Speakers:

• SPEAKER_00 = John Daub
• SPEAKER_01 = Peter von Gomm

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00:00:03 John Daub: Hello, everybody. Greetings to the city of Tokyo. This is a very important live stream. We are on Heiwajima, which means Peace Island. This is the site of the original Omori Prison POW Camp, which was also the Shinagawa POW Camp before it was turned into the Omori POW Camp. This is the exact location. This is the Heiwajima Kannon, a place of peace now. And I'm joined here by Peter Von Gomm, who's going to share some of his stories with us, as well as I will share some of the history of this location. And I want to thank Happy Rails over there in Mississippi, who gave me a lot of background information, and I've been talking back and forth with him a lot about the history of this spot, as well as a lot of the other events that happened during World War II. Now, it's very important to point out that this is a peaceful live stream. The war is over.

00:01:02 Peter von Gomm: So we won't be fighting.

00:01:03 John Daub: No, we're not. Between us, we won't be fighting. But, you know, Japan is our biggest ally. But for me, it was important to do this not just because it was Independence Day the day before yesterday, and also Memorial Day very recently, and the 75th anniversary of the ending of World War II. Right. And a lot of anniversaries have gone on, but — but because I don't think we should forget. And as the years go on and the generations move on, my grandfather fought in World War II, and he died in, I think, 1984. I was just 10 years old at the time. And their stories seem to get lost, so just kind of marking places like this.

00:01:39 Peter von Gomm: Yeah. And there's not many of them left.

00:01:41 John Daub: There aren't too many left from the Greatest Generation there during World War II. And those stories are important to try to remember. And I hope that this live stream could be something, especially those that had fathers or grandfathers that fought in World War II might want to come here and visit right now. I got some. Oh, go ahead.

00:02:02 Peter von Gomm: There's not — this vicinity is not — there's not a lot to see other than coming for. There's actually Iwo Jima park, which is over here, but this memorial is quite compact, and surrounding it is our shopping area and boat race, which we can talk about later.

00:02:20 John Daub: Yeah, the boat race is going on now, right?

00:02:22 Peter von Gomm: Yeah. But it's — it's a special place. And for those who are connected to World War II, perhaps grandfathers, fathers, brothers, somebody, some relatives that participated in that, and maybe some that actually were here in Japan. Yeah, it's a good place to come and pay your respects.

00:02:45 John Daub: And if you search YouTube, you'll find in 2015, some people that were here at the prison camp did come and make this trip to this exact same spot. And you can read some of the articles that were written about it, including an interview with them on what their feelings were at the time at this exact spot where we are right now. I want to show you where this is. There's a link in the description. There's a link in the description for all of you who want to know where this is. I guess I can press that there. So this is the city of Tokyo. You can see in the center, that's the Imperial Palace right there. We're down near Shinagawa Station.

00:03:22 Peter von Gomm: And kind of close to Haneda.

00:03:24 John Daub: Yeah, Haneda Airport. It's a place called Heiwajima and it's not in the park. And it took me a couple hours to figure out the spot because I didn't know what it was called. But this is right here. This is the Heiwa Kannon — Kannon, meaning —

00:03:40 Peter von Gomm: Kannon is — it's a goddess Kannon, which is a bodhisattva, meaning she prolonged her eternal enlightenment to stay behind to help those in the world that are suffering.

00:03:56 John Daub: Right.

00:03:57 Peter von Gomm: And so that's a very poignant Kannon for this particular mercy.

00:04:04 John Daub: Mercy and peace. And we're going to give you some of the background information as well as read this sign to you in English, which I think if you come to visit here, you might struggle a little bit with that. Maybe a little bit. Jay Ray, pbg, thanks for the history alive. Keeping history alive. You're very welcome. What's that on your chest right there? Before we get started, you want to talk about that now or — a little bit?

00:04:28 Peter von Gomm: Sure. Well, a lot of — I've mentioned this in some of my streams and videos, but my father fought in World War — well, I don't know fought, but he was in World War II at the very end, actually, so I won't say fought. He was in World War II and he came to Tokyo as part of the Occupation Force, 1945. He was a 20-year-old young man and he has lots of memories from being here and he's told me many stories. He's passed on now, but this was his dog tag from World War II. And we'll kind of get into maybe some other —

00:05:09 John Daub: Yeah. Stories that he was here when the prison camp was still a prison camp.

00:05:14 Peter von Gomm: Right? No, he came here — so he came here in the fall of 1945.

00:05:20 John Daub: Right.

00:05:21 Peter von Gomm: So, yeah, you're right. It was still — it was still a camp. It was still a camp, but it was not occupied by prisoners.

00:05:26 John Daub: Exactly.

00:05:27 Peter von Gomm: They were released.

00:05:28 John Daub: That was where Toldjo was before the trial. He actually stayed at the prison camp. Kind of justice, in a way. That's right, yeah. I want to show you some significant pictures here. Hold on to that for a second. This is what this site looked like. That's the prison camp. This comes from mansell.com — the link is in the description of this. It's an amazing site if you want to look at some of the history of World War II — things that probably are forgotten and left out of history books. But that's where we are right now.

00:05:58 Peter von Gomm: And, John, this is all reclaimed land, right?

00:06:01 John Daub: Yeah.

00:06:01 Peter von Gomm: So what we're on right now partially was built by the prisoners — prisoners of war, which were, you know, they were not just Americans, they're Australians, British and other countries. But they contributed to building this reclaimed land that we're on right now.

