NATIONAL FORMER POW RECOGNITION DAY 2026

        Presidential Message on National Former Prisoner           of War Recognition Day

The White House

April 9, 2026

This National Former Prisoner of War Recognition Day, we honor every American service member who returned home after enduring the horrors of captivity by enemy forces during times of war.  My Administration will always uphold the promise to leave no warrior behind and to bring home the missing souls from every war or conflict.

No one is more deserving of our Nation’s appreciation than the former prisoners of war (POWs) who put their lives on the line for freedom’s cause and survived brutality and violence beyond all comprehension for the sake of our posterity.  These brave warriors endured unthinkable atrocities, torture, mental and physical abuse, separation from family, and horrendous living conditions.  Their selflessness and strength deserve our everlasting respect, and as Commander in Chief, I will never stop fighting for these exceptional heroes and all of our incredible veterans.

This year, as we celebrate 250 glorious years of American independence, we are reminded that this milestone is possible only because brave men and women from every generation answered the call of liberty when it was in peril.  As our American Flag flies high over a Nation made free by their sacrifice, the POW/MIA flag flies at federal sites just below it—a requirement I was proud to sign into law during my first term—to serve as a constant reminder of those still missing in action and our duty to account for them and bring them home. 

As we pause today to celebrate the POWs who returned home, we also acknowledge their families who lived for months and years in a prison of uncertainty and fear while awaiting news of their loved ones.  This unimaginable sacrifice deserves our utmost gratitude, admiration, and awe.

Our returned POWs represent the best of America.  They understand what it means to serve a cause greater than self, and their names and stories should never be forgotten by a people forever in their debt.  Today and every day, we honor their extraordinary sacrifices, courage, patriotism, and resilience.

❀

N.B.: This proclamation is not as badly written as previous ones by the Trump White House. It was still issued late. The document did not appear on the White House website until late morning on the 9th. Previous presidents posted the day before. Sadly, there is no mention of either the POWs of Japan or of the Civil War. April 9 is a significant date for both.

April 9 is the 84th anniversary of the 1942 fall of Bataan to invading Japanese forces in the Philippines. Army Major General Edward P. King surrendered to Japanese General Masaharu Homma that morning. About 12,000 Americans and 66,000 Filipinos became prisoners of war making it the largest contingent of U.S. soldiers ever to surrender in U.S. military history.

There is, however, a Presidential Message on the Anniversary of the Surrender at Appomattox. April 9 is the 161st anniversary of the 1865 surrender of Confederate General Robert E. Lee to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at the Appomattox Court House in Virginia, effectively signaling the end of the Civil War. The formal and legal end of the Civil War is August 20, 1866,

Trump's Appomattox proclamation was not mandated by Congress. It is also the first by a president of the United States.

NATIONAL POW/MIA RECOGNITION DAY, 2025

A PROCLAMATION

[ANNOTATED]

September 19, 2025

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

From the battlefields of the Revolutionary War to the trenches of World War II to the sprawling jungles of Vietnam, thousands of our patriotic service members have been horrifically captured by the enemy and forced to endure excruciating torture, agony, and distress in the service of our Nation.  On this National Prisoner of War/Missing in Action (POW/MIA) Recognition Day, we remember our valiant American Soldiers, Sailors, Marines, Airmen, and Coast Guardsmen who were captured while fighting on foreign soil and our missing in action who have not yet returned home.  We honor their courage, we salute their patriotism, and we vow full accountability for the more than 80,000 heroes still missing from the wars and conflicts of the past. [Aside from the atrocious grammar and writing unfit for a White House statement, the facts are incorrect. Not all American POW/MIAs were captured or killed on foreign soil. There were POW/MIAs in the Revolutionary War (note the contradiction in the first sentence), the War of 1812, and the Civil War to name a few. During WWII, Americans were made POWs in American territories such as Wake Island, Guam, and Attu as well as captured on American merchant vessels. Not all military POWs were members of the military. During WWII in the Pacific, for example, the civilian contractors on Wake Island were eventually given veterans status, although none were formally enlisted members of the U.S. Armed Services. Some historians believe that more American Revolutionary War soldiers died as POWs of the British than in battle.]

Every American POW has answered the call of duty to fight not only for our country, but for the futures of our families, fellow soldiers, and our beloved Nation.  Imprisoned by enemy forces, American POWs endured years of deprivation, brutality, and anguish, sustained only by uncommon resilience and grit.  Their families lived in their own prison of fear and perpetual heartache, hoping and praying for a safe return.  For the loved ones of the missing, the unfathomable grief endures.

During my first Administration, I signed the National POW/MIA Flag Act directing the POW/MIA flag to be [visibly] flown with the American flag [on prominent federal buildings]. The black and white banner represents the noble sacrifices made in defense of our freedom and serves as an enduring and powerful symbol of our unwavering commitment to leaving no one behind. [Inexplicably, eight months after President Trump signed S. 693, the “National POW/MIA Flag Act, in November 2019 he had the POW/MIA flag removed from atop the White House. It had flown there under the American flag since 1998, the Clinton Administration. The POW/MIA flag was illegally missing until President Joe Biden returned it atop the White House on April 9, 2021, the anniversary of the fall of the Bataan Penisular in the Philippines and the beginning of the infamous Bataan Death March. It remains there as of April 2026.]

