Today is Veterans Day. To all who served, thank you.
- Thread starter fairgambit
- Start date
Thank you first HVD I received today!
What a long, strange trip it's been from the 1970s to today
I believe it is inappropriate to use this day for "Honoring all who served in any war, allies and enemies alike." I will limit my "honoring" to American veterans.
I would also take issue with the two sentences that follow that one, but I will leave that debate for another time.
I will use your post to bring up a few points about the Vietnam War that many Americans may not realize. There is a perception that most of those who fought in Vietnam were draftees. In fact, 2/3rds of the men who served in Vietnam were volunteers. Approximately 70% of those killed were volunteers. There is also a perception that the War was largely fought by uneducated minorities, yet 86% of those who died were white and Vietnam Vets were the most educated of any war in our history, 79% having a high school education or better.
(source for all the above is History.com. )
Link: http://www.vhfcn.org/stat.html
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Thanks for derailing a perfectly respectful and appropriate thread.
Ranger, I don't think he derails the thread. We can still respect our troops and veterans without necessarily agreeing with the necessity of a war(s).
I have no problem with you expressing your opinion. I do question your timing. Your issue appears to be with those who prosecute wars, not with those who fight them. Today we honor the latter.
I have to disagree. It’s like saying bad stuff about someone at their funeral. There is a time and a place for intelligent discourse about the pros and cons of war, but saying “thanks for your service, but war is bad” completely undermines the appreciation.
Thanks to all who have served, and those serving today. It is greatly appreciated.
The irony is that those who we honor today especially those who paid the ultimate price did so to give even those with dissenting thoughts the freedom to express them.
Thank you, veterans, for your service. Much respect and gratitude.
There is no need to delete the post, nor is there a need to call me shallow based upon a few lines on a messsge board. I am, at times, critical of the opinions of others on this board, but I try to avoid attacks on those who made them. I generally read the posts you make here and I will continue to do so. We can disagree without making it personal.
Absolutely true, and like most things, there is an appropriate time and place for their dissent.
Sometimes the right approach is to keep your thoughts to yourself.
No life is less valuable than another.....but you already know that. This day was originally Armistice Day, for “The War to end all Wars” ——-Morphed into Veterans Day to acknowledge/thank all those who served this “great nation” ( not, this “ perfect nation”). ——Other nations show similar respect/reverence (Remembrance Day). ——It’s not a day to critique the foibles of man or the atrocities of war, but because of the men and women we honor today, you are free to do so. ——It’s really not exclusionary, unless you make it so.
True, but measuring that is often difficult. I believe the sole purpose of this thread should be to honor and thank Veterans of the United States. Others will disagree. So be it.
Thanks for this kind post! Thanks to those who continue to serve!
Dont delete it. I liked it and agreed with it.
And any self respecting veteran would tell you he (or she) fought for your right to dissent from popular opinion and thought.
To all those that have served, thank you. We have and enjoy the freedom that we have because of our veterans.
doubtful there are any lakota, cherokee or other native tribe veterans of those different kind kinds of war alive to honor.....
That is not the point. There is a time and place for that. Today is a day to honor and thank Vets, not to debate the merits of war. Go to the test board this coming week and debate it all you want. Hell. Don't wait. Start a thread today. I just think a thread to honor vets should stand alone. I don't oppose debates on wars, but I would not show up at a military funeral and start one. Everthing has it's time and place.
Ok-everything has its time and place?
How about you admonish Ranger Dan for making a negative comment at a former Commander in Chief and family on this thread? For the same reason-time and place.
Or do the rules of this thread only apply to a select few?
I did not see it. I reread all his posts in this thread and still do not see it. I would be critical of any posts contrary to the point of the thread...thanking and honoring American Veterans.
Regardless of whether you "volunteered", or were "drafted", I will always give you the utmost respect.
Let us not forget that these folks are THE REASON we can give our opinions and be whatever we strive to be (among many other things).
There is a reason immigrants migrate and will do almost anything to come here.
That my friends is why I say thank you to all folks past and present whom have served this great country.
Happy Veterans Day
Let us not forget that these folks are THE REASON we can give our opinions and be whatever we strive to be (among many other things).
There is a reason immigrants migrate and will do almost anything to come here.
That my friends is why I say thank you to all folks past and present whom have served this great country.
