Telling Time

Took a licking and kept on ticking

‘Emotional moment’ to get watch for longtime WT supporters

by JON MARK BEILUE, West Texas A&M University

September 1, 2021

Photo: Bitsy Downing, longtime business manager and director of finance at WT, and son Stu hold the watch this summer of  late husband and father Scott Downing, who had it taken from him by the Japanese after he was captured in 1945.

The small package arrived on June 1, taking three months and 6,154 miles by way of ship and through customs from outside of Tokyo to the mailbox on Fulton Drive in Amarillo.

Stu Downing and his mother Bitsy knew what was inside. That only made carefully opening the package that much more poignant.

“It was an emotional moment for me,” Bitsy said, “because I kept thinking about Scott’s emotions at the time of his capture when he was tied to a tree near a village. I just imagined his emotions when he had to give up his possessions – his belt, his ring, and of course, his watch.”

His watch.

First Lt. Scott Downing of Canyon was a bombardier among a crew of 11 on a B-29 on what was his 20th – and as it turned out, final – combat mission on May 25, 1945. Only 2 ½ months remained of World War II, but they had no way of knowing that. They, like most, suspected a long protracted war with Japan.

They left the Tinian Islands on a six-hour flight to the heart of Tokyo. The objective was to bomb an industrial complex four miles southeast of the Imperial Palace. Dangerous? Was there a combat mission that wasn’t?

A Japanese Zero attacked the B-29 near Tokyo. The right engine caught fire. The crew bailed out 9,500 feet over Japan. Three could not get out of the plane and died. Downing was able to parachute down in a rice field 15 miles southeast of Tokyo.

His ordeal was just beginning. With 15 minutes, villagers ran toward him, carrying hoes, pitchforks, any crude implement they could get their hands on. Downing was tied to a tree until two Japanese soldiers arrived, one with a bayonet on the end of a rifle.

In his book A Ball of Rice and a Cup of Water, Downing said he was prepared to die, and die like a proud American. Instead, he was stripped of all personal possessions, blindfolded and marched to building with a dirt floor.

This was the beginning of three months as a prisoner of war. Nineteen soldiers were initially crammed into an 8-by-12-foot horse stall. There were beatings if Japanese soldiers saw POWs talking to each other and beatings anyway. Downing was beaten by a bamboo pole when an interrogation didn’t go the way the Japanese wanted. POWs were threatened with decapitation or a bullet in the temple.

Most POWs thought they would die at the hands of guards in retaliation of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Aug. 6 and Aug. 9, 1945. On Aug. 15, Emperor Hirohito announced the unthinkable – the surrender of Japan to the Allied forces.

Two weeks later, on Aug 29 and four days before the Sept. 2, 1945, formal surrender aboard the USS Missouri, Downing was among those at the Omori prison camp who were released to the Americans. His roommate on a transport ship was James “Pappy” Boyington, decorated Marine pilot and Medal of Honor recipient. [Today, the Omori camp location, an artificial island built by American POWs, is Heiwajima, a motorboat racing revenue owned by the Sasakawa organization that supports Japanese government public diplomacy.]

Men returned home to restart their lives. For Downing, he found himself back in Canyon. He became a longtime building contractor. Scott and Bitsy were married on the West Texas A&M University campus at the Joseph A. Hill Chapel on Sept. 1, 1951.

WT became a key part of their lives. Bitsy was assistant business manager and director of finance at WT from 1957 to 1982. Scott helped build the presidential home of James Cornette. He and his brother Jack also helped build the original Pioneer Village at the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum.

Scott was the youngest of 10 children, and Bitsy was the youngest of nine, but Stu was their only child. He graduated from WT in 1978. There was no a bigger fan of WT athletics than the former bombardier. He had season tickets to football and men’s and women’s basketball games for so long that no one could remember when he didn’t. A WT flag flew in the front yard of their Amarillo home where they moved in 2004.

That was passed down to Stu. Even today, if anyone wants to find Stu, just go to a WT athletic event and holler out his name. He’s usually there.

Finding the watch, or the watch finds them

His dad didn’t dwell on his combat missions and never, to anyone’s knowledge, suffered from PTSD. But it was always a part of him. Like novelist William Faulkner said, “The past is not dead. It’s not even past.”

Scott made four trips to Japan. The first was in 1947 to testify at a Japanese war crimes trial. He and Bitsy went on sightseeing tours there in 1986 and 1994. Then in 2015, just two years before his death at age 98, Scott and Stu were among an American POW contingent on a reconciliation tour sponsored by the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the U.S. State Department [and the American Defenders of Bataan Memorial Society].

At one event was a PowerPoint presentation by a man named Nakazato. It was all in Japanese so neither Downing knew the man was saying his grandparents were among those who tied a parachuting American to a tree. He had a watch that was the man’s which had been handed down by his grandparents.

But Dr. Isao Arai, a researcher with the group who is fluent in English, relayed what Nakazato said. Wait a minute, a watch? Could it be Scott’s watch? What were the odds?

Then they did some digging. Only officers were issued military standard Bulova watches. There were four officers on that downed B-29. Two were captured nowhere near the site. A third didn’t land too far from Downing, but he avoided detection for six days and was captured along the coast.

Eventually the Downings were convinced the watch was Scott’s. They put that on the backburner as they returned home, but it would be nice to one day get that watch back if possible.

