Author's Notes: Sgt. William A. Kenel, U. S. Army Air Corps, was among the 12,000 American soldiers who were surrendered to the Japanese at the tip of the Bataan Peninsula on April 9, 1942, during World War II. He survived the infamous Bataan Death March where over 1,000 soldiers perished during the nine-day, 55-mile long trek, and the brutality of Cabanatuan Prison. On October 11, 1944, he, along with 1774 other prisoners was crammed, at bayonet point, into the cargo hold of an unmarked Japanese "Hell " ship, the Arisan Maru, that sailed from Manila, Philippine Islands to the Japanese mainland. On October 24, 1944, the vessel was sunk by the American submarine, the U.S.S. Snook in the South China Sea. The captain of that ship committed suicide when he learned that his torpedoes had killed over 1500 men who had been chained in the cargo hold of the Japanese ship. For his valor, my uncle was awarded the Purple Heart posthumously. He had been a prisoner of war for thirty-one months. He was twenty-four years old when he perished.

My father, Daniel Matthew Kenel, was a man of quiet strength and dignity. By his very nature, he was a man of few words. Never was this truer than when someone brought up his brother, Bill. My father had great difficulty speaking of his younger brother, "Bodie;" his passing left a tremendous gaping hole in the heart of my father's family.

The reference to the dawn in line 23 is from my uncle to my grandparents, Anton and Lucy Kenel. "There is still beauty in a sunrise and a sunset," my uncle wrote on a Red Cross card that he was allowed to send to my grandparents during his internment in Cabanatuan. Since prisoners dared not write of their infirmities, this was his way of letting his loved ones know he still had his eyesight. My father remembers my grandfather saying, "At least we know Bodie can still see."

Yet, twenty-six years later, in 1970, when I was a senior in high school, my father welcomed into our family a Japanese exchange student, Natsumi Murakami, whose father had been a guard in the Japanese Imperial Army - stationed at the Imperial House of Japan under Hirohito. It was my mother's idea for our family to host an exchange student. When my mother shared that our student would be Japanese, my father was silent for a moment, and then he said the words that remain for me to this day the ultimate testimony of forgiveness, "It is time that we all heal." Natsumi Murakami lived with our family for an entire year. We all came to dearly love her...

That in itself is the triumph and legacy of my uncle's life. . .and perhaps, my father's as well...

Diane Kenel-Truelove 1/9/2019

Photograph of a northern Michigan October sunrise compliments of Google Images.

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