Corregidor

In June, five members of congress visited "The Rock" as Corregidor Island in the Philippines is known. The Congressmen were there as part of a recess study tour of the Philippines as well as of Turkey and Iraq. They agreed that they were surprised at how much they learned. The congressional delegation was composed of Russ Carnanhan (D-MO), Jim Costa (D-CA), Jeff Duncan (R-SC), Louie Gohmert (R-TX), and Judge Ted Poe (R-TX).

Watch this 1943 movie here

Thus far, only Congressman Russ Carnahan (D-MO) was inspired to become a co-sponsor of H. Res 333, which honors those veterans who fought on Corregior as well as throughout the Pacific. We hope readers will remind these members of congress of their trip to this historic landmark.

Their tour was led by Steve Kwiecinski, the son of one of Corregidor's defenders, Staff Sgt. Walter Kwiecinski, who manned the last 12 inch mortar firing on Battery Way (60th U.S. Coast Artillery).

The elder Kwiecinski, a Minnesota native, was a POW slave laborer with Lester Tenney mining coal for Mitusi at Omuta in Fukuoka. Mitusi has never responded to requests for a dialogue or an apology from the American POWs of Japan.

The Defense of Corregidor will be forever known as the last heoric stand of the battle for the Philippines in 1942, the worst military defeat experienced by the U.S. On December 25, 1941, General Douglas MacArthur, commander of U.S. Army Forces in the Far East (USAFFE), was forced to move his headquarters from Manila to the island fortress of Corregidor in Manila Bay. A series of air raids by the Japanese destroyed all the exposed structures on the island and USAFFE headquarters was dug in to the Malinta Tunnel on the island.

Japanese bombing and shelling was relentless. The Americans and Filipinos--soldiers, sailors, Marines, and civilians--were running out of ammunition, food, medicine, and people. Early in the battle, on March 12th, was evacuated to Australia leaving Lt. General Jonanthan Wainwright in charge. Armed with World War I-era weapons that were barely useful against the massive Japanese assault, they held out.

In a radio message to President Franklin Roosevet, Wainwright wrote, "There is a limit of human endurance, and that point has long been passed." Gen. Jonathan Wainwright finally surrendered the Corregidor garrison at about 1:30 p.m. on May 6, 1942. See HERE for a comprehensive resource on the battles to defend and retake the Philippines.

Earl Szwabo, a constituent of Congressman Russ Carnahan (D-MO), manned a coastal defense artillery emplacement on Corregidor (59th U.S. Coast Artillery) when the Japanese assault began hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. He survived the battle only to be shipped to Japan on a Hell Ship. He became a slave laborer at a copper foundry owned by Ishihara Sangyo Kaisha in Nagoya, at a port city south of Tokyo. Much of the work involved melting down bells seized from churches. Other Allied POW slave laborers at this POW camp mined coal or manufactured sulfuric acid for the company.

Szwabo was one of the six POWs who participated in the first American POW trip to Japan in September 2010 to receive the Japanese government's apology for their abuse and starvation. The Yokkaichi facility where Mr. Szwabo slaved still exists and Ishihara Sangyo Kaisha (ISK) has prospered.

In September, he and his wife did visit the Yokkaichi facility and met with plant officials who expressed their regret for his mistreatment, but said they were not part of the same company. They, however, would not speak on the record, nor offer an apology. He also visited a memorial that company had built to the souls of all those who died laboring for the company at this site.

The company's American subsidiary, Ishihara Corporation (USA) is located in San Francisco and its President is Marvin Hosokawa.

Mr. Szwabo accepted and appreciated the understanding he received from ISK's Yokkaichi plant managers. The hope is that someday, ISK's Chairman will deliver an apology and support efforts to remember the POW experience in Japan. And the greater hope is that companies larger than ISK such as Mitsui, Mitsubishi, and Sumitomo will also move forward with meetings and apologies.

Accepting an apology, however, doesn't mean that the horrors should be forgotten, as Mr. Szwabo told the St. Louis Beacon:

A POW will never forget. I dream still of different things, and think about it," he said. "I lost my outfit on Palawan when they burned 150 alive there. I was lucky that I got shipped out. I guess God was on my side. And I know why I was picked; I was in better shape than the older guys, and the Japanese took the ones who looked the best physically, so they could work us to death. The bad part is you can't forget it.

