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Post by friscohare on Sept 16, 2012 22:18:10 GMT -5
Village of Buttonwood resident’s father survived Bataan Death March[/u][/url][/size] (The Villages Daily Sun, 09/14/12) THE VILLAGES — John Bullen never spoke much about the atrocities. A quiet man, according to his son, Jerry Bullen, the corporal’s life would never be the same after he became a prisoner of war, captured by the Japanese in 1942 in the Philippines. The Village of Buttonwood resident’s father endured four years of indescribable suffering, according to his family. These family members kept scrapbooks filled with newspaper articles about the war, several written about the corporal, announcing that he was missing in action and later confirming he was a prisoner of war. “After reading the articles that I have from my grandmother’s scrapbook, I saw what he must have endured at the hands of the Japanese; and to be able to survive that, he must have been very strong,” Jerry said. Jerry said he understood why his father never spoke about it. “I would imagine it is probably very hard to see fellow soldiers” being killed, he said. In one newspaper clipping, the article cites a letter from John to his family stating he is OK but giving little other information because he was prohibited by the Japanese from elaborating, according to Jerry. John Bullen survived the Bataan Death March, resulting from the April 1942 Japanese capture of about 12,000 Americans and 63,000 Filipinos after the United States’ surrender in the Philippines, according to information from the U.S. Army. The Japanese rounded up the prisoners of war on “the only paved road that ran down the Bataan Peninsula and began marching them north toward Camp O’Donnell in Tarlac Province, 65 miles away,” according to information available from the Army. Throughout the five-day march the men were provided scant food and water and were shot or bayoneted if they attempted to escape, fell or tried to quench their thirst, the Army reported. On that march, the Army states, “the Japanese guards killed between 7,000 and 10,000 men.” Don Goldstein, a World War II scholar who has written 22 books about the war, said the Bataan Death March was horrific from many standpoints. “The Japanese treated them so badly that 37 percent of all American prisoners in Japan died in prison camp,” the Village of Hadley resident and president of the World War II History Club said, compared to 8 percent that died in German prisoner of war camps. The German army followed the Geneva Convention rules in its treatment of prisoners of war, but the Japanese did not, according to Goldstein. Jerry’s mother, Nora Bullen, recalls one conversation she had with her husband about his experience in the Philippines. “They only fed them rice,” she said. “They were assigned different duties by the Japanese, and if they did not do their job they were beaten.” Once prisoners reached the camps, conditions were no better, with no sanitation, meager food and little access to clean water, according to Joseph Vater Jr., president of ADBC (American Defenders of Bataan & Corregidor) Memorial Society, whose “mission is to preserve and perpetuate the story of the men and women who defended the Philippines … and later became prisoners of war.” Diseases such as dysentery and malaria were prevalent and spread rapidly in the camps because the prisoners were kept in close quarters, according to Vater. The Army states that 400 per day died in the camps. When prisoners were transferred to Japan in cargo ships, known as hell ships, the suffering continued, according to Vater. “They put hundreds of Americans into these holds that were used to hold cargo, with no sanitary facilities, with people who were very sick and had limited food and water,” he said. The experience had a lasting effect on John Bullen, age 23 at the time, Jerry said. “My father was a nervous person,” he said. “He was not a healthy man. He suffered so many diseases, all of those diseases that were found in the Pacific.” John Bullen died of a heart attack in 1972 at age 54. As a result of her husband’s trials, his wife said, “he worried about everything and he was sick a lot.” But irrespective of the suffering he endured, Jerry and Nora said he was not a bitter man. “I don’t think he had a bad bone in his body,” Jerry said of his father, who was awarded the Bronze Star for “meritorious achievement during combat while serving in the South West Pacific Theater of Operations,” according to the citation. “I don’t think he held a grudge toward the Japanese people.” “He was a very kind person,” Nora added. “He was the type of person that would give you the shirt off of his back.” Jerry said his father was there for him throughout his childhood, attending his Little League games and helping family members such as his uncle. Nora said her husband was part of the original group now known as the ADBC Memorial Society, and she went with him on a return trip to the Philippines in the 1960s to revisit the place where he endured incredible hardship as a prisoner of war. In particular, she said, she remembered visiting the Malinta Tunnel, where the sick soldiers stayed before they were captured by the Japanese. Her husband, she said, showed no emotion and kept to himself as they walked through the area. Vater said his father also was a prisoner of war, captured at Corregidor. Like John Bullen, he never spoke much about his experiences as a prisoner of war. “These guys understated what they went through,” he said. “It is almost chilling how calm and collected they are when they speak about it.” One recollection of that horrible time that he remembers his father telling him was about the looks on the prisoners’ faces. “You could literally look into people’s eyes and tell whether they were going to survive or not,” Jerry said he remembered his father telling him. Nora said she hopes more people learn about the incident. “History repeats itself,” she said. “When people forget, the world gets away with it.”