00:06:15 John Daub: Oh, geez. That's — all right. And here's another shot from — it was cracked like that before I dropped my phone. This is another shot from above of the Omori camp. You can see on the picture, it's marked here. Omori camp. We thank you — probably after the liberation, August 29, 1945. And PW — prisoners of war — right there. You can see the people down there on the ground.

00:06:42 Peter von Gomm: I wonder if — I think PW was on there before because it prevents air raids.

00:06:48 John Daub: Right, right.

00:06:49 Peter von Gomm: Bombing. So they —

00:06:50 John Daub: There's another look at it and you can see — yeah, there's a listed there. It's — it now. They've since the 1950s and '60s, they've added to the reclaimed land. So the island is much bigger, much bigger than it was back then.

00:07:04 Peter von Gomm: Right.

00:07:05 John Daub: And as you said, it was the prisoners who actually made the island. Right. They did all the backbreaking work to do it. So what we're standing on right now is made by prisoners of war.

00:07:15 Peter von Gomm: Partially.

00:07:16 John Daub: Partially.

00:07:16 Peter von Gomm: Obviously it's been expanded. It's an enormous land area now.

00:07:20 John Daub: Now, this picture is very significant. You'll find this on the mansell.com website as well as some others. These are the boys from the Omori POW camp that we're celebrating on August 29, 1945, when they came to liberate them. And you can see, they look pretty thin. Don't want to leave out the guy there in the corner. They look pretty thin. They're holding up flags from different countries. It wasn't just Americans in there.

00:07:50 Peter von Gomm: Yeah. Imagine that.

00:07:51 John Daub: Joy. Yeah. We're gonna leave this picture behind with some other goodies that we'll show you in a minute. I — I also wanted to — yeah, thank you. I also wanted to talk a little bit about this sign here so we get a little bit closer to the spot. I know a lot of people, you know, because of the pandemic, you can't come into Japan to see these kinds of things. So again, thank you to Happy Rails and to all the people who asked me to come here and do it. So let me see what I can do to try to translate this.

00:08:25 Peter von Gomm: Can you hold it while you're translating?

00:08:27 John Daub: Yeah, sure. Go ahead. So this is from the Heiwa Kannon. This is built in 1955. July 19th. Now that's written in Japanese there. I'll just point here. It's written in Japanese there. July 19, 1955. "The greatest rareness of humankind is peace." This is a literal translation. I actually did it on Google Translate before because I didn't have time. "This is the reason why I thought about — this is the reason why they thought about the construction of Heiwa Kannon. In order to continue praying for eternal peace on earth. Kannon even listens to the true wishes of humankind and scoops them up in the best possible way. This is — the translation is going to be somewhat weird, but Hayasama is a figure that worships the unchanged reason of the universe and is called by the person who gained great power by taking that reason." It's deep — among the Haiku — Kannon is the —

00:09:25 Peter von Gomm: Bodhisattva.

00:09:26 John Daub: Bodhisattva, right. Who shows the mercy of the universe to those who suffer from disasters and takes the means of — of scooping — that might be a strange translation there. "A Heiwajima, where the Statue of Peace Kannon was erected, was the place where the phantom camp of the other country was located during the war." This is a literal translation. "And it was a place of so-called war and peace where Japanese war criminals spent their days of hardship after the war." It's kind of interesting that they put that in there. This wasn't just a POW camp for the Allied forces that were captured, but also for the prisoners — for the war criminals after the war. That's written in here. So they acknowledge that. So they built this on this spot as a place to remember the Omori POW Camp. And I'm really glad that they did, because we don't want to forget the meaning of this. There's a lot of people that we — oh, I — I do want to — want to just point out for those of you that watched the Netflix movie or even read the book — right? I think we could swing this over to both of us here or read the book Unbroken. Unbroken. If you haven't and you're watching this live stream, check out the movie on Netflix called Unbroken. It's an amazing movie, but the book is even better.

00:10:44 Peter von Gomm: Yeah. Oh, man, the book is fantastic. I've seen the movie and I first read the book. To be honest, I was a little bit disappointed by the movie. It gets the gist of the experience that Robert — Louis Zamperini.

00:10:58 John Daub: Louis.

00:10:59 Peter von Gomm: Louis Zamperini. And it's just — it's fascinating, the book especially. Just — you can't — you can't put it down. It's really, really a moving, moving story.

00:11:12 John Daub: It's interesting, though, because he was — we are less than three weeks away from the Olympics.

00:11:17 Peter von Gomm: Right.

00:11:18 John Daub: And Louis Zamperini was a 5K medalist at —

00:11:23 Peter von Gomm: '48. '19.

00:11:24 John Daub: '48. 1936.

00:11:25 Peter von Gomm: '36.

00:11:27 John Daub: 36. He ran in the Olympics before. Oh, right, with — yeah, yeah, in Berlin, Nazi Germany. Yeah, he ran in the Berlin Olympics in the 5K race. After World War II — somebody forget his — and in many ways, he was kind of a celebrity prisoner of war because of that. And that also brought the notoriety, also probably made Watanabe Mutsuhiro — who in the movie is just an awful fellow who tortures, who beats him brutally many times. And I believe before the war, he transfers to the now [?] prisoner of war camp on the other side, which looks like absolutely ridiculously brutal over there, too. Doing a lot of dock work, carrying things. And then there's the scene where he has the log and he's asked to keep it over his head. And that's where your heart just is like, ripped out. And saying, gosh, the strength inside people who have been beaten for years and years is still there and gives us — you know, I can't even start to think how tough it was for the people that were living here as prisoner of war on the spot back then, over 75 years ago.