Support for H. Res. 333

On July 23rd, the American Ex-Prisoners of War (AXPOW) veterans organization expressed its support for Congressman Mike Honda's resolution, H. Res. 333, welcoming the Government of Japan's apology to American former POWs of Japan and commending the persistent effort of those POWs for justice.

AXPOW felt that the resolution was a positive, important step toward strengthening the U.S.-Alliance and the now strong ties between once bitter enemies. Apologies and acknowledgment is meaningful, even 65 years later.

God Bless Albert Brown

Albert Brown, America's oldest survivor of the infamous Bataan Death March and the oldest living American Veteran of WW II, died August 14th. The New York Times and most other major market newspapers reported his passing.

The Bataan Death March is considered one of the worst war crimes of World War II. With the April 9th surrender of the troops on Bataan in The Philippines, the Times reports:

With many already close to death, they [American and Filipino troops and civilians] were forced to trudge [65 miles]  toward a prisoner-of-war camp during a torrid time of year with little food or water. Those who stopped were killed. Japanese soldiers fractured skulls with rifle butts and cut off heads. Prisoners who tried to help fallen comrades were bludgeoned or stabbed. “One 18-year-old I knew, he fell down,” Mr. Brown said in the book [see below]. “A guard came along and put a gun to his head, pulled the trigger and walked away.” 

As horrific as the Death March was, the next three years as a slave laborer for the Mitsui Mining Company (today known as Nippon Coke & Enginieering Company which is now owned by Mitsui, Sumitomo and Nippon Steel) in Bibai, Hokkaido was worse.  The Mitsui POW camp that held Mr. Brown included 238 British, 50 Americans, 53 Dutch, 8 Australians, one Canadian, and one Estonian (as recorded 15 August 1945). There were 114 POW deaths from abuse, malnutrition, disease, and lack of medical care. The Times reports: 

The nightmare was hardly over when the survivors [of the Bataan Death March] arrived at the camp, or at the other camps in Japan to which many, including Captain Brown, were later taken. In three years in captivity Captain Brown was regularly beaten; thrown down stairs, seriously injuring his back; and struck in the neck by a rifle butt, causing a fracture. Though nearly 6 feet, he weighed 90 pounds when he was freed after the Japanese surrender. 

Captain Brown's injuries were so severe that he was not expected to survive more than a few years after liberation. To learn more about his experiences as a POW of Japan and his inspiration for survival, see a new biography about him, Forsaken Heroes of the Pacific War: One Man’s True Story (2011).

Captain Brown's congressman is Jerry F. Costello (D-IL) who participates on both the Army and Air Force Caucuses. Representative Brown has NOT yet become a co-sponsor of H. Res. 333 honoring veterans like Captain Brown who were POWs of Japan (August 17, 20011).

The use of forced labor in Japan's mines was not unusual. A Japanese-government study of the history of coal mining on Hokkaido notes that the use of prisoners was the most effective sourcing for mining labor on the sparsely-populated island.

Mitsui is Japan's oldest and largest trading company. It operates in 67 countries and is involved in many projects in the U.S. You can find information on its early history HERE. Mitusi operated the greatest number of POW camps in Japan as well as owned the most "Hellships" that transported POWs to Japan and its colonies.

Requests to obtain an apology from Mitsui for its use of and profit from POW slave labor have gone unanswered. Mitsui's corporate social responsibility charter, is founded upon its published values, which begin with the company's commitment to: Build trust with fairness and humility. If you want to ask Mitsui why it refuses to apologize for its extensive use and abuse of POW slave labor, fax its Washington, DC office, (202) 861-0437 or call (202) 861-0660 or email.

Liberation and V-J Day

Omori-POW Camp that held Louis Zamperini

On August 15, 1945, Japan's Emperor Hirohito took to the radio to tell his subjects that the "the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage" and he had agreed to accept the conditions of the Potsdam declaration. His Gyokuon-hōsō (玉音放送), lit. "Jewel Voice Broadcast" made it clear that ceasing the war was an act of international humanity. He had concluded, "Should we continue to fight, it would not only result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization."

To the Allied POWs, it was the end of depravation, torture, abuse, and capricious orders. Chicago Tribune journalist, George Weller, one of the first to interview liberated POWs, recorded their first thoughts and descriptions of experiences. His son published his uncensored and unedited reports in 2006 in First into Nagasaki.

