The Atomic Bombings and some events

PURCHASE BOOK

80th Anniversary of the Atomic Bombings

By Takuya Nishimura, APP Senior Fellow, Former Editorial Writer for The Hokkaido Shimbun.

The views expressed by the author are his own and are not associated with The Hokkaido Shimbun.
You can find his blog, J Update here.
August 11, 2025. Special to Asia Policy Point

This month the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki commemorated the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombings in 1945. While the sufferers of the atomic bombs, or hibakusha, aspire to eternal peace without the devastation of nuclear weapons, the gap between their hopes and the reality of world politics has widened. Hibakusha face a challenging task in handing their movement over to next generation, as the sufferers in Hiroshima and Nagasaki pass away.
 
In Hiroshima, in the Declaration of Peace at the Peace Memorial Ceremony on August 6, the Mayor, Kazumi Matsui, introduced a story of an unnamed man who was injured by the atomic bomb in Hiroshima. “Building a peaceful world without nuclear weapons will demand our never-give-up spirit. We have to talk and keep talking to people who hold opposing views,” Matsui said, quoting words of the hibakusha.
 
That unnamed man is thought to be Sunao Tsuboi who shook hands and had a short conversation with then U.S. President Barack Obama on his visit to Hiroshima in May 2016. “Never give up” is the phrase Tsuboi likes to use in his conversations. He once told me that he came to pursue peace and to hate war. Instead of continuing the resentment he held against America after the end of the war, he realized that retaliation would produce nothing. This principle is commonly held by the hibakusha.
 
Mayor Matsui also warned against a growing perception that “nuclear weapons are essential for national defense,” a view that he and many other believe heightens the risk of the use of these weapons.
 
In Nagasaki, Mayor, Shiro Suzu urged in his Nagasaki Peace Declaration on August 9 for the world to take the path to a peaceful future through dialogue with different people. Suzuki pressed world leaders to end disputes that are based on a principle of “force is met with force.”
 
One event at which the world community seemed to meet the hopes of the hibakusha was the award of the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize to the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organization, or Nihon Hidankyo. The Norwegian Nobel Committee recognized that “Nihon Hidankyo has carried out extensive educational work on the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of the use of nuclear weapons. Hence the motto ‘No more Hibakusha.’”
 
However, the reality of world politics has recently visited more disappointments on the hibakusha. Recognizing that it can use its nuclear weapons stockpile to blackmail Ukraine, Russia has continued its war. Commenters have noticed that the invasion by a country with nuclear weapons of another that abandoned nuclear weapons undermines the international non-proliferation regime. Ukraine gave up its status of the world’s third largest nuclear power with the Budapest Memorandum in 1994.
 
A growing concern among the hibakusha is the fact that the nuclear powers are increasing their involvement in international conflicts. Despite efforts to find a peace deal in the Gaza Strip, Israel – widely thought to have nuclear weapons capability – has continued to destroy cities in the region to eliminate a terrorist organization, Hamas. India and Pakistan, both of which are recognized as nuclear powers, exchanged military strikes in May over a terrorist attack in Kashmir.
 
The hibakusha were astonished that the U.S. conducted air strikes in June on three of Iran’s nuclear sites. Aggravating the situation for the hibakusha was U.S. President Donald Trump’s justification for the attacks on Iran as a means of ending the conflict between Iran and Israel. Trump likened the U.S. attack on Iran to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, characterizing the strikes on Iran as “essentially the same thing.” “Nothing has changed 80 years after the war,” said one of the hibakusha.
 
The survivors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki are also frustrated with the diplomacy of the government of Japan on nuclear non-proliferation. In their peace declarations, Matsui and Suzuki strongly recommended that the government join the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, issued by the United Nations in 2017. The Japanese government has routinely rejected that request because Japan is under nuclear umbrella of the U.S.
 
In his speeches at the ceremonies in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Prime Minister Ishiba stressed Japan’s efforts toward “the world without nuclear weapons” not through the 2017 UN treaty, but the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) in 1970. Ishiba also quoted the Hiroshima Action Plan, a plan first proposed by his predecessor Fumio Kishida in a speech to NPT Review Conference in 2022. The plan would preclude the use of nuclear weapons and enhance the transparency of a country’s nuclear development.
 
