JPAC Wake Island Mission
In 2011, a worker discovered a group of human remains exposed on the north beach of Wake Island near the site where American POWs were massacred in October 1943. The Joint POW-MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) sent a team to Wake to recover the remains and excavate the site. JPAC opened a mission to identify the remains and I volunteered to locate families of the “Wake 98” to provide DNA reference samples to aid in identification. While the majority of the massacre victims’ remains are interred in the mass grave in Punchbowl Cemetery, none were...
read moreHonor Flight
There is no better way to visit the war memorials in Washington D.C. than in the company of our nation’s war veterans. I went on the Inland Northwest Honor Flight to D.C. on October 8-9 as a volunteer “guardian” and was deeply moved many times during the trip. It was my good fortune to be matched with two fine gentlemen whose perspectives and memories gave special meaning to the experience. The dedication of the national World War II memorial in 2004 spurred the organization of the Honor Flight network. A retired USAF officer and physician...
read moreThe Railway Man
The Railway Man is the story of an ordinary man whose horrific experiences as a POW left him emotionally crippled for decades after the war until he confronted and ultimately forgave the target of his old, deep hatred. Thousands of ex-POWs, including my father, shared the first part of that sentence; very few were willing or able to achieve the second part. Eric Lomax’s journey reveals the dark world of intentionally buried horrors and shows us that there is – to use his favorite railroad metaphor – a light at the end of the tunnel. Eric...
read moreA Matter of Honor
My friend and colleague, Duane A. Vachon, Ph.D, has been writing a column on Medal of Honor recipients for the Hawaii Reporter for several years. He recently asked me what I knew about the Battle of Wounded Knee, saying that his research was suggesting that the MOH recipients might not be entitled to the honor because it was more of a massacre than a battle. I knew about Wounded Knee, but took an evening to revisit the historical sources, look into the debate over rescinding awards, and to consider the standards for the nation’s highest...
read moreMidway
Midway Atoll is ruled by the birds again, after a short stay by humans during the twentieth century. “Pihemanu” is the Hawaiian word for Midway: “loud din of birds” is an apt descriptor for the location of the world’s largest nesting colonies of Laysan and Black-footed Albatross. Midway is one of the best known of all the outlying Pacific islands due to the tide-turning Battle of Midway in WW2. It lies about 1300 miles west of Honolulu and 1200 miles east of Wake Island. These distances proved ideal for the refueling requirements of early...
read moreMarine Sanctuary
On June 17, 2014, President Obama announced a massive expansion of the Pacific Remote Islands marine sanctuary to protect the rich ecological areas adjacent to seven Pacific islands and atolls. Obama used his executive authority, based on the Antiquities Act of 1906, to cover protection of nearly 782,000 square miles in the Pacific from overfishing, marine pollution, and other depredations. This smart but bound-to-be controversial move vastly enlarges the core area of 87,000 square miles designated by his predecessor five years ago. In early...
read moreSearching for Families
The JPAC Wake Island mission began three years ago with the discovery of a group of human remains on the north beach. The location of the discovery and determination that the remains were Caucasian pointed to the massacre of American civilian contractors on October 7, 1943. While JPAC’s forensic anthropologists have studied the remains in their lab at Hickam AFB in Hawaii, I have been pursuing the families of the 98 to find qualified donors for DNA reference samples. Family members submit DNA samples to the military Central Identification...
read moreNuclear Disarmament
Two weeks ago Wake Island’s nearest neighbor, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, filed suit in the international court at The Hague against nine global nuclear powers and in federal court against the United States. The lawsuits demand that these nations meet disarmament obligations established by international treaties. I looked into it at the time and watched for reactions and follow up in the coming days. Not surprisingly, it caused barely a ripple. The U. S. State Department asserted its dedication to achieving disarmament, and Russia...
read morePOWs
Like many of his generation, my father did not open up with the family about his wartime experiences. We knew he had been captured on Wake Island and spent the war in a Japanese prisoner of war camp, but little else. He had some mysterious, recurring illnesses and strange scars that we knew were related to that time, but I waited until long after his death to start asking questions. My quest to find out “what happened to Dad” turned into a full historical account of the Wake Island saga, but I won’t ever know what really happened to Ted Olson...
read morePeale
Of the three components that make up Wake Atoll, Peale is the “deserted island.” Inaccessible by road since the wooden bridge burned over a decade ago, Peale has quietly slipped into obscurity. Vines and brush have swallowed the vestiges of the Pan American complex and the contractors’ naval air base facility construction, much of it bombed to ruins in the war or left to the ravages of time and tide in the postwar years. The rusty hulk of the 8” Japanese gun and a concrete pillbox still face the empty sea near the point. Behind them, over a...
read more