Remembering August 29, 1945

August 29, 2020 was the 75th Anniversary of the liberation and evacuation of the first POW camp on Japan's Home Islands. OMORI TOKYO MAIN CAMP

Commander Harold Stassen on Adm William Halsey's staff was in charge of the location and liberation of the POWs in Japan. Two years prior, Stassen had been governor of Minnesota. He resigned months into his third term and took up active duty in the Pacific with the Navy on April 27, 1943. 

For four months, 25 April 1945 to 26 June 1945, Stassen was sent to help negotiate the UN Charter at the San Francisco Conference that took place in San Francisco, California. Returning to Halsey's staff in the Pacific sometime in July 1945, he was assigned the upcoming search and care for the POWs in Japan. This was a top priority mission for the Allies. There was a high level of concern that the Japanese would murder the POWs before they could be rescued.

To the relief of all--excepting a few isolated beheadings on the day and days after the surrender--the POWs were not killed. Stassen's first task was to locate the POW camps. The Allies knew of 30 camps in Japan. After surrender, the Japanese government provided a list (called the "Yellow List") identifying 73 camp locations. This proved to be less than half the actual number of camps. Navy reconnaissance and POW interviews tracked down the others. They found 158 POW camp sites across the Home Islands.

Next was to coordinate POW relief supply air drops to the sick and starving men and women.  Starting on August 27th, Army Air Force planes dropped 4,470 tons of food, medicine, clothing, and cigarettes on the POW camps in Japan. See the "Report on POW Supply Missions" for more details. By the end of September 1945, nearly all of the 32,000 Allied POW's in Japan had been processed and on their way back home. 

On August 29th, Stassen positioned hospital and transport ships in Tokyo Bay and then at mid-afternoon directed a flotilla of Navy launches to a POW-made island close to shore and the Omori POW Camp. The first three boats held battle-hardened Marines who immediately secured the perimeter and established a communications command. Next, with famed Navy and Hollywood photographer John Swope at his side, Stassen arrived to command the rescue operation. 

Swope's iconic picture of ecstatic POWs waving their handmade national flags will forever represent liberation.In addition to American POWs, there were POWs from the UK, Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, Estonia, Italy, Norway, and New Zealand. The camp held famed aviators Louis Zamperini and Pappy Boyinton, the commanders of the USS Grenadier and USS Tang, as well as many downed aviators who were tortured nearby at the Emperor's horse stables.

Once on the island, Stassen was met by the camp's commander who told him he could not take the POWs as no authority from Tokyo told him to release the prisoners. The over six foot tall, Stassen glared down at the Emperor's representative and reportedly then grabbed the Japanese colonel by the front of his tunic and lifted him off the ground, and said, "I have no need for orders from Tokyo to do what I want to with these American prisoners." And so, that ended that.

Within hours the POWs were evacuated to the USS Benevolence where they were tiraged into those who needed immediate medical attention and those who were ambulatory. In the matter of a few hours, these walking skeletons were registered, checked, cleaned, deloused, shaved, clothed, and fed whatever they wanted and allowed to eat as much as they wanted under the watchful eyes of medics. Toward midnight, the healthier men were transported to the USS Reeves to bunk down until it was determined where to send them for their journey home.

Marine and Navy rescuers also quickly made their way to the nearby Shinagawa “hospital.” What they found was “an indescribable hellhole of filth, disease, and death.” One doctor, 1/Lt. Hisakichi Tokuda, at this "hospital" was infamous for his fascination with human experimentation and general medical incompetence. At the War Crimes Trial he was prosecuted for injecting soybean milk into one Dutch, one British, one Italian, and two American POWs resulting in their death. He was sentenced to life to death at the Yokohama War Crimes Trials in February 1948. On September 3, 1951, General Matthew Ridgeway, who was serving as head of UN Forces in Korea and Military Governor of Japan, commuted Tokuda's sentence to life. It is likely he was released in 1958.

