Foreign Workers - It is not about just providing food
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It is not about just providing food
theonlinecitizen on July 12, 2010
Jia Ye
We call them Special Pass holders – workers who, incurring large debts to pay for their agents’ fees in hopes of securing a work-permit job in Singapore for their families back home, have run into employment disputes. For most of these men who come to the Cuff Road Project (TCRP), home would be Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka.
For all of them, their employment problems have left them homeless and jobless. Every weekday and night, as well as at noon on Sunday, the men take their meals at either Sutha’s at Cuff Road or Isthana at Rowell Rd.
They may be transient both as workers and as diners at the restaurant – they leave once their cases are settled – but during their difficult sojourn, no matter how brief or long, TCRP goes beyond providing meals to them.
Take Alamgir, for instance. He did not say much the first few days after we first met at Sutha’s and even after, preferred to talk in softer tones.
Two of Alamgir’s fingers on his left hand had been sliced open while aligning metal sheets for ship-building. The company’s doctor grafted the gaping wounds with flesh from the side of his palm and gave him a single day’s medical leave for the injury. His foreman insisted he showed up for work promptly for “standby duty”.
Alamgir told me he tried explaining to his employer that he couldn’t go to work because his hand simply hurt too much but his foreman insisted he showed up for “standby duty”.
He went to see another doctor at a polyclinic, bearing the medical costs himself and in the hopes of getting a more comprehensive assessment.
The doctor, however, pressed him for a letter from his employer, which Alamgir was sure he would not receive. On top of this, “house manager many many shouting at me”, Alamgir said. So he took matters into his own hands. After his colleagues had left for their worksite at 5.30am one morning, Alamgir packed a few shirts along with his documents and left.
He headed straight for a lawyer and later, showed up at Cuff Road. He told me he wouldn’t have known what to do had the TCRP not been there for him.
I learnt more about Alamgir’s story over the weeks during my volunteer sessions at dinner. Before coming to Singapore, Alamgir ran a business brokering poultry farmers in his village in Bangladesh. A flu epidemic wiped out a large number of chickens, along with his business. “Many many chicken all die, so I thinking I come Singapore good,” he said to me. “Agent say Singapore job many money can earn. I know hard work but no problem. I can do hard job.”
Borrowing the equivalent of SGD$5000 from his brother in law, his family managed to put together the SGD$10, 000 for his agent’s fees that would secure him a job in Singapore. He is far from fully repaying his debt and as a result, family ties are strained. His previous six day work week brought in $600 – $700 a month, depending on whether there was overtime work available. About $200 would go back to paying his employer for his dorm bed and electricity bills. He would send another $200 home every month and the remainder paid for his food. His four-year old son, Akash – meaning “Sky” – needed the money. His face lights up whenever he talks about Akash. But Alamgir would always always end any conversation about Akash by saying, “My son many many miss me. He always asking, ‘When you come, Aba?’”.
My mum came to Sutha’s one night and Alamgir took to her immediately. He asks me about her health every other day and sent her a well-wishing text message on her birthday.
While Alamgir, like many other clients of TCRP, already had an established social network, it was at the restaurant that he got to know more Bangladeshis in his situation. They, along with other volunteers, became his support during this difficult time. He told me it was dinnertime he looked forward to the most each day – he knew that at 6.30pm everyday, he could sit down to dinner amongst familiar, friendly faces.
I launched a photo exhibit in conjunction with Singapore’s National Day last year. I had originally wanted to just take their photos as a going away present for them and also to create a sort of pictorial archive of the men who come to Sutha’s restaurant on Cuff Road for dinner. Talking to some friends who encouraged me to put up a public viewing of the pictures, I thought why not – these are people so integral to Singapore’s growth and their stories should be told and not only to people in academia.
The stories and pictures in the exhibit were in part fieldnotes for my PhD dissertation as well as a more informal yet intimate look into the experiences and lives of Singapore’s homeless male migrant workers. Their employment problems are complex and often long-drawn out. While the exhibit did not – indeed, could not – show the depth and breadth of just how complicated their difficulties are, I did, however, want to highlight the precariousness and the contradictions of their lives as a result of our current political-economy – a capitalist system that they work for but a system that has ultimately marginalized them. We cannot deny there is a class system in place here. But I wanted also to create a space where we could understand a little bit more about these migrants beyond the sort of political-economy discourse. I wanted a space where we could see them as individuals and not just a statistic or a case-study.
