Lest We Forget: Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery

Added: 2026-05-06

[00:00:02][music] [music] Hello folks, welcome back to World War II TV. Now, sidebar warrior Scott Grimwood returns to the channel to share the history of the Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery in St. Louis, Missouri. There are some fascinating sto stories coming from uh from from there and so we welcome Scott back so I'll bring him in. How are you today sir?

[00:00:36]>> Doing well Woody. How are you today?

[00:00:38]>> I'm all right. And um we were just talking that this is one of those stories that once you actually went there again and started investigating it, it led to rabbit hole after rabbit hole after rabbit hole and it became a bigger a bigger project than perhaps you thought it was going to be. But that but that's fun, isn't it? I guess.

[00:00:57]>> Yeah, it is. Well, I didn't um I stumbled across the the mass graves a couple of years ago when I went out there for a Memorial Day, US Memorial Day service, which they hold out there every year. And I just happened to find this grave with a lot of little flags, one UK, one US, one Australia, one Netherlands. I'm like going, "Okay."

[00:01:15]Then I started seeing more of these and I just started wandering around and I'm going, "Well, this is interesting." And u had no clue about it. And then of course stumbled on Lieutenant Mian's thing and I was a little bit of a dope.

[00:01:29]I couldn't remember who he was for a minute. Uh but then I figured it out.

[00:01:33]But yeah, no, it turned into quite a little project. And what I'm going to be sharing today is just a small snippet of a thing as we'll talk about. There are hundreds of these group burials at Jefferson barracks.

[00:01:46]>> Brilliant stuff. Well, there's a PowerPoint. So folks, there's a lot of detail coming on the slides. I've seen them already. So you you you probably won't need to ask too many questions, but that doesn't mean you can't. But I'm going to hand it over to Scott to take us through this. And we're going Pacific War, ETO, uh atrocities, uh accidents, Ps. It kind of covers covers everything.

[00:02:04]So over to you, sir.

[00:02:06]>> Thank you. All right. So um this again, the title will be uh Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery, World War II group burials, stories behind the stones. So, not just talking about the cemetery, but we're going to highlight some people that are buried there. And the area, if you look at the lower left hand of your screen of that photo, you see that white tri u rectangles. Those are where most of the group burials are located. So, you can see actually the stone difference.

[00:02:34]So, just a little quick um intro about um what we're going to do. We're going to talk about Jefferson barracks briefly about the coming remains the centralized barrel of the United States which was u a government program. Uh then we're going to talk about uh Braval PSA massacre the crew of the first B29 shot down over Japan. Uh Fukqua PS uh the USS amazing story there. Uh Los Negro Lost Negro burials. um a sad story there. And then of course uh uh Mian's uh crash um uh grave site.

[00:03:17]So Jefferson Barracks, just real quick, was established in 1826 on the West Bank of the Mississippi. It's considered the longest active US military installation because there's still uh National Guard units still posted on what was the old base. um in the ce the big the story thing that people remember about Jefferson barracks is that a lot of the Civil War generals went through there. So Grant Lee um Long Street all those matter of fact Grant met and married his wife while he was at Jefferson barracks and then when he left the army briefly after the Mexican War he lived not too far from Jefferson barracks.

[00:04:01]So the cemetery actually started the first year that um the house the fort opened and the burial was a young girl u daughter of one of the officers.

[00:04:17]This stone area if you could see in the back by the trees is the original uh grave area and the cemetery continued to grow. It became a national cemetery as part of the program started by Abraham Lincoln in 1862.

[00:04:32]Um, and in 1866, Congress passed uh legislature creating 12 national cemeteries and Jefferson barracks was one of those uh original national cemetery groups.

[00:04:45]It continued to expand over the years, getting a little bit bigger because it was still an active army post. And then when the war ended in 1946, they realized the Jefferson Beric Cemetery was a perfect centralized location for burials of potential group burials because you had road, river, rail, and air access to the uh to the area.

