Remembering a POW legend, Ed Jackfert

Ed Jackert with Senator Barbara Boxer

With sadness, I report that on July 24^th, Sgt Edward Jackfert, 98, of Wellsburg, West Virginia and Tampa, Florida passed away. 

 

His funeral was Saturday, August 1, 2020. The West Virginia (WV) Patriot Guard Riders escorted the WWII hero from the Chambers Funeral Home to a public graveside service at Franklin Cemetery, Wellsburg, WV, held with Military Honors by the WV Army National Guard. Ed was with the U.S. Army Air Corps in the Philippines where he was surrendered to become a POW of Japan for more than three years. He was liberated in Japan 75 years ago this August. You can leave a note, send flowers or plant a tree HERE.

 

Ed graduated in 1939 from Wellsburg High School and enlisted in the United States Army Air Corps on September 11, 1940. He was sent to aircraft engineers’ school, and then to the Philippine Islands, arriving in June 1941. He was assigned to the 28th Bomb Squadron which later became a part of the 19th Bombardment Group.  The unit was based at Clark Field as the bomber command of the Far East Air Force.

 

Ed was a mechanic at Clark Field when Imperial Japanese Navy planes attacked on December 8, 1941. The airfield was destroyed in less than an hour. Clark Field as a tactical base was virtually destroyed. The casualties were very high, about 100 wounded and 55 dead. Survivors were evacuated on December 24^th to the Bataan Peninsula and Mindanao island.

 

Ed fought as part of a provisional infantry formed on Mindanao. First, he was assigned to guard Carmen Ferry near Davao and the newly constructed Del Monte Air Field. In mid-April 1942, he was sent to the new Maramag Field in central Mindanao to help put up a last-ditch offense, known as the Royce Mission. Mindanao was surrendered to the Japanese on May 10^th. (Mother’s Day 1942. The POWs captured on Mindanao were consolidated at Camp Casisang, about five kilometers southwest of Malaybalay, Mindanao. They were miles away from Bataan and the infamous Bataan Death March.

 

On October 3, 1942, he and 268 POWs at Camp Casisang were transported by the hellship Tamohoko Maru from Bugu, Mindanao to Manila.  They were loaded aboard the hellship Tottori Maru for a month-long trip via Formosa (Taiwan) and Chosen (Korea) to Japan arriving November 11, 1942.

 

In October 1942, he was transported to Japan aboard the hellship Tottori Mari arriving November 11, 1942. He was primarily a slave laborer at Tokyo-2B-Kawasaki POW Camp (Mitsui Wharf Co., Ltd. known as “Mitsui Madhouse” for its brutal and chaotic conditions as well the language problems created by the many nationalities at the camp). There he was used as stevedore and day laborer for the Mitsui Senpaku KK [today’s Mitsui OSK Lines Ltd], Mitsubishi’s NYK Line (name unchanged today), Nisshin Flour (today’s Nisshin Seifu Group), Kawasaki Railroad Electric Power Plant, KYK Brick Factory (Kojima or Kawasaki Yogyo Co., Ltd., today’s Shinagawa Refactory), and Nippon Steel (name unchanged today). He was also traded around the Kawasaki, Kanagawa area spending time as a slave laborer for Nisshin Flour Milling (Tokyo 24-D), Showa Denko Chemical (Tokyo-16-B- Niigata [Kanose] today’s Showa Denko K.K.) where he mixed chemicals for ammunition, and Japan Steel Pipe [Japan Kokan, today’s JFE Holdings] (Tokyo 5D Kawasaki). Starting in January 1945, the camps came under constant air attack from American bombing raids. On July 25, 1945, Tokyo-2B was destroyed and 22 POWs were killed.

 

The camp was liberated on August 30, 1945. Among the 139 POWs in the camp, there were 59 Americans, 25 British, 6 Australians, 44 Italians and 5 Norwegians. He was evacuated to the hospital ship USS Benevolence (AH-13) for processing and then eventually on to a plane to Manila. There, on September 18, they boarded a troop transport and arrived in Los Angeles [possibly] on October 3.

 

Ed returned home to West Virginia to heal and reconstitute his life. He went to Bethany College and received a degree in economics. From there he joined the Internal Revenue Service as a Criminal Investigator and worked primarily in the field of organized crime and corruption of public officials. He retired from the government in February 1977.

 

Ed was a valiant and tireless advocate for the American POWs of Japan. He was one of five POWs who testified in person on June 28, 2000 to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on how the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty with Japan abrogated the right of former POWs of Japan to sue Japanese companies for compensation for their forced labor or on how the POWs were mistreated by their Japanese capturers in violation of the Geneva Convention.

 

In September 2010, he participated in the first delegation of American POWs on a “friendship” trip to Japan. There he met with Japan’s Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada who offered an official apology to the POWs of Japan. This apology appeared as a Cabinet Decision in February 2009 making it one of only four official Japanese government apologies.

 

He was twice elected National Commander of the American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor (ADBC, today the ADBC Memorial Society), in 1984 and 1999. His passion has been to ensure the legacy of the POWs by creating the ADBC Museum, Education & Research Center in Wellsburg, WV to preserve the history of the defense of the Philippines and to teach the lessons of war. 

The Museum received in 2015 the only atonement payment from a Japanese company, Mitsubishi Materials Corporation, for the company’s wartime abuse of POW slave laborers in its mines. You have to dig deep into the company's 2016 social responsibility report on page 70 to find mention of the apology on the Mitsubishi Materials website. There is one sentence. It mentions an "apology made to former US prisoners who were forced to work." In other words, the apology is not "offered" as reconciliation experts suggest; non-US POWs are not included (British, Australian, South African, Irish); and the rightwing euphemism "forced to work" is used. 

Ed wrote a memoir of his time as a POW called, Service to my Country. 

POW#246

 

Requiescat in pace

The struggle to forgive

'I had resentment for 10 to 15 years,' former POW Leland Chandler (seated left) said at the event at TUJ in Tokyo. 'My wife and I, when we would both go to church, I would hear the minister say, 'Forgive 'em, forgive your neighbor, forgive!' I looked that preacher in the eye and I thought, 'You don't know what you're talking about.'

On their return to Japan, former U.S. POWs recount struggles to forgive and forget

BY SARAI FLORES, The Japan Times, November 18, 2015

There is a time for everything and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time for war and a time for peace. — Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

Three-quarters of a century have passed since William Chittenden found himself aboard a U.S. Navy ship sailing for China, a freshly enlisted marine of 19 years old in a time of war of the most extreme and brutal kind.

This young man would be thrust into adulthood in the cruelest of ways — serving in the midst of a global conflict that would cut short more than 60 million lives and see more than 140,000 held in prisoner-of-war camps throughout Japan’s nascent empire.

Speaking at a time of peace to an audience of mostly expats in Tokyo, Chittenden, now 95, demonstrated an alarmingly keen memory as he delivered a message of forgiveness and reconciliation in the country where he had once spent years as a prisoner of war.

“I’ve never carried any resentment,” Chittenden said. “I’m a great believer that the little people — and by the little people I mean the people not in charge, the regular population of the Japanese — are very friendly and very good people. Japan had bad leadership and that’s all changed, that’s all history.”

Every year [since 2010] Japan’s Foreign Ministry invites a group of American former POWs to spend a week in Japan and speak about their experiences during World War II [see HERE for the profiles of this year's group]. Last year’s talk at Temple University Japan had an underlying theme of the horrors of their bitter fight for survival in the POW camps in the 1940s. This year, much of the talk among the nine visitors was of forgiveness.

Chittenden, in particular, spoke of his amazement at how far Japan has come since the end of the war.

