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War often is bred out of the least attractive human traits.
And yet, war also can bring out the best qualities in those involved.
It can forge strong friendships that transcend time and distance; friendships that can bring comfort to the family of a fallen comrade after half a century has passed; friendships such as the one that developed between Benny Kenzo Takatsu, then a teen-age Japanese orphan, and Pvt. Robert Tait of Bar Harbor, also a teen-ager, who died in a prisoner of war camp in Korea in 1951.
Thanks to technology, Takatsu, who still lives in Japan, has been able to help the family of Bobby Tait bring a sense of closure to a painful chapter in their lives.
Through the Internet and the telephone, the family also has forged a new link in that friendship, a link that will be strengthened this week when Takatsu visits Maine.
The story of Bobby Tait and Benny Takatsu begins with World War II.
Takatsu was just 10 when Japan went to war. His father had died several years earlier, and by the time the war ended his mother also was dead.
After 1945, U.S. troops remained in Japan as occupation forces while the defeated country began its recovery.
In a small book he has written, Takatsu described how he survived in postwar Japan, living for a time with relatives and selling small items on the black market to stay alive. He gravitated to Camp Crawford in Makomanai, where he began working for the GIs in the occupation forces doing laundry and shining shoes. It was at Camp Crawford that Kenzo Takatsu was given the nickname “Benny,” and it was there that he met Pvt. Bobby Tait.
Tait also grew up as a child of World War II. Both his father and older stepbrother served during that war, and it seemed natural for Bobby Tait to follow in their foot-steps. In 1948, the 17-year-old enlisted in the Army and was inducted at Dow Air Force Base in Bangor. He was assigned to the 57th Field Artillery Battalion and shipped out to Japan.
Benny Takatsu’s first contacts with the occupation forces gave him a different view of American soldiers from what he had expected.
“Military propaganda had made us believe Allied soldiers were cruel and frightening,” Takatsu said Tuesday in an interview by e-mail, “but we discovered for ourselves that they were friendly and kind. The more we learned, the more we liked an American democracy. They treated me like a human, and Bobby Tait treated me like a real brother. Until recently I had never known that he was the same age with me. I thought he was much older.”
The Korean War began on June 25, 1950, when troops from communist-ruled North Korea invaded South Korea. U.S. troops, including Tait’s unit in Japan, were ordered to Korea to join other U.N. forces, and Benny Takatsu was prepared to go with them.
“If I didn’t go, I knew I would lose my job and starve to death,” he said. “When we learned that we were departing for war, [Tait] gave me a haircut like an American Indian, so I knew he was going to take me to Korea.”
Takatsu hid on Tait’s weapons carrier, then stowed away on a merchant marine ship. He was discovered onboard and feared he would be handed over to the Japanese harbor police. But Tait and his friends intervened and Takatsu continued on to Korea. The Americans outfitted him with a uniform complete with helmet and an M-2 carbine.
The unit was part of the amphibious landing at Inchon that became a turning point in the war. The troops moved inland and eventually into the North Korean mountains near the Chosin Reservoir. It was there that an estimated 120,000 Chinese troops, backed by North Korean troops, attacked about 15,000 Allied forces, many of them strung out along a stalled convoy.
The battle at Chosin Reservoir was bloody with heavy casualties on both sides, and the Allied forces eventually withdrew from North Korea. Takatsu was wounded in the battle but found his way back to a Marine encampment, where he received treatment. Tait and other members of his unit were captured and taken to a prisoner of war camp where Tait died in 1951.
Until this year, the Tait family had little other information about Pvt. Robert Tait.
The latest chapter in this story began about a year ago as Milan Tait of Bucksport tried to master his computer.
Tait never knew his uncle; he was born two years after Bobby died in the Korean POW camp. But he knew that his uncle’s death and the lack of information had weighed heavily on members of his family.
“I started to think that maybe I could find out some information about my uncle,” he said. “I just wanted to be able to tell my aunt what happened to her brother.”
He wrote a letter to a Korean War veterans magazine asking if anyone had any information about his uncle.
“About three months went by and then one day the phone rang,” Tait said. “I spent the next 45 minutes listening and crying.”
The call had come from Takatsu, who put Milan Tait in touch with Sgt. Maj. John Logan in South Carolina. Logan was a member of the 57th Battalion and was in the same POW barracks as Bobby Tait.
Logan was in the bunk next to Tait the day he died.
It was through Logan that the family learned that Tait had been wounded during the battle. Military records indicated only that Tait had died of malnutrition, lack of medical care and exposure.
“For 50 years, we didn’t really know very much about what happened,” said Teresa MacQuinn, Robert Tait’s younger sister. “The government didn’t tell us much. There was no body and no private burial. We really didn’t have any closure.”
She said being able to talk with Takatsu and Logan about her brother had made a difference.
“It makes it feel like my brother is almost alive to me,” she said. “There’s closure there. At least we now have some idea of what happened to him.”
The information from Logan did more than ease the Tait family members’ minds. About a month ago, MacQuinn received her brother’s Purple Heart in the mail. According to Milan Tait, other citations are on their way.
The story might have ended there, except for the fact Benny Takatsu has felt a sense of duty to his comrades from the Battle of Chosin Reservoir. Over the years, he has collected information about the Korean War and that battle in particular. He has been involved with various veterans organizations and is a member of the Chosin Few, an organization for the survivors of the Chosin Reservoir battle.
Takatsu not only has provided information to the family, but has sent gifts from Korea, including T-shirts bearing a photograph of Robert Tait that none of the family had seen before.
He also has sent a videotape of the former Camp Crawford in Japan.
“My aunt was able to see the old camp, the old officers’ club and the enlisted men’s club, the barracks where my uncle had lived, the paths that my uncle had walked. She was able to see where Uncle Bobby had lived,” Milan Tait said. “And he had the decency to do that. He’s a remarkable man as far as I’m concerned and I haven’t even met him yet.”
Takatsu explains his actions as a debt he owes the GIs who were kind to him.
“Many GIs, they showed kindness and I thought I should do something for them. I must reply to them for their kindness,” Takatsu said Tuesday. “I know how they feel about their loved one who died in a faraway place and I should do something to comfort his family. That’s about the only thing I can do.”
Takatsu was scheduled to arrive in Portland on Friday evening. The Tait family plans to greet him like a long lost relative.
He will spend the night with Bobby Tait’s sister, Teresa MacQuinn. After a brief trip to Nova Scotia, he will return to spend several days with the Tait family before he takes part in ceremonies Aug. 18-20 in Bangor marking the start of the Korean War.
During that weekend, Takatsu will be “inducted” into the Tait family during a family gathering,.
“This is the biggest thing that’s happened to my family in my life,” Tait said. “As far as I’m concerned, he’s family. He’s the uncle I never had.”
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