Japan's desecration of Manila

Bay View Hotel

The Filipino in the eyes of the world

by James M. Scott, author of Rampage: MacArthur, Yamashita and the Battle of Manila.

First published in The Philippine Star, July 28, 2019

MANILA, Philippines — Few cities and cultures have been as dramatically shaped by war as Manila and the Philippines — the effects of which still echo through life today with the struggle of poverty, violence, and questions over national identity and remembrance.

But it wasn’t always that way.

Prior to the outbreak of World War II, the Philippine capital, filled with neoclassical architecture and spacious parks, was known as the Pearl of the Orient, the star of steamship ads and tourism brochures.

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The capture of the Philippines by the Japanese led to a brutal three-year occupation. Enemy troops terrified residents, commandeered homes, and looted department stores. Grocery shelves sat empty and fields rotted.

The Japanese so mismanaged the Philippine economy that it triggered widespread starvation and the unraveling of the Catholic nation’s social fabric.

To survive, doctors hawked bogus drugs, lawyers committed forgery and fraud, and police resorted to burglary and extortion.

Desperate parents, meanwhile, abandoned their children to orphanages or even sold them while loving wives sold themselves.

“Morality cowered before the relentless onslaught of economic forces that the war had marshaled and unleashed,” observed prominent historian Teodoro Agoncillo.

The late journalist Carmen Guerrero Nakpil echoed him: “We became a race of spies, thieves, saboteurs, informers and looters, callous and miserly.”

The liberation of Manila, which most had hoped would at long last bring an end to the years of fear and misery, instead only compounded the tragedy.

Japanese forces, rather than evacuate the city as America had expected, instead hunkered down inside government buildings, homes and hospitals — even the dugouts at Rizal Memorial Stadium.

In a battle fought building-by-building and even room-by-room, American troops had no choice but, in the words of one Army report, to “exterminate the enemy in place.”

Amid this ferocious fighting, Japanese soldiers and marines committed some of the worst atrocities of World War II. Troops tossed babies in the air, skewering them on the steel tips of their bayonets.

Others raped scores of women, decapitated men by the hundreds, and torched entire neighborhoods, dynamiting the financial district and leveling the beautiful areas of Malate and Ermita.

When the guns finally fell silent on March 3, 1945 — 29 days after the American cavalry had rolled into the city – Manila was gone.

The battle to liberate the capital had flattened 613 city blocks, an area containing more than 11,000 homes, schools, churches and businesses.

“There seemed nothing left even to mourn,” journalist A.V. H. Hartendorp wrote at the time. Manila, he observed, “remained a name only.”

Beyond the structural losses, were the cultural ones.

Gone were the centuries-old Spanish churches. Gone were the museums filled with paintings and sculptures. Gone were the libraries and archives that housed priceless literary works and the historical records of a nation.

The battle not only robbed Manila of its past and its heritage, but also its future. Amid the rubble and wreckage lay the lawmakers and doctors, teachers and inventors, moms and dads.

Forever lost was that priceless human capital, those men and women upon whose shoulders had once rested the future of a soon-to-be independent Philippines.

Absent any equivalent of the Marshall Plan — the $12 billion investment to rebuild a war-ravaged Europe — Filipinos were largely left to Band-Aid the city and themselves back together.

Manila, in many ways, has never recovered. Makati, with its wide boulevards and steel and glass high-rises, is a product of that pivotal battle. It was easier to simply start over than to rebuild.

But how does a nation heal the moral wounds that grew out of the war?

Were those years of desperation, which prompted brothers to turn on brothers, the seeds that blossomed into the social turmoil that currently ails the Philippines?

In an ironic reversal, Japan is one of the largest foreign investors and donors to the Philippines. But that cash has come with hidden costs that erode national morale and memory.

One such example was the removal last year of a statue on Roxas Boulevard dedicated to the euphemistic “comfort women,” victims of Japanese sexual assault.

The statue was not far from the old Bay View Hotel, where many Filipino women were held hostage and assaulted during the city’s liberation.

More recently, complaints by the Japanese Embassy prompted the removal of a second statue in San Pedro.

Why are the Japanese allowed to remember their war dead at the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo or the Peace Memorial Museum in Hiroshima but Filipinos cannot honor their wartime past with a simple statue?

National memory, it seems, has been traded for foreign investment.

But there are positive signs and fresh dialogue, too.

I was back in the Philippines in February for the launch of my book on the Battle of Manila, Rampage, a trip graciously sponsored by Memorare Manila, an amazing organization of survivors and descendants of that frightful fight.

During that time, I visited with students at area universities. I was amazed, too, at how many battle and even atrocity survivors attended. One woman brought me a copy of her diary. Another gifted me a poem she had written. Others showed me shrapnel scars.

It was powerful to witness generations come together to learn, share and remember this pivotal battle that was the fulcrum on which the history of Manila and its people forever changed.

