Vet remembers: 'We were all bawling, just like I'm doing now'

World War II veteran Herb Hanneman may have something to say in church today when other members of the congregation share their joys and concerns at Bethany United Methodist.

"I'm happy I'm home again," Hanneman, 88, of Madison, said Friday as he talked about the approaching 60th anniversary of V-J Day, which ended World War II and freed him from a prisoner of war camp in Japan.

V-J Day, or Victory over Japan Day, marks Aug. 15, 1945, the day Emperor Hirohito announced Japan's acceptance of the terms of unconditional surrender.

V-J Day is commemorated in the United States on Aug. 14 because the surrender news arrived on that date in U.S. time zones.

In matter-of-fact tones that belie the horrors of his experience, Hanneman recounts how, as a young Army soldier who enlisted in Madison, he was taken prisoner in early 1942 as he and some buddies bathed in a stream on Corregidor, an island in the Philippines.

They were herded into what became known as the Bataan Death March. As many as 70,000 U.S. and Filipino prisoners were forced to travel on foot, mostly without food and water, about 60 miles. Some were executed at random. Desperately thirsty men drank water from ditches.

He spent about 18 months in a prison camp at Cabanatuan, where the men lived on fish heads and rice. He heard men screaming at night and worked on burial details during the day.

Hanneman was moved by truck to Manila and later taken to Japan, where he was imprisoned at a camp in Hirohata and assigned to work in a steel mill. "They did feed us a little better. Instead of rice and fish heads we had rice and greens and fish heads," he said.

For two years, the "kind of rugged" mill work continued. When men died, survivors grabbed their blankets for protection from the cold.

A few days later, after the prisoners lined up for work, they were ordered to return to their barracks. They heard rumors the war was over and wondered if Japan or the United States had surrendered.

After their guards ran away, they tried to mark their camp for Allied pilots. Soon, a small plane dropped packages with food rations and magazines. Within a few days, an Army Jeep pulled up and "they informed us the war was over."

Prisoners were taken by train to Osaka, where they were deloused and given clothing that didn't fit their shrunken bodies. Hanneman, who is 5 feet 11 inches tall, weighed 90 pounds.

Tears come to Hanneman's eyes twice as he tells his story: When he talks of today's soldiers dying in Iraq and Afghanistan and when he remembers his ship approaching the Golden Gate Bridge.

"On our ship, there wasn't a sound. We were all bawling, just like I'm doing now," Hanneman said. "We were just so damn glad to be home."

It is hard for those who were born after WWII to understand the Japanese culture prior to 1946.

The Japanese believed their Emperor was a God. They were not allowed to look at him and he never spoke to his subjects. He was the God who approved Japans terrible treatment of all non Japanese.

In the 1930s the Japanese had invaded China. The occupation of Nanjing was called the Rape of Nanjing. Captured females were used to provide sexual pleasure for Japanese soldiers. Japan did not believe in surrender. They were taught that dying in battle was an instant trip to heaven. That surrender would result in an eternity in Hell. Japanese soldiers and civilians were taught to fight to the death. Surrender was not a option. They were also taught the Kamikaze belief. Like the Muslims today, the Japanese believed that certain death that took some enemy with them was an instant trip to heaven for both the suicide bomber and his family. They felt that Americans who surrendered were only worthy of death. They used them as labor and only kept those alive whose labor was needed for their war effort. If there was no need for prisoners they had them killed.

Up until the Atomic Bomb the Japanese leaders were certain that the USA would sue for peace if we lost millions of troops in an attempted invasion. They had trained their civilian population to act as soldiers when we invaded.

After the first Atomic bomb was dropped, President Truman sent word to the Japanese that we would continue to nuke Japan until there were no Japanese left or they surrendered. After the second bomb fell they did surrender on one condition. The condition was that their God Emperor Hirohito was not to be tried or punished. Truman agreed. Hirohito went on Japanese Radio and ordered all Japanese to surrender. Since Hirohito was their God they obeyed his command.

Truman by the way was bluffing. We had only made 3 atomic bombs. One was set off in Nevada to prove it worked. Truman was notified July 24th 1945 that the bomb worked. Truman had been told it would take more than a year to get the materials to make more atomic bombs.

From March 1945 until the end of July 1945, we had napalmed 60 Japanese cities.. killing over 800 thousand Japanese citizens. We had done our best to destroy all military targets we could. However the Japanese refused to surrender. On the night of March 9th 1945 we fire bombed Tokyo. It is estimated that 100 thousand Japaneses were killed in that one night of bombing alone. That is more dead than either Atomic Bomb produced. But the Japanese believed that we would have to invade and that the invasion would fail.

Had the Japanese not fallen for Truman's bluff, we would have lost as many as a million men in an invasion from the sea. Our closest base was hundreds of miles from Japan. It would have taken days for our invasion ships to reach Japan. Surprise or misdirection as was done for D Day in Europe was impossible. Truman was told we would lose a million men, and Japan would lose 4 million.

In our invasions of the pacific islands, the Japanese lost 4 times as many men as we did. That was because the Japanese would not surrender when all was lost. They refused to surrender and would fight with knives or bare hands until we killed nearly all of them.

Those that say Truman was evil for using Atomic weapons must believe that 200,000 dead Japanese and no dead Americans is worse than 4 million dead Japanese and 1 million Dead Americans.

Those that think that Iraqi's can not be made peaceful citizens, have zero knowledge of the Japanese Culture and Religion prior to 1946.

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