When we look at the reality of the hibakusha, they are decreasing year after year. Hibakusha who have kept their copies of the Atomic Bomb Survivor’s Handbook, issued by Japanese government, fell below 100,000 in 2024. It means we have fewer and fewer people who can talk about the direct experience of the devastation brought by atomic bombs. How the narratives of Hiroshima and Nagasaki can be passed down to future generations is an important – and unresolved – question.
 
In his peace declaration, Matsui urged young people to think less about themselves and more about each other. “Clearly, nations, too, must look beyond narrow self-interest to consider the circumstances of other nations,” Matsui said. This tenet is grounded in the  preamble to the Constitution of Japan, which states that “no nation is responsible for itself alone.” While Hiroshima’s hope for peace is as fresh as ever, the reality of the world, including that in Japan, looks as if the great tragedy of the atomic bombings has been forgotten.

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BOOK TALK: RAIN OF RUIN BY RICHARD OVERY. 10/7, 6:30-8:30pm (BST), IN PERSON ONLY. Sponsor: Imperial War Museums. Speaker: author Richard Overy, one of Britain’s most distinguished historians. https://www.iwm.org.uk/events/iwm-in-conversation-richard-overy-rain-of-ruin. Fee. PURCHASE BOOK: https://amzn.to/45hyoOU

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POP CULTURE, PROPAGANDA, AND POLITICS: REFLECTIONS ON THE PACIFIC WAR 80 YEARS LATER: 2025 ANNUAL CONFERENCE. 10/17-18, HYBRID. Sponsor: Admiral Nimitz Foundation at the National Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg, Texas. Speakers: Richard B. Frank, an internationally recognized leading authority on the Asia-Pacific War; Rob Buscher, a film and media specialist; Janet M. Davis, Professor of American Studies and History at the University of Texas at Austin; Dr. Ambyre Ponivas, Assistant Professor of Communication Studies and Psychology at Young Harris College in Georgia; Steven Rawle, Professor of Film at York St John University, UK; Henry Sledge is the son of Eugene B. Sledge, author of With the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa and China Marine. https://www.pacificwarmuseum.org/education/museum-programs/conference 

THE SURRENDER OF JAPAN: ORCHESTRATING THE END OF THE WAR. 9/2, 11:00am-Noon, HYBRID. Sponsor: National WWII Museum. Speaker: Colonel Mike Bell, PhD, Executive Director of the Museum’s Jenny Craig Institute for the Study of War and Democracy. https://www.nationalww2museum.org/events-programs/events/137098-surrender-japan-orchestrating-end-war

2025 CONFERENCE TO HONOR 80TH ANNIVERSARY OF END OF WORLD WAR II. 8/30-9/2. IN PERSON ONLY, Hilton Garden Inn, Arlington, VA. Sponsor: American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor Memorial Society. Various presentations on the American POW experience with Imperial Japan. https://www.adbcmemorialsociety.org/

FINALE IN THE PACIFIC: THE ROAD TO JAPAN'S SURRENDER. 8/23, 9:00am. IN PERSON ONLY, MacArthur Memorial Visitor Center, 150 Bank Street, Norfolk, VA. Sponsors: MacArthur Memorial, Military Aviation Museum, and Hampton Roads Naval Museum. Speakers: Military historians Richard B. Frank, author of Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire, D.M. Giangreco, author of Truman and the Bomb: The Untold Story, and Timothy J. Orr, co-author of Never Call Me a Hero: A Legendary American Dive-Bomber Pilot Remembers of the Battle of Midway. https://www.eventbrite.com/e/finale-in-the-pacific-the-road-to-japans-surrender-tickets-1371578601519?aff=oddtdtcreator

80TH ANNIVERSARY END OF WAR SYMPOSIUM. 8/8-9. Sponsor: National WWII Museum-New Orleans. Speakers: Guenter Bischof; Michael Neiberg; John McManus; Craig Symonds; James Scott; John Curatola; Jonathan House; Richard Frank; Jim Zobel; Noriko Kawamura. https://www.nationalww2museum.org/events-programs/events/135816-80th-anniversary-end-war-symposium VIDEO