As Commander in Chief, I remain committed to pursuing full accountability for those captured and missing in action.  During my first term, I secured the repatriation of remains from North Korea, believed to be at least 250 individuals who paid the ultimate sacrifice during the Korean War.  In March of this year, our Nation identified the 100th service member from the remains — ending decades of uncertainty for the families of the fallen.  This sacred mission will continue until every American is returned home. [North Korea returned 55 cases of possible remains in the summer of 2018. None hve been returned since. The North Koreans suspended the program in March 2019. Of the 250 possible people among the 501 bones returned, a number are South Korean. The identification process is ongoing.]

Today, the First Lady joins me in honoring America’s POW/MIAs and their families.  The debt of gratitude for their unimaginable sacrifices in defense of our sovereignty can never be repaid, and must never be forgotten. [Notably, in 2017, Trump called these men and women "suckers and losers."]

NOW, THEREFORE, I, DONALD J. TRUMP, 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 September 19, 2025, as National POW/MIA Recognition Day.  I salute all American POWs who, in the presence of great dangers and uncertainties, honored their duty to this great country.  Let this day also serve as a reminder for our Nation to strengthen our resolve to account for those who are still missing and provide their families long-sought answers.  I call upon Federal, State, tribal, and local government officials and private organizations to observe this day with appropriate ceremonies and activities.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this nineteenth day of September, in the year of our Lord two thousand twenty-five, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and fiftieth.

                               DONALD J. TRUMP

Society for Military History's Effort to Perserve History in Face the Trump Assault

On April 8, Dr. Wayne E. Lee, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, President, Society for Military History Writes

The constitutional mission of the Society for Military History is “to stimulate and advance the study of military history, especially that of the United States, and to diffuse knowledge thereof by publications, displays, and otherwise.”  In response to recent wholesale deletions or removals of historical publications, websites, lesson plans, and even the removal of books and archives, the Society’s Council has voted to act to preserve deleted materials and report on other administrative actions at state or federal levels that interfere with the mission of our Society. 

We believe that historical work requires the preservation of and access to records and publications. And there is no denying in this moment that books, articles, whole journal issues, lesson plans, exhibits, art installations, archives, and possibly more, are being removed from public access through a combination of automated screening for key words and through employees being diverted from their usual work into screening publications and materials.  It is true that after public outrage some few websites have been restored, but this has been thus far spotty at best.  

The involvement of historians within the government in the process of removal means that many members of our Society have specific knowledge of what materials are being or have been removed.  We encourage you to contribute to the archive.

The Society will archive materials and publications removed from federal and state entities since January 2025 that are materially relevant to the conduct of military history, including all arenas of research, publication, dissemination, and teaching.  Persons with access to deleted materials are encouraged to send unaltered copies (or at least links to currently active web archived copies such as the Wayback Machine, etc.) to SocMilHist@proton.me. The SMH will both publicly list those materials and make copies available. 

Alternatively, files may be directly (and anonymously) uploaded simply by dragging your file into the upload space and clicking the Upload button on this page. You may enter your name, your email, and something about the file you are uploading, but you do not have to. Finally, answer the simple math problem to prove you are a human!

Members with knowledge of other actions, to include archive deletions, exhibit alterations, publication removal, or the removal of books from libraries (with relevance to military history) are encouraged to report them (anonymously if need be) to SMH leadership using this linked form. 

The SMH will try to verify all submitted information, and will indicate as such on the list. If materials are restored to public view or access we ask the members to let us know via the same form, and we will update the list accordingly, although we will continue to list the item as having been deleted at least for the time being.

All submissions should be solely related to the practice of military history. Submitters are asked to provide sources for their information. We will NOT accept or archive any materials not already in the public domain. 

Among other things, it is important to note that in many cases, items removed are publications of our members. They are lines on C.V.s. Their disappearance threatens our members’ efforts at promotion, advancement, placement, or tenure.This archive will help fill that gap. I believe it is also worth pointing out that two separate votes were held on this motion, one for the draft text, made by the previous board, and one for the post-conference slightly revised text.  

Asia Policy Point supports the Society's efforts to preserve copies of things now missing and their continued effort to follow and record any destruction of the historical record. We encourage our followers to submit to the Society military history records that have found to have been deleted or altered by the Trump Administration.

75 Years Ago Today - Leyte

General Douglas MacArthur Fulfills His Promise and Returns to the Philippines in Victory

Red Beach, Leyte

October 20, 1942

despite long-held belief this photo was not staged

this one is confused with one in December 1942 on Luzon that was

October 20th, is the 75th Anniversary of General Douglas MacArthur's return to the Philippines. The iconic photo above by then-Capt Gaetano Faillace, an army photographer assigned to MacArthur, contrary to popular belief, was not staged. According to HistoryNet, what "may have appeared as determination [on MacArthur's face] was, in reality, anger. MacArthur was fuming. As he sloshed through the water, he stared daggers at the impudent beachmaster [who refused to send a smaller craft to assist the General ashore], who had treated the general as he probably had not been treated since his days as a plebe at West Point. However, when MacArthur saw the photo, his anger quickly dissipated. A master at public relations, he knew a good photo when he saw one."