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Post by friscohare on Oct 7, 2012 21:48:05 GMT -5
Bataan Death March survivor speaks to veterans[/u][/url][/size] (The Herald-Sun) DURHAM – On April 9, 1942, during World War II, 12,000 U.S. and 66,000 Filipino soldiers surrendered to the Japanese and were forced to march 65 miles to a prisoners-of-war camp up the peninsula of Bataan, the Philippines. Thousands of stragglers were executed or starved along the way during the Bataan Death March. Yet some survived, only to face years as POWs. One of the survivors is John Mims of Aberdeen, N.C. He was the guest speaker Monday at the Friendly City Civitan Club’s annual luncheon honoring war veterans. Mims fought in the Philippines with 31st Infantry Regiment of the 1st Battalion. “Even though a lot of my buddies didn’t come back, we fought almost like guys in the Alamo, if you get my meaning. We ran out of food and ammunition,” Mims told a roomful of Durham veterans, most of whom served in World War II. “The Bataan Death March was the most terrible thing we ever heard of in our life,” Mims said. “They were killing our people so fast we couldn’t even keep up with what was going on.” When they started to march, he said, they were told to march four abreast so if something happened to one, the other three would know about it. There was no food or water. Those who stopped were killed. A Japanese officer dropped a bottle of Coca-cola, and when Mims picked it up and handed it to him, he didn’t bow. “He busted my teeth out – every one of them,” Mims said. Mims learned to speak Japanese, something that would later save his life and the lives of many others. In August 1945 while still in a POW camp, Mims heard a guard say that the war ended with unconditioned surrender. The Japanese had planned to blow the POWs up in a mine and make it look like an accident, he said. Instead, the Americans took the camp over. They found out later that Japanese didn’t give them food because they didn’t have any. When U.S. troops took over the town, they found just women and children. “We’d been out in the village trying to find food to share with the women and children so they wouldn’t suffer so much,” he said. The first food they received was sugar and cream, which was too rich for the POWs, he said. Mims looked out over the room of elderly WWII veterans Monday and said, “I want to tell all of you in here: We love you and you can’t do nothing about it.” Mims, who is Native American, grew up in Georgia and Florida. He travels with his wife, Nena, speaking often about his experiences during the war. He wears a jacket that tells people to ask him about the Bataan Death March. A magnet on the side of his car says “Remember World War II.” In two weeks, he’ll go to Japan at the Japanese government’s expense and see one of the places he was a POW. Mims credits God with his survival. “A lot of times they tried to beat me to death and asked why I survived. I said God loved me,” Mims said.
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Post by friscohare on Oct 7, 2012 21:49:15 GMT -5
Ex-POW’s from WWII share their stories[/u][/url][/size] (Woodward News, 09/16/12) Woodward, Okla. — Every 2nd Thursday of the month, a small group of people with a unique bond gather for lunch at Big Dan's Steakhouse in Woodward. They are the members of the Oklahoma Panhandle Chapter of the American Ex-Prisoners of War. This group of former Prisoners of War (POW) and their family members gather for fellowship with others who also have the rare knowledge of what it was like to be taken captive by an enemy of war, either from first-hand experience or through the memories of a loved one. The American Ex-Prisoners of War is a national organization for former POWs of all wars and their next of kin. For more information on the organization, visit its website at www.axpow.org or call the national office at (817) 649-2979. Or feel free to join any meeting of the Oklahoma Panhandle Chapter of the American Ex-Prisoners of War. Chapter members say they would love for anyone to stop by their meetings, even if they are not a former POW. Their meetings are a time for telling stories, whether it is reminiscing about times past or just catching up with each other on happenings since the last meeting. This month the members were asked to write letters about their experiences while being a POW, which they graciously presented to The News to share with our readers. Here are their stories. GENE STEVENS The story of Norman Eugene 'Gene' Stevens, as told by his wife, Laura Stevens: "My husband, Norman Eugene Stevens, enlisted in the US Navy on March 11, 1940. After boot camp and four months schooling in San Diego, he was assigned to serve on 'The Heavy Cruiser,' The USS Houston CA 30. He was sent to the Philippines and was there when WWII broke out. The Houston was then sent to the Far East. The Houston was known as 'The Flagship of the Asiatic Fleet.' The Japanese claimed so often to have sunk her, she was nicknamed 'The Galloping Ghost of the Java Coast.' She was sunk in the battle of Sunda Strait, March 1, 1942. Of Houston's 1087 officers and men, 721 went down with the ship and 366 escaped only to be captured as they floundered helplessly in the sea. Gene was in the water 14 hours before he was picked up by the Japanese and turned over to the Japanese Military Police, and it was all bad news from there. Gene was in several prison camps in Java, Batavia, Singapore and Thailand, where they were forced to work at building a railroad, with no tools but their hands. After many deaths of the prisoners, 14 to 16 a night, they were sent back to Chang's camp in Singapore. The