OSAKA -- For 56 years, Ben Comstock, 82, an American captured by Japanese forces on Wake Island in December 1941, has been waiting.
He waited in the hold of a transport ship -- prisoners dubbed them "hell ships" because of their inhumane conditions -- and was taken from Wake Island to Shanghai.
He waited for liberation by the Allies as he endured life as a POW, first in China and then as a slave laborer at what is now Hitachi Shipyards on Sakurajima, Osaka, near Universal Studios Japan. "Our camp was located near a lumberyard, and there were between 300 and 350 Australian, British, and Americans. We were led from the camp to (the) Hitachi Shipyard site, where company supervisors took over," Comstock said from his Bellevue, Neb., home.