Today, the Heiwajima Motor Boat Racing venue is located at the site of this former POW camp. This monopoly gambling franchise was created by unindicted Class-A war criminal and black marketeer Ryohei Sasakawa. It now is managed by the Nippon Foundation which is part of the Sasakawa family of foundations and enterprises. The Sasakawa family and organization is the major funder of Japan programs around the world, especially exchange and think tank programs in Washington. The organization is a major funder of off-budget projects of the Japanese government.

There is a small memorial at the venue--Heiwajima Kannon--featuring a statue of Kannon (the goddess of mercy) and a signboard in Japanese with some euphemistic references to the brutal history of this spot. Among the information not provided by the signboard are: 1) how many POWs perished here, 2) how many POWs built the original island, and 3) that wartime Prime Minister Hideki Tojo was briefly held here when he was first arrested as a war criminal.

On August 30th, General Douglas MacArthur set foot in Japan at Atsugi Airfield aboard Bataan II. 

The next day, down the road in Totsuka, the Army found American Etta Jones and 18 Australian nurses. Etta was the first Caucasian female taken prisoner by a foreign enemy on the North American continent since the War of 1812. She was captured in June 1942 when Japanese troops invaded Attu Island in the Aleutians. The Japanese forced her to witness her husband beheaded. She and the 42 Aleuts living on Attu were taken as POWs to Japan. Nearly half of them died as POWs in Otaru, Hokkaido — many from tuberculosis, malnutrition and starvation.

For more on the liberation see HERE. 

Happy Birthday General Wainwright

Wainwright at liberation August 1945

Today, is the anniversary of General Jonathan Wainwright's 62nd birthday. In 1945, he celebrated while not quite a free man. He was liberated the next day, the 24th. Wainwright was in a Japanese POW camp in Northern China where he and other high-value Allied officers were held. As head of U.S. Forces in the Philippines, he surrendered Corregidor on May 6, 1942 and the rest of Philippines within the following days.

On August 16, 1945, a six-man Office of Strategic Services (OSS) team parachute into (Hoten) Mukden (today’s Shenyang), POW camp in northern China to liberate the POWs and locate the senior officers held by the Japanese. On the 19th, several dozen British, Dutch, and American senior officers including Lieutenant Generals Jonathan Wainwright and A.E. Percival were located at the Hsian POW camp (Xi'an or today's Liaoyuan), 150 miles north of Mukden. This was the first they heard that the war had ended.

When Wainwright and the other captive officers, enlisted men, and civilians were told of the war's end on August 19, he recounted, "We roared suddenly with laughter ... roared until the rest of [the interpreter's] words were blotted out. There was no stopping the laughter. It came up in me, and in the others, with an irresistible force: something born of a combination of our relief, the look on [the interpreter's] face, the blind preposterousness of his beginning, the release from years of tension, the utter, utter joy over having survived to see this blessed day."

However, the prisoners still had to wait for the arrival of the Russian Red Army on August 24th in order to move out. The Japanese, noted Wainwright, left the prisoners the remaining Red Cross packages and they "began having fine, well-cooked meals, the first sufficient food we had since the outbreak of the war. We smoked American cigarettes like chimneys." With the "prospect of getting home soon," Wainwright said he celebrated "the happiest birthday in many years."

The years of captivity took its toll on the general. He had endured prison camps on the Philippines, Formosa, and China. The man who had been nicknamed “Skinny” was now emaciated and drawn. His hair had turned white, and his skin was cracked and fragile. He was also depressed, believing he would be blamed for the loss of the Philippines to the Japanese.

When Wainwright arrived in Yokohama, Japan, to attend the formal surrender ceremony, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, his former commander, was stunned at his appearance. Wainwright was given a hero’s welcome upon returning to America, promoted to full general and awarded the Medal of Honor.

🌷You can leave virtual flowers at his Grave HERE. 