Nancy Samp, the historian of the 505th Bomb Group, agreed. She was instrumental in persuading Arai to take steps to return the watch. It didn’t take much persuasion. Arai was 12 when he witnessed the B-29 crash. He has spent much of his life researching B-29 crashes in Japan and bringing closure to families. The grandson also knew the watch belonged to someone else.

“Scott always told me and everyone he knew that the Japanese people were kind and considerate,” Bitsy said. “He only had fault with the military. They ruled the country at the time, and they were brutal. The citizens were not. The grandson needs to be commended for releasing it.”

The Downings were sent a photo last year of the watch. It was inscribed as a Type A-11 with a serial number of AF4380602. A Google search pronounced it from the 1940s.

Arai and Stu exchanged a series of emails to finalize the return. In one of his last emails, Arai wrote: “It is not just an old watch. I think of it as the spirit of a soldier returning home after 75 years.”

The watch was put on a boat in Japan on March 9, six years after its rediscovery and four years after Scott’s death. It finally returned home on June 1. But after 75 years-plus, what was another three months? Wife and son held the watch like a newborn. They were the first Downings to touch the band since May 25, 1945. The face read 12:07.

“The little second hand still runs,” Bitsy said. “We wound it up very carefully when we got it, and the second hand started running. It was like it was telling us, ‘I’m happy to be home. It’s good to be back in the United States.’”

The last Sunday in August was the 76th anniversary of Downing’s release. Sept. 2 marks the 76th anniversary of the formal end of World War II and the surrender of Japan.

The watch will not stay in the Downing home much longer. Sometime this fall, they will take it to the B-29 museum in Pratt, Kan., a restored World War II parachute building at Pratt Air Field. There it will remain among other artifacts from the war.

“We got it home and we got to touch it again,” Bitsy said. “That’s what’s important. I think Scott would want it up there.”

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. 

Former POW returns to Japan at country's request

Omori POW Camp on Aug. 29, 1945Scott Downing, at right

Amarillo Globe News story by Mark Beilue, December 19, 2015 [corrections by APP]

Stu Downing was walking to one of the many events the Japanese government had for his father, Scott Downing, and four other prisoners of war from World War II when he was handed an envelope. It was a letter signed by four Japanese high school girls.

“Dear Mr. Scott Dawning,

Good evening, everyone. Thank you for coming to Japan. We are students of Toin Gauken High School in Yokohama.

I’m so glad to participate in this meeting, but I am a little nervous too. We examined cruelty by Japanese this summer.

We found through our study what prisoners of war (POW) had to go through during the war. We pray from the bottom of my heart that your comrades’ soul may rest in peace. We wonder how you feel about your experience now. We were shocked to find out how little we knew about the past. We are now aware of what kind of damage ignorance can cause...”

This was Scott Downing’s fifth trip to Japan. The first was awful — three months as a beaten and abused prisoner of war 70 years ago. The second was somewhat redemptive — testifying at a war crimes trial of Japanese military officers two years later.

The third and fourth were sightseeing trips — in 1984 with wife Bitsy and in 1996 with Stu. This one, from Dec. 5 to 14, was one of healing.

“I feel great about the people,” said Downing, 96.

“They’re not bad people. It’s the soldiers I didn’t like.”

The trip was at the invitation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Japan. It was in conjunction with the U.S. State Department and the American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor (ADBC) Memorial Society.

There were four other former American POWs on the trip, which the Japanese government periodically [since 2010, this is the 7th] hosts for American prisoners. The goodwill trips are presented as one of reconciliation.

“It’s to heal any old wounds,” Stu said. “We’d like to think that time heals those wounds. I think all these men, including my dad, have forgiven, but they haven’t forgotten.”

“Seventy years,” said Scott, “is a long time.”

Shot down  over Japan
Indeed, 70 years ago, First Lt. Downing, 26, was an experienced bombardier on a B-29. He was part of an 11-man crew on its 20th mission from the Tinian Islands to Japan.

This one was May 25, 1945. The objective was an industrial complex four miles southeast of the Imperial Palace in Tokyo. A Japanese Zero fired on the B-29, setting fire to the right engine.

The crew of 11 tried to bail out. Three could not get out of plane. Downing did, landing 15 miles southeast of Tokyo. Villagers tied him to a tree for two hours, and beat him with sticks, shovels and rakes until the military arrived.

Thus began three months of imprisonment. He was first at the Kempeitai prison in Tokyo, home of the secret police where 19 prisoners were crammed into 8-by-12-foot horse stalls. If they talked to each other, they were beaten.

In fact, one of the former POWs on the trip, Donald Ryan of Florida, was among the 19 in the same stall as Downing. They didn’t remember each other because no communication was allowed.

They were given a rice ball the size of a golf ball three times a day and a cup of water. In July, they went three days without water.

Downing was interrogated by Japanese officers, blindfolded and threatened. He was beaten with a bamboo pole, threatened with decapitation with a sword at his neck, and had an officer repeatedly click a rifle bolt at his head.

Atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Aug. 6 and 9 had B-29 pilots at other camps beheaded. Downing and others were set for execution when it was announced Japan surrendered Aug. 15.

Downing and others were take to Omori prison camp on Tokyo Bay, where conditions were only slightly better. Two weeks later, on Aug. 29, a U.S. minesweeper and a cruiser came into the bay to load up the anxious prisoners.

Returning to the B-29 crash site
On this trip 70 years later, Downing, who became a building contractor in Canyon and Amarillo after the war, visited the sites of the camps and the crash site where three crewmen died. Nothing clicked. So much has changed since 1945.

