Re: Enemies at War, Friends for Life

Date: June 24, 2004

"Enemies at war, friends for life

Former U.S., Japanese officers reunite in Pacific

SAIPAN, Northern Mariana Islands — When he first met John Rich, Takeo Sato, a 25-year-old Japanese Imperial Navy officer, had just been pulled shell-shocked from the ruins of a sniper cave.

Placed on a volcanic rock, he braced himself for interrogation by Rich, a battle-hardened 26-year-old U.S. Marine.

“I expected that as a captured enemy soldier, someone would hit me,” Sato recalled last week. “But John-san was a real gentleman. He was very levelheaded. He was not forceful.”

Giving his side of the story, Rich, a former first lieutenant, said: “We realized we had a very intelligent and wonderful man.”

That first encounter — a prisoner interrogation as the sun set over the Western Pacific — began a friendship that has spanned six decades. It was this lasting bond, between onetime victor and onetime vanquished, that brought Sato, now 85, and Rich, now 86, back to Saipan last week for the 60th anniversary of the start of the battle that broke the back of Japanese military power in the Pacific.

In the fighting that raged for 25 days over the 72-square-mile volcanic island, about 30,000 Japanese and 3,144 American soldiers were killed, and 10,952 Americans were wounded.

For the 40 American veterans who traveled to Saipan, about 3,700 miles west of Hawaii, it was not the numbers but the faces that brought them here.

Perhaps the most singular reunited pair has been the former Japanese prisoner of war and his onetime American interrogator.

“Takeo is a great guy, one of my best friends,” Rich said, grasping the hand of the man who once was his captive. “Wars end. People can get along right, if you treat them right.”

— The New York Times"