“There are several things that have struck me: one, the courtesy of Japanese people — they’re a charming population,” he said. “I’m amazed at the great architecture I see in the country, from their bridges to their buildings. I would just like to say I appreciate the opportunity to return to Japan as I have this week, and it’s been an education to me.”

When Chittenden enlisted as a naive teenager in 1939, he probably did not consider the possibility that his decision would land him in a POW camp along with 1,200 U.S. military and civilians in Woo Sung, China, in February 1942. He would go on to labor in a total of five POW camps during his 3½ years in captivity.

In March 1940, Chittenden’s journey began aboard the USS Henderson, sailing for Peking, where he had been assigned to protect the U.S. Embassy. On Dec. 8, 1941, just after the Pearl Harbor attack dragged the U.S. into the war, the Japanese overran the embassy and took Chittenden and 140 other marines prisoner, herding them aboard freight cars for a four-day journey to the Woo Sung POW camp near Shanghai.

Chittenden and 1,200 other POWs labored at Woo Sung until December 1942, when they were moved to the nearby Kiangwan camp. In August 1943 the Japanese put a group of men from the camp on a boat to Kawasaki. Chittenden was among the group that endured that harsh four-day journey across the East China Sea.

Chittenden worked at a steel mill in Kawasaki for two years [ POW Camp Tokyo 5-D Kawasaki, which was across from the main gate of a steel mill owned by Nippon Steel Tube & Mining Company (Nippon Kokan, today’s JFE Engineering Corporation)], unloading cargo from freight ships, until mid-April 1945, when U.S. B-29 bombers leveled whole areas of the city.

“I was in a bomb shelter across the street from our POW barracks. It was built under a series of railroad tracks,” recalled Chittenden. “We had a four-hour incendiary night that night. . . . When we went back to our barracks the next morning, we saw that the whole town had been burned to the ground.”

Chittenden and 500 surviving prisoners were then moved to Kobe aboard one of the notorious “hell ships.” In June 1945 Chittenden was moved to yet another POW camp, in Niigata, where he worked as a stevedore until the Japanese surrender on Aug. 14. Weeks later, Chittenden was flown back home, finally arriving in the U.S. as a free man on Sept. 12.

“My thoughts were, ‘Thank God I lived through it,’ ” said Chittenden, “because there were many times when I didn’t know that I would, because every man in the camp had beriberi. We had practically no medicine, we were all starving and we were hungry. My normal weight was 150 pounds (68 kg) and I weighed about 100 pounds when the war was over. And that was true of everybody — everybody lost weight, everybody had beriberi and pellagra and all these diseases.”

Chittenden enrolled at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana and graduated in 1949. He went on to work in the men’s clothing department at a Sears store until 1989, got married and had three children.

Fifty years after his liberation, Chittenden published a memoir about his wartime experiences. In the years following his release, he used this writing as a coping mechanism, and Chittenden feels it helped him come to terms with his ordeal while he was still a young man. [ From China Marine to JAP POW: My 1,346 Day Journey Through Hell.]

Sitting a few feet away from Chittenden at the talk in Tokyo was 92-year-old Leland Chandler, another former U.S. POW who, unlike Chittenden, needed a number of years to recover from his horrific experiences in the war.

“When I arrived back in the United States, I was so happy to be back that at that particular time, I did not talk about my experiences very much,” explained Chandler. “Once in a while I would say something, but most of the time it took me several months. With the exception of my immediate family, I did not feel comfortable talking to strangers about it, so I learned how to keep my mouth shut.”

Chandler served with the 60th Artillery anti-aircraft regiment on Corregidor Island in the Philippines. After U.S. forces on the island surrendered to the Japanese in April 1942, Chandler spent his first six months as a POW at Camp Cabanatuan. After that, Chandler and nearly 1,500 American POWs were sent to Japan aboard the Nagata Maru hell ship. More than 200 men perished during the journey. On his arrival in Osaka, Chandler began working as a slave laborer at a steel mill [for Yodogawa Tekkojo, today’s Yodokawa Steel Works, Ltd.] at the Osaka 3-D Yodogawa POW Camp], where says he had to fight to survive.

“People always asked me, why did I survive and how did I survive? And I always said, ‘I’m going to live long enough to come home and get my back pay.'” Privately, Mr. Chandler says it was his faith and the bible he was able to keep with him throughout the war.

Chandler’s next stop was the Oeyama POW camp, where he worked as a stevedore for 10 months at Miyazu Harbor until the end of the war. Several years after returning to the U.S., Chandler married, and he worked as a fire chief until his retirement in 1974.

“I had resentment for 10 to 15 years,” Chandler said. “My wife and I, when we would both go to church, I would hear the minister say, ‘Forgive ‘em, forgive your neighbor, forgive!’ I looked that preacher in the eye and I thought, ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’

“About a week later at church, the preacher was talking about ‘forgive.’ I got up in front of the entire congregation, and I said, ‘I forgive all the Japanese people. I will treat them equally, there is no difference between us, all in the past has been forgotten,” said Chandler. “I have felt better to this day and I won’t go back.”

Sixth American POW Delegation to Japan

The following are profiles of the nine former POWs of Japan visiting Japan October 11-19, 2015 as guests of the Japanese government. They will hold an open meeting on October 14th.

All the men are in their 90s. One was captured in a hospital on Java after his U.S. Army Air Corps B-17 squadron evacuated in March 1942. Another fought on Corregidor AND the Battle of Chosin Reservoir in Korea. Four are “China Marines.” Another, a survivor of the Bataan Death March, was Rev. Jerry Falwell’s treasurer and has an award named after him at Liberty University. Three were slave laborers at POW camps that were factories and mines that are now part of Japan's new UNESCO World Industrial Heritage sites.

DIALOGUE WITH FORMER US PRISONERS OF WAR IN JAPAN 2015. 10/14, 6:30pm, Tokyo, Japan. Sponsor: Temple University. Speakers: Nine former US POWs - Leland Chandler, William Howard Chittenden, Carl Dyer, Arthur Gruenberg, George Hirschkamp, George Rogers, Jack Warner, Clifford Warren, Joseph Demott; Moderator: Robert Dujarric, Director, Institute of Contemporary Asian Studies (ICAS), Temple University.
A VIDEO OF THIS MEETING IS AVAILABLE.

Initial Press Coverage by AP.