It can be speculated that MacArthur's rush to stand on Leyte on October 20th before the fighting had ended and the critical battles had begun may have had another PR purpose. In the U.S., it was still October 19th. As he and many Americans at the time would have known, October 19th was a seminal date in American history: it was decisive victory in 1781 of the Americans over British forces and the surrender of General Cornwallis at the Battle of Yorktown (VA). This was the last major battle of the Revolutionary War and set the stage for a negotiated end to the conflict. The formal surrender at Yorktown was at 2:00pm; MacArthur stepped ashore at Leyte at 2:00pm.

For the POWs in the Philippines the retaking of the islands meant certain death. In addition to the rumors of a "kill all" order--which was enacted in Palawan on December 14, 1944 with the incineration of 150 POWs--there appeared to be an intensified effort to ship as many POWs to Japan and China, as with the Oryoku Maru that left Manila on December 13th. Although, there do not appear to be any documents that suggest this, it is likely these men, mostly officers, were being rounded up to be used as hostages when Japan was ready to negotiate an end to the war. Any surrender would have to be at a cost of the enemy and bitter.

Japan reconsiders and reinterprets the Pearl Harbor attack

Noboru Takeshita

And ignores the Prime Minister's upcoming visit

BY MARK SCHREIBER, a Tokyo-based writer

THE JAPAN TIMES, December 24, 2016

In May, U.S. President Barack Obama became the first sitting U.S. president to make a historic visit to Hiroshima, the city that became the birthplace of the age of nuclear warfare. It should come as no surprise that Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, is scheduled to make a reciprocal gesture of reconciliation this week, possibly making him the first sitting Japanese prime minister to visit the USS Arizona Memorial.

So far, however, news coverage in Japan has been disappointingly spotty, partly because the story has been eclipsed by the usual year-end roundups, interspersed with breaking news stories: the Osprey crash in Okinawa and resulting blowback; the terrorist incident in Berlin; heavy pollution in Beijing; and President-elect Donald Trump’s latest tweet.

In December, the January 2017 issue of prestigious monthly magazine Bungei Shunju was released with a 13-page essay by history critic Masayasu Hosaka titled “Pearl Harbor: The true nature of the blunder.” Though written long before the announcement of Abe’s upcoming visit, it nonetheless provides some scholarly insights into how Japanese reacted to news of the attack 75 years ago.

At 7 a.m., on Monday, Dec. 8, 1941, a young NHK announcer named Morio Tateno told radio listeners, “The Naval department of Imperial headquarters announced that at 6 a.m. today the Imperial Navy, during predawn hours, initiated hostilities with the British and American navies in the Western Pacific.”

On the night of Dec. 8, Prime Minister Hideki Tojo invited the heads of the army and navy to celebrate with a Chinese-style repast at the prime minister’s residence, during which he effused over the “better than anticipated results” of the attack and expressed anticipation of President Franklin Roosevelt’s imminent downfall. Extra editions of newspapers were passed out to pedestrians on the streets and stirring martial tunes such as “Warship March” emanated from loudspeakers. Company workers at their morning assemblies were exhorted to exclaim “banzai” cheers. Stock prices on the Tokyo exchange shot up by 10 percent.

As Hosaka observes in Bungei Shunju, “The exhilaration over the successful attack on Pearl Harbor was the beginning of what was to become a stream of glorified lies on the progression of the war.”

But, unlike Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, who went to war with the specific goal of recovering their former empires’ lost territories, Japan had no clearly defined purpose for initiating hostilities.

“Having gone to war with vague goals,” he wrote, “Japan had no means of determining how to bring the war to an end. Even after Tojo’s Cabinet fell, it could not speedily halt the war.”

This year, several magazines chose to run articles about Pearl Harbor with strongly revisionist slants. The January issue of conservative monthly Rekishi-tu featured two, one that accused the wily President Roosevelt of “maneuvering” Japan into attacking the U.S., and another maintaining U.S. intelligence had broken the Japanese naval code before Pearl Harbor and, therefore, had advance knowledge of the attack. The January issue of Shincho 45 magazine ran an article that claimed British leader Winston Churchill knew of the Japanese plans but chose not to inform the Americans. Move on folks, nothing new here.

In a live telephone interview on New York’s WABC Radio, Tokyo-based American entertainer Dave Spector remarked, “In America, it’s ‘Remember Pearl Harbor.’ In Japan it’s more like ‘Forget Pearl Harbor.’ “

Nonetheless, in a poll of 959 people conducted earlier this month by NHK, 34 percent of respondents said they “strongly approve” of Abe’s visit, with another 48 percent giving their qualified approval. Only 3 percent voiced completely negative opinions.

