In addition to showing at the Philippine Embassy in Washington, DC
Philippine Consulate General in San Francisco - September 26, 2019
Showing posts with label Film. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Film. Show all posts
Friday, September 13, 2019
Sunday, June 09, 2019
Alaskan POWs of Japan
Attu’s radio operator and handyman, Charles Foster Jones, was executed (his wife was told he committed suicide) during the invasion and his wife Etta, the island’s schoolteacher, taken prisoner. To prove to her that he was dead, Etta's Japanese capturers presented her with Charles' body. And then, before her, beheaded him.
Mr. Jones is the only non-military-related civilian buried in the military cemetery at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, in Anchorage.
The traumatized Mrs. Jones was sent to Yokohama, Japan (4573 Izumi-cho, Totsuka-ku) as a prisoner of war in July 1942. 
Alone for few weeks until July 16, she was joined by 18 Australian nurses captured in Rabuel, New Britain. The young women helped her heal from the traumas she experienced on Attu.
The Aleut (Unangan) villagers were also considered prisoners of war and confined to the immediate vicinity of the village. The Japanese fearing that they would become a fifth column, shipped them to Northern Japan in September. They were lodged in the small rooms of dormitory for single employees of the National Railroad in Wakatake-Cho, Otaru City in Hokkaido.
Of the 42 Aleut captives sent to Japan, 16 (40%) died from disease, despair, and starvation. None were allowed to return to their island home.
Half of these Native Alaskans -- twenty -- were already suffering from advanced tuberculosis. Their symptoms had been diminished by the hi-protein and hi-calorie diet (salmon, seal and whale) of Attu, but quickly resurfaced due to poor hygienic conditions on the ship and inadequate nutrition in the Japanese diet.
The POW years for Attu's residents were the usual story of Imperial Japan's internment camps, forced labor, abuse, and rape. They were a slow torture of hunger and isolation. They could not adapt to the loneliness, the local diet, and often became sick.
The battlefield area on Attu was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1985. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service owns and manages Attu as a part of the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge.
For the 75th Anniversary of the liberation of Attu, award-winner Japanese director Tadashi OGAWA premiered a documentary on the invasion, When The Fog Clears.
Records show at least 12 Alaskans were POWs of Japan. Mrs. Jones and the 42 Aleuts are not counted among them. None of the prisoners received compensation from either Japan or the United States.
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| Etta Jones' story Click to order |
Alone for few weeks until July 16, she was joined by 18 Australian nurses captured in Rabuel, New Britain. The young women helped her heal from the traumas she experienced on Attu.The Aleut (Unangan) villagers were also considered prisoners of war and confined to the immediate vicinity of the village. The Japanese fearing that they would become a fifth column, shipped them to Northern Japan in September. They were lodged in the small rooms of dormitory for single employees of the National Railroad in Wakatake-Cho, Otaru City in Hokkaido.
Of the 42 Aleut captives sent to Japan, 16 (40%) died from disease, despair, and starvation. None were allowed to return to their island home.
Half of these Native Alaskans -- twenty -- were already suffering from advanced tuberculosis. Their symptoms had been diminished by the hi-protein and hi-calorie diet (salmon, seal and whale) of Attu, but quickly resurfaced due to poor hygienic conditions on the ship and inadequate nutrition in the Japanese diet.
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| Aleut survivor's story click to order |
The battlefield area on Attu was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1985. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service owns and manages Attu as a part of the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge.
For the 75th Anniversary of the liberation of Attu, award-winner Japanese director Tadashi OGAWA premiered a documentary on the invasion, When The Fog Clears.
Records show at least 12 Alaskans were POWs of Japan. Mrs. Jones and the 42 Aleuts are not counted among them. None of the prisoners received compensation from either Japan or the United States.
Hidden caves & sunken ships:
Alaska's living museums of World War II
Monday, May 21, 2018
POWS in Hiroshima remembered
May 28th, 2018. MEMORIAL DAY POW PLAQUE UNVEILING IN LOWELL, MA HONORING AMERICAN POWS OF JAPAN. Centralville Veterans dedicate a new plaque honoring the 12 Americans killed in and from the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, August 6, 1945. The new memorial joins the nine others in the park, which collectively display the names of over 3,000 service members. Special guests will be Mr. and Mrs. Shigeaki Mori from Japan, the subject of the documentary film, Paper Lanterns, that recounts Mr. Mori’s 35-year quest to identify the American POW aviators who perished and to notify their families. Mr. Mori was the Hiroshima survivor that President Barack Obama hugged at his speech in Hiroshima. The families and friends of two of the POWs he identified--Normand Brissette, U.S. Navy and Ralph Neal, USAAC--will be at the ceremony. The event will begin at 9:00AM. Location: Centralville Memorial Park, 700 Aiken Street, Lowell, MA 01850, at the intersection of Aiken and Ennell Streets, at the foot of Aiken Bridge, MAP PRESS RELEASE
PAPER LANTERNS: FILM SCREENING. 5/24, 7:00–9:00pm, San Francisco, CA. Sponsor: Asian Art Museum. Speakers: The film’s subject, Mr. Shigeaki Mori, a Japanese historian and atomic bomb survivor, who spent 35 years finding the families of 12 American POWs who perished during the Hiroshima bombing. Location: Asian Art Museum, Samsung Hall, 200 Larkin Street.
PAPER LANTERNS: FILM SCREENING. 5/25, 6:00–7:30pm, Mountain View, CA. Sponsor: Community School of Music and Arts. Speakers: The film’s subject, Mr. Shigeaki Mori, a Japanese historian and atomic bomb survivor, who spent 35 years finding the families of 12 American POWs who perished during the Hiroshima bombing. Location: Community School of Music and Arts, 230 San Antonio Circle.
PAPER LANTERNS: FILM SCREENING. 5/30, 7:30–9:15pm, Boston, MA. Sponsor: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Speakers: The film’s subject, Mr. Shigeaki Mori, a Japanese historian and atomic bomb survivor, who spent 35 years finding the families of 12 American POWs who perished during the Hiroshima bombing. Location: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Harry and Mildred Remis Auditorium (Auditorium 161), Avenue of the Arts, 465 Huntington Avenue.
Saturday, December 30, 2017
Manila American Cemetery-Help Preserve History
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| My great-uncle through marriage died in Bilibid as a POW |
They are working on a film for the new visitor center at Manila American Cemetery, and are looking for people who are willing to be interviewed on-camera. The film tells the story of battles fought in the Pacific Theater, the powerful bond created between the United States and the Philippines during the war, and most important, the sacrifices made by those who fought and died.
They are looking for interviewees who fit the following description: World War II veteran who served in the Philippines during the war; or Direct next of kin (sister, brother, son, daughter) of a veteran who served in the Philippines during the war.
If you or someone you know would be interested in participating, contact Kaycee Garcia at Aperture Films by email or phone (949) 271-1778. Interviews are not guaranteed.
If you or someone you know would be interested in participating, contact Kaycee Garcia at Aperture Films by email or phone (949) 271-1778. Interviews are not guaranteed.
Be part of history this year, just don't observe!
Thursday, May 21, 2015
Angelina Jolie’s ‘Unbroken’ unscreened in Japan amid resentment
The true-life story of an American POW has been attacked as ‘anti-Japanese’
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| Angelina Jolie arrives to the world premiere of “Unbroken” in Sydney, Australia last November. Photograph: KHAP/GG/GC ImagesAdd caption |
First published in The Irish Times, May 9, 2015
In Unbroken, a 2014 war movie directed by Angelina Jolie, American prisoner of war Louis Zamperini is sent to a Japanese prisoner of war camp in the sleepy coastal town of Naoetsu. Starved and beaten by a sadistic guard, he barely survives.