LELAND CHANDLER, 92, lives in Galesburg, Illinois. A farm boy from Table Grove, Illinois, he enlisted in the U.S. Army on February 4, 1941. He was 18. On April 1st , he boarded the USAT Republic at San Francisco with 2,200 other soldiers headed for Manila. Arriving on April 22nd, he was assigned to the 60th Coast Artillery at Fort Mills on Corregidor Island at the entrance to Manila Bay. There he was a member of “H” or “Harford Battery” on Herring Field, Middleside helping man 3-inch anti-aircraft guns under the command of Capt. Warren Starr. Starting on December 8th (December 7th in Hawaii), with the Japanese invasion, Corregidor was bombed four to five times a day during the six-month long siege. The Americans surrendered on May 6, 1942. Capt. Starr recorded that his “battery fired about 875 rounds of 3-inch ammunition, and obtained observed hits on 14 planes.” Like most of the 12,000 men on Corregidor, Chandler was crowded into a small open area, the 92nd Garage, to wait nearly three weeks in the tropical sun with little food or water to be sent by boat to Manila. The men were then made to wade ashore before being paraded six miles down Dewey Boulevard on a “Victory March" to the old Spanish-built prison of Bilibid. Within a few days they were moved by train and foot to the squalid Cabanatuan POW Camp. On November 7, 1942, Mr. Chandler and over 1,400 American POWs were transferred to Japan via Formosa by the Hellship Nagato Maru. Initially, Mr. Chandler was a slave laborer for Yodogawa Tekkojo (today’s Yodokawa Steel Works, Ltd.) at the Osaka 3-D Yodogawa POW Camp He was a steel cutter in the steel mill working 12 to 15 hours each day on only two small bowls of rice a day. He was transferred in mid-May 1945 to Osaka 3-B Oeyama POW Camp where he toiled as a stevedore for Nippon Yakin Kogyo (today’s Nippon Yakin Kogyo Co., Ltd. or NYK) at Miyazu Harbor until the end of the war. After the Japanese guards disappeared and barrels of food descended from new B-29s, the prisoners decided to commandeer a Japanese train to Yokohama. There the POWs were deloused and fed and put on a ship to the Philippines and then back to San Francisco. The 5’11” Chandler weighed 185 pounds when captured, but only 85 pounds when liberated. He recalls “I made up my mind I was going to live, thank the good Lord,” and when “I broke my arm when a load of steel fell on it, I had another prisoner set it and I kept working. If you didn’t work you didn’t eat.” He spent seven months recuperating in hospitals before being discharged on April 7, 1946, at Fort Sheridan, Illinois. The next day he was hired by the Rock Island Arsenal and assigned to the Moline Airport (today’s Quad City International Airport) to provide fire protection for Army medical evacuations. After this service was discontinued, he joined the University of Illinois fire department. Two years later he joined the fire department at Chanute Air Force Base (decommissioned in 1993). He retired as Fire Chief from Chanute in 1974. For many years, Chandler and his wife enjoyed travel and RV camping. He likes woodworking and tinkering with projects in the shop/garage. He volunteers with the Care Committee at Church. He runs the CD player and sound system for the nursing home chapel services by his wife. He has been married to Ruth Chandler for 66 years.
POW# 389
Philippines POW# 1-10197

WILLIAM HOWARD CHITTENDEN, 95, resides in Wheaton, Illinois. Mr. Chittenden grew up in Chillicothe, Missouri. He enlisted in United States Marine Corps in1939 and started his basic training on October 30, 1939 at Twentynine Palms, San Diego. He was sent to China on May 5, 1940 aboard the USS Henderson (AP-1) with the 4th Regiment of the United States Marine Corp—also known as the China Marines—to be a guard at the U.S. Embassy in Peking (Beijing). Chittenden was captured with the 203 other Embassy Marine guards on December 8, 1941. He was first sent with all that were now called the North China Marines to Tientsin, and then on to the Woosung POW Camp outside Shanghai. In December 1942, he was moved to Kiangwan POW Camp, another suburb of Shanghai. There the POWs repaired roads and built a huge mountain for a military firing range that they referred to as Mt Fuji. On August 20, 1943, he was transferred from Kiangwan in Shanghai to Japan with 524 POWs to Osaka. He was taken to the POW Camp Tokyo 5-D Kawasaki, which was across from the main gate of a steel mill owned by Nippon Steel Tube & Mining Company (Nippon Kokan, today’s JFE Engineering Corporation). In this primitive and hazardous facility, he worked as a lathe operator and grinder operator. In June 1945, following the American bombings of the Kawasaki area, the POWs were moved to Niigata. Chittenden found himself at POW Camp Tokyo 5-B Niigata as a slave laborer loading and unloading cargo for Niigata Sea and Land Transportation Company or Niigata Kairiku Unso (today’s Rinko Corporation) until the end of the war. The camp Commandant, Lt. Tetsutaro Kato, was a particularly sadistic overseer who personally executed a POW (Frank Spear who is in a famous picture of three men on the Bataan Death March). Although sentenced to death at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, he was released with time served in 1952. Kato wrote I Want To Be A Shellfish [Watashi wa Kai ni Naritai] a novel (and two films) dramatizing and justifying his wartime experiences.  He was liberated on September 4, 1945, and put on a train to Yokohama. He was flown across the Pacific to Oakland, California arriving September 12th. Mr. Chittendan was discharged from the Marines Corps on February 16, 1946, as a Platoon Sergeant. He used the GI Bill to earn a Bachelor of Arts in Marketing in 1949, from the University of Notre Dame and where he met his wife, Peggy, who was a student at the neighboring St. Mary’s. He went to work after graduation at the national headquarters of Sears, Roebuck & Company in downtown Chicago. He was quality assurance manager for the company until he retired in 1980. In retirement, he wrote and published his autobiography, From China Marine to JAP POW: My 1,346 Day Journey Through Hell. He enjoys travel, golf, tennis, scuba diving, and spending time with his family. Mr. Chittenden, a widower, was married for 59 years and had three children, two sons and a daughter
POW# 233

JOSEPH DEMOTT, 97, lives in Lititz, Pennsylvania. He grew up in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania and enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps on August 29, 1939 at Chanute Field in Rantoul, Illinois. He trained as a radio operator with the 10th Air Force, 7th Bombardment Group 22nd Squadron. Mr. DeMott was part of the 22nd Squadron that flew on the Dec 17-18, 1941 from Hamilton Field, California to Hickam Field, Hawaii. As part of Major Kenneth Hobson’s B-17 crew, he helped pioneer the “Pacific route” from Hawaii on January 2, 1942 down through the South Pacific to Australia. Form there, they went to Malang, Java to join the rest of the 22nd on January 14th to reinforce Allied forces in the Netherlands East Indies. On the 15th, the ABDACOM (Australian British Dutch American Command) was formed with the mission to defend the Malay Barrier, which was defined as a line connecting the Malay Peninsula-Sumatra-Java-North Australia. On February 3rd, during a mission over Balikpapan (today’s Jakarta), Mr. DeMott was severely wounded in his leg and sent to a Dutch military hospital in Malang. Confined to hospital bed, he was unable to evacuate with his squadron at the end of February to Australia. The invading Japanese captured him on March 8, 1942. After several months when he was able to walk without crutches, he was sent to the western mountains of Java to a large POW camp for Dutch and British near Bandoeng (today’s Bandung), near Tjimahi that sent details out to do farming. This camp was possibly the Baros 5 Camp near the plantations of Lewigadjah. In late 1943, he was sent to “Bicycle Camp” in Batavia, Java. This camp had housed the Dutch 10th Infantry Battalion in Batavia, and took its name from the battalion’s use of bicycles for transportation. There he helped build fences and dig ditches as well as work on the docks. The prisoners never received official word that the war had ended. They simply realized something had changed when their treatment improved, they were allowed to go outside the Camp, and the Japanese officers no longer carried swords. On September 19, 1945, US Army Special Forces liberated the Camp. Mr. DeMott, starved, beaten and having temporarily lost his eyesight, never lost hope. He flew back to the States via Calcutta, Egypt, the Azores Islands, and Canada. In late October 1945, he arrived at LaGuardia Airport in New York. He was hospitalized on Staten Island, New York before going to Fletcher General Hospital in Cambridge, Ohio. He was discharged from the U.S. Army on May 20, 1946 with two Purple Hearts. Returning home, he used the GI Bill to obtain a BS in Engineering in 1949, from Pennsylvania State University and became an electrical engineer. After graduation, he worked at Sylvania Electric Products Inc. as a production engineer and then in telemetry for the Applied Science Corporation of Princeton (ASCOP). He retired from RCA as design developer, but went on to work as a plant manager in Lancaster, Pennsylvania for Champion Blower & Forge Co. (today’s Champion Fan) for an additional five years. In July 1979, he took full retirement. A Ham radio operator most of his life, he also enjoyed gardening. His wife of 67 years, Kate, died in August 2015.
POW# - unknown

