Mobile Museum | Asan Wall | Gov Reception

Jennings Bunn, Loren 'PeeWee' Day, Takashi Sato, Darrell Doss,
Elmer Mapes, Carlisle Evans.
This day was the first time some of the American veterans had met a Japanese veteran of the Guam campaign.

Liberation 1999

Returning veterans to the 55th Liberation Day commemoration events on Guam were treated to many events, including receptions at Governor Carl T.C. Gutierrez's home, among them a breakfast prior to the July 21 parade along Marine Drive.

Joe Lauer served on Guam in 1945-46. He brought a book of notes and phrases he made during his time among the Chamorros and overseeing Japanese POWs working in a cement plant. Lauer reads aloud to Takashi Sato some of the Japanese and Chamorro phrases he learned and wrote phonetically...still able to pronounce them, 55 years
later!

Joining the Marines that morning at the breakfast, was Mr. Takashi Sato, a Japanese veteran of the Guam campaign. Mr. Sato has returned often to the island in search of l the American doctor who saved his life in 1944 by operating on him in the field.  Mr. Darrell Doss, the leader of this year's American veteran group and a frequent Guam returnee from Iowa, had been in letter correspondence with Mr. Sato and suggested they meet on Guam  this year. Mr. Sato was accompanied to the governor's breakfast by Mr. Jennings Bunn, the Marianas Military Museum's director.

Joe Banek, American 77th Army veteran of the Guam campaign,  showed Takashi Sato, Imperial Japanese Army Lieutenant veteran of the Guam campaign, Japanese hand painted art and poetry on a cloth he had been handed  through a barbed wire fence by a Japanese prisoner of war.	Darrell Doss introduces Mr. Takashi Sato to the Governor of Guam, Mr. Carl T.C. Gutierrez, and the visiting American veterans.	Darrell Doss and Takashi Sato share breakfast as they compare information about the 1944 Guam campaign, seen from two very different perspectives.