At a Pearl Harbor sunset ceremony on Monday, whiskey from a blackened canteen was poured into the waters at the USS Arizona Memorial.
It capped off a weekend of remembering the lives lost during World War II. The military canteen is an artifact of war, but it has become a symbol of shared humanity.
It belonged to one of 23 U.S. airmen who died when their planes collided in midair over a city in Japan. It was found by a Japanese citizen who was so touched by the power of what he held in his hands.
A canteen whose owner's fingers gripped the vessel in his final moments. Now those indentations seared in metal created what some may see as a symbol of courage and fear in wartime.
That blackened canteen started a tradition toward a pathway to peace. It has become the centerpiece of a simple ceremony honoring not just airmen but Japanese citizens who died that night.
Dr. Hiroya Sugano has continued the tradition of traveling to Pearl Harbor to remember.
“During World War II, on June 19, 1942, Shizuoka City was attacked by 123 American B-29 bombers. During the bombing mission, two B-29 bombers arrived and crashed. As a result, 23 U.S. airmen died, and about 2,000 Shizuoka residents lost their lives,” Sugano said.
Sugano has made replicas of the canteen, and this weekend presented them to family members of some of those airmen in honor of the past.
Earlier this weekend, Sugano was invited to tour the largest skeletal identification laboratory in the world. The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency has worked to identify the remains of unknown U.S. troops for decades.
Kelly McKeague is the director of the agency. The retired Air Force major general and Damien High graduate underscored the U.S. commitment to the soldier identification work as he led a tour for Sugano.
The U.S. has teams in the field now, in Palau as well as in the Philippines. They’re working actively on cases of unknowns from the war in the Pacific. The team doing the work in the lab includes Denise To, who is both a forensic archeologist and anthropologist.
“We don't give up. We keep it here. And then every year we think, is there a new technology that was developed this year?” To said.
“Or maybe there's a new family that was able to provide us with a DNA sample, and we didn't know that person existed in the first place. So if we get that new piece of information or that new technology, we'll apply it to the case. And that's why one of these cases, 23 years, it was because we were able to get a new family reference sample or new dental reference, so we never give up.”
To said that items left behind, like a dog tag or a name on a canteen, can often help provide clues to identify the remains retrieved from the field. But sometimes there is little to go on.
There was no such clue left on the blacked canteen, and with no identity known, it is everyman’s canteen. Sugano said he has called on the Japanese government to do more to bring its soldiers home from battle sites across the Pacific.
Through an interpreter, HPR asked why Sugano thought there hadn't been more of an effort to do that.
“Probably the money is the issue; the government cannot support,” Sugano said through the interpreter. “So many Japanese people, over 3 million civilians, have been involved during World War II. ... He believes government personally wants to do that, but just having so much finance problem, since it costs so much money, it's been very difficult."
The power of a blackened canteen. A small artifact of war. A powerful relic of peace.
This story aired on The Conversation on Dec. 11, 2025. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. Hannah Kaʻiulani Coburn adapted this story for the web.
