Statement for the Record
to the
Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee and House
Veterans' Affairs Committee Joint Hearing
To Receive Legislative Presentations of
Veterans Service Organizations
By
Ms. Jan Thompson
President, American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor
Memorial Society
[Daughter of PhM2 Robert E. Thompson USN, USS Canopus,
Corregidor, Bilibid & Mukden, POW# 2011]
18 March 2015
American Prisoners of War of
Japan
Honoring the Memory of World
War II
Veterans of the Pacific
Chairmen Isakson and Miller,
Ranking Members Blumenthal and Brown, Members of the Senate and House Veterans
Affairs Committees, thank you for allowing us to present the unique concerns of
veterans of World War II’s Pacific Theater to Congress. The American Defenders
of Bataan and Corregidor Memorial Society (ADBC-MS) represents surviving POWs
of Japan, their families, and descendants. Our goal is to preserve their
history and communicate the enduring spirit of the American POW experience in
the Pacific to future generations.
We applaud the efforts of all the
veterans’ service organizations to fight for adequate medical care and
disability benefits. Moreover, the incidence and intensity of post-traumatic
stress for American POWs of Japan is believed to be the greatest of any World
War II veteran and possibly of any American war. These veterans had to survive
the sordid POW camps, unimaginable and capricious torture, “hell ships” to
Japan or its colonies, and years of brutal imprisonment and slave labor. Upon returning from the Pacific War, they
found a government reluctant to recognize and treat the mental and physical effects
that were consequences of the deprivations suffered while POWs of Japan.
At the time, PTSD was not yet a
medical category and VA doctors limited the POWs’ access to disability benefits
by dismissing the after-effects of years of abuse, disease, and malnutrition.
That should not happen to any veteran, and thus, we strongly support the
legislative goals of our fellow veterans service organizations to ensure medical and mental health care, as
well as to expedite disability claims, to provide rehabilitation, and to
establish job-training programs for all American veterans. The American POWs of
Japan and their families know intimately the difficulty of re-incorporation
into civil society with little support.
Our task
today, however, is to address another issue of respect and acceptance of
returning service men and women. This is to ensure that they are not forgotten.
For the American POWs of Japan this means that their unique history and the lessons
of their experience with Imperial Japan is preserved. This is an urgent task.
In the United States this history is being forgotten, and in Japan it is being
revised.
Remembrance, Reconciliation, and Preservation
The ADBC-MS was dismayed in 2012
when none of the 70th anniversaries of historic battles during the
beginning of World War II were officially recognized. Astonishingly, December 7, 1941, “a date that
will live in infamy,” has not been recognized with a Congressional resolution
for many years. This year, the 70th Anniversaries of the daring
“Great Raid” that liberated Cabanatuan POW camp in the Philippines and of the
Battle for Manila that freed thousands of American civilian internees and POWs
were not acknowledged.
We hope that future Congresses will remember the events that
started American involvement in World War II with resolutions memorializing the
simultaneous attacks on Pearl Harbor and the Philippines Islands. And we hope that future Congresses will honor those POWs
who were massacred by Imperial Japanese forces as American forces advanced to
liberate territories once lost. These include the 98 Americans on Wake Island
who were bound and machine-gunned to death on October 7, 1943 and the 139 on
Palawan Island who were drenched in gasoline and set afire.
The former POWs of Japan leave
many legacies and lessons. Among the most important is how they coped with the
postwar traumas of inhumane imprisonment. They fought two battles. One was for
recognition of their “battle fatigue” and the other for justice and
remembrance. The former is now championed by all veterans’ service
organizations. We ask Congress for support and to help our veterans in their
unique quest for justice and remembrance.
In an interview published 23
January 2014 in The Asahi Shimbun,
Japan’s second largest newspaper, U.S. Ambassador to Japan Caroline Kennedy
said:
I want to take a moment to talk about history and
reconciliation. This fall, there was an event that previously might have been
thought unimaginable. A group of Americans who suffered as Japanese prisoners
of war during the Second World War returned here at the invitation of the
Japanese government. Participating took enormous amounts of courage for all
those involved….It is not easy, but citizens in all countries should encourage
and support leaders who reach across history to build a peaceful future. It
took courage on the part of the participants to come back to Japan and learn
how Japan has changed.
As background to the Ambassador’s
words, in 2009 the Government of Japan, through its then-Ambassador to the U.S.