Memorare hosted an essay contest afterward for students, asking what they learned of the battle and its legacy. The winning essay by Lea Athena Molina, a student at the University of Asia & the Pacific, captured it perfectly. “History teaches us that the past not only impacts the present, but also shapes the future.”

“History is harsh” and Abe's speech to Congress

Former POW of Japan Lester Tenney sitting
behind Korean Comfort Woman
POW daughter Caroline Burkhart far right

“History is harsh”: Prime Minister Abe, the Joint Session of Congress, and World War II

By Professor Kerry Smith, Brown University

First appeared in JapanFocus, May 18, 2014

Thanks to a referral from my university’s government relations office [Brown Univerity] and an ability to head to Washington on short notice, I attended Prime Minister Abe’s April 29 speech before a Joint Session of Congress as a guest of Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse.  This essay began as an attempt to convey a few impressions of the event from the perspective of the House gallery, but upon reflection, and after encountering the generally uncritical reception the speech received from the media in the U.S., it seemed useful to engage more directly with what Abe had said, and with the arguments I think he meant to convey. I am very grateful to the Senator and his staff for the opportunity and for their hospitality. I should stress, however, that the views expressed in this essay are entirely my own.

The first thing that Prime Minister Abe Shinzō did after taking the podium and greeting his audience at last week’s Joint Session of Congress was quote from the speech that his grandfather, Prime Minister Kishi Nobusuke, had delivered in that same chamber in June 1957.  Abe reminded listeners that Kishi “began his address by saying ‘It is because of our strong belief in democratic principles and ideals that Japan associates herself with the free nations of the world.’”^[1]  That expression of fealty earned Kishi applause the first time it echoed through the House Chamber. Abe’s reward for recycling it was a rousing standing ovation.

The agenda for Abe’s recent trip to Washington has much in common with the goals of his grandfather’s visit in late June 1957. Kishi’s administration was concerned with managing the emerging frameworks for trade in East Asia, and with the limits on Japan’s access to American markets for some of its key exports, especially textiles.  China also loomed large, in part because Japan’s agreements with the U.S. precluded doing any significant business with the PRC, closing off opportunities for trade that might otherwise have benefited the Japanese economy.  Kishi’s visit was also an opportunity to remind U.S. policy makers and the public alike that Japan shared their commitment to democracy, and thus to resisting communism in all its forms, themes Kishi touched on more than once in his speech to Congress.^[2]

That there are these commonalities in topics and tone in visits separated by almost fifty years is of course something that Abe’s speechwriters must have hoped policy makers and the public would pick up on, and be reminded of how long and how well Japan has aligned itself with America’s geopolitical goals.  Having Abe quote from the lyrics of Carole King’s 1971 hit "You've Got a Friend" was arguably another gesture in that same direction. The Prime Minister is of the same generation as many of those listening on the House Floor that morning, and no doubt more than a few recognized the song as having a place in their own histories, even if they had not before thought of it as part of the soundtrack of postwar U.S.-Japan relations.  Such an emphasis on continuity and past friendship meshes well with the push by both the Abe and Obama administrations to ratify the TPP, to align Japan’s expanding military capabilities even more closely with U.S. goals in the region, and to otherwise continue on their current trajectory towards what Abe, by the end of his speech, was describing as “an alliance of hope.”

One striking and somewhat ironic difference between the expectations that shaped Abe’s speech and the context of his grandfather’s is that Kishi didn’t have to talk about the war, much less apologize for any of Japan’s actions during it.   Kishi’s speech referenced the conflict only to thank the U.S. for its support in rebuilding Japan’s economy in its aftermath.  Kishi’s own personal experiences as a wartime cabinet member and potential defendant in the post-surrender war crimes trials were of little interest to the press or the public during his visit.  Invited to throw out the first ball at Yankee Stadium a few days after his speech in Washington, the fans in New York greeted the Prime Minister with a standing ovation, after which he delivered “a strong overhand pitch that went a little more than 25 feet into the glove of Yankee catcher Yogi Berra.”^[3]

Fast forward to the present, where the expectations surrounding Abe’s visit and speech were very different.  It matters that this year brings the 70^th anniversary of some of the deadliest of the wartime encounters between the Americans and the Japanese, of course, but it also matters that the Abe administration has worked hard over the years to offer the public ways of thinking about the war that are significantly out of step with how Japan’s neighbors, and many of its own historians, understand it.^[4]

Abe’s performance before Congress built on those efforts in at least three ways.   First, having opposed earlier expressions of remorse for Japan’s actions during the war, and specifically having questioned both the veracity of the evidence linking the Japanese military to the comfort women system and thus the need to apologize to its victims, Abe has turned his decision to not repudiate the statements of regret crafted by prior administrations into a rhetorical device that occupies the space where an apology ought to be.  “Our actions,” Abe reminded Congress, “brought suffering to the peoples in Asian countries. We must not avert our eyes from that.”  “I will,” he continued, to applause from the Congressmen and Senators who had gathered to hear him speak, “uphold the views expressed by previous Prime Ministers in this regard.” ^[5] (This language is in line with previous statements by Abe prior to his Washington visit.)

