Prisoners Of War

DHAHRAN, Saudi Arabia -- War is no picnic, but Iraqi prisoners in U.S. custody can at least be assured of hot food, showers, soccer games and, coming soon, big-screen television.Standard British accommodations include individual toilets and bunk beds. There are also showers, three hot meals a day and top-of-the-line British S-10 gas masks, better than those many troops have been issued.And for those Iraqis who are Christians, Saudi Arabian prison camps are allowing them a measure of religious freedom that has been largely denied to Western allied forces throughout this Muslim land.

When pilot George W. Holdefer was sitting aboard a ship "off some port in England" at the end of World War II, he recalled what life had been like in Stalag Luft 13, a POW camp at Langwasser, a district of Nuremberg. "As I sit here with my belly full, I can clearly remember the days at Nuremberg when we got up in the morning to a cup of coffee, usually without sugar or milk, and two slices of bread with something spread on them as thin as possible," he wrote in a fuller detailed account of his days as a prisoner of war. Holdefer, a retired civil engineer, was 87 when he died last month at the Edenwald retirement community in Towson.

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba -- Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld flew into this contentious little corner of his domain yesterday to demonstrate his conviction that the United States is doing exactly the right thing with its 158 detainees from Afghanistan. "They are not prisoners of war," he said. And despite qualms in the State Department and intense criticism from abroad, "they will not be determined to be prisoners of war." The detainees are being treated as if they are protected by the Geneva Convention -- which they are not, Rumsfeld said.

George W. Holdefer, a retired civil engineer who during World War II flew Boeing B-17 Flying Fortresses, became a prisoner of war after his plane was damaged over Germany and recorded his experiences in a diary, died March 10 of multiple organ failure at the Edenwald retirement community. The former Campus Hills and Mays Chapel resident was 87. Mr. Holdefer, the son of an American Can Co. engineer and a homemaker, was born in Baltimore and raised near Patterson Park. After graduating from Polytechnic Institute in 1942, he enlisted in the Army Air Forces and was trained as a B-17 pilot at an airbase in Bradenton, Fla. He joined the 8th Air Force 486th Heavy Bomb Group based at Sudbury, England, northeast of London.

TOKYO -- "The shame of our history is now going abroad," says Tadashi Kosho, who has spent his life studying the use of slave labor by Japanese companies during the war. Enter Edward Fagan, a New York lawyer and world-class embarrasser. The man who shamed Swiss bankers and German industrialists into stumping up billions of dollars for their wartime offenses now plans to take on the might of Japanese industry. Launched late last year on the anniversary of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, Fagan's class-action lawsuit charges Mitsubishi Corporation, Mitsui & Company and Nippon Steel with violations of human rights, the use of forced labor and unjust enrichment.

Those al-Qaida guys at Guantanamo may not be prisoners of war, but they sure aren't prisoners of peace. Just 'cause Enron shredded documents doesn't prove it had anything to hide, right? Kmart sought bankruptcy protection and Amazon.com reported its first quarterly profit on the same day, so dotcomery may be here to stay. All things considered, the Ravens had a pretty good season.

Beginning today, the Naval Academy Museum will present an exhibit honoring prisoners of war from the Vietnam War. The exhibit, Open Doors: Vietnam POWs 30 Years Later, includes photographs and narrative profiles of 30 former prisoners of war, including nine Naval Academy graduates. Among them are 1996 vice presidential candidate Vice Adm. James B. Stockdale, who graduated in 1947, and U.S. Sen. John McCain, a 1958 graduate. Photographer Taylor Baldwin Kiland and writer Jamie Howren Quinn put together the exhibit, which is sponsored by the Coronado Museum of History and Art in California.

WASHINGTON - Despite President Bush's assertion that the al-Qaida and Taliban detainees at Guantanamo are not prisoners of war, this may not be the final word on the matter. Bush said Monday he would "listen to all the legalisms" on the captives' status "and announce my decision when I make it." One of the key questions he faces is whether the detainees fall under the protection of the Third Geneva Convention of 1949, the internationally recognized rules governing the treatment of captives in armed conflicts.

THE UNITED STATES should maintain the same standards of treatment of Taliban and al-Qaida prisoners that it would demand for any U.S. citizens taken prisoner by another country. This principle may be argued as pure ethics, as common sense in the real world of reciprocity or as public relations in the unending battle for the high ground in world opinion. Those three perspectives are not unrelated. In practical terms, this means complying with the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war. It means complying with the advice of investigators from the International Committee of the Red Cross.