CARL DYER, 91, resides in Oglesby, Illinois. He grew up in Fort Smith, Arkansas. Not a fan of schoolwork, Mr. Dyer at 16 convinced the U.S. Army recruiter that he was 18 and enlisted. Sworn in on March 17, 1941 at Camp Joseph T. Robinson in Little Rock, he was sent immediately to California and Fort McDowell (Angel Island). Barely a month later he was on a troop transport to Manila, arriving May 12, 1941. He was stationed with at Fort William McKinley as a member of the 12th Quartermaster Regiment Philippine Scouts supplying gasoline to the troops on Bataan. After Bataan was surrendered on April 9, 1942, he escaped the next day to Corregidor aboard a fresh water barge from Sisiman Cove near Mariveles—where most of the surrendered troops on Bataan began the Bataan Death March. On Corregidor, he was assigned to the defense of Monkey Point. After surrender on May 6th, he joined thousands of other POW on a small open area, the 92nd Garage, to wait nearly three weeks in the tropical sun with little food or water to be sent by boat to Manila. The men were then made to wade ashore before being paraded six miles down Dewey Boulevard on a “Victory March" to the old Spanish-built prison of Bilibid. Within a few days they were moved by train and foot to the squalid Cabanatuan #3 POW Camp. On November 7, 1942, Mr. Dyer and over 1,400 American POWs were transferred to Japan via Formosa by the Hellship Nagato Maruto. After arriving at the Port of Moji, Mr. Dyer was sent to POW Camp Osaka 4-B Tanagawa where he was a slave laborer for Tobishima-gumi (today’s Tobishima Corporation). There he helped build breakwater for a primitive dry-dock and submarine base. This camp was noted for the severe malnutrition of its prisonsers and an excessive death rate. It was closed March 20, 1945, and he was then moved to Osaka 8-D Naruo a POW camp to provide slave labor for Showa Denkyoku (Showa Electrode Company, Ltd., today’s SEC Carbon, Ltd.) for a graphite factory. This camp was closed in May and he was transferred Osaka 5-B Tsuruga on the Sea of Japan to be a slave stevedore for Tsuruga Harbor Transportation Company (company no longer exists). After the docks were bombed in June, the POWs were shifted between a brickyard and the port. It was at the dock that he listened with the Japanese workers to the Emperor say that the war had ended. After the first food airdrops into his POW camp, he and a number of fellow POWs walked out of the camp and commandeered a train to Tokyo. From there they were flown to Manila on August 29th and then boarded USS Rodman to San Francisco arriving there October 3, 1946. After a check up at Letterman Army Hospital, he was sent home to Fort Smith, Arkansas. He spent several more months at the Hot Springs Army-Navy General Hospital before he was discharged from the Army on March 15, 1946. He took advantage of the GI Bill by taking courses on mechanics at the Fort Smith High School. Mr. Dyer first worked at the Lowell Brickyard in Chicago and then as a tractor operator at the Caterpillar plant in Aurora, Illinois. After retiring in 1985, he and his wife moved to Hawaii, but returned to Illinois in September of 2000. Mr. Dyer was widowed in 2009 after 63 years of marriage to Jean, an Army nurse he met at the Letterman Army Hospital.
POW# 459
Philippines POW# 1-9778

ARTHUR GRUENBERG, 94, lives in Everett, Washington State. Mr. Gruenberg grew up on Long Island, New York and Colorado. He enlisted in the Marine Corps August 1, 1940, in Denver, Colorado and took his training at San Diego’s Marine Corps Recruit Depot. He was soon sent aboard the USS Chaumont (AP-5) via Manila to Shanghai to be part of A Company 1st Battalion of the 4th Marines—best known as the China Marines—that provided security for the Americans in the international settlement. As with most of the China Marines he was evacuated (either SS President Harrison or SS President Madison) November 27-28 to the Philippines to reinforce the defenses of the Islands. Prior to boarding the ship, he volunteered to test a new typhus vaccine with the result he arrived in the Philippines sick with typhus. Sent to Olongapo Naval Station on Subic Bay, he recovered. When war started he was sent to Corregidor and assigned to the 1st Battalion as a runner and telephone messenger through the siege of Corregidor. On May 6th, he delivered the surrender message from Major General Jonathan Wainwright to Lt Colonel Curtis T Beecher who commanded the 1st Battalion on East Sector-From Malinta Hill (inclusive) to the tail of the island. Like most of the 12,000 men on Corregidor, Mr. Gruenberg was crowded into a small open area, the 92nd Garage, to wait nearly three weeks in the tropical sun with little food or water to be sent by boat to Manila. The men were then made to wade ashore before being paraded six miles down Dewey Boulevard on a “Victory March" to the old Spanish-built prison of Bilibid. Within a few days they were moved by train and foot to the squalid Cabanatuan POW Camp #1. He arrived blind due to a vitamin A deficiency. US Army Dr Samuel Bloom was able to save his right eye’s site (this eye remains 20/20), but not the left. Mr. Gruenberg was eventually able to be sent to do farm work and other labor until he contracted malaria. In July 1944, Mr. Gruenberg, along with 1,540 other POWs, was taken aboard the Hellship Nissyo Maru via Formosa to Japan. After arriving at the port of Moji, Japan, he was sent to the POW Camp Fukuoka 7-B Futase (known as Shin-Iizuka) to be a slave laborer for Japan Iron & Steel Co., Ltd, (Nippon Seitetsu, today’s Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corporation. The camp is associated with the Fukuoka-Yamaguichi area awarded UNESCO World Industrial Heritage status this past July, albeit without mention of the hundreds of POW slave laborers who toiled there. At first assigned to build air raid shelters, he eventually ended up mining coal. His camp was liberated on September 16, 1945, and the POWs were put on trains to Nagasaki where many boarded Navy transport ships to San Francisco. Returning to the U.S., he spent approximately one year in three military hospitals: Oak Knoll, California; Glenwood Springs, Colorado; and St Albans Military Hospital, New York where they operated, ultimately, unsuccessfully on his left eye. Now a staff sergeant, he was able to reenlist in the Marine Corps under a waiver in September 1946. He was first sent to Washington, DC as a guard at the Naval Shipyard’s Naval Communications Annex. In Washington, he married and had two daughters. He was eventually assigned to the Brooklyn Naval Shipyard graves registration to escort WWII dead home. In the summer of 1950, he was transferred to Camp Pendleton and then to Korea. He arrived in time to participate in the legendary battle of the Chosin Reservoir. He was one of the handful of survivors of Fox Company’s (2n Battalion 7 Marine Rgt 1st ) bitter battle from November 27 through December 2, 1950 to protect, at all costs, a thin Toktong Pass escape route through the steep Nang­nim Mountains(See: The Last Stand of Fox Company: A True Story of U.S. Marines in Combat).Wounded shortly after this battle, he returned to the front in May until August 1951. Discharged September 10, 1952, he eventually went to work for the Denver water department and in 1954 founded his own excavating company. Moving to Seattle in 1966, he joined the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 302 working on construction project throughout the fast-growing region. He retired in 1980, to travel, fish, and enjoy life. Mr. Gruenberg oral history can be found as part of the Veterans History Project at the Library of Congress.
POW# 599
Philippines PO# 1-9596

