April 2002

Summary of news for the entire month.
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April 28, 2002 WW II - Axis POWs in Wisconsin
When Ann Munz was a child she would often sneak out behind her parents' house into a field where she peered over a makeshift snow fence. She was intrigued by the German soldiers imprisoned on the other side. Munz's brother would sometimes join her in the field as a curious onlooker, and who could blame him? It wasn't often that soldiers in Adolf Hitler's Third Reich were in town, especially if that town was Lodi.

April 26, 2002 WW II - Camp Lodi
There are no markings on posts, no tent stakes left in the ground and no names etched into the grandstand. The old buildings and light poles at the Lodi Fairgrounds show no signs of what took place here 58 years ago. But they do have a story to tell. It was in May 1944 that the Lodi Fair Association was informed that the fairgrounds would be a prisoner-of-war branch camp that would hold 250 captured German soldiers.

April 25, 2002 WW II - The Death Railway
Four hundred Australian and New Zealand war veterans and their families held a dawn service in the jungle mist in western Thailand on Thursday to remember comrades who died building the "death railway".

April 19, 2002 PGW - Speicher - 'We Need to Find Out What Happened'
U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson is asking American allies in the Middle East to use their influence with Iraq to help determine the fate of Jacksonville Navy pilot Scott Speicher, missing since the Gulf War.

April 18, 2002 WW II - POW Reparations a Hot-Button Issue
There is a new movement among former U.S. prisoners of war to seek compensation for the ordeals they suffered at the hands of Japan. It has been becoming a new ``historical issue'' between Japan and the United States, especially at a time when U.S. off-year elections are slated for this fall, because veterans have a powerful influence on congressmen.

April 17, 2002 VA Creates POW Advisory Committee
Secretary of Veterans Affairs Anthony J. Principi today announced the membership of a 12-member panel that will advise him on issues affecting former prisoners of war. "Many POWs have endured privations beyond description, even torture," said Principi. "The Department of Veterans Affairs must remain ever-attuned to their special needs.  This advisory committee is an important element in honoring the nation's commitment to our POWs."

April 17, 2002 WW II - Bataan Survivor Honored
Just hearing about the horrific conditions endured by Cpl. Edward H. Johnson in POW camps in Japan during World War II is enough to make you feel faint. But Johnson did not falter. He endured three years of suffering, starvation and forced slave labor to emerge as a war hero.

April 17, 2002 WW II - Former POW Refused Compensation
A Scots war veteran who was ordered by Winston Churchill to surrender to the Japanese has been denied £10,000 compensation. Ian Hay, 77, was refused the Government cash as there are no records to prove he was in a PoW camp.

April 17, 2002 WW II - POW Art Sells At Auction
A group of searing paintings and drawings depicting life as a prisoner of the Japanese during World War II sold at auction Tuesday for almost 200,000 pounds ($286,000 US).

April 15, 2002 WW II - Bataan Survivor Remembers
Maj. Gen. Edward P. King Jr. surrendered to the Japanese forces surrounding Clark Field against the orders of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, King said. MacArthur wanted the men to fight until the end, he said, but his commander saw it differently.

April 13, 2002 PGW - Pentagon Considers Sending Team to Iraq
Defense officials are trying to decide if there is anything to gain by sending a delegation to Iraq to further investigate the decade-old loss of a Gulf War pilot. The officials were considering a letter received Monday in which Baghdad suggested a U.S. delegation visit to discuss the fate of Lt. Cmdr. Scott Speicher, shot down over Iraq in Jan. 17, 1991, the first day of the war.

April 12, 2002 PGW - US & Iraq Formally Exchange Offers
The United States and Iraq have formally exchanged offers that could pave the way for an American delegation's visit to the Middle Eastern country to investigate the fate of a Navy pilot shot down early in the Persian Gulf War. Baghdad sent an offer earlier this week to the State Department, via the Red Cross, proposing that a U.S. team visit Iraq to try to determine what happened to Lt. Cmdr. Michael Scott Speicher.

April 12, 2002 KW-CW - Korean War Non-Repatriate
Lowell D. Skinner always said he had no regrets. It was his choice to become one of the most reviled men in America during the 1950s. The Akron soldier was branded a turncoat, a traitor, a defector, a communist... and those were some of the kinder words. Skinner spent three years as a prisoner of war in North Korea. When the conflict ended, he stunned his parents and country by refusing to come home. Instead, he and 20 other U.S. soldiers decided to go to Red China.

April 12, 2002 SEA - State Senate Recognizes CA POWs
Sen. Maurice Johannessen, R-Redding, has introduced Senate Concurrent Resolution 56 establishing a special day of recognition for California Prisoners of War. SCR 56 designates April 9, 2002, as POW Recognition Day in California. Johannessen, chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, introduced this resolution to formally acknowledge all American prisoners of war who so bravely fought and were held captive during times of conflict in our nation's history.