Downing did meet Hideo Onuki, 83, who as a 13-year-old boy witnessed the crash of the B-29.

“When I saw the crash, I thought, ‘Serves you right,’” Onuki told The Associated Press. “But now I feel that it was good for Downing to survive. I never thought I would actually get to meet him.”

The former POWs were asked questions by a Christian college class, and met for 1½ hours with Caroline Kennedy, the U.S. ambassador to Japan and daughter of the former president. [And met with Japan's Foreign Minister Kishida.]

“She was absolutely great with all the men,” Stu said.

The contingent was feted by the Japanese government at almost every turn with dinners and events. Only once did it turn awkward when an aide to the foreign minister suggested it was wrong for the U.S. to go on firebomb raids and drop the two atomic bombs.

Fiske Hanley, 95, of Fort Worth, one of the five POWs on the trip, took exception and mildly offered a retort.

“In a nicely worded way, he said had we not done that, the Japanese invasion was going to happen, and then 2 to 5 million would have died,” Stu said.

But that was only one uneasy moment in nine days of hospitality that was covered extensively by the Japanese press. Downing even got to experience a heated toilet seat in a Kyoto hotel.

“First time in 96 years,” he said.

And a far cry from his first trip. The return confirmed what he knew — that in war, evil most often lies with government and ideologies, and not with people. And time can change a lot.

“I’m glad I went,” Downing said. “I have a better feeling about the country. They’re more like we are. They think more like we do.”

PROFILES AMERICAN SPECIAL PRISONERS OF JAPAN

click to order

7TH POW JAPAN TRIP, DECEMBER 5-14, 2015

The following five American veterans, members of the U.S. Army Air Corps and U.S. Navy, travel to Japan on a Japanese government-funded program of remembrance and reconciliation. They will visit the sites of their capture, torture, and rescue as well as several Japanese cultural properties.

These men were “special prisoners” who were afforded no rights or even minimal care. One of the trip’s participants, Fiske Hanley, wrote a book, Accused American War Criminal on the horrors he and other flyers endured. Two of the men, Navy aviators Charles Brown and William Connell, were mentioned at length in James Bradley’s Fly Boys. Connell is believed to be the last American to leave Chichijima alive (others were beheaded and cannibalized).

click to order

They will visit the location of the Kempeitai Tokyo Regional Headquarters where the US Army Air Corps aviators were tortured and held in the infamous horse stalls. The site is now the municipal building for the Chiyoda ward of Tokyo. The Kempeitai HQ for the Empire was located at today’s Palace Hotel. They will also visit the man-made island (by American POWs) that was the Omori POW Camp, where they were all held the final days of the war. It was the first POW camp liberated on the mainland. This site is now a motor boat racing venue and called Heiwajima or Peace Island. They also plan to visit the site of Ofuna, the Imperial Navy’s interrogation center in Kamakura where the two Navy aviators were held as well as Pappy Boyington and Louis Zamperini.

The men will include a visit to the Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage and the memorial to the Raids in Yokomamicho Park. The Foreign Ministry will host a reception for them.

---

click to order

CHARLES H. BROWN, 91, resides in Kingwood, West Virginia where he was born and raised. Upon graduating high school in the spring of 1942, he enlisted in the V-5 program (Naval Aviation Cadet) of the U.S. Navy. In the period 1942 to 1945, the Navy produced 61,658 pilots - more than 2.5 times the number of pilots as the Imperial Japanese Navy. After a semester at Potomac State College in Keyser, West Virginia, he traveled to Washington, DC to impress upon the Office of Naval Personnel that he was ready to enlist. He entered active duty February 10, 1943 and took Navy pre-flight training at the University of Georgia at Athens. After advanced training in Kansas and Texas, he was commissioned an Ensign on April 1, 1944. After training to fly a Douglas SBD Dauntless (divebomber) at the Naval Air Station in Deland, Florida, he was sent to the Naval Air Station Glenview, Illinois for carrier training and then to the Naval Air Station Astoria, Oregon to learn to fly a SB2C Curtiss Helldiver. He left San Francisco on January 20, 1945, aboard the USS Randolph CV15 assigned to the VB-12 of Carrier Air Group 12 known as “Crommelin’s Thunderbirds” after their legendary Commander Charles Crommelin. They were engaged in the first carrier strikes against Japan. Barely 26 days at sea and on his first mission, Brown was shot down on February 16, 1945 by anti-aircraft fire while bombing a factory. He made a water landing on Lake Kasumigaura, Japan’s second-largest lake, which is about 35 miles northeast of Tokyo. Villagers from Kamiotsu (today’s Tsuchiura in Ibaraki Prefecture) captured him and his gunner. They paraded the men to authorities with their hands tied behind their backs, blindfolded, and subject to local women hitting them with their geta (wooden shores). At the train station, Brown was briefly positioned for what he thought was to be a beheading. Instead, he was jerked to his feet and put on a train to Tokyo and the Kempeitai’s Regional Headquarters. There he was subject to continual, ruthless interrogation and kept in a filthy horse stall with a Japanese civilian, who was possibly an informer, and a Korean civilian, who taught him how to use chopsticks. Brown was not considered a POW; he was a criminal, a “special prisoner” outside any protections of military custom. After two weeks he was then taken from Tokyo to the notorious Ofuna Naval Interrogation Center in the historic seaside town of Kamakura. After a month of solitary confinement in a 6’ x 8’ cell, he was permitted to mix with other prisoners, but not to speak. At Ofuna, there was continual mental and physical torture on top of starvation and minimal sanitation. The Ofuna interpreter told the prisoners that there was a standing order that if the Japanese homeland was invaded, all prisoners were to be executed. While at Ofuna, he witnessed a “delivery” of young comfort women to the guards, which temporarily displaced the prisoners from their cells for the guards’ “recreation.” Sometime near July 1, 1945, the survivors were transferred to the Omori POW Camp Tokyo #1, an island in Tokyo Bay built by POWs. Finally, the prisoners were permitted to talk to each other and have their wounds treated. However, the special prisoners were kept in a separate barracks surrounded by barbwire and not allowed to associate with the other POWs. By late July, physically and mentally fading, he was confronted by another prisoner, flying ace Major Gregory “Pappy” Boyington who cajoled him to “hang in there.” And he did. On August 15th, the Emperor’s address to the nation telling his people to stop fighting was broadcast throughout the camp. Much to Brown’s surprise the ‘kill all order” was not given and, instead, each special prisoner was given an envelope of Japanese currency for their “time” at Ofuna. Suffering from severe malnutrition, Brown barely remembers the next two weeks. On August 28, 1945, weighing 97 pounds, he was taken aboard the U.S. hospital ship Benevolence and soon flown back to the United States to recuperate from the after effects of beriberi, dysentery, avitaminosis, and beatings. After leaving the Navy in January 1946, he returned home and enrolled in West Virginia University where he received his AB and LLB in 1950. Brown became an attorney and practiced real estate and banking law for 50 years. He did not receive help for his Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) from the Veterans Administration (VA) until 1997, but he credits the VA counseling service with helping rid him of his persistent nightmares. He has been married to Betty for 67 years. They had three children. Some of Mr. Brown’s experiences as a POW are included in James Bradley’s 2004 best-selling history, Fly Boys: A True Story of Courage and Roy W. Bruce’s 1994 Crommelin's Thunderbirds: Air Group 12 Strikes the Heart of Japan. Mr. Brown’s POW memoir and oral history can be found at the Library of Congress’ Veterans History Project.

