July 21, 1966

Awkward to 'Remember Pearl Harbor'

"Bang! You’re dead," Ling-ti, age 7, will shout triumphantly in the year 1976 on the American island of Guam as he plays a game of soldiers with his friend Amoko, age 6.

"Yah, you missed me," Amoko will say.

"You're not playing fair," Ling-ti probably will reply.  "I'm the good Japanese soldier and you're the bad American.  You know you're supposed to be defeated."

"Why do I always have to be the bad guy," Amoko will complain.

"Because that's the way it was in the great war that Grandfather tells about, and you know it is so because the big tower in the park honors the sons of Nippon."

"Well, okay, but next time I get to be the Japanese."

This remains an imaginary conversation at the moment as its probable occurrence is a decade or so away.  It is predictable, however, because of the universal interest of children in war games (in imitation of adults) and the likelihood that the Japanese soldier will be memorialized in the South Pacific while the American GI drifts into the foot-notes of history.

Plans for a 100-foot high war memorial to the Japanese dead of World War II on the American Pacific territory of Guam have been approved by the U.S. Departments of State and Interior.

The monument will overshadow anything in the Pacific dedicated to American war dead, we are told.  The $200,000 with which to build the steeple-like structure by autumn of next year is being raised by private Japanese businessmen.  They wish to commemorate the 400,000 Japanese soldiers, sailors and civilians stationed in the Pacific who died in the American counterdrive on Japan.

The memorial will stand in a park hewed out of the jungle about 15 miles northeast of Agana, the capital city of Guam.

It is incredible to me that U.S. officials would give permission to our former enemy to erect such a monument on American land.  Next we could permit the school children of Japan to give a few yen from their lunch money to construct a memorial to the 35 brave fliers who were killed during the attack on Pearl Harbor.

If a Japanese businessman would just ask, I am sure the State Department would arrange to have the American monument over the U.S.S.  Arizona shifted aft a few feet.  Then the Japs could build a bigger structure over the forward section of the sunken battleship-tomb.

It must be remembered that Guam is as American as Hawaii, or California or Rhode Island.  It was colonized by the Spaniards in 1668 and captured by American naval forces in 1898 during the Spanish-American War.

During World War II it was the first American possession to fall into enemy hands.  Americans retook the island in 1944 after heavy fighting.  American casualties were 1,437 killed and 5,848 wounded.  The Japanese lost 12,442 killed and 524 captured.

The 58,000 Gumanians were granted full U.S. citizenship in 1950.

There used to be an active and proud post of American Legion there, but if it is still in existence it hasn't been able to register any protest to the Jap plans.  Their buddies must be resting uneasily in patriot's graves.

I found the proposal so hard to believe that I called the Interior Department and the State Department in Washington, D.C.  to confirm it.  "Yes, it is all true," they acknowledged.

"We are permitting it, however, because the Japanese revere their dead, and the money is being raised from private sources."

I remonstrated that the reverent motives of former enemies, who were treacherous and barbarous enough when they were killing some of my friends on Guam, are insufficient reasons for allowing the memorial.  "It's not going to be so bad," I was told.  "We're going to try and get an appropriation next year that will allow us to build a larger U.S. memorial somewhere."

Isn't that peachy-keen?  Future tourists on American Pacific territory will have to carry tape measures to find out who won the war.

On the other side of the world a former Nazi panzer commander has been named commander-in chief of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces in Central Europe.  He will give orders to a half million American, British and West German troops.

Gen.  Johann von Kielmansegg helped direct the panzers that invaded France in 1940.  He fought Russians, and then Americans in the Ruhr.  He surrendered to Americans at the end of the war.

What strange and disgusting bedfellows world politics makes.  We tolerate memorials to our former enemies and take orders from them.

This may be world understanding to the generation that didn't have to fight and die for the greed and cupidity of the Japs and Krauts.  But to we old servicemen who haven't yet faded away it somehow seems like a sell-out of the precious lives and treasure spent to subdue our evil enemies.

Back in 1941 I was urged by my government to "Remember Pearl Harbor!" Now I discover I have a longer memory than is convenient for the Washington propagandists.  It's an awkward situation for everybody — except the Japs and the Krauts.

Author: Lindsey Williams