Hawaii marker to honor hundreds of WWII prisoners of war
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Daniel Crowley, a 96-year-old U.S. Army Air Corps veteran from World War II who was held by Japan as a prisoner of war in the Philippines and Japan, speaks during an interview in Honolulu.
A 96-year-old former U.S. Army veteran who was held prisoner by Japan during World War II will help dedicate a memorial stone to other prisoners of war at a national cemetery in Honolulu.
Daniel Crowley is due to participate in the ceremony Wednesday at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific.
The memorial stone will honor about 400 men killed when a Japanese ship transporting them from the Philippines to Japan was bombed by U.S. pilots who didn’t know Allied POWs were on board.
Today, the men are interred in 20 graves marked as “unknowns” at the Honolulu cemetery.
Conditions on board the ships transporting prisoners to Japan were so horrific the Americans called them “hellships.”