THE CONTESTED HISTORY OF WORLD WAR TWO: THE HOTTEST FLASHPOINTS TODAY. 8/1. Sponsor: Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan. Speakers: M.G. Sheftall, Professor, Modern Japanese Cultural History and Communication, Faculty of Informatics, Shizuoka University; Alexis Dudden, Professor, Department of History, University of Connecticut and Visiting Professor of Japanese Studies, National University of Singapore; Koichi Nakano, Professor, Political Science, Sophia University.  https://www.fccj.or.jp/news-and-multimedia/press-conference-contested-history-world-war-two-hottest-flashpoints-today-mg VIDEO

POW Group Testifies to Congress

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

Jan Thompson

President

American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor Memorial Society

 

13 March 2024

 

AMERICAN DEFENDERS OF THE PACIFIC

TIME FOR A CONGRESSIONAL GOLD MEDAL

&

MEMORIALS IN JAPAN

 

 

Chairmen Tester and Bost, Ranking Members Moran and Takano, and Members of the Senate and House Veterans Affairs Committees, thank you for allowing us to describe how Congress can meet the concerns of veterans of World War II in the Pacific.

 

The American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor (ADBC) was founded in January 1946 at the Fort Devens, Massachusetts hospital by former POWs of Imperial Japan. The ADBC represented the men and women of the U.S. Armed Forces in the Pacific who participated in the early resistance to, and defensive battles against, the armed forces of Imperial Japan from December 8, 1941 to June 9, 1942. Nearly all the survivors endured four years of merciless imprisonment by Imperial Japan throughout the Empire.

 

Our Memorial Society now represents their families and descendants, as well as scholars, researchers, and archivists. Our goal is to preserve the history of the American POW experience in the Pacific and to teach future generations of the POWs’ sacrifice, courage, determination, and faith—the essence of the American spirit.

 

Background

 

The common perception of an American POW of Imperial Japan is as a casualty of the infamous Bataan Death March 82 years ago next month. The fall of the Bataan Peninsula in the Philippines and the start of the March, April 9, 1942, is National Former POW Recognition Day and is recognized with a Presidential Proclamation.

 

In fact, Americans—Marines, sailors, and merchant marines in China and Japan—became POWs of Imperial Japan starting with the first day of the War on December 8, 1941. Over the following months, Americans unprepared for war in outposts throughout the Pacific were surrendered en masse often after furious, unaided battles—Wake Island, Guam, Java, Sunda Strait, Luzon, Corregidor, Mindanao, Kiska, Attu—against the invading Japanese.

 

As POWs, the Americans were subject to torture, abuse, starvation, and neglect. Significantly, they were used as slave laborers for Japan’s military and private industry. The men toiled on the Thai-Burma Death Railway; built airfields with their bare hands—such as at what is now the Antonio Bautista Air Base on Palawan, Philippines; died constructing military projects such as the Soto Dam in Nagasaki Prefecture; and slaved in Japanese corporate mines, mills, and factories. For example, Nippon Steel, which is now attempting to purchase U.S. Steel, used more than 6,000 American and Allied POWs as forced labor with ten percent dying in the process.

 

I testify today to encourage a greater effort to remember and to advocate for these American men and women who gave their all under desperate conditions and who demonstrated determination and resourcefulness against a ruthless enemy. And all this against the backdrop of a long-decided U.S. and British policy to prioritize the war in Europe. The result was that thousands of these soldiers, sailors, Marines, and airmen became POWs of Japan and suffered some of the War’s worst consequences. One-third did not return home.

 

Our asks

To ensure that the sacrifices and unique history of our fighting men and women in the Pacific during 1941 and 1942 are not forgotten I ask Congress to:

 

1. Award the Congressional Gold Medal collectively to the American defenders of Bataan and Corregidor, as defined in U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich’s and Representative Teresa Leger Fernandez’s forthcoming bill. This group represents every U.S. state, territory, tribe, and military service. It is the most diverse World War II Congressional Gold Medal cohort.