Happy Veterans Day
A
anon_xdc8rmuek44eq
Guest
Link:
http://philippine-defenders.lib.wv.us/html/bataan.html
"Death March" by Soldier Poet Henry Lee
So you are dead. The easy words contain
No sense of loss, no sorrow, no despair.
Thus hunger, thirst, fatigue, combine to drain
All feeling from our hearts. The endless glare,
The brutal heat, anesthetize the mind.
I can not mourn you now. I lift my load,
The suffering column moves. I leave behind
Only another corpse, beside the road.
Hell Ship Clyde Maru (my father is listed on this roster)
SZCZEPANSKI JOSEPH LEON;Pfc;6897719;AC;Hq & Hq Sqdn;20th Air Base Gp;FEAF;194;;;
Hellships
As military success began to place greater demands on Japan's far-flung armed forces, the Japanese Prisoner of War Bureau, at the request of the Japanese industrialists, hastened the transfer of American and other Allied POW's to Japan and other areas to replenish their labor pool. Most of the Japanese ships transporting POW's were old and unseaworthy. The conditions were shocking and inhumane. At least 25 ships carrying Allied prisoners of war were sunk due to enemy action. On these ships there were a total of 18,901 prisoners of war being transported. Of this total, 10,853 were determined to have died because of submarine and air attacks--3,632 of them Americans. The number that died because of lack of food, sanitary conditions, medical supplies and attention, and brutal treatment by their Japanese captors has never been revealed. The death count of prisoners of war on these hellships was astounding. Japanese records disclose that these ships had the ultimate destination of Japanese industrialists to be used as slave labor.
http://philippine-defenders.lib.wv.us/html/bataan.html
"Death March" by Soldier Poet Henry Lee
So you are dead. The easy words contain
No sense of loss, no sorrow, no despair.
Thus hunger, thirst, fatigue, combine to drain
All feeling from our hearts. The endless glare,
The brutal heat, anesthetize the mind.
I can not mourn you now. I lift my load,
The suffering column moves. I leave behind
Only another corpse, beside the road.
Hell Ship Clyde Maru (my father is listed on this roster)
SZCZEPANSKI JOSEPH LEON;Pfc;6897719;AC;Hq & Hq Sqdn;20th Air Base Gp;FEAF;194;;;
Hellships
As military success began to place greater demands on Japan's far-flung armed forces, the Japanese Prisoner of War Bureau, at the request of the Japanese industrialists, hastened the transfer of American and other Allied POW's to Japan and other areas to replenish their labor pool. Most of the Japanese ships transporting POW's were old and unseaworthy. The conditions were shocking and inhumane. At least 25 ships carrying Allied prisoners of war were sunk due to enemy action. On these ships there were a total of 18,901 prisoners of war being transported. Of this total, 10,853 were determined to have died because of submarine and air attacks--3,632 of them Americans. The number that died because of lack of food, sanitary conditions, medical supplies and attention, and brutal treatment by their Japanese captors has never been revealed. The death count of prisoners of war on these hellships was astounding. Japanese records disclose that these ships had the ultimate destination of Japanese industrialists to be used as slave labor.
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Agree with your statement on Vietnam. A good percentage of my company were college grads, including me. I would say 20-25%.
Having served during Viet Nam in the reserves, I had an opportunity to meet a number of vets who had returned from Nam to serve out their tour. I have nothing but the upmost respect for them. I had a drill sergeant from Panama who was about 5’4” and tough as nails. He was a sniper who used to go off in the bush for a month at a time alone. One night he was was run up on by a viet cong troup and since it was pitch black he hugged a tree trunk to try to blend in. One of the vc soldiers brushed against his back while walking by him but never noticed. He tought us all about night vision. I’m sure he saved a few new recruits lives with his tough “instruction”.
