REMEMBERING WT2c CARL ELLIS BARNES, PALAWAN MASSACRE

REMEMBERING WT2c CARL ELLIS BARNES, PALAWAN MASSACRE

 ______ 

HON. TJ COX 

OF CALIFORNIA

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

Monday, December 16, 2019 

Mr. COX of California. Madam Speaker, today, I ask my colleagues to pause in memory of 139 soldiers, airmen, Marines, and sailors who perished 75 years ago this month. On December 14, 1944, in the midst of World War II, on the Philippines island of Palawan they were massacred as prisoners of war (POWs). They had just completed building a Japanese airfield that is used today as the Antonio Bautista Air Base, an important anchor of the U.S.-Philippines alliance. 

One of the men murdered, Water Tender 2C Carl Ellis Barnes, hailed from the Central Valley in California. He had arrived in the Philippines from China aboard the Yangtze River gunboat USS Ohau (PR-6) days before Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and the Philippines. During the next five months of combat, the warship operated in and around Manila Bay on inshore patrol. Barnes became a POW on May 6, 1942 when the island fortress of Corregidor was surrendered. 

In August 1942, he was taken to Palawan Island on the Sulu Sea with over 300 POWs, most of whom had survived the infamous Bataan Death March. The POWs were tasked with building an airfield for the Imperial Japanese Army. They endured arduous manual labor while being starved, denied medical care, and routinely and capriciously beaten. By December 1944, only 150 POWs were still held on the island and American forces were beginning to liberate the Philippines. 

At noon on December 14, 1944, the POWs were sent to their recently constructed air raid trenches. Quickly, the Japanese troops doused them with buckets of airplane fuel and set them afire with flaming torches, followed by hand grenades and machine gun fire. Miraculously, 11 men escaped to the sea and were rescued by Filipino guerrillas. 

Thus, today we remember these brave souls who labored and perished so far from home. The airfield they built is one of the sites of our Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement with the Philippines that helps bind our historic alliance with the Philippines. WT2c Barnes is buried in Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery, Missouri with most of his fellow POWs from the Palawan Massacre. Never Forgotten.

Congressional Record Vol. 165, No. 203 [Page E1595]

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Leave a virtual flower on WT2c Barnes grave Here.

75th Anniversary of the Palawan Massacre and Oryoku Maru Sinking

This coming Saturday marks the 75th Anniversaries of the Palawan Massacre and the sinking of the hellship Oryoku Maru off Subic Bay.

At noon on December 14, 1944, 150 POWs on Palawan Island in the Philippines were herded into their recently constructed air raid trenches. Most had been on the island since the summer of 1942 to build by hand an airfield for the Imperial Japanese Army. Quickly, the Japanese troops doused them with buckets of airplane fuel and set them afire with flaming torches, followed by hand grenades and machine gun fire. Miraculously, eleven men escaped to the sea and were rescued by Filipino guerrillas.

The airfield that the POWs built is used today as the Antonio Bautista Air Base, an important anchor of the U.S.-Philippines alliance. In a letter to Assistant Secretary of State David R. Stillwell, I suggested that the U.S. use this anniversary to memorialize the POWs with our Filipino allies to highlight our deep and historic military ties. I have not heard back.

On the same day, 600 miles north of Palawan, off Subic Bay, US Navy aircraft from the USS Hornet attacked the hellship Oryoku Maru. The day before, December 13, 1944, the ship had left Manila with 1,619 POWs in its cargo holds. Two hundred POWs died in the attack. Survivors swam ashore dodging bullets and sharks to endure a week on an abandoned tennis court in the tropical sun with limited food and water. The ordeal of the surviving POWs continued through a hellship voyage on the Enoura Maru and Brazil Maru from Luzon to Takao Harbor, Formosa (Taiwan). The Enoura Maru upon arriving at Takao on January 9, 1945 was sunk by aircraft again from the USS Hornet. 

Survivors were eventually consolidated on the Brazil Maru for the voyage from Takao to Moji, Japan. About 600 POWs reached Japan, but many of those died soon after arrival. Most of the remaining POWs were shipped to China via Korea and liberated at Mukden. One of the men who died en route to Korea in April 1945 was the father of the Smothers Brothers, US Army Major Thomas Bolyn Smothers, Jr. He was a West Point Graduate and a member of the 45th Infantry Regiment, Philippine Scouts. In the end, barely 400 POW made it to liberation.

Thus, today we remember these brave souls who suffered and perished so far from home. The airfield they built is one of the sites of our Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement with the Philippines that helps bind our historic alliance with the Philippines. Most of the POWs murdered at Palawan are buried in Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery, Missouri. In Hawaii, there is a memorial stone to the Enoura Maru dead at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific and a memorial to all who endured the hellships stands at Subic Bay in the Philippines. Never Forgotten

Put a virtual flower at the graves of some of the men massacred on Palawan HERE.

Put a virtual flower at the graves of some of the men who died during the Orokyu Maru's multiple ship voyage to Japan HERE.

Pearl Harbor, Midway and the American POWs of Japan

This year is the 78th anniversary of the "date that will live in infamy" -- December 7, 1941.

Few know that Japan bombed not only Pearl Harbor that day, but also the U.S. territories of The Philippine Islands, Wake, Midway, Guam, and Howland Island, as well as Hong Kong, Bangkok, Shanghai, Malaya, and Singapore.

The June 1942 Battle of Midway has been recently in the news as a new film has come out and two of the sunken Japanese aircraft carriers have been found. I have seen the movie and it is not as bad as many have said. It does its job and shows the incredible bravery of the young men who took to the seas and skies to fight the Japanese onslaught. However, it is helpful to know the history, and the dialogue is horrid. Here is a Smithsonian article comparing the various Midway movies,

The film correctly depicts the capture and murder of one American airman. There were actually three, maybe four POWs who were held by the Japan's Imperial Navy from this battle. Three were from the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise (CV-6) and executed aboard the Imperial Japanese Navy destroyer Makigumo. After a brutal interrogation, they were bound with ropes, tied to weighted fuel cans, and then thrown overboard to drown. The Makigumo hit a mine off Guadalcanal in 1943 and sank. One POW, Ensign Osmus was from the USS Yorktown and captured by the Arashi. He was thrown overboard, but managed to grab the chain railing. A fire axe was then employed to complete the execution.

