SCARCE Postcards from Corregidor 1942 - USS CANOPUS Sailor.

[KASTAUFFER]

USS CANOPUS - I recently acquired a correspondence lot from a sailor who served on the USS Canopus during the defense of the Philippines. After the Canopus was scuttled he was transferred to the 4th Marines on Corregidor. He was later captured and became a POW.

These are I AM WELL postcards posted by him in February 1942. He was transferred to the 4th Marines on Feb 28, 1942 based on Muster Rolls.

One of these cards is dated February 16th and the other February 25th, 1942. Both postcards have cancels known to have been used on Corregidor. On the card postmarked March 6, 1942 it has SAH signed near where the PLACE STAMP HERE is on the card. That was LTJG Stanley A. Leahigh USN who was known to have been the Naval postal officer on Corregidor.

 

All of the other cards of this type I have seen are to men known to have been on Bataan, rather than Corregidor, but the cards were processed though Corregidor. My assumption is that Driver mailed these while still on the Canopus, and they were taken by boat to Corregidor and then out by submarine. All of the cards I have seen like this mailed through Corregidor are dated Ferbruary, 1942.

The card postmarked Feb 18, 1942 was probably sent out on the USS Swordfish. The card dated March 6th , the USS Permit.

After the fall of Corregidor he was sent to Cabanatuan and then transferred to Camp Hoten in Manchuria where he spent the rest of the war.

 

 

[KASTAUFFER]

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