Second, Abe’s speechwriters highlighted the Prime Minister’s efforts to honor those who sacrificed their lives for their country by having him reflect on his visit earlier that same day to the nearby National World War II Memorial.  Referring to the field of 4,048 gold stars on the wall that is among the Memorial’s most striking features, Abe reported that he had “gasped with surprise to hear that each star represents the lives of 100 fallen soldiers. I believe,” he went on, “those gold stars are a proud symbol of the sacrifices in defending freedom.” (A standing ovation followed.)  It was in the context of his visit to the Memorial, which Abe described as “a place of peace and calm that struck me as a sanctuary,” that he said:

History is harsh.  What is done cannot be undone.  With deep repentance in my heart, I stood there in silent prayer for   some time. My dear friends, on behalf of Japan and the Japanese people, I offer with profound respect my eternal condolences to the souls of all American people that were lost during World War II. ” (Another standing ovation.)^[6]

Because this language limits the scope of Abe’s condolences to Americans, one of the things it also does is raise the question of whether he will eventually express similar sentiments towards the souls of Chinese or Korean soldiers and civilians lost in the war.  At the same time, it is hard not to hear at least some echoes of the Prime Minister’s many visits to Yasukuni Shrine in the way this part of his speech emphasizes the common impulse to honor the sacrifice and “lost hopes and lost futures” of young men and women “who otherwise would have lived happy lives.” In Japanese, his reference to the National World War II Memorial as a “sanctuary” reads as “神殿を思わせる、静謐な場所でした.” While 神殿 is sometimes used to name religious sites outside of Japan - the Temple Mount (神殿の丘), for example - I’d be surprised if readers coming across that term didn’t give some thought to the way it is more frequently deployed in Japan, which would be to refer to one of the sacred structures in a Shinto shrine, or more specifically still to one of the three Imperial Household sanctuaries on the Palace grounds. I’m not arguing that Abe was making an explicit comparison between his presence at the World War II Memorial and his actions at Yasukuni Shrine,  but it will be interesting to see whether this visit has to some extent inoculated the Prime Minister against official American critiques of future visits to Yasukuni, or at least complicated those critiques.

Abe’s final point about the war was at first blush also his least subtle.  Gesturing to the visitors gallery that rings the upper level of the House chamber, Abe invited the audience to acknowledge Lt. General Lawrence Snowden, who as a young Marine captain had been among the first to land on Ioto, or Iwo Jima, in February 1945.  Once the applause for Snowden had died down, Abe introduced the man standing next to the General in the gallery as

Diet Member Yoshitaka Shindō, who is a former member of my Cabinet.  His grandfather, General Tadamichi Kuribayashi, whose valor we remember even today, was the commander of the Japanese garrison during the Battle of Iwo Jima.  What should we call this, if not a miracle of history?  Enemies that had fought each other so fiercely have become friends bonded in spirit.

The handshake that Snowden and Shindō then shared prompted yet another standing ovation from Abe’s audience.

It is interesting that Abe understood history to be at once “harsh”, a way of thinking about the past that insisted that what was done could not be undone, but at the same time prone to miracles. In any case, the staged performance of this “miracle of history” was quite clever on several levels.  Of the many battles the American and Japanese forces waged against each other over the course of the war, only a handful have been as fixed in popular memory - in both countries - as the one for Iwo Jima. That horrific struggle is also special in that something like a shared narrative has developed around it, due in no small part to Clint Eastwood’s two films on the campaign, Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima, both released in 2006.  The latter portrays General Kuribayashi (played by Ken Watanabe) as an honorable and humane man, who together with the soldiers under his command struggles to do his duty against impossible odds. Very few of the Japanese defenders survived the battle.  General Kuribayashi was not one of them. That there were few if any civilians left on Iwo Jima by the time the fighting commenced presumably makes it much easier - for both Americans and Japanese - to view the island’s defenders and those who would take it from them as worthy of respect, and perhaps admiration. It also matters that although the Americans were victorious in the end, the total number of their dead and wounded exceeded the final tally on the other side, which in the blundered logic of the day was seen by some in the Japanese leadership as a positive outcome.

Bringing Kuribayashi’s grandson together with Lt. General Snowden did useful work for the Prime Minister.  Who could bear witness to such an example of reconciliation in practice and not be moved? The optics of their friendly handshake offered tangible evidence of the Abe administration’s willingness to confront the nation’s wartime past, even as it reminded those who saw it of how close the U.S. and Japan had become in the seventy years since the end of the war.  It therefore also smoothed the way for Abe to get on with the business of promoting the TPP and a stronger military relationship with the U.S. in his speech, and for him to eventually introduce the theme of a “proactive contribution to peace based on the principle of international cooperation” as the “new banner” under which Japan would pursue these goals.

