Re-read...

    That's past tense in the title, because it's about a book I re-read, past not present. So the book....the late Alf Larson was a member of St. James. That's incidental. He was a fine man but what really set him apart from most others was his experience in WW II. The book is Footprints In Courage: A Bataan Death March Survivor's Story by Kristin Gilpatrick. She interviewed Alf extensively and much of the story is in his own words. A fellow volunteer with Alf at the Minnesota Zoo, Rick Peterson, got him to talk about his experiences for the first time. This proved very therapeutic for Alf, and his family finally learned of his experiences. When I knew him late in life he talked readily about what had happened. 

   With jobs scarce in the depression he enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps. Given some bum advice by other servicemen he volunteered for deployment to The Philippines. Led to believe it was a tropical paradise he found a beastly hot, mosquito infested land. After Japan attacked American troops were ill prepared. Lacking food, supplies and ammunition because of Gen. MacArthur's inept planning the American forces surrendered to Japan. Alf joined what became known as the Bataan Death March. The prisoners were forced to march for eighty miles over six days in the tropical heat. Already starving when they were captured they had virtually no food during the March. The only water was what they could drink from polluted puddles. Prisoners who couldn't keep up were executed by the Japanese guards.

   Alf was moved to different prison camps around the Island. Eventually he was shipped by a "hell ship" to Japan. In Japan he was forced to work in a machine shop as slave labor. Captive from April 9, 1942 until Japan surrendered in 1946, he eventually made it back to his home in Duluth, MN.

  It's not an easy read but important. The book was published in 2002, copies are available online.

Takk for alt,

Al

In the Philippine jungle I'm standing at the base of tree to illustrate it's size. Our alarm clocks were the gibbon monkeys. Tropical heat and humidity with mosquitos bearing malaria and dengue fever for sure. Dengue fever is so painful that in SE Asia it's called 'break bone".