irish Posted June 8, 2013 Share #26 Posted June 8, 2013 That movie is one of my favorites. Amongst a group I have belonging to a Nurse captured in the Malinta tunnel is correspondence from a nurse who's character was losely played by Donna Reed. This nurse sued the studio near the end of the war and did receive a settlement. Her name escapes me at the moment, but I digress. Great stuff, you all turn up some real treasures out there Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bob Hudson Posted June 8, 2013 Author Share #27 Posted June 8, 2013 After our three-hour plus round trip drive to pick this up today, my wife, son and I have just sat down to watch They Must be Expendable on Apple TV - seems appropriate. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RustyCanteen Posted June 8, 2013 Share #28 Posted June 8, 2013 There are some great Corregidor groupings out there, this is one of them. And being from a sailor on the PT-41 boat just tops it off. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KASTAUFFER Posted June 8, 2013 Share #29 Posted June 8, 2013 Here is some POW mail from another man in the same unit: http://www.usmilitariaforum.com/forums/index.php?/topic/83205-motor-torpedo-boat-squadron-three-pow-letters-philippines/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bobgee Posted June 8, 2013 Share #30 Posted June 8, 2013 Bob - I watched "They Were Expendable" just last week with Devildog34. One of my favorite war flicks. He had never seen it. The film script really followed the war diary closely. And star Robert Montgomery had been a PT Boat skipper in real life. To see this amazing trove of items belonging to a 41 boat crewman is just fantastic. WOW!!!!!! Congrats on its acquisition. Thanks for sharing it! Bob Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
firefighter Posted June 8, 2013 Share #31 Posted June 8, 2013 MTBRON 3 received the Army Distinguished Unit badge.PT-41 was transferred to the Army on 13APR42 and destroyed on 15APR42 to prevent capture.It was a 77' Elco boat.Lt. Burkelley was awarded the MOH for his actions on PT-41 and Ens. Cox was awarded the Navy Cross for his actions on PT-41, separate action.PT-41 carried Gen & Mrs. MacArthur & their sons along with MGEN Sutherland, MacArthur's Chief of Staff to Australia. The above information was from 'CLOSE QUARTERS, PT BOATS IN THE USN'.This is an excellent reference book.I unfortunately I could not find any info on H.K. Miller. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Terry K. Posted June 8, 2013 Share #32 Posted June 8, 2013 Just an unbelievable find! The movie is on my top ten list. I just re-purchased it and got it in the mail yesterday. I guess I know what movie we will be watching this weekend. Congratulations on the grouping. I would love to own it. Terry Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JDK Posted June 8, 2013 Share #33 Posted June 8, 2013 I mostly collect air war items, but I've always enjoyed sub and PT boat items. Thanks for sharing. JD Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bob Hudson Posted June 8, 2013 Author Share #34 Posted June 8, 2013 Just an unbelievable find! The movie is on my top ten list. I just re-purchased it and got it in the mail yesterday. I guess I know what movie we will be watching this weekend. Congratulations on the grouping. I would love to own it. Terry Before we watched the movie I "briefed" my wife and son and showed them the documents so they'd have some perspective on it all. They'd gone with me to pick up the grouping, but while I was inside the son's house, they stayed in the car parked in the shade in the 97-degree high desert heat (it's very low humidity though) and they weren't really sure why we'd made the trip (my wife was just happy for a drive through the country and my son was on his iPad and probably didn't know we'd left the driveway). Having his docs and the downloaded War Diary really made it a living history lesson. Obviously a movie never follows history exactly, but this one does a pretty good job. His son had told me his father left the 41 boat before it took MacArthur to Mindanao. In the movie, just before the Mindanao mission, they talk about having two too many boat crews, and then there;'s a scene where those crews are in formation with helmets, M1903's and other gear, about too march off to become ground soldiers. If there was such a formation in real life, Miller would have been in it. I speculate that the 41 boat took the most experienced crew along for the MacArthur mission and Miller was a submariner who'd had only about four months MTB experience at that time (of course that four months included the most intense MTB activities ever to that point in history). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bob Hudson Posted June 8, 2013 Author Share #35 Posted June 8, 2013 The movie is on my top ten list. I just re-purchased it and got it in the mail yesterday. I We have an Apple TV box hooked into our TV and were able to rent it through iTunes for $2.99 which makes for a pretty cheap night at the movies. It's a John Ford film and is quite long: two hours, 14 minutes. Being a Ford movie made during the war it is heavy on dramatic lighting and music and it was intended in part to be domestic propaganda and it fulfills that goal, especially if you watch knowing that the vast majority of MTB-3 and the thousands of other Americans in the PI in spring 1942 had one of two certainties: death in combat or imprisonment in camps where a cruel death was common. