(This article originally appeared in the November 2026 issue of Military Officer magazine.)

For more than 80 years, a scarred, battered American canteen has been at the center of international ceremonies honoring wartime fallen and peacetime friendship.

In June, U.S. airmen from the 374th Airlift Wing gathered in Shizuoka, Japan, where bourbon whiskey is ceremonially poured over a stone monument inscribed with “B-29” and the names of U.S. airmen who died during a World War II bombing raid on the city.

And in December 2025, at the USS Arizona Memorial at Hawaii’s Pearl Harbor, American and Japanese military and government officials, WWII veterans, and family members attended a similar ceremony alongside Dr. Hiroya Sugano of Shizuoka, taking turns solemnly holding the canteen and pouring bourbon whiskey into the waters below in honor of the dead.

Sugano, now in his early 90s, has been the custodian of the canteen for many years. He received it from the Japanese farmer who stood in a fi eld of debris in 1945, his city in ruins after the air raid, searching the wreckage of two crashed U.S. bombers and respectfully recovering the survivors and the dead — and one blackened canteen.

The blackened canteen is shown before a memorial event.

The Shizuoka Raid

B-29 Superfortress bombers of the 314th Bombardment Wing began attacking Shizuoka in waves during the evening of June 19, 1945. Thousands of incendiary bombs fell on the city from more than 100 bombers, killing about 2,000 Japanese citizens.

During the raid, two B-29s collided and crashed. Local farmer and businessman Fukumatsu Itoh searched the wreckage for survivors, finding two U.S. airmen who initially survived the crash but were fatally wounded.

Altogether, 23 airmen aboard the two aircraft died. Itoh tended to the wounded and ensured the American airmen received proper burials, U.S. officials have said.

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Amid the wreckage, Itoh recovered the canteen, which was bent and discolored. He kept it and began a tradition of honoring the dead, both American and Japanese, in annual ceremonies at the crash site, pouring bourbon — and reportedly sake — from the artifact in tribute to the fallen.

Sugano, who was a child in Shizuoka during the war, came from a family of military doctors and eventually became a doctor as well. He knew Itoh and promised the aging farmer he would carry on the tradition.

In 1972, Sugano began hosting annual ceremonies at two monuments on Mount Shizuhata. Each year, near the date of the 1945 mission, U.S. airmen, Japanese servicemembers and officials, and local citizens gather for the ceremony to pour bourbon over the stone bearing the names of the fallen B-29 airmen.

In 1991, during the 50th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Sugano attended commemorative events in Hawaii and helped begin the annual Blackened Canteen Ceremony at the USS Arizona Memorial, with the help of Lt. Col. Gary Gene Meyers, USMC (Ret), according to Pacific Historic Parks, which works in partnership with the National Park Service.

“This is my life’s work,” Sugano said at the 2023 ceremony in Shizuoka. “To see the U.S. and Japan come together to celebrate tradition, friendship, and joy makes me extremely happy. This is what Mr. Fukumatsu Itoh would have wanted.”

‘Pathways to Peace’

Air Force Col. Michael Richard attended the 2025 ceremony in Hawaii as U.S. Pacific Command’s deputy chief of staff.

“Over the 80 years since, think of the monumental steps America and Japan have taken to build pathways to peace in the Pacific and throughout the world,” he said. “Let this ceremony and the remembrance and unity it symbolizes inspire current generations and those that follow. As the whiskey falls from the blackened canteen, may it serve as a call to all of us to continue building pathways to peace.”