Commonwealth cemetery

The American Battle Monuments Commission manages 26 cemeteries in foreign countries. There are roughly 140,000 U.S. personnel buried overseas, with another 61,000 MIA who are honored.

My guess is that when France hosts the Olympics in 2024, we'll hear about some of them. France alone has 12 of these cemeteries from the two World Wars, honoring 60,000 Americans buried within its borders and 7,000 missing-in-action. [Source]

However, you won’t see anything like that this year, despite the Olympics taking place here in Japan. That’s because there are no U.S. battle cemeteries here. There’s a reason for that.

On August 6th, 1945, we dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. On August 9th, we dropped another in Nagasaki. Japan surrendered shortly after, so the U.S. never had to invade the main Japanese islands.

With no massive battles, there are no massive graveyards. Although the two cemeteries in the Philippines reflect the massive loss of life there, with over 26,000 KIA and 36,000 MIA, the Americans who died within Japan proper were typically prisoners of war.

As a result, there's no dedicated U.S. cemetery. The closest thing we have is a memorial located within the Commonwealth War Cemetery near Yokohama (英連邦戦士墓地, Eirenpo Senshi Bochi). There, the remains of about 1500 soldiers from Commonwealth nations are buried, and the ashes of nearly 50 Americans who had died as prisoners of war are kept in a communal urn.
The Olympics were *supposed* to happen in 2020, with August 6th and 9th of that year marking the 75th anniversary of the atomic bombings. COVID19 didn’t allow things to happen that way -- instead, the Olympics are a year late, which kind of threw off the timing.

Nevertheless, I felt it appropriate to spend my Saturday morning -- on *this* particular weekend -- at the Commonwealth War Memorial. First, to honor the Americans who died as POWs. And second, to recognize the cost that the Japanese and Korean residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki paid so that there didn’t *need* to be a massive American graveyard here.

누군가가 그런 끔찍한 대가를 치러야 한다는 것이 유감스럽습니다.

誰かがこのようなひどい代償を払わなければならないというのが残念です。

I regret that anyone would have to pay such a terrible price.