Remembering a POW legend, Ed Jackfert

Ed Jackert with Senator Barbara Boxer

With sadness, I report that on July 24^th, Sgt Edward Jackfert, 98, of Wellsburg, West Virginia and Tampa, Florida passed away. 

 

His funeral was Saturday, August 1, 2020. The West Virginia (WV) Patriot Guard Riders escorted the WWII hero from the Chambers Funeral Home to a public graveside service at Franklin Cemetery, Wellsburg, WV, held with Military Honors by the WV Army National Guard. Ed was with the U.S. Army Air Corps in the Philippines where he was surrendered to become a POW of Japan for more than three years. He was liberated in Japan 75 years ago this August. You can leave a note, send flowers or plant a tree HERE.

 

Ed graduated in 1939 from Wellsburg High School and enlisted in the United States Army Air Corps on September 11, 1940. He was sent to aircraft engineers’ school, and then to the Philippine Islands, arriving in June 1941. He was assigned to the 28th Bomb Squadron which later became a part of the 19th Bombardment Group.  The unit was based at Clark Field as the bomber command of the Far East Air Force.

 

Ed was a mechanic at Clark Field when Imperial Japanese Navy planes attacked on December 8, 1941. The airfield was destroyed in less than an hour. Clark Field as a tactical base was virtually destroyed. The casualties were very high, about 100 wounded and 55 dead. Survivors were evacuated on December 24^th to the Bataan Peninsula and Mindanao island.

 

Ed fought as part of a provisional infantry formed on Mindanao. First, he was assigned to guard Carmen Ferry near Davao and the newly constructed Del Monte Air Field. In mid-April 1942, he was sent to the new Maramag Field in central Mindanao to help put up a last-ditch offense, known as the Royce Mission. Mindanao was surrendered to the Japanese on May 10^th. (Mother’s Day 1942. The POWs captured on Mindanao were consolidated at Camp Casisang, about five kilometers southwest of Malaybalay, Mindanao. They were miles away from Bataan and the infamous Bataan Death March.

 

On October 3, 1942, he and 268 POWs at Camp Casisang were transported by the hellship Tamohoko Maru from Bugu, Mindanao to Manila.  They were loaded aboard the hellship Tottori Maru for a month-long trip via Formosa (Taiwan) and Chosen (Korea) to Japan arriving November 11, 1942.

 

In October 1942, he was transported to Japan aboard the hellship Tottori Mari arriving November 11, 1942. He was primarily a slave laborer at Tokyo-2B-Kawasaki POW Camp (Mitsui Wharf Co., Ltd. known as “Mitsui Madhouse” for its brutal and chaotic conditions as well the language problems created by the many nationalities at the camp). There he was used as stevedore and day laborer for the Mitsui Senpaku KK [today’s Mitsui OSK Lines Ltd], Mitsubishi’s NYK Line (name unchanged today), Nisshin Flour (today’s Nisshin Seifu Group), Kawasaki Railroad Electric Power Plant, KYK Brick Factory (Kojima or Kawasaki Yogyo Co., Ltd., today’s Shinagawa Refactory), and Nippon Steel (name unchanged today). He was also traded around the Kawasaki, Kanagawa area spending time as a slave laborer for Nisshin Flour Milling (Tokyo 24-D), Showa Denko Chemical (Tokyo-16-B- Niigata [Kanose] today’s Showa Denko K.K.) where he mixed chemicals for ammunition, and Japan Steel Pipe [Japan Kokan, today’s JFE Holdings] (Tokyo 5D Kawasaki). Starting in January 1945, the camps came under constant air attack from American bombing raids. On July 25, 1945, Tokyo-2B was destroyed and 22 POWs were killed.

 

The camp was liberated on August 30, 1945. Among the 139 POWs in the camp, there were 59 Americans, 25 British, 6 Australians, 44 Italians and 5 Norwegians. He was evacuated to the hospital ship USS Benevolence (AH-13) for processing and then eventually on to a plane to Manila. There, on September 18, they boarded a troop transport and arrived in Los Angeles [possibly] on October 3.

 

Ed returned home to West Virginia to heal and reconstitute his life. He went to Bethany College and received a degree in economics. From there he joined the Internal Revenue Service as a Criminal Investigator and worked primarily in the field of organized crime and corruption of public officials. He retired from the government in February 1977.

 

Ed was a valiant and tireless advocate for the American POWs of Japan. He was one of five POWs who testified in person on June 28, 2000 to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on how the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty with Japan abrogated the right of former POWs of Japan to sue Japanese companies for compensation for their forced labor or on how the POWs were mistreated by their Japanese capturers in violation of the Geneva Convention.

