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1942 Tarawa Massacre Page 2
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Nineteen weeks later, on February 25, 1943, came the bloody conflict at Featherston army camp, serving as a camp for Japanese prisoners of war. Jack Owen was stationed there.
Dave Gillies, an officer at the camp, says the army had sought to move two Japanese officers from one compound to another. The prisoners resisted.
After a two-hour standoff while the seated prisoners refused to move, Lieutenant James Malcolm fired a warning shot and then a second shot, apparently aiming to wound an officer, which he did. The same bullet killed a man behind him. The Japanese moved; some said they were attacking the guard, others that they were scattering. The armed guard surrounded the prisoners. Thirty seconds later, 31 Japanese were dead and 91 injured. Seventeen died of their wounds. A New Zealand soldier was killed.
An investigation showed that most of the Thompson sub-machinegun rounds were fired by Corporal Jack Owen, whose nickname "Drag" came from a Hollywood Western character who was always drawing his six-shooter.
"I think Jack Owen probably helped in speeding up the Japanese wish to die for their emperor, while getting some satisfaction in avenging the ill treatment and execution of his brother, and his brother's associates," Mr Gillies says. He believes that Jack knew his brother was dead.
"Whether the corporal's contribution at Featherston was a vengeance one is a matter for conjecture in the riot," Mr Gillies says. But Japanese prisoners sensed that Jack Owen's action had been a reprisal, he says.
Guard Len James told Mike Nicolaidi in The Featherston Chronicles that Jack Owen fired on the prisoners; from behind, "mowing, them down".
Charles's daughter was horn on Maiana after her father was executed. Jack adopted her. Now Charlotte Owen lives in Canada and has known all her life the truth behind Featherson. "Uncle Jack was the man. The whole family knew, but it was never really spoken of."
Jack Owen is dead. The question is, when he fired on those Japanese, did he know of his brother's murder 19 weeks earlier? Officially he could have known only that Charles was missing. But information moved through the lines. The Gilbertese did travel and the story could have made it to the Ellice Islands, then to Fiji. Some of the men Mr Morgan had trained as radio operators had been designated to go to Suva. At least one got through, turning up at Suva's post office.
One of the soldiers executed was Rod McKenzie, from Piopio. His cousin, Norman McKenzie, was with the Fiji commandos in the Solomons and he says they knew the truth long before it was public. "The high commission arranged for the escape of its employees, the three district officers, but nobody took responsibility for the coastwatchers", he says.
"Even after the Japanese had taken the three northern atolls, they did nothing about the men who were civilians. They could have legally been shot as, spies for what they were doing."
John Jones says there was time to get the men out. It was "the ultimate blatant waste of so many young lives by the New Zealand government's absolute refusal to extricate them".
Tarawa is a sacred name in the United States. In three days, 6000 men died on its blasted sands. When the Americans built a memorial, the service included a platoon from Viti ~ the only commemoration for the 22 massacred.
What happened to the bodies of the 22 victims of the Tarawa massacre? Eriato Ueantabo, whose wife, Tio, is the daughter of murdered soldier Joe Parker, said last year that he was with an Australian man who in 1991 had dug up four bodies, that he had said were coastwatchers from New Zealand. The man was Alan McCarthy, a relative of executed radio operator John McCarthy of Auckland.
Mr McCarthy says he had not wanted to dig up the bodies, but merely verify what locals had told him - that there had been a mass grave.
"You could see the heads had been cut off."
The New Zealand high commissioner at the time, John Mills, doubts that the bones were those of New Zealanders. Perhaps it is best, he says, to leave the bodies alone.
A US Central Identification Laboratory team, acting on a tip from an old man, has found a mass grave of 20 US Marines. Colonel David Pagano says their war dead are American heroes. "They gave up their lives for the country and they deserve to be brought back to America for proper burial," he says. "There is a commitment in our organisation to today's service members that if, God forbid, they should fail, their country will bring them home."
Top of pageNew Zealand's attitude is the opposite -- though the pain of most of the families is so acute it's as though the executions were yesterday.
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