The ordeal was the nadir of an extraordinary life. A distance runner, Zamperini qualified for the 1936 Berlin Olympics and met Adolf Hitler.
Before being captured by Japanese soldiers, he survived 47 days adrift on a raft in the Pacific. When the second World War ended, he struggled with alcoholism, depression and an obsession with revenge. His says his life rebounded only when he embraced Christianity and publicly forgave his captors.
Zamperini’s story, with its stirring American motifs of individual bravery, triumph and redemption, was turned into a bestselling book in 2010 and translated into 30 languages. Since it opened last year, Unbroken has been screened around the world. Everywhere, it seems, but Japan.
The film, and the translation of the book, was stopped in its tracks by a campaign in the right-wing media, amplified by online ranting that branded it “anti-Japanese”. Toho-Towa, the Japanese distributor for Universal Studios, has yet to announce a release date.
Universal itself has kept its distance from the controversy, except to deny any intention of “spreading a political message” through the film, says Duncan Clark, the studio’s president. Anything to do with the history of the second World War is political in Japan, in particular this year – the 70th anniversary of the nation’s surrender in August 1945.
Prime minister Shinzo Abe belongs to a political tradition that rejects much of the accepted narrative on the war. Education minister Hakubun Shimomura fired the latest salvo from that tradition last month when he announced stricter control over school history textbooks.
Mr Abe’s views were under the global spotlight last week during an eight-day visit to Washington. On April 29th, he became the first Japanese leader to address a joint session of Congress in a speech that expressed remorse for the war but stopped short of an apology.
Japan has produced much of the top scholarship on the war, critical or otherwise, and its movie studios have produced a string of anti-war classics. American-made movies showing mistreatment of POWs, notably Bridge on the River Kwai, have been widely seen in the country.
Official amnesia
But reflection, never easy, has long battled official amnesia. That amnesia is accelerating, says Mindy Kotler, director of the Washington-based think tank Asia Policy Point. “The Abe administration has walked back on every aspect of accountability for the war,” she says.
Kotler says the government has created an atmosphere of “misinformation and self-censorship” at home and sent diplomats out across the world to object to war memorials and complain to history professors and journalists.
In one notorious incident last year, Japanese officials accused Germany’s largest business newspaper of carrying pro-Chinese propaganda against Japan. “There is a clear shift taking place under the leadership of Mr Abe,” wrote the newspaper’s correspondent Carsten Germis. “A move by the right to whitewash history.”
Many ordinary Japanese have fought the retreat from the past. In Naoetsu, a group of locals, working with the families of former Australian POWs, created one of the few domestic memorials to Japan’s wartime victims. A small park marks the spot where the camp once stood.
About 60 Australians died from disease and mistreatment at the camp from 1942-45. When the war ended, eight guards were tried and executed, more than any other POW camp in Japan. Zamperini’s tormentor, Mutsuhiro Watanabe, fled and was never brought to justice. He later became a successful businessman.
The inmates included Irish man Thomas Fanahan Finn, who left Mitchelstown, Co Cork, aged 19 and enlisted with the Manchester Regiment. Towards the end of the war he was transported to Japan in “terrible, vile conditions” for compulsory labour at the Naoetsu camp, says his daughter Kit Clay.
But many of the people who fought to have the park built in 1995 have passed away. Around the town, few seem even aware of the camp or that it has been immortalised by Hollywood. The local library doesn’t have a single record of Zamperini.
“I don’t think people care about something that happened so long ago,” says Yukiko Ishida, who runs a coffee shop less than a kilometre from where the camp once stood.
Shared interpretations
Kotler says the government has created an atmosphere of “misinformation and self-censorship” at home and sent diplomats out across the world to object to war memorials and complain to history professors and journalists.
In one notorious incident last year, Japanese officials accused Germany’s largest business newspaper of carrying pro-Chinese propaganda against Japan. “There is a clear shift taking place under the leadership of Mr Abe,” wrote the newspaper’s correspondent Carsten Germis. “A move by the right to whitewash history.”
Many ordinary Japanese have fought the retreat from the past. In Naoetsu, a group of locals, working with the families of former Australian POWs, created one of the few domestic memorials to Japan’s wartime victims. A small park marks the spot where the camp once stood.
About 60 Australians died from disease and mistreatment at the camp from 1942-45. When the war ended, eight guards were tried and executed, more than any other POW camp in Japan. Zamperini’s tormentor, Mutsuhiro Watanabe, fled and was never brought to justice. He later became a successful businessman.
The inmates included Irish man Thomas Fanahan Finn, who left Mitchelstown, Co Cork, aged 19 and enlisted with the Manchester Regiment. Towards the end of the war he was transported to Japan in “terrible, vile conditions” for compulsory labour at the Naoetsu camp, says his daughter Kit Clay.
But many of the people who fought to have the park built in 1995 have passed away. Around the town, few seem even aware of the camp or that it has been immortalised by Hollywood. The local library doesn’t have a single record of Zamperini.
“I don’t think people care about something that happened so long ago,” says Yukiko Ishida, who runs a coffee shop less than a kilometre from where the camp once stood.
Shared interpretations
Other countries struggle over how to remember the bloody 20th century, points out Shin Kawashima, a specialist in diplomatic history at the University of Tokyo. But in Asia, nationalism appears to be fuelling a retreat from attempts at shared interpretations of the past.
South Korea has responded to Japan’s textbook changes by announcing that schoolteachers will be given dedicated training on the history of Japan’s wartime military brothels. In China, primary and secondary schools already extensively study Japanese invasions of the 1930s and 1940s; a compulsory text on the 1937 Nanjing massacre was adopted this year for use in all its classrooms.
Unbroken should resonate beyond national borders because its central character embraced reconciliation, say those who know the story. Zamperini, who died last year, aged 97, later went to Japan to meet his captors and even requested a meeting with Watanabe, who refused. Zamperini was one of 30,000 POWs in Japan; 10 per cent died in the country, says Kinue Tokudome, executive director of the US-Japan Dialogue on POWs. “People don’t know that history,” she laments. “They must have seen these emaciated Caucasians in the countryside. How could they not remember and talk about it?”
Tokudome says there is still some space in Japan to discuss the uncomfortable past. She points to a new English-language textbook for secondary school children that recounts the tale of another POW.
But like many observers, she worries that this space may be closing. “I’m pleased that at least we now have this one vehicle to reach out to young Japanese people,” she says.
“Otherwise, they have very few opportunities to learn about the history that took place in their country.”
South Korea has responded to Japan’s textbook changes by announcing that schoolteachers will be given dedicated training on the history of Japan’s wartime military brothels. In China, primary and secondary schools already extensively study Japanese invasions of the 1930s and 1940s; a compulsory text on the 1937 Nanjing massacre was adopted this year for use in all its classrooms.
Unbroken should resonate beyond national borders because its central character embraced reconciliation, say those who know the story. Zamperini, who died last year, aged 97, later went to Japan to meet his captors and even requested a meeting with Watanabe, who refused. Zamperini was one of 30,000 POWs in Japan; 10 per cent died in the country, says Kinue Tokudome, executive director of the US-Japan Dialogue on POWs. “People don’t know that history,” she laments. “They must have seen these emaciated Caucasians in the countryside. How could they not remember and talk about it?”
