ALUMNI IN THE NEWS
Of Pain and Penpals
Yuko Tojo Iwanami, granddaughter of General Tojo, is greeted by ex-marine Corydon Wagner ’43 at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. Photo by Barry Wong/The Seattle Times
Cordy Wagner ’43, an ex-marine who lives near Tacoma, Washington, played host in April to the granddaughter of General Hideki Tojo, the Japanese wartime premier who ordered the attack on Pearl Harbor. The friendship is an unlikely one: Yuko Tojo Iwanami long harbored ill feelings toward the U.S.-led Allies who executed her grandfather for war crimes; Cordy saw some of the fiercest action of the Pacific at Peleliu and Okinawa [“Cordy’s Ridge,” Winter 1996] and lost many friends at the hands of the Japanese. Six years ago, Cordy went back to Peleliu to find the last Japanese command post of that battle. Inside, he found the bones of two Japanese soldiers who had committed suicide rather than surrender. They had been discovered since the war, but never moved. Cordy arranged to have the bones returned to Japan. The gesture led Iwanami to write to Cordy and express her gratitude. An exchange of letters began. During that time, Iwanami’s heart softened toward Americans. She was touched by Cordy’s “largemindedness,” she said. Reconciliation is the reasonable response of responsible people,” Cordy said. “Humanity and feelings for people ultimately win out over hate.” “For a long, long time, the war was so horrible you never thought about it,” Cordy told the News Tribune. “Now, I think about it a lot. I think about it almost every day. You think about the friends you made and lost.” He said his friendship with Iwanami prompted some soulsearching at first: “I never would have dreamt this. I just kind of have to hold myself back and think it through—am I being disloyal to my beliefs or friends that I served with?” But Cordy said he’s convinced that his friendship with Iwanami can serve as an example of how bitter foes can reconcile, regardless of what has happened in the past. “We’re a small, shrinking world,” he told the Seattle Times. “We must get along better than we have in the past. These episodes maybe are there as part of some grand design…. There’s some healing in all this. They used to be the enemy. It’s a wonderful end to World War II for me.”
Jonathan Read ’74, chairman of Park Plaza Worldwide Hotels, meets with Yasir Arafat this spring to sign a joint venture for five hotels in Palestine.
22
Summer 1999
Source: Jake Batsell, Seattle Times, and Dani Dodge, The News Tribune