Frank W. O'Flaherty

Bruno Peter Gaido

John Cady Lough

Wesley Frank Osmus

The above link to the POWs' "Find a Grave" site

Please visit and add a flower of remembrance

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Guaranteeing a rest in peace

The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency: Bringing Our Nation’s Heroes Home

Tuesday, November 19, 2019 - 2:00pm

House Committee on Oversight and Reform

The hearing will help inform the public about the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency’s (DPAA) accounting efforts and allow the Subcommittee to conduct oversight of DPAA’s performance. The hearing will also examine whether DPAA has the necessary resources to carry out its mission, as well as whether it has used these resources effectively since its formation in 2015.

In fiscal year 2019, the DPAA recorded 218 identifications, the highest yearly total reached by the agency or its predecessor organizations, bringing important closure to family and loved ones.

Panel One

Kelly McKeague

Director

Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency

Panel Two

Mark Noah

Chief Executive Officer

History Flight

Vincent “B.J.” Lawrence

Washington Office Executive Director

Veterans of Foreign Wars

Jo Anne Shirley

Former Chair

National League of POW/MIA Families

Veterans Day 2019

https://www.va.gov/opa/vetsday/gallery.asp

Homecoming of LT Thomas Crotty USCG

November 2, 2019

November 1, 2019

Never Forgotten - November 2 Funeral for USCG LT Crotty

LT Thomas James Eugene "Jimmy" Crotty was the only member of the US Coast Guard to become a POW of Japan. His combat record garnered the Coast Guard a battle streamer for the Philippines Campaign. He will "return" home on November 1, 2019. Semper Paratus

Arlington Cemetery Memorial

His remains were recently identified after being exhumed from Common Grave 312 in the American Cemetery and Memorial in Manila in the Philippines.

There are many opportunities during LT Crotty's return home from Hawaii to Buffalo, New York to honor him. Please take a moment to sign his "tribute wall" LINK HERE

On Thursday October 31, the repatriation ceremony for LT Crotty at Coast Guard will be held at Air Station Barbers Point, Kapolei, Hawaii at 11:00am. During the repatriation ceremony, a Coast Guard Honor Platoon led by Rear Adm. Kevin Lunday, commander, Coast Guard 14th District, will escort Crotty’s remains from the hearse to a HC-130 Hercules airplane and accompany the remains to Coast Guard Air Station Sacramento. There the casket will be transferred to another plane to continue its journey home.

On Friday, November 1, his arrival honors will be held at Niagara Falls Air Reserve Station, 10405 Lockport Rd., New York at 10:00am. 

All are invited to join LT Crotty's family on Saturday, November 2nd at Noon for a funeral Mass for LT Crotty at the St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church in Buffalo, New York. He will be buried with full military honors next to his parents in Holy Cross Cemetery, 2900 South Park Avenue, Lackawanna, Erie County, New York. Commandant of the Coast Guard Admiral Karl L. Schultz is expected to attend as are senior officials from the Navy and Marines. 

The family will also receive LT Crotty's Filipino Veterans of WWII Congressional Gold Medal during the ceremony. It symbolizes Congressional recognition of the enduring bond between the American and Filipino forces defending the Philippines against Imperial Japan's invasion.

A 1934 Coast Guard Academy graduate, Crotty was assigned mid-1941 to the US Navy Mine Recovery Unit at Cavite Navy Yard near Manila in the Philippines. He served aboard the USS Quail in the Philippines during the outbreak of World War II in early 1942 and in April aided the 4th Marines in the defense of Corregidor, an island in Manila Bay. He missed the epic escape of the USS Quail's captain and 17 crew members in a 36-ft motor launch across the Pacific to Australia. Instead, with the surrender of Corregidor on May 6, 1942, he found himself on the rocky beach of Corregidor's 92nd Garage Area. At the end of the month he and most of the POWs on Corregidor were taken to Manila and marched down Dewey Blvd to Bilibid Prison. From there they were put standing in trains to the Cabanatuan POW Camp. He died there on July 21, 1942 of diphtheria. See HERE for more of his story on this blog and HERE for the official Coast Guard biography.

Coast Guard Mutual Assistance (CGMA) has established an award in LT Crotty's name. The Lieutenant Thomas James Crotty Inspirational Leadership Award recognizes the CGMA Representative who best exemplifies a willingness to go above and beyond in the service of the Coast Guard family. Donations in lieu of flowers to support this award may be made to Coast Guard Mutual Assistance online or sent to 1005 North Glebe Road, Suite 200, Arlington VA 22201. Please note LT Crotty on the donation.

News story from The Buffalo News, October 27, 2019.

75th Anniversary of the Arisan Maru Tragedy

A ship similar to the Arisan Maru

October 24th is the 75th Anniversary of the sinking of the hellship Arisan Maru in the Bashi Channel between Formosa and Luzon.

It was the largest naval disaster in American history. In comparison, more than 1,500 perished on the RMS Titanic.

Seven hundred miles south raged the Battle of Leyte Gulf (October 23–27, 1944) to liberate the Philippines.

The Arisan Maru went down with 1,774 mostly American POWs of Japan. It was torpedoed by either the submarines USS Shark (SS-314) or the USS Snook (SS-279). The Shark was attacked and destroyed at the same time, adding 87 more Americans to the missing. The Snook was lost six months in the Luzon Strait later on April 8, 1945 with 60 onboard.

t is said that nearly all the POWs were able to make it into the water. Wearing life belts and clinging to rafts, hatch boards, and any other flotsam and jetsam, the POWs struggled through the night in the rough, cold waters of the South China Sea. The Japanese ships nearby refused to rescue them. By morning, all but nine were dead.

Memorial at the National Pacific War Museum
Dedicated October 24, 1999

Of the nine POWs that survived, four were eventually rescued by the Japanese and taken to Formosa. And five managed to find a life raft, a sail, food, and water. They navigated by the stars 200 miles to the Chinese coast where they were rescued by friendly Chinese and taken to an American base hundreds of miles inland.

Of the four taken to Taiwan, Texan Army Pvt. Charles W. Hughes, a member of the Coast Artillery assigned to the 31st Infantry HQ, died November 9, 1944 at the Shirakawa POW camp on Formosa. 

The remaining three were moved to various camps on Formosa. US Army Air Corps medic and Bataan Death March survivor SSgt. Philip Brodsky was moved among four camps on the Island. Chief Boatswain Martin Binder USN assigned to the USS Pigeon (ASR-6) spent the rest of the war at the Toroku POW Camp. On January 19, 1945, Cpl. Glenn Oliver, who was with the 194th Tank Battalion on Bataan was sent to Japan aboard the Melbourne Maru. He spent the remainder of the war working as a stevedore at Osaka POW Camp #10-B Maibara near Lake Biwa in Shiga Prefecture. 