War ended Aug. 15. On approximately Sept. 1, Gene was the last person on the first plane to a hospital in Calcutta, India. In about 2 weeks [he was sent] to St. Albans, New York. He was discharged on March 15, 1945 after 3 1/2 years as a Japanese prisoner of war. We are so grateful he made it back home in spite of all the filth, starvation, beatings, diseases and brutality he endured." Gene and Laura did not meet till after Gene returned from the war and were married on April 7, 1946. Laura Stevens said after returning home Gene had many health problems from the hard labor and malnutrition that he endured while in the POW camps. "He was a gentle man and a good husband and father," Stevens said. He never talked much about being in the camps, but from what she gathered over the years they didn't get much food and when they were too weak to work, they got no food. She said that after his time in the POW camps, he hated to see others go hungry. "He had said that when he was in the water after the boat sank, the Japanese men that had picked him up were some of the nicest people. They themselves didn't have much food and one even gave him his bowl of rice. Gene had said that rumors were that even the fishermen would shoot you in the water so he fought these men that were trying to save his life," she said. Stevens said that she didn't truly understand what her husband had gone through until they took a trip to Australia and along the way visited some of the camps that he had stayed in while he was a POW. JACK WARNER Jack D. Warner tells of his capture and escape from the Japanese during World War II. Jack is also a former National Commander for the American Ex-Prisoners of War. "My name is Jack D. Warner, and I have lived most of my life in western Oklahoma. I joined the United States Marine Corp in 1939, and was in the Marines until 1946. I went to San Diego, CA for boot camp, and then I was then transferred to Mairaini Island, CA for 9 months. I then was sent to Shanghai, China by the way of Hawaii; Midway Island; Wake; Guam; Manila, Philippines; Chongqing, North China, up the Yangzi River to Shanghai. I was sent to the 2nd Battalion E Co 4th Rec. for about 14 months, then to Olongapo/Subic Bay, Philippines. When World War II started I went through a strafing by Japanese zeros from there to Bataan, then to Corregidor Island. We went through bombings every day, by 4 motor bombers for 4 months. After General King surrendered Bataan we were bombed everyday and some nights, by 105, 155, 8 in. and 240mm cannons. The Japanese Emperor's birthday was April 29, and on that day shelling started about 4 in the morning and stopped about 10 p.m. Jack Graves, the squad leader and myself were buried twice during the shelling up to our necks. At this time I was in A Company 1st Battalion. The night of May 5th the Japanese landed on Corregidor Island in front of my post. We fought all night, up until 11 in the morning of May 6. That is when the Army surrendered Corregidor, because we were out of ammunition, water and food. I was captured by the Japanese at that time, and taken to Bilibid prison camp in Manila, then to Cabanatuan and from there I was sent on a Hellship Lima Maru to Formosa, Japan, from Formosa I was sent to Yokohama, Japan, Mitsubishi shipyard [where I worked] as a riveter from Thanksgiving Day 1942 until May 12, 1945. We went through 2 shellings by Halsey 3rd fleet which killed 36 American Prisoners of War and a lot of Japanese. After that we escaped twice while we were there, and the second time, myself and 21 other men made it to the American lines and turned ourselves into the 7th Army General Johnson, Quaguin Islands. From there I was sent back to the states by the way of Guam, Hawaii and Oakland Naval Hospital. I was a Sgt. at the time of discharge." KEN BECKWITH Ken Beckwith tells his story of marching with other prisoners through the cold German countryside. "Feb. 6, 1945, an estimated 11,000 Prisoners of War, both American and English, and I was one of them, marched out of Stalag 4, just ahead of the advancing Russian Army. They said there was only a 30 mile gap to get us through. They (Germans) were planning on trying to get us to another prisoner of war camp at Swanda Mundy only two days march. There was 24 inches of snow on the ground and the coldest weather in Germany in 60 years. We marched all night and finally in the early morning we stopped and everyone fell out in the snow, too tired to go on. That 2 day march turned into an estimated 800 miles and 80 days later. 4 of us teamed up together for the whole trip. Andy Anderson - Cooper - Monty Childress and I. Our main food was potatoes that we could steal. So many of the POWs had dysentery and just couldn't go on. They were left behind with a German guard and later in the day that guard was up with the group again. It took no imagination to know what happened. We were recaptured by the American Army at the Elbe River where the American and Russian troops met. This is just a brief summary of my stay with the German govt. And if you really want to know what freedom means, talk to any ex-POW, if you can get them to talk about it." RALPH E. BAIRD, Jr. The story of how Ralph E. Baird, Jr. earned his Army medals. "In Aug. 1942 Jr. married his wife Jackie. 17 days later Jr. took his Army physical. A month after the wedding he was Pvt. Ralph E. Baird, Jr. Jr.'s father Ralph E. Baird, Sr. had served in WWI. Jr. 