🔵 The Blackened Canteen

On June 20, 1945, during a bombing raid over Shizuoka, Japan, two Army Air Force B-29s collided, killing 23 crewmen. More than 2,000 Shizuoka citizens died as a result of the raid. Local farmer Fukumatsu Ito found a blackened canteen among the wreckage and began an annual ceremony - including a silent prayer and the pouring of bourbon whiskey from the blackened canteen onto the crash site - to honor those killed, both Japanese and American. On the 51st anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack, Dr. Hiroya Sugano conducted the first Blackened Canteen Ceremony aboard the USS Arizona Memorial, and it became a tradition that continues today.