I suspect that audiences in Japan and elsewhere in East Asia might have been paying attention to some of the other messages that this piece of Abe’s performance conveyed. I was struck less by the implications of the handshake for U.S.-Japan relations, for example, than by Shindō’s participation in it.  It isn’t that  Shindō's connection to Kuribayashi came as a surprise, since he has spoken on many occasions about his grandfather, or that he is somehow opposed to reconciliation, since he is a regular and enthusiastic participant in joint memorial services on Ioto.^[7] What complicates our understanding of Shindō’s role in this part of Abe’s visit are all the ways he has been active over the years as an advocate of a deeply revisionist agenda for how Japan’s wartime history should be remembered, and taught.  Shindō is well known for his frequent and problematic visits to Yasukuni Shrine, a practice he continued during his tenure as Abe’s Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications.  The Chinese, South Korean and Taiwanese governments have regularly denounced these visits, but Shindō’s decision not to go to Yasukuni this April, as has been his practice in recent years, almost certainly has more to do with Abe’s impending visit to Washington than with concerns over how Japan’s neighbors would react.^[8] As an active proponent of Japan’s claims to disputed islands in the South China Sea and the Sea of Japan, Shindō is also well known to policy makers and the public in the region for reasons other than Yasukuni. In August 2011, after announcing plans to travel to the South Korean island of Ulleung-do on a fact-finding mission related to the ongoing Dokdo/Takeshima territorial dispute, Shindō and several fellow legislators were ultimately denied entry to South Korea. That incident did not go unnoticed by the Japanese or Korean media.

The final observation to make about what it means that Abe brought Shindō with him to Washington and wrote him into his speech is that it is hard not to see it as signaling an attitude toward the comfort women issue that is at odds with the Prime Minister’s careful efforts in the months leading up to the trip to avoid suggesting in public that his position differs in any way from that of his predecessors on the key questions of whether coercion occurred, and what if anything the Japanese government might owe to survivors of those practices.  In a March 26th interview with the Washington Post's David Ignatius and then again at Harvard a few days before he arrived in Washington, Abe had spoken of his sorrow over the suffering of those women who had been victims of human trafficking, and as he did in his speech, reiterated the point that his views were no different from those expressed by previous Prime Ministers.^[9]

Such language was presumably designed to avoid the widespread criticism that a clearly articulated change in the government’s position would have provoked, to say nothing of the complications it would have posed for Abe’s dealings with the Obama administration.  But casting Shindō in a key role as a symbol for postwar reconciliation - however pleasantly sentimental that might have been for an American audience - can also be read as evidence of what the Abe administration really thinks about all this.  Shindō has a history going back many years as an outspoken critic of efforts to connect the Japanese military to the coercion of young women into the comfort women system. (His views on the topic are documented on his website.) In a recent Channel Sakura broadcast, for example, Shindō responds at length to the June 2012 unveiling of a memorial to the comfort women in New York’s Nassau County.^[10]  The text inscribed on the memorial referring to the “more than 200,000 women and girls who were abducted for the use of sexual slavery by the armed forces of the Imperial Government of Japan,” Shindō challenges as entirely without a basis in fact, and as an insult to the nation and the Japanese people alike.  Later that same year, and just before Abe became Prime Minister (again),  Shindō signed on as an “Assentor” when the Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact placed a prominent advertisement in the New Jersey Star Ledger denying that the Japanese military had been involved in coercion, and arguing that the women “embedded with the Japanese army” were “working under a system of licensed prostitution” in which they were well treated and well paid.[11] Shindō was one of eight other future members of Abe’s cabinet whose names appeared on the ad.

Or nine if you include Abe, who was also on the list.

Also in the House visitors gallery that morning, as the guest of Representative Mike Honda, was Yong Soo Lee, who at the age of 16 had been forced to serve the Japanese military as a comfort woman.  She had no comment on the Prime Minister’s speech.


Kerry Smith is an Associate Professor in the Department of History, Brown University, where he teaches courses on modern Japan, East Asia, and the atomic age.  His publications include A Time of Crisis: Japan, the Great Depression, and Rural Revitalization (2001),  “The Shōwa Hall: Memorializing Japan’s War at Home,” The Public Historian, 24:4 (Fall 2002): 35-64,  and “Earthquake Prediction in Occupied Japan,” Historical Social Research 40, no. 2 (2015): 105–33. He is at work on a book about disasters, science and the history of expertise in 20^th and 21^st century Japan.

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^[1] 114 Cong. Rec. H2504 (daily edition April 29, 2015).  That phrase appears three paragraphs into Kishi’s speech.

^[2] Prime Minister Kishi spoke before both Houses of Congress, just not at the same time. Kishi gave the same speech twice - first in the Senate Chamber and then a few hours later in the House.  85 Cong. Rec 9777 and 9865, 1957.