 

2. Call on Nippon Steel and other Japanese companies to acknowledge their history of using American and Allied POWs as slave laborers and to establish an educational foundation to support research and learning about the POW experience in Imperial Japan. Respect for the sacrifices of American veterans should be fundamental to Nippon Steel’s acquisition of a U.S. company. It is the only way that trust can be established.

3. Ask the Government of Japan, to create two central government-funded memorials in Japan, as none exist, to the Allied POWs of WWII. One would be in Tokyo and the other at the Port of Moji on Kyushu, Japan where most of the “hellships”–floating dungeons where POWs were denied air, space, light, sanitation, water, and food–first arrived in Japan to unload their sick and dying human cargo. Currently, the only monuments at Moji are to Japanese war horses, Japanese soldiers, and bananas.

 

4. Instruct the U.S. Department of State to prepare a report for Congress on the history and funding of the 2010-2023 “Japan/POW Friendship Program.” The report should include (i) how other Allied POW reconciliation programs initiated by the Government of Japan in 1995 compare both in funding and programming with the one for the Americans; (ii) how the U.S. program compares with its “kakehashi” people exchange programs in the United States funded by the Government of Japan starting in 2015; and (iii) a breakdown of the budgets of these various exchange programs and the types and ages of participants.

 

5. Ask the Government of Japan to reestablish and institutionalize the “Japan/POW Friendship Program.” Inaugurated in 2010 as a reconciliation visit to Japan for former U.S. POWs and family members, it was modeled after ones initiated in 1995 for British, Dutch, and Australian POWs. Japan ended the visitation program for Americans in 2023. Instead of stopping reconciliation efforts, Japan should transform the American POW program into a permanent educational, remembrance, and exchange initiative that encompasses history, justice, and democratic resilience.

 

6. Ask the Government of Japan to publish in Japanese, English and other Allied languages on the website of the Foreign Ministry of Japan the 2009 Cabinet Decision making a formal apology to all the prisoners of war of Japan and the text of Ambassador Ichiro Fujisaki’s May 30, 2009 speech to the final convention of the ADBC offering an apology to the POWs.

 

7. Ask the Government of Japan to honor its 2015 written promise to include the “full history” of Japan’s UNESCO World Industrial Heritage properties of the Meiji Industrial Revolution: Iron and Steel, Shipbuilding and Coal Mining. Despite the government’s written commitments to UNESCO, the history of POW slave labor at many of the Heritage sites is not included at those locations or at the Tokyo Information Center. Two of these locations are owned by Nippon Steel.

 

High price of freedom

By June 1942, most of the estimated 27,000 Americans ultimately held as military POWs of Imperial Japan had been surrendered. By the War’s end, roughly 12,000 Americans POWs had died in Japan’s squalid POW camps, in the fetid holds of “hellships,” or in slave labor camps owned by Japanese companies. This was a death rate of 40 percent. In contrast, 1.5 percent of Americans in Nazi POW camps died putting the mortality rate for POWs of Japan as 20 times greater.

Eighty-three years after the start of the War in the Pacific, it is time to recognize the Americans who fought the impossible and endured the unimaginable in the war against tyranny and fascism in Asia. The American men and women in the early months of the war in the Pacific fought with limited and outdated weapons and no hope of reinforcement or resupply.

 

Current and future generations can be inspired by their “victory from within.” As President Franklin D. Roosevelt said in August 1943, when the outcome of WWII was still uncertain, “The story of the fighting on Bataan and Corregidor—and, indeed, everywhere in the Philippines–will be remembered so long as men continue to respect bravery, and devotion, and determination.”

 

In return for their sacrifices and service, they ask that their government keep its moral obligation to them. They do not want their history ignored or exploited. What they want most is to have their government stand by them to ensure that they will be remembered, that our Japanese allies respect them, and that their American history is preserved accurately.

