21-06-2025
Memorial service held in Fukuoka for American POWs executed near end of WWII
FUKUOKA -- A memorial service was held here to honor American prisoners of war executed by Imperial Japanese Army personnel on June 20, 1945 -- less than two months before the end of World War II in Japan.
A total of about 20 people from both Japan and the United States attended the service held at Aburayama Kannon temple in Fukuoka's Jonan Ward on June 20 both in person and online to pray for the victims' souls. Attendees included relatives of the POWs visiting from the U.S., officials of the U.S. Consulate in Fukuoka, and kin of war criminals involved in the executions.
In a series of events collectively called the "Seibugun Jiken" (Western District Army incidents), the former Imperial army's Western District Army command in Fukuoka executed approximately 30 American POWs, including B-29 bomber crew, without court martials in three separate instances from June to August 1945. Between May and June that year, the "Kyushu Imperial University vivisection incidents" occurred, where eight POWs were taken to present-day Kyushu University and died after being subjected to experimental surgeries.
The first executions of POWs on June 20 took place the day after the U.S. military's Great Fukuoka Air Raid. Kentaro Tohji, an army captain who executed four POWs, had lost his mother in the air raid. He was later sentenced to death by hanging as a war criminal but had his sentence commuted to life imprisonment, and passed away at the age of 68 in 1983. His third son, Katsuya, 71, who lives in Fukuoka's Chuo Ward, attended the service and remarked, "War leaves deep scars on both winners and losers."
Timothy Lang, 61, whose uncle was a crew member of a B-29 bomber that crashed near present-day Yame, Fukuoka Prefecture, and was captured and executed, also attended the service online. He expressed his heartfelt wish that wars that take young people's lives will never happen again.
The memorial service, the sixth to be held, was organized by military aviation history researcher Hiroyuki Fukao, 54.
Beside the main hall of Aburayama Kannon are four "jizo" Buddhist statues erected by Tohji to honor the POWs he executed. Attendees offered incense there to pay their respects to the deceased.