Tokudome says there is still some space in Japan to discuss the uncomfortable past. She points to a new English-language textbook for secondary school children that recounts the tale of another POW.
But like many observers, she worries that this space may be closing. “I’m pleased that at least we now have this one vehicle to reach out to young Japanese people,” she says.
“Otherwise, they have very few opportunities to learn about the history that took place in their country.”
Thursday, February 05, 2015
US National Archives shares records behind UNBROKEN
National Archives Meets Hollywood: Shares Records Behind UNBROKEN!Free screening, document display, and article highlight National Archives’ connection
Washington, DC
Special free screening of UNBROKEN
Tuesday, February 10, at 7 PM, William G. McGowan Theater
Join us for a free screening of the film UNBROKEN (2014; 137 minutes; trailer), based on the 2010 book by Laura Hillenbrand, UNBROKEN: A World War II Story of Survival Resilience and Redemption. The film, a World War II action drama, was produced and directed by Angelina Jolie and stars Jack O'Connell, Takamasa Ishihara, and Domhnall Gleeson. Presented in partnership with NBCUniversal and in conjunction with the UNBROKEN Featured Document display, February 5 through March 4, 2015.
Register online or call 202-357-6814. Theater doors will open 45 minutes prior to start time. Walk-ins without reservations will be admitted 15 minutes prior to start time, depending on available seats. Attendees should use the Special Event entrance on Constitution Avenue and 7th Street, NW.
UNBROKEN Featured Document Display*
February 5 through March 4, 2015, National Archives East Rotunda Gallery
The National Archives welcomes UNBROKEN with a special display of Olympian Louis "Louie" Zamperini’s wartime service records and his Purple Heart, which he gave to UNBROKEN author Laura Hillenbrand. The display is free and open to the public at the National Archives Museum in Washington, DC, on Constitution Avenue at 9th Street, NW.
On May 27, 1943, Army Air Force bombardier Louis “Louie” Zamperini’s B-24 airplane crashed into the Pacific Ocean. Louie survived 47 days at sea, only to be taken as a prisoner of war by the Japanese. His fate unknown, Louie was declared dead a year and a day after his plane went down. His family received a condolence letter from President Franklin Roosevelt and a Purple Heart medal for “wounds that resulted in his death.” Against all odds, Zamperini survived and was liberated at the end of the war. The National Archives Museum’s “Featured Documents” exhibit is made possible in part by the National Archives Foundation.
Display highlights include:
The National Archives holds hundreds of millions of records created or received by the U.S. Government during World War II, including the original records of hero Louis Zamperini. See:
Air Crew Report on the disappearance of the Green Hornet, Zamperini's B-24 plane.
Smithsonian.com “Deep Dive” on the Air Crew Report that includes an interview with archivist Eric VanSlander.
National Archives blog post “Louis Zamperini: The Story of a True American Hero.”
The East Rotunda Gallery and William G. McGowan Theater are located in the National Archives Museum in Washington, DC. Metro accessible on Yellow or Green lines, Archives/Navy Memorial station. To verify the date and times of the programs, call the National Archives Public Programs Line at: 202-357-5000, or view the Calendar of Events online.
* Please note: a July 12, 1973, fire at the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, MO, destroyed approximately 16-18 million Official Military Personnel Files (OMPF) of Army and Air Force service members, including Zamperini’s file. In reconstructing his service record, official copies of these original records were incorporated into Zamperini’s OMPF by the National Archives.
Register online or call 202-357-6814. Theater doors will open 45 minutes prior to start time. Walk-ins without reservations will be admitted 15 minutes prior to start time, depending on available seats. Attendees should use the Special Event entrance on Constitution Avenue and 7th Street, NW.
UNBROKEN Featured Document Display*
February 5 through March 4, 2015, National Archives East Rotunda Gallery
The National Archives welcomes UNBROKEN with a special display of Olympian Louis "Louie" Zamperini’s wartime service records and his Purple Heart, which he gave to UNBROKEN author Laura Hillenbrand. The display is free and open to the public at the National Archives Museum in Washington, DC, on Constitution Avenue at 9th Street, NW.
On May 27, 1943, Army Air Force bombardier Louis “Louie” Zamperini’s B-24 airplane crashed into the Pacific Ocean. Louie survived 47 days at sea, only to be taken as a prisoner of war by the Japanese. His fate unknown, Louie was declared dead a year and a day after his plane went down. His family received a condolence letter from President Franklin Roosevelt and a Purple Heart medal for “wounds that resulted in his death.” Against all odds, Zamperini survived and was liberated at the end of the war. The National Archives Museum’s “Featured Documents” exhibit is made possible in part by the National Archives Foundation.
Display highlights include:
-Letter from President Franklin D. Roosevelt to the Zamperini Family after Louis was mistakenly declared deceased, May 28, 1944.* National Archives at St. LouisOnline resources: Zamperini’s Paper Trail at the National Archives
-Certificate awarding the Purple Heart medal to Louis Silvie Zamperini after he was mistakenly declared deceased, October 12, 1944.* National Archives at St. Louis
-Purple Heart medal awarded to Louis Silvie Zamperini, ca. 1944. Courtesy of Laura Hillenbrand, author "Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption," who received it as a gift from Louis Zamperini.
The National Archives holds hundreds of millions of records created or received by the U.S. Government during World War II, including the original records of hero Louis Zamperini. See:
Air Crew Report on the disappearance of the Green Hornet, Zamperini's B-24 plane.
Smithsonian.com “Deep Dive” on the Air Crew Report that includes an interview with archivist Eric VanSlander.
National Archives blog post “Louis Zamperini: The Story of a True American Hero.”
The East Rotunda Gallery and William G. McGowan Theater are located in the National Archives Museum in Washington, DC. Metro accessible on Yellow or Green lines, Archives/Navy Memorial station. To verify the date and times of the programs, call the National Archives Public Programs Line at: 202-357-5000, or view the Calendar of Events online.
* Please note: a July 12, 1973, fire at the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, MO, destroyed approximately 16-18 million Official Military Personnel Files (OMPF) of Army and Air Force service members, including Zamperini’s file. In reconstructing his service record, official copies of these original records were incorporated into Zamperini’s OMPF by the National Archives.
Saturday, January 31, 2015
70th Anniversary of the Great Raid
On January 30, 1945, three days after Soviet troops liberated their first Nazi death camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau, American Rangers and Filipino guerrillas rescued American and Allied POWs from the first of many Japanese concentration camps on the Philippines.
The Great Raid—as the liberation of Cabanatuan was called-was urgent and heroic. General Douglas MacArthur approved the raid ahead of his advance on Manila and the full liberation of the Philippines after an intersected cable revealed a “kill all” order by Japan for all prisoners.
Proof that the Japanese were serious about this order was confirmed in early January by reports of the December 14th
Palawan Massacre. On Palawan Island in the Philippines, Japanese forces anticipating an American invasion pushed 150 American POWs into an air raid shelter, doused them with gasoline, set them afire, and then machine gunned, bayoneted and clubbed to the screaming men to death. Miraculously, eleven escaped to tell their story. Last Man Out: Glenn McDole, USMC, Survivor of the Palawan Massacre in World War II is one of these inspiring accounts of survival and perseverance.
One hundred and twenty-three are now buried at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery in St. Louis, Missouri.