I thank them for allowing me to share their photos and stories. I thank them for teaching me about resilience and patience in the face of adversity. I am truly learning a lot about them and learning a lot from them. Donobaad! This is why The Cuff Road Meals programme is meaningful to me – it is not about just providing food. Crucial as that is for the individuals who truly need it, it is also a friendly social space for them and for a volunteer like me, a space where we can trespass those gaps – those pervasive, salient class barriers – and get to know people whose lives are so different, yet not so far removed from our own.
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Jia Ye is a volunteer with TWC2 and a PhD candidate at The University of British Columbia, Vancouver. -
agents are gangsters and with the internet most should already know its slave labour in unberable conditions....so the person to be blamed would be the worker himself too n and the agents collecting $$$$.greed,desperation n false hopes led him to where he is.
he shoulda stayed back in indian sri lanka n built something there without any gov breathing down his neck every week.with $5k he coulda bought plenty raw materials n technology to build up a small shop factory in bangladesh etc.....so guy supports agent gangs n got wat he thinks he wont get.
cross his fingers???too late its already injured.severely.
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oh by the way.....this is probably HDB and ministry of labor biggerest scammed and shamlessly created a system that expliot modern slaved trade.
Main Contractor will charged a comission from Sub Con for supplying labors.
In return Sub contract pay labors shamlessly for only at less than $30 a day for 12 hours work while charging main contractor regular 8 dollars an hour. Double on Weekend.
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That is why i think Govt do not to institute minimum wage to protect labors.
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it is call modern slavery aka labour exploitation.
Most of the time, they are mislead by heartless/stone "people".
During Qing Dynasty, many China men had been decieved and sold themselves as piglet aka "gold miner" by unscrupulous businessmen.
Some of them managed to survive in San Francisco!
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The government should get the blame.
Their great idea of flooding singapore with cheap foreigner labour caused the rise of greedy agents who cheats the foreigners and cause misery to both foreigners and singaporeans
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the gov makes use of slave labour from these lil companies from shipyards to construction in order to build their economy.and these lil companies with these virtual slaves end up dead,injured n with no$$$$.
pretty mmuch like the japanese army in ww2 being supplied by sex slaves by local jap contractors.
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Lee Ok-seon's three years as a sex slave for Japanese soldiers began on a summer day when two men snatched her off a street in broad daylight. Before she realized what was happening, she was on a train to China, where humiliation and brutal beatings awaited.
She was just 15, one of thousands of girls and women across Asia who were kidnapped Kidnapped
caught in the intrigues of Scottish factions, David Balfour and Alan Breck are shipwrecked, escape from the king’s soldiers, and undergo great dangers. [Br. Lit.: R. L. Stevenson Kidnapped]
See : Adventurousness and forced into providing sex for Japanese troops during World War II.
Among the few still alive in South Korea today, she was incensed to hear Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe Shinzo Abe (安� 晋三 Abe Shinz� say last week that there was no proof they were coerced into prostitution.
His comments came as the U.S. House of Representatives considers a resolution urging Japan to formally apologize for its treatment of the so-called "comfort women."
"They took away other people's young daughters only to beat them to death, make them sick to death and starve starve
v.
1. To suffer or die from extreme or prolonged lack of food.
2. To deprive of food so as to cause suffering or death. them to death," said Lee, her speech slurredslur
tr.v. slurred, slur·ring, slurs
1. To pronounce indistinctly.
2. To talk about disparagingly or insultingly.
3. To pass over lightly or carelessly; treat without due consideration.
..... Click the link for more information. because she is missing her lower front teeth from a beating she said she suffered as a sex slave.
"And now they say there was no coercion in taking us. How evil are they?" she said Tuesday in Gwangju, 30 miles south of Seoul, where she and eight other women share a shelter for former sex slaves that includes a museum.
Now 79, Lee is among 113 remaining South Korean survivors of the Japanese military brothels BROTHELS, crim. law. Bawdy-houses, the common habitations of prostitutes; such places have always been deemed common nuisances in the United States, and the keepers of them may be fined and imprisoned.
2. that were widespread throughout Asia in the 1930s and '40s. For years the women have staged weekly rallies at the Japanese Embassy in Seoul, demanding an apology and compensation from Tokyo.
