YOKOHAMA, Japan (AP) – Nine former American servicemen who were held as prisoners during World War II were in Japan on Monday to revisit some of the places where they were held seven decades ago and recount their memories.
The men, all in their 90s, opened their tour with a memorial service for their fellow fallen soldiers at the Commonwealth War Graves in Yokohama, near Tokyo.
As they marked the 70th anniversary of the end of the war, the emphasis was on reconciliation.
George Rogers, of Lynchburg, Virginia, said he had no hard feelings. Now 96, he was taken captive by the Japanese after surviving the infamous Bataan Death March in April 1942 and forced to work at the Yawata steel plant in southern Japan, or today’s Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corp.
During his nearly 3 1/2 years of captivity, Rogers was given meager food rations and sometimes beaten up.