April 12, 2002 PGW - US Seeks Resolution on Speicher Case
Defense officials are deciding whether there is anything to gain by sending a delegation to Iraq to further investigate the decade-old loss of a Gulf War pilot. The officials were considering a letter received Monday in which Baghdad suggested a U.S. delegation visit to discuss the fate of Lt. Cmdr. Scott Speicher, shot down over Iraq in Jan. 17, 1991, the first day of the war.

April 12, 2002 PGW - US 'Considers' Iraqi Offer
The United States is considering a proposal from Baghdad to send American investigators to Iraq to determine the fate of the first U.S. pilot shot down in the 1991 Gulf War, U.S. officials said on Wednesday. ``A formal request was received this week and the State and Defense Departments are considering a reply,'' one of the officials told Reuters.

April 11, 2002 Illinois Governor Honors POWs
An annual ceremony honoring former Illinois prisoners of war doesn¹t usually draw the state¹s top official, but Gov. George Ryan appeared outside the Executive Mansion on Tuesday for the commemoration.

April 10, 2002 WW II - Hell On A Ship
Army Air Force Cpl. Joseph T. Poster had survived the Bataan Death March and four months of slave labor on Luzon island in the Phillipines. It was still the early stage of the U.S. involvement in World War II. In August 1942, Poster's Japanese captors sent him to Camp 1 near the city of Cabanatuan, also on Luzon. At Cabanatuan, another POW told me 40 or 50 guys were dying every day.

April 10, 2002 PGW - US to Search for Pilot in Iraq
The Bush administration is ready to dispatch a team of experts to Iraq to investigate the fate of missing Persian Gulf war pilot Lt. Cmdr. Michael Scott Speicher, defense officials said yesterday. The Pentagon has drafted a reply to a formal offer from Baghdad to allow a team to look for the missing pilot if details for the investigation can be worked out, officials told The Washington Times on the condition of anonymity.

April 09, 2002 WW II - Bataan, 50 Years Later
His reluctance to talk about his wartime service is understandable: he survived the Bataan Death March. Sherman Arnold "Pete" Johnson, now 83, had been in the U.S. Army for about a year and had been stationed in the Philippines for a couple of months when Corregidor fell and he became a prisoner of war on April 9, 1942.

April 09, 2002 WW II - Ex-POWs Meet after 60 Years
Veterans of World War II POW camp in Germany meet after nearly six decades

April 08, 2002 SEA - Ex-POW Has Been to Hell and Back
The pack of aerial rockets fell into each other and exploded. Fire and debris flew into the air-intake. The engine shuddered, then exploded, shearing off the tail in the process. Stratton ejected and landed in the only tree behind the only house for 5 miles. The natives beat Stratton and turned him over to the authorities. "It was a bad day," he said. It was the first of 2,251 bad days.

April 08, 2002 WW II - Batann Death March Survivors Lived By Wits
Sixty years ago Tuesday, Les Tenney and Bob Vogler made seemingly trivial decisions that saved their lives. They were among thousands of American and Filipino troops who surrendered to Japanese forces April 9, 1942, on the Bataan Peninsula in the Philippines during the early days of World War II.

April 08, 2002 SEA - Make Trade, Not War by Pete Peterson
" As a Vietnam veteran and former prisoner of war, I remember the horrors of the battlefield and understand how difficult healing can be. In 1997, when I returned to Vietnam as the U.S. ambassador and was chauffeured to my destinations, I could not forget the times when I had traveled those same roads in the back of a prison truck, handcuffed, shackled, blindfolded and often gagged. Nor did I forget the days when I thought of Vietnam only as a war, not a country."

April 08, 2002 WW II - Nurse-POWs... Horror and Duty
The Far East Veterans Association is now calling on the Government to officially recognise the hardships suffered by prisoners-of-war held by the Japanese.

April 07, 2002 SWA - Reward Offered for Captured or Killed US GIs
The U.S. military said on Friday leaflets were circulating in eastern Afghanistan offering rewards for killing foreigners connected to the international drive against the Taliban and al Qaeda. "We continue to receive credible threats of violence against coalition service members, citizens and journalists," U.S. military spokesman Major Bryan Hilferty told a news conference at Bagram Air Base, just north of Kabul.

April 07, 2002 WW II - German POWs in the US
German prisoners of war were held in Florida before the United States entered World War II. Among the early prisoners was the 52-member crew of the Arauca, a German freighter that escaped into port at Fort Lauderdale in mid-December 1939 to avoid a British cruiser.