Generally, the POWs talked about their beatings and starvation. In Omuta, one Texas POW who slaved in a Mitsui coal mine camp, Fukuoka 17-B, as one of the "cooks" maybe used his down-home honesty to sum it up best:

Navy Cook Laurel Whitworth (Boerne, Texas): "Leaving Japan for me means not having to cook any more dogs to eat. One day I had to cook sixty-nine, another seventy-three, another fifty-five. I hate cooking dogs." (p. 94)

Las Cruces, New Mexico

In Las Cruces, New Mexico stands the only federally funded memorial dedicated to the memory of the those soldiers and civilians forced on the Bataan Death March in April 1942 at the start of Pacific War. The Bataan Death March Memorial Monument is located in the town’s Veterans Park. It was dedicated in April 2001.

Las Cruces artist Kelly Hester designed and sculpted the larger-than-life bronze statue depicting the struggle of those on the Death March. Two men try to hold up their buddy and move him forward. If they did not succeed, he would be shot, bayoneted, or beheaded—or all those things. Footprints are imbedded in the concrete in front of them... footprints made by boots as well as by bare feet. These footprints were made by those who had survived the March and their ordeal as POWs of Japan.

The Battle of Bataan and it bitter aftermath is deeply rooted in the state of New Mexico. Of the 12,000 Americans on the Bataan Death March, 1,800 were from the 200th and 515th Coast Artillery of the New Mexico National Guard. They came from nearly 300 New Mexican communities, and some 300 came from southwest New Mexico alone, where Las Cruces is located.

In addition to the national memorial to the Bataan Death March, the Las Cruces area has also hosted, since 1989, the annual Bataan Memorial Death March. The March takes place every March at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. Over 5,000 people from all over the U.S. and the world participate. Service members march in uniform.

The local congressman is Republican Steve Pearce, an Air Force veteran and Tea Party Caucus member who has established a Veterans Advisory Council for his district. Despite this commitment to New Mexico’s veterans, Congressman Pearce has not yet signed on as a co-sponsor of H. Res. 333, honoring those who were POWs of Japan, many of whom were from New Mexico. (August 13, 2011)

UPDATE: On December 9, 2011 Congressman Pearce became a co-sponsor of H. Res. 333.

Sendai's POW Camps

Map courtesy of Wes Injerd

The Sendai region of Japan has been much in the news lately. The March 11, 2001, triple disasters – earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear – were centered in this region. For many survivors of Japan’s POW camps, the names of these cities brought back memories.

Of the 88 POW camps for Allied prisoners of war on Japan's main islands (96 more throughout the Empire) there were 11 in the Sendai region between the years of 1942-1945. All used POW slave labor and a number were associated with companies involved with critical war production that were the first bombing targets of the U.S. Navy in 1945. At least 32 POWs were killed by the shelling. Exact information is hard to come by as research on the POWs of Japan is still evolving and slowly becoming more sophisticated and professional.

All of the companies that used POW slave labor still exist and prosper. The name of each of the eight wartime Japanese companies that used POW slave labor in the Sendai region is identified below along with its contemporary name in English and Japanese. The eight companies are today: Joban Kyodo Power Co. Ltd.; Furukawa Co. Ltd.; Mitsubishi Materials; Nippon Steel Company; Nippon Express Company; Dowa Holdings Co., Ltd.; Tohoku Electric Power; and JX Nippon Mining & Metals. None have apologized or offered to make amends for their use of slave labor.

Each of the 11 camps that researchers has been able to identify in the region that held Allied POW slave laborers is listed below, along with the type of slave labor performed and the modern name of the town, if it was changed. More detailed information is available through the hyperlinks. A number of the now-closed mines have been turned into tourist attractions, albeit with no mention of Allied POW slave labor or the tens of thousand of Chinese and Korean forced laborers. The rails that transported the POWs to the camps and factories are now owned by JR East.

1-B: Yumoto
Town: Fukushima-ken, Iwaki-gun, Yumoto-machi [Contemporary city name: Fukushima-ken, Iwaki-shi, Joban Yumoto, 福島県いわき市常磐湯元] MAP　
Labor: Coal mining
Company: Joban Coal (Tanko) Company
Company Today: Joban Kyodo Power Co. Ltd. (Joban Kyodo Karyoku Kabushiki Kaisha 常磐共同火力株式会社)
Notes: The largest of the Sendai Group camps, with a liberation total of 232 British, 198 Canadian, 135 Dutch, and only two American POWs; there were 32 deaths. The coast side of the city was destroyed by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami, but inner town had no major damage.