click to order

WILLIAM L. CONNELL, 91, lives in Edina, Minnesota. Born in Bakersfield, California, he grew up in Seattle, Washington. At 17, after graduating high school, he enlisted August 29, 1942 in the U.S. Navy and was sent to Yakima, Washington to join the Civil Air Patrol (CAP) to learn to fly. The Yakima Composite Squadron is one the few remaining original CAP Charter Squadrons. In January 1943, he began his Naval Aviation Cadet training at the University of Iowa, Iowa City. In April, he was sent to flight school at Naval Air Station Olathe, Gardner Kansas where they trained on the N3N Yellow Peril bi-plane for two months. Next was the Pensacola Naval Air Station to learn to fly a variety modern aircraft. He graduated in December 1943 becoming an Ensign and Naval Aviator. He spent the next three months in Douglas SBD Dauntless (divebomber) training at the Deland Naval Air Station in Florida and then six weeks at the Naval Air Station Glenview, Illinois for carrier training on Lake Michigan. Next was training on the new SB2C Curtiss Helldiver at Naval Air Station Barbers Point, Connell was assigned as a replacement pilot to Air Group 2 aboard the USS Hornet (CV-12), which he joined on June 29, 1944 at the Enewetak Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Enewetak, captured in February 1944, was a major forward base for the U.S. Navy during the rest of the war. After the war, the atoll was used for nuclear testing as part of the Pacific Proving Grounds. Forty-three nuclear tests were fired at Enewetak from 1948 to 1958. Connell’s first and last mission was July 4, 1944. After a predawn takeoff, Connell and his gunner, Ben Wolf, approached the small volcanic island of Chichijima in the Bonins, known today as the Ogasawara Islands. Their squadron was to bomb one of the heavily-garrisoned island's two radio bunkers, but as they approached their objective, they spotted two Japanese freighters entering the harbor. They decided to attack them as targets of opportunity. But before Connell had a chance to drop his bombs, an anti-aircraft shell exploded beside his airplane, tearing off the tail section. Although Connell was able to parachute out safely, his gunner did not. He landed in the waters near Chichijima and was captured. His first day was spent strapped to a tree in an excruciatingly painful position that prevented him from sitting. In the week that followed, he was either tied to the tree or being interrogated. While he was on the island, eight American aviators were captured, beheaded, and partially cannibalized for dinners by the General Staff. Five Japanese officers were eventually hanged for these crimes that were chronicled by Chester G. Hearn in his 2003 Sorties into Hell: The Hidden War on Chichi Jima. Connell has the distinction of being the last American to leave the island alive. He was taken to Japan to the Ofuna Naval Interrogation Center in Kamakura, about 30 miles southwest of Tokyo. He spent nearly ten months there enduring isolation, brutal interrogation, and starvation. In April 1945, he was transferred to the Omori POW Camp Tokyo #1, an island in Tokyo Bay built by POWs. Today, the island is Heiwajima, a motorboat racing venue. Considered a “special prisoner” he and other aviators were kept in a separate barracks away from the other POWs on the island. They were considered criminals, not captives. Those who could work were sent out into the firebombed Tokyo to clear the rubble and salvage building materials. Daily, they were threatened with execution if Japan lost the war. Fellow prisoner, the Marine Corps flying ace Major Gregory “Pappy” Boyington organized Connell and other to fight back if the Japanese tried to enact this plan. In the end, this was not necessary and their Japanese captors disappeared soon after the Emperor’s speech ending hostilities on August 15, 1945. After liberation at the end of August, he was flown back to the United States to recuperate at the Naval Air Station, Sandpoint, Seattle Washington hospital. Despite his ordeals, he remained in the Navy and retired in 1964 as a Lieutenant Commander. He spent the next 23 years as a State Farm Insurance agent. After his second retirement, he worked for the next 11 years in various positions at the Minnesota Valley Country Club in Bloomington, Minnesota. Connell has since turned his attention toward educating children about the history of World War II and mentoring them through golf and tennis. In 2012, he took his second parachute jump, but this time under much more controlled circumstances in Minnesota. He has also returned to Chichijima several times--once with President George H.W. Bush, who was also shot down near the island. Twice married, Connell is the father of four children. He is mentioned prominently in James Bradley’s 2004 best-selling history, Fly Boys: A True Story of Courage. His oral history has been recorded by the POW Oral History Project, based at Concordia University, St Paul as well as by the Library of Congress’ Veterans History Project.

