Sep 19, 2023

Remembering Bataan - Susan Dress

The library’s' Bataan Memorial Collection honors the men of Company C, 192nd Tank Battalion. Forty-two men from the Port Clinton area were inducted into service on 25 November 1940. Thirty-two of those men were with their unit on Bataan when they were captured. Only 10 of those men survived the Bataan Death March and three and a half years as prisoners of war.

In 1942, The Bataan Peninsula and island of Corregidor were the last Allied strongholds in Southeast Asia. In January, Japanese forces invaded Luzon and several islands in the Philippine Archipelago. Despite MacArthur’s statement that help was on the way, Japanese blockades left American and Filipino troops short of supplies and reinforcements. These forces still managed to hold off the Japanese for 3 months before having to surrender. On 9 April 1942, the 60,000 Filipino and 15,000 American soldiers who had surrendered were forcibly transferred from the Bataan Peninsula to Camp O’Donnell, a distance of 65 miles. Prisoners were subjected to brutal treatment during the march, receiving little food and water, and only that medical treatment their fellow prisoners were able to provide. Exact figures are unknown, but it is estimated that between 5,500 to 18,650 POWs died on that march. During the months they were held in Camp O’Donnell, another 20,000 Filipinos and 1,500 Americans died from ill treatment.

Our Bataan collection includes books, videos, DVDs, scrapbooks, and photographs: many of them are personal narratives of Bataan survivors, or compilations of interviews with survivors, including civilians caught up in the battle.

One of those books is Bill Sloan’s Undefeated: America’s Heroic Fight for Bataan and Corregidor [BATAAN 940.542991 SLOAN 2012]. It tells the story of the outnumbered American soldiers and airmen who stood strong against invasion. They fought an overwhelming enemy force for four months after being essentially abandoned by their government. They then faced the brutality of the death march, prison camps, and prison transport ships. An estimated 10,000-12,000 of those who surrendered managed to escape and form guerilla units to continue the fight. Some 15,000 of the Americans captured on Bataan survived to return to the United States. Bill Sloan interviewed 30 of those survivors in the course of writing this book.

More information on the members of the 192nd can be found here: The Bataan Project by Jim Opolony This website has a section devoted to the battalion, with information on each member and their journey to Bataan.Each page has a brief biography of the service member, a general history of the men’s training, transport to Bataan, the battles they fought, their surrender, and their conditions on the march and in the prison camp. Messages sent to the families from the War Department during this time are included.The biography of Tec 4 John Kovach, Jr. ends with his final return to Port Clinton in 2017 after DNA testing on previously unidentified bodies from the prison camp. The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency continues the work of identifying these bodies to return them to their homes and families.

Library Note:

This will be our last Local History blog post for the year. Starting next year, we will be changing up how we do our Local History newsletter and blog posts.

If you're interested in contributing local interest pieces, email mlove@seolibraries for more information.