00:12:44 Peter von Gomm: Camps — they're not a Holiday Inn, right? They're never a great place to be. But I'm glad we're here today. Pay our respects.

00:12:55 John Daub: Yeah.

00:12:55 Peter von Gomm: Pay our respects.

00:12:56 John Daub: Yeah, absolutely.

00:12:57 Peter von Gomm: We brought along some goodies.

00:12:58 John Daub: We did.

00:12:59 Peter von Gomm: And make an offer.

00:13:01 John Daub: We did. We brought some goodies here. Let's go show some of the people. And we're gonna have a little kampai as well. So I brought two Budweiser because I figured — and they're cold. I figured, you know, American beer might sit well with the boys here. And can you bring the coffee and the sandwiches? I brought a sandwich. I figured, yeah, since we love our Tamago Sando, we'd leave this behind for the boys. Where do we put it?

00:13:26 Peter von Gomm: I think right here on the altar.

00:13:27 John Daub: Okay. You can just put it. Somebody will come through.

00:13:30 Peter von Gomm: Monetary offerings.

00:13:34 John Daub: And the can of coffee because I figured a cup of joe is probably hard to find in a prison POW camp. So that's our offering from you guys here. The Budweiser tastes better than the Budweiser back home, so they might be surprised by that.

00:13:48 Peter von Gomm: This is true.

00:13:50 John Daub: Very true.

00:13:51 Peter von Gomm: It's not a bad beer here.

00:13:52 John Daub: Yeah. Can you say hi to my new shih tzu named Rusty? He likes to watch the live streams. All right. Sure, sure. You got it. All right, let's get our beers and we'll give a little prayer to the boys here. Yeah, I — I really wanted to do this because again, like, Memorial Day is a time where, of course, we get a holiday in the United States. Make sure you drink the one that's non-alcoholic. He's driving.

00:14:16 Peter von Gomm: Yeah.

00:14:16 John Daub: So what do you got there? I just bought it at the Conbini. This came from my refrigerator, though. This is a Dry Zero, so there's no alcohol in it.

00:14:24 Peter von Gomm: Yeah, you got that going for it. And then I got my Asahi Super Dry, which is also official beer of the 2020 Olympics. Sorry, Budweiser.

00:14:35 John Daub: We're not gonna chug it. That would be disrespectful. Or would chugging it be respectful? Because that's what you would do in the summer? Yeah, maybe. I don't know. So.

00:14:44 Peter von Gomm: Well, these guys were here in the heat of the summer, man. And Tokyo's July and August are incredibly humid, so you can imagine these guys — yeah, we're working. These guys were all right, putting in some hard work.

00:15:07 John Daub: Kampai to the ones that didn't make it.

00:15:10 Peter von Gomm: And yes, cheers to all those who are — we're suffering and are suffering — and to those who — for the —

00:15:20 John Daub: We salute you. Yeah.

00:15:28 Peter von Gomm: John, my — I have my mom is one of eight kids, all four boys in World War II.

00:15:36 John Daub: Wow.

00:15:37 Peter von Gomm: Two of them are still living and one of them is 100 and I think he's almost 104. He was a pilot in Europe and he was shot down two or three times and the last time he got injured and then he was taken out of service, but still living. And man, I mean, yeah, the stories they have. I actually did a video on Earl Depner on my YouTube channel from years ago about his story that he wrote about the miracle of surviving and several mishaps he had as a pilot in being in combat. And yeah, it's quite interesting. But yeah, to all those who are still with us, thank you. And cheers. And we are here at the Heiwajima Peace Park area at the Kannon.

00:16:36 John Daub: Hey, Heiwajima Kannon. Yeah. I have here — I want to show you this website. This is a pretty amazing resource here. And I'm glad that I found — this is just a screenshot of it because I don't have a signal on this phone. Mansell.com. Again, the link is in the description here — has all the timeline and information of this. The vital information. Now this prison — the Omori Prison Camp, the location we're at right now, was founded or started in September 12, 1942. It's known as the Shinagawa POW Camp. Located a little bit away from here in Shinagawa. This location is quite a ways. Yeah, no, no alcohol from this spot here.

00:17:28 Peter von Gomm: Where'd you put yours?

00:17:29 John Daub: It's in my pocket. I'm not actually drinking it. So — yeah, so we can still film here, right? Yeah. Okay. He put his beer away. It's non-alcoholic beer. If it's non-alcoholic, is it actually alcohol? But it's okay. He didn't — we're not gonna argue. It's a place of peace. But mansell.com is a great site for looking at the vital statistics. The information here, there's a list of those that were here at the prison camp. So you can take a look at the names and remember what happened. And they have some good photos as well. Some of them I showed you here — I printed out at the convenience store. And the rescue was effected in 1945. So three years — see here, move to Omori. So actually it was only two years that Omori Prison Camp, the prisoner war camp, was here on this location, which is interesting — 1943 to 1945. But the camp went on as a place for the war criminals who were tried here. Now I do want to clarify one more time here — and is that Michael Sassano? Yes, it is. Hi, John. PVG, thank you for sharing this piece of history and for paying respect to the lives that were lost. Beverages and snacks for your trip home on me. Thank you, Michael.

