Guam's Liberation Day

July 21 is Guam's liberation day.

Marine Landing first hour

In 1944, after hours of Naval bombardment, American Marines and Infantry soldiers stormed the beaches. Marine Major General Roy S. Geiger, commanding general of III Amphibious Corps urged them forward saying "You have been honored. The eyes of the nation watch you as you go into battle to liberate this former American bastion from the enemy. The honor which has been bestowed on you is a signal one. May the glorious traditions of the Marine Corps' esprit de corps spur you to victory. You have been honored."

The Battle for Guam, lasting 21 days, was as nasty and brutal as any had been in the Pacific. The Imperial Japanese forces put up a tenacious resistance exacting heavy casualties. Japanese stragglers fought for months after the defeat and the last one was not found until 1972.

Soon, from airfields on Guam, as well as those on Tinian, B-29s were bombing the Japanese home islands. Hard fighting was yet to be experienced by Marine divisions on Peleliu, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. But whether they knew it or not, the end of the war was less than a year away.

The War in the Pacific National Historical Park is a memorial to the citizens and liberators of Guam. It was established in 1978 to commemorate the bravery and sacrifice of those participating in the campaigns of the Pacific Theater of World War II and to conserve and interpret outstanding natural, scenic, and historic values and objects of the island of Guam. The National Park Service's website on Guam is an excellent historical resource including first person accounts and photos.

Part of Japan's terrible cost on Guam were 10,971 battlefield casualties, and more than 8,500 Japanese were killed or captured on Guam between August 1944 and the end of war in August 1945. In the 21 days of the Guam campaign ending 10 August, American Marine units of the III Amphibious Corps reported 1,190 men killed in action, 377 dead of wounds, and 5,308 wounded. The 77th Division's casualties were 177 soldiers killed and 662 wounded.

According to Captured: The Forgotten Men of Guam, an account of the POWs from Guam, there were 414 civilian and military, men and women POWs (five Navy nurses and a civilian wife and infant). Somehow, despite desperate conditions and dismal leadership only three percent perished. They were all taken to Japan aboard the Argentina Maru in January 1942 and first held at the Zentsuji POW Camp on Shikoku. There they did agricultural and stevedore labor. Some reportedly were used for human experimentation.

Today, of the more than 22,000 people who lived in Guam through World War II, less than 1,000 are still alive to share their memories. One constant, is the respect the people of Guam hold for their liberators, the US Marine Corps. The above video is from this past weekend's memorial ceremony.

Jungle Journal

A Jungle Journal page

Jungle Journal: Prisoners of the Japanese in Java 1942-1945 is a true account of the alternate horror and banality of daily life, and the humor that helped British POWs of Japan on Java survive the beatings, deprivation, and death of comrades.

Told through the diary and papers of Lt Ronald Williams, an officer in the 77th Heavy Anti Aircraft Royal Artillery and others, Jungle Journal includes many cartoons and poems produced by the prisoners, as well as extracts from the original Jungle Journal, a newspaper created in the first months of captivity by the men under the noses of their guards.

Williams was the "editor" of this potentially fatal "publication" produced at the Tanjong Priok POW Camp just north of Batavia (Jakarta). Over 6,000 POWs of all nationalities were kept there. Americans were survivors from the USS Houston and the Texas Lost Battalion.

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At the end of the war Williams kept as many of the newspapers as he could and stored the collection in a trunk in the attic of his home in Powys, Mid Wales.

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The first issue carried the message:

If this production can make one gunner forget for five minutes the disappointments and discomforts of his present position, then our editorial efforts will not be in vain.

The book was compiled and edited by Williams' son, Frank, and published in June. In an interview with The Daily Mail, Frank Williams observed "You can see hatred all the way through. They detested their captors but the men kept a level of humanity which I think is incredible really."

The Imperial War Museum has a good collection of artifacts, diaries, and oral histories from Commonwealth POWs held on Java. The BBC's "People's War" features a number of oral histories from POWs on Java. See Tommy Scott who was in the same regiment as Lt. Williams.

Beheaded on New Guinea, Honored in Rhode Island

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May 27th, which happens to be Memorial Day in both United States and Japan this year (2013), was the 69th anniversary (1944) of the downing of Army Air Corps 2nd Lt. Robert E. Thorpe's P-47D Thunderbolt by Japanese ground fire near Kairiru Island, New Guinea.

Lt. Thorpe, 20, after ditching his damaged plane, swam ashore to Kairiru. There, he had the misfortune to become a POW to some of Imperial Japan's more sadistic Naval officers.

According to a Yokohama War Crimes Trial summary record (Case 329), Thorpe was first beaten and interrogated by Lt. Commander Kaoru Okuma and and Lt. Isamu Amenomoro. When Thorpe continued to refuse to supply any information other than name, rank and serial number, Okuma invited a group of soldiers to join in on the beating.


