News-Info-Alerts

Re: Recalling Captivity

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Date: November 11, 2002

"W.W. II veteran recalls captivity
By Connie Skipitares
Mercury News

Until three years ago when failing eyesight forced him to stop driving, 81-year-old Thomas J. Cronin proudly displayed his unique vanity license plate, which often became a conversation piece in parking lots.

``POW 1003,'' it read, noting that he was a prisoner of war for 1,003 days.

The World War II veteran will share some of his memories with fellow soldiers when they gather at 11 a.m. today to dedicate a new veterans memorial in Santa Clara's Central Park.

Even though it has been six decades since his imprisonment in the Japanese-occupied Philippine Islands, the former U.S. Marine sergeant from Santa Clara has a near-flawless memory of the days he spent in captivity from 1941 to 1944.

What Cronin remembers most about his POW days was how sick he was most of the time, once for several months with elephantiasis and another time with beriberi, both debilitating illnesses caused by the unhealthy conditions at the camps.

Once, his health had deteriorated so badly that his Japanese captors took him to a barracks where dead prisoners' bodies were stored. They expected him to die.

``They laid me on the cold ground next to the dead bodies,'' said the soft-spoken Cronin, who was awarded the Bronze Star ``with valor,'' the Philippine Defense Medal and a medal for honorable service while a prisoner of war. ``I was sort of delirious, so I wasn't quite sure what was happening. I woke up the next day in the infirmary, and I was alive. I was so glad to be alive. It was then I figured they'd left me there to die because I was so sick.''

Another powerful memory for Cronin was when his captors forced him and other prisoners to dig a 15-foot-deep trench that they all believed was to be their grave.

``They didn't tell us anything about why we were digging it,'' Cronin said last week in the small Santa Clara home where he raised 11 children. ``We went to sleep that night not knowing what our fate was going to be the next day. It turned out the ditch was to drain water from the field so we could build an airstrip.''

Cronin said he never felt fear while he was a POW. ``All you tried to do was stay alive. Every morning you'd get up and say to yourself, `What do I have to do to make it through the day?' You were totally focused on survival.''

When his Marine uniform wore out, he found a piece of canvas and fashioned some pants to wear. And when his boots wore out, he took pieces of wood from a pile and cut some strips from an old leather belt and made sandals.

Today, as members of the various military branches gather for the dedication ceremony, Cronin says he will probably think back over his POW years and remember some of his buddies who didn't make it.

The veterans memorial was the idea of Santa Clara veterans Jim Lee, Ray Gamma and former Santa Clara City Council member Jim Ash, who all helped raise $260,000 to build it. Flagpoles with the U.S. and POW-MIA flags rise from the center of the memorial, which is paved with bricks and will soon feature pedestals of granite. About 1,300 of the bricks are engraved with the names of veterans from Santa Clara whose families and friends paid $100 each for the honor. About 2,500 more bricks are to be engraved.

Cronin's name is among them, and he feels fortunate just to be able to see it.

Many of his fellow POWs were put on a Japanese boat that was attacked by U.S. bombs and were killed. Cronin was supposed to be on that boat but remained behind because of illness.

``I don't really think about all this in my everyday life,'' said Cronin, who worked 30 years for the city of Santa Clara's electric department. But at the ceremony, ``I expect that it'll be a little emotional.''

Contact at Connie Skipitares at cskipitares@sjmercury.com or (408) 920-5647. "