Echoes from the Past

A POW, a young boy, and an old photo converge and lead to an almost impossible search.

From the Washington Post...

Sixty-nine years ago on Saturday, American and Filipino prisoners of war on the Bataan Peninsula started marching at gunpoint. By the time the survivors arrived at a prison camp in the Philippines in spring of 1942, they had watched thousands of their comrades die along the 60 or more miles. What they suffered endures as a symbol of wartime cruelty.

A few months ago, the grandson of one of the survivors traveled from Northern Virginia to Japan with an old photograph in his hand. It was a grainy picture of a young Japanese boy. For Tim Ruse, a 27-year-old from Centreville, and for the Japanese people who greeted him, the photo offered a way to pluck from a dark chapter of history one single act of compassion. It was a photo of the child who helped save his grandfather’s life.

Now they just had to find him.