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Firstly I was drafted, so I'm no hero. Secondly, after we lost a platoon RTO, and I can't recall how our company commander knew I was a college graduate, he reasoned I would make a decent RTO. I refused as, when the NVA ambushed (frequently) they would look for the RTO (the antenna), knowing the man in front of them was an officer. RTOs hit often. Plus I guess reducing communication a big factor too. However, in their enthusiasm and haste they probably started swinging the AK a second sooner than pulling the trigger. It was the same with the point. Point man often missed but the guy behind got it. Anyway, so I was ordered in the field to become an RTO. Again, no hero! They made the right choice in that, for some reason I knew phonetic alphabet really well from advanced infantry training. Shortly after I joined our unit we "lucked" into several contacts and began to get this reputation. So it was like a snow ball. NVA would be spotted and in we would go. How often? Every 25 flights you are awarded an Air Medal. I have two. I became friends at PSU and later work, with several infantry men, including Marines and they were astonished at the number of firefights I was in. Our crowning achievement was the taking of the NVA cash "Shakey's Hill" (CBS was with us and there is a documentary made, I still never bought it) in Cambodia in May of 70. Normally six ships (hueys) would go back and forth two or three times to drop you into an area. That day in May, 64 ships in the air at once. Shock and awe I guess. We went in with over 70 some and walked out with less than 50. I was hit, got two days of IV antibiotics and was back with my unit in time to walk out.
I honor all Veterans, but I have an enduring admiration for those who served in combat. Drafted or not, It appears you served your country with distinction. Thank you.
By absolutely no means do you have to volunteer in order to be a hero, so you and I will have to disagree on your first point. Thank you for everything you did.
@m48tank,
Tank, He did survive the prison camp Fukuoka Camp 17. He died in 2005 in the VA while I was also in the hospital fighting a serious condition of sepsis. My younger brother (semi retired) has actively pursued the war records and war crime depositions given by Joseph.
Below is an article written by David Venditta of the Morning Call.
BACK TO BATAAN
From his bedroom at night, little Rick would hear his father in the kitchen directly below, shouting in Japanese, barking sharp commands. He'd been out drinking again.
It was the early 1960s, and Joe Szczepanski was collecting a military pension and working at a shoe factory. After his shift, he'd stop at a bar just a block from the house.
He'd get home late, sit by himself and rant for an hour or more.
Rick, who was about 7, would have to get up for school the next morning, and the racket kept him awake. He knew it had something to do with POW camps during
World War II. His father had told him about beheadings.
''My dad was a little bit screwed up,'' Rick Szczepanski now says. ''He was suffering from post-traumatic stress, but nobody knew what that was at the time.
You never knew when he was going to fly off the handle. He didn't physically take it out on us; mentally, though, he did. It was hard for the whole family.''
A one-time amateur boxer from the coal country around Wilkes-Barre, Joe had stayed in the service after the war and would go on to another career, teaching Spanish
at Bethlehem Catholic High School. But he had a drinking problem and a hair-trigger temper that made life difficult for his wife and three sons.
As Rick got older, he found it easier to spend less time with his father than to put up with his combativeness. He knew some lurid details of his dad's existence as a
captive American soldier in the Far East. But he wouldn't gain a fuller understanding until after his father died in 2005.
Inspiration came from summarizing the 86-year-old's life for the obituary. The task launched a journey to his father's past that continues to this day. It is a quest that has
unmasked much of Joe Szczepanski's ordeal during the Bataan Death March and 31/2 years as a prisoner of the Japanese. And it has brought Rick Szczepanski of East Allen Township face to face with an Army veteran who was with Joe in two POW camps, including one in Japan where they slaved in a coal mine and saw the atomic bombing
of Nagasaki.
''Dad never really got over what took place in the prison camps, until in the mid-1980s he finally let go. It didn't bother him anymore,'' said Rick, who is 54 and owns
a mechanical contracting business. A sampling of the abuse his father suffered at Japanese hands appears in his 1947 testimony for the War Crimes Office investigating atrocities.
After his father died, Rick wrote to the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis and was surprised to get a copy of the transcript. He hadn't known about the war crimes deposition. His father had never talked about it.
In his testimony, Joe Szczepanski told a counterintelligence agent about an incident that took place at Fukuoka Camp 17 on Japan's Kyushu island, where he was held
from mid-1943 until the war ended. A Japanese overseer in the mine ''reported me for not working hard enough. He and two guards beat me with their fists into unconsciousness, revived me with water and knocked me out a second time. They knocked out five teeth in the beating. They gave me the alternative of being shot or accepting the beating.''
A long walk in the sun
Joseph L. Szczepanski was born in 1918 to Ukrainian immigrants in Plymouth Township, Luzerne County. His parents, who would also have three daughters, were fairly well off. While his father worked in the coal mines, his mother made bootleg plum brandy. They built a nice home in Nanticoke, along with a rental house in the rear.