 2-B: Yoshima
Town: Fukushima-ken, Iwaki-gun, Yoshima-mura [Contemporary City Name: Fukushima-ken, Iwaki-shi, Yoshima 福島県いわき市好間] MAP
Labor: Coal mining
Company: Furukawa Mining Company
Company Today: Furukawa Co. Ltd. (Furukawa Kikai Kinzoku Kabushiki Kaisha 古河機械金属株式会社)
Notes: Mostly British POWs were here, but also an international mix of American, Canadian, Australian, Norwegian, Belgian, French, Danish, Irish, Portuguese, Czech, Romanian, and Polish POWs. The area of Yoshima-machi suffered no major damage from the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.


3-B: Hosokura
Town: Miyagi-ken, Kurihara-gun, Uguisusawa-mura [Contemporary City Name: Miyagi-ken, Kurihara-shi, Uguisusawa 宮城県栗原市鶯沢] MAP
Labor: Coal, lead, zinc mining
Company: Mitsubishi Mining Company
Company Today: Mitsubishi Materials (Mitsubishi Material Kabushiki Kaisha 三菱マテリアル株式会社)
Notes: Mostly American POWs. The mine was closed in 1987 and turned into an amusement and theme park (Hosokura Mine Park) by the City of Kurihara in 1990 where visitors can walk through its main tunnel. There are explanation boards throughout the tunnel, but the wartime use of Allied POWs is not mentioned. The city of Kurihara did not suffer major damage from the March 2011 earthquake.

4-B: Ohashi
Town: Iwate-ken, Kaihei-gun, Katsushi-mura [Contemporary City Name: Iwate-ken, Kamaishi-shi, Katsushi-cho 岩手県釜石市甲子町] MAP
Labor: Iron mining and charcoal manufacturing
Company: Kamaishi Iron Mining Company and the Nitto Company Charcoal Manufacturing Plant
Company Today: Nippon Steel Company (Shin Nihon Seitetsu Kabushiki Kaisha 新日本製鐵株式会社)
Notes: Mostly Canadian POWs. Camp to which POWs were evacuated to after the July and August shelling of the Kamaishi camp.


5-B: Kamaishi
Town: Iwate-ken, Kamaishi-shi, Yanoura [Contemporary City Name: Iwate-ken, Kamaishi-shi岩手県釜石市] MAP
Labor: Iron milling
Company: Nippon Steel - a Mitsubishi Company at the time
Company Today: Nippon Steel Company (Shin Nihon Seitetsu Kabushiki Kaisha 新日本製鐵株式会社)
Notes: Mostly Dutch POWs. Kamaishi, an important foundry town, was the first city bombarded by the US Navy in WWII. The largest number of POW deaths occurred here, 50, 32 killed by the US Navy shelling in July and August 1945. A video of the shelling can be found HERE. The town was devastated by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

CLICK THE LINK BELOW TO CONTINUE

Condolences

Donate by clicking the picture

On March 11, 2011 the Northeast coast of Japan, Tohoku, was consumed by the triple disasters of an earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown. Towns and families were swept out to sea while the earthquake pushed Japan closer to China. The uncontrolled release of radioactivity contaminated the land, water, and air.

Eleven POW camps were once among the towns and villages of the Tohoku region. More if you count those that were formally administered in the Tokyo region but closer to Sendai, the earthquake's epicenter in the Tohoku region. 

Despite the painful memories of abuse and deprivation, many former POWs of Japan empathized with the Japanese who had their lives torn apart by both the natural and man-made triple disasters.

Thus on March 25th, a small delegation of descendants of American POWs of Japan delivered a letter of condolence to Japan's Embassy in Washington, DC. It was signed by the POWs and POW descendants who participated in the first American POW Friendship exchange program in September 2010.

Below is the text of the letter they delivered. HERE are various other messages of sympathy from former POWs and their descendants.

March 25, 2011
 

His Excellency Ichiro Fujisaki
Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Japan
Embassy of Japan
2520 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C.   20008 

Dear Ambassador Fujisaki:

We watch with a heavy heart the devastation of your nation and your citizens and want you to know that the Japanese people are in our thoughts and prayers.

As members of the first American POW Friendship delegation the sorrow for us is profound. We visited Japan knowing the pain of loss and despair and left with the warmth of friendship and understanding.

