Memorial Service held in Fukuoka for executed US POWs
A memorial service was held in Fukuoka on Friday for US prisoners of war who were executed without trial by the western command of the now-defunct Imperial Japanese Army in the closing days of World War II.
The event was attended by people related to the POW executions from Japan and the United States, including a consul of the US Consulate in Fukuoka and a US Forces Japan chaplain.
"We must do our part to ensure that the friendship between our two nations continues and leads to lasting peace," Katsuya Toji, 71, the third son of a former paymaster captain of the army who was judged a war criminal, said in his address at the ceremony, held at the Aburayama Kannon temple in the southwestern Japan city.
Toji's father, Kentaro, executed four captured B-29 bomber crew members soon after Kentaro lost his mother in a US air strike.
"War leaves deep scars, not only on the defeated but also the victors," Toji stressed.
Kentaro wrote many short poems during his imprisonment. Citing one of the poems that reads: "Will my children ever meet the children of the airmen I had to execute?" Toji explained that his father wished for peace in the next generation.
"The poem has become a reality--following last year, we have met again today," he added.
The temple enshrines four "jizo" stone Buddha statues made by Kentaro for the POWs he killed.
"I hold no anger or resentment in my heart for what happened to (uncle) Allen, only sadness," Timothy Lang, a 61-year-old online attendee and an executed American POW's nephew, said. "I am glad we are friends now, that we can remember our dead together in peace, and I very much hope we can avoid any more wars that will get our young men and women killed in the future."
The western district army decapitated eight American POWs at its headquarters in Fukuoka on June 20, 1945, and killed others at Mount Aburayama in the city in August same year.
The ceremony featured photos of the executed US servicemen, mostly airmen, as well as those of eight killed in vivisection conducted jointly by the army and Kyushu Imperial University, now Kyushu University.
Ko Fukuda, 100, a former communications squadron member who saw POWs taken to Aburayama for execution in August 1945, said he still dreams sometimes about the prisoners put on a truck with their feet tied with ropes. "I wanted to help them but couldn't do anything," he remembered.
[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]