[00:05:14]All right, here. So, we're going to talk about the World War II group areas real quickly. So this is where the individual names for the most part individual names of the deceased are known but the indiv individual identification is impossible or they are unknowns. So basically what we mean by that is for the US military if you have a dog tag and a set of remains that's an identification but it if the remains are mixed together such as in an air crash um other kind of situations we'll talk about it's becomes especially at that time period impossible to tell them apart. This is pre-DNA.

[00:05:56]>> Yeah. the return of the dead program, which was what the US set up for bringing all deceased servicemen back if the families wanted to do that.

[00:06:07]However, with the group burials, the family had no say. They were going to automatically go to Jefferson barracks that way because they couldn't separate out remains. So everybody who was in a group burial was sent to Jefferson barracks because it's centralized to be less of a burden or an even burden for anybody that wanted to come. So as you can see here, there's 769 group burials covering over 5,000 deceased at Jefferson barracks and it's all over the place for like what he said air crashes that are obviously air crashes, all sorts of other things that are there.

[00:06:48]And of course, these group burials, especially a lot of the ones we're going to talk about, occurred well after the war. We're talking some burials not occurring till 1952 from World War II.

[00:07:00]We had that great show uh talking about railways a couple of years ago where all the railway battalions the US sent across to the ETO and indeed the Pacific. A lot of them then got converted to instead of taking you know live troops to the front and uh they be they became uh masquerade rail ambulances uh or hearses if you like to take the egg back and it's it's one of the reasons the USA was able to offer the repatriation because you had the infrastructure in place to do it and and let's be honest the money uh because I mean the the cost it must have uh been horrendous for the for the US government to offer that uh you for all the places you'd lost your your young men and women. So >> yeah, the the fact that it was St. Louis and and it kind of connects to the rail network all makes sense from my ETO point of view.

[00:07:52]>> Yeah. And the ETO the Pacific was insane because we're talking um in the one part of the equation that's not talked about are the intram burials. So the original burials then they were usually collected and to a more centralized location which were from India, New Guinea, they're all over the place.

[00:08:13]So then you have to take those out of the intram burial sites and bring them back. So um because the only burial site for us in that part of the world that's official is in the Philippines at the uh the national cemetery there in Manila.

[00:08:30]But everything else has been moved on or moved to the United States.

[00:08:35]So group burial markers and the army the the uh the army quartermaster corps is the group that handles burials. Um so that's where grace registration is part of part of the quartermaster core and usually in the past they prefer still to this day they prefer the upright markers um that you see Arlington has them a Jefferson barracks has them but with the number of dead possible coming in one single grave they were reaching a problem of they couldn't fit them all and they were concerned that large markers that were upright would look ungainainely either it's going to be too tall or too wide or too something.

[00:09:16]So, a decision was made to go to a flat stone. That way, the flat stone would just get bigger to accommodate the number of names that would be placed on the grave. And that was codified in May 9, 1950.

[00:09:33]So, we're going to show you initially here are two preflat group burial markers. The one on the left is a traditional upright the same width and you can see that it's crowded and then the one on the right they've gone to a slightly wider stone which looks a little bit better.

[00:09:55]I have to say that I am a I don't fan's not the right word, but I really love what the Commonwealth War Graves do with their stones. I was fortunate enough to to visit their visitor center and their workshop. I think it's in Arth there's a workshop there uh where you can do a tour. You actually see them carving the stones.

[00:10:19]The quality of the stone and the way the stone look is great. And I know when they do group burials, they kind of put all the stones touching side by side, I think, is how I understand the process.

[00:10:30]>> Yeah.

[00:10:30]>> But the US is a little more if you can see basic. Um, so in this case, it was getting a little too basic because normally you'd have a cross or some sort of religious symbol. Um, they didn't have any of these.