^[3] “Kishi is Yankee Rooter, Hurls Game’s First Ball,” Washington Post and Times Herald,  June 24, 1957, p. A4.

^[4] See, for example, Morris-Suzuki, Tessa. “Addressing Japan’s ‘Comfort Women’ Issue from an Academic Standpoint.” The Asia-Pacific Journal 12, issue 9, no. 1. (2014).

^[5] 114 Cong. Rec H2505 (daily edition April 29, 2015.

^[6] The first two sentences of that quote are rendered as one in the Japanese version of the speech: “ 歴史とは実に取り返しのつかない、苛烈なものです.” See the Prime Minister’s website http://www.kantei.go.jp/jp/97_abe/statement/2015/0429enzetsu.html for the full text in Japanese.

^[7] Shindo’s official website ( (http://www.shindo.gr.jp) includes video clips of his visits to the island, as well as links to published reflections on his grandfather and the battle.

^[8] “Yasukuni Frequent Flyer Enrages China, South Korea,” Japan Times, April 12,  2014.

^[9] “David Ignatius’s full interview with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe,” Washington Post, online, March 26, 2015. http://wapo.st/1GwHbKO, accessed May 7, 2015.

^[10] Also accessible via Shindō’s website,  a Youtube version of the broadcast is available here: https://youtu.be/JiXAcdX5SeU.

[11] “Yes, we remember the facts,” Star-Ledger, 4 November 2012.

Sign Petition to Japan - SHOW UNBROKEN

SIGN THIS PETITION

Petitioning The Japanese Embassy in Washington D.C.

This petition will be delivered to:

The Japanese Embassy in Washington D.C.

Stop the ban on Angelina Jolie's movie, Unbroken, 

in Japan

Here is our open letter to filmmaker Angelina Jolie in which we, The Indo Project initiate a counter petition as an answer to the Petition started in Japan to ban Angelina Jolie's movie UNBROKEN. We encourage people to sign to stop the continued effort of Japan to deny and censor its war record and crimes. 

Open Letter to Angelina Jolie,

Prior to the release of your movie Unbroken which depicts, among other things, the circumstances of a Japanese POW camp, the news broke that your movie might be banned from being distributed and screened in Japan. Japanese nationalists have already collected 8,000 signatures in a petition to ban the movie, and Hiromichi Moteki of the Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact has questioned the movie’s credibility and called the film immoral, racist and demonic.

We at The Indo Project question Mr. Moteki’s sources and hope he’s aware of the list of the many war crimes the Japanese committed in the period 1937-1945. Has he ever read up on the Nanking Massacre and the other massacres, the building of the Burma railway line or the Bataan Death March? Official Japanese war crimes include torture (including water boarding), use of chemical weapons, forced prostitution (comfort women) and forced labor (romusha). WWII statistics of casualties are tricky and controversial but if we have to mention one number, Mr Moteki can check the US Navy Department Library for himself. While the total number of American service men (93,941) in German POW camps experienced a 1% death rate, US service men (27,465) interned in Japan and Southeast Asia, had a 38-40% mortality rate.

We at The Indo Project all had relatives in Japanese internment camps and life was exceedingly harsh: starvation, excruciatingly long train rides in box cars without food or water, withholding of food and medication, forced labor, torture, death marches— we have heard it all in our families. A denial of the war crimes represented in the movie is a denial of the atrocities perpetrated against our family members who rest in war cemeteries and mass graves all over Indonesia, killed, directly or indirectly, by the Japanese army.

The war in Asia has been underrepresented in movies and books, and sadly, generations of Japanese schoolchildren still may not know what their grandfathers did in the war as Japan’s role in WWII has been denied and pushed under the rug for generations. This denial has now been compounded by name calling, which, in our view, is compelling testimony of how nervous some Japanese factions are about being found out in a movie that shows the excessive cruelty of some Japanese officers. By banning the movie in Japan, the Japanese miss yet another opportunity of educating their children about the Japanese war record.

We applaud you, Mrs. Jolie, for pointing your cameras at the war experience in Asia. By doing so, you honor our grandparents and fathers and mothers who perished in Japanese internment camps and prisons. Your hero in the movie, Louis Zamperini, survived to tell his tale to Laura Hillenbrand and you, and in the telling of his story, it has become our story too.

We want to endorse your movie by starting a counter petition, signed by the survivors (POW’s, civilian internees of the Japanese camps) descendants and other family members or friends of those who could not sign for themselves because they died under the Japanese regime. We petition Japan to stop all forms of censorship and show the movie, and we commit to supporting the movie by taking family and friends to see it together.

Inez Hollander Lake, Ph.D.
On behalf of The Indo Project

SIGN PETITION HERE

Bangka Massacre

Seventy-two years ago today, the SS Viner Brooke and a convoy of ships were sunk by Mitsubishi Zeros in the Bangka Strait. The survivors, evacuated from Singapore, washed up on Bangka Island, east of Sumatra. Australian women, children, wounded soldiers, and army nurses found themselves without shelter, food, or protection.