April 07, 2002 SEA - NLF Update Line
Family Update

April 07, 2002 WW II - 56 Years Later, Ex-POW Gets Medals
ilbert Spears enlisted in the Army when he was 15. He was seriously wounded in Austria four years later, held in a German prisoner of war camp for four months, and honorably discharged nearly a year later.

April 07, 2002 WW II - Former Japan Labor Camp POW Continues Fight
War veteran Arthur Titherington is going to the Japan's highest court to fight for compensation for former prisoners of war. Lawyers for the Japanese Labour Camp Survivors' Association, of which Mr Titherington is chairman, are appealing to the Japanese Supreme Court. But it could take up to two years for a hearing to be held.

April 07, 2002 REMINDER - April 9th National Former POW Day
President Bush signed a proclamation Thursday making April 9, 2002, Former Prisoner of War Recognition Day.

April 06, 2002 WW II - Nurse-POW's Collection Goes to Museum
ONE woman's experiences in a Second World War internment camp are to form a powerful display at the Imperial War Museum North. Museum staff were amazed by Margaret Wanklyn's possessions and experiences from her time at Stanley Camp in Hong Kong between 1942-1945.

April 06, 2002 SEA - Unfinished Work
On the wings of a C-17 Globemaster III and the shoulders of its 12-man crew rested 30 years of unfinished work demanded from people like Ann Mills Griffiths. She has locked horns for more than 23 years with officials from the DMZ to D.C. Griffiths is the executive director of the National League of POW/MIA Families in Washington, D.C. She is also the sister of someone who is missing in action ‹ Navy Reserve Lt. James Mills whose plane was shot down in 1966.

April 06, 2002 SEA - Searching for Solace
Be it an Army private killed in World War II, a Marine lost during the Korean War or an Air Force pilot shot down and missing in Vietnam, the road home for any U.S. military member killed or missing in action travels through Hawaii. More precisely, that road runs directly through the Army¹s Central Identification Laboratory Hawaii.

April 05, 2002 PGW - Senator Nelson Meets with Syria
Sen. Bill Nelson asked Syrian President Bashar Assad on Thursday to discuss with Iraq the case of a missing American pilot during the senator's trip to the Middle East. Nelson, in a telephone call from Syria's capital Damascus, said he brought up the case of Lt. Cmdr. Scott Speicher when Assad was addressing the situation in Iraq.

April 05, 2002 PGW - Syria to Meet with Iraq in "Several Weeks" on Speicher
Syria's president agreed yesterday to inquire and seek information about the fate of a Jacksonville Navy pilot, missing since he was shot down over Iraq 11 years ago, a U.S. senator said. President Bashar al-Assad pledged to use what influence he has with Iraq after meeting with U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., for nearly two hours in Damascus.

April 04, 2002 WW II - Ex-POWs Share the Pride... the Horror
The speakers represented each branch of the military. Some saw action overseas, while others were stationed at home. There were two POWs, a nurse stationed in North Africa, a tank driver who was at the Battle of the Bulge, a sailor whose ship was sunk at the Battle of Midway, and people who waited at home, like the two men who were children during the war years.

April 04, 2002 PGW - US Dismisses Speicher Story from Iraq
The State Department is dismissing an Iraqi newspaper's report that Baghdad has formally invited a U.S. delegation to investigate the fate of a Jacksonville Navy pilot missing since he was shot down over Iraq during the Gulf War 11 years ago.

April 04, 2002 Proclamation - National Former POW Day
Americans who bear the title "Former Prisoner of War" are national heroes. Their service to our country placed them in dire circumstances, causing their capture and imprisonment by our country's enemies. These heroes suffered great adversity and sacrificed much for freedom and for the future of America.

April 03, 2002 WW II - Former POW Camp May Get World Heritage Listing
The site of the only battle fought on Australian soil during World War II ­ the Cowra prisoner-of-war camp ­ may soon join the world heritage list. A thermal archaeological survey of the camp where 378 Japanese prisoners escaped will also be conducted under plans to recognise the site, which has been neglected since 1947.

April 02, 2002 WW II - Civilian POW Remembers
A civilian more adept with a pipe wrench than a rifle, he was hard at work on Wake Island when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. And before the reality of war could even set in, he was part of it, fighting for survival as the Japanese bombed, strafed and eventually invaded the tiny American outpost. Taken prisoner just 17 days following the United States¹ entrance into World War II, the 28-year-old from Granger, Utah, spent the rest of the war ‹ nearly four years ‹ as a captive of the Imperial Japanese Army.

April 02, 2002 PGW - Smith on Speicher
Sen. Bob Smith, R-N.H., has pressed the White House to do more to determine just what happened to Navy pilot Michael Speicher, long believed to have been killed during the Persian Gulf War but now suspected of being held prisoner by Iraq. The following are edited excerpts of a recent Smith interview on Fox News.

POW-MIA Issue Update May 2002