TUGGLE-ROBERT

 

WAR  CRIME  VICTIM

 

Excerpts from article published in Stars and Stripes on June 24, 2001:

 

Three American aviators are shot down over a tiny island off Okinawa, captured by the Japanese Imperial Navy in 1945, dragged through the island’s main village and tortured.  Forced to kneel before two holes, two Americans are beheaded.  The other crewmember faces an even harsher fate as he is beaten, tied to a tree and stabbed by bamboo spears for bayonet practice. 

 

The trio was LT Vernon L. Tebo, pilot, ARM1 Warren H. Loyd, radioman, and AOM1 Robert Tuggle Jr., rear gunner.  The trio had flown their Grumman TBM Avenger bomber from the USS Makassar Strait (CVE-91) on the morning of April 15, 1945, with the mission of taking photos of the Japanese Imperial Navy’s Airfield on the island of Ishigaki.  The island is 265 miles south of Okinawa and was a base for Japanese Kamikazes.  Although they encountered no Japanese fighter planes, intense antiaircraft fire damaged their plane forcing them to parachute into the water near the island.  They were able to swim to a coral reef where Japanese sailors quickly captured them.  The trio was taken to the Japanese headquarters where they were interrogated, tortured and then killed.  After Japan surrendered the aviators’ bodies were cremated in an attempt to destroy evidence of the killings and their ashes were placed in cans and sunk to the sea bottom.  The Imperial Navy ordered the 32,000 local residents to forget the incident. 

 

However, Takeo Shinohara, a professor at the University of the Ryukus learned of the incident and was determined to make sure the aviators rest in peace.  He contacted American officials and his efforts were successful when a monument to honor the three aviators was dedicated on Ishigaki on August 15, 2001, in the presence of U.S. officials, former crewmates and representatives of the slain aviators’ families.  Shinohara said “When I came upon accounts of this incident I didn’t know what to do because it was too cruel and ruthless.  Not knowing what to do, my first reaction was to try to make believe that I did not find it out.  But I couldn’t.  It haunted me and I knew that I would suffer for the rest of my life if I did not take any action.”  The executions were revealed in February 1947 when one of the Japanese sailors forced to take part in the killings wrote an anonymous letter to the U.S. occupation forces in Tokyo.  Following an investigation of the war crimes, seven men who played major roles were hanged.  The Ishigaki Monument in honor of the slain airmen stands on land overlooking Iriomote Island, near the ocean where the three men’s ashes were disposed.  At the memorial dedication a local resident who led the group of island residents in efforts to build the memorial read, “We, the people of Ishigaki, hope the three Americans rest in peace.”

 

Robert Tuggle Jr. was born on January 4, 1925, in Eastland, Texas.  He graduated from Brownwood High School and enlisted in the Navy in 1943.  In April 1945 he was serving with Composite Squadron 97 aboard the USS Makassar Strait.  He was one of the two heroic airmen to be beheaded on Ishigaki on April 15, 1945.  AOM1 Tuggle and his two crewmates were also honored on June 18, 2011, with memorial plaques at the National Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg, Texas

 

Submitted by CDR Roy A. Mosteller, USNR (Ret)