Nearly 3,000 American POWs had died in Cabanatuan. Further thousands had been transported to Japan for slave labor from the camp. Remaining were the sick and dying.
Immortalized in the movie, The Great Raid, a group of more than 100 Army Rangers, Alamo Scouts and Filipino guerrillas traveled 30 miles behind Japanese lines to reach the camp on Bataan, Philippines. Along the route, other guerrillas in the villages muzzled dogs and put chickens in cages lest they alert the Japanese.
The nighttime raid, under the cover of darkness and a distraction by a P-61 Black Widow, surprised the Japanese forces in and around the camp. Hundreds of Japanese troops were killed in the 30-minute coordinated attack; the Americans suffered minimal casualties. The POWs were escorted back to American lines, often with Rangers carrying two emaciated men on their backs. In the end, the rescuers rounded up nearly 60 caribou carts to transport the survivors. The rescue allowed the prisoners to tell of the death march and prison camp atrocities, which sparked a new rush of resolve for the war against Japan when it was made public in March 1945.
The raid was considered successful—489 POWs were liberated, along with 33 civilians. The total included 492 Americans, 23 British , three Dutch, two Norwegians, one Canadian, and one Filipino. The rescue, along with the liberation of Camp O'Donnell the same day, allowed the prisoners to tell of the Bataan and Corregidor atrocities.
The Great Raid was soon followed by additional successful liberations, such as the raid by the 1st Cavalry Flying Column of Santo Tomas Civilian Internment Camp on February 3, raid of Bilibid Prison on February 4, and the 11th Airborne's raid at Los Baños on February 23.
A poorly worded and inaccurate joint resolution by Congress directed then-President Ronald Reagan to issue a proclamation designating April 12, 1982 as "American Salute to Cabanatuan Prisoner of War Memorial Day".
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| entrance to Palawan Massacre |
Palawan Massacre. On Palawan Island in the Philippines, Japanese forces anticipating an American invasion pushed 150 American POWs into an air raid shelter, doused them with gasoline, set them afire, and then machine gunned, bayoneted and clubbed to the screaming men to death. Miraculously, eleven escaped to tell their story. Last Man Out: Glenn McDole, USMC, Survivor of the Palawan Massacre in World War II is one of these inspiring accounts of survival and perseverance.
One hundred and twenty-three are now buried at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery in St. Louis, Missouri.
Nearly 3,000 American POWs had died in Cabanatuan. Further thousands had been transported to Japan for slave labor from the camp. Remaining were the sick and dying.
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| DVD click to order |
The nighttime raid, under the cover of darkness and a distraction by a P-61 Black Widow, surprised the Japanese forces in and around the camp. Hundreds of Japanese troops were killed in the 30-minute coordinated attack; the Americans suffered minimal casualties. The POWs were escorted back to American lines, often with Rangers carrying two emaciated men on their backs. In the end, the rescuers rounded up nearly 60 caribou carts to transport the survivors. The rescue allowed the prisoners to tell of the death march and prison camp atrocities, which sparked a new rush of resolve for the war against Japan when it was made public in March 1945.
 |
| click to order |
The raid was considered successful—489 POWs were liberated, along with 33 civilians. The total included 492 Americans, 23 British , three Dutch, two Norwegians, one Canadian, and one Filipino. The rescue, along with the liberation of Camp O'Donnell the same day, allowed the prisoners to tell of the Bataan and Corregidor atrocities.
The Great Raid was soon followed by additional successful liberations, such as the raid by the 1st Cavalry Flying Column of Santo Tomas Civilian Internment Camp on February 3, raid of Bilibid Prison on February 4, and the 11th Airborne's raid at Los Baños on February 23.
A poorly worded and inaccurate joint resolution by Congress directed then-President Ronald Reagan to issue a proclamation designating April 12, 1982 as "American Salute to Cabanatuan Prisoner of War Memorial Day".
Thursday, January 15, 2015
A POW views Unbroken
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| Fukuoka #17 Omuta |
The movie Unbroken will be seen in Japan only when the Japanese in authority decides not to rewrite history. Forgetting about one's past is like a narcotic: it dulls the senses and relieves the pain of knowing you’ve committed a wrong.
The book, and ultimately the movie Unbroken, once again verifies that society cannot escape history. The reality of what happened remains with us in the present and follows us into the future. History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be un-lived, but when faced with courage, the past need not be lived that way again.
I have often been asked about the apology given to us by the Japanese government in 2009. I reply that apologies are very important. That is, if they are honest and sincere. A meaningless apology, so often expressed, is like a second insult. I do believe the apology given by Japan's Ambassador to the United States Ichiro Fujisaki and the one given to the POW’s in 2010 by the Minister of Foreign Affairs was sincere and I appreciated the words and the desire to be recorded.
We POWs, however, have been hurt not just by Imperial Japanese soldiers, but also by employees of those Japanese businesses that used and abused us as POWs. We were slave laborers for the likes of Mitsui, Mitsubishi, Kawasaki, Hitachi, Sumitomo, and Nippon Sharyo. And we want to be healed. And that can be done only with a sincere apology.
The movie Unbroken is bringing forward our story of survival and search for justice and truth. The abuse and enslavement of American and Allied POWs did happen. If honor is important to today's Japanese, then the full and truthful story must be brought to a public forum. It can no longer be hidden.
NHK, Japan's National Broadcasting Company (similar to our PBS) called me and wanted to take me to see the movie. A producer, cameraman, and writer came to my home on December 27th and took my wife and me to a screening of Unbroken. They interviewed me right outside the theater, within minutes after we left the show.
The movie Unbroken is bringing forward our story of survival and search for justice and truth. The abuse and enslavement of American and Allied POWs did happen. If honor is important to today's Japanese, then the full and truthful story must be brought to a public forum. It can no longer be hidden.
NHK, Japan's National Broadcasting Company (similar to our PBS) called me and wanted to take me to see the movie. A producer, cameraman, and writer came to my home on December 27th and took my wife and me to a screening of Unbroken. They interviewed me right outside the theater, within minutes after we left the show.
To be sure, I watched the movie with different reasons than most other movie-goers. My objective was to see whether the movie honestly portrayed being a POW of Japan. I told the NHK journalists that I expected a lot from the film. Thus, my first impressions, on a scale of 1 to 10, I gave the overall picture a 4; the screenwriting a 6, the acting an 8; and the directing a 3.
I found it strange that of all the POWs only one was picked out regularly to be beaten or tortured and that there was only one abusive guard (the Bird). That was not the way it was in the camp that I was in. Arbitrary and excessive punishments to all were the rule. Guards were mean, petty, capricious, and psychotic. And the war crimes records for the camps in which Mr. Zamperini was held also noted the widespread abuse. I also found odd the absence of bugs, vermin, and the deathly ill. And never was it clear how little the POWs were fed, clothed, housed, or given medical care.
When the NHK team said goodbye, I said to them that I was surprised by the interest in the movie and book as I had not found many people curious about the history of the POWs. I wondered how many viewers understood the enormity of a near 40% death rate among the Americans held in Japanese POW camps. The movie did not capture the degradation of spirit and body that took place. Everyday was a desperate effort to survive for every prisoner, not just one.
In parting, I told the Japanese
When the NHK team said goodbye, I said to them that I was surprised by the interest in the movie and book as I had not found many people curious about the history of the POWs. I wondered how many viewers understood the enormity of a near 40% death rate among the Americans held in Japanese POW camps. The movie did not capture the degradation of spirit and body that took place. Everyday was a desperate effort to survive for every prisoner, not just one.