SCOTT M. DOWNING, JR, 96, resides in Amarillo, Texas. He was working for Boeing Aircraft making B-17s in Seattle, Washington when he enlisted in the Army Air Corps in September 1942. He was not called to active duty until February 15, 1943 and he began his basic training at Buckley Field, Denver, Colorado (today’s Buckley AFB). He was then sent to Fort Hays State College in Kansas for Cadet Training and then to Bombardier School at Big Spring, Texas. In June 1944, he was commissioned a Second Lieutenant and sent to Harvard Army Airfield, Nebraska (today’s Harvard State Airport) and the 505th Bombardment Group for B-29 training. In mid-December 1944, he reported to Grand Island Army Airfield, Nebraska (today’s Central Nebraska Regional Airport) to pick up a new B-29 plane and was sent to Tinian to join the 482 BS, 313 Wing, 505 Bombardment Group, 20th Air Force in the Mariana Islands, arriving December 27th. Raids against Japan from Tinian had started November 24, 1944. His crew’s bombing and mining missions began on January 29, 1945. On their 20th mission over Tokyo on May 25/26, 1945, his B-29 was shot down near Musai, about 15 miles northeast of Tokyo in Chiba Prefecture. He bailed out of the burning plane and was captured almost immediately by civilians who turned him over to military personnel. The next day he and three other members of his crew were trucked through bombed-out downtown Tokyo to the Kempeitai Tokyo Regional Headquarters. After initial interrogations and beatings, he was thrown in a cell that was about 8’ x 12’. These were converted horse stalls that often held 19 men per cell including some that were critically burned and injured. For roughly three months, Downing subsisted on a baseball-sized ball of rice each day, and his weight fell from 165 to 120 pounds. These months were marked by a horrible monotony of fear and homesickness, occasionally interrupted by guard-administered beatings and sadistic interrogations. The men were not allowed to talk, wash, shave, or receive medical care. Conditions were so tight that when everyone would lie down to sleep, the only way to turn over was to stand in place, turn, and then lie back down. Throughout the day and night, they listened to fellow POWs–some of whom had been severely burned–scream in pain or insanity and struggle to take one more breath before their breathing stopped altogether. It is estimated that 250 American flyers were brought the Kempeitai Tokyo Regional Headquarters, but only 160 survived. On August 15, 1945, Downing and his fellow prisoners were moved to a barbed wire-surrounded barracks on a five-acre man-made island between Tokyo and Yokohama called Omori POW Camp Tokyo #1. This move was part of an agreement between the United States and Japan in anticipation of the end of the war. It was a tough camp but a relief from the Kempeitai horse stalls. On Omori, the prisoners had more freedom and could talk, bathe and exercise. On August 29, 1945, the over 500 POWs including 155 B-29 flyers on Omori became the first liberated by American forces. After the war he was in and out of Madigan General Hospital (today’s Madigan Army Medical Center) at Fort Lewis, Washington. He remained in the service and was assigned duty in the spring of 1946 at Clinton County Air Base in Ohio. In April 1947, he was ordered to Japan and was sent to the 611th Aircraft Control and Warning Squadron at Shiroi Air Base (today’s Shimofusa Japan Maritime Self Defense Forces Air Base) located northeast of Tokyo. Downing was soon asked to help investigate the atrocities committed by the Tokyo Kempeitai for war crimes prosecution in Yokohama. Working in the Investigation Division of the Legal Section of General Headquarters, Japan, he helped interrogate Japanese defendants and assisted the prosecutor by preparing the witnesses. He also testified concerning conditions and the treatment of the prisoners at the Tokyo regional Kempeitai Headquarters. Discharged from the Air Force while in Japan, he concluded his part of the investigation in early fall of 1948 and returned to the United States and Canyon, Texas. He then entered the construction business with his two brothers. Downing has been married to Bitsy for 64 years and they have one son. He enjoys fishing and watching college sports. His oral history is held by the Veterans History Project of the Library of Congress.