00:18:48 Peter von Gomm: Wow. Thanks. Thank you.

00:18:50 John Daub: Yeah, the war is over. I know some people might still be upset and I know that December 7, 1941, that's a day that really still angers some people. But it's over. We are friends. So much so that there's so many parallels — Babe Ruth was a figure in World War II. He came to Japan in 1934 and 1936, twice, I believe. And he was the most famous American at the time. And the father of Japanese baseball was Babe Ruth. He came across on a boat across the Pacific and promoted American baseball. And it just took root here. And there's some amazing stories — the time that Babe Ruth visited Japan in the 1930s. Now during World War II, I think there were some movies — as it when the fighting was happening and Japanese could not speak much English, one of the things they could say was "F*** Babe Ruth." Because they knew Babe — I'm serious. They knew Babe Ruth as a famous American. And that was the one thing that they thought would enrage the people.

00:20:02 Peter von Gomm: Why don't you spin around this way so they can see the oil in the back?

00:20:04 John Daub: Yeah, so they can see — it's better than the parking garage. Is that what you're saying? So they would say "F*** Babe Ruth." I just think it's — it's really an amazing thing now. A wonderful thing that now we have in the All Star Game a Japanese baseball player, Ohtani Shohei, who's considered the next Babe Ruth, is Japanese and is a two-way player like Babe Ruth was — both pitching and hitting at a very high level. I think he has 31 home runs now and is listed in the All Star Game as both pitcher and batter. And that's a tribute, I guess, to Babe Ruth. So we just — the connection and the love and respect that the two countries have now — you can't — we can look back on this time and know where it — where we came from. And it's important to do that because we make the same mistakes if we don't look back at history and pay our respects to it.

00:20:55 Peter von Gomm: Right.

00:20:55 John Daub: Anything you want to add to that?

00:20:57 Peter von Gomm: Well, actually, just going back to the player — I was watching the other day and the opposing teams, they're afraid of him when they're up to bat.

00:21:05 John Daub: Oh, yeah.

00:21:06 Peter von Gomm: Or sorry, when they're pitching — when he's up to bat because he was just smacking all these homers. And this one guy, the umpire called a — I think they call it — where he was — he was taking too much time. He was trying to fake out because he knew if he threw it, he's crafty, he was going to smack it out. And so then the umpire called — out of time — out of time and — but yeah, it's — it is pretty — it's — it's thrilling to see that happen. And like you said, the baseball — they call it yakyū in Japanese. And it's such a popular sport here. All the boys are playing, the girls — girls play softball? Is there softball here?

00:21:55 John Daub: They have a girls baseball team?

00:21:57 Peter von Gomm: I believe so. Softball is an Olympic sport. They're playing that up in Fukushima this year for the Olympics, but not so sure.

00:22:05 John Daub: But yeah, it's — it's fun. I think John and I both — we tend to kind of root for the — even though we're here, we're Americans, but we're here, we kind of root for the home team. So it's exciting to see this guy making strides in baseball. And I love it.

00:22:33 Peter von Gomm: That was a young guy, too. I think 25 now.

00:22:37 John Daub: I wonder if the — if the American — the guys here were talking about baseball when they're in the prison camp about DiMaggio.

00:22:44 Peter von Gomm: Anything to get their minds off.

00:22:46 John Daub: Yeah, absolutely. Back then, I think DiMaggio was even in the service back in 1940s. So it's, you know, talking baseball here is probably not the first time to do that. Yeah, baseball was pretty big — pretty big back in the 1940s and '50s, too. Yeah.

00:23:08 Peter von Gomm: You know, John, I was going to mention one other thing.

00:23:10 John Daub: Oh, sure. Yeah.

00:23:11 Peter von Gomm: We were talking about just our connection with Japan, and I mentioned my father was here. Well, my father came here at the end of '45. So it was in the fall, late fall, I think, of '45. And by April, the trial of the Prime Minister of Japan at the time — which is — yeah, the trial was going on in Tokyo. Well, my father attended the trial.

00:23:38 John Daub: What — he was here for the trial?

00:23:40 Peter von Gomm: Yes, yes. So he went in. He was in the courtroom during the trial. He wasn't there for every day throughout the trial, but he was there and he sat in and was a participant in — not part of the jury, but the observing area in the courtroom. And he told me that story. And, you know, it's just — it really kind of rings home, you know, when you hear all that stuff.

00:24:05 John Daub: Absolutely.

00:24:06 Peter von Gomm: Pretty interesting.

00:24:07 John Daub: Yeah, there's lots of stories and if you do have one — if you do have a story to share, you can write it in the comments below because I really want this episode to be kind of a history or look back on this memorial because everything in Tokyo is changing. Who knows what it's going to be like in five, 10 years. It's pretty amazing, the speed of the change of this city. But — I forget what I was going to say. We're gonna do a walk around Heiwajima, so you can go — this is a really cool spot. Why don't we — why don't we start walking around it? We got a mask on — I think, mask on — and show you a little bit of the area and then we'll come back. We'll come back here and end the live stream back here. Yeah. It's just funny, though, because this exact site, the strip where the prison camp is, was at — is now a leisure area with shops and an onsen — a hot spring is here. A boat race for — gam — oh, is it for gambling? Oh, okay.

00:25:09 Peter von Gomm: Well, they come and they bet on the little speedboats.

