Dear Father Phillips,

  My name is Ao Wang and my organization is "Truth Council for WWII in Asia".  I met you many times during the
last three or four ADBC's conferences.  I mentioned to you about visits to the Mukden Camp during a ride together
to the airport.  We have had visits to the old Mukden camp sites since 2002.  Allen and Bob Rosendahl went back
with my group in 2003. 

  We are seeing some fruits from those visits because the city is now agreed to have a Mukden Memorial Museum
there and has been working day and night so that it will be ready for the 18th of August's dedication.  
  
  Please see the copied letter from Dr. Cynthia Caples of the US Consulate at Shenyang. Also please send pictures
or stories directly to her if you have any. It will be displayed at the 918 Memorial at Shenyang now and moved to
the Mukden Memorial when it is completed.

  The city of Shenyang has set the 18th of August as the day of dedication for the Mukden POW campsite which is
getting a work over now. The old campsite will become a memorial museum for all POWs who were interned there.
Janiece Cohn, whose father was interned at Mukden, will be there in August. 

  I am working now to get a group to go in September.  My organization has a fund raising memorial concert on
September 18 and hopefully the proceeds can be divided evenly to help those who are going.

  Hope you can join us in September.  Please pass the words around and thanks.

  Take care and best wishes.

  Ao

    
From: Caples, Cynthia B 
Sent: Tuesday, July 12, 2005 4:18 PM
To: (Deleted)
Subject: Need photographs of Camp Hoten and its inmates
   
   Dear veterans of Camp Hoten, and family members of veterans, 
   
   Do any of you have photographs of Camp Hoten and its inmates which you could transmit electronically to the
U.S. Consulate in Shenyang, for potential use in a photo exhibit in commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the
end of World War II?  The Shenyang Cultural Bureau has applied for permission to host a Thursday Aug. 18 memorial
ceremony at the city's 9-18 Museum dedicated to the sufferings of Liaoning Province and the rest of Northeast
China under Japanese occupation (the first shots were fired here on Sept. 18, 1931, hence the museum's name).
Assuming official approval comes through, the American and Russian Consuls General will attend and give speeches
about the American and Russian contributions to victory in the Pacific Theater of World War II.  The Russians
say they are planning to mount an exhibit of about 40 photographs of their troops in Manchuria in August 1945.
We would also like to mount some photographs of the American POWs who spent nearly three years in Camp Hoten in
Mukden (the old name for Shenyang), but we don't have any.  Does anyone have any photographs they would be
willing to let us use (duly credited) for this purpose?  
   
   Please let me know.

   --With best regards,

   Cynthia B. Caples
   Public Affairs Officer, U.S. Consulate, Shenyang
   e-mail: caplesc@state.gov
   
********************************************************************************   
   
  Camp Hoten No. 1 - unofficial rough-draft chronology
    
   11 Nov., 1942 - 1188 U.S. enlisted men (ordinary soldiers) and 14 officers arrive in Mukden (Shenyang) from
Manila via Korean Peninsula as American POWs, sent to POW Camp Hoten No. 1, then a group of old Chinese Army
earth huts half underground (an additional 60 English and 40 Australian and New Zealand troops have joined them,
live in Barracks No. 13; there are eventually 19 barracks in all)
   
   March 1943 - burial of 176 POWs, most of whom died in the first 90 days at Camp Hoten; by summer 1943, a total
of 205 have died, more than 17% of the American enlisted men in Camp Hoten
   
   July 1943 - the camp is moved to a new location, two-story brick structures c. four miles away, about half a
mile from the Mitsubishi Ko-Kan Machine and Tool Factory, a former Ford Co. factory where some of the camp
inmates work under Chinese supervision, disassembling machinery so that Japanese Technicians can make blueprints
of it; camp inmates also work as farm and construction labor; new camp is an improvement on the old one, and
rations are increased slightly, to above starvation level; at this point, 11 American and 2-3 British officers
are still alive 
   
   June 1944 - c. 150 American POWs sent from Camp Hoten to Kamioka, Japan, to work in the lead mines there, as
punishment for sabotaging work at the Mitsubishi Factory in Mukden (Linda Goetz Holmes, 'Unjust Enrichment')
  
   7 December 1944 - Allied B-29 air raids on Shenyang factories and rail lines drop two bombs within the Camp
Hoten perimeter, killing 19 of the POWs, and injuring more than 30
   
   April 1945 - 316 senior officers, orderlies, and four civilians (mostly American, British, and Dutch generals
and colonels; senior officer is U.S. Maj. Gen. George M. Parker, Jr.) are moved to Camp Hoten from Camp Chang
Chia Gen. Jonathan Wainwright, highest-ranking American POW, and a few close aides and officers, is held
elsewhere in Liaoning, at Si'an (Japanese: Seihan), along with Britain's highest-ranking POW, Gen. A. E.
Percival, former commander of Singapore
   
   5 August 1945 - newly-appointed International Committee of the Red Cross head delegate to Tokyo Dr. Marcel
Junod visits Mukden en route to Tokyo, first visit to Camp Hoten by an ICRC representative
   
   6 August 1945 - Dr. Junod visits Gen. Wainwright at Si'an 
   
   8 August 1945 - Russia enters the Pacific War
   
   17 August 1945 - four-man American OSS parachute group arrives in Shenyang
  
   18 August 1945 - low-flying Allied plane scatters leaflets announcing that Japan has surrendered
   
   20 August 1945 - advance Soviet tank units enter Shenyang
   
   9 September 1945 - American POWs leave Camp Hoten No. 1 to return home