[00:10:44]So now we're going to move on to our first burial, group burial we're going to talk about today. And then you can see here the flat stones. This is the way they would do. They would do them in columns. They would include the name, the rank, and uh the service. The AC stands for air core. Even though they was US Army Air Forces during most of the war, for whatever reason, they can they used airore. And we're going to talk about first we're going to talk about um Walter Mayberry. He's one of the gentlemen that Woody put on the thing cuz he liked him sitting in front of his Corsair with a cigar. And that's a great photo. Um he was a former football player at the University of Florida.

[00:11:28]So he was quite the he joined the Navy, the US Navy in May n uh May of 1941.

[00:11:36]Served as enlisted man for six months before becoming an aviation cadet. Then I'm assuming then u I have looked at his file but there's gaps in some stuff transition the Marine Corps. Um he's a very skilled pilot. He shot down four aircraft before he was shot down including three in one day which he then received a distinguished line crossostumously for that action.

[00:12:03]He was shot down on uh August 30, 1943 while helping to escort some Army B24 bombers. Um and he was shot down over um an island near not too far from Revolve and was eventually captured on September 2nd, 1943.

[00:12:26]From reading his records, it sounds like he was turned in by a local who was pretended to be his friend and then eventually turned him over to the Japanese. Uh I learned this because that particular person got uh picked up, arrested by the Australians and he had some of Mayberry's personal effects like wristwatches, stuff like that with him.

[00:12:50]And then we're going to talk about somebody else here also that's also on the stone. So here's Mayberry. uh an FCoria pilot with the flying eightballs.

[00:12:58]I love that name. And the Dilbert character. If you don't know Dilbert, he was a character the Navy came up with to help train u air crews about what not to do. Um there was also a live version as well as a cartoon version of Dearborn.

[00:13:13]>> And you can see why photo. It is such a cool photo. I mean >> badass.

[00:13:19]>> Find a better one.

[00:13:20]>> Well, it's funny, Woody. The uh personal effects uh list shows he had a number of photographs that were sent home to his family. So I think this is one that probably was he had somebody take of him and then it went home um uh with his stuff because it's not in his personal file. Um okay. So he was taken to Rabal.

[00:13:43]So here's the infamous Rabbal. We have on the right we have an aerial photograph uh of Rabbal and then a map with the look and then this is the Rabbal town city uh and that's where the prisoners were kept and then this is the photos of the two prison camps. Uh the original one uh set up by the Kempatai was in that dark rectangular building and the image on the left and then because of air raids and things like that they eventually moved uh the prisoners to this tunnel uh called the Tunnel Hill P camp.

[00:14:18]Now this is where things get we um weird. Um, [snorts] so the Japanese Well, I'm going to skip I'm going to send this to you first.

[00:14:33]This is a for those who can see it. If not, you may want to come back later and do what I do sometimes and take a picture of the screen with your phone and look at it. This is actually a transcript of a radio broadcast from Japan in um, April of 1944 with a message from Mayberry. Now it includes references to Florida and things like that. So obviously the Japanese had interrogated him uh and he had developed at least where he was from uh some other items like that. So they this went out in I think it's April 13, 1944. I want you to remember that date.

[00:15:13]Okay. Okay, the next person we're going to talk about because it all comes together is Major Ralph Chile, US Army Air Force Commanding Officer, 405th Bomb Squadron, B25s.

[00:15:25]Uh you could um he's on the right, the squadron logo is on the left, and his him and his crew and his airplane are in the center. Um and he was shot down August 18, 1943. And he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for that action. his plane was on fire leading his squadron in and he refused to break formation to bail out and kept the the uh formation together for a low-level attack. Uh and after the attack, he was then crashed into the sea. They thought he was dead, but he was uh he did escape the aircraft and was captured by the Japanese. Uh, one quick note for those who are fans of mass level bombing in the Pacific. Ralph Chel is the first one to do it. He did at the Battle of Bismar Sea.

[00:16:17]Oh, wrong way.