Whether Thorpe cooperated or not, the Commander of the 27th Japanese Special Naval Base Force Rear Admiral Shiro Sato had already ordered his execution. He explained to his Chief of Staff that on the Mainland all captured American flyers were executed and that "under the present circumstances...the execution of the prisoner of war cannot be helped."

Lt. Yutaka Odazawa, who had been selected to execute the prisoner, warned his fellow officers who wished to use Thorpe as target practice to shoot the prisoner below the waist otherwise it would difficult to behead him. After a number of gunshot wounds, Thorpe dropped to his knees and was held in this position at the edge of freshly dug grave. The trial records note:

Odazawa said to the flyer, "I am going to behead you under orders";  "I am golng to kill you"; "I Odazawa will now proceed to execute you"; "You wilI first go to Paradise, and I will follow you later on"; "Due to the war, it cannot be helped; I will dispose of you." He then poured water on the prisoners neck and on his samurai sword. With one blow of the sword, he struck the prisoner in the back of the neck. The head was not completely severed, but was hanglng by a small bit of flesh. After the blow the prisoner fell into the grave.

In the trial testimony, it was said that a Medical Petty Officer Waichi Ogawa climbed into the grave and cut out an organ from the deceased flyer. It does not say what was removed, but it is likely to have been the liver. As documented in James Bradley's, Flyboys: A True Story of Courage (2003), it was not unusual for Japanese commanding officers to consume the liver of their enemies.

Rear Admiral Shiro Sato killed himself and his entire family at his Yokosuka home in 1946. Petty Officer Waichi Ogawa was Sugamo Prison's first suicide (August 1947) during the Yokohama Class B and C War Crimes Trials. Lt. Commander Kaoru Okuma, was convicted in 1948 for his war crimes and hanged in 1949. Oddly, according to court records, his own father concurred with the death sentence.

Remembered in Rhode Island
On May 14th, Rhode Island State Representative Peter F. Martin (D-Dist. 75, Newport) introduced a Resolution on the House floor – unanimously supported by the Chamber – honoring Rhode Island native Lt. Robert E. Thorpe. “Lt. Thorpe is a hero in every sense of the word,” said Representative Martin. “He probably could have escaped some of the brutality inflicted upon him if he had been willing to cooperate with his captors. Instead, he went to his death bravely and defiantly.”

State House Resolution H 6114 (2013) "requests the Governor to honor 2nd Lt. Robert E. Thorpe posthumously with the Rhode Island star and the Rhode Island cross for his extraordinary heroism in the service of our nation during WWII; and be it further RESOLVED, That this House hereby urges the Graves Record Administration to re-investigate and bring the remains of 2nd Lt. Robert E. Thorpe home."

2nd Lt. Robert E. Thorpe's unmarked grave was never found and a memorial had never been held. Yet, his family and dedicated others have in the past decade stepped up efforts to locate him. During August 2009, the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) did excavate a grave site thought to be Thorpe's, but found nothing.

On May 17th, the Rhode Island State House finally honored Lt. Thorpe at a special ceremony [a video worth watching]. Present were Lt. Thorpe’s brother Gill and members of his family as well as Capt. Lewis Lockhart, a WWII fighter pilot who was Lt. Thorpe’s friend. Political leaders present included Governor Lincoln Chaffee and Cranston Mayor Allan Fung, who is the first Asian-American mayor in Rhode Island. Mayor Fung declared May 17th Robert E. Thorpe, Jr. Day in Cranston.

Video of the Ceremony

Unforgotten
A book in the works, Broken Trust by Ken Dooley [to be published August 2015 as Relentless Pursuit], documents Thorpe's life, death, and the quest to bring him home. One journalist who previewed the book said it suggests the question "Were a good many guilty people in Germany and Japan spared the justice they deserved?" He compares the draft with the bestseller Unbroken and observes that they demonstrate "how that spirit of reconciliation has been disturbed in the last decade, as several writers have gone back and combed official records and trial transcripts that paint a Japanese culture far removed from serene gardens, arranged flowers and delicate poetry pondered in the moonlight."

Dooley said at the memorial ‘‘There once lived a man named Robert E. Thorpe, who stood on a lonely beach and who, in the words of one of his tormentors, died magnificently.’’

These memorials, resolutions, books, articles, and videos show that Imperial Japan's victims are not forgotten. A new generation still searches for closure. The Japanese are wrong to believe we will forget.

Death March remembered

At the Cannes Film Festival this year, a film on the infamous 1942 Bataan Death March was featured among "un certain regard" selections. As you can see from the clip above, the Filipino director, Adolfo Borinaga Alix Jr., took a very stylistic, emotive approach to the war crime.