When Joe was 16, he lied about his age and joined the National Guard. The next year, he graduated from Nanticoke High School and worked in a silk mill. In 1938, now with the regular Army, he went to Hawaii and tangled with other soldiers in the boxing ring while serving in a chemical warfare battalion.
The decision that led him to Asia was his transfer to the Army Air Corps. He arrived at Luzon island, the Philippines, in mid-1940 and became a clerk at the Nichols Field air base outside Manila.
Two weeks after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Japanese troops swarmed Luzon's northern coast. They gradually overpowered American and Filipino forces, trapping them on the mountainous Bataan peninsula. Joe was there, helping to supply the soldiers in the fight.
With hunger, disease and hopelessness weighing on the Allies, their commander surrendered on April 9, 1942. The next day, Sgt. Szczepanski was taken prisoner on Bataan's southern tip. He was among 75,000 Allied captives the Japanese would start moving north to the captured Camp O'Donnell -- 85 miles, all but two dozen of them on foot.
This was the Bataan Death March.
Along the way, hundreds of Americans and thousands of Filipinos died from dehydration, exhaustion and exposure to the fierce sun and heat, and from being run over, shot, bayoneted, beheaded, beaten and buried alive.
Digging their own graves
Joe was transferred later in the spring of 1942 from Camp O'Donnell to Cabanatuan Camp 1, also on Luzon.
''For the first four months, we were fed nothing but a very small quantity of gourd soup and rice for the three meals each day,'' he told the war crimes investigator.
''We worked from [7 a.m. until 5 p.m.] six days a week on road construction and miscellaneous construction. Â… Treatment was brutal for the slightest offense.
''I personally saw five American soldiers shot to death for bribing the guard and leaving the camp for procuring food from a nearby Filipino village. These soldiers were given
the choice of [being shot or] standing for three days tied to a post neck-high, with their heads resting back on the posts in the face of the tropical sun.
''On the third day one of the boys made a break to escape, and all of the boys were forced to dig their own graves and were shot down in the graves while they were singing
'God Bless America.'''
Another time, Joe testified, three officers were caught trying to escape. ''They were deprived of any clothing and were compelled to stand out in the cold weather,
during which time they were whipped, stoned and spat upon by Japanese soldiers.
''This lasted for about three days, following which the officers became delirious and were marched down the road and shot to death.''
Testimony from Szczepanski and other survivors helped convict some 3,000 Japanese of war crimes. Many defendants got prison terms; more than 900 were executed.
Nagasaki's blazing sky
After more than a year at Cabanatuan, Joe and several hundred other POWs deemed fit to work were crowded into the hold of an old cargo vessel and taken to Kyushu,
where they were held at Fukuoka Camp 17 and forced to labor for a coal mining company. Joe would remain there for the rest of the war.
Many years later, Joe told his son about his struggle to survive despite disease -- he had beriberi, caused by vitamin B1 deficiency -- cruel guards and desperate hunger.
He talked about the lengths a man had to go to stay alive.
''I remember my dad saying he used to wait till one of his friends was just about dead and drag him out to get his food, then take him back and have his food because his friend
was on the way out. ''Another thing is, he crushed his own foot in order to get out of the coal mines for several months. He crushed it with a big piece of coal.''
Beginning in late 1944, Joe's parents, sisters and others back home sent postcards to him while he was at Fukuoka Camp 17. Joe wrote the name Charlie Balaza
on the back of one. He wrote the names of other fellow captives on cards, as well.
Rick scoured POW Web sites and found Charlie's name. He lives near Trenton, N.J., and had published a memoir, ''Life as an American Prisoner of War of the Japanese,''
but it doesn't mention Joe.
Rick and his wife, Gloria, visited the 86-year-old in October 2007 to find out why his name was on the card. Rick was amazed at what he discovered.
Charlie served in an Army coast artillery unit on Corregidor, an island fortress that guarded the mouth of Manila Bay. Its troops weren't captured until May 1942,
after the Bataan Death March. But Joe and Charlie were both held at Cabanatuan Camp 1, and they were among 500 fit POWs who were carried in a ship's cargo hold
to Kyushu in July 1943, then marched to Fukuoka Camp 17.
Charlie said he was with Joe outside the camp's barracks at 11:02 a.m. on Aug. 9, 1945. He remembered seeing a high-flying B-29 bomber and a billowing mushroom cloud.