GEORGE HIRSCHKAMP, 95, resides in Sandpoint, Idaho. Born in Germany, he came to the U.S. with his mother in 1928, and settled in the Chicago suburb of Berwyn. At 18, he enlisted in the Marine Corps in February 1938, and took his basic training at the San Diego Marine Corps Recruit Depot. He was sent to the San Francisco Naval Station for instruction on becoming a radio communications operator. He was assigned mid-1940 to the 4th Marines as part of a detachment to the U.S. Embassy in Peking to work as a radio operator—part of a small, 130-man support unit stationed there before the war. December 8, 1941, they were all taken prisoner on what was the first day of the war. They were then transferred to Tientsin, followed by Woosung and then Kiangwan, the later two suburbs of Shanghai. At Woosung, Hirschkamp repaired Japanese vehicles and helped build a huge mountain for a military firing range that the POWs referred to as Mt Fuji. In July 1945, he was transferred to Japan via Manchuria and Pusan to northern Japan. He was fist sent to Hokodate #2 Akahira to be a slave laborer for an Asano coal mine owned by Sumitomo Mining (today’s Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corporation) and then to Hakodate 3-B Utashinai, he also mined coal, this time for the Sorachi Office of Hokkaido Shipping and Mining Company, Ltd., which is today’s Hokkaido Colliery & Steamship Co., Ltd, which is a Mitsui company. He was liberated from this camp on September 15, 1945. The POWs at this camp learned of the end of the war when the camp commander “ lined us up on the parade ground and informed us that hostilities had ceased,” Hirschkamp recalled. “Then we all had a drink of sake. The war had ended. The next morning, we woke up and - lo and behold - they were all gone,” he continued. They had abandoned us. From then on, everything became sweet.” The POWs left the camp on September 17th, and were put aboard a British destroyer and taken to Tokyo for processing before a long ship voyage to the States. After returning from Japan, he used the GI Bill to complete his GED and study mathematics at Morton College in Cicero, Illinois. He also married the woman who waited seven years for him to return from the Marines. Mr. Hirschkamp likes to recount that “When I got home, we dated a couple times and she had the brass to ask me, ‘When are we going to get married, George?’ “I stammered and stuttered and she finally said, ‘It’s June 1 [1946] or never.’ So we got married.” He worked for International Harvester in Illinois and eventually at Ford Aerospace’s plant in Newport Beach, California. He retired in 1980 and traveled the country until his wife of 62 years, Lorraine, passed away.
POW# unknown

GEORGE W. ROGERS, 96, resides 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 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 Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corporation) 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. At 96, he retains his teeth, has five children, and displays “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. Mr. Rogers was married 67 year to Barbara,who passed away August 2015.
POW# unknown
Philippines POW# 1-06096

JACK DOYLE WARNER, 94, lives in Elk City, Oklahoma. Mr. Warner grew up in western Oklahoma and enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps on October 18, 1939. After basic training at San Diego’s Marine Corps Recruit Depot his first duty was at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard, 25 miles north of San Francisco. In the summer of 1940, he was on a 148-day voyage to Shanghai to be part of A Company 1st Battalion of the 4th Marines—best known as the China Marines—that provided security for the Americans in the international settlement. In late November 1941, Mr. Warner thinking he was returning to the U.S. found instead that he and the regiment were being sent to the Philippines to defend the island of Corregidor from a potential Japanese invasion. Shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese bombed Corregidor. He was stationed at Kindley Airstrip as a rifleman with the 2nd Marine Battalion. With the fall of Corregidor on May 6th, he and most of the 12,000 men on Corregidor were crowded into a small open area, the 92nd Garage, to wait nearly three weeks in the tropical sun with little food or water to be sent by boat to Manila. The men were then made to wade ashore before being paraded six miles down Dewey Boulevard on a “Victory March" to the old Spanish-built prison of Bilibid. Within a few days they were moved by train and foot to the squalid Cabanatuan POW Camp. In August 1942, his Japanese captors forced him and hundreds of surviving American troops to strip naked to be examined by Japanese military doctors. Warner and 300 Americans picked to be the first group of POWs to go to Japan. On September 21, the POWs were sent to Formosa aboard the Hellship Lima Maru. They spent two months there, ostensibly to learn Japanese. From Taiwan, the POWs were shipped aboard the Dainichi Maru arriving in Moji, Japan on November 25th. At first, Mr. Warner was a slave laborer at POW Camp Tokyo 1-D Yokohama, providing riveter labor for shipyard and ship construction. He was also forced to repair German ships that docked outside the Yokohama harbor. However, he said the Germans fed him better than the Japanese, who limited the POW diet to small amounts of rice and fish heads. “When we went out and riveted on a German ship, we always liked that because they carried hogs on their ships and they fed us two meals,” said Warner, “We got our ration plus what they gave us and we usually carried ours back to give to our buddies.” After the docks were bombed by in May 1945, he was sent to POW Camp Sendai 5-B Kamaishi, and toiled as a mechanic repairing slag cars at iron mill works owned by Japan Iron & Steel Co., Ltd, (today’s Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corporation). At the camp, Warner volunteered to take a beating for a Navy sailor who he said was in bad shape. “I don’t know what he had done, but he was a good kid and I knew him,” said Warner. “We knew he couldn’t take it if they give him a real beating.” In August 1945, he twice escaped from the camp. Miraculously, Camp Commander Makoto Inaki (from April 1944) did not have the escapees executed, but instead had them beaten and confined to the guardhouse. The second time he escaped, the war ended and he was advised by local Japanese to return to the camp for repatriation. He and a buddy jumped the evacuation team to Sendai and made their way to Yokohama. After a series of adventures included a tour of the city sanctioned by the commanding general, they flew out of Tokyo and island hopped to Oakland. On May 24, 1946 he returned to civilian life. After returning to his home, Mr. Warner used the G.I. Bill education benefits to take vocational agricultural classes at Hammon, Oklahoma’s high school. For 17 years he farmed until 1961 when his property became part of Foss Lake reservoir. He joined the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Retiring in 1982, he travelled with his wife, June, to all 50 states and many foreign countries. Married 68 years, he was widowed in 2014.
POW# 4463
Taiwan POW# 972

CLIFFORD WARREN, 91, resides in Shepherd, Texas. At 16, Mr. Warren left the family farm near Houston, Texas without his parent’s permission and enlisted in the U.S. Army in February 1941. Leaving behind the family’s farm was an easy decision, considering they had already experienced three crop failures, including two floods and one fire. His parents did not know where he was until he arrived in the Philippines aboard the USAT Republic on April 22, 1941. There he immediately sent his parents a letter explaining where he was and how long he believed he would be there. He became a member of the 60th Coast Artillery Regiment, 1st Battalion Battery “D” or “Denver” manning 3”anti-aircraft guns near Kindley Field on Corregidor Island. This battery was the first confront Japanese invading amphibious forces in May 1944. Unfortunately, shelling from Bataan had killed their commanding officer in last part of April, which undermined their effectiveness. With the fall of Corregidor on May 6th, he and most of the 12,000 men on Corregidor were crowded into a small open area, the 92nd Garage, to wait nearly three weeks in the tropical sun with little food or water to be sent by boat to Manila. The men were then made to wade ashore before being paraded six miles down Dewey Boulevard on a “Victory March" to the old Spanish-built prison of Bilibid. Within a few days they were moved by train and foot to the squalid Cabanatuan POW Camp. He was placed at a work detail to build an airfield in Lipa City in Batangas Province for 18 months. Most of the men were transferred from here in March of 1944 to construct another runway at Camp Murphy. In the summer of 1944, he was shipped to Japan via the Hellship Nissyo Maru. Upon arrival he was sent to POW Camp Nagoya 1-B Kamioka, where he was a slave laborer to mine lead and zinc for Mitsui Mining Co., the predecessor of today’s Nippon Coke & Engineering Co., Ltd. In July 2015, the site was given UNESCO World Industrial Heritage status, albeit without mention of the hundreds of POW slave laborers who toiled there. The camp, reportedly was for “hard cases” who were difficult for the Japanese to manage. Mr. Warner recalls that the POWs were repeatedly told that they would be killed if and when the country was invaded. Twice, he said, the guards would take them out and have them sit on the roads alongside the mountain. Then set up machine guns at either end of the road. After awhile they would dismantle the guns and take them back to work. He thinks they were practicing what they would do if there had been a land invasion. Toward end of August the Japanese camp commander escorted the POWs south by train. On the middle of the third day they could go no further due to track damage, but American forces were waiting there to truck any POW's who arrived back to Tokyo. From there they were flown to Okinawa. He remembers being able to smell beef stew on the airfield there from the field kitchens near the beach. But the first thing he wanted was coffee as he had not had any in four years! Five days later they were flown on B-24s to the Philippines. In the Philippines he was actually able to connect with a brother, Willie Kelso Warren, who he had not seen since before the war. He went by troop ship from there to San Francisco. He turned 21 the day they sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge October 15, 1945. After two days in San Francisco, he was sent by train to the McCloskey General Hospital in Temple, Texas (today’s Olin E. Teague Veterans' Medical Center in Temple, Texas). He was to be there for three months but was soon furloughed to spend the time at his parent's in Leggitt, Texas or in Beaumont, Texas courting, Ivene, his wife to be. He was discharged at Fort Sam Houston January 29, 1946, and married Ivene on October 6, 1946. Mr. Warren tried night school at the University of Houston and working days at Ford Motor Company. Severe PTSD made this difficult. He switched to working various positions operating machinery and in 1965 went to work for Brown & Root Engineering and Construction (today’s KBR Inc.) He helped run the engine rooms for the big offshore derrick barges. Later he was in the first group of Safety Officers Brown & Root trained to meet the new OSHA safety regulations. He in 1986 retired as the #2 Safety Man for Brown & Root construction of the nuclear power plant at Glen Rose, Texas, known as Comanche Peak. He was widowed in 1990 and remarried in 1997 to Myrtle Emmons.
POW# 488
Philippines POW# 1-1350