POW Oral history

Japan’s War Legacy

Baron Mitsui dines with POW officers

The postwar generation may now be the majority in Japan, but they too must know the atrocities of war.

By LESTER TENNEY
Wall Street Journal, Sept. 1, 2015

Imperial Japan became history on Sept. 2, 1945. Gen. Douglas MacArthur accepted Japan’s unconditional surrender on the deck of the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, ending World War II. For me, nearly 600 miles south in a prisoner of war camp outside Nagasaki, unaware of these historic events, I simply remember the pure joy of liberation.

What was V-J Day like for POWs? For those of us in Fukuoka No. 17-B POW Camp, the war ended on Aug. 15, when our Mitsui company overseers, without explanation, stopped sending us down into their coal mine. We were returned to camp for an unusual midday meal of limitless rice and recognizable vegetables. We received our first full Red Cross boxes. And the camp guards said “hello” in English instead of striking us with their rifle butts for not bowing.

After lunch, the camp commander, flanked by trucks mounted with machine guns, gathered us on the camp’s parade ground. He curtly announced, “America and Japan now friends. War is over.”

There is no accurate way to describe how it feels to be a slave one moment—starved and abused, forced to work long hours in a treacherous mine, beaten daily for not working fast enough or not bowing low enough—and a free man the next.

After more than two years underground in the dark, narrow seams of a coal mine, it was glorious to be in the sun. American planes soon appeared overhead and with them came parachutes carrying 55-gallon drums of food, clothing, medicines and magazines. One parachute failed to open, its cargo of fruit salad spilling out onto the camp yard. We happily and immediately dined on the scattered remains.

Baron Mitsui, a 1915 Dartmouth graduate who owned our coal mine and many others, hosted a series of dinners for senior Allied commanding officers of our POW camp. The baron had often visited his captive village and was aware of the grim conditions. Over the meals, he reportedly asked the officers for their tolerance and thanked them for their efforts. Photos from the dinner series show a wary indulgence in the eyes of the American, Australian, British and Dutch guests.

Fast forward to last month, when Prime Minister Shinzo Abe used the same word—tolerance—in his statement on the 70th anniversary of the war’s end. “How much emotional struggle must have existed and what great efforts must have been necessary . . . for the former POWs who experienced unbearable sufferings caused by the Japanese military in order for them to be so tolerant nevertheless?” Mr. Abe marveled.

While I welcome any step, however modest, the Japanese make in addressing war crimes committed against POWs, this word stops me short. It makes a war crime a matter of inconvenience. I can tolerate someone cutting me off in traffic. But being a POW was not a matter of tolerance. It was a matter of life or death—mostly death.

The denial of water and food on the Bataan Death March didn’t simply inconvenience us; it killed thousands of soldiers. My fellow prisoners and I didn’t tolerate nor have we forgotten the beatings and torture, the starvation and broken bones, or the filth and stench of dying men. What tolerance did I have watching my buddy tortured so viciously that he had to have both legs amputated?

And what of today? Our wait for Japan’s apology, offered officially in February 2009, wasn’t tolerance. It was patience. Patience for justice.

Still, Mr. Abe’s awkward statement on Aug. 15 suggests that our patience may not be in vain. His mention of POWs is the only reference in the statement that clearly matches a noun of wrongdoing to a verb of responsibility. He correctly points out that “unbearable suffering” was “caused” by Imperial Japan’s military. Acknowledging the perpetrator of a crime and the crime itself is the first step toward reconciliation.

For me, the war is hard to forget. But as Mr. Abe points out, the postwar generations are now the majority in Japan. Japanese today aren’t responsible for what happened more than 70 years ago. But they also cannot forget or distort the past.

Japan owes me, the descendants of its victims and its own citizens the truth. As Mr. Abe said, “We Japanese, across generations, must squarely face the history of the past. We have the responsibility to inherit the past, in all humbleness, and pass it on to the future.”

