Magic of the internet

I was helping my niece's son with a genealogy project for 4-H and stumbled on a pretty cool photo.

I'm pretty sure that I've mentioned before that my Dad's Uncle was a career Marine and was taken prisoner on Corregidor when the Philippines surrendered at the start of WWII. I happened to find a group photo taken of the POW's from the camp he was in that was taken when they received word of the Japanese surrender and got control over the camp they were in. The last camp he was in was called Tokyo Camp #8B Hitachi and the POW's were used as labor in a copper mine. He was a Staff Sgt. at the start of the war and was quickly made a Warrant Officer. He stayed in the Corps. after the war and was a Lt. Colonel when he had to take a medical retirement.

In the photo, he is seated 3rd from the left wearing the white undershirt and sandals. At the time this photo was taken there were also a lot of Dutch prisoners from Java in the camp as well.

Attachment 13308

Wow! What are the odds of finding that?

I was at one of the Smithsonians in DC years ago and they had a display of a photo of Japanese emigrants that had been turned into a large wall mural. I spotted a couple right in front with a suitcase that had "Yamamoto" stenciled on the side. Now, Yamamoto to the Japanese is like Smith or Jones here, so the chances of a family connection was almost nil. I took a pic of the mural to Lynn's mom and she immediately exclaimed that was her mom and dad (Lynn's grandparents) in the photo! Small world.

There is an excellent old novel (1962) by James Clavell about life in a wwii japanese POW camp in Singapore. The novel is fiction but the author was a prisoner in the same camp in real life. The novel is called King Rat. Its beenseveral years since I read it but as I recall its an excellent read.

BKb

Also a pretty good movie (1965).

Very cool!

Dang, how cool is that!

Those old WW2 dudes were some tough hombres. I don't know how anyone survived being a POW.