FISKE HANLEY II, 95, lives in Fort Worth, Texas where he grew up. Always fascinated with aviation, he earned an AS in Aero Engineering from North Texas Agricultural College (today’s University of Texas at Arlington) and in 1943 a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Texas Technology College (today’s Texas Tech University). In his junior year, he was accepted into the Army Air Corps Aviation Cadet Program. Immediately after graduation, he was sent to the Boca Raton Army Airfield, Florida for cadet training for engineering, meteorological, and communications. The base was created from appropriated land of Japanese-Americans. In September 1943, he was sent to Yale University for specialized technical training and graduated in February 1944 with a second lieutenant’s commission. With only 20 members of his Yale class, Hanley was sent to B-29 flight engineering school at the Seattle Boeing factory. Graduating in August, he was assigned to the 504th Bombardment Group training as a flight engineer at Fairmont Army Air Field, Nebraska. In January, his air crew commanded by 2nd. Lt. John A Brown made their way to Tinian. They flew 16 missions, seven considered combat, which included the March 10, 1945 bombing of Tokyo. Hanley’s plane was shot down on March 27, 1945 while mining the Strait of Shimonoseki. One of only two crew members who survived the plane’s destruction, he parachuted into a rice paddy near Ueki, southwest of Yawata, near the steel mills of Kokura on Kyushu Island [today the mills have become UNESCO World Industrial Heritage sites]. His first eight days were spent in or near Kokura at a police station and a military facility. He had his wounds treated twice and he believes he was questioned by a high level Combined Fleet Command about his mission to mine Shimonoseki Straits. In early April, Hanley and 12 other B-29 captured crew members were taken north over 600 miles by train to Tokyo. On April 6th, the group arrived in Tokyo. Before reaching the Kempeitai Tokyo Regional Headquarters, the prisoners’ guards took the time to reward themselves by visiting a Comfort Station, or military brothel. The American flyers were taken to filthy, basement 4’11’ x 9’10” dungeons or “pig boxes” [buta bako] and told that they would either die of their wounds in or be executed. They were “special prisoners,” considered criminals who murdered women and children and lower than the vermin that would infest their cells and bodies. Eight men, a mixture of B-29 crewmen and Japanese political prisoners, were crammed into these cells. Except for one light bulb that burned 24 hours a day in the corridor, these cells were continually shrouded in gloom. Eventually he was sent to a cell holding 19 other men in an 8’ x 12’ horse stall in the back of Kempeitai Tokyo Regional headquarters. Many mortally wounded men were thrown into these cells. Hanley still has nightmares of their groans and screams of agony as they slowly succumbed to their injuries. Subject to constant beatings and brutal interrogations, Hanley and the other POWs were quickly fading from starvation, torture, untreated wounds, unsanitary conditions, and misery. One tormentor, the English-speaking Yasuo Kobayashi particularly stands out for his cruelty. He seemed to thrive on the prisoners’ agony and enjoy their suffering. He was directly responsible for the deaths of many prisoners and the continual torment of the rest. Although sentenced postwar to 40 years hard labor, he was released in 1952 and settled into a peaceful and successful life in Hawaii. On August 15th, the surviving POWs were taken to Omori POW Camp Tokyo #1 a prison camp island constructed by American POWs. Still “special prisoners” they were separated from the other POWs, but allowed more freedom, given medical attention, and could talk, bathe and exercise. On August 29, 1945, the over 500 POWs including 155 B-29 flyers on Omori became the first liberated by American forces. Camp Omori also housed Olympian Louis Zamperini, a WWII hero at the center of Unbroken, a film by Angelina Jolie based on the best-selling book by Laura Hillenbrand. Hanley was a “source for Unbroken” and he was invited to the movie’s Hollywood premiere in 2014. After liberation and medical care on the U.S. hospital ship Benevolence, he was flown back to the United States. He was treated at Letterman Army Hospital and then went home to Texas on leave. He was discharged from the Army Air Corps and married to Betty, an American Airlines stewardess, in June 1946. He went to work as an engineer for Consolidated-Vultee Aircraft in Fort Worth, which became Convair, then General Dynamics, and now today’s Lockheed Martin. He worked on developing new bombers and fighters as well as NASA’s Saturn V moon rocket. He retired in 1989 and wrote The History of the 504th Bomb Group in World War II and then his autobiography, Accused American War Criminal: One of Few Survivors of Japanese Kempei Tai Military Police Brutality. Married to Betty for 23 years they had three children.