00:25:09 John Daub: Yeah, that's pretty fun. All right. It's gonna do a wide berth from coughing man over there.

00:25:22 Peter von Gomm: The guard drinks a beer and has the sandwich.

00:25:25 John Daub: Oh, the guard's not gonna touch those beers. Oh, is — did he? I gotta be careful. Yeah. So — so where did — wait, is this where you parked the bicycle? Your motorbike? Second — all right, let's — are we all right? Okay. In the front there. One of the reasons we started late was because we couldn't find bike parking. And then when we did, there was lots of it. So there's a lot of industry here, a lot of factories on Heiwajima. This will — this road will take us to a dead end. We know that because we walked there — we walked to the dead end, but on the side is a spa. It's a hot spring — right there's the —

00:26:07 Peter von Gomm: The Kannon — kitty cat. Oh, chilling out. Hey, I wonder if the prisoners had any pets. Oh, there's two cats. Hey, you got — you look like a scrapper. Hey, buddy.

00:26:30 John Daub: Yeah, you know, Peter, I don't think these are good cats.

00:26:32 Peter von Gomm: This guy's filthy.

00:26:36 John Daub: Kitty, kitty.

00:26:37 Peter von Gomm: Can you zoom up on its left ear?

00:26:40 John Daub: Hey — oh, he's talking to us. I told you I can speak cat. All right.

00:26:46 Peter von Gomm: Impressive, but we're not impressed. Look at — zoom up on his left ear. Can you —

00:26:50 John Daub: Yeah. Oh, it's bitten off.

00:26:52 Peter von Gomm: No, no, no, no.

00:26:53 John Daub: It's only this part of it.

00:26:54 Peter von Gomm: That's what the — the city clips their ear to indicate that it's a feral cat.

00:27:01 John Daub: Oh, really?

00:27:01 Peter von Gomm: Yeah. So it has a notch out of it.

00:27:04 John Daub: How come that one's escaped? The clipping?

00:27:06 Peter von Gomm: It actually probably hasn't been fixed. I think that's it. So they catch them, they fix them, and then they clip their ear.

00:27:12 John Daub: They come out. There's another one over there.

00:27:15 Peter von Gomm: He's got a cute little mustache.

00:27:17 John Daub: That's Charlie Chaplin.

00:27:18 Peter von Gomm: You see Charlie Chaplin.

00:27:19 John Daub: Oh, there's another one. Yeah, he's doing it because I'm calling them all. We're gonna have 20 of them here. This is my cat in heat call.

00:27:35 Peter von Gomm: I got to tell you a really funny story.

00:27:37 John Daub: Oh, he's moving.

00:27:40 Peter von Gomm: Who wants to hear the story? Who wants to hear John make those ridiculous sounds?

00:27:46 John Daub: He's gonna mate with you. So it was him.

00:27:48 Peter von Gomm: Let me tell you this quick story. A friend of mine who lives in Tokyo, he lives in an apartment, and there were some cats — a lot of feral cats that are hanging out around this house across the street. And he wasn't able to sleep at night because they were fighting. So he thought it would be a smart idea to get some repellent — cat repellent. And he — at one day, he went out and he sprinkled the cat repellent around where these cats were. Well, unbeknownst to him, the neighbor had a surveillance camera. And, oh, they saw this pile of whatever, and they like, "What is that? Some sort of poison?" So they called the police.

00:28:26 John Daub: Police.

00:28:27 Peter von Gomm: And they together reviewed the surveillance tape, and they found — they saw my friend. Of course, he's a — he's a foreigner living in this neighborhood, so everybody knows him. So, bing bong. He answered the door, and it's a police officer.

00:28:41 John Daub: Oh, my gosh.

00:28:42 Peter von Gomm: Yeah, he's like, "We saw you putting some poison or something outside. What is that?" It's like, "Oh, it's a — it's cat repellent." "You need to clean it up."

00:28:51 John Daub: Wow.

00:28:52 Peter von Gomm: So he had to go out and do the walk of shame out there with a broom and dust pan while these — these house — these old ladies are standing there just watching him as he's cleaning it up. And how humiliating.

00:29:06 John Daub: So the cats came back?

00:29:07 Peter von Gomm: Yeah, 'cause he had to clean up the repellent.

00:29:10 John Daub: But — hey you — hey. Did they react to dog noises? All right, all right. Okay. Too much. Okay, all right. Offensive. That's true. Yours is non-alcoholic. All right. If you're acting funny, it's because of the drive over here. Yeah, he's got a mustache. Hey. No, no. Show us your face. No. All right. Do we need to go this way?

00:29:43 Peter von Gomm: Well, you know, if we go down to the end here, we might be able to see the actual —

00:29:47 John Daub: Look at — somebody wrote there — no, it's been deleted. Oh, that was awful. Okay, just gonna keep that. Should we go down this way or the other way? Can you save the — see, where do we see the boat racing?

00:29:58 Peter von Gomm: Well, I could see it when we were down at the end down there. We could see a little bit of it.

00:30:01 John Daub: Should we go around this way, you think, through the street and the other side we can see too? So this — there is a boat racing area here. It's interesting — the place of the Heiwajima Kannon, the place of worship, is in one of the noisiest places too of the island, I think. Although there is a massive interchange highway interchange on the island right in the center of it. I put a map in the link for the map in the description of this video. So you can go and check out exactly where we are right now. There's a Don Quijote here as well, which is pretty cool. But I guess we can walk through here.