 

Ms. Jan Thompson

President, American Defenders of Bataan & Corregidor Memorial Society

Daughter of PhM2c Robert E. Thompson USN, USS Canopus (AS-9)

Survivor of the hellships Oryoku Maru, Enoura Maru, and the Brazil Maru

Survivor of the POW Camps Bilibid (Philippines), Fukuoka 3B (Japan), & Mukden (China)

 

See previous testimony to the Veterans’ Affairs Committees for a fuller background

on the history and efforts of the ADBC-MS.

https://www.adbcmemorialsociety.org/

Convening on the history of the POWs of Japan

13TH ANNUAL AMERICAN DEFENDERS OF BATAAN AND
CORREGIDOR MEMORIAL SOCIETY CONVENTION

May 4-6, 2023

Sheraton Albuquerque Uptown

2600 Louisiana BLVD NE

Albuquerque, NM

Special hotel rate available by April 6, 2023

Call 24 hrs. a day at 1800-325-3535 and ask for the American Defenders of Bataan & Corregidor Memorial Society (ADBC-MS) Rate or LINK (suggest you call to see if you can retain the conference rate after the deadline)

Find registration form HERE.

You can email in a pdf of the registration form and call in your registration fee by emailing Ms. Judy Pruitt, pruittja13@aol.com   

Thursday, May 4, 2023

• 2023 POW/Japanese Friendship Trip to Japan discussed by the seven “children” of eight POWs.

• John Duresky talks about the book: Relentless Hope: A True Story of War and Survival by David L Britt, with John Duresky and Vickie Graham  (ISBN 978-1-09838-539-2, august 31, 2021). The story of US Army 1st Lt. Chester K Britt who served at Ft Wint in Subic Bay and then in the Battle of Bataan. He was from La Crosse, Wisconsin.

• William Dalness and Josh Kefauver discuss their relatives in “Two Wars Two Generations.” Harold Elmore "Swede" Dalness, 31st Inf (PA) who fought in the Battle of Corregidor as an officer with the Provisional Battalion of the 4th Marines and was a POW of Imperial Japan and his namesake, Harold Edward Dalnes, a sailor aboard the USS Cyclops that disappeared in the Caribbean Sea during WW I.

Friday, May 5, 2023

• Chris Schurtz, Grandson of Major Paul W. Schurtz (515th Coast Artillery, died aboard the Oryoku Maru) discusses memorials across New Mexico remembering the Battle of Bataan and the Bataan Death March.

• Paul Ruiz tells the stories from his father MSGT Joe Ruiz (U.S. Army Philippine Scout, POW, Guerrilla Fighter) about the war in the Philippines.

• Gregory Kupsky, Ph.D., Senior Historian on the WWII Team in the Indo-Pacific Directorate at Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency gives an update on the disinterments of Unknowns from Manila American Cemetery and the  National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific (Punchbowl, Hawaii)

Saturday, May 6, 2023

• Thomas H. Begay, U.S. Marine, Navajo Code Talker at Iwo Jima talks about The Navajo Code Talkers: Their Code Was Never Broken Presenter:  

• The Next Generation: The Grandchildren of Bataan and Corregidor Veterans. Panel led by the grandchildren of Agapita Silva (200th Coast Artillery)

Banquet-Speaker: author Steve Moore discusses his book As Good As Dead: The Daring Escape of American POWs From a Japanese Death Camp about the Palawan Massacre.

Upcoming events of interest to the POW community

THE ROLE OF VETERANS IN STRENGTHENING OUR DEMOCRACY. 9/9, 4:00-5:15pm (EDT), IN PERSON AND ONLINE. Sponsor: Brookings Institution. Speakers: Steve Abbot, Admiral (ret.) - United States Navy Former Deputy Homeland Security Advisor to the President; Thad W. Allen, Admiral (ret.) - United States Coast Guard Former Commandant of the Coast Guard; Ellen Gustafson, Co-Founder - We the Veterans Co-Director - Summit Institute Co-Founder - Military Family Building Coalition; Elaine Kamarck, Founding Director - Center for Effective Public Management Senior Fellow - Governance Studies; Craig R. McKinley, General (ret.) - United States Air Force Former Chief National Guard Bureau; MODERATOR: Michael E. O’Hanlon, Director of Research - Foreign Policy, Brookings. 

WAR CRIMES - AN ANALYSIS OF CAUSES & METHODOLOGY FROM WWII IN THE PHILIPPINES TO TODAY. 9/15, 5:30 -7:00pm (PDT), WEBINAR. Sponsor: Bataan Legacy Historical Society. Speakers: Cecilia Gaerlan, Founder & Executive Director of Bataan Legacy Historical Society; Mark Hull is a full professor at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, KS. 

