Congress Is Missing in Action for the POWs/MIAs

On this National POW/MIA Recognition Day, I am at a loss as to why H. Res. 333 honoring POWs from World War II languishes in the House of Representatives. The Resolution, introduced by Representative Mike Honda (D-CA), thanks the Government of Japan for offering last year an apology to the American POWs of Japan and encourages the Japanese companies that used them as slave labor to follow the example of their government. Most important, it acknowledges the sacrifices of these veterans of whom nearly 40 percent died in merciless captivity.

My story is not much different than many Americans captured by Japan. I was a member of the Army Air Corps stationed on the Philippines when the Japanese invaded in December 1941. I was surrendered by my commanding officers on April 9, 1942 and survived the infamous 65-mile Bataan Death March in the tropical sun with little water and no food. I saw my friends beheaded, bayoneted and beaten to death.

The violence did not end at the POW camps on the Philippines where I helped bury hundreds of fellow POWs who died of disease, abuse, and malnutrition. In 1944, I was shipped to Japan in a Hell Ship, the Nissyo Maru, owned and operated by Mitsui. Nearly 1,600 POWs were herded into the freighter's dark hold and given little food or water. After 17 hellish days with no sanitation or fresh air, we arrived in Moji, Japan.

We were then transported by train to the village of Narumi on the main island of Honshu. The military had sold 200 Americans as property to Nippon Sharyo to labor at its locomotive factory to maintain war production. Both the guards and company employees routinely and capriciously beat us. We subsisted on little food, clothing and medical care. We were never given Red Cross boxes or mail.

Nippon Sharyo profited from our labor. The company, now owned by the Shinkansen operator JR Central, remains one of Japan's principal rail car makers and has robust sales in the United States. It is also a central player in Japan's bid for American high-speed rail contracts.

At Nippon Sharyo, I remember watching a starving Staff Sergeant, Sam Moody, brought to the camp yard after stealing a cup of rice. He was beaten and left to stand at attention in the summer sun with six other POWs. The slightest movement or twitch led to a harsh blow from the passing guards. He stood there for a remarkable 53 hours until he was tossed back into the barracks. Rep. John Mica (R-FL), chair of the House Transportation Committee reprinted Moody's POW memoir to distribute to all visiting veterans.

The abuse, violence, and murders in Nippon Sharyo's Narumi POW camp and factory led to one of the highest number of convicted Japanese war criminals: 22.

But this doesn't make up for the fact that both the Japanese government and its wealthiest companies colluded to enslave tens of thousands of American and Allied POWs, in clear violation of the Geneva Convention. Companies like Mitsui, Mitsubishi, Sumitomo, Kawasaki and Hitachi requested and purchased us from Japan's War Ministry. Often these corporations were more abusive than Imperial Japan's military.

Last September the Japanese government officially apologized to the American POWs and, in March, to the Australian POWs. The government established a provisional visitation program to Japan for U.S. veterans and our descendants -- 15 years after Tokyo had established a similar program for Allied POWs. Although my health prevented me from participating, it was profoundly meaningful for me to know that my fellow POWs who participated in the inaugural visit were treated with kindness and respect. The experience of being a POW and slave laborer for Japan stripped me of my dignity and my youth. It astounds me that Nippon Sharyo and other Japanese corporations neither acknowledge nor apologize for willfully enslaving American forces. But it bothers me more, that members of Congress, many who exhibit POW/MIA flags outside their Capitol Hill offices, hesitate at becoming co-sponsors of H.Res.333.

It is time for Japan's companies to follow their government's lead, and apologize to the POWs and establish a program of remembrance. Our blood and despair helped sustain these companies. I do not want compensation. I simply ask for a genuine apology and that my presence be remembered. But first, Congress must stand by our side.

For more information on HR 333, see this blog on the American POWs of Japan.

 

Comments

[Talab]

07:27 AM on 09/19/2011

Congress is missing in action on Healthcare , jobs, infrastructure, the economy , regulating our financial industry , regulating banks , criminalizing financial fraud , our environment, and foreign affairs but this is what you call them out on 66 years after the fact ? Okkkkkkkkk

[waldopepper]

11:01 PM on 09/17/2011

I sympathize with your hellish experience, but to seek, or indeed to compel such apologies is an endless and I think a fruitless task.

After the war was over countless nations kept Axis prisoners for years afterward and used them for their labor. The British even compelled captive Japanese to fight under arms for them, trying to put down a rebellion. The US used 80000 such Japanese prisoners in the Philippines in 1946. See page 257 of this document http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA438000&Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf

Violations of the Geneva conventions are commonplace. Even by the allies. Are such violations on par with what the Axis forces did? Personally, I do not think so and wonder how any could think that they were.

I think it a fine idea to get Congress to pass a resolution recognizing the sacrifices of POW's, and would shocked to learn that they had not done so already. But to try and externalize the effort to other defeated nations is both hypocritical and counter productive. I also do not think that the pursuit of such forced apologies worthy of the victors. Losing, for the Axis powers, has been sufficiently excoriating.

[Anti Warrior]

10:13 PM on 09/17/2011

Are you going to apologize to them for invading and bombing them?

Understand that every american pow in japan got captured in japan.
Japan never came over here during the entire war.
Yes Pearl harbor and the Phillipenes were close...But that wasn't America. You had no right to have your military there either

If anyone deseves an apology from Japan it would be China
As far as we are concerned we are the ones that owe Japan an apology

[waldopepper]

10:42 PM on 09/17/2011

"Understand that every american pow in japan got captured in japan."

This 'fact' is not even remotely true. Do some reading, please.

[Anti Warrior]

12:13 PM on 09/18/2011

Show me a single US pow captured by Japan inside the United States

You need to do some reading

[Doctor Nurse]

05:18 PM on 09/18/2011

We stayed in Japan for 7 years following the bombings and rebuilt their country; that constitutes reparations enough.

My father was stationed in the Phillippines as an aerographer (weather forecaster). Are you saying this was an aggressive act?

[ljmck]

08:46 PM on 09/17/2011

Thank you, Mr. Levenberg, for your service in those crucial years. We will never forget.

[Doctor Nurse]

06:05 PM on 09/17/2011

Thank you, Mr. Levenberg for helping Americans remember. My father, Zemo C. Tarnowski, was captured in the fall of Corregidor in May, 1942, having missed the Death March when the Navy was evacuated to Corregidor in early 1942. He and the other prisoners were packed into searing hot rail cars like cargo, and moved to Cabanatuan, Phillipines, before transport to Japan by hell ship. He said the men on the outside, against the rail car sides, were badly burned from the heat. Those who died, in the rail cars and hell ships, did not fall because they were packed so tightly together. He "stood" alongside dead men, whose bodies could not rest until they were unpacked at their destination. My father spent 3 1/2 years brutally beaten, worse than most because he was the camp commander, at (camp) Umeda Bunsho, near present-day Osaka, Japan. I don't know what company they were enslaved to; all I know is they loaded and unloaded rail cars, stealing food and bribing guards to survive. The capricious beatings and atrocities you speak of are all reflective of my father's experience. God bless you, my dear father, and all the others who suffered.

[jhNY]

01:27 PM on 09/17/2011

"I simply ask for a genuine apology and that my presence be remembered." And I hope you get what you have asked for. Sincerely.

[Trevor Lahey]

10:48 AM on 09/17/2011

These tragic events are definitely underreported. Thank you for your service sir.

[theracoon]

08:25 AM on 09/17/2011

And we nuked two of their cities. We can probably call it even?