On the other hand, Sunday Mainichi (Dec. 25) opined, perhaps Abe’s not the right person to go there. After all, over the past several years it has been the Emperor and Empress who traveled to Saipan, Palau and the Philippines to console the war dead. A visitor from the Imperial Family would carry more weight than a prime minister and, Abe’s good intentions notwithstanding, it’s unlikely his visit will erase the lingering U.S. sentiment that the attack on Pearl Harbor was a “cowardly act.”

Contradicting most news reports, meanwhile, it appears that Abe might not necessarily be the first sitting Japanese prime minister to visit the USS Arizona Memorial after all. Shukan Post (Jan. 1-6) claims the former Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita also went there in June 1988, during his tenure as Japan’s leader.

Takeshita, while traveling aboard a government-chartered Japan Airlines DC-10, stopped in Hawaii on the return leg of a summit meeting in Toronto. The magazine’s check of airport flight records notes that Takeshita’s aircraft first flew from Toronto via Chicago to the island of Maui on June 24, for a two-night stay. At 8 a.m. on June 26, he flew to Oahu, and returned to Tokyo’s Haneda at 6:23 p.m.

Allowing for a flight of 30 minutes from Maui to Oahu, and the seven to eight hours flying time between Honolulu and Haneda, Takeshita would have had a stopover of from one to two hours in Oahu. No records exist, however, of his having gone to Pearl Harbor.

“While no record of such a visit exists, there have been cases where visitors do not go through military channels,” Daniel Martinez, chief historian at the USS Arizona Memorial, explained to Shukan Post.

A member of Takeshita’s entourage says that the prime minister slipped away to Pearl Harbor while the others in his entourage went golfing, so only a few Diet members could have accompanied him. Efforts to identify other eyewitnesses were inconclusive, but the story’s source emphasized, “I’ve only been to the Arizona memorial once, so my recollection couldn’t possibly be wrong.”

The Dec. 24 Tokyo Shimbun can claim bragging rights for nick-of-time historical research. It has discovered that two other prime ministers, Ichiro Hatoyama and Nobusuke Kishi, also visited Pearl Harbor during their tenures, in 1956 and 1957 respectively. The Hawaii Hochi newspaper covered the events.

POW Families speak in Japan

On December 7, 2016, the Institute for Contemporary Asian Studies at Temple University's Japan Campus in Japan hosted its 6th dialogue with former POWs. This time, no POWs were able to participate. Instead, widows and children traveled to Japan to see where their loved ones were slave laborers.

There is an assumption that reconciliation has been achieved and that it is a distinct end point. None of this is true. Reconciliation is a process and a journey. The trip, decades too late and hard fought for, is merely a beginning. Speaking in public of their painful family history was very difficult for these women.

The introduction of the panel members was abysmal. Here you can find a link to fuller, researched profiles of the POWs discussed.

Why veterans are underrepresented in Congress

By Gary Schmitt and Rebecca Burgess, respectively, director and program manager of AEI’s Program on American Citizenship. Data used in this piece comes from a forthcoming AEI report on the status of veterans in American legislatures.

The Hill, October 28, 2016

George Washington’s assertion that “When we assumed the Soldier, we did not lay aside the Citizen” is justly famous for capturing the traditional attitude of the American citizen-soldier. While the nation at times has requested or required that citizens fulfill the highest form of civic duty, there have always been individuals who have voluntarily donned its uniform. Viewing military service as a form of public service, many, not surprisingly, have followed their days in the military by pursuing other forms of civic service, notably in the halls of government.

Although American democracy demands a military-civilian divide in regard to political power, voters have shown they are comfortable with electing officials with military service on their resume. Indeed, despite the colonists’ Revolutionary-era complaints about the British conflating military and political power, of the first 25 men to become president, 21 had military experience.

Nevertheless, for well-on 30 years military veterans have been a decreasing presence in Congress. In 1971, veterans made up 72 percent of the House of Representatives and 78 percent of the Senate. In 1991, the Congress that approved the use of force against Iraq in Operation Desert Storm had only slightly more veterans than non-veterans. In today’s Congress, veterans hold 20 percent of Senate seats, while 18 percent of House members are veterans. And regardless of who wins the presidency this time around, three of four recent presidents will not have served in the military, and the one who did had no combat experience.

At first blush, the decline of veterans in public office appears to be the natural consequence of the diminishing number of veterans in the overall population. With cuts in force levels following the end of the Cold War, the draft gone, and the All-Volunteer Force in place for four decades, veterans now comprise just 9 percent of the total population. Yet, when veterans made up over 70 percent of Congress in the 1970s, they were a little less than 14 percent of the total population. The decline of veterans in public office has been sharper than the decline of veterans within the general population. Why?

Perhaps the most significant reason is the current cost of running for Congress. The price tag for a Senate campaign stands near $10.5 million, the House near $1.6 million. Both political parties are likely to recruit candidates who have existing fundraising networks and abilities, with personal wealth often to boot. The high cost of political campaigns and highly restrictive campaign finance laws, which bind political parties, favor the incumbent and disadvantage the military veteran, whose earnings and savings is typically quite modest, as is his immediate circle of friends and associates.

