News-Info-Alerts

Re: Bataan Death March Lecture Series

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: September 25, 2003

"EX-POW TELLS TJC STUDENTS ABOUT BATAAN DEATH MARCH

By: CASEY KNAUPP, Staff Writer

EXPERIENCE TALKS: Oliver "Red" Allen tells senior college students at Tyler Junior College about his experiences as a prisoner of war during the first of six lectures he is giving at TJC. (Staff Photo By Tom Worner)
One of the last few survivors of the Bataan Death March, a World War II veteran returned to Tyler this week after revisiting a prisoner of war camp in China, where he spent four trying years of his life.

Growing up just northeast of Paris, Texas, Oliver "Red" Allen spent his childhood years as a "redheaded, freckle-faced" boy who lived mostly on beans and cornbread. He dreamed of trading in his Model T for a Corvette like the pilots in the Air Force drove. His parents wouldn't let him join the military - but he eventually did anyway.

With $5 in his pocket and the clothes on his back, he enlisted in the Army Air Corps after two years of college. He never became a pilot, but was sent to the Philippines as a 20-year-old with his 19th Bomb Group just before WWII broke out, he told a class of seniors who are college students at Tyler Junior College Tuesday.

Allen and wife, Mildred, are conducting a six-part lecture about his experiences as a prison of war to senior college classes at TJC.

On Dec. 8, 1941, the day after Pearl Harbor, Allen's group was hit by an air raid. The cleanup was discouraging, he said.

Many friends didn't make it and Allen asked himself "so many times ... what did I have that they didn't?"

At times, Allen, 82, became emotional while telling students of his experience.

"I'm just trying to tell my little story and sometimes it gets pretty rough," he said.

On Christmas Eve 1941, the remaining men got orders to head out for the peninsula of Bataan.

Somehow the officers had "forgotten about the food situation" and soldiers soon began to suffer from hunger and illness.

Gen. Edward King Jr., the commanding general of the Philippine-American forces on Bataan, surrendered the largest military force in American history on April 9 after he believed the situation was hopeless.

Allen believes he was more fortunate then most, according to his book "Abandoned on Bataan: One Man's Story of Survival."

He "inherited" a mosquito net, a cot and mattress. At night, he used the net to cover himself while others were attacked by insects. He believes it kept him healthy enough to survive what would later be known as the Bataan Death March.

"The nightmare began. The Bataan Death March. Death and suffering. Suffering that brought death. Prolonged death. Sudden death. Suffering that made some wish for death," Allen wrote with the help of his wife Mildred.

In groups of 500 to 1,000 men, soldiers were forced to walk days to different POW camps. They were not allowed to eat and received few opportunities to drink dirty water along the way. They were tortured in the unbearable heat - many didn't make the trek.

Allen said the march took about five days. For some it ran from two to three weeks.

"I found out later, from those behind me, that the path we took became littered with the bodies of dead Americans ...," he wrote.

He arrived with the others at Camp O'Donnell, an unfinished and abandoned Filipino army camp. Later, they were moved to a camp in San Fernando, then on to Camp Cabanatuan.

The soldiers were sick and weak.

"Boys were dying faster than we could bury them," Allen said.

Prisoners were shipped off to work in factories. Allen and the surviving prisoners spent nearly three years at a prison camp in Mukden, now known as Shenyang, China. During the first winter at Mukden with freezing temperatures, at least 260 are believed to have died.

The POWs were rescued after nearly three years by members of the American Army Air Corps who parachuted into the camp to stop the Japanese from slaughtering the prisoners.

Allen learned after the war was over, the Japanese planned to take the prisoners on a forced march to execute them.

Allen visited Mukden Sept. 18 with his wife and other survivors. One barracks from the old camp remains and is now a battered apartment building for poor Chinese. The factory Allen worked in is still in operation by the Chinese.

"It was a lot different," Allen said, comparing the area's population and look to when he was there. "I'm glad I got to go."

Chinese officials are discussing the possibility of preserving the remains of the camp and building a museum there.

Allen estimates 81,000 soldiers - 12,000 Americans and 69,000 Filipinos - surrendered on April 9, 1942. An estimated 10,000 prisoners, including 2,300 Americans, died from malaria, exhaustion, starvation, thirst, suffocation, beating and murder on the march, according to Allen's book. Within two months of the surrender, 21,000 men disappeared, he wrote.

Allen didn't know the history of WWII during the years he was imprisoned. After he regained his freedom, he returned to America and an "entirely different world."

Mrs. Allen told the audience Tuesday the importance of studying the history of things like the Bataan Death March and the WWII POWs.

"History is not just some boring subject in a textbook," she said. "History is life. Everything that has ever happened to you ... has all been brought on by something that happened in the past."

Allen and his wife will continue to offer their special class "Abandoned on Bataan," on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 2 to 4 p.m. through Oct. 9. They have special guests planned to speak to the senior college classes and U.S. history classes. The cost is $26 and includes an autographed copy of Allen's autobiography. For more information, call (903) 510-2900.

Casey Knaupp covers northern Smith and Henderson counties. She can be reached at 903.596.6289. e-mail: news@tylerpaper.com

©Tyler Morning Telegraph 2003
© 2001 T.B. Butler Publishing Company, Inc. "