Joe saw the smoke and fire, too. ''I viewed the sky blazing over Nagasaki after the atomic bomb was dropped, although it was about 40 miles away,''
he wrote to the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader when he got home.
Rick was thrilled to meet someone who was with his father at that historic moment.
'Imagine, two POWs, both seeing the Nagasaki bomb cloud -- my father telling me when I was no older than 13 that he was with another POW when this happened.
Then out of pure luck, meeting this other POW.''
At peace with himself'
Joe walked out of Camp 17 on Sept. 12, 1945, almost a month after the Japanese surrender.
He returned to the States on a transport ship operated by the US Coast Guard, the USS Admiral C.F. Hughes. (not to be confused with the USS Hughes).
Joe spent 18 months recuperating at Valley Forge General Hospital. One weekend in February 1946 when he was home, he met Catherine Wardzel at a Wilkes-Barre
dance hall. They were married four months later.
Remaining in the military, Joe specialized in aerial photography with the Air Force and was posted across the country and in Canada and Britain. He was a technical sergeant
with more than two decades of service when he retired in 1959. But he wasn't through working. He studied Spanish at King's College in Wilkes-Barre and taught at Becahi
for 10 years. Then in 1985, in his mid 60s, he was hospitalized with emphysema and almost died. Rick said it was a turning point for his dad.
''He was a smoker, so he quit smoking, cold turkey, and he quit drinking. He made a comment at the time: 'That's it, I'm not going to let the past run my life anymore.'
He just let go. At that point, I'd say, he was at peace with himself.''
Late in 1999, after Joe had grown frail, Rick got him into the Veterans Affairs nursing facility in Wilkes-Barre. Five-and-a-half years later, Joe Szczepanski died of lung cancer.
A path still to follow
In his mission to grasp what his father endured, Rick has read about 20 books on Bataan and prisoners of the Japanese.
He belongs to an e-mail group that disseminates POW information, and he has spent countless hours exploring Web sites related to his dad's service and captivity.
He has attended national conventions of the American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor, a veterans group his father belonged to but wasn't active in.
And this year, Rick will be among the descendants who keep the organization going.
In addition, he and Gloria are considering a trip to the Philippines next year to follow his father's path.
''I understand now why he was the way he was. I can visualize many things today. But once you understand, you start wanting more information. I am still searching.''
Credit: David Venditta of the Morning Call david.venditta@mcall.com
Tank, He did survive the prison camp Fukuoka Camp 17. He died in 2005 in the VA while I was also in the hospital fighting a serious condition of sepsis. My younger brother (semi retired) has actively pursued the war records and war crime depositions given by Joseph.
Below is an article written by David Venditta of the Morning Call.
BACK TO BATAAN
From his bedroom at night, little Rick would hear his father in the kitchen directly below, shouting in Japanese, barking sharp commands. He'd been out drinking again.
It was the early 1960s, and Joe Szczepanski was collecting a military pension and working at a shoe factory. After his shift, he'd stop at a bar just a block from the house.
He'd get home late, sit by himself and rant for an hour or more.
Rick, who was about 7, would have to get up for school the next morning, and the racket kept him awake. He knew it had something to do with POW camps during
World War II. His father had told him about beheadings.
''My dad was a little bit screwed up,'' Rick Szczepanski now says. ''He was suffering from post-traumatic stress, but nobody knew what that was at the time.
You never knew when he was going to fly off the handle. He didn't physically take it out on us; mentally, though, he did. It was hard for the whole family.''
A one-time amateur boxer from the coal country around Wilkes-Barre, Joe had stayed in the service after the war and would go on to another career, teaching Spanish
at Bethlehem Catholic High School. But he had a drinking problem and a hair-trigger temper that made life difficult for his wife and three sons.
As Rick got older, he found it easier to spend less time with his father than to put up with his combativeness. He knew some lurid details of his dad's existence as a
captive American soldier in the Far East. But he wouldn't gain a fuller understanding until after his father died in 2005.
Inspiration came from summarizing the 86-year-old's life for the obituary. The task launched a journey to his father's past that continues to this day. It is a quest that has
unmasked much of Joe Szczepanski's ordeal during the Bataan Death March and 31/2 years as a prisoner of the Japanese. And it has brought Rick Szczepanski of East Allen Township face to face with an Army veteran who was with Joe in two POW camps, including one in Japan where they slaved in a coal mine and saw the atomic bombing
of Nagasaki.