Any reversal of the declining trend in veterans in the halls of Congress will probably begin with the one tried-and-true way to gain legislative experience, build name recognition, and increase access to a fundraising network—election to a state legislature. State legislative office is a traditional steppingstone to federal office, with 50 percent of the 114th Congress, for example, composed of former state legislators.

From this perspective, the good news is that no fewer than 1,039 out of 7,383 state legislators have military experience—14 percent. While the clear majority, as in the US Congress, lean Republican, female veterans in the House, Senate, and state offices tend to break more evenly along partisan lines. And, as one might expect given the respective size of each of the services, Army veterans, from the active component, the Guard, and the Reserves, account for a majority of state and federal office holders. But each of the services, along with the Coast Guard, has veterans currently serving in the state legislatures.

As one might expect with the aging of the Vietnam-era cohort, Post-Cold War veterans make up an increasing share of all veteran state legislators. Post-9/11 veterans alone now total 20 percent of all congressional and state-level veteran legislators. And, strikingly, 41 percent of veterans running for Congress this year served after 9/11 (128 of 316).

The annual Military Family Lifestyle Survey released by Blue Star families in 2015 revealed that, when asked about their motivation for having joined the military, 95 percent of service members answered, “to serve my country.” Similarly, in a 2015 poll taken by Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, the veteran population proved highly engaged and civic-minded: 93 percent were registered to vote, 80 percent reported voting in the 2014 election, and nearly 40 percent indicated they have considered running for public office.

Military veterans in American legislatures will not reach again the high levels of the 1970s. We fight our wars differently, requiring no massive, nation-wide conscription cutting across all the strata of society such as produced the diverse World War II and Korea veteran cohorts in the first place. But the rise of post-9/11 veterans pursuing public office demonstrates that, even with the high costs of entry, their commitment to public service endures.

A week for remembering the Prisoner of War

On November 11th, Veterans Day, Dan Crowley, 94, will join President Barack Obama for his annual breakfast for representatives from America's Veterans Service Organizations. He will represent the American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor Memorial Society.

Mr. Crowley was sent to the Philippines as an enlisted member of the Army Air Corps in 1941 untrained and unarmed. When the Japanese attacked the Philippines on December 8, 1941, he fought in an improvised air defense at Nichols Field near Manila. After the Field's destruction, the airmen were moved to Bataan to join the US Army Infantry in the Battle of the Points repelling three waves of the Japanese invasion. He avoided the Bataan Death March after Bataan's surrender by swimming and clinging to life rafts to Corregidor Island fortress where he engaged in shore defense with the 4th Marines. He was surrendered on May 6, 1942.

In August 1942, he was sent as a POW to help construct the infamous air field on Palawan Island. Starvation, beatings, and unworkable conditions prolonged the task. He was shipped to Japan aboard the Hellship Taikoku Maru in March 1944 to be slave laborer, thus missing the Palawan Massacre of 150 of his fellow POWs on December 14, 1944.

First taken to POW Camp Tokyo #8B, a Hitachi copper mine, Crowley was liberated in September 1945 from another copper mine near Tokyo, Ashio POW Camp Tokyo #9 owned by the Furukawa Company, today a major multinational.

Its US subsidiary, Furukawa Rock Drill, located in Kent, Ohio is barely 100 miles from Port Clinton, Ohio. Company C 192nd Tank Battalion sent to the Philippines in October 1941 was a unit whose core was comprised of men from the Port Clinton area. The 32 Port Clinton men were soon engaged in the Defense of the Philippine Islands. Only 10 of the 32 local men survived the Bataan Death March and three and a half years as POWs.

On November 18, from 10:00 to 11:00am, the Marysville, Ohio Public Library will hold a lecture on the 192nd Tank Battalion: The Bataan Death March and the local men who died as POWs of Japan. Marysville was one of the first American towns (1979) to receive extensive Japanese foreign investment with the establishment of a Honda plant and its various subcontractors. According to the local newspaper in 2013, "Since Honda of America Mfg. came to town more than 30 years ago, the company and the suppliers that followed have invested almost $5 billion in the county."

In 2014, he participated in a Japanese reconciliation program began in 2010 for former American POWs to visit Japan. Unfortunately, representatives from Furukawa refused to meet with Mr. Crowley or to offer an apology. However, he was able to visit the mine where he toiled as it is now a museum and amusement park. There is no mention of the American and Allied POW labor at these facilities.

You can find out more about Mr. Crowley at the Library of Congress' Veterans History Project or from this pamphlet by Central Connecticut  State University.

We are fundraising to support Mr. Crowley's travel to Washington. A tax-deductible donation can be made through PayPal HERE.

Mr. Crowley will give two presentations open to the public, among the many veterans programs this week.

click to order

LAST RING HOME. NOVEMBER 9, Noon-2:30pm, Washington, DC. Sponsor: US Navy Memorial Foundation and Asia Policy Point. Author Minter Dial II discusses his new book The Last Ring Home: A POW’s Lasting Legacy of Courage, Love and Honor in World War II (Myndset Press, 2016) and documentary on his grandfather, Lt Minter Dial who commanded the USS Napa (AT-32) until ordered to Corregidor in March 1942. Lt Dial's Annapolis Naval Academy ring, miraculously made its way home 17 years after he was killed as a POW of Japan on the Philippines in December 1944. After his remarks, there will be a special advance screening of the new PBS documentary The Last Ring Home based on Dial's book.