With few choices, the civilian women and children set off to find the invading Japanese so that they could surrender. Left behind were the wounded, 100 British troops from another bombed ship, 22 Australian nurses, and an elderly lady.

On February 16, Japanese troops discovered these survivors on Radji Beach. The soldiers immediately rounded up the men and took them over a bluff. After hearing several bursts of machine gun fire, the women on the beach knew the men were gone. The Japanese detachment returned, cleaned their bloody bayonets, and reloaded their guns.

They then ordered the 22 Army nurses, two of them wounded, together with the elderly civilian, to march into the sea, line abreast, and face the sea. It was about noon; the sea was tranquil, a light breeze played, palms lined the tropical shore. The nurses wore their grey dresses and Red Cross armbands. The Japanese soldiers then machine-gunned the women and left their bodies to float as so much debris onto the shore.

One survived.

Sister Vivian Bullwinkel, struck by a bullet that pierced her thigh, floated on the sea in shock. She gathered her wits and pretended to be dead until the Japanese left. She hid with a wounded British private for 12 days before deciding once again to surrender. They were taken into captivity, but the private died soon after. Bullwinkel was reunited with survivors of the Vyner Brooke. She told them of the massacre, but none spoke of it again until after the war lest it put Bullwinkel, as witness to the massacre, in danger. Bullwinkel spent three and half years in captivity; she was one of just 24 of the 65 nurses who had been on the Vyner Brooke to survive the war.

In captivity, the nurses and civilian women recall that their Japanese captors tried to "coerce" them into becoming Comfort Women in brothels set up by their military. Refusing meant that they faced starvation and other deprivations. Few felt that there was a choice. One nurse, Elizabeth Simmons records in her book, While History Passed that “I think all the girls would agree that this club [brothel] experience was the most repulsive and unpleasant in our whole imprisonment. I know it stands out grimly in our memory.” 

Another nurse, Betty Jeffrey in White Coolies notes that “Somebody suggested that we should all swear never to mention it, or tell any tales about anyone if and when we were released.” And nobody ever broke that promise. Simmons' book was the basis of the movie Paradise Road.

Nurses Memorial on Bangka

On March 2, 1993, in the presence of seven of the surviving nurses, including Sister Vivian Bullwinkel, the Nurses Memorial was dedicated on Bangka Island.

It is situated near, Radji Beach, the spot where survivors of the sinking of SS Vyner Brooke came ashore and where 21 Australian Army nurses were massacred.

The memorial incorporates stone from the: 'Women's Camp' which the Australian Army nurses occupied for a time as Prisoners of War. A bronze plaque records the names of all 65 nurses who were aboard the SS Vyner Brooke. 

Sister Bulwinkel died July 17, 2000 at 84.

Bangka Island is reputedly the setting for Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim.

Submission to the Joint Veterans' Affairs Committees

On March 6, 2013, Mr. Joseph A. Vater, Jr., Esq. (PA), President, president of the ADBC Memorial Society submitted the testimony below for the record to the Joint House and Senate Committees on Veterans' Affairs to receive Legislative Presentation of Multiple Veteran Service Organizations (VSOs).

Prime Minster of Japan Shinzo Abe has said that he wants to review and possibly reissue past apologies that Japan has offered for its initiating the war in the Pacific and committing war crimes--war apology (Fusen Ketsugi). This is alarming to the American POWs of Japan as they were offered one of the few official apologies given by the Japanese government. And this apology laid the foundation for Japan offering a program of acknowledgement and repair.

Officially, the Government of Japan has issued only four war-related apologies. The criteria for "official" is that the apology has to be approved by the Cabinet with a Cabinet Decision (kakugi kettei) or approved by the Diet. No war apology can be said to be approved by the Diet. Prime Minister Murayama's Statement in 1995, Prime Minister Koizumi's Statement in 2005, Prime Minister Kan's Statement in 2010 (only directed toward South Korea) and the 2009 apology to the American former POWs (buried in a February 6, 2009 reply, #171-22 [English, Question III, #3], to a Dietmember, which is legally a Cabinet Decision) are the only cabinet approved apologies. A recent paper published by Japan's National Institute for Defense Studies NIDs appears to confirm this view.

The Kono Statement offered as an apology to the Comfort Women in 1993 was not approved by the Cabinet. On March 16, 2007, however, the first Abe Cabinet did approve a Cabinet Decision affirming that the Kono Statement was not Cabinet approved. This Cabinet Decision does note that all following Cabinets have, however, acknowledged the Kono Statement as an apology, just not officially.