[00:16:20]So the the Japanese claim that 28 um PS were killed on March 6, 1944. So remember the radio broadcast goes out in April 44, but it's March 4th. We're back was killed by an air an Allied air raid on March 6, 1944 or March 5. I have checked there was a raid by nine B29 uh B24s that day and that the they were killed and then later cremated.

[00:17:09]There is the the Australians investigated this and they believed it, but there are people out there who don't believe it. They believe that. Matter of fact, if you go to Pacific Rex, they'll talk about the Tunnel Hill Massacre.

[00:17:25]They believe that the Japanese used the air raid as a cover for massacring the PS.

[00:17:34]It's It's very absurd. There's a lot of weird information. One one thing I saw said Chel was killed on a ship going to Japan, but how do you end up with his his ashes? The Japanese are going to pull him out of a bowl harbor. So, um it's it's very mixed up at this point.

[00:17:51]This is a letter um that talks about the disposition of these ashes. There were Americans and Australians and the Americans and Australians agreed to split the ashes.

[00:18:07]The US was going to take three quarters of them because there were more Americans. There's 21 Americans and four uh 22 Americans and four Australians.

[00:18:17]And the the Australians are going to take a quarter of the ashes and then just claim them as their people.

[00:18:24]I've never seen this before. I hope I never see it again.

[00:18:28]>> It's [clears throat] I How do you have that conversation about splitting up ashes when you have no clue where they are? And then in another burial we'll talk about later, Australians are buried there because they can't separate them out. So it's I don't know why that decision was made.

[00:18:46]Um so both Mayberry and Chel were killed on that day is the information that I have.

[00:18:54]There is some information that's roaming around that says that Mayberry was killed earlier. The date on his headstone is actually the date he was shot down, not the date he was killed.

[00:19:06]Um, so it's very confused. Um, I think that's the day he shot anyway.

[00:19:12]It's the whole situation's very confused. The the military records don't always match what's on the stone and I can't figure out why. So it it gets and then this whole thing about splitting up the the ashes I just find >> strange. I I guess the only way I could feel about it.

[00:19:30]>> I guess they had to find a solution and and you know you're you're wearing your archavist uh sweatshirt today and this reminds us just because >> just because a a document says something or a gravestone gives a date doesn't definitively mean that it is that date.

[00:19:44]there will always or there are always the potential of different versions of the same story especially in a complicated situation like this when that when there's you know different languages and location and potential atrocities there so yeah >> um the first bit of paper you find doesn't necessarily mean it's the definitive answer >> right and I will and I as an archavist that's what I do folks 30 plus years of doing it I I agree with that there's always contradiction but I always feel you have to go back to the original records because somehow that information does come together because if you just go by hearsay then things kind of get that's where I think a lot of this gets weirded out. I'm rather disappointed. I read the entire uh Australian investigation at Rabal and I think they they were too eager to believe the Japanese and for those who are wondering why the Australians are doing it that was Australian territory before the war.

[00:20:38]Uh so they were in charge of doing the investigations afterwards and this group was very much believing everything the Japanese were saying. Matter of fact, they went as far as saying that the PS were um treated according to uh the um norms of law which I'm doubt but we'll we'll let it go. Okay. Wh So I want to talk here for a minute. The Chelly here shows Chell's um Medal of Honor stone. It is in very poor condition. I have reached out to some people say, "Hey, this needs to be fixed." Each Medal of Honor winner gets a stone. Now, other people who have other medals like a group burial, they're their uh that is not recognized.

[00:21:24]We'll talk about that. But Medal of Honor winners get a separate stone placed below. So, there's two other Medal of Honor winners and group burials at Jefferson Barracks. And basically, it's just the uh the metal uh usually done in gold paint, but again, this one's in pretty uh poor shape.

[00:21:43]Now, we're going to the Philippines and Paloan.

[00:21:50]These are the marker for 123 men that were, for lack of a better word, murdered uh by the Japanese while they were on a prison camp on Paloan Island.