's Army career was not a smooth one. Jr. was inducted in August 1942 and discharged in October 1945. Jr. was a ball turret gunner and crew chief on a B17. On Feb. 22, 1944 his plane was shot down, on their 13th mission, over Germany. He was taken prisoner of war. Being in a prison in East Prussia he was moved several times. Each time ahead of the Russian advance. Jr. and Jackie's 1st son was 11 months old when Jr. finally got home. Jr. was awarded the purple heart, European theatre of operations with three bronze stars and the air medal with two oak leaf clusters." WALTER ROBERTS Walter Roberts tells his story of his release from captivity in Germany during World War II. "On May 12, 1945 the American prisoners being held at Littau, Germany were ordered to fall out. It was dark. We began our trek to Czechoslovakia which was about 17 miles. The guards handed out bread to each man and that was the last we would see of them. Three of us left the other POW's and stared hitchhiking to Prague. We got rides with a Russian medical squad, a four door touring car that was powered by steam, and we walked the rest of the way. Total distance of about 60 miles. We came to a small town where all the people were going into one building, so we entered. This place had a stage at one end where 3 or 4 German officers were standing. The people were holding a public trial for these men. By the shouting, by the people, we knew what the outcome would be. We retreated out the door and continued on our way to Prague. The people of Prague could all speak English and they put us up in one of the nicest hotels I have ever stayed in. The rooms had balconies, silk sheets on the beds and [the hotel] was 12 to 14 stories high. They also provided us food. We stayed about a week. he Czechs managed to get a pick-up and transport us to Pilsen where the American Army was. They had a driver, 2 men in the back of the pick-up with guns in case we would meet any Germans along the way." Editor's Note: Roberts recently was part of one of the Oklahoma Honor Flights for World War II veterans. Look for his story in a future edition of the Woodward News.
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Post by friscohare on Oct 7, 2012 21:51:33 GMT -5
Illinois School Project Preserves Memory, History of Bataan Soldiers[/u][/url][/size] (IL NG, 09/19/12) SPRINGFIELD, IL (09/19/2012)(readMedia)-- A persistent interest in a locked memorial garden, a promise to a friend and the quest for free computers led a couple of teachers at Proviso East High School in Maywood, Ill., to embark on a project that is today an expansive online databases of a single National Guard organization and a fascinating chronicle of one of the most dramatic prisoner of war episodes in American history. Inside the well maintained, park-like memorial garden at Proviso East High School are several large commemorative plaques with the names of 191 former students who died fighting during World War II etched onto them. Ian Smith, a former social studies teacher, and Jim Opolony, an English teacher at Proviso East, often talked of exploring the memorial garden, but found little opportunity until after school one day during the 1999 school year. "The garden is an open air courtyard that classrooms overlooked and wasn't an area typically for students to go into and wander around in," said Smith. "The doors would lock automatically and we were worried we couldn't get back in. But one day we noticed the door was ajar and we went out to explore." While they explored the memorial garden, Smith and Opolony made a rubbing of the name Robert Boerman from one of the monuments as a favor to Boerman's nephew. As they continued to explore they noticed a disproportionate number of names from the class of 1938. "We knew Maywood had a long history with the Bataan Death March because of the parade, which was held for 50 years and the Bataan Day ceremonies," said Smith. "We wondered why there were so many from this particular class and thought it may be connected to Bataan." The pair investigated further and discovered the building across the street from the school, visible from Smith's classroom, was the armory. Following on an oral history project they led with their students the year before, Smith and Opolony decided to get their students involved in the project of discovering and documenting the histories of the Proviso veterans who were memorialized in the garden. As a bonus, the student's use of the Internet for the project would help the school procure computers through a school consortium. The teachers quickly found their students knew very little about their local history and the project was a great opportunity to educate them about it. The original focus of the project was Company B, 192nd Tank Battalion, Illinois Army National Guard whose Soldiers, along with those of the rest of the battalion, would successfully repel the Japanese invasion of the Philippine's Bataan Peninsula for four months while critically short on food, bullets and other supplies. Without supplies or hope of reinforcements, the troops were ordered to surrender. Now prisoners of war, the Soldiers were made to walk the 80 miles to Camp O'Donnell suffering from dehydration, exhaustion, disease and brutal treatment at the hands of their Japanese guards. "Originally the students got really upset," said Opolony. "We brought one of the Bataan survivors into the classroom and a student asked him 'did you want to die?' and he said 'every day.' They had tears in their eyes when they realized these men were really just boys of 17, 18, or 19 years old when this happened to them." Opolony and Smith were successful at piquing their students' interest and said the project quickly grew wheels. "This was such a close, local story. These guys went to the same school, played on the same ball fields and lived in the same neighborhoods as the students," said Smith. "A passion