Nearly lost amid the World War II retrospectives is a postwar prank that literally had Japan's vanquished military leader chewing on the words: "Remember Pearl Harbor."
A draftee dentist drilled the message in Morse code inside Gen. Hideki Tojo's dentures while the general was imprisoned in occupied Japan. The dots and dashes remained for three months before the secret got out and they had to be removed."It wasn't anything done in anger," recalled E.J. "Jack" Mallory, who made full upper and lower dentures for Tojo in 1946. "It's just that not many people had the chance to get those words into his mouth."
Tojo, who had approved the surprise attack that drew the United States into the war, asked for the dentures so he could speak better at his war crimes trial. He was convicted and executed in 1948.
Mallory, then 22, knew that writing out the words "Remember Pearl Harbor" could get him court- martialed. An amateur radio operator, he decided to inscribe the letters in Morse code instead.
Also in on the secret was George Foster, who died in 1990. He was assigned to provide dental services at Sugama Prison near Tokyo, where he extracted Tojo's teeth and sought Mallory's help in making the dentures.
"I figured it was my duty to carry out the assignment," Foster wrote in 1988. "But that didn't mean I couldn't have fun with it."
When the dentures were done, Mallory said he and Foster told other buddies in the dental service.
"We took them on an excursion to the prison to show them our masterpiece," Mallory said. "The only ones in on this were my dentist roommates and myself, all sworn to secrecy."
But the secret was just too juicy to hold. One of the men wrote about the escapade to his parents in Texas, they passed it to a brother, who broadcast it on a local radio station. Suddenly, the tale of Tojo's teeth was broadcast all over the world.
Mallory confessed to his commanding officer, who told him to hide while the story was denied. Late that night, Mallory and Foster drove to the prison and woke a bewildered Tojo in the middle of the night to "borrow" his dentures.
Using a crude grinding stone, Mallory removed the dots and dashes.
The erasure came just in time. The next morning, a furious colonel called Mallory and his roommate.
"Is there any truth in this report that `Remember Pearl Harbor' is inscribed in the dentures?' " the colonel barked.
"No, sir!" the men were able to answer truthfully.
Mallory said he never learned if Tojo found out about the trick, which was not publicized in the Japanese press. But a dentist who succeeded Mallory in Japan told him that the general began complaining about the dentures' looser fit.
Mallory, now 71, retired a decade ago from his dental practice in Chico, 90 miles north of Sacramento. Since his military service ended, he has talked openly about the prank. There is even a display about it in the Navy Dental Corps Historical Museum in Bethesda, Md.
In 1969, Mallory returned to Japan for a reunion with several Japanese dentists. Over dinner, he told them the tale of Tojo.
"They thought it was the funniest thing," Mallory said. "They all said, `Why didn't you tell us this?'
"I said, `Well, the timing just didn't seem right.' "