The camp is gone
Last September, Rick Szczepanski and Dawne Clay arrived in Tokyo with six others from the defenders group. Japan covered all expenses for the weeklong stay — travel, hotels, meals, guides — totaling about $20,000 per person, Rick said.
They met with Japan’s parliamentary vice minister of foreign affairs, who told Rick, “This is what we have of your father’s,” and handed him a copy of Joe Szczepanski’s POW index card, which even has his parents’ names and home address. Rick was surprised the card existed, and was elated to have it. Dawne got one, too, but was disappointed. It has little more than “MU,” for Mukden.
On Kyushu, near Omuta, Rick stood where barracks once housed his dad and 1,800 other Allied prisoners. Nothing remains of Fukuoka Camp 17. He saw only a massive black mound in the distance, part of a coal storage site. He wanted to know about the Mitsui coal mine, where his dad did exhaustive, dangerous work under abusive civilians.
“Where is the mine?” Rick asked, and he was surprised at how close to the camp it was — less than a mile. He went there with his guide, a researcher, two other Japanese and a friend whose father was among hundreds of POWs rescued from Cabanatuan in the Great Raid, celebrated in the 2005 film of the same name. The mine is closed, but the entrance, buildings and some equipment are still there.
“I had studied so much on it, but the mine had an impact on me,” Rick said. “It filled in missing pieces.”
What struck him most was seeing the vehicle that took the POW laborers down into the mine, how crude it was. He imagined his dad riding in it, disappearing into the depths.
On the main island of Honshu, Dawne visited the Kyoto Museum of World Peace and heard a talk by a Japanese history professor. The woman said something that left Dawne livid. Even after she came home, she was so angry that she didn’t want to talk about it. It was about the Unit 731 doctors.
“Those bastards got off scot-free,” Dawne said. “She showed me a picture of them. It really took me over the edge.”
After the war, the United States made a secret deal with the Unit 731 doctors and their leader, granting them immunity in exchange for the results of their research.
“It infuriated me that our government would hide this,” Dawne said. “Why didn’t they make the families aware of it?”
As disturbing as that revelation was, her journey to her father’s past has given her some peace.
“It has helped me to understand why he was the way he was,” she said.
Rick’s study of his dad’s ordeal has given him an encyclopedic grasp of the details. Asked what Joe suffered from, he responded in seconds: dry beriberi, dysentery, malaria, parasites in his blood, a hernia, a broken nose, a busted jaw with loss of teeth, a broken instep from purposely smashing his foot, and later, neurosis stemming from beriberi and lung cancer linked to a spot found on his lung when he was repatriated.
Rick has also found satisfaction in sharing information with relatives of POWs who crossed paths with his dad.
“So many died in World War II, and a lot of families never had an answer to what happened,” he said. “It makes me feel so great that I’m able to help others.”
But as with Dawne, his greatest reward has been a better understanding of his father. Summing it up, he said: “I love you, Dad. I just never knew you.”
David Venditta is a freelance writer for The Morning Call.