Dan Crowley, a former POW of Japan who fought on Corregidor at the same time as Lt Dial, will be a special guest. After the Dial presentation, over a lite lunch. Mr. Crowley will offer his observations on Japan's invasion of the Philippines, the battles that followed, the historic surrender of American troops by their officers, and his over three years as a POW of Imperial Japan.

THE BATTLE OF THE PHILIPPINES 75 YEARS LATER: A VETERAN'S TALE. NOVEMBER 10, 1:00-2:30pm, Washington, DC. Sponsor: Sigur Center, George Washington University and the American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor Memorial Society. Speaker: Dan Crowley, veteran of the Battle for the defense of Philippines with the US Army Air Corps, Army Infantry, and Marines; former POW of Japan in the Philippines and Japan, slave laborer in copper mines owned by Hitachi and Furukawa.
Mr. Crowley will offer his observations on Japan's invasion of the Philippines, the battles that followed, the historic surrender of American troops by their officers, his over three years as a POW of Imperial Japan, and his struggle to forgive. Mr. Crowley will be a special guest of President Obama at his Veterans Day Breakfast on the 11th. Location: Sigur Center, Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University, 1957 E Street, NW, Chung-wen Shih Conference Room, Suite 503.

Mr. Crowley is a life member of the VFW.

VFW NATIONAL COMMANDER BRIAN DUFFY will give a press conference on NOVEMBER 10th at 10:00am at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. He will discuss the needs of the nation’s 20 million veterans and the plans of veterans’ groups to move President Obama's successor and the next Congress to improve the delivery of promised benefits. The VFW, which traces its roots to the Spanish-American War, requires its members to have served in combat zones overseas.

Putting Mr. Crowley's POW experience in historical perspective will be the following program.

PRISONERS OF WAR. NOVEMBER 14, 6:45-8:45pm, Washington, DC. Sponsor: Smithsonian Connections. Speaker: Judge Evan J. Wallach, an expert on war crimes and the law of war, circuit judge at the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Location: Smithsonian, S. Dillon Ripley Center, 1100 Jefferson Drive, SW.

War has always resulted in prisoners, and their treatment has always been problematic. The settings in which they have been held extend from the Revolutionary War’s prison ships to the Civil War’s infamous Andersonville camp, Japanese slave labor camps and German concentration camps during WWII, and North Korean brainwashing centers through to Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. Just as war has changed dramatically over the years, so has the treatment of captured prisoners. 

Evan J. Wallach, an expert on war crimes and the law of war, finds that how a country treats—or mistreats—captured enemy prisoners is a key gauge of its values as a society and its views of international human rights. He discusses the history of prisoners of war, how POW status is defined in modern warfare, the current required treatment of prisoners, limits to their interrogation, and potential domestic and international legal sanctions for their mistreatment. 

Wallach is a circuit judge at the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. He served as a combat engineer in Vietnam and Cambodia and in the Pentagon as a U.S. Army judge advocate during the Persian Gulf War, where he was responsible for prisoner of war issues and wrote the Army’s investigation of Iraqi war crimes including mistreatment of coalition POWs.

Obama must memorialize more than Hiroshima

memorial to American POWs
who died in Hiroshima

On May 27th, U.S. President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will together visit together the Hiroshima Peace Memorial.

There has been much commentary on this, most to create a climate of acceptance of this historic visit. Few give the perspective of the American POW. Many assume it will be negative. This is not necessarily true.

Below is an op ed that appeared on May 11th in The Wall Street Journal Online by Dr. Lester Tenney. He tries to give some nuance to how a Pacific War veteran may view the visit.

For the POWs, who have so often have been abandoned by the White House, this is an opportunity to insist that they must be remembered.

To this end, a memorial needs to be erected at the Port of Moji on Kyushu that is part of a UNESCO World Heritage site; Japan’s new UNESCO World Industrial Heritage sites must note that American and Allied POWs were slave laborers at these sites; and that the POW visitation program must be turned into a permanent program of remembrance, reconciliation, and education.

On May 12th, National Security Advisor Susan Rice held a meeting with veterans organizations to review the President’s upcoming trip to Vietnam and Japan. The American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor Memorial Society was not invited. Rice said the President’s decision to visit Hiroshima, Japan was “to honor the memory of all who lost their lives during World War II.” We shall see.

Remembering More Than Hiroshima
We must not forget the lives lost and trauma incurred by Allied forces during the Pacific War.
By LESTER TENNEY
Wall Street Journal, May 11, 2016 12:15 p.m. ET

A black man was the first American soldier to die in World War II. An unexploded bomb from a Mitsubishi “Betty” split U.S. Army Pvt. Robert Brooks in two on December 8, 1941, as he ran to the machine gun on his half-track at Clark Field in the Philippines. Like me, he was a member of the 192nd Tank Battalion preparing to fight the invading Imperial Japanese forces. It is fitting that our first black president will soon stand at Hiroshima, where the Pacific War began its end.