''Dad never really got over what took place in the prison camps, until in the mid-1980s he finally let go. It didn't bother him anymore,'' said Rick, who is 54 and owns
a mechanical contracting business. A sampling of the abuse his father suffered at Japanese hands appears in his 1947 testimony for the War Crimes Office investigating atrocities.
After his father died, Rick wrote to the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis and was surprised to get a copy of the transcript. He hadn't known about the war crimes deposition. His father had never talked about it.
In his testimony, Joe Szczepanski told a counterintelligence agent about an incident that took place at Fukuoka Camp 17 on Japan's Kyushu island, where he was held
from mid-1943 until the war ended. A Japanese overseer in the mine ''reported me for not working hard enough. He and two guards beat me with their fists into unconsciousness, revived me with water and knocked me out a second time. They knocked out five teeth in the beating. They gave me the alternative of being shot or accepting the beating.''
A long walk in the sun
Joseph L. Szczepanski was born in 1918 to Ukrainian immigrants in Plymouth Township, Luzerne County. His parents, who would also have three daughters, were fairly well off. While his father worked in the coal mines, his mother made bootleg plum brandy. They built a nice home in Nanticoke, along with a rental house in the rear.
When Joe was 16, he lied about his age and joined the National Guard. The next year, he graduated from Nanticoke High School and worked in a silk mill. In 1938, now with the regular Army, he went to Hawaii and tangled with other soldiers in the boxing ring while serving in a chemical warfare battalion.
The decision that led him to Asia was his transfer to the Army Air Corps. He arrived at Luzon island, the Philippines, in mid-1940 and became a clerk at the Nichols Field air base outside Manila.
Two weeks after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Japanese troops swarmed Luzon's northern coast. They gradually overpowered American and Filipino forces, trapping them on the mountainous Bataan peninsula. Joe was there, helping to supply the soldiers in the fight.
With hunger, disease and hopelessness weighing on the Allies, their commander surrendered on April 9, 1942. The next day, Sgt. Szczepanski was taken prisoner on Bataan's southern tip. He was among 75,000 Allied captives the Japanese would start moving north to the captured Camp O'Donnell -- 85 miles, all but two dozen of them on foot.
This was the Bataan Death March.
Along the way, hundreds of Americans and thousands of Filipinos died from dehydration, exhaustion and exposure to the fierce sun and heat, and from being run over, shot, bayoneted, beheaded, beaten and buried alive.
Digging their own graves
Joe was transferred later in the spring of 1942 from Camp O'Donnell to Cabanatuan Camp 1, also on Luzon.
''For the first four months, we were fed nothing but a very small quantity of gourd soup and rice for the three meals each day,'' he told the war crimes investigator.
''We worked from [7 a.m. until 5 p.m.] six days a week on road construction and miscellaneous construction. Â… Treatment was brutal for the slightest offense.
''I personally saw five American soldiers shot to death for bribing the guard and leaving the camp for procuring food from a nearby Filipino village. These soldiers were given
the choice of [being shot or] standing for three days tied to a post neck-high, with their heads resting back on the posts in the face of the tropical sun.
''On the third day one of the boys made a break to escape, and all of the boys were forced to dig their own graves and were shot down in the graves while they were singing
'God Bless America.'''
Another time, Joe testified, three officers were caught trying to escape. ''They were deprived of any clothing and were compelled to stand out in the cold weather,
during which time they were whipped, stoned and spat upon by Japanese soldiers.
''This lasted for about three days, following which the officers became delirious and were marched down the road and shot to death.''
Testimony from Szczepanski and other survivors helped convict some 3,000 Japanese of war crimes. Many defendants got prison terms; more than 900 were executed.
Nagasaki's blazing sky
After more than a year at Cabanatuan, Joe and several hundred other POWs deemed fit to work were crowded into the hold of an old cargo vessel and taken to Kyushu,
where they were held at Fukuoka Camp 17 and forced to labor for a coal mining company. Joe would remain there for the rest of the war.
Many years later, Joe told his son about his struggle to survive despite disease -- he had beriberi, caused by vitamin B1 deficiency -- cruel guards and desperate hunger.
