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HorrorBataan was real-life drama• Continued from D 1 bit of food.”Straight out of the tropics, suffering from malaria, and the malnutritian diseases of scurvy, beri beri and pellagra, MinierLittle Caesarsone that gives you two.* ~•■■XT, -r *is■XcoupoMTwo Great Pizzas! One Low Price.Buy any sizeat one low price with this coupon! *OPENING SOON 47 WHITTLESEY AVE. IN NORWALKHuronShoppers PlazaSandusky904 W Washington627-1245I• Extra cheese on a per-pie basisExpires 12-8-82lIcoup0M■1Iwas shipped to Manchuria, where he was put to work in a war factory in Mukden.“It’s cold there, sometimes 40 below, and we had to walk 11 kilometers (nearly seven miles) to work. It was rough.”The NBC researchers foundthat as American liberation forces under Gen. Douglas MacArthur moved closer to the Philippines, the Japanese packed the most able-bodied of the remaining POWs into other ships and sent them to Japan asslave laborers.Two survivors of the ship “Oryoku Maru”, who have never met, recount on camera similar stories of madness, vampirism and murder, as some crazed American prisoners killed their own comrades as they fought for air and water.Fewer than 400 of the 1,600sent to Japan arrived alive. At least two of them were from Port Clinton.Minier believes that of the nearly two dozen Port Clinton men in Company C who were killed, one died on the Death March and the rest perished on the ships.For him, the end of the war came even more abruptly than the beginning. Suddenly, in late September, 1945, the Russians parachuted into Mukden and liberated the prisoners of war.The young man who weighed 150-155 pounds when he entered the Army at age 20 in 1940 weighed just 85 pounds after four months of combat and 42 months of captivity.Elsewhere, Americans had not been so fortunate. “Some of the men from the (192nd) batallion were herded into a cave and the Japanese poured gasoline on them and burned them alive,” he said.When the Port Clinton City School District built a new elementarv school in 1952, one of the survivors of Company C suggested it be named Bataan in honor of the men who servedthere.That school on W est 6th Street was the focus of attention last year when, on the 40th anniversary of the battle, educators made an effort to tell the current generation of youngsters what the name represents.“We wanted them to understand the heroism that it stood for,” said Director of Curriculum Joan Heslet, who helpedcoordinate the program.“For many people in Port Clinton, Bataan represents their brothers or fathers, but for some of these children, it’s their grandfathers or even greatgrandfathers. We wanted them to understand.”Although the experience still comes back to him occasionally, when he’s under anesthesia or when he has a fever, John Minier will be watching the television show Sunday.“Time is a great healer,” he said. “Sure, I’ll be watching.”It will be his own history he will be seeing.
Newspaper Details
Sandusky Register
Sandusky, Ohio, US
Thu, Dec 02, 1982
Page 35
Full Page
Clipped by
James O.
USA 20 Dec 2019
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