A plan that would have resulted in an exchange of 6,400 detainees and prisoners of war by all three sides in the Bosnian war has in effect collapsed. New conditions on accounting for missing people that were set by the warring parties caused the plan to be delayed pending new negotiations.The boom of artillery and tank fire echoed in the hills around SARAJEVO as government troops battled Serbian besiegers. At least 10 people were killed and 50 were wounded, officials reported.As shelling increased in Sarajevo, United Nations engineers set out in hopes of restoring electricity to the city, which has been without power for nearly two weeks and could soon be without water.

John H. "Jack" Meyers Sr., a retired Domino Sugar supervisor and decorated World War II veteran who was commander of a state ex-prisoner of war group, died of cancer Thursday at the Baltimore Washington Medical Center. The Glen Burnie resident was 86. Born in Baltimore and raised in Ferndale, he was a 1942 graduate of Glen Burnie High School and played football for the Linthicum Heights Athletic Association. He joined the Army during World War II and trained with an infantry unit in Africa.

Edwin S. Huson, a career member of the Maryland National Guard and a World War II prisoner of war, died Wednesday of interstitial fibrosis at the Upper Chesapeake Medical Center in Bel Air. He was 83 and lived in Kingsville. Born in Dallastown, Pa., he moved to Franklinville in Baltimore County as a teenager and attended Bel Air High School. Before entering the Army in 1942, he earned his General Educational Development certificate. As a member of the 8th Army Air Corps, 92nd Bomb Group, 327th Bomb Squadron, Mr. Huson was a technical sergeant stationed in England, where he served as a waist gunner on a B-17 bomber.

Dr. Louis Haberer Tankin, a retired Baltimore urologist who wrote of his experiences as a prisoner of war during World War II, died from complications of a stroke Thursday at Ruxton Health and Rehabilitation Center. The Pikesville resident was 92. Dr. Tankin was born in Baltimore and raised on Milton Avenue near Patterson Park. As the son of a surgeon, he was from an early age interested in a medical career. "He didn't want to be a doctor for money or status. He wanted to be a doctor because he loved and wanted to help people," said a son, Alan C. Tankin of Newburg, Mo. He was a 1932 graduate of City College and earned a bachelor's degree from the Johns Hopkins University in 1936.

When you enter a boxing ring, you agree to abide by the rules of boxing. But when you are attacked from behind in a dark alley, you would be a fool to abide by the Marquis of Queensbury rules. If you do, you can end up being a dead fool. Even with a nuclear Iran looming on the horizon and the prospect that its nuclear weapons will end up in the hands of international terrorists that it has been sponsoring for years, many in the media and in the government that is supposed to protect us have been preoccupied with whether we are being nice enough to the terrorists in our custody.

LONDON -- The British government's chief legal adviser said yesterday that Guantanamo Bay had become a symbol of injustice and called for the U.S. base to be closed. "The historic tradition of the United States as a beacon of freedom, of liberty and of justice deserves the removal of this symbol," Attorney General Peter Goldsmith told the Royal United Services Institute for Defense Studies, an independent policy forum. The comments were the strongest criticism of the U.S. detention camp by a senior British official.

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court announced yesterday that it would hear a challenge to the Bush administration's plan to try foreign terrorism suspects in special military courts, setting the stage for a ruling on whether the Geneva Conventions trump the president's go-it-alone policy in the war on terrorism. The case, to be heard in the spring, will set the rules for the first war-crimes trials for foreign prisoners since World War II. The legal battle will take place against a backdrop of growing criticism of the Bush administration's handling of foreign prisoners.

LONDON -- The British government's chief legal adviser said yesterday that Guantanamo Bay had become a symbol of injustice and called for the U.S. base to be closed. "The historic tradition of the United States as a beacon of freedom, of liberty and of justice deserves the removal of this symbol," Attorney General Peter Goldsmith told the Royal United Services Institute for Defense Studies, an independent policy forum. The comments were the strongest criticism of the U.S. detention camp by a senior British official.

50 years ago World War II prisoners of war are leaving Anne Arundel County. Fort Meade was the first army post in Maryland to house prisoners, receiving its first, Italians, in 1943. Over half were engaged in contract labor while the rest were put to military work. -- The Sun, May 4, 1946.The Board of Visitors to the Naval Academy has recommended that land be acquired for an airfield, that midshipmen pay be raised from $65 a month to $85 and that prospective teachers be scrutinized more closely regarding scholastic backgrounds.

WASHINGTON -- Girding for a potential fight with the Bush administration, supporters of an explicit ban on torture of prisoners of war by U.S. interrogators threatened yesterday to include the prohibition in nearly every bill the Senate considers until it becomes law. The no-torture wording, which proponents say is supported by majorities in both houses of Congress, was included last month in the Senate's version of a defense spending bill. The measure's final form is being negotiated with the House, and the White House is pushing for a rewording or deletion of the torture ban. By a voice vote yesterday, at the urging of Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican, the Senate added the ban to a related defense bill as a backup.