He was not concerned with historic details such as the style of the helmets or cleanliness of the uniforms. He wanted the viewer to feel the brutality, to sense the hopelessness, to become abandoned of all senses. The film is considered "experimental."

Unfortunately, Alix overplayed his objective and the film was not well-received. The Variety reviewer wrote that the film, Death March, was a

gruelingly abstract and attenuated war meditation. Deploying a curious mix of artificial scenery, extended slow-motion and black-and-white cinematography, the director seeks to suspend viewers in the surreal, barbaric experience of the Bataan Death March, which claimed the lives of thousands of POWs being forcibly transferred by the Japanese army in 1942. That it’s monotonous and excruciating by design isn’t enough to recommend this drawn-out tribute/art piece, whose walkout-heavy Cannes premiere doesn’t bode well for its prospects beyond festivals.

In contrast, filmaker Jan Thompson's Tragedy of Bataan, tries to maintain historical accuracy and stays close to traditional documentary filmmaking.

The Tragedy of Bataan features first-person accounts by over 20 survivors of the conflict, archival photos, and never-before-seen Japanese propaganda film footage. It also includes excerpts from the unpublished diary of Captain Albert Brown of Pinckneyville, Illinois, who describes the five months leading up to the surrender of U.S. troops and Filipino defenders to the Imperial Japanese Army. Brown, who is featured in the television program, was 101 years old at the time of the interview and passed away at age 105 in August 2011. He had been the oldest survivor of the Bataan Death March.

These are two different films, albeit with an important history to recall. Neither, however, transcends to art. They are not graphically arresting, unsettling records of the horror. Whereas the story they tell is memorable, the storytelling is not. They are not Night and Fog, The Sorrow and The Pity, Schindler's List or Sophie's Choice, the title of which has become an literary expression for an unbearable choice.

But these films about the March are important steps toward encouraging the production of a seminal film on the POW experience. And most important, they are proof that the history will not expire with the death of the last survivor. The story is moving into the realm of the artist. The arts embed history into culture and are thus the best way to ensure permanence. In the end, Japan's deniers have more to fear from art than they do from history.

Japanese American POW "unmasked"

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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.

Battle of Midway, June 1942

Midway Atoll

June 4-7 is the 71st anniversary of the Battle of Midway. It is was a dramatic victory for the United States following a series of humiliating defeats in the early months of the Pacific War. The seminal naval battle showed Japan that the Americans were not push-overs.

Victory at Midway followed the Battle of the Coral Sea (May 7-8, 1942) where the U.S. Navy had established an operational advantage over Japan. The U.S. showed it could get forces quickly out to the Pacific and could weaken Imperial Japan's Pacific offense. As you can imagine, the former achievement would haunt the American POWs of Japan abandoned on The Philippines.

After the Battle of Midway, Tokyo understood that the war was to be long and difficult. The U.S. military had not been crippled by the bombing of Pearl Harbor or by the fall of the Philippines. The Americans proved tenacious and lucky.

Japan thought it could eliminate the U.S. Pacific Fleet and secure an important base mid-way in the Pacific. They believed that victory would lead to a negotiated peace with the U.S. and a quick end to the war. They were wrong.

If you are interested in learning more about the Battle of Midway and its significance, there is a new anthology published this month of memoirs, articles, excerpts from other books, and relevant government documents to help readers understand what happened and explain why the battle was so significant to the naval service. The Battle of Midway: The Naval Institute Guide to the U.S. Navy’s Greatest Victory (June 2013) focuses on events leading up to the battle and the battle itself, with a separate section examining how others have interpreted the battle's engagements.

The author is Thomas C. Hone, a former senior executive in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and a former member of the faculty of the Naval War College with a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin.

Two of the most respected and read books on the Battle of Midway are Gordon W. Prange's Miracle at Midway (1982) and Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully's Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway (2005) that uses recently translated Japanese sources.

Click on the books to order or learn more.

Auction of POW art

Working Party with typed label to verso inscribed Working Party. Bullock cart loaded with rocks and one Japanese (nicknamed Angel Face) had to be pulled three miles by five sick POWs over rocky muddy ground, slight crease marks, small tears, small holes, cellotape residue to one side

Trail of Death bearing typed label to verso inscribed Trail of Death. "Those who went before...", crease marks and associated loss, some small tears.

As reported by the Cambridge News, on Tuesday, May 21, 2012, the British auction house Rowleys will put up for sale four drawings by LEO RAWLINGS (1918-1984) a member of the 2nd Battalion Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders in Malaya tasked with defending Singapore.

Rawlings was taken prisoner by the Japanese at the fall of Signapore in 1942 and he eventually ended up working, along with many others thousands of POWS, on the construction of the notorious Thai-Burma Death Railway. He secretly recorded the experience in a series of drawings and ink washes.