[00:22:03]It's one of the islands in the Philippines ch archipelago. They were actually um the prison camp was located at Porto Princa, which is the capital of that particular province of uh thing.

[00:22:17]Matter of fact, it was an old it was in an old Philippine castabularary barracks that they were using.

[00:22:25]So, this is my new favorite uh guy. Um PFC William Skidmore, United States Marine Corps.

[00:22:35]Um he joined the Marine Corps in 1934, had three enlistments. You notice he's little PFC. You know why? His record, as my dad would call it, full of pig tracks. This guy was drinking, brawling, awol, but he he got he was I saw a record that said that he had uh excellent character, but he should not be recommended for a good conduct metal, which basically if any of you have seen the movie uh Heartbreak Ridge, he's like this. He's graded you a case of war break glass.

[00:23:14]otherwise get the heck out of the way.

[00:23:16]>> Um, but he had been in he had done sea service on a battleship. He had been in China in the 30s and then went on to join u the first separate marine battalion on Kaviti in 1941 and then they moved he was fought in Batan, moved to u Gador uh wounded by a Japanese shell um April 20, 1942 then taken prisoner when everybody else was taken prisoner and then moved to Palawan.

[00:23:47]The photo down here in the lower corner that's Fort Mills barracks. I couldn't find a better representation. Uh, and that's his last enlistment photo there up in the upper right.

[00:23:58]This is unique. I didn't expect to find this. This is Skidmore's Japanese P card. Um, which, um, I like I don't know whether he filled out the English or whether a Japanese who knew English filled it out. Um, but that is his official card. I was not expecting to find that. I did not find that for anybody else who was a uh prisoner of the Japanese and I'm not sure how many of them are floating around.

[00:24:28]Now we're going to talk about Peterman um second class Wilbur Blackburn, United States Navy.

[00:24:35]Um Blackburn joined uh the Navy in 1939.

[00:24:43]He prior he previously served on a submarine the S38 before joining the USS Kenopus uh submarine tenor inhabiti.

[00:24:56]Uh the Kenopus uh moved from Kaviti down to uh Maraveis in u on Christmas Day 1941.

[00:25:04]The ship was damaged twice uh 29th and things. So they were starting to take because the ship was damaged and even though they were still doing work and helping out, they were starting to pull troops uh sailors off to go to other things and he was sent to the fourth marine regiment um um at Fort Mills on things. So he may or may not have known Skidmore when they were at uh on the island on the rock.

[00:25:31]He was taken prisoner May 6 uh and then also taken to uh Palawan. And that's the Canopus up there.

[00:25:41]This photo shows the uh Paloan camp.

[00:25:44]That's a building. I'm I'm using my mouse so you can't see it. Sorry. Um it's in the middle of the photograph, sort of like that U-shaped uh structure.

[00:25:51]And that is the Paloan camp. If you actually zoom in, you uh this was taken after the war. So you can actually see prisoner of war camp or PW camp written on the roof um uh to acknowledge it.

[00:26:06]Now this is now [snorts] we get into the bad stuff.

[00:26:10]This is a map or drawing depicting what happened on December the 14th, 1944.

[00:26:19]as what I've read from the reports and there's several out there and Woody has some links that he's posting the the Japanese at Palawan saw the American uh invasion force going to Muro Island which is nearby and they I guess decided that the for having the prisoners if the Americans invaded Palawan they didn't want to have prisoners around because there were a number of escapes from this camp and there was a very active gorilla group on Palawan. So I guess they were afraid that the Americans would become sort of like combatants again and would do something because there were more more of them than there were the Japanese.

[00:27:04]So, it is unclear whether there were aircraft in the air or whether the Japanese just sounded an aircraft um and aircraft warning alarm which the prisoners were to go to these various um shelters.

[00:27:24]But whatever it is the Japanese plan is because as soon as they're in the shelters, they douse the shelters with gasoline and then threw torches on them and then had Japanese set up with machine guns and rifles to cover the entrances to start shooting anybody that tried to escape.