DONALD E. RYAN, 93, lives in Sebring, Florida. He grew up in Kalamazoo, Michigan and enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps on November 16, 1942. He did his basic training at the Big Spring Army Air Force Bombardier School in Texas. In January 1943, he was sent to the Gulfport Army Air Field in Mississippi for aircraft training on P-39/P-40s and other older planes. He then trained at Boeing’s B-29 flight engineering school in Renton, Washington. In August 1943, he was assigned to the 794-468th Bombardment Group; 58th Wing, 20th Air Force at the Smoky Hill Army Airfield Salina, Kansas with the first group to train on the B-29 Superfortress. In January 1944, the 468th Bombardment Group shipped out to the Kalaikunda Air Force Station in Kharagpur, West Bengal, India. It was one of four B-29 bases established by the U.S. in India. Ryan flew as a tail gunner in the 16 missions they had in India which included flying gasoline and bombs over the “hump” (the Himalayan Mountains) to China; bombing railyards and docks in Bangkok, Singapore, and Sumatra. The crew also participated in the bombing the steel mills at Yawata on Kyushu (today an UNESCO World Industrial Heritage site). In April 1945, they were reassigned to Tinian in the Mariana Islands. On their second mission, May 25-26, 1945 to bomb Tokyo, his plane was attacked and hit by fighter planes and those that could, bailed out. Ryan landed on a farmer’s fence near today’s Misato in Saitama prefecture close to Tokyo. The local Kempeitai official, who identified himself as having attended the University of Michigan, questioned him while “playing” Russian roulette on him. This intimidation was reinforced by taking Ryan to a saw mill and alternatively trying to stuff him into a casket or pushing him toward the buzz saw. He was soon turned over to military authorities in Tokyo and told he was a “special prisoner,” undeserving of care or POW status. He was taken to the Kempeitai Tokyo Regional Headquarters near the Imperial Palace. He was put in an 8’ x 10’ cell that was once a horse stall with 16 other men. Flies and lice soon turned his and his cellmates’ skin into unending open boils and infections. Continual beatings, starvation, darkness, filth, random cruelty by the guards, and dehydration wore on his humanity and morale. He endured the slow deaths of two badly burned fliers who were added to his cell. On August 15th, the horse stalls were emptied and the prisoners were taken to Tokyo Bay to wash in the surf and then to Omori POW Camp Tokyo #1. Still “special prisoners,” the men were held in barracks separate from the other POWs on this man-made island outside Tokyo. It was a tough camp but the prisoners had more freedom and could talk, bathe and exercise. On August 29, 1945, the over 500 POWs including 155 B-29 flyers on Omori became the first liberated by American forces. Ryan was evacuated to the USS Benevolence and soon flown to Hawaii to take a ship back to the United States. He spent at least six months in the Edward Hines, Jr., Veterans Administration Hospital outside Chicago and was discharged from the Army Air Corps in mid-1946. Ryan returned home to Kalamazoo where he worked with his brother in a truck leasing business and for a number of years owned the Otsego Inn. He has five children from his first marriage. He enjoys dancing and married his fourth wife in 2013.

And what of the fate of the torturers

Award-winning newsman Bob Simon died this past National Foundation Day, Japan's holiday to remember its Empire and the establishment of the Imperial family. One of his most inspiring stories for 60 Minutes was on Louis Zamperini. It won an Emmy.

For the segment, Simon went to Japan to track down Mitsuhiro WATANABE the torturer of Zamperini and hundreds of others who passed through the Omori and Naoetsu POW camps where Watanabe was a psychotic guard.

Simon found him. The interview is above. Zamperini had wanted to meet Watanabe and Simon want to film the encounter. Watanabe, an unrepentant former Imperial Army captain and now insurance salesman, refused.

Watanabe had escaped arrest by going into hiding during the American Occupation of Japan. He escaped prosecution when Washington suspended the arrest warrants of suspected war criminals after the San Francisco Peace Treaty went into effect on April 1, 1952.  With this, Watanabe was free to emerge from hiding and become a typical Japanese salaryman--an insurance salesman to be exact.

click to order

Watanabe severely beat and psychologically tortured Zamperini and was reviled among the other POWs, American and Allied. Yet, frankly and sadly, Watanabe was not the exception. Imperial Japan's fascist state had forged beasts from simple peasants and school boys.

Legendary war historian Max Hastings wrote in Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45 about the shocking Japanese treatment of POWs that has horrified and “fascinated” Westerners ever since. He noted that the POW’s “liberators were stunned by the stories they heard: of starvation and rampant disease; of men worked to death in their thousands, tortured or beheaded for small infractions of discipline.” He said that “It seemed incomprehensible that a nation with pretensions to civilisation could have defied every principle of humanity and the supposed rules of war.”

Japanese American POW "unmasked"

click to order

Martin Cherrett in his excellent daily blog, World War II Today, points out that June 1 was the 70th anniversary of the "discovery" by Japanese guards that Staff Sergeant Frank Fujita of the Texas National Guard, their prisoner, was Japanese.

Fujita was a member of the 2D Battalion, 131st Field Artillery, Texas National Guard during World War II. Known as the Lost Battalion, they were captured in March 1942 on Java. Its members were sent to build the infamous Thai-Burma Death Railway. SSgt Fujita was then sent to be a slave laborer for Kawanami Shipyards at Fukuoka #2B near Nagasaki. He was also sent for interrogation to the infamous Ofuna Naval Interrogation Center and then forced to do radio propaganda at Omori where he was liberated.

Because SSgt Fujita was not part of the famous Japanese American 100th Infantry Battalion and the 442nd Regimental Combat Team nor a member of Military Intelligence Service (MIS) during WWII, he was not honored by Congress on November 2, 2011 with a gold medal. There has been no  gold medal for the American POWs of Japan.

An excerpt from his memoir with military historian Stanley L. Falk, Foo, A Japanese-American Prisoner Of The Rising Sun: The Secret Prison Dairy of Frank “Foo” Fujita (1993), of his "unmaking" is below.

On June 1, 1942 almost one year and three months after we were captured in Java, a Japanese guard realized that my name was Japanese, here in Nagasaki, Japan. This guard, like so many people in Japan, could read something printed in English, but they could not understand when it was read back to them.
…
As room chief my name was at the top of the roster and when he saw it, his eyes liked to have popped out and he pointed to my name and said: ‘Fujital Fujita Nippon no namai!’ (Fujita is a Japanese name!’) And then he asked me where Fujita was, and I told him that he had gone to the benjo [toilet]. He said that he would wait and I moved towards the back of the room with my heart in my mouth and shaking like a leaf. I was as close to being scared to death as I will ever come. The guard remained at the front of the room and asked everyone that came into the room, where Fujita was. 