00:30:49 Peter von Gomm: And I think we can actually go in without pain. It's like the Kawasaki Auto Race, which is the motorcycle race that I made a YouTube video on.

00:30:59 John Daub: All right. The Kawasaki Auto Race. Yeah.

00:31:01 Peter von Gomm: If you check my YouTube channel later and you're interested in motorcycle races, check it. It's a lot of fun.

00:31:07 John Daub: Yeah.

00:31:07 Peter von Gomm: But the same sort of thing — it's a gambling spot.

00:31:10 John Daub: Right.

00:31:11 Peter von Gomm: These boat races — they're different colors and they bet on the boats, the speedboats.

00:31:19 John Daub: Right.

00:31:20 Peter von Gomm: And I think we can go in for free.

00:31:22 John Daub: Oh, really? We can go in for free. Can I live stream in there too? Yeah, hold on. I gotta put this can away because it's leaking all over me.

00:31:30 Peter von Gomm: You hold —

00:31:40 John Daub: Keeping Heiwajima clean. Oh, yeah, there it is. Boat race. So place where boats go at a super high speed is the location of the Omori prison POW camp. Things have changed since 1943. I was just saying things have changed a lot since 1943. It is a lot of restaurants here. Buses can come in through here. We learned that because some guy yelled at Peter, barked orders, saying, "Do not ride in here. Bus only." He said "Bus only." The way he said it really fast, it was — it's hard to understand. I had to decode it. There's a Jonathan's, a Loteria. There's a Don Quixote. There's a couple of other restaurants in there. So it's weird. Yeah, they kind of COVID'd up the seaside, so you can't see into it to see the boats. There's a little inlet here, if you take a look at the map, where there's some a waterway going in here, but you can't actually see any of the — Peter's asking the security guard if you can — he's getting some information here on where we might be able to see some of the boat races. They also have a schedule here. It seems like a lot of boat races going on here.

00:33:11 Peter von Gomm: He said that there's nowhere you can see it from outside. You have to go in. It costs 100 yen.

00:33:16 John Daub: Oh, that's it.

00:33:17 Peter von Gomm: Yeah. You go through those tents down there and for 100 yen you can see the boat race.

00:33:21 John Daub: Okay, let's do it. Interesting.

00:33:26 Peter von Gomm: But yeah, look at this — imagine back in the day, this was completely flat with nothing but those prisoner of war — what do you call them? Hangars, basically. And look at it now. NCT buildings here, this boat race park, huge parking garage.

00:33:47 John Daub: So I missed a couple of super chats just by time going by. Sorry about that. I'll go back and take a look at it and try and answer any of the questions that were in here. You can see the waterway through here. Yeah. Yeah, you kind of see through there.

00:34:06 Peter von Gomm: You see them zip by.

00:34:07 John Daub: You see him — the biggest — you can certainly hear them zipping by. I don't think we need to go in there. I think I don't want to get in trouble with the filming. And this is pretty cool. Yeah. Any — any last things that you want to say? Right again, the temp — the place where we started is right there. So we're gonna walk back over there to end it — just giving you a quick look around to see a lot of things have changed. There's an NTT Logistics Center above it, loads of warehouses and factories in the Heiwajima area. There's also a very nice park. If you have kids, this would be a nice place to keep them. I don't know if the island is made out of the trash and debris from World War II — they used a lot of that to make metals and stuff — metals and cement and things that they made the debris left behind because the city was completely destroyed. I know a lot of the man-made islands back then were made from the debris of World War II — just so much of it. They put it all into one place, made an island. One of the neighborhoods — Tsukishima — was part of that was grown from debris and rubbish from that.

00:35:20 Peter von Gomm: Like the reclaimed land areas along Tokyo Bay.

00:35:24 John Daub: Yeah.

00:35:25 Peter von Gomm: But a lot of people are hesitant to live there.

00:35:29 John Daub: Just — right.

00:35:31 Peter von Gomm: You know what's going to happen if there was a large —

00:35:33 John Daub: Oh, is this — this is the entrance to what? The gambling area? I'm not quite sure — boat race something. And this is the Tokyo Waterworks — the city.

00:35:52 Peter von Gomm: These are female racers — Ladies Cup. It's a female —

00:35:56 John Daub: Oh, wow. Okay.

00:35:57 Peter von Gomm: Boat racers from — hey, till the 6th.

00:35:59 John Daub: You kept him away from our Tamago Sando. Do you see that, Peter?

00:36:04 Peter von Gomm: Oh, dude, he's — you know he's going to get it.

00:36:05 John Daub: Oh, he's going to go for that sandwich.

00:36:07 Peter von Gomm: You know it.

00:36:08 John Daub: All right. We got to get — we got to save the — what's he doing there? Peter, can you get him? Do you have a stone or something?

00:36:34 Peter von Gomm: Look at that big beak. I'm not going near that.

00:36:37 John Daub: It's true.

00:36:38 Peter von Gomm: Think it opened a tin can.

00:36:40 John Daub: He's — he's not scared of humans. Confused by my calling. Can you do height? Oh, he's gone. Okay. Oh, he's getting above us. That's how they do it — sniper from above. Toby.

00:37:04 Peter von Gomm: All right, let's say our final respects to the —

00:37:09 John Daub: I can't do it with the crow there. Oh, my gosh. He's just scary. Why didn't he go away? He smells fear. That's why.