THE AMERICAN POW EXPERIENCE AND THE MIA LEGACY. 9/16, 2:30-3:30pm (EDT), VIRTUAL. Sponsor: Virginia War Memorial Assistant. Speaker: Virginia War Memorial Assistant Director of Education Crystal Coon. 

1942: THE PERILOUS YEAR. Explores how that year was truly the hinge point of all of WWII. 9/16-17, IN PERSON OR VIRTUALLY. Sponsor: The Admiral Nimitz Foundation, National Museum of the Pacific War, Fredericksburg, Texas. Speakers: Richard B. Frank is an internationally recognized leading authority on the Asia-Pacific War, author of many books on the Pacific War, most recently Tower of Skulls (2020); Craig L. Symonds is a professor of history emeritus at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, where he taught for thirty years and served as History Department Chair; Jonathan Parshall is an independent WWII scholar. He is co-author of Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway, which is widely acclaimed as the definitive account of that crucial battle; John C. McManus is Curators’ Distinguished Professor of U.S. military history at the Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T); Katherine Sharp Landdeck is an associate professor of history at Texas Woman’s University, the home of the WASP archives. FEE.

WORLDMAKING IN THE LONG GREAT WAR. 9/19, 4:00-5:30pm (EDT), WEBINAR. Sponsor: Yale Alumni Academy. Speaker: author, Jonathan Wyrtzen, Associate Professor of Sociology and History , Yale University. PURCHASE BOOK: https://amzn.to/3Kt0cn9

12TH ANNUAL AMERICAN DEFENDERS OF BATAAN AND CORREGIDOR MEMORIAL SOCIETY CONVENTION. 9/21-24, IN PERSON. Location: DoubleTree by Hilton Seattle Airport, Washington. Speakers include: Author Jody Beck: Your Loving Son Ty: A World War II Story of Hope and Horror in the Pacific; Ralph Longway, Civilian Internee of Imperial Japan during WWII; Sandra Harding: A daughter's story of the personal journeys of an Army nurse and an Army Infantry Officer, their chance meeting on Corregidor and passage from paradise and freedom to internment by the Japanese; Mark Kelso: MIA Cold Case: the story of Lt. Hyman Victor Sherman; 2019 Japanese/American Friendship Visitation Program participants report.

*THE WAR AND TRANSFORMATION OF THE AMERICAN COMMUNITY IN THE PHILIPPINES. 9/24,  9:00-11:00am (PHST) , 9:00-11:00pm (EDT). WEBINAR. Sponsor: Ayala Foundation, Inc. - Filipinas Heritage Library, and  U.S. Embassy in the Philippines. Speaker: Joseph P. McCallus, Professor of English at Columbus State University, Columbus, GA, has conducted academic research in the Philippines since 1986. 

FROM STEWARDS TO FLAG OFFICERS: FILIPINOS IN THE U.S. NAVY. 10/19, Noon-1:30pm (EDT), IN PERSON ONLY. Sponsor: National Museum of the United States Navy and Bataan Legacy Historical Society. Speakers: Luisito Maligat, Management and Program Analyst, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE); Lorna Mae Devera, Customer Advocacy Manager, Leidos; Paula Hackbart, President, Filipino American Midshipman Club, U.S. Naval Academy; Moderator: Rear Admiral Samuel J. Cox, SES, USN (Retired), Director, Naval History and Heritage Command, Curator of the Navy, Washington, DC. 

POW History Convention

11th annual American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor Memorial Society Virtual Convention 

THIS WEEKEND: October 23 and 24, 2021. VIRTUAL 

The convention is free, but only open to members. Membership is a mere $40! JOIN HERE.

If you are interested in the history of the war in the Pacific or POW history this is a must join organization.

Schedule Here. 

