Does your DNA match? Find your missing POW

In 1946, nine remains were recovered from Cabanatuan Grave #110, Cabanatuan Cemetery #1 and moved to Manila Cemetery #2.  A year later, they were once again moved to the Manila Mausoleum at Nichols Field for the purpose of analyzing and identifying the remains.   

Of the nine men listed only Pfc Kokitas was identified.  The analysts unsuccessfully attempted to associate these eight remains with the eight unresolved individuals believed to have been buried in Grave 110. 

After a second attempt to identify the remains in 1949, the CIP analysts from HQ, AGRS PHILCOM ZONE recommended that these remains be classified as unidentifiable.  In 1950, the AGRS interred these eight unknowns in the Manila American Cemetery.

Researchers at the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) have collected documents and assessed historical evidence concerning Cabanatuan POW Camp cases for many years.  DPAA is engaged in a long-term project to fully account for the Cabanatuan missing.  This will involve a comprehensive review of all files associated with Cabanatuan, including the collection of genealogical data and DNA reference samples from the prisoners’ next of kin. 

Currently, DPAA must have DNA samples of 60% or Family Reference Samples (FRS) on file for each grave before the U.S. government will consider approving a disinterment for the purpose of identification.  As of 31 October 2016, the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory (AFDIL) has no FRSs on file for Grave 110. 

If you are a next of kin of one of the men listed below and you wish for the DPAA to try to identify their remains, please contact Fred Baldassarre.

Individuals Recorded as Buried in Grave 110, Cabanatuan Cemetery #1
Name	Service Number	Rank	Unit	Branch of Service	Status
SUTPHIN, IRVIN R.	O-890391	2d Lt	31st Infantry	U.S. Army	BNR
Bernardy, Donald L.	00280239	Pfc	4th Marine Regiment	U.S. Marine Corps	BNR
Gunn, John G.	06978029	Cpl	31st Infantry	U.S. Army	BNR
Bailey, Gerald J.	19018331	Cpl	19th Bomb Group	U.S. Army Air Corps	BNR
Ramirez, Juan	38030019	Pvt	515th Coast Artillery	U.S. Army	BNR
Grier, Joe R.	06926136	S Sgt	27th Bomb Group	U.S. Army Air Corps	BNR
Wilson, Woodrow	06832712	S Sgt	24th Pursuit Group	U.S. Army Air Corps	BNR
Hueston ,Joe I.	06573215	Pvt	24th Pursuit Group	U.S. Army Air Corps	BNR
Kokitas, Albert J.	13004748	Pfc	31st Infantry	U.S. Army	Resolved

A POW Merry Christmas

Painting by Gustav Potthoff survivor of Bridge over the River Kwai

Prisoner of war Potthoff, 94, used art to convey life in captivity

The Republic, Columbus, IN, 12/25/16 

Gustav T. Potthoff, a Columbus resident known for his paintings and the brutal conditions he endured as a World War II prisoner of war, has died.

He died at his home Thursday at age 94. Potthoff is survived by his wife, Adele; and their two children. Services are pending at Barkes, Weaver & Glick Funeral Homes.

Potthoff moved to Columbus in 1965 to begin a career with Cummins Engine Co. It was over the ensuing years that local residents learned of the cruelty he suffered, and later the joy and catharsis he experienced in creating artwork.

Gustav Potthoff created this painting of an angel he said was by his side while he was a prisoner 

in World War II, and that follows him everywhere. Potthoff died Thursday at age 94.

He was born in Indonesia March 11, 1922, on the island of Maluku, near New Guinea and Australia, and raised in a Dutch colonial orphanage. Potthoff was a mechanic in a Dutch Indies Army battalion when he was captured by Japanese forces in 1941. Potthoff and about 1,800 other soldiers were sent to Burma to work on the Burma-Thailand railroad project that would later become widely known in the movie “The Bridge on the River Kwai.” The movie was fictional but based on real-life events.

Potthoff was a prisoner for 3½ years. He suffered from cholera, dysentery and pneumonia. He saw fellow prisoners beaten, killed at random, starved and become ill. When he was freed in 1945, only 300 of the original 1,800 prisoners he was with had survived.

After his release, Potthoff went to Holland, but in 1962 he immigrated to the United States — specifically Indianapolis. Three years later he arrived in Columbus with the help of First Christian Church as his sponsor.

In 1986, Potthoff and his wife became American citizens.

It was after Gus Potthoff retired from Cummins in 1987 that he used painting to depict memories of his time as a prisoner of war, including the forced labor of constructing the railroad. They were a way to tell what happened during his imprisonment and remember those who didn’t survive. His paintings often included images of elephants, spirits of the dead, the lush countryside, railroads, bridges and angels.

“The angels are who was looking out for me. They’re still looking out for me,” Potthoff told The Republic in 2012.

He painted many works, but never kept count of how many. Potthoff never sold his works; he always gave them away.

Potthoff’s works were displayed throughout the community, such as at IUPUC, YES Cinema, the Columbus Learning Center, the Bartholomew County Public Library and the Atterbury-Bakalar Air Museum.

He was a familiar figure at the Atterbury-Bakalar Air Museum at Columbus Municipal Airport, where he was a member of the 95ers, a group of volunteers engaged in veterans support activities.

Potthoff’s contributions to the community and his story of survival earned the admiration of local residents, who made sure he received the honor he deserved and help when needed.

When climbing the steps to his front porch had become a difficult labor, two fellow members in the 95ers — Wendell Ross and Pete Jenkins — built a ramp up those steps for their friend.