For the Record

On October 15th, Congressman Mike Honda (D-CA) entered into the Congressional Record the names of the seven participants of the 4th American POW Delegation to Japan. He introduced the former POWs and the widows of former POWs with the following "extension of remarks":

Mr. HONDA. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor veterans from America's greatest generation and thank the Government of Japan for recognizing the sacrifices of these men. On Sunday, October 13, seven former members or widows of former members of the U.S. Army, U.S. Army Air Corps, and U.S. Marines who fought in the Pacific Theater of World War II--and who were once prisoners of war of Imperial Japan--will travel to Japan as guests of the Japanese government. Marking an act of historic reconciliation and remembrance, this is the fourth delegation of U.S. POWs to visit Japan through this program.

Their first trip to Japan was on aging freighters called ``Hellships,'' where the men were loaded into suffocating holds with little space, water, food, or sanitation. The conditions in which they were held are unimaginable. At the POW camps in the Philippines, Japan and China, they suffered unmerciful abuse aggravated by the lack of food, medical care, clothing, and appropriate housing. Each POW also became a slave laborer at the mines, factories, and docks of some of Japan's largest companies. In the end, nearly 40 percent of the American POWs held by Japan perished; compared to two percent of those in Nazi Germany's POW camps. The POWs of this delegation slaved for Mitsubishi, Nippon Express, Sumitomo, Nisshin Flour, Hitachi, Dowa Holdings, and JFE Holdings.

In September 2010, the Japanese government delivered to the first American POW delegation an official, Cabinet-approved apology for the damage and suffering these men endured. Although the Japanese government had hosted POWs from the wartime Allies of the United States since the late 1990s, the 2010 trip was the first trip to Japan for American POWs. It was also the first official apology to any prisoners of war held by Japan.

I know that the American POWs fought hard for this recognition. Dr. Lester Tenney of California, a former POW who mined coal for Mitsui, was instrumental in persuading the Government of Japan to offer the apology and initiate the trips of reconciliation. He says he is ``honored to have had the opportunity of assisting the U.S. State Department and the Japanese Embassy in arranging this year's POW Visitation Program. Like the years past, the visit will no doubt yield many memories while at the same time erase many bad experiences that left its mark on the POWs. This year, for the first time, Japan's Minister of Foreign Affairs has allowed three widows of former POWs to participate in the program and visit the sites of their husbands' Japanese prison camps located in various cities in Japan.''

I thank the POWs for their persistent pursuit of justice, and commend the U.S. State Department for helping them. I also appreciate the willingness of the Japanese government to pursue an historic and meaningful apology. It is my hope that the POW Visitation Program continues to expand, and that it will be a healing mechanism for the POWs, their families and communities.

Now, it is time for the many Japanese companies that used POWs for slave labor during World War II to follow the example of their government by offering an apology and supporting programs for lasting remembrance and reconciliation.

Mr. Speaker, I wish these men a fulfilling trip to Japan, and I hope that their trip contributes to securing the historic peace between the U.S. and our important ally Japan. 

[Biographies of participants follow in text.]

4th American POW Delegation in Japan this week

From October 13 to 21, seven former members or widows of former members of the U.S. Army, U.S. Army Air Corps, and U.S. Marines who fought in the Pacific Theater of World War II and were taken prisoner by Imperial Japanese Forces will be guests of the Government of Japan. This is the fourth American POW delegation to visit Japan. Temple University in Tokyo will host a public event.

Mukaishima POW Camp

Dialogue with 

Former US Prisoners of War in Japan

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

7:00pm

Institute of Contemporary Asian Studies (ICAS)

Mita Hall, Temple University, Japan Campus

5F

Tokyo, Japan

The trip includes visits to sites of the former prison camps where the POWs were slave laborers. Many of the camps/mines/docks are in the regions that Japan would like UNESCO to designate as World Modern Industrial Heritage sites. Mitsui, Mitsubishi, Hitachi, Sumitomo, and Nippon Steel all originated in these regions. All used POW slave labor and forced labor from Japanese colonies. And today all also want to bid for American high speed rail projects.

Japan’s historic official apology--one of only four that have been cabinet approved and the only one victim-specific--and continued support for the POW Visitation Program has improved our relations with Japan, established a viable path for reconciliation with other victims of Imperial Japan, and, most important, has had a positive effect on the former POWs and their families.

It is in everyone’s interest that the POW Visitation Program continues. I hope that you will help the Abe Administration understand this as it is a program they want to end.

The program needs to evolve by including children and other descendants of the American POWs of Japan as well as to expand to support research into the POW experience under Imperial Japan. These are worthy goals of our broadening alliance with Japan. As we know today, the legacy of torture and abuse affects generations of a family and society.

Below is the list of participants, which include 3 Death March survivors, a Marine on Guam, and a Native American.

4th Delegation of American Former POWs of Japan

October 13-21 2013 

Phillip W. COON, 94, is a full blood Muscogee Creek who grew up in Oklahoma. After graduating from the Haskell Institute (today’s Haskell Indian Nations University) in Lawrence, Kansas, he enlisted in the U.S. Army on September 29, 1941. He was assigned to the 31st Infantry Regiment and sent immediately to the Philippines Islands aboard the USAT Willard A. Holbrook arriving on October 23, 1941. At Fort McKinley he trained as a .30 caliber machine gunner (M1919 Browning). He fought on Bataan Peninsula against the invading Japanese forces and was surrendered on April 9th. Forced on the infamous 65-mile Bataan Death March, he was subjected to capricious cruelty and abuse, denied water, food, rest and protection from the sun. Nearly all on the March had surrendered sick and malnourished causing thousands to die before they reached their destination of Camp O’Donnell. Coon credits his survival to God, or as he said, “We ran out of food, ammunition and men, but we didn't run out of prayer.” His first POW Camp was Camp O’Donnell where he worked burial detail. For the next two years, he was held at Cabanatuan, Camp Lipa-Batangas, Camp Murphy-Rizal, and Bilibid. On October 1, 1944, he was shipped via Hong Kong on the Hellship Hokusen Maru to Taiwan where he was held briefly at the Inrin Temporary POW Camp. From Taiwan he was sent to Moji, Japan via the Hellship Melbourne Maru arriving January 23, 1945. He was then shipped north to Sendai and became a slave laborer mining cooper for Fujita Gumi Kosaka Kozan (today’s Dowa Holdings Co. Ltd) at the Sendai-#8B Kosaka POW Camp. After his liberation in September 1945, he returned to the U.S. and was discharged from service as a Corporal on June 24, 1946. He returned home to work as Union Painter doing high-scaffold work. Helen, his wife of 67 years, died this spring. Mr. Coon lives with his son, Michael, a Vietnam vet who works with DAV Creek County Chapter #9 as a Service Officer helping veterans with their disability claims. Six members of the Muscogee Creek Nation became prisoners of Japan on the Philippines: five from Corregidor and Mr. Coon who was on Bataan.
POW# UNKNOWN