developed at that point to get the word out. Let's see if we can find survivors; let's see if we can find some relatives of those who died and get their stories out there." Both teachers said they could not imagine how the project would grow and develop. "We were only going to document B Company, but as soon as we went online with the project we began receiving e-mails from family members from the remainder of the battalion in Wisconsin, Ohio and Kentucky," said Opolony. They decided to move the project forward and expand it. "We were getting information about all four companies in the battalion," said Smith. "We decided, let's keep going with it." Today the entire project is a site of its own (http://www.proviso.k12.il.us/bataan%20web/index.htm) and is updated as often as new information is made available from survivors and family members. "All of the information is from primary sources; first-hand accounts. Survivors sent us pictures and letters and scrap books," said Smith. "We went to the Maywood Bataan Day event in 1999 and looked for people who looked like they were World War II veterans and asked them to do interviews and that developed into great relationships." As the nation marks POW/MIA Recognition Day Sept. 21, Smith and Opolony take pride in their students' efforts to preserve the history of the Illinois National Guard Soldiers who are connected to Bataan. "The students really appreciated the history. It wasn't something in a history book, it was personalized," said Smith. "We'd have addresses of where the Soldiers lived and students would say 'that's next to my house.' It made the history come alive for them." Both have found the project impacted their lives too. "If you would have asked me in 1999, I wouldn't have known a whole lot," said Opolony. "I'm not an authority on Bataan or World War II, but I know a ton about the tank battalion. I've made a lot of friends and have traveled to all four towns where companies of the 192nd were from." They said most of the survivors interviewed for the project were being asked to talk about something they would rather not remember, but that talking helped the survivors and helped their families. "We were able to find out things, fill in the pieces for families who lost someone over there, but until (this project), we knew very few details about their experience before they died. Survivors would say to us 'thank you for helping me tell these stories I've never told anybody about before,'" said Smith. Today only a few of the 192nd Tank Battalion Soldiers who served in WWII are still alive, but their stories and their memory live on as a result of the Proviso East High School Bataan Commemorative Research Project. The project has been a blessing to survivors and the families around the world and received two awards including an Illinois State Board of Education excellence award. Smith and Opolony said the project has been a blessing on them personally as well. "The privilege of being able to interact with and get to know these people...it has been as rewarding for Jim and I as it has been for the veterans and families who've benefitted from the project," said Smith.
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Post by friscohare on Oct 7, 2012 21:53:17 GMT -5
Prisoners of war honored at VA ceremony[/u][/url][/size] (Ashville Citizen-Times, 09/21/12) ASHEVILLE — Having spent time in the Hanoi Hilton, Dave Grant got emotional at a ceremony Friday honoring prisoners of war and those declared missing in action. “It’s a tearjerker,” said Grant, a Brevard resident whose plane was shot down over Vietnam in June of 1972. “There’s too many friends gone. It means a lot.” About 75 people attended the Charles George VA Medical Center for the POW/MIA recognition ceremony, which featured a “missing man table” with five empty chairs, one representing each branch of the service. “The phrase on the POW flag says, ‘You are not forgotten,” said John Cowart, coordinator of the former POW program at the medical center. “It’s incumbent on every American to not forget.” Grant said he considers himself fortunate to have spent only six months as a prisoner of war while others were imprisoned for years. “Once you got over the initial super harassment, it was just a matter of staying alive, getting the sun to come up, so to speak,” he said. “Whereas, the families were the ones that had the hard part.” Also at the ceremony was Bailey Gillespie, 82, of Spindale. He was a combat medic in the Korean War who spent 34 months in prison. “We need to remember the sacrifices that have been made,” he said. “Our freedom is because of the Revolutionary War that started our freedom, and we’ve had to defend it ever since.”
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Post by friscohare on Oct 7, 2012 21:54:54 GMT -5
Frank Byars First war casualty from Forest ParkWebsite honors 1938-39 Proviso class members, captured and held by Japanese during WWII[/u][/url][/size] (Forest Park Review, 09/25/12) They were students at Proviso East High School in 1938 and joined the National Guard in Maywood at the beginning of World War II. Then almost 200 members of Proviso East's classes of 1938 and 1939 were shipped overseas to the Philippines where they played a part in one of the most gruesome episodes of the Pacific Theater: the surrender of their company, followed by the infamous 80-mile Bataan Death March in 1942. Those who survived the march faced imprisonment and inhumane conditions in a Japanese prison camp - some for more than three years. The 70th anniversary of the death march was observed in September as well as POW/MIA Recognition Day on Sept. 21. For 50 years, the village