Japan acknowledged in the 1990s that its military set up and ran brothels for its troops. But it has rejected most compensation claims, saying they were settled by postwar treaties. And though the government issued an apology in 1993, it was never approved by parliament.
Abe said Monday there is no need for Japan to apologize again, and his government made it clear Wednesday that it was sticking to that position.
"The U.S. resolution is not based on objective facts and does not take into consideration the responses that we have taken so far. Therefore, we will not offer a fresh apology," said Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki.
The resolution does not recommend that Japan pay reparations reparations, payments or other compensation offered as an indemnity for loss or damage. Although the term is used to cover payments made to Holocaust survivors and to Japanese Americans interned during World War II in so-called relocation camps (and used as well to . It does urge Japan to reject those who say the sexual enslavement en·slave
tr.v. en·slaved, en·slav·ing, en·slaves
To make into or as if into a slave.
en·slave
ment n. never happened and to educate children about the women's experiences.
Historians say thousands of women _ as many as 200,000 by some accounts _ worked in the brothels.
But prominent Japanese scholars and politicians routinely deny direct military involvement or the use of force in rounding up the women, blaming private contractors for any abuses. The government also has questioned the 200,000 women figure.
Abe's comments touched off fresh criticism from China, South Korea and the Philippines, which say Tokyo has not fully atoned.
Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing- This is a Chinese name; the family name is Li (�).
Lee said she was abducted abducted Distal angulation of an extremity away from the midline of the body in a transverse plane and away from a sagittal plane passing through the proximal aspect of the foot or part, or away from some other specified reference point in July 1942 in the southern city of Ulsan. Two large men grabbed her by the arms while she was on her way to the restaurant where she worked. She kicked and screamed, to no avail.
She was thrown into a truck with five Korean girls _ also about 15 years old _ and taken by train to Yanji in northeastern China, which was occupied by Japan at the time. There she said she was confined con·fine
v. con·fined, con·fin·ing, con·fines
v.tr.
1. To keep within bounds; restrict: Please confine your remarks to the issues at hand. See Synonyms at limit. to a brothel and forced to "serve as many soldiers as we can to pay them back for providing us clothes and food."
A woman might have sex with as many as 30 soldiers a day. Typically she worked in a 40-square-foot room furnished with a wooden bed and a hard mattress, according to according to
prep.
1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians.
2. In keeping with: according to instructions.
3. replica at the museum in Gwangju. Often the only other object was a tin basin, dimly lit by a single bulb.
Women who refused to comply were beaten and stabbed with knives, Lee said, showing scars on her right arm and foot. She said she suffered lasting damage to her uterus and nearly went deaf from the frequent blows.
Many women died, if not from the beatings then from starvation, she said, and their bodies were tossed out on the streets "to be eaten by dogs." One of her friends at the brothel became pregnant and the baby was taken away at birth, never to be seen by its mother again.
After the war ended, the stigma stayed with the women.
Like many former sex slaves, Moon Pil-ki said she couldn't even think of marrying because she was so ashamed of her past.
"It wasn't my fault, but still I was shameful," Moon said. "Do you know how much it hurts to have your whole youth stolen? They made us all cripples cripples
see osteomalacia. ."
"If I ever see Abe, I want to slap him, and knock some sense into his head." -
it is one of reason that China decide to build a modern army
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Caught in the middle were 1,600-plus Americans captured when Wake fell in December 1941, 1,100 of them civilian contractors of construction conglomerate Morrison Knudsen there to build a naval base. Most of these, and all military personnel, were shipped to POW camps in China early in 1941; only 700 contractors would survive their four-year sojourn in Japanese captivity.
By September 1942, only 98 Americans remained* on Wake Island — all contractors, the last remnants of the prison labor force who had been forced to lattice the island with defensive fortifications against the expected American invasion.
U.S. forces bombed Wake Island repeatedly during World War II — rare respites from the monotony of forced labor — but the most intense attack was an orchestrated naval bombardment and aerial attack beginning Oct. 5. Shigematsu Sakaibara feared it was the prelude to a long-anticipated landing attempt. And he wasn’t the only one: reporting the attack, the New York Times tried to read the tea leaves of the official pronouncements:
The fact that Wake was attacked yesterday by surface bombardment as well as aeriel bombing probably indicates that a major reduction of Wake is now intended. The atoll, which is the closest Japanese base to Pearl Harbor with the exception of a few islands in the Marshalls group, is a key stepping stone on Japan’s fastest aeriel route to her other central Pacific possessions in the Marshalls and Gilberts southwest of Hawaii.