Imperial Japan tormented, enslaved and defiled many people. This is a grave legacy to pass on and to teach future generations. But it is vital to keep memories like mine alive. It’s one thing to remember great deeds done by great men, like Gen. MacArthur in Tokyo Bay. But World War II’s history is composed of the suffering of many individuals in different circumstances. This, too, should not be forgotten, or else the lessons of the war will be incomplete.

Mr. Tenney served in the 192nd Tank Battalion of the U.S. Army.

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.

entrance to Palawan Massacre 

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.

DVD click to order

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.

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".

Liberation Day

I was one of many who were in [Fukuoka, for Mistsui Mining] Camp 17 in Omuta, Japan on that exciting day, August 15, 1945. We went to the coal mine, but didm;t go down, instead we were brought back to camp. Then came call for all of us to go intro the mess hall where we were given a full Red Cross Box. At noon we were offered all the rice we wanted to eat, and at roll call at about 6PM our Japanese camp commander, Uri, drove onto the parade ground and, with all trucks surrounding us, with machine guns on top of the trucks, said to us.."Japan and the United States are now friends." and he and the trucks drove off leaving us standing there, free men. What a day to remember.
Lester Tenney # 264, Camp 17, barracks # 4, Bataan Death March survivor

Author, My Hitch In Hell: Memories of War

Guam - 70th Anniversary of Liberation Day

Fireside Chat at War in the Pacific National Historical Park,
July 19, 2014

On July 21, 1945 the first US Marines landed on the island of Guam. After nearly two and one-half years of brutal Japanese rule, liberation had begun. Liberated, not reoccupied, was how the survivors felt.

The Japanese invasion was December 10, 1941,  days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Renamed “Omiya Jima” (The Great Shrine Island), Guam became an important base for Japanese military operations. Most Americans were shipped to POW camps in Japan while some of the American women left behind were rumored to become Comfort Women. Chamorro men were pressed into forced labor, Comfort Women were imported, and Japanese Catholic priests were brought in to pacify the people.

In the last weeks of the war, survivors say that the Japanese abandoned all humanity. Beatings, beheadings, murders, and rapes--raw rage--confronted the people of Guam as the Japanese invaders desperately fought the Marines. Adding to the chaos, the American naval and aerial bombardment of Guam killed and maimed countless civilians.

The result is a lingering bitterness toward both the Japanese and Americans. There is a sense on the island that so much was sacrificed, but so little appreciated or recognized. For years, like the American POWs of the Japan, the people of Guam have asked for some sort of ex gratia payment for their unique suffering. As you can see from the recent news story on the demise of H.R. 44, Guam has been no more successful than the POWs.

Senate rejects Guam war claims
Jun. 20, 2014 Written by Steve Limtiaco
Pacific Daily News

U.S. citizens on Guam could get priority treatment when it comes to federal housing assistance, according to an Omnibus Territories bill approved yesterday by the U.S. Senate, but Guam Delegate Madeleine Bordallo expressed disappointment that the Senate once again rejected a provision to pay war claims to Guam.

According to Bordallo's office, four Republican senators: Lamar Alexander, of Tennessee; John Barrosso, of Wyoming; Mike Lee, of Utah; and Tim Scott, of South Carolina, removed Guam war claims from the bill, and also a provision that would have saved the local government as much as $500,000 in local matching funds for federal grants.

The Senate's Energy and Natural Resources Committee left those provisions intact in the bill it worked on, according to Bordallo's office, but they were removed before floor consideration by the full Senate because of objections raised by the four Republicans.

"I am extremely disappointed that H.R. 44 was removed from the Omnibus Territories Act that was passed by the U.S. Senate this evening," Bordallo said yesterday in a written statement. H.R. 44 is her latest war claims bill for Guam, introduced in January 2013, and included in the Omnibus Territories bill last summer.