of Maywood held a Bataan Day parade in September to honor the local boys who perished there. A tank in a park visible from First Avenue serves as a reminder of the Maywood 192nd Tank Battalion National Guard Unit. In 1999, two Proviso East teachers used a class project to develop a website to commemorate the local members of the National Guard unit. Over the years it has expanded to tell individual stories of anyone involved with Bataan. The website, www.proviso.k12.il.us/bataan%20web/index.htm, tells the stories of local high school students who perished in the Philippines. Among those profiled is Frank Byars, 21, the first war casualty from Forest Park. "He died nine days before me and my twin brother were born in December 1941," said Byars' niece, Eunice Blazak, who grew up in Forest Park but now lives in Shell Knob, Mo. "He was one of six brothers; five of them served in the military." Byars grew up at 1334 Circle Avenue in Forest Park and attended Field-Stevenson School and Proviso Township High School, according to the website. Before joining the Illinois National Guard, he worked as a mechanic for the Continental Can Company in Chicago. Byars was a motorcycle courier who delivered messages back and forth between the command headquarters and the company. He died delivering a message. "I found out later he was killed by friendly fire," said Blazak. "I'm not sure even my grandmother [Byars' mother] knew that." Byars' mother, Ida, got conflicting dates of Frank's death from the U.S. Army. Then she got the most puzzling and heartbreaking telegram. "It was from Uncle Frank and said, 'Don't worry, things are not so bad, I'm all right,'" said Blazak. But the telegram had been delayed. Frank was dead by the time it arrived. "I found it with her papers when she died in Missouri," she said. Blazak said Frank's body, buried in a mass grave, was never recovered. She is working with the U.S. Army to try to identify his remains. "We sent them a DNA sample from one of Frank's cousins." "The one thing my grandmother wished for was for his remains to come home." Growing up in Forest Park, Blazak said her parents never spoke about the battalion surrender to the Japanese in 1942 and the teens, age 17-19 who died or lived under torture in the prison camps. "My parents didn't talk about it. It was only after I found my grandmother's papers and saw the names of the other soldiers that I realized they were all uncles of my high school friends at Proviso," Blazak said. "I think our parents wanted to shelter us." Proviso English Teacher Jim Opolony, a Vietnam veteran who runs the high school website, said students are always surprised and upset when they study the historical event. "They ask me, 'Were they in these classrooms?' and I say yes. They realize that these men were young, just like them. They start to understand that wars are not fought by 50-year-old men." Opolony said he met and videotaped local survivors for the website. "I think they didn't want to talk about it for most of their lives, but then realized they were getting old and they didn't want their stories to be lost." On the website, veteran Joseph Lajzer, of Toledo, Ohio, described how the group was marched for the first two days and nights of a six-day march without stopping, including walking over "what felt like burlap bags," but discovered they were the corpses of soldiers and civilians who had fallen in the road. On the whole, Opolony said, the surviving soldiers, now in their 90s, were happy people. "Some of them have the best senses of humor of anyone I've met. When you get liberated from a POW camp what in your life is going to be that bad again?" The dead are remembered in a special memorial garden at the high school with a plaque listing the 191 members of Proviso East who died in the war. Some survived it all, said Opolony, including one young man who returned to Proviso to get his diploma. "Imagine being in a prison camp for 38 months as a POW and then going back to high school!"
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Post by friscohare on Oct 7, 2012 21:56:23 GMT -5
Local veteran tells of POW horrors[/u][/url][/size] (Fox 8 New Orleans, 10/03/12) New Orleans, La. - Erwin Johnson lived the misery shown in old photos on the second floor of the National WWII Museum. Johnson was in the U.S. Army on the Bataan Peninsula in the Philippines on December 7th 1941. A few months after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, they began a siege of Bataan. "We were on half-rations and we were down to quarter-rations and the ammunition had just about run out," said Johnson, a New Orleans native. By April 1942, American and Filipino forces on Bataan surrendered. Erwin says their Japanese captors were ruthless. They were forced to march almost 70 miles to the first POW camp -- something the historians now call the Bataan Death March. "About six days, we had maybe two cups of rice and were allowed, one time, to put some water in our canteen," he said. "If a guy started walking slow and trailing, he would be bayoneted or shot." The tens of thousands of soldiers who endured the madness made it to a prison camp. Johnson would stay at Camp O'Donnel for two weeks before he ended up spending years in a camp in China. "It didn't hit me until I was an adult of what he had gone through," his son Raymond said. Erwin organized a meeting in New Orleans with other POW's this week, part of a decades-long healing process. "It helps to be able to talk to the guys to get it out of your system," said the veteran. When Erwin and other POW's were liberated in 1945, it didn't erase the pain. Still, he wants the story told for generations to come.