Lora CUMMINS, 87, is the widow of Ferron E. CUMMINS (1917-1990). She lives in San Antonio, Texas. Mr. Cummins grew up in New Mexico where he graduated in 1938 from Tyler Commercial College in Texas and went to work as a bookkeeper for the First National Bank in Hagerman, New Mexico (today’s First American Bank). In November 1940, he enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps and had his Basic Training at Brooks and Kelly Fields near San Antonio, Texas. He was assigned to the V Interceptor Command, 24th Pursuit Group, 34th Pursuit Squadron at Hamilton Field, California. In November 1941, Cummins was transferred to the Philippines Islands aboard the USS Coolidge. He arrived on November 20th and was assigned to Nichols Field. When the Japanese invaded the Philippines on December 8th, he was sent to Aglaloma Point, Bataan to fight with the 71st Infantry joining men from all branches of the Armed Services. He was surrendered on April 9, 1942 and forced on the infamous 65-mile Bataan Death March on April 10, 1942 from Mariveles to Camp O'Donnell arriving on April 21, 1942. From Camp O’Donnell, he was moved to Cabanatuan, then Bilibid. At these camps he survived sunstroke, dysentery, malaria, denuge fever, wet and dry beriberi, yellow jaundice, and blindness. In August 1944, he was shipped to Moji, Japan aboard the Hellship Noto Maru. He was taken to Hiroshima and became a slave stevedore for Hitachi Shipyard (today’s Hitachi Zosen Corporation) at Mukaijima [Mukaishima] Hiroshima Sub-camp #4. A Japanese elementary school in Mukaishima today honors the memory of the men of this camp. On August 6, 1945, he felt the air warm and watched a three-mile high mushroom cloud rise above Hiroshima from the atomic bomb. He was officially liberated September 14, 1945. He returned to Lake Arthur, New Mexico where he remained in the Air Force and married the girl down the street, Lora Mae Lane. Upon retirement, he owned a laundry and vending machine business. In 1967, the family moved to San Antonio, Texas and where he worked for SEARS. He and Lora had one child, Glenda, and were married 43 years. Lora was a civilian employee of the Air Force. He passed away on March 26, 1990 of a heart attack just days after returning from his second trip to the Philippines with his wife, daughter, son-in-law, and grandson, Ferron. Mr. Cummins is buried at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery in San Antonio, Texas.
Autobiography
POW# 115

Robert B. HEER, 92, lives in Sequim, Washington. He grew up in Iowa and joined the U.S. Army Air Corps in June 1940 becoming a carpenter with the 30th Bombardment Squadron, 19th Bomb Group (Heavy), V Bomber Command stationed at March Field, California. He was stationed at Kirtland Field in Albuquerque, New Mexico before being ordered to the Philippine Islands in October 1941 He arrived on October 23, 1941 aboard USAT Willard A. Holbrook and was sent to Clark Field. On December 29, 1941, the 30th Bombardment Squadron was evacuated to Mindanao and he was sent to the Del Monte Airfield. He was surrendered on May 10th and sent to Camp Casisang, about five kilometers southwest of Malaybalay, Mindanao. On September 6, 1942 the Generals and Colonels were removed from Camp Casisang and sent to Formosa (Taiwan). Heer served as an orderly to Brig, General Joseph P. Vachon, the former C.O. of the Philippine Army’s 101st Division on Mindanao, with whom Bob Heer was sent to Karenko POW Camp via the freighter Suzuya Maru. At Karenko he wrote a message to his family that the Japanese broadcast to the U.S. over shortwave radio. In May 1943, he was shipped to Heito POW Camp to clear and work in sugar cane fields. He remained there nearly a year before being moved to Taihoku POW Camp #6 where he slaved at building a memorial park for Japanese soldiers and a man-made lake for the irrigation of rice fields. In early 1945, he was shipped to Japan, first to the port of Moji on Kyushu and then north to Hokkaido. There he was first a slave stevedore for the Hakodate Port Transportation Company at Hakodate 2-D POW. In late May 1945, he was moved north to become a slave laborer mining coal for Sumitomo Mining (today’s Sumitomo Metal Mining Co. Ltd) at Hakodate #2 Akihira POW Camp. He was liberated in early September 1945, when American Army records clerks arrived and told them the war was over. After liberation, Heer remembers eating well and gaining 40 pounds in Japan, making friends with post-war civilians there. “I was giving food to the Japanese,” he said, even eating dinner with one family who invited him in after he gave them matches and soap, which was in short supply. On April 20, 1946, Heer was honorably discharged from the Air Corps at Camp Beale (Beale A.F.B.) in California. He used the GI Bill to earn a degree in photography from the Fred Archer School of Photography in Los Angeles, California. Missing friends and the military life, he returned to active duty with the Air Force in 1950, retiring in 1966 as a Technical Sergeant. In retirement he has worked as an amateur historian of American POWs of Japan and embarked on a “third career” as a house husband. He has been married to Karen Harper since 1989, and has four children from two previous marriages.
Oral History
Biography
POW# 330

Esther JENNINGS, 90, is the widow of Clinton S. JENNINGS (1919-2004). She lives in San Francisco, California. Mr. Jennings, a California native, served in the Civilian Conservation Corps before enlisting in the U.S. Army in 1941. He was sent to the Philippine Islands the same year aboard the USS Republic (AP-33). On Corregidor, he joined Battery “K” 59th Coast Artillery Regiment where he helped man fixed 60" Searchlights No. 1 through 8, plus a number of 60" and 30" mobile seacoast searchlights. Surrendered on May 6, 1942, he was sent to a series of POW camps on the Philippines: Bongabong, Cabanatuan, Lipa- Batanga, and Bilibid. In July 1944, he was herded along with 1,600 other American POWs aboard the Hellship Nissyo Maru to be shipped to Japan. The nightmarish two-week voyage to Moji, Japan included an attack by an American submarine wolfpack on the unmarked transport. Jennings was first held in Fukuoka-23-Keisen as slave laborer mining coal for Meiji Mining [Meiji Kogyo] Hirayama Mine (The company was dissolved in 1969, but its exploration and research division became independent as Meiji Consultant Co., Ltd. in 1965, and still exists). He was then transferred to Fukuoka #9B, located near the town of Miyata (now the city of Miyawaka), again to be a slave laborer mining coal, but for Kaijima Coal Mining Onoura Mine (the company no longer exists). After the war, he spent 25 years in the Army working in finance. He retired in 1965 and worked in public finance at the Bank of America retiring again in 1985. Jennings was a dedicated volunteer: he spent 27 years at KQED; 24 years at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; and 20 years for the San Francisco Opera Guild where he enjoyed being a supernumerary. He was a member of American Defenders of Bataan & Corregidor; American Ex-Prisoners of War; Philippine Scouts Heritage Society; American Legion; San Francisco History Association; VFW; Military Order of the Purple Heart; Past President of Golden Gate Chapter #18 of National Sojourners; Native Sons of the Golden West, Guadalupe Parlor; The Great War Society; Past Master of Masonic Lodge San Francisco #120; Scottish Rite, Shriners; President of the National Assn. of Civilian Conservation Corps Alumni; The Retired Officers Association and the Reserve Officers Association. He was married to Esther Bloom for 34 years and had three children from a prior marriage. He succumbed to cancer on October 28, 2004. Mr. Jennings is buried at Hills of Eternity, Colma, California.
POW# UNKNOWN

