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AAF POW HELD BY JAPANESE MAIL


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I had a friend came me last week and say I think I found something that you might want. I was very please when he showed me these to postcards mailed from Philippine Military Prison camp #2. They were mailed from an AAF private that was on the Bataan Death March. After doing a little research I found that Camp 2 did not allow much mail out. There were 800 Americans held there and very little mail was sent home. The one card states he had malaria 3 times but was doing better. Those guys went through a living hell with the Japanese. Ben

post-4101-0-53842400-1412539106.jpg

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Camp 2 was Davao Penal Colony. They were not allowed to send as much mail generally as the POWs in Camp 1 ( Cabanatuan ) . I do have a POW mail group from Camp 2 from am officer who later died on one of the hell ships. It has 7 postcards from Camp 2, which is the most I have seen sent out by 1 man from that camp.

 

Nice find!

 

Kurt

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Your man was also a survivor of the sinking of the hellship Shinyu Maru on Sept 7, 1944. 668 died and 86 survived.

 

Granz survived the war ,

 

Kurt

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Kurt Thank you for the added info on Granz. It makes them that much more special. I guess he was either one lucky guy or one tough guy to make it to the shore and survive. Is there a site that lists survivors? Ben

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Found this in a Fresno Bee article about Granz. The POW Ernest Myers that he speaks of died in Honshu POW Camp on Jan 26 1945. Thought this was interesting. The wording of this article is quite odd. It is hard to believe it was published this way. Ben

 

Fresno Bee Nov 14, 1944

 

Escaped Japanese Captive Reports Fresno resident is Safe. Mrs Merle Myers of 2747 Fresno Street today has assurance her son, Private Ernest M. Myers, 24, for more than two a Japanese prisoner of war in the Philippines, was not only alive but uninjured and in good health, as recently as three months ago. The assurance came from Private Donald J. Granz, 25, of 3530 Huntington Boulevard, now recuperating in a veterans hospital in San Francisco from the effects of hardships of prison life in the same camp with Myers and from the strain of an escape from a Japanese prison ship last month. Granz was rescued after an American submarine torpedoed the Japanese ship. "Tell Mrs. Myers her son was in the best of shape the last time I saw him this Summer," Granz told his sister in law, Mrs. E. H. Granz of Fresno, in a long distance telephone conversation. "Conditions in our camp were rough but Ernie was doing well under them." Granz explained Myers was not transferred to the torpedoed ship and, to his knowledge, remained in the prison camp. The mother declared the message delivered by Mrs. Granz was "one of the finest things that ever happened. Ernest did get out three letters from his prison camp saying he was well, but one never knows whether the Japanese may not have tampered with such letters," she declared. "I had no word at all from my son since last December and that card, apparently, had been enroute since August of 1943. It made me feel worse that he had not received any communication from me since November, 1941." Myers, a graduate of the Fresno State College where he was prominent in fraternity work, enlisted in June, 1941, and was sent to the Philippines in October, 1941. He has been a Japanese prisoner since May, 1942.

 

 

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Looks like he may have died in 1979, and his widow in 2013. There are several newspaper articles on Ancestry about his return, but I could not find an Obit.

 

Frank

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