The story of the survival of the five who sailed to China, is nothing less than mythic. Much of their accomplishment was due to Baltimore native Robert S. Overbeck, who must have been a son of Neptune. Overbeck, a Columbia University graduate, was working as a mine foreman and mine superintendent in the Philippines when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. He joined the Army that day.

He participated in the defense of Bataan and survived the Bataan Death March, Camp O'Donnell, Cabanatuan POW Camp, and Bilibid Prison. After U.S. aerial attacks on Manila September 21-22, 1944 (Overbeck says early October), men were boarded on the Arisan Maru on October 10th. They were kept in the sweltering holds for ten days as the hellship inched toward Palawan and then returned to Manila after more Allied air raids. On October 21, the Arisan Maru departed Manila for the final time, joining convoy MATA-30 heading for Takao, Formosa (Taiwan).

American torpedoes hit the hellship on October 24th breaking it in half. As Overbeck tells the story, he was oddly prepared. He had changed to shorts and had a life vest before he made his way into the water. After being refused rescue by a Japanese destroyer, he spied a life boat and threw off his life vest to swim to it. During the night he acquired four passengers. By morning they could no longer see anyone in the water.

Overbeck found a box with a sail floating near the life boat. Later, a keg of water was found and some hard tack ration was on board. 

1st Sgt. Calvin R. Graef, a member of 200th Coast Artillery from Silver City, New Mexico had, like Overbeck survived battle on Bataan and the Bataan Death March.

Pvt. Avery E. Wilber,  a member of the 60th Coast Artillery (AA), Battery A from Maine had also survived battle on Bataan and the Bataan Death March. 

Cpl. Donald E. Meyer, a member of the US Army Air Corp, 693 Aviation Ordnance Company, 24th Pursuit Group from California had been at Nichols Field when Japan attacked. He had suffered a depressed skull fracture and a dislocated hip during the fighting on Corregidor. Doctors at Bilibid Prison were able to repair both. [looking for links]

Pvt. Anton E. Cichy, a member of H Company of 194th Tank Battalion from Minnesota, had also survived battle on Bataan and the Bataan Death March. 

Overbeck, more civilian than Army, was the only one with sailing experience and automatically took over command. Knowing roughly where they were at the time of the sinking, being able to visualize the coast of China as running approximately north northeast in these latitudes and having a good idea of the wind direction from the rising sun, he thought it "was easy to decide" on a rough course which would take us to China.

They made it the 250 miles in two and one-half days by following the stars. A Chinese junk rescued the and first took them to Kitchioh [Jieshi] a town in  Lufeng, Shanwei Municipality, Guangdong midway between Hong Kong and Shantou [Swatow] and then up the coast to Hoifung.

The journey then continued to the interior to Hingning-a refugee town right out of a Star Wars movie. The former POWs were treated like royalty by the Chinese in every village they entered. For 12 days the five survivors were transported about 600 miles by foot, truck, bicycle and plane to Kunming airfield, base of the 14th Air Force and the former Flying Tigers. On November 28, 1944 they started their flight aboard a C47 back to the USA. 

SEE:

Arisan Maru: America's Worst Naval Tragedy - Paperback – March 18, 2019 by Don Treichler
The Last Voyage of the Arisan Maru - Paperback - June 30, 2008 by Dale Wilber

Ride the Waves to Freedom: Calvin Graef's Survival Story of the Bataan Death March and His Escape From a Sinking Hellship  - Paperback - 1999 by Melissa Masterson

75 Years Ago Today - Leyte

General Douglas MacArthur Fulfills His Promise and Returns to the Philippines in Victory

Red Beach, Leyte

October 20, 1942

despite long-held belief this photo was not staged

this one is confused with one in December 1942 on Luzon that was

October 20th, is the 75th Anniversary of General Douglas MacArthur's return to the Philippines. The iconic photo above by then-Capt Gaetano Faillace, an army photographer assigned to MacArthur, contrary to popular belief, was not staged. According to HistoryNet, what "may have appeared as determination [on MacArthur's face] was, in reality, anger. MacArthur was fuming. As he sloshed through the water, he stared daggers at the impudent beachmaster [who refused to send a smaller craft to assist the General ashore], who had treated the general as he probably had not been treated since his days as a plebe at West Point. However, when MacArthur saw the photo, his anger quickly dissipated. A master at public relations, he knew a good photo when he saw one."

It can be speculated that MacArthur's rush to stand on Leyte on October 20th before the fighting had ended and the critical battles had begun may have had another PR purpose. In the U.S., it was still October 19th. As he and many Americans at the time would have known, October 19th was a seminal date in American history: it was decisive victory in 1781 of the Americans over British forces and the surrender of General Cornwallis at the Battle of Yorktown (VA). This was the last major battle of the Revolutionary War and set the stage for a negotiated end to the conflict. The formal surrender at Yorktown was at 2:00pm; MacArthur stepped ashore at Leyte at 2:00pm.

For the POWs in the Philippines the retaking of the islands meant certain death. In addition to the rumors of a "kill all" order--which was enacted in Palawan on December 14, 1944 with the incineration of 150 POWs--there appeared to be an intensified effort to ship as many POWs to Japan and China, as with the Oryoku Maru that left Manila on December 13th. Although, there do not appear to be any documents that suggest this, it is likely these men, mostly officers, were being rounded up to be used as hostages when Japan was ready to negotiate an end to the war. Any surrender would have to be at a cost of the enemy and bitter.

The Last Train

October 14th is Railway Day in Japan. It celebrates the opening day in 1872 of Japan's first railway, which was between Shimbashi Station in Tokyo and Yokohama. This was a significant step in the modernization of Japan.

October 17th is celebrated by only a few. It is remembered, however, as the day in 1943 of the opening ceremonies of the Thai-Burma Death Railway. Engine C5631, built by Nippon Sharyo in 1938 at its Narumi plant, was the locomotive used at the opening. It was hauling a cargo of Comfort Women.

This notorious engine now sits restored at the entrance of the Yasukuni Shrine's war museum in Tokyo. The museum celebrates the "Bushido" of Imperial Japan's military and it success in liberating Asia. A recent article in the right wing propaganda online magazine Japan Forward highlights the annual celebration for this wartime relic. The author dismisses the atrocities associated with building the infamous tract. 