In parting, I told the Japanese
Maybe now you can see why we POWs say 'dying is easy; it's the living that’s hard'. We survivors cannot give you any hard facts as to why we survived and others died. We keep asking ourselves, 'why me God, why me Why did I survive?' And it is this burden that has proved worse than all the abuse and torture inflicted upon us by the countless "Birds" that populated the camps. The Bird was not unusual, however, surviving was and our goal, despite all The Birds was survival.Although the movie was not all that I wanted or expected, it does succeed in ensuring that the struggle for survival endured by all American POWs of Japan is unforgotten.
Thursday, January 01, 2015
‘Unbroken’ tells half of Japan’s war story
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| See HERE for more picture of Omori POW Camp, One of Camps where Zamperini was held |
By James Gibney, Editorial Writer on international affairs for Bloomberg View and APP Member.
First Published by Bloomberg News, December 31, 2014
In the just-released film “Unbroken,” as in real life, U.S. Army Air Corps Lt. Louis Zamperini was beaten, starved and forced to work as a slave laborer by his Japanese captors.
Things could have been worse. Like some other war prisoners held by the Japanese, Zamperini could have been used in biological warfare experiments. Or vivisected. Or beheaded, with parts of his body then eaten by his captors. As the historian Daqing Yang notes, 9 out of 10 U.S. POWs who died in captivity in World War II did so at the hands of the Japanese.
In Japan, where “Unbroken” does not yet — and may never — have a release date, right-wing nationalists have protested the film as racist and inaccurate. “It’s pure fabrication,” asserted a representative of one such pressure group, the Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact. Online petitions have described director Angelina Jolie as a “demon” and called for her to be banned from Japan.
Unfortunately, the attacks on Jolie’s film, which is really much less about Japanese brutality than the resilience of the human spirit, are part of a revisionist recrudescence under the administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Several of his Cabinet members and appointees have pushed to whitewash or deny the Japanese military’s forced wartime recruitment of women as prostitutes, the 1937 Nanjing Massacre of Chinese civilians by Japanese troops and other wartime atrocities, targeting journalists and scholars who dare to disagree.
Such behavior has roiled Japan’s relations with China and South Korea and undermined its alliance with the United States. And it has cast an ugly shadow over the impending 70th anniversary of World War II’s end. Yet that occasion also offers an opportunity for both Japan and the U.S. to relearn lessons about the uses and abuses of history, beginning with the folly of trying to cover it up.
In the two weeks following the end of hostilities on Aug. 15, 1945, and the arrival of the first U.S. troops on Aug. 28, Japan’s military engaged in a wholesale destruction of its files. Some Japanese historians estimate, for instance, that as much as 70 percent of the army’s wartime records were lost. Although the Americans, British, Chinese, Dutch, Filipinos and Russians each held separate war-crimes trials of Japanese defendants, their documentation has never been gathered in one place, making it harder to access. Meanwhile, Japanese rightists have sought to discredit the remembered accounts of Korean “comfort women” as anecdotal or concocted memory. They have also exploited inaccuracies in sensationalist best-sellers such as Iris Chang’s “The Rape of Nanking” to try to discredit larger truths.
Yet not only have many Japanese contributed unflinching histories of Japan’s wartime behavior — many available in English — but voluminous, and damning, official records exist that have yet to be fully exploited. In 2006, the U.S. government’s National Archives and Records Administration published “Researching Japanese War Crimes,” a guide to U.S. intelligence reports, captured Japanese documents and contemporary news accounts contained in various U.S. public archives.
It’s not the kind of stuff you want to read on a full stomach: In the National Archives, for instance, you can find the transcript of the trial of Japanese officers who ordered the execution, and then the cooking, of four U.S. Navy airmen downed in raids on Chichi-Jima — a fate that Lt. George H.W. Bush, who was also shot down on the raid, barely avoided.
To their credit, many Japanese scholars have drawn on such materials in their own work: U.S. documents on Japan’s biological warfare experiments on Chinese prisoners, for instance, helped to blunt the 1980s attempt by Japan’s Ministry of Education to censor references to such crimes in history textbooks.
Any forthright exploration of Japan’s wartime cruelties, of course, must be matched by an acknowledgment of the battlefield savagery of U.S. troops in the Pacific, where some members of the Greatest Generation pried gold teeth out of the mouths of still-living Japanese soldiers, strafed airmen in their parachutes, shot surrendering soldiers and sent Japanese skulls home to their sweethearts as table ornaments. Compared with the European theater, it was not exactly the Good War: “Subhuman, inhuman, lesser human, superhuman — all that was lacking in the perception of the Japanese enemy was a human like oneself,” observed the historian John Dower.
Moreover, U.S. archives lay bare another troubling aspect of U.S. wartime history: the willingness to collaborate with Japanese war criminals in the name of larger strategic interests. As Michael Petersen documents, Gen. Charles Willoughby, a die-hard anticommunist who was Douglas MacArthur’s intelligence chief, oversaw a (remarkably feckless) postwar spy network that included Masanobu Tsuji, the Imperial Army officer who helped organize the Bataan Death March that killed so many of the U.S. soldiers that MacArthur abandoned in the Philippines.
Still missing are documents showing what happened to data from the human experiments by Unit 731, the notorious Japanese chemical and biological warfare outfit headed by Gen. Shiro Ishii, who was never prosecuted by the Allies. The records also shine a light on the expedient clemency policies toward suspected war criminals such as Nobusuke Kishi, a postwar prime minister who also happens to be Abe’s grandfather.
That raises a final historical irony worth pondering over the coming anniversary year: the U.S. responsibility for shielding the progenitors of Japan’s latter-day revisionists from accountability and prosecution. Even as late as the 1990s, the U.S. State Department was arguing against releasing information on early Cold War payments by the CIA to right-wing politicians from Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party. Such behavior helps explain why “Unbroken” describes not just Louis Zamperini’s spirit, but the resilience of Japan’s rightists.
Tuesday, December 30, 2014
Untold stories of heroism and valor still to be told
Success of Angelina Jolie's Movie "Unbroken" Highlights
Untold Stories of World War II POWs
American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor Supports Surviving Veterans, Can Help Journalists Connect
with Former Prisoners of War of Japan
As we approach the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, many remarkable and compelling stories of valor, perseverance and survival remain untold.
The American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor (ADBC) Memorial Society has maintained constant support and engagement with surviving POWs of Japan and their families and the ADBC is uniquely positioned to provide unrivaled media access to these veterans who are located throughout the United States and their incredible histories. A number of former POWs from California, Connecticut,Nebraska, and New Mexico recently returned from a reconciliation trip to Japan.
These men, all in their 90s, represent all the Services. Most were POWs longer than Mr. Zamperini and some were held with him in the Ofuna, Omori, and Naoetsu POW camps. Others are survivors of the infamous Bataan Death March, the building of the Thai-Burma Death Railway, and solitary confinement in occupied China.
"The box office success of Angelina Jolie's biopic 'Unbroken' on the heels of this coming year's 70th anniversary of the end of World War II highlights a history shared by thousands of Americans that needs to be better known and should not be lost," Jan Thompsonpresident of American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor Memorial Society said today.