• Yasukuni Shrine and Total War Memories and Counter-Memories of the Asia-Pacific War with Akiko Takenaka, Associate Professor, University of Kentucky, author, Yasukuni Shrine: History, Memory and Japan’s Unending Postwar
• Living in the Shadow of a Hell Ship—George Burlage’s POW Survival Story with Georgianne Burlage, author
• The Medic—the story of POW Henry Chamberlain with Rebecca Chamberlain and Claire Swedberg, author, The Medic: A World War II Story of Imprisonment, Hope, and Survival
• The Jersey Brothers with Sally Mott Freeman, author, The Jersey Brothers: A Missing Naval Officer in the Pacific and His Family's Quest to Bring Him Home

Click the links to order the books.

Historian of the POWs of Japan

Linda Goetz Holmes of Shelter Island, a journalist who devoted decades of her life to bringing to light the treatment of Allied POWs imprisoned by Imperial during World War II, died August 18, 2020. She was 87.

Holmes was a member of the Overseas Press Club Foundation and past president and board member of the Society of the Silurians, the nation’s oldest press club. She was also an associate member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers.

She wrote three influential books about POW experiences, 4000 Bowls of Rice: A Prisoner of War Comes Home, Unjust Enrichment: American POWs Under the Rising Sun (of which there are two editions , 2000 and 2008, with the second having a new forward), and Guests of the Emperor: The Secret of Japan’s Mukden POW Camp. She also completed and published POW archivist Roger Mansell's book on the men and women captured on Guam by the Japanese in December 1941,  Captured: The Forgotten Men of Guam.

Born into a news family

Linda Graves Goetz was born May 4, 1933, in White Plains, NY. She was the second child of Florence (née Brown) and Theodore Becker Goetz, a prominent newspaperman in Westchester County.

Along with her older sister, Susan, she attended Scarsdale schools. According to the Scarsdale Alumni Association, Holmes was “the wittiest in her class”. The caption under her senior photo was “Lady of the Press”.

After graduating from Wellesley College in 1955, Holmes jumped into the world of broadcast. She worked in the television production department at Ted Bates & Co., a pioneering advertising agency in Manhattan, and at CBS Television.

In 1959, she married Theodore Edward Holmes. The couple had two sons and later divorced.

POW research
In 1994, Holmes published her first book, 4000 Bowls of Rice, about Allied prisoners of the Japanese who built the Burma Railway. The book was inspired by a conversation over dinner on Shelter Island with an Australian friend, who’d spent three and a half years in POW camps in Java, Burma, and Thailand.

Holmes relates how Cecil Dickson, who served with the Australian Pioneer Battalion, off-handedly marveled while passing a serving dish of rice, that even though he’d eaten nothing but rice for over 3,800 consecutive meals, he still enjoyed it.

Dickson, also a journalist, was the first POW Holmes met who had actually worked on the Death Railway made famous in the film The Bridge on the River Kwai. After he passed away, his widow sent to Holmes a packet of letters that he’d written during his time as a POW. Holmes conducted research and connected Dickson’s stories of forced labor to records kept about Allied prisoners who built the notorious Thai-Burma Death railway.

In 4000 Bowls of Rice: A Prisoner of War Comes Home, which includes photographs taken in secret by POWs and not previously published, Holmes tells a story of slave labor that had not before been reported. She said she was inspired by the spirit of the prisoners, “the indomitable determination to look ahead because if you dwell on the past you are still a captive in your own mind.”

What enabled the POWs to survive unspeakable hardship? “They helped each other. They helped each other have the will to live.”

The book was added to the John E. Taylor collection of military history and intelligence volumes at the National Archives Library in College Park, Maryland, the National POW Museum at Andersonville GA, and the Australian War Memorial.

In 2011, Linda was the American Defender of Bataan and Corregidor Memorial Society's first Roger Mansell Guest Lecturer. She spoke in Pittsburg at the Society's 2nd annual convention about her work on Roger Mansell's book about the Guam POWs.

Locating and declassifying records of World War II war crimes
Richard Myers, a senior archivist for the National Archives Modern Military Records, was among the people Holmes got to know well during her research. It was at his recommendation that she became the first Pacific War historian appointed to the U.S. Government Interagency Working Group (IWG). It was formed in 1999 under the aegis of the National Archives to locate and declassify material about World War II war crimes. The agency made a final report to Congress in 2007.