Still,
[o]ccupation by United States forces of Wake Island, which is 1,033 miles from Midway, has been predicted for some time, but there is no indication that such an operation is probable immediately.
Sakaibara, unfortunately, didn’t have a Times subscription.
Expecting a landing, and fearing the prisoners would rise up as a “fifth column” against their captors when it came, Sakaibara had the 98 prisoners machine-gunned en masse on the beach. One of them managed to survive and escape the slaughter, but was recaptured shortly after, and is supposed to have been personally beheaded by the admiral. It’s said that unidentified man carved a (misdated) testimony to the crime on a nearby coral rock known as “98 Rock”: “98 US PW 5-10-43″.
As it turned out, the landing never did come. The U.S. Navy bypassed Wake Island, allowing it to languish under a blockade as it advanced elsewhere in the Pacific, and received Sakaibara’s peaceful surrender after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Although the Japanese had hastily exhumed the murdered POWs and reburied them in a cemetery as the end of the war approached, the cover story on the “Wake Island Massacre” soon cracked. For this day’s affair, Sakaibara was convicted of war crimes by an American tribunal, and hanged in Guam on June 18, 1947.
* The identities of the 98 are known, and are listed online here as well as on a plaque at the site.
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From Reuters to The Nikkei [sub], the world is abuzz with the shocking news that Honda had to shut down assembly lines at all of their four Chinese auto assembly plants after workers at a Honda transmission factory in Foshan in southern China walked off the job. While the job action barely registers in the Chinese press, my phone in Beijing rings off the hook. Common question from abroad: “Are they allowed to do that?” There goes another myth.
Before we get to that, the facts: Monthly salaries for factory employees at the transmission factory average 1,500 yuan ($220). The workers want something between 2,000 yuan ($300) to 2,500 yuan ($370) a month, same as what the folks at Honda’s auto assembly plants receive.
On Monday, talks between workers and management broke down. Workers walked. With just-in-time production, the effects were immediate: Honda had to send Monday’s night shift home at their Zengcheng plant (Accord) and at a plant in Huangpu. Yesterday (Wednesday) night, the Honda factory in Wuhan, which makes the Civic, ran out of transmissions and was shut down.
As of this Thursday afternoon in China, all Honda factories remain closed with no end in sight. The Nikkei [sub] said this afternoon that Honda has no plans to obtain transmissions from Japan. A signal that Honda wants to play hardball: If the workers in the transmission plant strike, jobs elsewhere are imperiled.
Now, back to the question. Are Chinese workers allowed to strike? It may come as a surprise to some that strikes are a common occurrence in China. Slavery has been abolished long ago, and you can’t force someone to come to work. China is a signatory to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, including the right to strike. As long as workers walk off the job, the only recourse a company has is to fire them for breach of contract. Oh, yes, they must have a work contract by law. Hire and fire just like in the U.S. is against the law.
Militant picketing, Teamster’s style, blocking of plant entrances and so forth would fall under “illegal assembly to break the public peace” and can attract police action. Which doesn’t mean that strikes are always peaceful. Last year, rioting steel workers killed the manager of a steel factory in Jilin, then attacked the police. A factory that made Nerf toys for Hasbro was ransacked by laid-off workers after they had overwhelmed security guards and police. A Philips factory needed the protection of riot police after 1000 workers went on strike. Chinese workers learned from their French colleagues: Taking managers hostage is a common occurrence. No wonder that a little strike at a transmission factory doesn’t get much traction in the Chinese media.
As far as Honda goes, this is the third strike they had in China this year alone. The car market is surging, the workers want a piece of the action. Possibly, enough to buy a car. As China’s economy grows, the oversupply of workers has lessened. Massive government infrastructure projects gave jobs to workers back home in the hinterlands, which lowered the supply of migrant workers.
Not everybody is happy about this. As Tokyo is getting ready to go home this evening, The Nikkei [sub] muses: “In China, mounting worker frustration over pay levels and working conditions is disrupting the operations of Japanese carmakers, who are growing concerned that they might be unable to keep pace with wage increases.”
