On Veterans Day, One World War II POW Is Still Seeking Justice

Lester Tenney

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The Japanese tortured me. The American government refused me restitution.

For seventy years I dealt with my PTSD by looking forward, or as I say, “for the next carabao.” This is how I learned to survive the Bataan Death March and over three years of brutal captivity on the Philippines and Japan. It is a lesson I like to share.

After the surrender of Bataan to the Japanese in April 1942, 70,000 American and Filipino troops began a sixty-five-mile forced march up the Bataan Peninsula. We walked in the tropical heat with no food, little water and rare relief. I bear a shoulder wound from a botched beheading.

From time to time, we passed carabao, the water buffalo that is the national animal of the Philippines, trying to keep cool in swamps and rice paddies. I knew that once I saw one carabao, there would be another one up the road. If I could just make it to the next carabao and then the next, I would make it to the end.

I made it through the March and through the ordeals of the next three-and-a-half years. But we surviving POWs are still looking for the last carabao.

Seven years ago, on Veterans Day 2008, I found the next one. I had just completed laying the American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor’s last memorial wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington National Cemetery. As I started to leave, my cell phone rang. It was Japan’s ambassador to the United States, Ichiro Fujisaki. He asked to see me.

For decades, I had harbored anger and resentment toward both the Japanese who tortured me and the American government that refused me justice. The Army prohibited me from talking about the horrors I endured, and the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty barred me from seeking redress for my slave labor. Multimillion-dollar lobbying campaigns by Japan and a White House intent on protecting its Japanese ally stymied all Congressional efforts to help the POWs.

It is hard to explain my excitement at the call. Never before had any Japanese official been willing to meet with a former POW. My wife and I took a taxi directly from the cemetery to the ambassador’s residence.

Ambassador Fujisaki met us at the door. In an extraordinary gesture, Mrs. Fujisaki met us with a bow and extended both her hands. She then led us on a tour of her home. She stayed with her husband to listen. A Washington “Japan hand” told me not to smile. That was advice I ignored.