Pacific Side

Tomorrow is Memorial Day, when we honor all who have pledged their lives in the service of their country. World War II was one of those tumultuous periods of history where most of the globe was rocked by events and changes that continue to determine major aspects of the lives of people today. Had it not been for World War II, I probably would not have grown up in Taiwan. That alone would have made for a vastly different life experience on my part. Right now my housemate Utsunomiya Tomohiro is writing a history paper on the assigned topic of whether or not the United States should have dropped the atomic bomb on Japan. Tomo is from Hiroshima. Needless to say, the course of his life was also affected by the War, even though he had not been born either. Both our fathers' fathers played relatively minor roles in the events of their times, but today the impact of those years of their lives is still felt in the experience of their children and grandchildren. Consider this an attempt at documenting not the broad, impersonal dynamics of political history but the life stories of two men whose worlds collided and have now come to coexist within our small apartment.

Utsunomiya Shigeharu (宇都宮茂春) was born around 1916 in Kure, Hiroshima, Japan. His father was Japanese and his mother was German. In the Meiji (明治) and Taishō (大正) periods, national modernization efforts brought a massive influx of European experts in various fields, predominantly from the German Empire, and she may have been the daughter of a foreign advisor. Shigeharu's parents eloped, and soon after birth he was left to the care of relatives in Hiroshima. His parents moved to Tokyo and were never heard from again. They were presumed to have been killed in the magnitude 8.3 earthquake that ravaged Kantō in 1923. Shigeharu was raised by family in Hiroshima and then conscripted into the army at age 19 and sent to Manchuria. The Japanese military had entered Manchuria in 1931 and established the state of Manchukuo (満州国) under the puppet leadership of Puyi (溥儀), the last emperor of the Qing (清) dynasty of China who had been deposed when the Republic of China was established in 1911. The pacification of the region required continued military action through the following decade. The colonial setting of Manchukuo produced some fascinating cultural hybrids, such as Li Xianglan (李香蘭), a Japanese singer born and raised in Manchuria who everyone believed to be Chinese until the end of the War. Her songs mixed Chinese and Japanese language to promote the peaceful coexistence of colonizer and colonized. To this day, her music is iconic of that era. After returning to Japan, Shigeharu married. He liked the wide open spaces of Manchuria though and the priorities of the Empire played a role, so he moved back there with his wife soon after. Their first son was born there and they continued to reside in Manchuria through the end of the War. When Hiroshima was destroyed by the nuclear bombing of 6 August 1945, many of their relatives were affected by the blast. Shigeharu, his wife, and son survived the explosion by the simple chance they lived overseas at the time. On 9 August 1945, the Russian Soviets began their invasion of Manchuria from the north, and his family was forced to flee back to Japan. After the War ended, he taught kendo in the mountains outside of Hiroshima.

Carl Boyd Powell was born on 25 November 1921 in West Decatur, Pennsylvania, the second boy in a family of six sons and two daughters. Raised on a farm, he also worked out West as a teenager with the Civilian Conservation Corp during the Great Depression. His older brother Eldon joined the U.S. Army Air Corps (predecessor of the U.S. Air Force) as a pilot before World War II. Eldon was based in Panama for a time and would write home about his experiences. When the U.S. entered the War, Eldon was a second lieutenant (ASN: O-428763), but on 4 April 1942, he was killed when his plane malfunctioned on a flight out of Romulus Army Airfield (Wayne County Airport) near Detroit, Michigan. Eldon's death was hard on the family, but on 3 September 1942, Carl enlisted in the Army (ASN: 13084174). He was sent first to England and then served as an anti-aircraft searchlight operator with the 505th Coast Artillery on the campaigns through North Africa, Sicily, and Italy. The unit provided artillery cover for the landings at Salerno in September 1943 and at Anzio in January 1944. The journals from his tour of duty record a lot of volleyball games, ice cream, movies, letters, lectures he gave on job-related topics, and church services as well. After returning to the U.S. briefly in 1944, he was shipped out again to the Philippines with the 429th Field Artillery and continued to serve in Luzon through the surrender of Japan on 2 September 1945. He was discharged with the rank of sergeant on 10 January 1946 in Fort Knox, Kentucky. For his service, he received the exceptional honor of the Presidential Unit Citation as well as the European African Middle Eastern Campaign Medal, Asiatic Pacific Campaign Medal, Philippine Liberation Medal, World War II Victory Medal, and American Campaign Medal. After the War, he completed a degree at Columbia Bible School in Columbia, South Carolina. He married and had three kids. He worked as a teacher in schools, a leader at church, and on and off for the Bureau of Printing and Engraving in Washington, D.C. In the aftermath of the War, a group of men and women who had served in the military came together to form the Far Eastern Gospel Crusade (FEGC), a Christian mission organization focused on church development in Japan and the Philippines. In 1960, the vision expanded to include Taiwan and gradually other areas of the world as well. After his experience in the Philippines during the War, Carl wanted to return there in a reconstructive role, and he and my grandmother applied to work with FEGC. Their application did not work out due to health reasons, but their home was one that placed great importance on fulfilling the call of the Great Commission. As a result, my own father is one of very few people I have ever met who knew from the beginning what he wanted to do and followed through on it every step of the way in his education, his marriage, and his career. In 1981, FEGC changed the organization name to SEND International, and my parents began discussions with SEND about going to the Philippines. In the end, the decision was made that they would go to Taiwan.

I never met Carl Powell. Tomohiro never met Utsunomiya Shigeharu. Both men passed away before we were born, but were it not for the unique courses of events that both their lives followed during the War years, Tomo would not be around today and I never would have ever set a foot in Taiwan let alone spent most of my life there. This Memorial Day, I'm telling my story here. Tomo is telling his in his history paper, while defending the view that the atomic bomb was a necessary evil required to expedite the end of the War and spare Japan and the U.S. the further cost in human lives that a land invasion would have entailed. Together we honor the memory of our grandfathers we never met.