Between June 1942 and October 1943 the POWs and forced laborers laid some 258 miles (415 km) of track from Ban Pong, Thailand (roughly 45 miles [72 km] west of Bangkok), to Thanbyuzayat, Burma (roughly 35 miles [56 km] south of Mawlamyine). Japanese forced approximately 200,000 Asian conscripts and over 60,000 Allied POWs to construct the Burma Railway. Among them were nearly 700 Americans, survivors of the USS Houston and the 131st Field Artillery/2nd Battalion (known as the “Texas Lost Battalion”), both captured on Java.

Ralph Levenberg

The truth is that more than 100,000 Asian and Allied POWs died in its making from abuse, torture, starvation, and lack of medical care. No one is sure how many of 200,000 Asian laborers died, as the Japanese did not consider them human enough to count. There were Allied POWs. As the dead cannot speak, I urge readers to comment on the piece and alert veterans groups in Australia, England, and the Netherlands. Japan Forward was created in January 2017 by the rightwing Sankei Shimbun as part of the Abe Government's stepped up PR and history revision campaign.

October 18th (2019) was the funeral for former POW of Japan Air Force Major Ralph Levenberg (September 12, 1920 – July 29, 2018) and his wife Kathie at Arlington National Cemetery. They were buried with full military honors: an Air Force Rabbi, a horse-drawn caisson, an Air Force casket team, an Air Force firing party (three shots), a bugler, an Air Force escort platoon, and an Air Force military band.

Major Levenberg was with the Army Air Corps' 17th Pursuit Squadron at Nichols Field in the Philippines when Japan attacked on December 8, 1941. The Field was destroyed on December 10th and the surviving airmen were moved to Bataan to form a provisional infantry. He and all American-Filipino troops on Bataan--estimated to be 85,000--were surrendered on April 9, 1942.

From the funeral

He was one of the small number of Jewish soldiers on the infamous Bataan Death March to Camp O'Donnell. From mid-April until most of the camp was shut down in early June 1942 and the POWs moved to Cabanatuan, thousands died. Levenberg participated in a number of grueling work details outside the camp in the Philippines before he was shipped to Japan to be a slave laborer.

Aboard the hellship Nissyo Maru, via Formosa, he arrived at the Port of Moji early August 1944. There he as taken north to the Nagoya POW Camp #2-B Narumi. This camp provided labor to Nippon Sharyo, where train engines were built and repaired. The same factory that built Engine C5631 that opened the Thai-Burma Death Railway.

Most of the time Levenberg worked in the "kitchen" boiling water for the thin soup to feed the POWs. Two weeks before the end of the war, he was savagely beaten by a guard and fell into a month-long coma. He did not revive until September 3 when he was evacuated to an American hospital ship. At liberation, he weighed 72 pounds and could not walk.

Nippon Sharyo factory still maintains the factory at Narumi where Levenberg toiled and was beaten. The Company is now owned by the rail corporation JR Central. The company is promoted by the Japanese government as wanting to build high-speed rail in the US with proposed projects between Dallas and Houston, and Baltimore and DC. The firm, however, has never apologized to nor acknowledged its American POW slaves. 

Both Nippon Sharyo and JR Central have offices in the United States. Both were alerted to Major Levenberg's funeral. Neither replied nor sent condolences.

Major Levenberg remained in the US Air Force after the war and saw combat in the Korean War. He held numerous world-wide assignments as a security professional in the Strategic Air Command and then as a U.S. civil service member of Naval Air System Command.

In retirement, Levenberg donated his time and energy to support other former POWs at the VA Hospital in Reno, Nevada. He also served on the VA's National Advisory Commission of Former Prisoners of War and as National Commander of the American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor (ADBC) from 1979 to 1980.

In 1994, he joined, on behalf of ADBC, the group of ex-POWs of the Japanese from other former Allied countries in an appeal to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights regarding these countries' failure in addressing the injustice suffered by POWs of the Japanese during WWII. The appeal was based on the denial of a previous appeal with respect to the "gross violations of human rights" committed by Japan against American POWs during WWII. (Excerpts from the appeal document for UNCHR prepared by Mr. Levenberg) Although their appeal was again denied, it led to the payment by Canada, the United Kingdom, Isle of Man, Norway, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and Australia to their former POWs of the Japanese. The United States is the only country that has not done so.

His oral history was recorded by the Library of Congress and the University of Nevada (“Nothing Had Prepared Me For This Kind of Brutality” p 570). In 1996, Dick Cavett interviewed Levenberg for his HBO series Yesteryear...1942 -- a look at the first year of America's involvement in WWII.

Remember the Wake 98

Late in the afternoon of October 7, 1943, 97 Americans, bound, and blindfolded, sat on a rocky beach facing the Pacific. None among them probably doubted what would come next. Three platoons of Japanese troops soon mowed them down with machine gun and rifle fire.

One man reportedly escaped, but he was soon recaptured and beheaded personally by the island's Imperial Japanese Navy commander. Prior to the massacre another civilian had been killed by the Japanese sailors.

The 98 Americans were all civilian contractors for Morrison-Knudson who were surrendered after the historic two-week defense of Wake Island in the Northern Pacific during December 1941. Among them was a civilian doctor (Dr. Lawton Shank, the only civilian ever awarded the Navy Cross), the two-man crew of the tugboat Justine Foss (Capt. Tom McInnis and Mate Ralph Van Valkenberg, Foss Maritime Co.), and two Chinese-Americans from Hawaii. They were what was left of the 1,150 men on Wake Island to build an airfield, seaplane base, and submarine base and to dredge a channel into the lagoon to allow access for U.S

submarines. 

.

tugboat Justine Foss

Combat, disease, and shipment to Japan and China for slave labor had reduced the group to those unlucky few. They toiled, for the Japanese, in violation of the Geneva Convention at various military projects on all three islands of the atoll. The most famous project by Wake Island slave laborers on the Home Islands is the Soto Dam near Sasebo Navy Base where 58 men died during its building.

click to order

On a large coral rock near where the POWs were buried is carved 98 US PW 5-10-43. It has been believed that the lone escapee of the massacre returned to the site to carve this lonely memorial before he was recaptured. However, this story is now thought to be apocryphal. The escapee would not have had the tools or strength to chisel anything; and he most certainly would have avoided making any noise. It is more likely, that group itself created their own memorial five months earlier in May. 

There remains an ongoing mission to identify human remains found on Wake Island in 2011.  The U. S. Navy Casualty Office has taken responsibility for the navy contractors. DNA of relatives is still being sought. If you think you know anyone who might be related to the 98, please contact. 