For help in contacting these American heroes, please contact the ADBC Memorial Society President Ms. Jan Thompson at (618) 521-3654 or janithompson@gmail.com. Website: http://www.dg-adbc.org/
The ADBC Memorial Society is also available for any information on the backgrounds of these men or details on the historical context to help bring their stories to life.
"Unbroken" is an opportunity for truth telling and reconciliaiton
'Unbroken': Let Japanese audience see Jolie film, learn truth about POW treatment
By Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Kinue Tokudome
First Published by Fox News on December 29, 2014
On most Mondays, we are fed the mildly diverting and largely irrelevant data about weekend box office grosses. Not this Monday. This week we are left to ponder the gross excesses of censors — three to be exact.
First there was the assertion of a scary cyberbullying attack by North Korea seeking to abort the launch of a comedy about a fictional attempt to off Pyongyang’s awful leader. While there’s now skepticism about North Korea’s role, what’s not in dispute is that there is nothing funny about life in North Korea. Tragically, the long-suffering people there, including hidden Christians, did not wake up on Dec. 25 to find regime change gift-wrapped under illegal Christmas trees.
Next came the thought police in Casablanca and Cairo, who have rated the epic remake of the biblical “Exodus” “Z” for Zionist. Apparently, they are less disturbed that God was relegated to a minor supporting role in the narrative than they are that muscular “white guys” dominate the screen and that the movie has the audacity to suggest that Hebrew slave labor contributed to ancient Egypt’s unique skyline. All this from two of the most “moderate” Arab societies.
But these two incidents, both generated in tightly controlled societies, pale in comparison to the decision of a leading studio to stop the release of a true story in a sister democracy.
On Christmas Day, Universal Pictures released Angelina Jolie’s “Unbroken" — which depicts the remarkable life of Louis Zamperini, an Olympic runner who became a prisoner of war of the Japanese — all over the world … except in Japan.
The Los Angeles Times reported that “Unbroken,” with its unflinching depiction of the brutality of Japanese POW camps during World War II, would have encountered considerable resistance there.
Already millions of viewers — most of them born long after the Second World War — have been inspired by Zamperini’s sheer determination to survive unimaginable brutality at the hands of the Japanese; his struggle with post-war PTSD; and his finally being able to forgive his former tormentors. People in the very country where these events took place are now robbed of the opportunity to learn from their nation's past.
Why did Universal feel compelled to make this draconian move? Japan is no North Korea. She is one of the United States’ closest allies, with almost 70 years of friendship based on shared values of democracy and human rights. Shouldn’t the Japanese people be trusted to face their past, even their history’s darkest chapters like POW abuse?
One of us recently attended the signing at the State Department of a joint agreement between France and the U.S. that calls for France to provide $60 million in compensation to Holocaust survivors it deported to Nazi concentration camps. But it was not only about money. Speaking for France, Patrizianna Sparacino-Thiellay, the ambassador-at-large for human rights in charge of the Holocaust, declared, “This agreement is a further contribution to recognizing France’s commitment to face up to its historic responsibilities.”
The Japanese people deserve this kind of commitment from their leaders, not the overwhelming denial of history that led to the “Unbroken” blackout.
It took until 2009, when then Japanese Ambassador Ichiro Fujisaki, on behalf of his government, apologized to former American POWs at their last national reunion, for the real reconciliation to finally start. Because of the ambassador’s commitment to improving U.S.-Japan relations and his willingness to work closely with Dr. Lester Tenney, a survivor of the Bataan Death March and of forced labor in a Japanese coal mine, a POW invitation program to promote reconciliation funded by the Japanese government started in 2010.
Former POWs in their late 80s and 90s who went to Japan were finally able to feel peace and a sense of closure as they visited the places where they had endured hard labor and were warmly welcomed by today’s Japanese. U.S. Ambassador Caroline Kennedy praised this program. The positive publicity generated by the surviving ex-POWs’ yearly visit has been helping younger Japanese to learn about what happened to POWs in their country — in most cases, for the first time.
One group that must have welcomed the “Unbroken” cancellation was the very Japanese companies that enslaved American POWs. Of some 12,000 Americans who were sent to Japan after being captured on the battlefield, 1,115 died while being forced to work for these companies. Their refusal to honor the request of aging ex-POWs who insist “We survivors want our honor returned; we want you to apologize” is not worthy of Asia's leading democracy.
In contrast, France's state-owned railway company, SNCF, whose trains were used to deport Jews from France to Auschwitz, has expressed regret for those actions, opened its WWII archives to historians and increased its financial commitment to Holocaust education in France, Israel and the U.S.
In 2015, some Japanese companies that used and abused American POWs will try to sell their high-speed rail technology to the U.S., as will SNCF. These Japanese companies should emulate their French competitor by issuing an apology and committing themselves to educate the future generation on the history of American POWs of the Japanese. Showing “Unbroken” across Japan can be one way to show such a commitment, as well as reassuring her neighbors on both sides of the Pacific that the mindset that led Japan into World War II is a thing of the past, not an inspiration for the future.
Friday, December 26, 2014
Sign Petition to Japan - SHOW UNBROKEN
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
Wednesday, December 10, 2014
Waiting for Unbroken
On Tuesday, December 9th, NBC Dateline featured a preview of the movie Unbroken about an American Olympian who became a POW of Japan. The TV program focuses on Angelina Jolie the director. The American premiere will be December 15 in Hollywood. There is still time to buy the book by Laura Hillenbrand. The movie will be released throughout the US on Christmas Day.
Friday, March 07, 2014
Never The Same: The Prisoner Of War Experience
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| Loretta Swit and former POWs of Japan |
More than 20 years in the making, this documentary depicts the experience of American POWs of Imperial Japan during World War II and reveals their indomitable will to survive. Our honored guests at all four screenings will include former POWs, Narrator Loretta Swit and Director Jan Thompson. A brief Q & A session will follow each film.
Film screening times are Friday, March 21 at 7pm; Saturday, March 22 at 3pm and 7pm, and by popular demand, Monday, March 24th at 7pm. Tickets are $12 general admission and may be purchased on-line at www.RioGrandeTheatre.com , at the Doña Ana Arts Council offices located on the second floor of the Rio Grande Theatre, or at the door. Doors open one half hour before show time.
The Rio Grande Theatre is located at 211 N. Main Street, Las Cruces, New Mexico. For tickets and more information call (575) 523-6403 or visit www.RioGrandeTheatre.com.
Thursday, August 15, 2013
Documentary on POWs of Japan Screened LA
Jan Thompson’s
Thursday, 15 August 2013
Screening at the
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| Watercolor by British POW Des Bettany reproduced with kind permission of his family |
In this intimate and moving portrait of Americans who fought the first battles of World War II and became prisoners of Imperial Japan reveal their indomitable will to survive. Starved, beaten, sick, brutalized, and enslaved but always keeping a wry sense of humor, these amazing soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines used gallows humor to beat the odds. Some of the men were artists, some wrote poetry and songs and many collected recipes.
Jan Thompson is a three-time Emmy award winning documentary writer director, editor, and composer. Thompson was the creator of Hidden Journeys a series of primetime specials for PBS on food and cultures around the world. She also was the producer director of the interfaith program Ties That Bind, which was distributed by NETA for 9/11 anniversary programming. Jan is a professor in the Radio Television Digital Media Department at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. She is also president of the American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor Memorial Society.
Attending the LA viewing with filmmaker Jan Thompson are possibly eight former POWs of Japan, several of whom participated in the Japanese government’s POW visitation program to Japan (noted with *). The fourth such program will take place this October.