It would tap federal section 30 funding for Guam -- income taxes paid by the island's federal employees -- to fund reparations for Guam residents who suffered during the Japanese occupation of the island during World War II. It called for payments of as much as $15,000, using an increase in section 30 money expected from the pending military buildup.

Guam is seeking reimbursement from the federal government and not Japan because the United States decades ago forgave Japan's war debts.

There is no official cost estimate for Guam war claims, but news files cite a figure as high as $80 million. That's less than half the cost of earlier reparations bills.

'Ideological grounds'

"Passing war claims has been a long standing issue for our community and has been an effort that Congressmen Won Pat, Blaz, and Underwood, and I have all worked to resolve. The latest version of the bill addressed every concern that has been raised by conservatives, and it would have had no impact on federal spending. Despite addressing each of these concerns, several U.S. Senators continue to object to this bill on ideological grounds and have fundamental objections with opening reparations for any group."

Congress came close to approving war claims in 2009, when the Senate offered to pay war claims, but only to survivors of the war, and not their descendants. Bordallo at the time rejected the offer, saying she wanted descendants to be paid as well.

Her war claims proposals have been rejected ever since.

According to Pacific Daily News files, critics of the reparations bill, such as Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., remain influential and conservative groups, including the Heritage Foundation, are ready to challenge the measure if it advances.

Some Guam lawmakers in early 2013 opposed the idea of using section 30 funding for the payments, arguing Guam would be paying the debt with its own money.

They relented, however, after Bordallo said the measure had no chance of moving forward without a way to offset the federal government's costs. They passed a resolution supporting her bill.

"I will continue to work to find a resolution that finally recognizes loyalty of the people of Guam during World War II," Bordallo said yesterday.

"I will consult with the governor and the Legislature and on our remaining options to advance war claims I am committed to continuing our fight for war claims for our manamko' despite all the obstacles the conservative Republicans continue to raise."


WAR CLAIMS TIMELINE

• May 9, 2007: The Guam World War II Loyalty Recognition Act passes the House by a vote of 288-133. The bill now goes to the Senate for its consideration.

• April 17, 2008: The U.S. Senate attempts to pass the Guam war claims bill. The effort fails after Republican Sen. Jim DeMint from South Carolina objects to a motion for a unanimous consent.

• January 2009: Bordallo reintroduces the Guam World War II Loyalty Recognition Act as H.R. 44.

• February 2009: The House passes a $126 million bill to compensate Guam victims of the Japanese occupation of the island during World War II. The House sends the bill to the Senate for the second time. The House approves the same bill in 2007, only to see it stall in the Senate.

• June 26, 2009: Bordallo includes the war claims bill in the House version of the 2010 National Defense Authorization Act, saying the war reparations measure has a better chance of passing now.

• Oct. 7, 2009: A conference committee composed of House and Senate members decides not to include the measure in the defense bill. Bordallo rejects a compromise offered by the Senate "because it would not recognize all of those who endured Guam's occupation," she said.

• 2011 and 2012: Attempts to pass the measure fail.

• Jan. 4, 2013: Bordallo introduces another Guam war claims bill, which would tap the island's federal section 30 tax money related to the military buildup as a funding source.

• May 2013: Bordallo's war claims bill is incorporated in a House of Representatives Omnibus Territories bill.

• June 18, 2014: The Senate passes the Omnibus Territories bill, but removes the Guam war claims provisions.

Mitsui's Liberation Dinners

Today, Mitsui family members and corporate officials refuse to meet with the former slave laborers that kept their business profitable during World War II. This was not always the case.

During the War, Mitsui, Japan's oldest and largest trading company, transported and used the greatest number of Allied POWs as slave laborers. Their mines, factories, and docks were considered among the most hellish for non-Japanese. At the postwar war crimes tribunals, former POWs identified many Mitsui employees as sadists, torturers, and murderers.

