[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 14]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page 19588]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




               VETERANS DAY AND AN AMERICAN POW OF JAPAN

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                          HON. DARRELL E. ISSA

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                        Monday, December 7, 2015

  Mr. ISSA. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the veterans of my 
district. In particular, I want to call attention to my constituent 
from Carlsbad, California, Dr. Lester Tenney, 95, a proud member of the 
192nd Tank Battalion of the U.S. Army that fought in the defense of 
Bataan, the Philippines against Imperial Japan in the first battles of 
World War II.
  Surrendered by his commanders on April 9, 1942, he survived the 
infamous 65-mile Bataan Death March, a Hellship to Japan, and nearly 
three years of brutal, slave labor in a Mitsui coal in southern Japan 
that is today an UNESCO World Industrial Heritage site.
  On this 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, it is important 
to call attention to Dr. Tenney's most important achievement. This has 
been to forgive his capturers and to forge meaningful friendships with 
Japanese citizens.
  In 2008, Dr. Tenney sat down with Japan's ambassador to the United 
States Ichiro Fujisaki with two simple requests: (1) an official 
apology to the Allied POWs for the prohibited abuse and slave labor 
they experienced in the care of Imperial Japan; and (2) a visitation 
program to Japan to initiate healing and reconciliation. In 2009, the 
apology was delivered and in 2010 the annual trips began.
  The result of efforts and experiences by men like Dr. Tenney is that 
for 70 years Japan has enjoyed a prosperous peace and the United States 
and Japan have become unshakeable allies. Dr. Tenney reflects upon this 
and his POW experiences in his occasional articles for The Wall Street 
Journal.
  For this year's anniversary of surrender on the USS Missouri, Dr. 
Tenney wrote what that time meant to him and the other POWs who had 
been liberated. He rightly points out that the war and the peace is 
composed of the deeds and sacrifices of many: foot soldier to general; 
sailor to fisherman; mother to widow. None should be forgotten.
  With profound respect, I submit Dr. Tenney's essay in which he 
eloquently reminds us to honor our veterans and implores us to pass on 
and teach future generations of the legacy of World War II in the 
Pacific.

             [From the Wall Street Journal, Sept. 1, 2015]

                           Japan's War Legacy


 The postwar generation may now be the majority in Japan, but they too 
                    must know the atrocities of war

                           (By Lester Tenney)

       Imperial Japan became history on Sept. 2, 1945. Gen. 
     Douglas MacArthur accepted Japan's unconditional surrender on 
     the deck of the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, ending World War 
     II. For me, nearly 600 miles south in a prisoner of war camp 
     outside Nagasaki, unaware of these historic events, I simply 
     remember the pure joy of liberation.
       What was V-J Day like for POWs? For those of us in Fukuoka 
     No. 17-B POW Camp, the war ended on Aug. 15, when our Mitsui 
     company overseers, without explanation, stopped sending us 
     down into their coal mine. We were returned to camp for an 
     unusual midday meal of limitless rice and recognizable 
     vegetables. We received our first full Red Cross boxes. And 
     the camp guards said ``hello'' in English instead of striking 
     us with their rifle butts for not bowing.
       After lunch, the camp commander, flanked by trucks mounted 
     with machine guns, gathered us on the camp's parade ground. 
     He curtly announced, ``America and Japan now friends. War is 
     over.''
       There is no accurate way to describe how it feels to be a 
     slave one moment--starved and abused, forced to work long 
     hours in a treacherous mine, beaten daily for not working 
     fast enough or not bowing low enough--and a free man the 
     next.
       After more than two years underground in the dark, narrow 
     seams of a coal mine, it was glorious to be in the sun. 
     American planes soon appeared overhead and with them came 
     parachutes carrying 55-gallon drums of food, clothing, 
     medicines and magazines. One parachute failed to open, its 
     cargo of fruit salad spilling out onto the camp yard. We 
     happily and immediately dined on the scattered remains.
       Baron Mitsui, a 1915 Dartmouth graduate who owned our coal 
     mine and many others, hosted a series of dinners for senior 
     Allied commanding officers of our POW camp. The baron had 
     often visited his captive village and was aware of the grim 
     conditions. Over the meals, he reportedly asked the officers 
     for their tolerance and thanked them for their efforts. 
     Photos from the dinner series show a wary indulgence in the 
     eyes of the American, Australian, British and Dutch guests.
       Fast forward to last month, when Prime Minister Shinzo Abe 
     used the same word--tolerance--in his statement on the 70th 
     anniversary of the war's end. ``How much emotional struggle 
     must have existed and what great efforts must have been 
     necessary . . . for the former POWs who experienced 
     unbearable sufferings caused by the Japanese military in 
     order for them to be so tolerant nevertheless?'' Mr. Abe 
     marveled.
       While I welcome any step, however modest, the Japanese make 
     in addressing war crimes committed against POWs, this word 
     stops me short. It makes a war crime a matter of 
     inconvenience. I can tolerate someone cutting me off in 
     traffic. But being a POW was not a matter of tolerance. It 
     was a matter of life or death--mostly death.
       The denial of water and food on the Bataan Death March 
     didn't simply inconvenience us; it killed thousands of 
     soldiers. My fellow prisoners and I didn't tolerate nor have 
     we forgotten the beatings and torture, the starvation and 
     broken bones, or the filth and stench of dying men. What 
     tolerance did I have watching my buddy tortured so viciously 
     that he had to have both legs amputated?
       And what of today? Our wait for Japan's apology, offered 
     officially in February 2009, wasn't tolerance. It was 
     patience. Patience for justice.
       Still, Mr. Abe's awkward statement on Aug. 15 suggests that 
     our patience may not be in vain. His mention of POWs is the 
     only reference in the statement that clearly matches a noun 
     of wrongdoing to a verb of responsibility. He correctly 
     points out that ``unbearable suffering'' was ``caused'' by 
     Imperial Japan's military. Acknowledging the perpetrator of a 
     crime and the crime itself is the first step toward 
     reconciliation.
       For me, the war is hard to forget. But as Mr. Abe points 
     out, the postwar generations are now the majority in Japan. 
     Japanese today aren't responsible for what happened more than 
     70 years ago. But they also cannot forget or distort the 
     past.
       Japan owes me, the descendants of its victims and its own 
     citizens the truth. As Mr. Abe said, ``We Japanese, across 
     generations, must squarely face the history of the past. We 
     have the responsibility to inherit the past, in all 
     humbleness, and pass it on to the future.''
       Imperial Japan tormented, enslaved and defiled many people. 
     This is a grave legacy to pass on and to teach future 
     generations. But it is vital to keep memories like mine 
     alive. It's one thing to remember great deeds done by great 
     men, like Gen. MacArthur in Tokyo Bay. But World War II's 
     history is composed of the suffering of many individuals in 
     different circumstances. This, too, should not be forgotten, 
     or else the lessons of the war will be incomplete.

     

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