Erwin R. JOHNSON, 91, divides his time between Wynantskill, New York outside of Albany and Lacombe, Louisiana. He grew up in New Orleans, Louisiana and enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps in September 1940. He was assigned to the 48th Materiel Squadron, 27th Bombardment Group (Light), V Bomber Command where he was trained as a mechanic for A-20 fighter planes. He was transferred to the Philippines Islands aboard the USS President Coolidge in November 1941, arriving on November 20th and was deployed to Fort McKinley south of Manila. When Japanese forces attacked the Philippine Islands in December 1941, though not trained as an infantryman, Johnson was issued a rifle and ordered to defend against the Japanese advance. He and all American and Filipino troops on the Bataan Peninsula were surrendered on April 9, 1942. Immediately, he was forced on the infamous 65-mile Bataan Death March to Camp O'Donnell. He recalls many horrific events during the March; maybe the worst was a Japanese guard bayoneting to death a Filipino mother and her baby for trying to pass food to the starving, sick POWs. At Camp O’Donnell he volunteered for work duty building bridges and other projects. Later that year, he was transferred to Cabanatuan where he volunteered for work details outside of the Camp. He was among 500 other American POWs shipped from the tropical Philippines to the freezing Mukden, China (today’s Shenyang) in October 1942 aboard Mitsubishi’s Hellship Tottori Maru via Formosa and Korea to Manchukuo (Manchuria). None of the men had winter clothing. Johnson was housed at the Hoten POW Camp and became was a slave laborer at MKK (Manshu Kosaku Kikai or Manchouko Kibitsu Kaishi, which some researchers believe was owned by Mitsubishi and known as Manchuria Mitsubishi Machine Tool Company, Ltd.). The camp was liberated in August 1945 by Russian and OSS forces. Discharged in June 1946, he used his GI bill to obtain a mechanical engineering degree from Tulane University. He worked for a number of technology manufacturing companies in Southern California including North American Aviation (today’s Boeing) and eventually returned to Louisiana, retiring from the Port of New Orleans in 1993. In retirement, he and his wife Margaret traveled throughout the United States and were active in a number of veterans and POW organization. Margaret, his wife of 53 years passed away in 2010. Together they raised five boys. In 2011, he married Ann Wilbur Lampins whose brother, Staff Sgt Charles S. Wilbur, was also a member of the U.S. Army Air Corps. He was with the 28th Materiel Squadron, 20th Air Base Group, Far East Air Force on the Philippines. He too became of prisoner of Imperial Japan and was also shipped to Mukden. He died of pneumonia soon after arrival on December 28, 1942. The Johnsons are active members of the Mukden POW Survivors group and other veterans’ organizations.
Memoir By the Grace of God can be found at the Veteran's History Project of the US Library of Congress.
POW # 277

Marjean McGREW, 87, is the widow of Alfred Curtis McGREW (1922-2008). She lives in San Diego, California. Mr. McGrew grew up in Columbus, Ohio. After high school and briefly working with the Civilian Conservation Corps, he enlisted in the U.S. Army at Fort Hayes. In January 1941, his unit sailed to the Philippine Islands aboard the USS Republic (AP-33). He took Basic Training at the 92nd Garage on Corregidor and was assigned to Battery “D” (Denver) 60th Coast Artillery (A.A.). He was transferred to Battery “H” (Hartford), 60th, Coast Artillery (A.A.) at Herring Field, Middleside and was taken prisoner there on May 6, 1942 with the surrender of Corregidor and the Philippines. He was held in the following POW camps: 92nd Garage, Bilibid, Cabanatuan 2 and 1; Camp O'Donnell, Nichols Field. In August 1944, he was shipped to Moji, Japan aboard the Hellship Noto Maru. In Japan, McGrew became a slave stevedore for Nippon Express (same name, sam company today) at Omori Tokyo Base Camp; then a slave stevedore for Nisshin Flour Milling Dispatched Camp (Tokyo 24-D) (today’s Nisshin Seifun Group); and finally at Suwa Branch Camp (Tokyo 6-B) he was a slave laborer for Nippon Steel Tube & Mining Company (today’s JFE Holdings). He was liberated in Yokohama on September 6, 1945. He later became an Honorary Member and friend of the U.S. Army 503rd Parachute Regiment Combat Team (RCT) who liberated Corregidor from the Japanese in 1945, and the 4th Marine Regiment who had defended it. After returning to Columbus, he met and married Marjean Herres of Bellefontaine, Ohio (the love of his life for 59 years). They moved to San Diego to be nearer the ocean and raise their two children, Vicki and Steve. He retired from Control Data Corporation after 27 years when the manufacturing division left San Diego. In retirement, McGrew traveled back to Corregidor many times to collect photos, documents, and data from those who served on Corregidor. During his many trips back, he sat in the ruins of Corregidor thinking of the great times and the bad times as well as the many young friends he lost. As a long-time amateur historian, he assisted many family and friends in their search for information on their loved ones serving and/or captured on Corregidor. McGrew’s approach to life was to use humor as a base for survival and survive he did several times in his life. For fun, he enjoyed scuba diving, golfing, table tennis, camping, and traveling with his wife around the U.S. in their R.V. Mrs. McGrew was a nurse and an avid folk dancer. He succumbed to cancer on January 27, 2008 surrounded by his loving children and his wife. Mr. McGrew is buried at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery, Point Loma, California.
Oral History
POW# UNKNOWN

Marvin A. ROSLANSKY, 91, lives with his wife Josephine in Mesa, Arizona. Mr. Roslansky grew up in Minnesota and enlisted in the Marine Corps in the spring of 1941. He was sent to Guam in September 1941. He was one of 153 Marines assigned to defend Guam, a U.S. territory administered by the U.S. Navy in the Pacific. As a member of the Insular Patrol Unit he fought in the brief defense of the island (December 8-9, 1941) and was captured by invading Japanese forces. On January 10, 1942, the American prisoners of the Guam garrison including five nurses and a civilian mother and child were shipped to prison camps in Japan aboard the MS Argentina Maru, what was Mitsui’s OSK Line’s fastest ship. Arriving in Japan on January 16, 1942, he was taken to Shikoku and imprisoned at the Zentsuji POW Camp (Zentsuji was originally built to house German prisoners of the Japanese in World War I). The camp was on an island about 400 miles west of Tokyo. He spent the rest of the war there as a slave stevedore for Nippon Express (still in operation under the same name) working 12-hour days at the Sakaide Rail Yards and the Port of Takamatsu. He was liberated September 27, 1945. After the war, he lived in Racine, Wisconsin where he owned an auto parts business. Retired in 1981, he volunteered at the Clement J. Zablocki VA Medical Center in Milwaukee as well as doing veterans service work for the DAV, the American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor, and the Milwaukee Barb Wire, East Valley, and Prairieland Minnesota Chapters of AXPOW. With his first wife, Iva they raised four daughters and three sons. He married Josephine Plourde in 2010.
Interview by Concordia University, St Paul

POW# none