00:37:21 Peter von Gomm: And beer.

00:37:23 John Daub: I can't pray with him watching me. He's gonna steal the prayer and take it to his posse. Oh my gosh. I'm really close. Can you please — excuse me, sir? Can you please move away from the — okay. That's not any better. Okay.

00:37:44 Peter von Gomm: All right.

00:37:45 John Daub: Awful.

00:37:51 Peter von Gomm: Moment of respect.

00:37:53 John Daub: Yeah. Moment of respect. Silence.

00:38:05 Peter von Gomm: Okay.

00:38:14 John Daub: Except for those watching, we did leave behind a couple of Budweisers, a coffee and Tamago Sando for those that were left behind here. All right. So that's about it. I'm glad that we came here. I always wanted to come here just to check it out once again. This is where we are right now. This is the site of what it looked like — oh, my gosh. Really? What does that mean?

00:38:54 Peter von Gomm: He's got a seat.

00:38:59 John Daub: This is the site of this — okay, never mind that. This is the site of where we are right now. What it looked like in 1945 from above. This is another shot. This is all on mansell.com — you can check that out — prisoner of war camp. And this is August 29, 1945. Liberation Day. And — yeah, tribute to those that were here before us. You're not forgotten. She'll leave the photo there. Yeah, I'm cool with that. There you go. Okay —

00:40:12 Peter von Gomm: That sideways, so we both get in.

00:40:15 John Daub: Is that — is that crow still up there?

00:40:17 Peter von Gomm: Yep.

00:40:18 John Daub: Oh, my God.

00:40:19 Peter von Gomm: The moment we leave, he's going to be enjoying best meal of his life. Here we go. One more time. There he goes. Oh, he's going to poop on your head.

00:40:31 John Daub: All right. Oh, my gosh. He did. All right. He's there. He's circling us. Do you think he's sizing us up? Let's just get out of here. I can't — are we going to walk to the bicycle — to the motorbike anyways?

00:40:51 Peter von Gomm: Yeah, and I'll give you a ride.

00:40:53 John Daub: Oh, thanks. I appreciate that. Where to?

00:40:55 Peter von Gomm: To the station.

00:40:56 John Daub: Which station?

00:40:57 Peter von Gomm: The closest one.

00:40:59 John Daub: Shinagawa.

00:41:01 Peter von Gomm: If that's better for you, I could go to Shinagawa.

00:41:03 John Daub: Yeah, that might — I think that's better. You going home now?

00:41:11 Peter von Gomm: Yeah, I'm working on my next podcast.

00:41:16 John Daub: That's right. Why don't you let us know about that? The Serial Talker.

00:41:20 Peter von Gomm: Yeah. Yeah, so I do — I've got a weekly podcast called the Serial Talker. Please check it out — it's a true crime, true stories podcast. And the one we just did, released a couple days ago, was about Andy Warhol. Did you know Andy Warhol was shot?

00:41:38 John Daub: What? No.

00:41:39 Peter von Gomm: You know Andy Warhol, right? The artist. Of course. So back in 1968, a crazy lady shot him, tried to kill him and shot him. And an art critic. So it's — it's an awesome story. There was actually a Netflix movie maybe called I Shot Andy Warhol or something like that, but it's a really good story. And you — if you like Podcast, you can check it out. You can also see it on my Serial Talker podcast YouTube channel.

00:42:09 John Daub: Yeah.

00:42:10 Peter von Gomm: So please check it out. John will put those links in.

00:42:13 John Daub: I'll put the links in there in the video. And it's already been — the moderators put it in there. So check it out.

00:42:18 Peter von Gomm: Thank you.

00:42:19 John Daub: Yeah. My parents love Peter's Serial Talker. They listen to it in the car as a podcast.

00:42:24 Peter von Gomm: Oh, nice.

00:42:24 John Daub: And now they're becoming experts of crime. Thanks a lot. So what — you know what they talk about? I call them up and, "Oh, did you hear the one by Peter?" And they start talking about crime. They're not talking about Leo. They're talking about your podcast. Thanks a lot.

00:42:36 Peter von Gomm: Nice. They have an allegiance to crime. Crime pays.

00:42:40 John Daub: John — wait, who is the last one of the last killers you were talking about? Because that — they were telling me about it. Do you know the story of the Zodiac Killer or something?

00:42:48 Peter von Gomm: I didn't do the Zodiac yet, but the last — actually the last three or four I've done have been my favorites. The Andy Warhol shooting before — that is a great story. A listener sent me a story. She had an inside scoop on this Brinks robbery that took place in — in Rhode Island. Not Rhode Island, sorry, sorry — Rochester, New York.

00:43:12 John Daub: Yeah.

00:43:14 Peter von Gomm: Which is a great story as well. And lots of —

00:43:16 John Daub: Lots of —

00:43:18 Peter von Gomm: Lots of fun stuff. So — yeah, I don't know which one that they were talking about specifically. Could have been about the jewelry robbery.

00:43:27 John Daub: Oh, right, yeah, that was it. The jewelry robbery. Yeah, the surfers —

00:43:30 Peter von Gomm: Surfers that —

00:43:30 John Daub: That scaled the walls — crime, basically. They're like — to talk about. There's a donkey hot day here — you — you've been there. You've been banned from Don Quixote because you're filming inside there illegally, right?

00:43:43 Peter von Gomm: Well, just the one in Akihabara.

