Portrait of a WWII soldier, by one of his prisoners leading to reunion

The portrait of the young Japanese-American soldier, eyes twinkling above a broad smile, still shines in spite of the dark horrors that followed Eddie Tanaka home from Germany after World War II.

Hanging from a single nail, that painting has adorned every Tanaka home for the last 60 years -- from the living room in St. Louis where he and his bride, Gloria Slaton, raised their family, through the retirement years of square-dancing and RV trips, to the couple's new home in the Independence Village retirement center in Naperville.

"We're married 58 years and we've carried it around everywhere we've been," Gloria Tanaka says.

Now 83, the eyes and smile still the same, Eddie Tanaka remembers the man who painted that 1946 portrait -- a captured prisoner of war named Paul Penczner.

"We were taking care of the prisoners," Tanaka says, recalling how his famous "Go For Broke" regiment of Japanese-American soldiers and Hawaiians (they called themselves "Buddha-heads") marched through Europe and were running a prisoner of war camp in an occupied German town as the war wound down.

"Paul was really friendly around there. I talked to Paul a few times," Tanaka says.

Penczner, a Hungarian orphan forced to fight as part of the German Axis, was wounded battling the Russian army, captured and shipped off to the American camp, where he met Tanaka.

"I didn't look at him as a soldier," Penczner, 91, says Wednesday during a telephone interview. "We had a very friendly feeling toward them. We felt very much liberated, and felt very lucky that we did not go to the Russian camp but to the United States."

Tanaka says some of those prisoners behind the barbed wire fashioned sharp weapons out of ration cans and butchered an elite Nazi SS officer among them.

"The human body falls apart real easy if you cut it up," Tanaka says with the calm reassurance of a man who learned a lot about death from hearing the "pssst" as his gaffing pole snagged bloated bodies of enemies floating down the Rhine River.

Death was death. Suffering was something else.

"Boy, I couldn't stand that," Tanaka says, recalling scenes of orphaned German children pawing through Army garbage cans in search of food.

Uniquely American, Tanaka was born in St. Louis -- the youngest son of immigrant parents. His dad was a former laborer and house boy on the West Coast. His mom was a "picture bride," paid for and shipped from Japan for the marriage. The family ran what was basically a soul-food restaurant ("the pig from the nose to the tail") in a neighborhood dominated by Italians and Greeks.

Tanaka learned how to get along with everyone.

Shortly before he enlisted at age 19, Tanaka remembers watching a movie at a theater with two best buddies -- one from an Italian family, the other from a German family -- when a newsreel showed German ruler Adolf Hitler, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and Japanese Prime Minister Hideki Tojo.

"We just burst out laughing because there we were," Tanaka remembers.

Tanaka brought that humor, compassion and civility to his corner of World War II. He befriended a German prisoner, who was a gymnast like Tanaka. The prisoner lived in the nearest village and asked the American soldier to check on his relatives.

During dinner at the man's home, Tanaka discovered the family gave him their only pork chop, so he returned later with an Army-issued can of meat. Prisoners mostly were "just normal people" who didn't cause trouble, he says.

"They were ready to go home. We were the trouble," Tanaka quips. "I did lose a couple of prisoners, but I didn't care, and neither did anyone else. The war was over."

Penczner, no threat to anyone, became a favorite of the camp and was allowed to roam in civilian clothes.

"I talked to him more frequently than other prisoners because he was loose, hanging around our camp," Tanaka says. "We'd just chit-chat, that's all."

One day, Penczner said, "I'm an artist. I'll paint your picture."

Tanaka passed him a small snapshot of himself in military dress.

"He wanted a canvas, so I got him a canvas," Tanaka says, figuring an old green Army tent would suffice. "I got two people to pack it up and give it to him."

Using oil paints he had gotten from another U.S. soldier with connections, Penczner got to work.

"Naturally one has to stretch it, and one has to paint some oil paint on it, white paint, to be able to paint," Penczner says. "I painted 75 to 100 portraits."

A frame was fashioned out of wood that Tanaka thinks might have been from an ammunition box.

"I looked at it and said, 'Oh, my gosh,' " Tanaka says. "I didn't realize he was that kind of artist."

Since immigrating to the United States in 1951 with his wife, Jolanda Schubath, a German refugee, Penczner has become a renowned artist in Memphis, Tenn., where he and his wife made their home. His artworks hang in board rooms, university galleries and museums across the world. Penczner's "Jesus Christ and the Twelve Apostles" was acquired by Pope John Paul II and is part of the Vatican's permanent art collection.

"Who knew 60 years ago that I'd run into him again?" marvels Tanaka, who is planning to do just that.

Having seen that painting every day of her childhood, Tanaka's daughter, herself a grandmother, only recently noticed the printed name in the lower right-hand corner.

"I Googled 'Penczner, WW2, POW, Germany, artist' or something like that," says Christine Keuer of Wheaton, who located her father's artist in Memphis.

"We received a very kind and very fine letter from his daughter," says Penczner, who adds that he is hoping for a reunion this summer.

Keuer sent the artist a photo of his painting, which he remembers.

"It was really important for me to concentrate very much on the quality of the portraits," says Penczner, for whom painting was an escape from the war. "At this time, American soldiers were paying with cigarettes. Cigarettes were the most important thing."

For Tanaka, who spent his post-war career in the new air-conditioning, heating and refrigeration industry, the painting is priceless.

"Now he gets thousands of dollars for his paintings," Tanaka says. "Well, I paid him off in cigarettes."