We plan to do what we can to aid and comfort our Japanese friends overcome the horrific damage done to their beautiful country. We are bound together by common peril and worry as well as the determination to overcome this crisis.

Please extend our sympathies and condolences to those that lost family members and our hopes go out to those that do not know the fate of theirs.

Most important, we send our heartfelt best wishes to all those involved in helping in the assistance and recovery efforts.

Most sincerely yours,

Dr. and Mrs. Lester Tenney
Last Commander of the American Defenders of Bataan and CorregidorCarlsbad, California

Ms. Jan Thompson
President, Descendants GroupMakanda, Illinois

Signing as well for:

Mr. and Mrs. Joseph AlexanderSan Antonio, Texas 

Ms. Judy ChorleyPrescott, Arizona

Mr. and Mrs. Edward JackfertTampa, Florida and Wellsburg, West Virginia  

Ms. Nancy KraghLudlow, Washington

Mr. Benjamin RosendahlAustin, Texas

Mr. Robert RosendahlSpringfield, Missouri 

Mr. and Mrs. Earl SzwaboFlorissant, Missouri  

Mr. Donald VersawLakewood, California

Nippon Sharyo

 All rights reserved by CTBarey

In the entrance hall of the Yushukan, the war museum on the property of the Yasukuni Shrine, locomotive C5631 greets visitors. You examine the black engine as you ride up the escalator to the main museum. The museum's entrance hall envelopes its guests in a blinding white.

The C5631 was one of the engines used on the Thailand-Burma Death Railway. This particular engine is said to have been one that opened this infamous Railway, which was the subject of the Academy Award wining movie, Bridge on the River Kwai. The movie immortalized the Allied POWs who slaved to build the railway. PBS hosted a documentary in June 2008 that is truer to the facts of the awful history of building the railway.

Over 240,000 British, Dutch, Australian, Canadian, American, New Zealand, Amonen, Indian, and other civilian and military Allied POWs as well Southeast Asian forced laborers such as Burmese, Malaya, Indonesian (Romusha), Thai, and others participated in creating the railroad from the jungle and mountains. Probably 75 percent died in the process from abuse, malnutrition, disease, overwork, and accidents.

More than 600 American POWs slaved to build the Thailand-Burma Death Railway. They were mostly survivors of the USS Houston CA-30, sunk in the Battle of the Sunda Strait in February 1942, and an artillery battalion of the Texas National Guard (2nd Battalion, 131st Field Artillery) that was taken prisoner on Java after a brief battle in March 1942. Less than half survived the ordeal.

Nippon Sharyo manufactured in 1936 the C5631 that now rests at the Yushukan. It was shipped to Thailand in 1942 and is said to have taken part in the opening ceremony of the Thailand-Burma Death Railway. After the war, it was used in Thailand until it was retired in 1977. Japanese veteran groups raised funds to return the locomotive to Japan in 1979, restore it, and place it on the grounds of the Yasukuni Shrine. Apparently, in Shizuoka at the Oigawa Railway, you can ride a sister engine, C-5633, manufactured by Mitsubishi also in 1936. 

Since 1896, Nippon Sharyo has been Japan's leading railway rolling stock manufacturer. Today, in the United States, it supplies passenger cars to: Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District (NICTD), Virginia Railway Express (VRE), Northeast Illinois Regional Commuter Railroad Corporation (Metra), California Department of Transportation (CalTrains), Maryland’s MARC, the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (LACMTA), and Sonoma Marin Area Rail Transit (SMART). The company is an essential component of both JR Central and JR East's bids for U.S. high-speed rail contracts, which will be primarily U.S. taxpayer funded. In 2008, the bankrupt Nippon Sharyo was acquired by JR Central to ensure the historic company's survival.

During the war, Nippon Sharyo utilized American POW slave labor at two sites. The largest was at Narumi, which remains an important manufacturing center for the company. Narumi was where Sgt. Sam Moody was tortured (he testified at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal) and one of the POW camps with the greatest number of convicted war criminals (22). 

Nippon Sharyo-manufactured trains rumble daily past the Maywood Veterans Memorial Park. The village of Maywood, home of Company “B” of the 192nd Tank Battalion (originally the 33rd Tank Company of the Illinois National Guard, activated for Federal service on November 25, 1940), had the highest number of POWs on the Bataan Death March from a single municipality. Of the 89 men of Company "B" who left the U.S. in 1942 for the Philippines, only 43 would return from the war.