28 Comments on “Striking Workers Shut Down
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The Search for My FatherMary-Anne Hansen Stickney
I’m writing in memory of my father, Peter Wales Hansen. He was taken from his family while they were young. Harriet was 10, John was 8, I, Mary-Anne was 6 and his loving wife, our mother, Bernice Kurtzweil Hansen. I want my children and grandchildren to have a record of how their grandfather was buried in a mass grave with 99 others soldiers of many nations. Even in this year of 2004, it’s hard for people who did not experience WWII to understand.
Peter was born in Green Bay, Wisconsin on March ５, 1901. He met my mother in Rhinelander, Wisconsin while they both worked for Mr. Daniels who owned the Daniels Paper Mill. They married in Portland, OR in 1930. Dad did many things well and in the days of the Great Depression, a man worked where he could for as long as the jobs lasted. He was a private pilot in his spare time and loved to fly. So much so that their home was always near an airport.
We three children were all born in Rhinelander, Wisconsin, from 1931 to 1934. Sometime in the late 30’s we moved to Inglewood, Calif. Dad was an independent contractor building homes in the Los Angeles area. Sometime in the late 30’s he built his family a two bedroom home with a 2 car garage in what was then a rural area near a small airport called Miner’s Field. Much later that small airport became LAX .
My father was a fun loving man who loved his little family dearly. Mom said they always had company and I remember dad playing the piano and singing to us and with us on the player piano.
When he came home from work he would lift me up in the air and call me his Monkey. I tell you this because these are the few memories of a little girl that grew up without her loving daddy.
Dad went to Wake Island in March, 1941 as a civilian carpenter for the Morrison Knudsen Company, one of the companies that made up Contractors Pacific Naval Air Bases who were building military bases in the Pacific on the Islands of Cavite, Guam, Johnston, Midway, Palmyra and Wake. His contract was for 9 months. If he stayed to complete the 9 months, he not only would get a big bonus but would be guaranteed a job with Morrison Knudsen for his lifetime. This was important to men experiencing hard to find jobs during the Great Depression. We expected him to be home for Christmas. His last letters told of plans for arriving home, buying Christmas presents for his children, promising his sweet wife all the shoes she wanted and she could pick out the new car they’d buy. He wrote to his wife every day describing his work and the conditions on the tiny island as they improved. Even though there was a danger in the air, his letters revealed that he would stay to finish his contract commitment, confident that he would be home before any hostile action between Japan and the USA---if that should happen. He was to leave for home on December 23, 1941.
On a sleepy Sunday morning, December 7, 1941, the Japanese staged a massive surprise attacked against the United States at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii destroying and damaging many of the warships. It was Monday December 8th on Wake Is., a normal work-day due to the International Date Line. Within hours Japanese attacked Wake Is by air. The battle of Wake Island is a much documented battle. There were less than 500 Marines, only a dozen Grumman Wildcat fighters and about 1200 civilians. This tiny force repelled the first invasion of the Japanese Navy by sea but was overwhelmed by much larger enemy forces and fatigue on December 23rd. After a gallant fight, the men Wake Island surrender to the Japanese.
We were notified by telegram that Dad was presumed captured on Wake by the Japanese and there was no further information. Mother wrote many times seeking information of his physical condition and his whereabouts, all to no avail. The authorities had no information on any of the men. The Japanese government did not answer their repeated requests and demands to account for the men on the island.
It wasn’t until April 1944, over 3 years later that we received the first of three very short letters from Dad from Fukuoka POW Camp #1. He received at least two of mother’s letters. The war ended in Aug 1945 after two Atomic bombs destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Weeks later, our family had received no word of my father’s whereabouts or if he was still alive or dead. Mother sent many letters to the authorities searching for news.
Then the letter from the Department of the Navy came. It was dated Oct 12, 1945 informing us of Dad’s death on March 21, 1945 and his ashes “placed in a memorial at Fukuoka, Japan.”
In the year 2000, mother was in her nineties living with my sister, Harriet, in Southern California. I came to stay with mother while my sister went on vacation. I was going through some old papers when I came across that letter from the Navy. Mom was a good secretary and saved carbon copies of all her correspondence with the authorities from 1941 to well into the 50’s. She also saved all of the newsletters from the Woman of Wake during those years documenting the struggle to receive financial support for the families and to receive those last paychecks and bonuses that stopped in December 1941.
