In a letter received in the autumn of 2000, we learned of further atrocities committed against prisoners of war on Taiwan by the Japanese in the closing days of the war.
At that time we received a letter from Mr. Charles D. "Buddy" Parker of Florida, USA asking for assistance in finding more information on his brother who had been executed by the Japanese in Taihoku in June 1945. This was the first time we had heard anything about other POWs being executed. To our knowledge there were only the two POWs who had tried to escape from the Taichu Camp that had been executed, but Mr. Parker’s letter revealed otherwise.
It stated that his brother - John Roberson Parker - was part of a crew of 11 in a PB4Y-1 Navy Liberator aircraft called the “Queen Bee” of US Navy Squadron VPB117 that was shot down on January 28th 1945 over the waters south of Taiwan on a routine bombing mission. Four of the crew died when the plane was forced to crash-land in the sea after being hit by gunfire from one of the ships it was attacking, one was badly burned and died a week later in the Takao hospital, and the other six were taken prisoner. They were moved to Taihoku (Taipei) where they were held in the Taihoku Prison as POWs after being “interrogated” by the Kempetai.
One of the group, Ensign John Bertrang was injured in the leg in the crash of the aircraft and was taken to a local hospital. Later - as he was the senior surviving member of the crew, he was sent on to Japan where he received further medical treatment and then was sent to the infamous Ofuna interrogation camp near Tokyo where he finished his days as a POW. After the war he was returned to the US Navy Hospital in Chicago where he recovered. He passed away some years later in 1993. The remaining men from the Queen Bee remained in the Taihoku Prison.
On May 29th 1945 - less than three months before the Japanese surrender, John Parker, and the other four members of the Queen Bee crew, and nine other captured American fliers were brought before a Japanese 'War Disciplinary Tribunal' and in a brief, mock trial and without any proper defense, were found guilty of so-called "indiscriminate bombing" and sentenced to death. Subsequently, on June 19th 1945 - only 58 days before the end of the war, the men were all murdered by a Japanese firing squad inside the walls of the Taihoku Prison. In addition to the five Navy crewmen from the Liberator, five other US Navy and four US Army Air Force personnel were murdered that day.
The names of the Japanese who committed this mockery of justice are known. The tribunal was comprised of Lt. Col. Naritaka Sugiura, Chief of the Tribunal; Col. Seiichi Furkawa former Chief of the Judicial Dep’t. of Japan’s 10th Army; Lt. Gen. Harukel Isayama, Chief of Staff, 10th Army; and Capt. Yoshio Nakano, Judge.
All of these facts were obtained in the fall of 1945 by the father of one of John’s crewmates who visited the Navy Department at that time and received excellent co-operation from them. Copies of official US Navy Department documents were obtained, and Charles sent the TPCMS copies of all this material to us to help verify the story.
In the past few years Charles had tried to obtain more information about his brother but upon approaching the War Department and the Navy Department he was told that somehow all of the pertinent records had “gone missing” so no information could be given about John Parker or the incident of his trial and execution. It seems not only the Japanese want to cover up these atrocities, but so now does the US government!
So Charles, who had been referred to the TPCMS by the University of Florida Research Center, turned to us to see if we could find anything more about his brother and the camp in which he might have been interned.
By examining records obtained from the US National Archives and another source, we found that the Japanese had turned the cremated remains of 15 American military personnel over to the Allies after the Japanese surrender on Taiwan. In a careful check of the Japanese records on the same incident, we found that although the names had been badly mis-spelled, the names on the captured Japanese list matched the list of the men executed in June 1945. One set of remains was from an American flier who had been executed by the Japanese on July 11th on Miyako-Jima Island near Okinawa.
Along with the 14 executed men, eleven other shot-down aircrewmen were held in the Taihoku Prison and at the Japanese surrender were released and sent to Taihoku Camp #6 from where they were evacuated to freedom on September 6th 1945.
There were a number of other US Navy and Army Air Force pilots and crewmen who were also shot down from October 1944 to July 1945, and rather than being held in Taiwan at the prison, they were sent on to Japan, most to the infamous Ofuna Naval Interrogation Centre for questioning - and in many cases torture, to try to extract information from them. Most finished the war either at Ofuna or at the Omori POW Camp outside Tokyo.
We are pleased to be able to help Charles with this information, and very grateful to him for sharing this story with us. Now maybe his brother John and the others will always be remembered.
Note: Please see the other related articles about this story in the Articles and Stories section of the website.
Postscript - After the war Col. Furkawa and Lt. Col. Sugiura were both sentenced to be executed by an American firing squad, but their sentences were later commuted to life imprisonment and Lt. Gen. Isayama and Capt. Nakano were also sentenced to life in prison. So some justice was done!
Charles 'Buddy' Parker passed away on January 10th 2017 at 88 years of age. He is finally reunited with his brother John and may they both rest in peace.