He talked about the lengths a man had to go to stay alive.
''I remember my dad saying he used to wait till one of his friends was just about dead and drag him out to get his food, then take him back and have his food because his friend
was on the way out. ''Another thing is, he crushed his own foot in order to get out of the coal mines for several months. He crushed it with a big piece of coal.''
Beginning in late 1944, Joe's parents, sisters and others back home sent postcards to him while he was at Fukuoka Camp 17. Joe wrote the name Charlie Balaza
on the back of one. He wrote the names of other fellow captives on cards, as well.
Rick scoured POW Web sites and found Charlie's name. He lives near Trenton, N.J., and had published a memoir, ''Life as an American Prisoner of War of the Japanese,''
but it doesn't mention Joe.
Rick and his wife, Gloria, visited the 86-year-old in October 2007 to find out why his name was on the card. Rick was amazed at what he discovered.
Charlie served in an Army coast artillery unit on Corregidor, an island fortress that guarded the mouth of Manila Bay. Its troops weren't captured until May 1942,
after the Bataan Death March. But Joe and Charlie were both held at Cabanatuan Camp 1, and they were among 500 fit POWs who were carried in a ship's cargo hold
to Kyushu in July 1943, then marched to Fukuoka Camp 17.
Charlie said he was with Joe outside the camp's barracks at 11:02 a.m. on Aug. 9, 1945. He remembered seeing a high-flying B-29 bomber and a billowing mushroom cloud.
Joe saw the smoke and fire, too. ''I viewed the sky blazing over Nagasaki after the atomic bomb was dropped, although it was about 40 miles away,''
he wrote to the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader when he got home.
Rick was thrilled to meet someone who was with his father at that historic moment.
'Imagine, two POWs, both seeing the Nagasaki bomb cloud -- my father telling me when I was no older than 13 that he was with another POW when this happened.
Then out of pure luck, meeting this other POW.''
At peace with himself'
Joe walked out of Camp 17 on Sept. 12, 1945, almost a month after the Japanese surrender.
He returned to the States on a transport ship operated by the US Coast Guard, the USS Admiral C.F. Hughes. (not to be confused with the USS Hughes).
Joe spent 18 months recuperating at Valley Forge General Hospital. One weekend in February 1946 when he was home, he met Catherine Wardzel at a Wilkes-Barre
dance hall. They were married four months later.
Remaining in the military, Joe specialized in aerial photography with the Air Force and was posted across the country and in Canada and Britain. He was a technical sergeant
with more than two decades of service when he retired in 1959. But he wasn't through working. He studied Spanish at King's College in Wilkes-Barre and taught at Becahi
for 10 years. Then in 1985, in his mid 60s, he was hospitalized with emphysema and almost died. Rick said it was a turning point for his dad.
''He was a smoker, so he quit smoking, cold turkey, and he quit drinking. He made a comment at the time: 'That's it, I'm not going to let the past run my life anymore.'
He just let go. At that point, I'd say, he was at peace with himself.''
Late in 1999, after Joe had grown frail, Rick got him into the Veterans Affairs nursing facility in Wilkes-Barre. Five-and-a-half years later, Joe Szczepanski died of lung cancer.
A path still to follow
In his mission to grasp what his father endured, Rick has read about 20 books on Bataan and prisoners of the Japanese.
He belongs to an e-mail group that disseminates POW information, and he has spent countless hours exploring Web sites related to his dad's service and captivity.
He has attended national conventions of the American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor, a veterans group his father belonged to but wasn't active in.
And this year, Rick will be among the descendants who keep the organization going.
In addition, he and Gloria are considering a trip to the Philippines next year to follow his father's path.
''I understand now why he was the way he was. I can visualize many things today. But once you understand, you start wanting more information. I am still searching.''
Credit: David Venditta of the Morning Call david.venditta@mcall.com
They came for Republicans only I did not speak out because I'm not a Republican.
Just keepin it real.
I disagree. I am a "self respecting veteran." And Arts and Letters can go pound sand. Part of the problem is 1% of the country, the mercenary class, does the bidding for the remaining 99%. Consequently, the 99% takes it for granted. There's no empathy. Not that I'm looking for empathy on veterans day but if you make out remembrance to be anymore than what it is, like Ants and Letters is doing (i.e. a celebration of war) then you can count on receiving blow back from the self-respecting.
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