I was 66 years old and thought many times that I would like to go to Wake Is and walked where Dad walked and even fly to Japan to see where the POW camps were located. In the war years, I cried for my father. I wanted him home cradling me with his big, strong arms.
July 2000
At home now rereading the Navy’s letter, it was as if I had read it for the first time. “…ashes placed in a memorial at Fukuoka, Japan.” The letter was dated Oct 12, 1945. I was thinking “that’s pretty quick to put up a memorial with everything else going on.” Now I was determined to go to Fukuoka to see the memorial that would give me closure with my father’s death. Wouldn’t it be nice if I could find where Dad’s ashes lie so mother and my siblings would at last know. This idea was never voiced in my family. It was an unspoken longing in my heart to find the father I grew up without.
But first I needed to find out exactly where the memorial was in the city of Fukuoka. I immediately picked up the phone to call the Japanese Consulate in Houston and was given Major Moran, who was familiar with the Japanese city. Major Moran is an American civilian working in the security force at the Consulate in Houston, Texas. I told him about the Navy’s letter, that mother was in her nineties and my plans to fly to Japan seeking closure. He assured me there was no such memorial. The only memorial there was a stone wall where the Doolittle pilots were shot. I told him, “then the U.S. Navy lied to us and I want to know where my father’s ashes are!” He said he would do everything he could to help me but it had been a long time and the Japanese government has never been cooperative with information about POWs. Our government was concentrating on the MIA’s in Viet Nam and Korea. The books on WWII POW’s were closed. Major Moran said he would try to get some information from Japan and Washington but not to get my hopes up.
Major Moran took to the internet and so did I. I found information about an organization called Survivors of Wake-Guam-Cavite . This was a group of civilian workers that survived their ordeal as POWs. I wrote to them immediately asking for any information about Peter W. Hansen or anyone who remembered him. I contacted American Ex-Prisoners of War based in Arlington, TX and received their MED SEARCH information. This was written by M. D.s who were also POW and understood the effects of starvation on the bodies organs and the illnesses it can cause over a lifetime.
In October 2000 I started receiving letters from men of Wake. Rodney Kephart, Frank Mace, J.O. Young, Joe Astorita, who made sketches of the guards, shoes, camps, etc. were just some that I made contact. Mr. Kephart and Mace wrote books that I devoured for information of what happened to my father and his fellow POWs.
As I talked to each of these men who so gladly and freely told me of their experiences and answered my questions, I began to learn what happened to the men; when they left the island and where they went. And each survivor said they remembered my father. They knew his occupation and home town but very little else. Early in 1942 all able bodied military men and all but 350 civilians were transported to Shanghi. In October, 1942 a group of about 250 civilians were transported to Japan to build a dam at Sasabo. The remaining 98 were later executed on the Island. Each of the men of whom I spoke, claimed my dad was with their group.
Their books and many others I’ve since read about POW’s of the Japanese told of the horror of their existence; the beatings, their living conditions, food, the freezing cold with no winter clothing, the illnesses, lack of medicines and treatment etc. Before this time, I had no knowledge of the cruelty they suffered for so long. I was horrified at what they went through. What determination and sheer will these men had just to survive each day. God made strong bodies to endure such abuse and yet live on for many years.
Most of the surviving men were in there early twenties when they went to Wake. My father was 40 years old. That may have been a factor in his death although he died just 5 months before the war ended.
June Fabian, the Survivor’s group long time secretary, sent me excerpts from the diary kept by Lee W. Wilcox listing the deaths at Camp #18 at Sasbo as well as a list of deaths by Rev. Oreal Johnson. June is the widow of a survivor and knows the history of most of the men.
In September, I contacted Major Moran to see if there was some news. He sent me an article stating the Australian War Graves Group filled two urns with POW ashes recovered from “two of the camps of war centered at Fukuoka” One contained ashes of 200 British POWs, 50 American and 20 Netherlanders. That urn is in the United Kingdom section of the Commonwealth War Cemetery near Yokohama. The other urn, containing mostly American ashes, was sent to Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery in St. Louis, Missouri.
A few days into October, I wrote to Jefferson Barracks on a Friday inquiring if my father’s ashes could possibly be there. The following Tuesday, I put dinner on the table and for some reason excused myself to check my email. An e-mail was waiting for me from Randy Watkins of Jefferson Barracks saying my father was indeed there! “OH MY GOD, I HAD FOUND HIM! I FOUND MY DAD!” I was so excited I could hardly read the message! There were two pictures attached; the picture of the large headstone listing 100 men from different nations and a close-up of Dad’s name. I still cry when I think of seeing ‘Peter W. Hansen, Civ’ on the screen.
