U.S.A.
April 7, 2014
THE ASIAN REPORTER n Page 7
Japanese architect
Shigeru Ban wins Pritzker Prize
By Jocelyn Noveck
AP National Writer
N
FAMOUS PHOTO. A photo released by the U.S. military in 1945,
after it was captured from the Japanese, shows allied prisoners of war in
the Philippines carrying their comrades in slings. In 2009, John E. Love, a
Bataan Death March survivor, joined a campaign with other Bataan Death
March survivors to change the caption of the photo, one of the most fa-
mous photos in AP’s library about the march. The photo, thought to be of
the Bataan Death March, was actually an Allied POW burial detail. Follow-
ing a six-month investigation, the caption was corrected in 2010, 65
years after the image was first published. AP archivists confirmed Love’s
account of the burial detail at a prisoner-of-war camp in the weeks follow-
ing the Death March. Love died last month after a long battle with cancer.
He was 91 years old. (AP Photo/U.S. Marine Corps)
John Love, Bataan Death
March survivor, dies at 91
By Russell Contreras
The Associated Press
A
LBUQUERQUE, New Mexico — John E. Love, a
Bataan Death March survivor who led a campaign
to change the caption on a historic photo from The
Associated Press, has died. He was 91 years old.
Love died after a long battle with cancer, said Gerry
Lightwine, pastor at La Vida Llena, the Albuquerque
retirement home where Love lived.
As a 19-year-old member of the New Mexico Guard,
Love was one of 75,000 Filipino and American soldiers
who were taken captive by the Japanese in World War II
when U.S. forces surrendered in the province of Bataan
and Corregidor Island in April 1942.
In all, tens of thousands of troops were forced to march
to Japanese prison camps in what became known as the
Bataan Death March. Many were denied food, water, and
medical care, and those who collapsed during the
scorching journey through Philippine jungles were shot or
bayonetted.
“I was one of the first 300 or 400 off the march to enter
Camp O’Donnell, and they (prisoners) began dying that
same day,” Love told the Albuquerque Journal in a 2009
interview. He estimated he carried more than 1,000
bodies to the graveyard.
For the remainder of the war, Love was forced to work in
a Japanese copper mine until being liberated in 1945.
After the war, he enrolled at the University of New
Mexico and graduated in 1950. He worked at Conoco Inc.
for 35 years and lived in El Paso, Fort Worth, Houston,
and Arlington, Texas with his wife, Laura Bernice Ellis,
who died in 2000.
In 2009, Love joined a campaign with other Bataan
Death March survivors to change the caption on one of the
most famous photos in AP’s library about the march. The
photo, thought to be of the Bataan Death March, actually
was an Allied POW burial detail.
Following a six-month investigation, The AP corrected
the caption in 2010, 65 years after the image was first
published. AP archivists confirmed Love’s account of the
Continued on page 11
EW YORK — Japanese architect Shigeru Ban,
who has combined a talent for innovative design
and experimental use of everyday materials with
extensive humanitarian efforts around the globe, has won
the 2014 Pritzker Architecture Prize.
Ban, 56, is the seventh architect from Japan to receive
the honor, which will be officially awarded in June. For
two decades, he has rushed to the site of disasters — for
example, the 1995 earthquake in Kobe, Japan, or the 1994
conflict in Rwanda — to construct temporary relief
shelters. He has often used cardboard paper tubes as
building materials, since they are easily found, easily
transported, and can be waterproofed or fireproofed.
Ban’s relief work has not been limited to creating living
shelters. In the wake of the 2009 earthquake in L’Aquila,
Italy, for example, he created a temporary auditorium so
the city’s musicians could continue to play. And after the
2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, he created
partitions for existing emergency shelters so families
could have some privacy.
Outside his humanitarian work, Ban’s noted projects
have included the Centre Pompidou-Metz, a modern art
museum in Metz, France, that features a remarkable
curved roof made of timber — and inspired by a Chinese
hat.
In its citation, the Pritzker jury noted Ban’s unique
approach to materials.
“He is able to see in standard components and common
materials, such as paper tubes, packing materials, or
shipping containers,” the jury wrote, “opportunities to use
them in new ways.”
It noted his “Naked House” in Saitama, Japan, in which
the architect used clear corrugated plastic on the external
walls and white acrylic stretched across a timber frame to
create a home that questions “the traditional notion of
rooms and consequently domestic life.”
Ban’s “Curtain Wall House” in Tokyo uses two-story
high white curtains to open or close the home to the
outside. Similarly, his “Metal Shutter Houses” in New
York’s Chelsea neighborhood feature a unique metal
shutter system to open up apartments to the city air.
But it is Ban’s humanitarian work that the Pritzker
jury emphasized in announcing the prize, which will be
formally awarded June 13 at the Rijksmuseum in
Amsterdam. “Where others may see insurmountable
challenges, Ban sees a call to action,” the citation said.
Speaking in an interview last month in one of the
distinctive “Metal Shutter House” apartments, Ban, who
has offices in Tokyo, Paris, and New York, explained that
despite his extensive work for private clients, his humani-
tarian efforts are of utmost importance to him.
“This is my life’s work,” he said.
ARCHITECT & HUMANITARIAN. Tokyo-born architect Shigeru
Ban, 56, the recipient of the 2014 Pritzker Architecture Prize, stands on
the balcony of one of the “Metal Shutter Houses” he designed in New
York’s Chelsea neighborhood, which features a unique metal shutter
system to open up apartments to the city air. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
Architects, Ban noted, are lucky because they always
work for people who are happy — as people generally are
when they’re building a house. But he’s always felt that
architects need to play a broader social role.
“After I became an architect I was very disappointed in
our profession,” he said, “because we are mostly always
working for privileged people, with power and money. So I
thought that architects needed to have more of a social
role. I thought we could use our experience and our knowl-
edge for people who need help in a natural or manmade
disaster. Even something like temporary housing, we can
make more comfortable and more beautiful.”
In times of disaster, building materials can be difficult
and expensive to procure. That’s why, Ban said, his
favorite building material is something most people throw
out: cardboard tubes.
“Even in Kigali, Rwanda, when I was building shelters,
I found them,” he said. “I’m not inventing anything new,
I’m just using existing material differently.”
In 2011, when Japan was rocked by an earthquake and
tsunami, Ban first created partitions to help families keep
their privacy in shelters like gymnasiums. Then he built,
on the grounds of a baseball stadium, a three-story tem-
porary shelter to house 19 families.
After the Kobe earthquake of 1995, he built a “Paper
Church” which remained there for 10 years, he said,
because of affection for it. Ultimately it was dismantled to
make way for a permanent structure and rebuilt in
Taiwan as a community center.
“Even a building that is made of paper can be perma-
nent, as long as people love it,” he said. “And even a con-
crete building can be temporary, as we see in earth-
quakes.”
Continued on page 13
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