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Post by friscohare on Oct 7, 2012 21:57:57 GMT -5
POWs reunite: Veterans recall experience in Mukden camp[/u][/url][/size] (The Advocate, 10/05/12) NEW ORLEANS — By late 1942, American servicemen in the Philippines had already experienced some of the worst of war. They had fought hopeless, desperate sieges at Bataan and Corregidor. Most had endured the Bataan Death March. All had been in squalid prison camps or prisons. When more than 1,000 of them boarded a Japanese freighter, the Tottori Maru, on Oct. 6, 1942, some might have hoped things would get better. Such hopes would be dashed when, on Nov. 11, they arrived at their new home. No Japanese prisoner of war camp was nice. The Hoten POW camp in Mukden, Manchuria, was notorious, a place where, in addition to the typical indignities, the captors conducted medical experiments on POWs. “They treated us like a bunch of livestock. They mistreated you,” said Robert Rosendahl, 91, of Springfield, Mo. “If you disobeyed them they’d kill you. If you gave them any trouble they killed you. And they got away with it.” Rosendahl is one of four Mukden survivors holding a reunion this weekend in New Orleans. They toured the National World War II Museum on Wednesday, and will have a Saturday night banquet at the Hotel St. Marie. The reunion coincides with the 70th anniversary of their being shipped out of the Philippines. That journey itself was an adventure. An American submarine, unaware of who was on board, tried to sink the ship, but the torpedoes missed. The ship docked in Pusan, Korea, and roughly 1,200 prisoners were put aboard trains to Mukden. Despite being moved from the tropics to frigid Manchuria, not all prisoners received new clothes, and the ones who did were given summer Japanese military uniforms. “It was raining, and it was colder than hell,” said Randall Edwards, 95, of Lakeland, Fla. “We went out of the camp from the railroad station in open trucks. I would say probably about 10 kilometers, and it was pretty nasty. They finally got us some more clothes. In Mukden, Manchuria, it gets to 40 below. We weren’t too comfortable.” It was worse than uncomfortable. By the following summer, 205 prisoners had died. The 173 who died during the winter were not buried until the following spring. “A lot of guys had dysentery, and starvation,” said Ralph Griffith, 89, of New London, Mo. Most prisoners were put to work in a nearby factory, and others worked in a tannery, textile plant or steel mill. Edwards credits a Japanese doctor with getting the captors to change their rations from cabbage soup to soybean soup, which had more nutrition. “It saved our lives,” he said. Other medical attention had sinister motives. After the war, it was discovered that the Japanese were conducting biological warfare work at a nearby installation known as Unit 731, which included experimentation on humans. In her book, “Guests of the Emperor: The Secret History of Japan’s Mukden POW Camp,” author Linda Goetz Holmes reported that doctors from Unit 731 exposed prisoners to diseases. “We got an awful lot of shots,” Edwards said. “One of the main ones that they gave us was for Japanese encephalitis B. That was the name they hung on it. Was it real? I don’t know. We had lots of other shots. Why were they giving us the shots? I don’t think there were any diseases they were trying to prevent. So, I think we were control (subjects) for experiments they were doing up in (Unit) 731.” The prisoners did their part to thwart the Japanese. The factory made various parts for the Japanese military. Prisoners sabotaged the work at every opportunity. “All the parts that they made, they made sure they didn’t fit,” said Erwin Johnson, 90, of Lacombe. “That was one of the good things that they did.” “You wonder why we would do it and take the chance of getting our heads busted,” Edwards said. “Well, we did get a lot of beatings for it. I got lots of knots on my head because I worked on four different machines in that factory before I was done. But the Japanese orders were that if the Americans invaded Honshu, the prisoners were to be executed. It’s that simple. We didn’t really care. We knew we were going to be executed anyway.” POWs knew that Americans were getting closer when, on Dec. 7, 1944, B-29 bombers bombed the Mukden war industries. Two of the bombs fell inside the camp, killing 19 prisoners and wounding more than 30. The prisoners were ordered outside their barracks and to lie down in the open, so they watched the bombers in action. “My buddy was laying right close to me,” Griffith said. “After it was over, I turned over and he was dead. Shrapnel hit him. He didn’t even know what hit him.” Edwards helped a wounded prisoner to the infirmary, and the Japanese insisted he first be used in a filmed propaganda interview to criticize the Americans for bombing them. “They set it up, and he said, ‘Send them again. They’re beautiful,’” Edwards said. “That was the last of that interview.” In mid-August, 1945, prisoners saw a handful of red parachutes appear in the sky and drift into Mukden. Members of the Office of Strategic Services — the forerunner of the CIA — had arrived to inform the prison officials of Japan’s surrender and to protect the prisoners. The highest-ranking POWs of America and Britain, Gen. Jonathan Wainwright and Gen. A.E. Percival, were being held nearby. On Aug. 19, the Russian army arrived. “When they lined us all up the next morning and told us the war was over, you’d have thought there would be a tremendous blast of cheers and whatnot,” Edwards said. “You could have heard a pin drop in that compound, and people wandered around and went back in their barracks. It didn’t sink in until about 2 o’clock that afternoon: ‘Hell, we’re out of here.’ The Jap guards were already gone. “The first ones out of the camp came back in with an oxcart load of vegetables. The ox and the vegetables all went into the pot.” The survivors were a shell of their former selves. Rosendahl doesn’t remember how much weight he lost in captivity, but said he gained 90 pounds in 90 days after being freed. Now, Mukden is only a bad memory for the survivors. “It doesn’t bother me any more,” Griffith said. “I used to dream about a lot of stuff. When I got discharged, they looked in your ears and throat and discharged you. They didn’t follow through like they do nowadays. But I was lucky enough. I didn’t have anything wrong with me.”
