Some stories must never be forgotten.
The extraordinary story of PT-109 and the young John F. Kennedy during World War II in the Pacific.
A story of survival, courage and determination.
This story has a remarkable epilogue:
They didn’t know it was Amagiri that night.
It was a dark, moonless night and the collision happened incredibly fast. The Japanese destroyer Amagiri, returning at high speed from a “Tokyo Express” mission, spotted PT-109 ahead and turned into her, cutting the small wooden patrol boat in two.
The identification came later. U.S. patrol reports and intelligence were compared with Japanese naval records: the time, location and route of Amagiri through Blackett Strait matched the collision. Japanese wartime records ultimately confirmed which destroyer had encountered PT-109.
And the story had a remarkable epilogue. After the war, Amagiri’s former commanding officer, Kohei Hanami, and John F. Kennedy corresponded. Hanami later sent Kennedy a commemorative bronze medal for his 1961 presidential inauguration — an extraordinary gesture of reconciliation between two men whose paths had crossed so violently in the Pacific eighteen years earlier.
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