There are quite a number of histories of the Wake Island Battle. This book, The Epic Saga of the Civilian Contractors and Marines of Wake Island in World War II, By Bonita Gilbert, however, focuses on the role of the civilian contractors and provide another perspective on how the U.S. entered the War. The book is a must have for anyone who studies the Pacific War and POWs of Japan. Her blog is excellent and has excerpts from the book.

National POW/MIA Recognition Day - September 20, 2019

ORDER THIS POSTER FROM DPAA HERE

Documentary honoring Filipino hero - September 20, 2019

In addition to showing at the Philippine Embassy in Washington, DC

Philippine Consulate General in San Francisco - September 26, 2019

Requiescet in pace George Rogers

It is with great sadness that I report the passing of George Rogers (100) on August 18 in Lynchburg, Virginia. Liberty University reported his death on the 20th.

In 2015, at 95, he returned to Japan with nine other former POWs of Imperial Japan as a guest of the Japanese government as part of the 6th POW Friendship program that is organized by the American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor Memorial Society of which he was a member. The Japanese initiated this important program of reconciliation only in 2010.

Rogers was a survivor of the Bataan Death March, the hellship Nissyo Maru, and Nippon Steel's steel mill at Yawata (now a UNESCO site). The multi-national Nippon Steel still exists and has never offered an apology for its use of POW slave labor. The Yawata steel mill complex was to be the target of the second atomic bomb, but on that day clouds covered the target and Nagasaki was instead selected.

GEORGE W. ROGERS, 100, resided in Lynchburg, Virginia. Mr. Rogers grew up in St Louis, Missouri and enlisted in the U.S. Army August 20, 1941, at Jefferson Barracks. He arrived on the Philippines October 1 and was assigned to 4th Chemical Company.

At first a clerk/typist at Fort McKinley, he was soon fighting in the defense of Bataan with L Company of the 31st Infantry Regiment (US) after Japan’s December 8 invasion. American forces were short of food, ammunition, and reinforcements throughout the campaign against the better equipped and trained Japanese. All forces on Bataan were surrendered on April 9, 1942, and most were forced on the infamous Bataan Death March.

Mr. Rogers endured the 65-mile trek up the Bataan Peninsula experiencing starvation, exhaustion, and beatings while witnessing merciless murders and torture. At the Camp O’Donnell where 1,500 Americans died over four months, he was a gravedigger. In August, he was moved to Cabanatuan #3 to farm rice and vegetables as well as to do duty building an airfield. On top of the beatings he received from the camp guards, Mr. Rogers and his fellow soldiers suffered through extreme pain in their feet and legs due primarily to dry or dry beriberi, a disease affecting the nerves and muscles. He also survived malaria and spent six months quarantined for what was thought to be amoebic dysentery.

On July 17, 1944, he was one of 1541 POWs taken to Japan via Formosa aboard the Hellship Nissyo Maru. During the 18-day trip with barely any food or clean drinking water, extreme heat, rampant illness — both physical and mental—he said, “I almost lost it, and then … I got a peace that came over me, and I just felt everything is going to be alright, just relax”; Rogers said. “As far as I’m concerned, God was at work again.” After arriving at the port of Moji, Japan, he was sent to POW Camp Fukuoka 3-B Yawata Japan Iron & Steel Co., Ltd. (Nippon Seitetsu; today’s multi-national Nippon Steel) to work in the Yawata steel mill for the rest of the war. Yawata featured Japan’s first blast furnace and was one the Empire’s most important armament makers. It was the primary target for the second atomic bomb. Cloud cover from aerial bombing on August 8, 1945, prevented this, but succeed in destroying key production facilities and ending prisoner work at the mill.

In July 2015, the site was given UNESCO World Industrial Heritage status, albeit without mention of the hundreds of POW slave laborers—American, British, Australian, Dutch, Portuguese, Jamaican, Indian, Malay, Chinese, and Arabians at the site. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited the facilities of Yawata Steel Works in July 2014, to encourage the UNESCO application. 

On August 15, 1945, the camp commander announced that the war had ended and the guards disappeared. The camp was liberated on September 13th.

Mr. Rogers returned to the U.S. a gaunt, 6-foot-3, 85 pounds. Military doctors told him that it was unlikely that he would live past 45 or 50, keep his teeth, or have children. He retained his teeth, had five children, and displayed “a contagious joy.” Mr. Rogers used the G.I. Bill to obtain an accounting degree from St. Louis University.

Starting in 1973, Mr. Rogers was the CFO for Reverend Jerry Falwell (founder of the Moral Majority) overseeing his Old Time Gospel Hour television ministry and the Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia. He became Liberty University’s vice president of finance and administration in 1999, through to Rev Falwell’s death in 2007.

In 2010, Liberty University named an award in Rogers' honor. The George Rogers Champion of Freedom Award is given annually to a man or woman who served in the United States Armed Forces and went above the call of duty, displaying extraordinary heroism while serving. The award is presented at a Flames football game during Liberty's Military Emphasis Week, held near Veterans Day. A bust of Rogers stands at the gate of Williams Stadium, the home of the Liberty Flames football team, as a tribute to Rogers for his sacrifices. 

In 2017, President Donald Trump devoted 20 minutes of his commencement speech at Liberty University honoring George Roger s' inspiring courage and grit.

Mr. Rogers was married 67 year to Barbara,who passed away August 2015 shortly before he returned to Japan.

Mr. Rogers returned to Japan, as a guest of the Japanese government, in October 2015.

Japan POW# unknown
Philippines POW# 1-06096

Happy Birthday General Wainwright

Wainwright at liberation August 1945

Today, is the anniversary of General Jonathan Wainwright's 62nd birthday. In 1945, he celebrated while not quite a free man. He was liberated the next day, the 24th. Wainwright was in a Japanese POW camp in Northern China where he and other high-value Allied officers were held. As head of U.S. Forces in the Philippines, he surrendered Corregidor on May 6, 1942 and the rest of Philippines within the following days.

On August 16, 1945, a six-man Office of Strategic Services (OSS) team parachute into (Hoten) Mukden (today’s Shenyang), POW camp in northern China to liberate the POWs and locate the senior officers held by the Japanese. On the 19th, several dozen British, Dutch, and American senior officers including Lieutenant Generals Jonathan Wainwright and A.E. Percival were located at the Hsian POW camp (Xi'an or today's Liaoyuan), 150 miles north of Mukden. This was the first they heard that the war had ended.