Almost everyone in the room was as keyed up as I was, for they had sweated my being found out, too, and now that the time had come they all stood around with bated breath to see what would happen next. 

Another man came into the room and the guard asked him where Fujita was and he looked around and saw me, and before anyone could caution him, he pointed to me and said ‘There he is!’ 

The guard looked surprised and also a little put out with me for having told him that Fujita had gone to the benjo. Any other time I would have been beaten up on the spot, but this time he was much too excited over his discovery to think of bashing me about.
He called me back up to the front of the room and looked me up and down, sucking his teeth and muttering something incredulously about Fujita being a POW. He tried to carry on a conversation with me, about me, and finally decided that I really could not speak the language. He would feel of my skin and then put his arm next to mine and compare them, and like the guard at the wash rack, he said ‘Somma, Somma! He would turn to the other guys in the room and then point to me and then to himself and tell them that we were somma, somma. 

Finally he could not stand it any longer, that he was the only Japanese to know this so he took off for the guard house. 

I really became frightened then and felt very strongly that my untimely demise could be forthcoming posthaste! Even though I felt like this, I still felt hope way down deep that I would survive the war in one piece. 

In a little while he brought another guard with him to look me over, only to have the lights go out, for it was bedtime and all room lights were turned out at 10:00 PM. 

Well, there was no sleep for me this night and Sgts. Heleman and Lucas were trying to comfort me and convince me that maybe they would not kill me after all. I was in such mental anguish that even the bedbugs, fleas, and mosquitos were not bothering me. 

During the night, each time the guard shift changed, the guards would take turns coming to my room and looking at me, even those who normally patrolled the other side of the camp 

Fujita became an object of curiosity for the Japanese but he survived several interrogations by pretending to be stupid. He upset them by refusing to join the Japanese Army and in the end they let him return to the ranks of the other U.S. POWs.

Louis Zamperini on the Tonight Show

Sadly, NBC took down its links to Mr. Zamperini's appearance on the Tonight Show and blocked others from displaying the now-historic interview. [Update 7/13/14]

However, here see a better, longer piece by CBS Sunday Morning (produced by a high school classmate of mine) May 27, 2012.

 Louis Zamperini, the subject of the best-selling book Unbroken, was interviewed by Jay Leno on the Tonight Show Thursday, June 7, 2012. Zamperini talks about how he was tortured and experimented upon by the Japanese on a Pacific island after he was captured having survived 47 days on a life raft. He was eventually shipped to Japan for further torture and ended up as a slave laborer for Japanese corporations. He survived the infamous Ofuna Naval Interogation Center in Kamakura and was then shipped to two of Japan's most horrific prison camps near Tokyo: Omori where he slaved for Nippon Express and then Naoetsu where he labored for Shin-Etsu Chemical and Nippon Stainless (NSSC). These multi-national companies still exist with their same names.

Unbroken will be translated into 23 languages worldwide. Japanese is not one of the languages as no publisher in Japan has shown an interest in this bestseller.

Unbroken will be released as a movie sometime in 2013 by Universal and directed by Francis Lawrence.

Later: Here Mr. Zamperini is interviewed back stage at the Tonight Show and adds a bit more about his 1936 Olympics roommate, Jesse Owens.

Best Seller Still

Other photos of the Omori rescue and Ofuna rescue HERE 

As reported in USA TODAY, last week Laura Hillenbrand's Unbroken passed the one-million-copy milestone in hardcover sales. Currently there are no plans to issue the book in paperback.

Hillenbrand's story of Louis Zamperini, a World War II bombardier who crashed in the Pacific, was marooned on a raft for 47 days and survived brutal internment in Japanese POW camps, was first published in November 2010.

 Zamperini endured sadistic torture and abuse at the infamous Ofuna Naval Interrogation station (he was water-boarded) in Kamakura and was then sold to Japanese companies to be a slave laborer in Japan's two most horrific prison camps: Omori where he slaved for Nippon Express and then Naoetsu where he labored for Shinetsu Chemical and Nippon Stainless. These companies still exist and have retained their original names.

The book has spent 41 weeks on USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books list. It was the best-selling hardcover nonfiction title of the first half of 2011, according to Bookscan. E-book sales to date: approximately 650,000 copies.

Best Seller: Unbroken

Since the day it was published in November 2010, Laura Hillenbrand's Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption has been a bestseller. This memoir of an American POW of Japan has remained among the top ten on the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon lists.

Californian, Olympian, airman, Louis Zamperini experienced the worst of Imperial Japan's POW camps. He was tortured, experimented upon, interrogated, beaten, whipped, starved, humiliated, and forced to give a radio broadcast. He survived torture at the infamous Ofuna Naval Interogation station in Kamakura and was then shipped to to work in Japan's two most horrific prison camps: Omori where he slaved for Nippon Express and then Naoetsu where he labored for Shinetsu Chemical and Nippon Stainless. These companies still exist.

As Hillenbrand writes: 

Virtually nothing about Japan's use of POWs was in keeping with the Geneva Convention. To be an enlisted prisoner of war under the Japanese was to be a slave. The Japanese government made contracts with private entities to send enlisted POWs to factories, mines, docks, and railways, where men were forced into exceptionally arduous war-production or war-transport labor. The labor, performed under club-wielding foremen, was so dangerous and exhausting that thousands of POWs died on the job. In the extremely rare instances in which the Japanese compensated the POWs for their work, payment amounted to almost nothing, equivalent to a few pennies a week. (p. 234)