Ichiro FUJISAKI, and again in 2010 through its then-Foreign Minister Katsuya
OKADA, officially apologized to the American POWs of Japan. These
Cabinet-approved apologies first established as a Cabinet Decision on February
6, 2009 were unprecedented. Never before had a Japanese Government
apologized for a specific war crime nor had it done so directly to the victims. The Japanese Government further initiated the “Japan/POW
Friendship Program” of trips for American former POWs to visit Japan and return
to the places of their imprisonment and slave labor. Thus far, there have been
five trips, one each in the fall of 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014.
The benefits of this long-awaited
act of contrition have been immeasurable for former POWs and their
families. The Program, as Ambassador
Kennedy has pointed out, is a great success, but we are concerned about its
future. We are concerned that
Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzo ABE, may revise Japan’s war apologies and end
the POW/Japan Friendship Program. We are concerned that Japan has limited each
trip to only seven former POWs. We currently have 26 men, all over 90-years old, eager to participate and
waiting to hear when or if there will be another journey to Japan. Because of
their advanced ages, many of these veterans may miss the opportunity.
Success should encourage more action
The success of this visitation
program should encourage Japan to do more. The Program should not end with the ability
of the nonagenarian POWs to visit Japan or with their deaths. A POW’s captivity
has multi-generational effects on families. The wives, children, and siblings of
those who died suffered irreparable loss. The families of those who survived suffered from
the long-term physical and mental health problems caused by the ex-POW's years
of cruel captivity. Widows, brothers, sisters, children, and
other descendants have all been profoundly affected by the POW experience of
their relative and they too should be eligible for future programs.
We ask Congress to encourage the
Government of Japan to preserve, expand, and enhance its reconciliation program
toward its American former prisoners. We want to see the trips to Japan
continued and extended to include descendants and researchers. We want the
visitation program drawn into a permanent program of research, documentation,
reconciliation, and a people-to-people exchange that is not subject to the
Japanese government’s yearly budget review. We want Japan’s Ministry of Foreign
Affairs to publicize the program and its achievements.
We want this program to include
funds to create visual reminders of history through museums and monuments. We want national memorials to the POWs who
slaved and died on Japanese soil and territories as well as aboard the “hell
ships.” We want to see a Japanese government-funded memorial at the Port
of Moji where most of the hell ships docked and unloaded their sick and dying “cargo.”
We also want the many companies
that brutally used POWs as slave labor and who now profit in the American
market, to join with their government by acknowledging their use of forced
labor and by offering their own acts of reconciliation. Over 60 Japanese
companies, such as Mitsui, Mitsubishi, Sumitomo, Hitachi, Toshiba, Kawasaki, Nippon
Steel, Nippon Express, Nippon Sharyo, Ube Industries, Showa Denko, Aso Group, and
Yawata Steel maintained war production by cruel exploitation of American and
Allied POWs.
Prime Minister Shinzo ABE and his address to Congress
Prime Minister Shinzo ABE, who we
understand may soon address a joint meeting of Congress, has a unique opportunity
to acknowledge Japan’s historical responsibilities. His past statements
rejecting the verdicts of Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal that serves as the foundation
of the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty with Japan trouble us. We want Congress
to only extend the invitation to Prime Minister Abe to speak at the podium of
Roosevelt and Churchill if they are assured that he will acknowledge that
Japan’s defeat released the country from the venom of fascism and the
inhuman goals of a criminal regime.
By doing so, the Japanese prime
minister’s speech to Congress can be a historic one of reconciliation of which
the first step is acknowledgement. Tied to this, we feel, should be that he
extends and enhances the POW visitation program as we have outlined. He can
engender trust with his American allies by honoring their country’s veterans. Here
he can signal to Japan’s other wartime victims that meaningful reconciliation,
as Ambassador Kennedy pointed out, is possible. The POW/Japan Friendship
Program is one that confronts the past while preserving the dignities of both
Americans and Japanese.
It is our hope in addressing this hearing that we can
encourage Congress to work with the Obama Administration and the State
Department to persuade Japan to hold to its promises and responsibilities.
Japan needs to be encouraged to do more.
And it is our hope that members of
Congress will encourage the many Japanese
corporations that operate in their districts to acknowledge the history of the
American POWs who slaved for them.
The American POWs of Japan and
their families have paid a high price for the freedoms we cherish. What they
ask in return for their sacrifices and service is for their government, even
after 70 years, is to keep its moral obligation to them. They do not want their
history ignored or exploited. They do not ask for further compensation. What
they want most is to have their government stand by them to ensure they will be
remembered, that our allies respect them, and their American history preserved.
Thank you for this opportunity to
address your committees.
[Ms. Thompson is a documentary filmmaker. Her recent work is Never the Same: the POW Experience]