When Wainwright and the other captive officers, enlisted men, and civilians were told of the war's end on August 19, he recounted, "We roared suddenly with laughter ... roared until the rest of [the interpreter's] words were blotted out. There was no stopping the laughter. It came up in me, and in the others, with an irresistible force: something born of a combination of our relief, the look on [the interpreter's] face, the blind preposterousness of his beginning, the release from years of tension, the utter, utter joy over having survived to see this blessed day."

However, the prisoners still had to wait for the arrival of the Russian Red Army on August 24th in order to move out. The Japanese, noted Wainwright, left the prisoners the remaining Red Cross packages and they "began having fine, well-cooked meals, the first sufficient food we had since the outbreak of the war. We smoked American cigarettes like chimneys." With the "prospect of getting home soon," Wainwright said he celebrated "the happiest birthday in many years."

The years of captivity took its toll on the general. He had endured prison camps on the Philippines, Formosa, and China. The man who had been nicknamed “Skinny” was now emaciated and drawn. His hair had turned white, and his skin was cracked and fragile. He was also depressed, believing he would be blamed for the loss of the Philippines to the Japanese.

When Wainwright arrived in Yokohama, Japan, to attend the formal surrender ceremony, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, his former commander, was stunned at his appearance. Wainwright was given a hero’s welcome upon returning to America, promoted to full general and awarded the Medal of Honor.

🌷You can leave virtual flowers at his Grave HERE. 

Japan's desecration of Manila

Bay View Hotel

The Filipino in the eyes of the world

by James M. Scott, author of Rampage: MacArthur, Yamashita and the Battle of Manila.

First published in The Philippine Star, July 28, 2019

MANILA, Philippines — Few cities and cultures have been as dramatically shaped by war as Manila and the Philippines — the effects of which still echo through life today with the struggle of poverty, violence, and questions over national identity and remembrance.

But it wasn’t always that way.

Prior to the outbreak of World War II, the Philippine capital, filled with neoclassical architecture and spacious parks, was known as the Pearl of the Orient, the star of steamship ads and tourism brochures.

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The capture of the Philippines by the Japanese led to a brutal three-year occupation. Enemy troops terrified residents, commandeered homes, and looted department stores. Grocery shelves sat empty and fields rotted.

The Japanese so mismanaged the Philippine economy that it triggered widespread starvation and the unraveling of the Catholic nation’s social fabric.

To survive, doctors hawked bogus drugs, lawyers committed forgery and fraud, and police resorted to burglary and extortion.

Desperate parents, meanwhile, abandoned their children to orphanages or even sold them while loving wives sold themselves.

“Morality cowered before the relentless onslaught of economic forces that the war had marshaled and unleashed,” observed prominent historian Teodoro Agoncillo.

The late journalist Carmen Guerrero Nakpil echoed him: “We became a race of spies, thieves, saboteurs, informers and looters, callous and miserly.”

The liberation of Manila, which most had hoped would at long last bring an end to the years of fear and misery, instead only compounded the tragedy.

Japanese forces, rather than evacuate the city as America had expected, instead hunkered down inside government buildings, homes and hospitals — even the dugouts at Rizal Memorial Stadium.

In a battle fought building-by-building and even room-by-room, American troops had no choice but, in the words of one Army report, to “exterminate the enemy in place.”

Amid this ferocious fighting, Japanese soldiers and marines committed some of the worst atrocities of World War II. Troops tossed babies in the air, skewering them on the steel tips of their bayonets.

Others raped scores of women, decapitated men by the hundreds, and torched entire neighborhoods, dynamiting the financial district and leveling the beautiful areas of Malate and Ermita.

When the guns finally fell silent on March 3, 1945 — 29 days after the American cavalry had rolled into the city – Manila was gone.

The battle to liberate the capital had flattened 613 city blocks, an area containing more than 11,000 homes, schools, churches and businesses.

“There seemed nothing left even to mourn,” journalist A.V. H. Hartendorp wrote at the time. Manila, he observed, “remained a name only.”

Beyond the structural losses, were the cultural ones.

Gone were the centuries-old Spanish churches. Gone were the museums filled with paintings and sculptures. Gone were the libraries and archives that housed priceless literary works and the historical records of a nation.

The battle not only robbed Manila of its past and its heritage, but also its future. Amid the rubble and wreckage lay the lawmakers and doctors, teachers and inventors, moms and dads.

Forever lost was that priceless human capital, those men and women upon whose shoulders had once rested the future of a soon-to-be independent Philippines.

Absent any equivalent of the Marshall Plan — the $12 billion investment to rebuild a war-ravaged Europe — Filipinos were largely left to Band-Aid the city and themselves back together.

Manila, in many ways, has never recovered. Makati, with its wide boulevards and steel and glass high-rises, is a product of that pivotal battle. It was easier to simply start over than to rebuild.

But how does a nation heal the moral wounds that grew out of the war?

Were those years of desperation, which prompted brothers to turn on brothers, the seeds that blossomed into the social turmoil that currently ails the Philippines?

In an ironic reversal, Japan is one of the largest foreign investors and donors to the Philippines. But that cash has come with hidden costs that erode national morale and memory.

One such example was the removal last year of a statue on Roxas Boulevard dedicated to the euphemistic “comfort women,” victims of Japanese sexual assault.

The statue was not far from the old Bay View Hotel, where many Filipino women were held hostage and assaulted during the city’s liberation.

More recently, complaints by the Japanese Embassy prompted the removal of a second statue in San Pedro.

Why are the Japanese allowed to remember their war dead at the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo or the Peace Memorial Museum in Hiroshima but Filipinos cannot honor their wartime past with a simple statue?

National memory, it seems, has been traded for foreign investment.

But there are positive signs and fresh dialogue, too.

I was back in the Philippines in February for the launch of my book on the Battle of Manila, Rampage, a trip graciously sponsored by Memorare Manila, an amazing organization of survivors and descendants of that frightful fight.

During that time, I visited with students at area universities. I was amazed, too, at how many battle and even atrocity survivors attended. One woman brought me a copy of her diary. Another gifted me a poem she had written. Others showed me shrapnel scars.

It was powerful to witness generations come together to learn, share and remember this pivotal battle that was the fulcrum on which the history of Manila and its people forever changed.

Memorare hosted an essay contest afterward for students, asking what they learned of the battle and its legacy. The winning essay by Lea Athena Molina, a student at the University of Asia & the Pacific, captured it perfectly. “History teaches us that the past not only impacts the present, but also shapes the future.”

