In Honor of Veterans

: Dad WWII POW

It’s Memorial Day week end and I stopped by the florist yesterday to order a small wreath to place on my father’s grave at Fort Snelling Cemetery. Memorial Day is a special day of remembrance for our veterans and my Dad always made sure we understood the contributions of those who served because of his own military experience. In honor of veterans I want to share one of Dad’s stories from his video recordings of his WWII/POW experience.

“Well, I was born and raised on a farm in Texas, I joined the service (US ARMY) in 1941 just before the war started, I had my training in Texas. From Texas they were filling in right now and I wind up in Fort Bliss, Texas and they draft an outfit from the state of New Mexico, they were the National Guard and it was the Calvary mind you the Calvary and they made them the Coast Artillery so I filled in with all my outfit here in Texas you know, so with the state of New Mexico they formed the 200 Coast Artillery and we wind up on the Philippine Islands and there was no war then.

I was on Clark (air) field on the Philippine Islands when they (Japan) bombed Pearl Harbor, they bombed Pearl Harbor and then they bombed us a couple of days later. They devastated everything so we fought from day one, I think we fought for about 3-4 months and we lost all our supplies and everything then the Japanese came and took over.

And I was captured.

I put my time in the Bataan death march and worked in the Philippines for almost two years in the fields building this and building that and from there the Americans were coming in and taking over the Islands close by so they (Japanese soldiers) picked up the people they wanted and they took us to Japan. I went to work in the coalmines of Japan and I worked there in the mines until they dropped the (atomic) bomb, not very far from where I was staying.

I was in Fukuyoka the island and the bomb (Atomic bomb) was dropped on the next island the main island. Yes, it was the Atomic bomb but we didn’t know, we didn’t know what it was; for three years we were dead; we didn’t know what was going on. We were in the coal mines when they dropped the bomb and when we came out… the Japanese were going back and forth and we knew something was going on, something was wrong but we didn’t know what and then we found out we were Free! So now we were waiting for someone to come and get us.

When I left Japan, we were in camp (Fukuoka #17) with a lot of sick people and the planes would fly over and drop stuff down to us and that was the first news we got from them (Americans). They dropped food and messages to us and they told us to wait, they couldn’t come in because there were a lot of mine fields so they had to bring in a lot of minefield sweepers before they could come in and get a lot of the sick and wounded. We knew the Americans had built a small airfield close by but we didn’t know where it was and we didn’t have transportation available.

So we went wild you know and a bunch of guys a few at a time we escaped from the prison camp, but we didn’t really escape because we were Free. So one day, me and I think four guys we walked to town with some guns we took from the Japanese because they were afraid after the bomb was dropped. So we got on a train and we made a guy (Japanese) take us to where the airfield was, we had the guns and they were afraid and they didn’t know what was going on so we got on a train and then we stole a truck so we could get to the Americans.

We made the Japanese take us to the American air force base and they were afraid, I think they thought they were going to be killed but when we got close we told them to go. That’s when I saw the first Americans, we were a small group of just a few together and that’s how I got back to the states, step by step.”

For more information on WWII in the Pacific you may want to check out the following websites:

http://www.bcmfofnm.org/ http://www.lindavdahl.com/index.html

In honor of my father and all Veterans this week end and every day.