*Harold Bergbower, 93 - Joined the U.S. Army Air Corps in 1939 and was part of V Bomber Command, 19th Bomb Group, 28th Bombardment Squadron, Far East Air Force. He was at Clarke Field when Japan attacked on December 8, 1941. He was knocked out in the bombardment and when he awoke he found himself in the morgue at Fort Stotsenburg. Bergbower crawled out and went back to his squadron to fight in the Battle of Bataan. By escaping to Mindanao after surrender, he avoided the Bataan Death March and was captured in May. On the Philippines, he was imprisoned at Malaybalay on Mindanao and the Davao Penal Colony. In August 1944, he survived the sinking of several Hellships only to end up on Mitsubishi's Noto Marti; a trip he has completely blocked out. He was a slave laborer scooping iron ore into an open hearth furnace at the Nagoya-6B-Nomachi (Takaoka) camp for the Hokkai Denka Company which was involved in ferro-alloy smelting. Today, the site remains in ferro-alloy business as Takaoka Works. It is, as was Hokkai Denka, still part of Japan Metals & Chemicals Co., Ltd (JMC, Nihon Jukagaku Kogyo). Bergbower stayed in the U.S. Air Force and returned to Japan (1954-1957) to train Japan's Air Self-Defense Force. After retiring in 1969, he became a golf pro for Dell Webb's Sun City, Arizona. He is a past Commander of the American Defenders (2005-6). See his bio here.
*Harry Corre, 90 - Joined the U.S. Army in 1941 and was sent to the Philippines as part of the 59th Coast Artillery Regiment, Battery C "Wheeler.'' He was captured by the Japanese with the surrender of Bataan on April 9, 1942 and began the infamous Bataan Death March. He escaped by swimming, with the assistance of a hastily improvised floatation device, the three-and-a-half miles to Corregidor, where he rejoined his unit. Corre was surrendered on Corregidor and imprisoned at Cabanatuan #1 and #3. He was shipped to Japan in July 1943 on Mitsubishi's Clyde Maru to mine coal at Omuta Fukuoka #17 Branch POW Camp for Mitsui Mining (now Mitsui's Nippon Coke & Engineering Company Co., Ltd., NB: Mitsui-aflliated companies now have a minority stake in this company, of which Nippon Steel and Sumitomo hold the majority of shares. (See FY2010 Annual Report, page 27, in Japanese only.) After the war he worked odd jobs for several years and then moved to California to work in the aerospace industry. He returned to school in 1971 and graduated from Western Electronic Institute in Los Angeles as an electronics engineer. He worked in the aerospace industry for 40 years with his last position at TRW. Corre presently works at the Los Angeles, California Veterans Administration Hospital as a Patient Advocate and as a Veterans Service Officer for the American Ex-Prisoners of War as well as a POW Coordinator for the Veterans Administration Hospital & West Los Angeles Veterans Administration Regional Office.
*Jim Collier, 90 - Enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1940 at the age of 16. As a member of U.S. Army 59th Coast Artillery, Battery D “Cheney,” he was captured on Corregidor. Before being shipped from the Philippines to Japan on Mitsubishi's Noto Maru in August 1944, he was held in Cabanatuan and Clark Field. Collier was a slave laborer feeding iron ore into the open hearth furnace at the Nagoya-6B-Nomachi (Takaoka) camp for the Hokkai Denka Company, which was involved in ferro-alloy smelting. Today, the site remains in ferroalloy business as Takaoka Works. It is, as was Hokkai Denka, still part of Japan Metals & Chemicals Co., Ltd (JMC, Nihon Jukagaku Kogyo). After WWII, he earned two master's degrees: one in the Teaching of English from San Jose State and another in School Counseling from the University of Oregon, Eugene. He taught English and Psychology and worked as a guidance counselor in a high school and community college. Upon returning to Takaoka, Jim was impressed by the site’s natural beauty, which he had never noticed as a POW.
*William Eldridge, 91 – Was a member of the Army’s 31st Infantry, "M" Company, 3rd Battalion. After Pearl Harbor was attacked, he was assigned Nichols Field in the Philippines as part of the perimeter defense. After the Japanese bombed the airfield Bill was sent to Bataan where they set up and defended a command post at the entrance of the peninsula. Bill suffered his first attack of malaria as he began the Bataan Death March, of which he remembers very little. In July of 1943, he went to Japan via the Hellship the Clyde Maru. He became a slave laborer mining coal for Mitsui at Fukuoka #17 Branch POW Camp in Omuta (click here for more on Fukuoka), where he severely injured his leg. After his return to the United States, Bill had an operation on his leg and was discharged with full disability. In 1948, he waived disability and reentered the Army. He first worked as a recruiter and then volunteered for duty in Korea. He stayed there for two hitches and then spent time in Japan, Germany and France, and other stations in the U.S., where he retired in 1963. See his bio here.
Warren Jorgenson, 92 – Among the last of the “China Marines”. He was with the 4th Marines stationed in Shanghai and deployed to the Philippines in November 1941. He fought in the defense of Corregidor where he was wounded. He was sent to Japan in 1944 aboard the Hellship Noto Maru and became a slave laborer at Sendai #6 (Hanawa) POW camp for Mitsubishi Goushi Company (today’s Mitsubishi Materials) The mine closed in 1978 and was turned into a museum, the Osarizawa Mine Historical Site that recounts the 1300-year history of mining the mountain. Visitors can also go through some of the main tunnels. An amusement park and museum opened in 1982 as “Mine Land Osarizawa.” In 2008, the site was renovated with the amusement section, Cosmo Adventure [Sic], focused on space-themed indoor shooting games. There is no mention of the slave laborers who worked the mine during the war. After the war, Warren graduated from Drake University and became a record industry executive. Warren reconnected with his high school sweetheart in 1995 and the two now live together in Pebble Beach.
William Sanchez, 95 – Was a Army Sergeant with 59th Coast Artillery Regiment, Battery “I” assigned to Corregidor. He remembers he was in combat continually for five months until the island was surrendered on May 6, 1942. Battery “I” was the first to fire on the enemy. He was taken to Japan aboard the Hellship Taga Maru to become a slave laborer at Niigata 5-B POW Camp unloading coal ships for Niigata Kairiku Unso, now part of the Rinko Corporation, however, POWs remember Rinko as their “employer”). He was moved to Tokyo #1 Base Camp, Omori where he was a slave laborer for Nippon Tsuun (today’s Nippon Express). Omori was one of the first POW camps to be liberated as intelligence indicated the POWs were about to be executed. He and Harry Corre appeared in the famous staged photo at the entrance of Malinta Tunnel of the American surrender on Corredigor.
*Lester Tenney, 93 – As the last National Commander of the American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor, he successfully negotiated with the Government of Japan and the US State Department Japan’s 2009 offer of an apology to the American POWs of Japan and the program of reconciliation and visitation to Japan for former POWs. He was a tank commander from the famous?Maywood, Illinois National Guard, Company B, 192nd?Tank Battalion fought in the Battle for Bataan from December 1941 to April 9, 1942. He survived the infamous Bataan Death March, a Hellship, and slave labor mining coal for Mitsui at Fukuoka #17 Branch POW Camp in Omuta. Dr. Tenney is a professor emeritus of finance and accounting at Arizona State University. Japan’s rightwing has used anti-Semitic references to attack Dr. Tenney’s accounts of his torture by Imperial Japan’s Army and the horrors of the Bataan Death March. See his bio here.