 

In September 2010, he participated in the first delegation of American POWs on a “friendship” trip to Japan. There he met with Japan’s Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada who offered an official apology to the POWs of Japan. This apology appeared as a Cabinet Decision in February 2009 making it one of only four official Japanese government apologies.

 

He was twice elected National Commander of the American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor (ADBC, today the ADBC Memorial Society), in 1984 and 1999. His passion has been to ensure the legacy of the POWs by creating the ADBC Museum, Education & Research Center in Wellsburg, WV to preserve the history of the defense of the Philippines and to teach the lessons of war. 

The Museum received in 2015 the only atonement payment from a Japanese company, Mitsubishi Materials Corporation, for the company’s wartime abuse of POW slave laborers in its mines. You have to dig deep into the company's 2016 social responsibility report on page 70 to find mention of the apology on the Mitsubishi Materials website. There is one sentence. It mentions an "apology made to former US prisoners who were forced to work." In other words, the apology is not "offered" as reconciliation experts suggest; non-US POWs are not included (British, Australian, South African, Irish); and the rightwing euphemism "forced to work" is used. 

Ed wrote a memoir of his time as a POW called, Service to my Country. 

POW#246

 

Requiescat in pace

Don't dither on the apology, Mr Abe

Lester Tenney and Minister Okada

On May 13, 2013, The Japan Times posted the essay below by Dr. Lester Tenney, tank commander in the battle to defend the Philippines, survivor of the Bataan Death March, a Hellship, and a Mitsui coal mine. Dr. Tenney has been on the forefront of negotiating with the Japanese government to achieve a meaningful apology for and acknowledgement of the horrors experienced by the American POWs of Japan.

Shift the focus, Mr. Prime Minister

CARLSBAD, CALIFORNIA – Sometimes things fall apart so that other things can fall together. Such is the case of defining or redefining the meaning of “aggression” before and during World War II. It’s time now, Mr. Prime Minister, to change your focus from “aggression” to “apology.”

The apology I speak of was made by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Katsuya Okada, on Sept. 13, 2010, to six American former prisoners of war (POWs) of the Japanese and their family members, who were invited to Japan as guests of the Japanese Government for an opportunity to share the history of World War II in a peaceful and friendly atmosphere.

At the outset of the meeting, Minister Okada welcomed the former POWs and stated that, even though circumstances of the past had made it difficult, he felt sorry for waiting so long before starting an invitation program for American former POWs, which had been available to former POWs of other countries for 15 years.

Minister Okada stood in front of Japanese television reporters and correspondents from all over the world to apologize to the former POWs: “On behalf of the Government of Japan and as minister for foreign affairs, I extend my heartfelt apology to the former POWs over the inhumane treatment and sufferings they experienced while they were held captive by the Imperial Japanese Army.”

Minister Okada added that he hoped this visit to Japan by the former POWs would be an opportunity to overcome their past bitter feelings and cooperate in promoting better Japan-U.S. relations in the future.

As a former POW of the Japanese, and as one of the POWs in attendance at that historic meeting, I can assure you, Mr. Prime Minister, that much of the past bitter feelings evaporated as we heard his words. His proper apology atoned for the inhumane treatment by the Japanese Imperial Army.

It has been my privilege to have served as liaison between the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and American former POWs and their descendants in arranging the visitation programs.

Thus far there have been three annual visitation programs, starting in 2010. The responses from former POWs who participated in these programs are heartwarming — men, 89 to 94 years old, with tears in their eyes, saying “thank you” to the citizens of the very country that years earlier had forced them to work as slaves in a factory or a mine.

Meeting and communicating with the officers and workers at the very companies who enslaved the POWs was especially meaningful.

When the former POWs were ready to return home each said in his own way: “We can hardly believe how wonderful we have been treated while on this visit to Japan. Everyone has been so helpful and friendly, it’s easy to forgive and get on with living.”

Mr. Prime Minister, I hope you can see the value of this apology, not only to the former American POWs but also to Japanese citizens who came into contact with these former soldiers.

The apology to former American POWs has helped strengthen relations between our two countries.

Instead of arguing about who was the aggressor and its meaning, please, Mr. Abe, allow the friendship generated through an apology to be our mutual goal.

We former POWs, like the Japanese who were directly involved in our daily lives, need closure to events of the past, and we are anxiously waiting for this year’s program to be announced so that more American and Japanese lives can be touched.

Seventy years is a long time to wait. It is about time to come to terms with the past without using semantics to change the true meaning of events that touched our lives.

Mr. Prime Minister, don’t let this opportunity for understanding slip away, an apology is so much more important than trying to determine the meaning of “aggressor.”