In the War’s immediate aftermath, hoping to temper these POWs' feelings, Mitsui’s leaders appear to have held a series of "parties" for senior officers from their POW camps. The thoughts of the attendees, unfortunately, are not readily available. Holocaust scholars I have talked with cannot recall any similar farewells between German corporate officials and their recently-released slave laborers.

As this photo in the Australian War Memorial archives shows, Baron Takaharu MITSUI is hosting a party in early September 1945 with Allied officers who had been held in Fukuoka Camp #17, a POW camp at Omuta located at the Mitsui Kozan Miike Kogyo-Sho coal mine and Mitsui Zinc Foundry.

Although the mine is long closed--it was the site in 1960 of Japan's worst and most violent labor dispute--Mitsui facilities  remain at the location and are part of Mitsui's Nippon Coke & Engineering Co. Ltd., one of the successors of Mitsui Mining.  The Japanese government has recently submitted an application to UNESCO to designate this Miike mine as a World  Industrial Heritage Site.

In the photo ABOVE, from left to right are Baron MITSUI; Captain Richard Parker, Australian Army Medical Corps; Padre C. Hamel, Royal Netherlands Army; Lieutenant Theodore Bronk, United States Army Medical Corps; Scotty Howell, Australian Army; and Lieutenant Gerit Bras, Royal Netherlands Army Medical Corps.

In this photo to the LEFT, also from the "party," are: Left To Right: Lieutenant (Lt) Gerit Bras, Royal Netherlands Army Medical Corps; Lt Harold Proff, United States Army Medical Corps; and Captain Ian L. Duncan, Australian Army Medical Corps.

Baron MITSUI, a Dartmouth (1915) graduate, was the owner of the coal mine where these POWs slaved. He took a peculiar interest in their existence at his largest mine. Many former POWs remember seeing the Baron visit both their camp and the mine in his open touring car. He even attended a burlesque show the POWs were allowed to stage in the fall of 1944.

He, thus, knew that the mine was so dangerous that it had been shut down for years and that the injury rate among the POWs was very high. He saw the emaciated POWs and he knew that food, heat, medicine, and clothing were withheld. And he did nothing.

Prior to this "party," up north in Hokkaido, the mine managers of the Mitsui mine at the Hakodate #4, Nishi-Ashibetsu POW camp held their own "celebration." On 20 August 1945, three days after they informed their slave laborers of Japan's surrender, the officials of the Mitsui Mining Company invited POW commander, Colonel William Ashurst and several other officers to a dinner at the local Mitsui Company Club House. The picture BELOW is of some of the attendees. The following POWs, nearly all North China Marines or Wake Island Marines, attended:

Americans: Maj L A Brown, Maj J P S Devereaux, Capt J A White, Capt H C Freuler, Lt W M Kessler, Lt W W Lewis, Lt M L Lewis (All Americans were Marines except for M Lewis who was Army Air Corps).

Australians: Col J J Scanlon, Maj J R P Clark, Maj J Edmonds-Wilson, Capt S G Nottage, Capt R A McDonald, Capt P H Brown, Lt E R Almond, Lt J RBadham.

Miramar National Veterans Cemetery

Courtesy Clay Perkins

Today, a 15-foot-bronze, concrete, and stainless steel monument to American POWs was dedicated at the new Miramar National Veterans Cemetery in San Diego.

The ten-foot-tall figure of a male prisoner of war emerging from captivity (titled “The Liberation Moment”) was created by Richard Becker, a San Diego sculptor.

A plaque installed on the statue’s base reads, “This statue conveys the excitement, trepidation, exhilaration and emotion of the LIBERATION moment, as the emaciated soldier steps out of the darkness into the “Sunshine of Freedom.” He portrays the hundreds of thousands who were bound in captivity by the infamy of foreign enemies. This is to stand as an eternal legacy for our community by reminding visitors of the sacrifice of veterans during America’s efforts to keep alive the hopes and dreams of freedom for oppressed around the world.”

Liberation and V-J Day

Omori-POW Camp that held Louis Zamperini

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

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

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

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