00:43:45 John Daub: Oh, just — you're banned from Akihabara Don Quijote. Okay. Do they have your picture on a bulletin board? Is that how they know? Is Joji banned too? Probably. Oh no.

00:43:56 Peter von Gomm: "These two were spotted in the Akihabara Don Qui Ho. Keep an eye out for them."

00:44:00 John Daub: Yeah, we want to go to the other side — that's where my — no, you can — from here I believe. It's just interesting — this is this — we're still on the site of the old POW camp. And there's a Don Quixote here. That's pretty funny, right? Got your paw. Really? You gonna get one? What if they don't have anything interesting? I don't think so. Sometimes Moon Rabbit. I'm not sure.

00:44:30 Peter von Gomm: 300 yen. That's an outrage.

00:44:32 John Daub: You into this? Dragon Slayer. Oh, Peter, this is awesome. It's a shaver —

00:44:41 Peter von Gomm: Wow.

00:44:42 John Daub: You can get five different kinds of shavers. Does it work? I wouldn't trust that. I don't — I think that's just for people to pretend. Why would you want to do that? I'm not quite sure, but — Demon Slayer. I guess it's your cash, hard earned. There's some yellow ones over here. No? Nothing. It's pretty good. Vending machine options. Are you getting it? Okay, do it. Pull the trigger. You can — you can delete it, can't you? Push the button. That's a keychain. This one climbs wires. The other one seems better. I don't like it. These always come out cheaper because there's some — and they never — they always break. These look like they'll last for a week. Longer.

00:45:52 Peter von Gomm: For somebody — somebody's grandkid.

00:45:58 John Daub: For Joji?

00:45:59 Peter von Gomm: No — somebody's grandkid.

00:46:01 John Daub: Oh, look at him. He's looking at us from inside the capsule. That's creepy.

00:46:09 Peter von Gomm: Nice. All right.

00:46:12 John Daub: All right. So we are live from Heiwajima, which is the site of the Omori Prison Camp from 1943 to 1945. There's some ice cream —

00:46:29 Peter von Gomm: Right?

00:46:29 John Daub: Yeah. Omori means extra portion of food, right? I didn't hear you say that. But Heiwajima now means peace — Peace Island. And yeah, I think it's a fitting name now for what used to be a really tough place — now is a place of entertainment and fun. Big — it's a place of big fun now. Oh, can you hear that? I can hear the boats going by. Today is all female racer day. So those racing the boats at high speed are all ladies. That would — well, they are pretty fast there. Every park down here. All right, thanks, everybody for watching and joining and keeping us company all the way to the bikes. Once again, Peter's podcast is the Serial Talker. You can listen to him in great detail — talk about crime and — hein — I love that word — heinous crimes, as well as crimes of passion and crimes of — do too much of the —

00:47:34 Peter von Gomm: I don't get into the real gore stuff.

00:47:37 John Daub: Nothing — heinous.

00:47:38 Peter von Gomm: I'm classy, John. I'm a classy guy. I'm a classy crime reporter.

00:47:42 John Daub: How many words — what other words does heinous rhyme with? Can you just tell me? Heinous. Go ahead. Let's — a man of words.

00:47:50 Peter von Gomm: Linus.

00:47:51 John Daub: Linus. Anything else?

00:47:54 Peter von Gomm: I can't think of anything right off the — right off my backside. No, keep it —

00:47:59 John Daub: Keep it real and keep it fun, because this is a place of big fun now. Don't forget it.

00:48:04 Peter von Gomm: Look at all these scooters.

00:48:06 John Daub: There's a lot of scooters here. Thanks, everybody. Have a — have a great day. Have a great night wherever you are. Just, I'm glad that you joined us for this really important episode. And yeah, if you come to Tokyo, this is a great place to come if you know somebody who was in World War II and you just want to pay your respects. Because the POW camps here were pretty rough. I believe 10% of the people who are in them died.

00:48:35 Peter von Gomm: Only 10?

00:48:35 John Daub: Only 10. That does not — that doesn't account for the boats that they traveled on from places that they were captured.

00:48:45 Peter von Gomm: Philippines.

00:48:45 John Daub: Yeah. Because I can't imagine that they were in good shape traveling to those prison camps either. So just keep that in mind — people were lost en route to prison camps, too. This is a lot of stories. Mansell.com is a site where you can get a lot of that information to fill in the blanks of this. Thank you to Happy Rails for making this possible.

00:49:10 Peter von Gomm: If you guys want to see the ride to Heiwajima, I just on my way here today, I filmed on my live streaming channel — Peter Von Gomm Japan Live.

00:49:17 John Daub: Yeah.

00:49:21 Peter von Gomm: And you can see the ride from — or inside Tokyo to Heiwajima on the scooter.

00:49:23 John Daub: Was it — was it fun? You think so? All right. This place looks like it's kind of ancient. It looks like deep countryside Japan. Really? It doesn't look like Tokyo to me.

00:49:44 Peter von Gomm: Wow.

00:49:45 John Daub: That's Peter's bike. Oh, the other one. That's a pretty sweet ride. Take care, everybody. I'll see you in another live stream really soon. I might go to Shinjuku to take a look at a 3D cat above a sign that seems to be looking down on millions of people walking by with taking selfies. Yeah. You guys see it to believe it — Shinjuku started yesterday. Yeah. It's a serious, serious thing. It's very serious. Take care, everybody. Bye bye.