Pvt. Brooks’s sacrifice and those of thousands of American and Allied forces who fought and died for freedom in the Pacific must never be forgotten. What Hiroshima represents is more than the effects of a nuclear weapon. It is the culmination of a war started by Imperial Japan and conducted with gross inhumanity, a war in which more civilians died than combatants.

It would be wrong for the president to pivot away from this history and use his visit solely to discuss aspirations for a world without nuclear weapons. Hiroshima highlights mankind’s tragic ability to wreak terrible destruction, and this destruction was not caused exclusively by atomic bombs. Sand-filled bamboo sticks, bayonets, plague-inflected fleas, starvation and rape—methods of warfare used by Japan—are also destructive.

When President Harry Truman announced the bombing of Nagasaki, which ended the war, he recognized “the tragic significance of the atomic bomb.” However, he went on to explain “we have used it against those who attacked us without warning at Pearl Harbor, against those who have starved, beaten and executed American prisoners of war, against those who have abandoned all pretense of obeying international laws of warfare. We have used it in order to shorten the agony of war, in order to save the lives of thousands and thousands of young Americans.”

As a former American POW of Japan, I am particularly sensitive to these words. Truman was looking out for me and more than 27,000 other American POWs in Asia. Until then, we felt forgotten and ignored. The “Europe first” policy of Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill abandoned us to fight without resupply or reinforcement on the Philippines at the start of World War II. We became POWs for more than three bitter years.

We endured four unforgiving months of tank warfare in the tropical heat on Bataan against an enemy with superior training, equipment and provisions. Surrendered by our commanders, nearly 80,000 of us American and Filipino troops were forced on the Bataan Death March. The surviving 68,000 arrived at Camp O’Donnell, a prison camp that saw up to 300 die daily.
The camp commandant ranted at us that we were lower than dogs and better off dead, as we would always be enemies of Japan. I must say that many times I had to agree.

After a period in the camp, many of us went by “hell ship” to Japan to become slave laborers. In my case, it was in a dilapidated Mitsui coal mine. My friend from Janesville, Wis., Capt. Fred Bruni, had a different experience. He and 150 men from the camp were sent to Palawan Island to build an airfield. Upon completion, all the men were set afire and machine-gunned by the Kempeitai.

We POWs have tried to preserve this history despite U.S. and Japanese government efforts to suppress it. Upon liberation, most of us were forced to sign gag orders not to discuss the horrors of our imprisonment. The U.S. government’s policy was to pacify Japan in part by curbing memories of its war atrocities. Central to the 1952 San Francisco Peace Treaty is an article foreclosing any further compensation of victims, thus again preventing the recall of Imperial Japan’s past crimes and abuses.

At home, an underfunded Veterans Administration refused to give us full disability and ignored or misunderstood the aftereffects of vitamin deficiency, tropical diseases and trauma. It took two acts of Congress before we received any compensation for our imprisonment and only at a rate of $1.50 per day for lost meals.

The U.S. government abandoned the Pacific War’s history. This has made efforts to hold Japanese companies accountable for their brutal use of POW slaves nearly impossible. It is taboo to associate high-speed rails, luxury automobiles or Washington’s metro cars with companies that once abused Americans. Among the nearly 60 well-known companies such as Mitsui, Mitsubishi, Sumitomo, Kawasaki and Nippon Sharyo, only the Mitsubishi Materials Company, which used POWs in four of its mines, has apologized.

In recent years the Japanese government has finally begun to make amends to American POWs. They offered an official apology in 2009. At the Obama administration’s urging, they established in 2010 a reconciliation program for former POWs to visit Japan. Unfortunately the program will end this year without any follow-up for descendants or the public.

But history is critical to how we understand ourselves. No one knew Pvt. Brooks’s race until the Army wanted to honor him. When news of his death reached Fort Knox, the chief of the armored force, Gen. Jacob Devers, decided that a parade ground should be named in his memory, because the first American tanker to die in World War II should not be forgotten.

When it was discovered that Pvt. Brooks’s parents were black tenant farmers from Sadieville, Ky., the general was asked if he wanted to reconsider. “No,” he answered, “it did not matter whether or not Robert was black, what mattered was that he had given his life for his country.” As Gen. Devers said at the Brooks Field dedication ceremony, “In death there is no grade or rank. And in this greatest democracy the world has ever known, neither riches nor poverty, neither creed nor race, draws a line of demarcation in this hour of national crisis.”

Mr. Obama wants to use his visit to Hiroshima to highlight the perils of nuclear war. But this is not the only lesson. Our service as veterans of the Pacific War needs to be remembered and not abandoned to some tumid oratory. The president’s visit to Hiroshima will be hollow, a gesture without motion, if the Pacific War’s full history is not maintained. Hiroshima does not and cannot exist outside the context of the Asia-Pacific War and all its dead.

