Shareware Supreme Volume 6 #1/swsii.zip/swsii/009/KX01.ZIP/KX01.TXT

Text File | 1989-11-11 | 4KB | 78 lines

KUSAKA, AKIRA

Name: Akira Kasaka
Rank/Branch: Civilian
Unit:
Date of Birth:
Home City of Record: Japan
Date of Loss: 06 April 1970
Country of Loss: Cambodia
Loss Coordinates: 110236N 1060419E (XT171209)
Status (In 1973):
Category:
Acft/Vehicle/Ground: auto
Other Personnel in Incident: Claude Arpin; Yujiro Takagi (both missing); same
day at same grid coordinates: Sean Flynn, Dana Stone (both captured)

REMARKS:

SYNOPSIS: Photo journalists Sean Flynn and Dana Stone left Phnom Penh on rented
Honda motorbikes to find the front lines of fighting in Cambodia. Traveling
southeast on Route One near a eucalyptus plantation in eastern Cambodia, the
two men were stopped at a check point at grid coordinates XT171209 in Svay
Rieng Province, Cambodia, and led away by elements of the Viet Cong Tay Ninh
Armed Forces and elements of the combined North Vietnamese-Viet Cong Ningh
Division based in Cambodia.

On the same day, French journalist Claude Arpin and Japanese correspondents
Akira Kusaka and Yujiro Takagi arrived by auto at the same location on Route 1.
Details are sketchy regarding these foreign nationals, but by 1988, they were
still classified as missing.

Sean Flynn is the son of actor Erroll Flynn. Although Flynn had spent much of
his life in California and New York, his mother, Lili Loomis, maintained homes
both in Palm Beach and Ft. Dodge, Iowa. Flynn was on a photo contract to Time
Magazine, and his friend Dana Stone was on contract to CBS to cover American
fighting in Cambodia. Both men were "veterans" of combat news.

Stone attended school in New Hampshire, but his home was in Vermont, where his
parents resided. He had been in the U.S. Navy at the time of the Bay of Pigs
incident. Both men frequently travelled with military units on patrol and
operations. The Marines who knew Dana Stone called him, "Mini-Grunt".

Information obtained from indigenous sources indicated that Stone and Flynn
were executed in mid-1971 in Kampong Cham Province, Cambodia.

Various sources, including an intercepted radio message from COSUN, the Viet
Cong high command, indicate that Flynn and Stone survived. One source reported
that he had seen "a group of very long haired, bearded, tall prisoners near
Minot, Cambodia" who were identified as "imperialist journalists". Over the
years, meanwhile, there has been occasional word from isolated Cambodian
villages that someone saw the "movie star" who is being held prisoner by the
Khmer Rouge.

Flynn's colleagues have said, "If anyone is equipped to survive...years of
hardship in the jungle, it's Sean Flynn...he's very much an expert at jungle
survival."

Flynn, Stone, Arpin, Kusaka and Takagi are among 22 international journalists
missing in Southeast Asia, most known to have been captured. For several years
during the war, the correspondents community rallied and publicized the fates
of fellow journalists. After a while, they tired of the effort, and today these
men are forgotten by all but families and friends.

Tragically, nearly the whole world turns its head while thousands of reports
continue to flow in that prisoners are still held in Southeast Asia. Cambodia
offered to return a substantial number of remains of men it says are Americans
missing in Cambodia (in fact the number offered exceeded the number of those
officially missing). But the U.S. has no formal diplomatic relations with the
communist government of Cambodia, and refused to directly respond to this
offer. Although several U.S. Congressmen offered to travel to Cambodia to
receive the remains, they have not been permitted to do so by the U.S.