Robert Paul Wilson
|
Robert P. Wilson ID: 14029183 Mr.
and Mrs. Robert Y. Wilson of Sweetwater have been notified by the War
Department that their son, T-5 Robert Paul Wilson, died at Cabantuan Prisoner of War Camp on July 6, 1942. Until they received this telegram, no
official word had been received since June, 1942, when he was listed as
missing since the surrender of ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- MONROE VETERAN IS
PRISON CASUALTY Death of T5 Robert
P. Wilson at Cabantuan is Reported SWEETWATER,
Tenn, Sep 15--Robert Paul Wilson, technician fifth
grade, died at Cabantuan prisoner of war camp on
July 6, 1942, according to a telegram to his parents, Mr. & Mrs. Robert
Y. Wilson, of Sweetwater. Until
the telegram from the War Department received recently, the parents had
received no official word since June, 1942, when young Wilson was reported
listed as missing since the surrender of Bataan on April 9, 1942. Cpl.
Wilson enlisted in the army air corps in Oct. 1940, and received his training
at Savannah Air Base. He landed in
Manila Nov. 19, 1941, and was stationed at Fort William McKinley Air Base,
near Manila, he wrote his parents. It
is presumed he was still there at the time of Pearl Harbor. Mr.
& Mrs. Wilson learned from a survivor that their son survived the
"death march" to O'Donnell Prison Camp and back to Cabantuan. The
last letter received by his parents was written Feb. 8, 1942, while he was
serving as a communications man after all air corps equipment had been
destroyed. Surviving,
besides his parents, are four sisters and one brother. Chattanooga
Daily Times, Sun Sep 16, 1945 The Bataan Death March (also known as The Death March of
Bataan) took place in the The "march", or
forcible transfer of 75,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war, was
characterized by wide-ranging physical
abuse and murder, and resulted in very high fatalities inflicted upon
prisoners and civilians alike by the armed forces of the Empire of Japan. The treatment of the American
prisoners was characterized by its dehumanization, as the Imperial soldiery
"felt they were dealing with sub humans and animals." Trucks were
known to drive over those who fell or succumbed to fatigue, and "cleanup
crews" put to death those too weak to continue. Marchers were harassed
with random bayonet stabs and beatings.
Accounts of being forcibly marched for five to six days with no food
and a single sip of water are in postwar archives including filmed reports.
The exact death count is impossible to determine, but some historians have
placed the minimum death toll between 6,000 and 11,000 men; other postwar
Allied reports have tabulated that only 54,000 of the 72,000 prisoners
reached their destination — taken together, the figures document a rate of
death from one in four up to two in seven of those on the death march. The
number of deaths that took place in the internment camps from the delayed
effects of the march is considerably more. On May 30, 2009, at the 64th
and final reunion of Bataan Death March survivors in U.S.
World War II Army Enlistment Records, 1938-1946
|
|
Researcher and Designer