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Post by VeeVee on Mar 12, 2013 13:47:47 GMT -5
www.nytimes.com/2013/03/11/us/mildred-dalton-manning-nurse-held-as-japanese-pow-dies-at-98.html?_r=2&Mildred Manning, ‘Angel’ of Corregidor, Dies at 98Mildred Dalton Manning grew up poor on a Georgia farm. Her mother made all the family clothes on an old sewing machine. Hoping to escape a life of poverty, she attended nursing school during the Depression and became a nurse at a hospital in Atlanta. She enlisted in the Army Nurse Corps in 1939. “I joined the Army to see the world,” she told The Courier News of Bridgewater, N.J., some 60 years later. “And what I saw was a prison camp.” Mrs. Manning was among the Army and Navy nurses of World War II known collectively as the Angels of Bataan and Corregidor. When the Japanese were overrunning the Philippines in early 1942, the nurses treated wounded, dying and disease-ridden soldiers under heavy enemy fire, in one of the darkest chapters of American military history. A total of 66 Army nurses were taken into captivity by the Japanese after the Americans’ final outpost, on the island of Corregidor, fell in May 1942. They spent most of the war under guard at Japan’s Santo Tomas internment camp for foreign nationals in Manila, where they faced near-starvation and were ravaged by disease and malnutrition while treating nearly 4,000 men, women and children. When Mrs. Manning died on Friday in Hopewell, N.J., at 98, she was the last survivor of the Army and Navy nurses who had been captured by the Japanese in the Philippines, said Elizabeth M. Norman, who told their stories in “We Band of Angels.” Ms. Norman’s book was first published in 1999 as a Random House hardcover, but she said she had continued to keep track over the years. “I’m certain she was the last one,” Ms. Norman said of Mrs. Manning. “We Band of Angels” was published in paperback in 2000 and as an e-book in 2011. Ms. Norman is preparing a revised paperback edition that will include a final chapter on Mrs. Manning titled “Last Woman Standing.” Mrs. Manning — Lt. Mildred Dalton during the war — and her fellow nurses subsisted on one or two bowls of rice a day in the last stages of their imprisonment. She lost all her teeth to lack of nutrition. “I have been asked many times if we were mistreated or tortured,” she wrote in a remembrance for her files, made available on Saturday by her son, James, who announced her death. “Physically, no. A few people might get their face slapped if they failed to bow to a Japanese guard. Humiliated, yes. We would be awakened at 2 in the morning for head count or searched for contraband.” “From time to time they would round up a number of men and take them out of camp and they were never heard from again,” she continued. “Our internment was nothing compared to the Bataan Death March and imprisonment our soldiers went through. They were tortured and starved.” Mildred Jeannette Dalton was born on July 11, 1914, near Winder, Ga. She graduated from the Grady Memorial Hospital School of Nursing in Atlanta, then was head nurse at Grady before entering military service. She was stationed at Clark Field, north of Manila, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, and bombed the Philippines (where it was Dec. 8, across the international date line). She treated servicemen at field hospitals in jungle terrain in the retreat to the Bataan Peninsula, then joined the last-ditch stand on Corregidor, treating the wounded there in tunnels bombed incessantly by the Japanese, until the American capitulation. The 1943 Hollywood movie “So Proudly We Hail,” starring Claudette Colbert, Paulette Goddard and Veronica Lake as Army nurses in the Philippines, was based on the memoir “I Served on Bataan,” by Lt. Juanita Redmond, who was among nearly two dozen nurses evacuated from Corregidor shortly before it fell. The captive nurses — 66 from the Army at Santo Tomas and 11 from the Navy, who had surrendered in Manila and were held at another internment camp — were liberated in the winter of 1945. The Army nurses received Bronze Stars in a ceremony on Leyte island in the Philippines, then were flown to California and received a message of gratitude from President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Lieutenant Dalton was sent by the Army to promote war bond sales in her final months of military service. She met Arthur Brewster Manning, an editor at The Atlanta Constitution, at a rally and married him on her 31st birthday. She later worked as a nurse in Jacksonville, Fla., while raising a family. In her later years she moved to Trenton to be near her son. In addition to him, she is survived by a daughter, March Price, as well as five grandchildren and a great-grandson. Her husband died in 1994. Mrs. Manning told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 2001 that she continued to experience trauma from her war experiences. She feared dark places long after those grim days and nights in the tunnels of Corregidor, she said, and she built extra shelves in her home to store staples out of fear that she would run out of food. “But I came out so much better than many of my friends,” she said. “I have never been bitter, and I have always known that if I could survive that, I could survive anything.”
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Post by VeeVee on Apr 9, 2013 9:22:03 GMT -5
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Post by VeeVee on Apr 30, 2013 22:49:32 GMT -5
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Post by VeeVee on Sept 21, 2013 12:07:43 GMT -5
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Post by VeeVee on Oct 22, 2013 12:50:52 GMT -5
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Post by VeeVee on Jun 1, 2014 19:43:56 GMT -5
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Christopher vanhorn
Guest
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Post by Christopher vanhorn on Aug 23, 2017 7:13:35 GMT -5
Gordon frank Siljestrom is my grandfather, crazy seeing articles mentioning him. I'd be excited to hear any info anybody has about him. Saltshaker16@gmail.com
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