Thus, in this ambiguous political environment, the apology to the American POWs is likely to be in jeopardy. Further, the program of repair and reconciliation--the US/Japan POW Friendship Program--is also threatened. Indeed, the unwillingness of the Japanese Foreign Ministry to expand the program to include widows, family members, and descendants is troubling. In light of the international trends toward extending peace and reconciliation programs to conflict victims, democratic Japan, an ally of the United States has an opportunity to turn the successful visitation program for the surviving POWs into a model.

With these issues in mind, Mr. Vater offered his testimony to the Veterans' Affairs Committees:

Chairmen Sanders and Miller, Ranking Members Burr and Michaud, Members of the Senate and House Veterans Affairs Committees, thank you for allowing us to present the concerns of veterans of World War II’s Pacific Theater to Congress. The American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor (ADBC) Memorial Society represents surviving POWs of Japan, their families, and descendants.

In 2009, the Government of Japan belatedly recognized the extraordinary abuse suffered by the American POWs of Japan. An official apology was offered by the Japanese Ambassador to the United States and a course of reconciliation established called the POW/Japan Friendship Program.

Imagine our dismay when we learned that the new Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, may rescind Japan’s war apologies. We naturally worry that the reconciliation effort, the POW/Japan Friendship Program, is also in jeopardy. Although our membership was, understandably, divided on the value of the 2009 apology, a repudiation of the apology and cessation of the popular visitation program would send an unambiguous message of disrespect to the former POWs and harm the U.S.-Japan Alliance.

The U.S. State Department’s involvement was vital to the effort to obtain the apology and to establish the visitation program. It is our hope that Congress will work with the Obama Administration to persuade Japan to hold to its promises and responsibilities. Japan needs to be encouraged to do more.

As way of background, it was at the final convention of the American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor (ADBC) in May 2009 that the Government of Japan through the Japanese Ambassador to the U.S., Ichiro Fujisaki, and then again in 2010 through its Foreign Minister, Katsuya Okada, offered the American POWs of Japan an official apology:

We extend a heartfelt apology for our country having caused tremendous damage and suffering to many people, including prisoners of wars, those who have undergone tragic experiences in the Bataan Peninsula, Corregidor Island, in the Philippines, and other places.

The Japanese Government followed up the apology by initiating a provisional program for American former POWs to visit Japan and return to the places of their imprisonment and slave labor. Nearly all the original Japanese companies that used POW slave labor still exist and often continue to operate facilities at the same sites associated with their assigned POW camps. Thus far, there have been three trips: 2010, 2011, and 2012.

It concerns us that the Abe Administration wants to limit the program to former POWs and possibly end the program this year. Widows, children, and other descendants have also been profoundly affected by the POW experiences of their relatives and they should be included in future programs. We are concerned about how little Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has publicized the program’s accomplishments and goodwill. We are troubled that some Japanese companies have refused to allow our nonagenarian POWs to visit the sites of their imprisonment and slave labor.

The success of the POW/Japan Friendship Program should encourage Japan to do more. 

Still we wait for Japan’s great multi-national corporations to acknowledge their use and abuse of POW labor. Still we wait for Japan to create national memorials to the POWs who slaved and died on Japanese soil. Still we wait for memorials for American POWs who died on Japan’s Hellships and in occupied territories outside Japan such as Taiwan, Northeast China, Wake Island, and Guam. And still we wait for Japan to establish a fund to continue this visitation program and to include research, documentation, people-to-people exchanges, and promotion of human rights.

We want to see the trips to Japan continued and to include widows, descendants, and researchers. We want the visitation program to be turned into a permanent program not subject to the Japanese government’s yearly budget review. 

Prime Minister Abe is in a unique position to extend and enhance this visitation program. Two of his Cabinet members have family ties to companies that used POW slave labor during the war.

By showing his government’s acknowledgement of the pain inflicted on soldiers of what is now Japan’s closest ally, the United States, Prime Minister Abe can strengthen bilateral relations at a fundamental level. It would engender trust among the Americans tasked with protecting Japan by honoring their veterans, and would signal to Japan’s other wartime victims that meaningful reconciliation is possible.

As you can see from this sampling of impressions by former POWs of their trip to Japan, it has brought closure and peace of mind to those who participated:

This program has really helped my Dad [Harold Bergbower, Past National Commander, ADBC]. For years, Dad would have nightmares after any talk, show, or sometimes just because of his years as a POW. Since our visit his nightmares have gone. I cannot really put in words what that day at the Japanese Factory in Takaoka, Toyama, Japan did. He has not forgotten or totally forgiven but there is now a peace to his remembrance. If you are able please consider participating in this program. My Dad's memory is failing on his daily activities but he continues to recall his trip to Japan. Now when he talks about his POW experience he can now add closure. The audience is amazed at his story. I was honored to go with Dad to Japan. If you are a descendant please talk with your parent about the program. It truly is a life changer.