Mr. Tenney, 95, was a member of the 192nd Tank Battalion, Company B that defended the Philippines in World War II. He lives in San Diego.

Kerry's Premature Visit to Hiroshima

Saturday, April 9 was the 74th anniversary of the Fall of Bataan and the beginning of the Bataan Death March. The failure of the US Secretary of State to acknowledge all the victims of the Pacific War and why President Harry Truman felt it was necessary to use the destructive power of a new weapon on Japan has prompted many to question the wisdom of the President following with a visit as this former POW writes.

WEEKLY STANDARD, APR 11, 2016 | By LESTER TENNEY

By Lester Tenney, PhD, 95, is a survivor of the Bataan Death March and was a tank commander in the 192nd Tank Battalion on Bataan

John Kerry has become the first U.S. secretary of state to visit the Hiroshima Peace Park, ground zero to the first atomic bomb. He recognized the victims of World War II, saying he was there in part to "revisit the past." As part of that history, a prisoner of war of Imperial Japan, I hope that Secretary Kerry also remembered why there was a Hiroshima and a Nagasaki, which I witnessed.

Secretary Kerry stood in Hiroshima on the anniversary of what was my second day of the Bataan Death March. After four months of brutal tank warfare in the Bataan Peninsula of the Philippines, on April 9, 1942, I had been surrendered by my commanding officers as we had run out of ammunition, food, and medicine.

Nearly 80,000 American, Filipino, and European volunteer troops, exhausted, sick, and hungry, were forced to march in the tropical sun on unpaved roads out of Bataan. Every moment was one of gripping fear. We did not know where we were going or if we would arrive alive. Our guards screamed commands we did not understand. They beat us with rifle butts and sand-filled bamboo sticks until we fell.

The first American I saw killed directly by the Japanese was on the second day of the Death March. He had fallen to the ground and tried to explain that he was too sick to continue. The guards responded by bayoneting and shooting him in the chest. A lieutenant also fell of exhaustion and was shot, but his body was left in the middle of the road for a truck convoy to crush. But the worst that day was watching my first American beheaded—you convulse as you throw up with your stomach muscles tightening so that you think you will never again breathe. And then you shake and shake and shake.

Deniers in Japan have been revising the Bataan history for some time. In December 2005, a popular Japanese magazine, Bungei Shunju, reported that the Bataan Death March route was mischaracterized. A female journalist had walked the 65-mile Bataan Death March trail in October and found the now-paved road undemanding. She had water, a snack, and a hat. She did not have dysentery, malaria, battle wounds, or a bayonet at her neck. She was not denied water, food, or rest. Nor did she witness random deaths. She was not a prisoner of war.

In 2010, another popular magazine, Shukan Shincho, again questioned my memory of the Death March and the abuse I received as a POW. The author suggested that the March never happened and that I made up a "collection of torture scenes from Hollywood movies."

A similar article in 2012, in the conservative monthly, Seiron, accused me of willfully killing civilians in the Philippines and exaggerating the horrors of the Bataan Death March. Both articles referred to my being Jewish as the cause of my indifference and supposed overstatements, as if to say I am not a typical American.

But the bigger problem of misperception is maybe outside Japan, where the POW experience is ignored. Last year, UNESCO designated Mitsui's Miike Coal mine, barely 35 miles from Nagasaki, as a World Industrial Heritage site. This is the dangerous mine where 1,700 POWs and I were slave laborers. Nothing at the site mentions us, and no U.S., European or Australian government official has objected.

While the Bataan Death March is being dismissed in Japan, it is being misremembered in the U.S. If recognized at all, it is believed to have been just another long slog. In an interview with Politico, President Obama compared his first election campaign to the Bataan Death March.

I am a witness. Who will be my witness when I am gone? At 95, I can't have much longer. It is not enough to silently remember the victims of the Pacific War. An active and rigorous campaign of education and reflection is necessary. It is premature to visit Hiroshima's ground zero before first ensuring that the full history of World War II is preserved.

If President Obama follows his Secretary of State with a visit to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial in May, I suggest he also visit the Port of Moji. The "hell ships" carrying the sick and dying survivors of the Bataan Death March and other lost battles unloaded their "cargo" at this port. It would be fitting for the president of the United States and the prime minister of Japan to break ground with a memorial at the port to the American and Allied POWs. And the president should insist that Japan's UNESCO World Industrial Heritage sites, where so many POWs toiled and died after arriving at Moji, have this history included in the pubic descriptions.

The final Japanese offensive on Bataan had started on April 3: Good Friday for the Americans and Filipinos. Behind Japanese lines, it was the anniversary of their first Emperor Jimmu's death. For both sides it was a day of death, but one that might point to a path toward redemption.

Looking back 74 years, I understand that it is what we share that matters most. On the second day of the Bataan Death March, I happened to stare at a tin of fish being eaten by a young Japanese soldier sitting beside the road. We had not yet been allowed food or water. He stared back. Then, without hesitation, he handed me the opened can.

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

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

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

By Professor Kerry Smith, Brown University

First appeared in JapanFocus, May 18, 2014

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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