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bob Hudson Posted June 8, 2013 Author Share #36 Posted June 8, 2013 After being taken to Japan, Miller was held at was sometimes called the "Osaka #7B" camp (or simply "Osaka Camp" as Miller wrote in his LDO application), but is apparently known in official records as "Kamioka POW Camp, Nagoya Detach 1-B." Miller and the other men held there (many of them Dutch, along with a few Brits) were used as slave labor for zinc and lead mining. There's a website for it at http://www.mansell.com/pow_resources/camplists/Nagoya/kamioka_1/kamioka.htm Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kurt Barickman Posted June 8, 2013 Share #37 Posted June 8, 2013 Bob, I love sub and PT items as well. Great grouping to a guy who saw it all. What a great find. Congrats. Kurt Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KySoldier Posted June 8, 2013 Share #38 Posted June 8, 2013 Truly a remarkable story of a true American Hero ! God bless him and keep him. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kanemono Posted June 8, 2013 Share #39 Posted June 8, 2013 What a great historical group Bob! Thank you for sharing it with us. Dick Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bob Hudson Posted June 9, 2013 Author Share #40 Posted June 9, 2013 I wonder if many survivors of the invasion of the Philippines filed claims for lost stuff? In the movie. the MTB-3 compound gets beat up pretty bad in the bombing of Cavite. In fact, they lost ALL of their spare parts that day and i suspect the crewmen lost a lot of personal property: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RustyCanteen Posted June 9, 2013 Share #41 Posted June 9, 2013 Since he was still in the hospital when that claim was filed, he was probably trying to get compensation for lost uniforms and money. It's interesting that he had to resubmit it a little over a year later. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bob Hudson Posted June 9, 2013 Author Share #42 Posted June 9, 2013 If he was transferred to the "Naval Infantry" fighting on Bataan he should receive the Combat Action Ribbon and The Bronze Star - or the CIB in lieu of the CAR. Bill I've been trying to get a little more understanding of the Navy's role there and particularly Ken Miller's. The final MTB-3 War Diary had him among the PT crewmen who ended up at Mariveles on Bataan, where they had a Naval Battalion. But, his records show that he also served as a squad leader with the 4th Marines and was taken POW on Corregidor, and I had wondered about that. Tonight I found this in a wikipedia entry for the 4th Marines: "The 4th Marines then were moved to Corregidor where on 10 April 1942 it added the 4th Provisional Battalion composed of U.S. Navy personnel that had previously served during the Battle of Bataan as the Provisional Naval Battalion." When you look at the final deposition of MTB-3 members just before the fall of the Philippines, you see them scattered hundreds of miles apart, in Battan, Corregidor, Cebu, Mindanao. And there were the five officers who were flown to Australia. The MTB-3 wikipedia page tells what happened after the fall: "Three officers and fifteen enlisted men were killed in action or died as prisoners of war, seven evaded capture as guerrillas on Leyte, and 38 POWs were liberated after the war." I wonder there was ever an MTB-3 reunion? While searching for info on that, I came across a September 1942 newspaper clip about the then new book "They Were Expendable." Ironically the clip is in the newspaper from Iola Kansas, Ken Miller's hometown, but there's no mention of him. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bob Hudson Posted June 9, 2013 Author Share #43 Posted June 9, 2013 Here's a photo of Miller's boat, the squadron flagship PT-41 - it's from a website at http://pinoyhistory.proboards.com/thread/2049 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jumpin Jack Posted June 9, 2013 Share #44 Posted June 9, 2013 Bob, a most impressive piece of history. You've done a great job in pulling this history together. Jack Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Patchcollector Posted June 9, 2013 Share #45 Posted June 9, 2013 Very cool stuff,glad to see he made it through P.O.W internment and lived a long life afterwards. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bob Hudson Posted June 26, 2013 Author Share #46 Posted June 26, 2013 Added some more items today. This is a small sign that was displayed somewhere in his home town after he was taken POW: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bob Hudson Posted June 26, 2013 Author Share #47 Posted June 26, 2013 He was a submariner before getting assigned to MTB Squadron Three in 1941 and there's a scrap book of his days in pre-war Hawaii and photos from the Asiatic Fleet. A lot of the loose photos are large, close to 8x10. I shrank them down to 800 pixels wide to fit the forum, but if you click on most of them (beginning with the Submarine Division 13 photo) you can see larger version. I haven't done any research about the time and place of these photos although the harbor photo looks like Hong Kong/Kowloon to me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bob Hudson Posted June 26, 2013 Author Share #48 Posted June 26, 2013 -- Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bob Hudson Posted June 26, 2013 Author Share #49 Posted June 26, 2013 -- Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tarbridge Posted June 26, 2013 Share #50 Posted June 26, 2013 Great grouping.Robert Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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