(A lot of the information in this post is first hand accounts from the men in Juie’s unit.)
Juie was stationed at Fort McKinley during the Pearl Harbor attack, when the Japanese attacked Fort McKinley as well. They had been moved from Louisiana to Manila in order to join Operation Plum.
On Christmas Eve, the men were sent to the bay of Bataan in order to service the planes that were supposed to be available for the fight. But the poor planning of Operation Plum left the men without food, medicine or supplies. There were few planes available, so the bombers of the 27th were handed rifles and told to become infantry men. Now, most of the men hadn’t had any kind of training, except Juie, but even so, they fought from Christmas Eve to April 9th, defending their position against the Japanese.
Last telegraph home in March of 1942
The 27th group was awarded three Presidential Unit Citations and they are the only Air Corps unit to ever be awarded the Combat Infantry Badge. They were also the only unit there whose lines were never breeched.
By April, the men were so weak and starved, they could no longer defend their position, so they surrendered. The Japanese lined them up and took everything of value- including pulling gold teeth or taking off fingers to get to rings. Some of the men were killed right there or beaten for no reason. Then, they began to march.
The Bataan Death March. They put the men in groups of one hundred and marched them from Mariveles north. They were not allowed to stop and drink water or eat. The temperature was high and the humidity just as bad. Most of the men had malaria or some other intestinal disease. After an hour, they received a ten minute break. If a man was wounded or too tired to walk, he was killed. Juie gave up everything he had with him, including his toothbrush, hoping to lighten his load.
The march covered about sixty miles and took most of a week. When they reached San Fernando, they were packed into small metal boxcars and given the “sun treatment”. They stayed there for eight hours during the heat of the day and then marched the last nine miles to Camp O’Donnell.
The camp had one faucet for several thousand men, the stream was turned on the size of pencil and the men would stand in line for hours to get a half a cup of water. They were fed a rice ball three times a day and a watery soup in the evening. Men were dying at a hundred a day from starvation and disease.
The men were taken out for work details and Juie’s friend ended up leaving Juie and headed to Lesang with three hundred men to build an airfield, only seventy returned.
The report my dad received, was that Juie went on an assignment to build a bridge. The scaffolding they had was flimsy, just bamboo tied together with strings. It collapsed with him on top and he was severely injured. He was sent to Bilibad Prison Hospital where he died from his injuries as well as the other diseases his body was ravaged with. His death was dated June 6th of 1942.
The trials of war defeats so many, but as long as we remember, their victory is won. Never forget.