After 55 years of not even knowing what happened to him, where he was, how he died, we found his ashes and they were in the United States! It was a miracle. I quickly called my sister, knowing Mom was there and my brother was visiting that week. And I immediately forwarded the email and pictures so they could see them too. It was a complete surprise to them since I didn’t tell them I was even searching. They were a bit stunned. I was anxious to get mother’s reaction which came a few days later. Mom was glad that Dad’s ashes were in the States but it had been too many years. She had no desire to visit the grave.
Although my family had not moved from the address that was listed on my father’s official records, we were never notified of his remains being re-interned in US soil.
In early November 2000, I went to St. Louis to my father’s grave. It was a beautiful autumn day. I sat on the ground and just wept over my daddy’s grave. Those years forever gone. How much I missed him. My life would have been so different had he returned. How different? We’ll never know but I can’t help but feel it would have been more complete. It’s strange how the pain of grief can hurt so deeply after so many years. It’s as if the grief were fresh---as if he died just yesterday. The tears of a 10 yr old were shed freely. I cried for the good years that might have been, I cried for the pain of separation and the horror he lived surviving each day with hope of returning to us--- hanging on until he could hang on no longer.
To my surprise, the discovery of Dad’s ashes did not bring the closure I was seeking. My search was not over. Now I wanted to know what happened to dad from the time he left Wake in Oct 1942 until he died in March 1945. Where did he go ? what did he do? What caused his death? I wanted the truth, even if the details of POW life were too horrible to bare. I wanted the truth and my brother wanted to know too. The answers I found through Major Moran’s contact in Japan with a American teaching English living near Fukuoka. He had heard about the POW camps and started some research. Through my contact with Wes Injerd, and his research into the National Archives, he found the dates and places Dad had been. He also provided me with Dad’s death certificate in both Japanese and English. Most of all, he found an affidavit written by an American doctor, Major Walter Kostecki, at Fukuoka Camp #1 who documented the real reason for his death. Wes had lived in Japan for 26 years and had a lovely family with four children growing up fast.
Meanwhile, I made several inquires into the National Archives with no success. Then I was notified that there was a complete war-trial transcript of the Japanese soldier that was responsible for my father’s death.!!! A WAR CRIMES TRIAL??? Again, I was in shock at what I found, Our family did not know of the trial of Masato Hada. There was even a picture of him in the transcript. Hada was tried and found guilty of war crimes against sick and weakened POWs including withholding medications, beating them and other heinous acts causing their deaths. The transcript brought out all the details.
So now I knew the truth, the horrible truth about what happened to my gentle father, whose only crime was loving his young family enough to go to a tiny island in the Pacific to work for their welfare. He stayed on that island with the promise that if completed his 9 month contract honorably, he would not be without work again.
On November 11, 2002, my sister, Harriet and brother, John, and I traveled to St. Louis, MO to attend the annual Remembrance Day ceremony. It is held at the mass grave site of 100 heroes who died while in captivity during the period July 1944 through April 1945 in a Japanese Prison Camp or camps, in the Fukuoka Region of the Island of Kyushu. On the 28th of September 1949, 59 United States Soldiers, Sailors and Marines and 12 civilians; and 29 men of the British, Dutch and Australian military, were re-interned at Jefferson Barracks Nation Cemetery. A military man from each country laid a wreathe on the large, flat, granite stone and I laid a wreathe for my father and all the civilians. We attending on this special day were standing in the gap for those loved ones living too far away to attend or those who did not know where there loved ones were. It was very meaningful and clearly honored these men who paid the ultimate price for their countries.
At last, I found closure.
Forgiveness Requires Great Strength and Compassion
Wes Injerd
I first came in contact with Mary-Anne in July of 2000 through an email from Major Moran. He told of a daughter searching for her father who died in Fukuoka during WWII. I immediately went to work searching for the name "Peter Hansen" in my growing collection of archives, and the rest of the story is history. It was because of Mary-Anne's search that I dedicated my own website to her father.
http://home.comcast.net/~winjerd/POWCamp1.htmI had mixed emotions as I worked on the Hansen story-- angry that the Japanese had done this, yet understanding the wartime conditions in Japan; sad at what had happened to the Hansen family, yet happy that the truth had finally been discovered. It was hard for me to conceive that the very people among whom I had been living for the past 26 years could be capable of such inhumane behavior, especially toward someone who wasn't even in the military and not even directly fighting against them.