The Most Controversial Decision: Truman, the Atomic Bombs, and The Defeat of Japan

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“Mr. Straight Arrow,” John Hersey, and the decision to drop the atomic bomb: A Book Review

by D. M. Giangreco

D. M. Giangreco is the author of 13 books including Hell to Pay: Operation Downfall and the Invasion of Japan, 1945-1947(Naval Institute Press, 2017) and The Soldier from Independence: A Military Biography of Harry Truman. Vol. I: 1906-1919(Potomac Books, 2018). His Journal of Military History article “Casualty Projections for the U.S. Invasions of Japan: Planning and Policy Implications” was awarded the Society for Military History's Moncado Prize.

First published in History News Network, August 4, 2019

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Roy Scranton’s ”How John Hersey Bore Witness” (The New Republic, July-August 2019) is an insightful look at a new book on one of my favorite authors. It touched all the right notes and has prompted me to add Mr. Straight Arrow to my “Christmas list.” Sadly, in the midst of this otherwise fine review, author Scranton repeats the discredited old chestnut that President Harry S. Truman dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki even though he knew Japan was trying to surrender. Truman’s real reason for using the weapons, according to Scranton, was to employ them as a diplomatic club against the Soviet Union. This allegation was popular in some quarters during the 1960s and 70s, but was only sustained by a systematic falsifying of the historical record and it continues to pop up even today.

Underscoring this sad fact is the link Scranton provides which takes readers to a 31-year-old letter to the New York Times from Truman critic Gar Alperovitz purporting that “dropping the atomic bomb was seen by analysts at the time as militarily unnecessary.” Presented in the letter is an interesting collection of cherry-picked quotes from a variety of diary entries and memos by contemporaries of Truman, such as Dwight D. Eisenhower. All are outtakes and have been long rebutted or presented in their actual contexts. Even key figures are misidentified. For example, FDR’s White House chief of staff Admiral William D. Leahy, who chaired the meetings of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is elevated in the letter to the position of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

As for the notion that Japan was trying to surrender, this is not what was beheld by America’s leaders who were reading the secretly decrypted internal communications of their counterparts in Japan.

In the summer of 1945, Emperor Hirohito requested that the Soviets accept a special envoy to discuss ways in which the war might be “quickly terminated.” But far from a coherent plea to the Soviets to help negotiate a surrender, the proposals were hopelessly vague and recognized by both Washington and Moscow as no more than a stalling tactic ahead of the Potsdam Conference to prevent Soviet military intervention --- an intervention that Japanese leaders had known was inevitable ever since the Soviets’ recent cancellation of their Neutrality Pact with Japan.

Japan was not trying to surrender. Even after the obliteration of two cities by nuclear weapons and the Soviet declaration of war the militarists in firm control of the Imperial government refused to admit defeat until their emperor finally forced the issue. They had argued that the United States would still have to launch a ground invasion and that the subsequent carnage would force the Americans to sue for peace leaving of much of Asia firmly under Japanese control.

The war had started long before Pearl Harbor with the Japanese invasion of China, and millions had already perished. That Asians in the giant arc from Indonesia through China --- far from Western eyes --- were dying by the hundreds of thousands each and every month that the war continued has been of zero interest to Eurocentric writers and historians be they critics or supporters of Truman’s decision. As for the president, himself, Truman rightfully hoped, after the bloodbaths on Okinawa and Iwo Jima, that atomic bombs might force Japan’s surrender and forestall the projected two-phase invasion which would result in “an Okinawa from one end of Japan to the other.”

Hersey understood this well. Fluent in Chinese (he was born and raised in China), Hersey was painfully aware of the almost unimaginable cost of the war long before the United States became involved and, after it did, observed the savagery of battle on Guadalcanal first hand. Yes, he understood it quite well and it will come as a surprise, even shock, to many that neither Hersey nor Truman saw Hiroshima as an indictment of the decision to use the bomb.

Those were very different times and the prevailing attitude, according to George M. Elsey, was “look what Japanese militarism and aggression hath wrought!” (Truman also made similar observations when touring the rubble of Berlin during the Potsdam Conference.) The president considered Hiroshima an “important” work and, far from being persona non grata, Hersey would sometimes spend days at a time in Truman’s company when preparing articles for The New Yorker. This level of access was not accorded to other journalists and circumstances resulted in Hersey sitting in on key events such as when Truman learned that the Chinese had just entered the Korean War and a secret meeting with Senate leaders over the depredations of Joe McCarthy.

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Although exceptions can be found in the literature, Hersey’s Hiroshima was simply not viewed in the postwar period as an anti-nuclear polemic and Elsey, who served in both the Roosevelt and Truman administrations before going on to head the American Red Cross for more than a decade, remarked to David McCullough that “It’s all well and good to come along later and say the bomb was a horrible thing. The whole goddamn war was a horrible thing.”


Scranton, himself, gives a brief nod to this fact, admitting that the midnight conventional firebombing of Tokyo earlier that year killed even more people, approximately 100,000, yet one shudders to think what he teaches to his unsuspecting students. The “revisionist” Japanese-were-trying-to-surrender hoax prominently recited in his review of Mr. Straight Arrow has long been consigned to the garbage heap of history by a host of scholarly books and articles* including, ironically, a brilliant work by one of Scranton’s own colleagues at Notre Dame.

Father Wilson D. Miscamble’s The Most Controversial Decision: Truman, the Atomic Bombs, and The Defeat of Japan(Cambridge University Press, 2011) is a hard hitting, well researched effort that is especially notable for its thoughtful exploration of the moral issues involved. Though Scranton and Miscamble share the same campus, a colleague of mine maintains that the two scholars have never met. Perhaps they should get together for coffee some morning.

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* Six particularly useful works are: Sadao Asada’s award winning, “The Shock of the Atomic Bomb and Japan’s Decision to Surrender -- A Reconsideration,” Pacific Historical Review, 67 (November 1998); Michael Kort, The Columbia Guide to Hiroshima and the Bomb, (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007) and “The Historiography of Hiroshima: The Rise and Fall of Revisionism,” The New England Journal of History, 64 (Fall 2007); Wilson D. Miscamble C.S.C., The Most Controversial Decision: Truman, the Atomic Bombs, and the Defeat of Japan (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Robert James Maddox, ed., Hiroshima in History: The Myths of Revisionism, (Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 2007); Robert P. Newman, Enola Gay and the Court of History, (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2004)

THE Coast Guard's POW of Japan

Lt James Crotty, USCG

August 4th is the birthday of the U.S. Coast Guard. On this day in 1790, the first Congress authorized the construction of 10 vessels to enforce tariff and trade laws, prevent smuggling, and protect the collection of federal revenue.