Mr. James Collier later reflected on the trip to Takaoka, whose natural beauty he had never recognized while being a POW: “After meeting the kind people at JMC and after observing the beautiful surroundings of the city, I realized that I had been robbed of the opportunity of truly knowing this place for the past 66 years. Takaoka had always remained as a dark and depressing place in my mind. Yet this visit has finally afforded me the opportunity to appreciate its beauty.”

Mr. Roy Friese met up with Mr. Kensuke Morooka, Representative of the Association for Recording Air Raids of Omuta. His family home was completely destroyed in the fire-bombing of June 18, 1945. “I remember I saw POWs when I was a boy of thirteen. The skeletal POWs were crammed upright into trucks,” he told Mr. Friese as they shook hands. “The facts of sixty-six years ago should never be forgotten. But instead of animosity, we have to hold onto our belief that stupid wars should never happen again,” said Mr. Morooka. “I had felt various prejudices but they are all gone now,” said Mr. Friese as he left the POW camp site. More observations by former POWs who have participated in the POW/Japan Friendship Program are on the Outreach section of our website at www.dg-adbc.org. The program is a tangible benefit of the acknowledgement by Japan of some of Imperial Japan’s injustices.

We are grateful for the State Department’s recent efforts to encourage the Japanese government to do the right thing by initiating a process of reconciliation. The irony is that in 1995 the Japanese government established a program of reconciliation and exchange for all former Allied POWs with the exception of American POWs. We hope that Congress will now encourage the State Department to continue to make up for lost opportunities and time.

We ask for Congress and the Obama Administration to insist that Japan maintain its visitation program for former POWs and expand this remarkable program to include family members, to initiate a plan to preserve their history, and support for human rights education.

Thank you for this opportunity to address your committees.

Just Compensation

Secretary of State Clinton at the
American Cemetery in Manila
honoring the fallen of World War II
November 2009

The letter below appeared online in the Japan Times the same day the 3rd delegation of American POWs of Japan  met with the Japan's Foreign Minister Gemba and received their personal apologies for the torture and abuse they endured during WWII. Japanese-language publications had refused to print Dr. Tenney's reflections.

Remembrance is 'compensation'

By LESTER TENNEY

Past National Commander, American Defenders of Bataan And Corregider
Carlsbad, California
Japan Times, October 14, 2012

This week, seven former American POWs of the Japanese will travel to Japan and revisit former campsites where they were held during World War II. Some of them will also visit the companies for whom they were forced to work. Although their memories of Japan from 68 years ago are still painful, they know that they will be welcomed by today's Japanese citizens and that they will enjoy a beautiful autumn in Japan.

For the third straight year, the Foreign Ministry is inviting former American POWs to Japan under the "Japanese/American POW Friendship Program."

In 2009, Japan's Ambassador to the U.S. Ichiro Fujisaki traveled to Texas to attend the last convention of the American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor (a national organization of former POWs of the Japanese), of which I was the last National Commander. He stood before the surviving POWs and their families and apologized for Imperial Japan's abuse of POWs.

The following year, Ambassador Fujisaki and Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell worked together to have six former POWs, including myself, invited to Japan, where Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada directly delivered Japan's formal apology to us. In 2011, Foreign Minister Koichiro Genba graciously repeated the same apology to that year's POW delegation.

These sincere apologies played a vital role in our regaining the dignity once taken from us. Official Japan reached out to us POWs with respect and the invitation program has been so successful in bringing former POWs and today's Japanese citizens closer.

Today, I feel assured that our wartime experience will be remembered by the Japanese people through this invitation program, which I hope will continue not only for former POWs but also for their widows and descendants in years to come.

I have been hearing that so-called comfort women are still waiting for the Japanese government to offer them a sincere apology. I hope they will receive it soon. As someone who also had freedom, health and dignity taken away, I know how much a genuine apology like the ones we received will mean to them.

Most important, Japan needs to demonstrate its sincerity by remembering all its histories as a proud nation. To be remembered is our "compensation."

Calling for an apology

Above is New York State Assemblyman Edward Braunstein's Message to Japanese Government for an Official Apology to the "Comfort Women," Filmed by the Korean American Voters' Council at the Holocaust and Comfort Women Survivors Calling for Justice Together event at the Harriet and Kenneth Kupferberg Holocaust Resource Center & Archives at Queensborugh Community College in Queens, New York on December 13, 2011. Mr. Braunstein represents Queens.

There have been multiple apologies by Japanese government officials to the Comfort Women. A private fund was established (ended in 2007) to offer atonement payments to some surviving comfort women. However, there has not been a Diet resolution nor a Cabinet Decision affirming that the apologies are official Japanese government policy and assuming responsibility. The apologies leave doubt; they are equivocal.

This is not the case for the American POWs of Japan. The apology was a Cabinet Decision and followed up by a government-funded program of visitation to Japan by former POWs.

There is, however, more to be done. The apology still  needs to be followed by efforts to research and preserve the history of the POWs of Japan. And it must include contributions by Japan's private sector that benefited by using POWs for slave labor.