Houston Turner, 91 – Was a rifleman in the 31st Infantry stationed in Manila. When the war started he fought on Bataan and fought with the guerillas after surrender on April 9, 1942. Suffering from untreated malaria and malnourishment, Cpl. Turner surrendered to Japanese forces at Mariveles in southern Bataan. He was among the last 50 POWs to make the Bataan Death March. This small contingent of POWs buried those comrades who preceded them on the March. In 1943 he was shipped to Japan on a Hellship. He first was a slave laborer for Nippon Seitetsu (today’s Nippon Steel) at Hirohata Osaka 12-B POW Camp. Then he was transferred to Nagoya Camp 9-B Jinzu Iwase, where he was slave laborer for Nippon Tsuun (today’s Nippon Express). Following the war he continued to serve in the Army until 1952 and worked for the Los Angeles Dept. of Water and Power September where he retired in 1988. See his bio here.
*Don Versaw, 92 – Among the last of the “China Marines.” He played the French Horn in the 4th Marines Band in Shanghai before he transferred to Corregidor in November 1941. He became an infantryman in E Company Second Battalion, Fourth Regiment. When Corregidor was surrendered to the Japanese on May 6, 1942, he spent the next 40 months as a POW in the Philippines and in Japan. During captivity he was held on Luzon Island mostly on a work camp near Clark Air Base for more than two years. In July 1944 he was moved to Japan on the Hellship Nissyo Maru owned by Tokyo Senpaku K.K. He was sent to Fukuoka-#7B-Futase on Kyushu to be a slave laborer mining coal at Nittetsu-Futase Tanko Kaisha (still Nittetsu Mining Co., Ltd). This company paid enlisted men 5 sen per day for their labor. [(A sen is one hundredth of a yen)(One yen was then equal to ten American cents)] Deductions were made at the rate of 50% deposited in Japanese Postal Savings Plan where today the funds remain. Following repatriation, he stayed in the Corps. In 1950-51 he served in Korea with the 1st Marine Division in a Photo unit. After retirement in 1959 he worked in the aerospace industry for 13 years on the Saturn and Apollo programs. He completed 10 years of Civil service divided equally between the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Air Force; he retired in 1984 with a total of 31 years federal service. See his bio here.
Tuesday, June 11, 2013
Death March remembered
At the Cannes Film Festival this year, a film on the infamous 1942 Bataan Death March was featured among "un certain regard" selections. As you can see from the clip above, the Filipino director, Adolfo Borinaga Alix Jr., took a very stylistic, emotive approach to the war crime.
He was not concerned with historic details such as the style of the helmets or cleanliness of the uniforms. He wanted the viewer to feel the brutality, to sense the hopelessness, to become abandoned of all senses. The film is considered "experimental."
Unfortunately, Alix overplayed his objective and the film was not well-received. The Variety reviewer wrote that the film, Death March, was a
gruelingly abstract and attenuated war meditation. Deploying a curious mix of artificial scenery, extended slow-motion and black-and-white cinematography, the director seeks to suspend viewers in the surreal, barbaric experience of the Bataan Death March, which claimed the lives of thousands of POWs being forcibly transferred by the Japanese army in 1942. That it’s monotonous and excruciating by design isn’t enough to recommend this drawn-out tribute/art piece, whose walkout-heavy Cannes premiere doesn’t bode well for its prospects beyond festivals.
In contrast, filmaker Jan Thompson's Tragedy of Bataan, tries to maintain historical accuracy and stays close to traditional documentary filmmaking.
The Tragedy of Bataan features first-person accounts by over 20 survivors of the conflict, archival photos, and never-before-seen Japanese propaganda film footage. It also includes excerpts from the unpublished diary of Captain Albert Brown of Pinckneyville, Illinois, who describes the five months leading up to the surrender of U.S. troops and Filipino defenders to the Imperial Japanese Army. Brown, who is featured in the television program, was 101 years old at the time of the interview and passed away at age 105 in August 2011. He had been the oldest survivor of the Bataan Death March.These are two different films, albeit with an important history to recall. Neither, however, transcends to art. They are not graphically arresting, unsettling records of the horror. Whereas the story they tell is memorable, the storytelling is not. They are not Night and Fog, The Sorrow and The Pity, Schindler's List or Sophie's Choice, the title of which has become an literary expression for an unbearable choice.
But these films about the March are important steps toward encouraging the production of a seminal film on the POW experience. And most important, they are proof that the history will not expire with the death of the last survivor. The story is moving into the realm of the artist. The arts embed history into culture and are thus the best way to ensure permanence. In the end, Japan's deniers have more to fear from art than they do from history.
Tuesday, April 09, 2013
Hug a former POW today
Dr. Lester Tenney, survivor of the Bataan Death March, a Hell Ship, and
a Mitsui coal mine on CNN 's Human Factor today.
He was instrumental in encouraging Japan in 2009
to apologize to the American POWs of Japan.
In 2009, President Barak Obama proclaimed April 9th to be National Former POW Recognition Day. This is an especially historic day for American and Filipino POWs of Japan.
On April 9, 1942, after four months of brutal fighting against a superior Japanese invasion force, exhausted, starving, and out of ammunition American forces on Bataan, The Philippines were surrendered by their commanding officers. It was the beginning of the infamous Bataan Death March--65 miles of Hell resulting in thousands of deaths of unarmed, sick American and Filipino prisoners of war. Japanese troops tortured, starved, looted, raped, humiliated, and murdered the POWs at will.
In Washington, DC, the Embassy of The Philippines will hold its annual memorial to the heroes of Bataan at the World War II Memorial followed by a reception and a showing of the documentary Forgotten Soldiers about the Filipino Scouts.
Over the weekend, in Chicago, the documentary film of the POW experience, Never the Same premiered. It will show again on May 25th at the MacArthur Museum in Norfolk, Virginia.
NATIONAL FORMER PRISONER OF WAR RECOGNITION DAY, 2013
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BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
From the days of the Revolutionary War to the trials of our times, America has been blessed with an unbroken chain of patriots who have always stepped forward to serve. Whenever our country has come under attack, our men and women in uniform have risen to its defense. And whenever our freedoms have been threatened, they have responded with unyielding resolve -- sometimes trading their liberty to secure our own.
Today, we pay tribute to former prisoners of war who made that profound sacrifice. Caught behind enemy lines and stripped of their rights, these service members endured trials few of us can imagine. Many lost their lives. But in reflecting on the tragic price they paid, we also remember how their courage lit up even the darkest night. Where others might have given up or broken down, they dug in. They summoned an iron will. In their strength, we see the measure of their character; in their sacrifice, we see the spirit of a Nation.
As we express our gratitude to heroes who gave so much for their country, we remain mindful that no one gesture is enough to truly honor their service. For that, we must recommit to serving our veterans as well as they served us -- not just today, but every day. We must pursue a full accounting of those who are still missing. And for service members who have come home, we must never stop fighting to give them the stability and the support they have earned. That is the promise we renew today -- for former prisoners of war, for their families, and for every American who has sworn an oath to protect and defend.
NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim April 9, 2013, as National Former Prisoner of War Recognition Day. I call upon all Americans to observe this day of remembrance by honoring all American prisoners of war, our service members, and our veterans. I also call upon Federal, State, and local government officials and organizations to observe this day with appropriate ceremonies and activities.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this eighth day of April, in the year of our Lord two thousand thirteen, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-seventh.
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