In her work with the IWG, Holmes interviewed more than 400 ex-prisoners of war, their families, American and Japanese military personnel and historians, government and banking officials, and archivists from around the globe to authenticate what happened to prisoners in Japanese hands and why.

She presented her findings before audiences at the National Security Agency Center for Cryptologic History, the National Museum of the Pacific War (Admiral Nimitz Museum), and numerous civic groups, veterans organizations, and classrooms throughout the country. You can watch an interview with Holmes recorded for the Robert H. Jackson center on YouTube.

Long time resident of Hay Beach
Holmes was a long time resident of Shelter Island’s Hay Beach and had also lived in Manhattan. She was president of the Hay Beach Property Owners Association (HBPOA) for two separate terms and served as the organization’s unofficial historian. She contributed to Then & Now: The Story of Hay Beach, a publication of the Shelter Island Historical Society and the HBPOA.

In that book, you can see photos of her beloved colonial-era home on Dinah Rock Road, a circa 1775 house that she had transported by barge from Cutchogue. Holmes bought the house in 1968 and a year later hired the Davis Brothers to transport it across the bay to a lot she’d purchased for $7,000.
Services

Holmes was predeceased by her parents and sister. She is survived by her sons, Philip and Theodore. The Shelter Island Funeral Home assisted the family, who received friends on Tuesday, August 25 at the Parish Hall at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church. Funeral services were held the following morning officiated by the Rev. Charles McCarron. Interment followed at St. Mary’s Cemetery. 

requiescat in pace

Editor’s note: This article was adapted from one that first appeared in the Shelter Island Reporter. Their intern Maeve Browne contributed to researching and writing this report. They owe special thanks to Patrick Clifford of the Hay Beach Property Owners Association for bringing this remarkable woman’s story to our attention. Thanks also to Katherine Moore at the Shelter Island Public Library for quickly locating Linda Holmes’ books for us to read.

Historic Ceremony for POW of Japan

On January 4, 2021, Simsbury, Connecticut resident Daniel Crowley, 98, will finally receive his Combat Infantry Badge (CIB) for his service with the Provisional Army Air Corps Infantry Regiment defending the Bataan Peninsula in the Philippines against the invading Imperial Japanese forces in the early months of WWII in 1942. Until this ceremony, the U.S. Army has refused to confer the CIB to the provisional soldiers on Bataan.

Dan will also receive his Prisoner of War Medal and recognition of his previously unknown 1945 promotion to Sergeant at a noon ceremony at Connecticut’s Bradley Air National Guard Base presided over by Gregory J. Slavonic, Under Secretary of the Navy, PTDO vice Acting. At the ceremony a representative of Dan’s former employer Northwestern Mutual will announce a donation in his honor to the American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor Memorial Society.

Under Secretary Slavonic with his Executive Assistant CAPT G. J. Leland, a former commanding officer of the multipurpose amphibious assault ship USS Bataan (LHD 5,) worked with the Secretary of the Army to research and confirm all the awards and promotions Dan had earned in WWII.

Dan arrived in the Philippines in the spring of 1941 with the U.S. Army Air Corps. Within hours of the December 7, 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the military airfields in the Philippines were also destroyed. With surviving airmen, he was sent to defend the Bataan Peninsula. Dan avoided the Bataan Death March in April 1942 by swimming to Corregidor and fighting with the 4th Marines. He became a POW with the surrender of all the Philippines in May of that year. Dan was liberated from a POW slave labor copper mining camp in Japan in September 1945. 

 

The event will be livestreamed on the Connecticut Air National Guard’s 103rd Airlift Wing Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/103aw

A leading voice for Pacific War veterans and their families, the American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor Memorial Society (ADBC-MS) promotes education and scholarship about the POW experience in the Pacific, supports programs of reconciliation and understanding, and advocates for a Congressional Gold Medal for the POWs of Japan. The ADBC-MS is the point of contact for all official U.S. government activities affecting American POWs of Japan. 

Over 26,000 Americans were POWs of Imperial Japan. There were more than 200 from Connecticut. Nearly 11,000 died in POW camps, aboard “hell ships,” or as slave laborers for Japanese companies.