“We didn’t look on it as a chore,” Ross, former manager of Columbus Municipal Airport and a U.S. Navy veteran, told The Republic in 2012. “Gus has gone through so much in his life and served as an inspiration to anyone who ever met him. It was really a labor of love.”

Sept. 16, 2016, marked the third consecutive year that Bartholomew County honored local residents such as Potthoff, who were prisoners of war or listed as missing in action. They were honored at a local observance of national POW-MIA Recognition Day, which is the third Friday of every September.

Organizer Robert Miller said it’s important to honor, remember and never forget these veterans.

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.

Buy the 75th Anniversary mug commenorating the Defense of the Philippines

Please support our research and remembrance of the American POW experience with Imperial Japan by purchasing our commemorate mug of this year's 75th Anniversary of Defense of the Philippines.

For tax-deductible donations of $35 or more we will send you this statement mug. CLICK HERE TO ORDER. Please remember to include your address.Thank you

Another date that will live in infamy

The Palawan Massacre

December 14, 1944

150 American POWs were forced in trenches, doused with gasoline, set afire, and machine gunned to death. Eleven men escaped and survived.

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.

War Carnage in the Philippines

Everyone remembers the attack on Pearl Harbor. What we endured in the Far East was no less tragic, but almost unforgivable.

By LESTER TENNEY
Wall Street Journal Online, December 7, 2016

Dec. 8 was my Pearl Harbor. Barely nine hours after the Japanese destroyed most of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, they began their invasion of the Philippines. My tank battalion, stationed at Fort Stotsenburg in the Philippines, was just as surprised and no more prepared for war than the crews of the battleships sunk earlier that day.

The catastrophe of Pearl Harbor still overshadows the embarrassing defeat inflicted on American forces in the Philippines. Whereas Japan attacked Hawaii for 90 minutes and never returned, the battles in the defense of the Philippines continued for five months, followed by widespread guerrilla warfare and the nightmarish internment of combatants and civilians. This culminated in a ferocious American campaign starting in October 1944 to retake the Islands.

By midmorning on Dec. 8, Imperial Army bombers attacked two U.S. bases on Luzon, Tuguegarao Field and the Baguio headquarters of the U.S. Army Forces in the Far East. Shortly after noon, Japan’s Imperial Navy bombers and fighters attacked Clark Field and Iba Field. My 192nd Tank Battalion was waiting for them at Clark Field.

We sat in our tanks surrounding the airfield and prepared to defend it from a ground attack, which never came. The antiaircraft guns of the 200th Coast Artillery fired too low to be effective. Their 1932 vintage ammunition and corroded fuses made the guns unreliable. Maybe one of every six shells actually exploded.

We watched as the first flights of Japanese bombers blew apart Clark’s hangars, barracks and warehouses. Our planes were on the field, fueled, ammunition loaded, and lined up wingtip-to-wingtip as the pilots and crew had lunch. These were torn apart not just by the waves of bombers but also by low-flying Mitsubishi Zeros. More than 100 planes were lost, and the human casualties amounted to 55 killed and more than 100 wounded.

When combined with the other losses on that one day of war, the U.S. Far East Air Force was eliminated as an effective fighting force. And with it disappeared the ability to conduct a realistic defense of the Philippines.

I was literally fresh off the boat. My tank battalion had left San Francisco on Oct. 27 aboard the USAT Hugh L. Scott. We arrived in Manila on Nov. 20—Thanksgiving Day. I remember my feast of hot dogs, while the officers had turkey at their club.

The 192nd battalion had boarded the troopship with little to no training. We were 588 men, nearly all activated National Guard, from Maywood, Ill., Fort Knox, Ky., Clinton, Ohio, and Janesville, Wis. For a few weeks in September and October, we practiced tank warfare with broomsticks for guns, markers for heavy tanks and a handful of 1930s vintage tanks.

Never once did we practice on the 108 light tanks that were sent with us to the Philippines. Thus during Japan’s raid on Clark Field, our cannons were silent. Amid the chaos, we desperately searched for the shells. We found them as the last Japanese bomb fell that day: They were under the radio operator’s seat, my seat.

Throughout Asia on Dec. 8, American and Allied soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines all found themselves at the mercy of Imperial Japan. It is forgotten that the Japanese also descended on Guam, Wake Island, Malaya, Singapore and Hong Kong. At the time, few believed that the Japanese would be able to strike so far from home and in so many places.

That day in China, nearly 300 U.S. Marines, sailors, and diplomats became the first American prisoners of war. In the following weeks and months, American soldiers and civilians throughout Japan’s newly occupied territories became POWs. They all endured more than three years of confinement in squalid camps or slave labor at such places as the Thai-Burma death railroad.

For me, my battalion soon met advancing Japanese tanks and infantry as we covered the withdrawal of American and Filipino forces into the Bataan Peninsula. We held on for four months fighting with dwindling food, medicine and materiel. Promised reinforcements from the U.S. never came. Fearing a bloodbath, our commanders surrendered us on April 9, 1942.

What followed was maybe worse: the Bataan Death March. Then prison camps with little food, minimal shelter, rampant disease, and sociopathic guards; “hell ships” to Japan where men suffocated or lost their mind in the noxious dark; and slave labor at POW camps in Japan, Formosa, Korea, and China.

Every day I am asked if I have forgiven the Japanese for their brutal treatment of me as a prisoner. I lost more friends to abuse and starvation as POWs than from combat. More prisoners died on “hell ships” than Marines in the Pacific.

I have forgiven, as at 96 I do not want to live with all the hate. But it is just as hard to forgive the short-sightedness of the commanders who put us in harm’s way on Dec. 7 and 8.

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