Thus, today, we pause to remember the Coast Guard's one POW of Japan. Records suggest there were two others, but Coast Guard historians believe they were actually sailors assigned to Coast Guard duties in the Philippines.

By all accounts, Lt. Thomas James "Jimmy" Crotty is a hero. He arrived in the Philippines on October 28, 1941 for what was supposed to be a six month deployment as a member of a Navy mine recovery unit near Manila.

A 1934 Coast Guard Academy graduate, Crotty had never before traveled outside North America. He served on board cutters based out of New York, Seattle, Alaska and Sault Ste. Marie. His career included duty on the cutter USCGC Tampa (WMEC-902) during its famous rescue of passengers from the burning liner SS Morro Castle, and a Justice Department appointment as special deputy on the Bering Sea Patrol.

Prior to his Philippines assignment he studied at the Navy’s Mine Warfare School in Yorktown, Virginia. With additional training at the Navy’s Mine Recovery Unit in Washington, DC, Lt. Crotty became the Coast Guard’s leading expert in mine operations, demolition and the use of explosives. He was first assigned to the In-Shore Patrol Headquarters at the American Navy yard at Cavite, located near Manila.

On December 10, Japanese aircraft bombed and damaged most of the facilities at the Cavite Navy Yard and advancing enemy ground forces necessitated the movement of American units behind fortified lines on the Bataan Peninsula and onto the island fortress of Corregidor. During this evacuation, Crotty supervised the demolition of strategic civilian and military facilities to prevent them from falling into enemy hands. This equipment and material included the Navy yard’s ammunition magazine and the fleet submarine USS Sea Lion, which the enemy damaged during the air attack. Crotty had the sub stripped of useful parts, filled it with depth charges and blew it up on Christmas Day.

Corregidor under attack

The Navy withdrew Crotty and its other personnel from Cavite to the Sixteenth Naval District Headquarters at Fort Mills, on Corregidor. The Navy reassigned Crotty to the local guard unit, but he also participated in night raids on the mainland to demolish more American equipment and facilities before the Japanese occupied Manila.

During February and March of 1942, Crotty served as executive officer of the Navy minesweeper USS Quail (AM-15), which shot down enemy aircraft and swept American mine fields so U.S. submarines could surface at night to deliver goods and remove critical personnel. During his time as executive officer, the Quail served as a command vessel and provided shore bombardment for an offensive against Japanese landings attempting to cut off supply lines to American forces trapped on the Bataan Peninsula.

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After Bataan was surrendered on April 9, 1942, Corregidor's defenders held out for another month. Crews on board Navy vessels, such as Quail, had cannibalized deck guns and moved them onto the island to mount a final stand against the encircling enemy forces. Crotty served up to the bitter end fighting alongside the island’s stubborn Army, Navy and Marine defenders. Eye witnesses reported last seeing him commanding a force of Marines and Army personnel manning 75-millimeter beach guns firing down on enemy forces landing on Corregidor’s beaches. When Japanese bombardment finally silenced Crotty’s guns, Corregidor’s defenders knew the island fortress would soon fall.

The Quail was scuttled May 5th to prevent her capture. After, Lt. Commander John H. Morrill gave his crew the choice of surrendering to the Japanese or striking out across open ocean the Quail's 36-foot diesel motor launch. Only 17 of his 24-member crew could join him on the desperate voyage. Lt. Crotty had been separated from the crew, as mentioned above, to command a mixed defensive unit on Corregidor and was not included. With a pistol recovered from a dead serviceman as their only armament (this may not be true), supplies and weapons scavenged from the beached tugboat Ranger on Caballo Island, and with a few charts and navigational aids from the Ranger, Morrill and his crew evaded the Japanese and transversed 2,060 miles of ocean, reaching Darwin, Australia on June 6 after 31 days.  See Morrill's account in his book: SOUTH FROM CORREGIDOR

motor launch to Darwin

With Corregidor’s capitulation on May 6, Crotty became the first Coast Guard prisoner of war since the War of 1812, when the British captured Revenue Cutter Service cuttermen. At the end of May, the Japanese loaded Crotty and his fellow prisoners into watercraft transferring POWs from Corregidor Island to Manila, where they were marched through the city to Bilibid Prison and eventually taken by railroad in box cars to the Cabanatuan prison camp in northern Luzon.

Crotty’s fellow prisoners at Cabanatuan knew him for his love of sports as well as his sense of humor and optimism. One of them wagered a bet with Crotty on the outcome of the 1942 World Series while another later recounted that: “The one striking thing that I remember was his continued optimism and cheerfulness under the most adverse circumstances. He was outstanding in this respect at a time when such an attitude was so necessary for general welfare.” But Crotty’s courage and optimism could not sustain him late in the summer of 1942 when a diphtheria epidemic swept through the camp killing forty prisoners per day. Crotty contracted the illness and, with the Camp's lack of necessary medications and proper health care, he passed away only days after getting sick joining the more than 2,500 American POWs who perished in this camp during the war.

It had been unclear if he died July 19th or September 30th. On September 10, 2019, the Defense Personnel Accounting Agency (DPAA) confirmed that Crotty had died July 19, 1942, and was buried along with fellow prisoners in the Cabanatuan Camp Cemetery, in grave number 312. In January 2018, the “unknown” remains associated with Common Grave 312 were disinterred and sent to the DPAA laboratory for analysis, including one set, designated X-2858 Manila #2. These remains proved to be LT. Crotty's.

In a May 6, 2010 ceremony in Buffalo, New York, Crotty's descendants received his long-overdue Bronze Star, Purple Heart, the Prisoner of War Medal and the Philippines Defense Medal. It is possible for the family to now apply for the Congressional Gold Medal given to those who served with Filipino troops during WWII.

On November 2, 2019, a rosette will be placed beside his name on the Walls of the Missing at the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial indicating that he has been found. His funeral will be that day in Buffalo, New York at the St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church  and he will be buried with full military honors next to his parents in Holy Cross Cemetery, 2900 South Park Avenue, Lackawanna, Erie County, New York.

One of the 43 Battle Streamers on the Coast Guard flag--Philippines Defense--is entirely due to the actions of one man, LT Crotty from Buffalo, New York, who helped command a Navy vessel, scuttled a submarine, swept mines, served as adjutant, led Marines and soldiers defending Corregidor and held the line to the last.

Requiescat In Pace

Liberally borrowed from Compass and War History Online.
Updated October 20 and 21, 2019