This is perhaps one of the hardest things to understand in life -- Why has this terrible event happened to me? Why is life so unfair? What did I do to deserve this?
Mary-Anne surely felt this a hundred times as she read document after document to discover the truth about her father's death. Yet she never let it make her bitter toward the Japanese, even though all of the "why's" were left unanswered.
It requires great strength and compassion to forgive offenses against those dear to yourself. As a Christian, I believe this is one of the greatest ways to heal the wounds of the past -- through love and forgiveness, just as Christ forgave those who committed the greatest offense of all against Himself.
My hope and prayer is that the people of Japan and the United States will learn this vital element, the application of which will greatly speed up the healing process and real closure.
Mr. Hansen with children
(Mary-Anne, Harriet and John)
One daughter's trip to Japan
Kinue TokudomeMary-Anne Stickney recently visited the site of Fukuoka POW camp #1 in Japan for the first time. Her father, Peter Hansen, was an American civilian worker captured by the Japanese military on Wake Island in December of 1941. He was brought to Japan and made to work for dam construction in Sasebo. He almost survived the war but died on March 21, 1945. A Japanese soldier who was responsible for his death was tried and found guilty of war crimes against sick and weakened POWs including withholding medications, beating them, and other heinous acts.
When Mary-Anne visited the site of the POW camp in Fukuoka where her father died, there was nothing to remind people that a POW camp once stood there and that 147 POWs died there. It was just a small empty lot in a wooded area.
Mary-Anne made a cross with twigs she picked up and placed a little flower she had brought with her in front of it. No memorial or a plaque... Only a little twig cross she herself made... That was how she paid tribute to her father exactly 63 years to the date of his death in Japan.
Mary-Anne Stickney at the site of the former POW camp where her father died
(photo taken by Wes Injerd who guided Mary-Anne's visit to Kyushu, Japan)She also went to the hill overlooking the port of Moji where tens of thousands of Allied POWs arrived after being transported on Hellships. Again, nothing to remind of the horrific voyages that POWs endured.
The port of Moji today where tens of thousands of POWs arrived during WWII
to become slave laborers (photo by Wes Injerd)Mary-Anne shared with me her reflection on her visit to the place where her father lived and died as a POW.
I am glad I went. No it wasn't all sad. I was in awe that I was there in Japan where my dad was. To be walking on the same ground where he walked. Just mostly quietly absorbing the air and the feeling his presence and a sense of wonder how anyone could have survived.
I certainly shed tears at the dam as I thought of the icy winds with few clothes, the empty stomachs, extreme hours of hard labor and the beatings. How did they endure this day after day after day? Then of course under the pines, knowing he died on that day 63 years before. He held on until he could no longer.But we can rejoice that my dad is in heaven walking with Jesus and singing praises with the angels! That's the real victory, the triumph.
The other sense of my trip was to be with the Japanese people. I have never held any animosity against the people. -- The Japanese government and military, however, is another story. I saw more sameness than difference between our cultures.
An insightful lesson.
Mary-Anne touches the Soto Dam built by slave labor by POWs including her father. (Photo by Wes Injerd)
Mary-Anne's trip to Japan is a painful reminder that the United States and Japan need to start working together to properly remember and honor those POWs who had to endure the tragic chapter in our shared history. It is unworthy of our close relationship that the history of American POWs is virtually unknown in Japan today. It is unworthy of our friendship that the United States allows that situation to continue.Dr. Lester Tenney has already proposed an honorable resolution--creating a foundation by the Japanese government and the Japanese companies that enslaved POWs during WWII. Such a foundation can invite American ex-POWs and their families to Japan, just as the Japanese government has been inviting ex-POWs and families of other former Allied countries. A joint research on the POW history can be started so that Japanese people will learn about what took place at nearly 130 POW camps scattered throughout Japan during WWII. People from both countries may eventually build a memorial on the hill of Moji someday.
Such an effort could go a long way to heal old wounds and to bring people of the United States and Japan closer.
(posted on Ausgut15, 2008)
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national slavery aka conscription