Danny Davis (D-IL) is the congressman representing Maywood, Illinois. As of August 5, 2011, he has not yet become a co-sponsor of H. Res. 333.

Motionless

Everett Reamer 2011

Standing at attention in the hot sun, with beatings if you even twitched, was one of the tortures endured by the POWs of Japan. Two Americans were once noted in Guinness Book of Records for their endurance to this treatment. Today, the category “motionless” does not appear in the print edition and the current “record” is inexplicably days less than those held by the American POWs.

According to a Guinness official we contacted, Om Prakash Singh of India holds the record of standing motionlessness with 20 hours 10 minutes and 6 seconds. Mr. Singh’s record was last included in 2006 Edition of the Guinness Book of World Records. Thereafter, the record was removed from the book, but not from the database, due to the space limitations according to the Guinness representative.

Eliminated from the Guinness database--and we asked--appear to be two records that far exceed Mr. Singh’s. The Guinness Book of World Records in the 1987 through 1991 editions all noted Pvt Everett Reamer stood at attention for 132 hours without food, water or relief.

Ohio native, Pvt Reamer fought on Corregidor with the 60th Coast Artillery Antiaircraft. As a POW he was sent to Japan to be a slave laborer for Nippon Express (Nippon Tsuun) at the Osaka Main Headquarters Camp No. 1-B (Chikko). After “stealing” Red Cross boxes that the Japanese had withheld, he and others were tortured and forced to stand at attention on August 15, 1944. He was the last to drop, 132 hours later on August 20, 1944.

He was then taken to Japanese Army Headquarters in Osaka where he was sentenced to solitary confinement at Osaka's Sakai Prison. His cell was 5 x 8 feet with solid concrete walls. There were no bars and no window—just a small slit at eye level for the guards to pass food through. There was no bed, no heat, and no running water. He slept on the concrete floor. His toilet was a wooden pail. He wasn’t allowed to stand; he could only sit on the floor. He says he kept sane by repeating the 23rd Psalm each day.

He remained there until August 22, 1945 when the guards gave him a huge bowl of rice. “I thought I had died and gone to heaven,” Reamer says. Then they called him out of his cell, along with the seven other allied POWs. He was certain they were to be shot. Instead, they were told that the war was over and “we are now friends.”

click to order

Mr. Reamer who we interviewed in June 2011, was told by a Guinness Book editor in New York not to be surprised if the Japanese government finagled to have the item removed. Although the cause cannot be confirmed, it is true that the record was removed. Maybe, because the feat was “involuntary” it no longer qualified.

You can read Mr. Reamer's story in his memoir Unconquerable Faith: Surviving Corregidor, Bataan, and Japan or HERE or HERE. 

Mr. Reamer was able to give us copies of his Guinness Book entries, but we could not confirm Sgt Sam Moody’s claim that he too was included. Mr. Moody died in 1999. However, there are still POWs alive who were with him at Nippon Sharyo’s Narumi POW camp who remember the incident.

Samuel Moody, who his fellow prisoners said was always getting in trouble, was forced to stand at attention for stealing a bowl of rice (in some accounts it was a canteen of cooking oil). He stood in the prison camp yard for 53 hours.

Before he died, Moody fought to receive token compensation from the Japanese companies that enslaved him and other POWs. In 1992, Masashi Mazobuchi, a spokesman for the Japanese Embassy in Washington said that although the Japanese government ''deeply regrets'' all wartime incidents, all legal questions were settled in the Tokyo war crimes trials. ''Of course, morally, some individuals are not satisfied,'' he said.

Moody was one of six Lynn, Massachusetts men who survived the Bataan Death March. He was considered the city’s preeminent war hero and his portrait was included in the 1949 time capsule buried in the cornerstone of the Lynn Memorial City Hall and Auditorium.

As previously noted, Mr. Moody’s last congressman was John Mica (R-FL). You can obtain a free copy of Sam Moody’s memoir, Reprieve from Hell from Mr. Mica's office. The current congressman from Lynn, Massachusetts is John Tierney (D-MA). Everett Reamer’s congressman is Trent Franks (R-AZ). None of these representatives has yet to become co-sponsors of H. Res. 333.

If you wish to follow up with the Guinness Book of World Records, try HERE.