The BentProp Project: Providing Families Of WWII Airmen With Closure
By John J. Geoghegan

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Since Palau is located in the tropics, it rains frequently there. Temperatures range from the 80s to high 90s in February, when BentProp conducts its missions, and the humidity is high. Dehydration is the number-one problem facing BentProp’s mission specialists—but there are also insects, snakes and insufficient information to deal with. Though the ocean temperature is a typically a balmy 84 degrees, Scannon wears a Lycra skin suit when he dives because jellyfish can also be a problem.

Palau has been occupied by many different countries over the course of its history. The English came first, followed by the Spaniards and the Germans. Palau was actually a German colony during the early 20th century, but in 1914 Japan seized the colony from Germany and was allowed to keep it at the end of World War I as part of war reparations.

In addition to the combat losses and MIAs the U.S. sustained in the islands during WWII, some American POWs were executed there by the Japanese. The documentary Last Flight Home depicts this dark side of Palau’s history by telling the story of 2nd Lt. Wallace F. Kaufman, an American POW who parachuted from his stricken B-24. Kaufman landed on Palau and was captured by the Japanese, who subsequently executed him in May 1945.

The documentary tracks Scannon’s search for Lieutenant Kaufman’s lost B-24 and his quest to discover the fate and final resting place of the captured airman. At one point in the film, Scannon travels to Japan to interview Tetsuji Katsuyama, a Japanese lieutenant who was stationed on Palau at the time. General Inoue, Katsuyama’s commanding officer, gave him the “honor” of executing the captured American flier, and Last Flight Home tells the hair-raising tale of what actually happened.

“Katsuyama came from a small farming community. He’d never even held a sword,” Scannon says, recalling the interview. “He had to obey his commanding general. He didn’t have a choice.”

The filmed interview is both powerful and shocking—especially when Katsuyama comes to describe how he beheaded the American flier. “It was an emotional moment for me,” Scannon admits—no less so because Katsuyama botched the execution, leaving the prisoner mortally wounded but still alive.

Later, Scannon revealed that Katsuyama was ordered by General Inoue to commit suicide, since the United States was about to invade the islands, and the general wanted to hide any evidence of POW executions. Scannon recalls what Katsuyama told him but did not appear in the film: “A friend of Katsuyama’s took him out in the jungle after his commanding officer ordered him to commit suicide and said, ‘You don’t need to kill yourself because you’re already dead.’ Then Katsuyama’s friend showed him the body of a dead Japanese soldier and helped him to switch clothes. It would have been a severe loss of face for Katsuyama not to commit suicide.”

An old man in the documentary, Katsuyama speaks regretfully of his own actions and admiringly of the courage and dignity displayed by the American flier before he was put to death. At the end of the war, the Japanese officer was arrested, tried for his war crimes and served seven years in Tokyo’s Sugamo prison before being pardoned.

Last Flight Home also tells the story of how BentProp located and helped identify the remains of airman Arthur Miller Sr., then made sure they were brought back to his son. Arthur Jr. hadn’t really known his father while growing up, and the documentary sequence of his visit to Palau to trace his father’s end is moving.

Another striking element of the documentary is authentic aerial combat footage that was filmed in and around the skies of Palau during the war. One sequence in particular that stands out shows a B-24 losing its port wing and plummeting out of sight. There is also spectacular color footage taken from a Corsair, as well as an SB2C Helldiver’s carrier takeoff filmed from the perspective of the plane’s tail.

Tags: Aviation History, People, World War II

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