[00:27:42]There were a number of people who did escape down across this bottom area along the bottom part is actually a cliff area going down to a beach.

[00:27:51]The Japanese saw this and then actually hunted these people down, killed most of the ones that escaped, took them back to the camp, put them back on the now burnt uh shelters, poured gasoline on them, and burnt them as well.

[00:28:12]only nine people out of the 150 or uh that were in the camp um escaped.

[00:28:22]uh they were the ones that eventually the um gorillas got them to in touch with uh MacArthur's forces and it is believed that this massacre is what triggered the push to uh to do the rescue on Cabanotuan when they were on got to Luzon >> because they figured that if they're doing this here you know and Cabanatuan was bigger uh bigger camp So they were worried that this was going to be repeated uh different places.

[00:28:58]So this is um Blackburn's uh data of remains not yet identified or a thing.

[00:29:06]So cause of death that is not scientific but it's damn accurate atrocity.

[00:29:17]I couldn't think of a better way to place it.

[00:29:20]Um, I have seen the photos of them recovering the bodies. I will not show them here. Uh, it is not nice. Uh, and I feel for those poor grace registration guys that had to pull these poor uh, remains out of these um, shelters.

[00:29:39]So, you can see here at the bottom there, I blew it up a little bit. Is u, the description. This one says there was two P38 aircraft. And then they do talk about what they did. Um there were uh the head of the camp I think was arrested after the war and or picked up not too long after they took it into Pawan and he was um tried. I believe he was uh executed. I don't know. Again, this is all very high level. There's more out there and this would definitely be a whole show uh to cover this.

[00:30:13]>> Yeah, I just put it in the sidebar. He was tried and he was hanged in 1946. It was in the Philippines the trial. So yeah, Yamashita General >> Yeah.

[00:30:22]>> Yeah. So here is this is afterwards.

[00:30:25]This is one of the um uh the air raid trenches, the photo on the left, but that's afterwards. And the sign on the right is where they were temporarily buried. And I I really stood out by the fact that no one is supposed to bother this place. That was very clearly. You notice that bottom part of that sign says don't. This is not a tourist attraction. Just keep away.

[00:30:50]And then um despite all of this, Blackburn's family could not come to terms with the fact that they could not have him back. And they said, "I've seen the photos. There is no way in Hades in 1945 that they're going to tell all these people apart.

[00:31:09]I'm just grateful that they actually had names to work with because there's no way.

[00:31:14]But his family wanted him buried home in New Jersey.

[00:31:18]And they went as far as having one of their family members write to President Truman in 1951, December 51, explaining the situation, asking him to intervene and have to have the military return their thing.

[00:31:35]The response letter, as you can see, and I highlighted a section on the right, basically said that we can't do it.

[00:31:43]And this is not the only one I've seen where people had real difficulty. There were his his parents wrote there were like I could have filled up a whole screen of slides with his poor family wanting him home >> and he couldn't. Matter of fact, the and that burial didn't occur till 1952.

[00:32:04]Uh, so it's been dragging out. Matter of fact, the last letter in his file is a letter indicating that they sent a photograph of the headstone to his family in 1954.

[00:32:15]So 10 years after almost 10 years after he died, this whole process is still kind of like an open wound. Um, that's here.

[00:32:26]Very sad situation.

[00:32:27]>> Yeah, agreed.

[00:32:31]This um I found this at the 11th hour.

[00:32:34]Um this is very unique.

[00:32:38]The US military buried 123 caskets.

[00:32:47]They're lined up there at Jefferson barracks.

[00:32:50]Now, I don't know whether or not each one of them contained a certain amount of ashes, but there were 123 caskets. And I checked I did a Google map uh satellite look and there is a whole lot of very large part of green space in front of that stone that I didn't notice walking the ground where probably they were able to do this probably doing double to triple stack on some of the caskets at least double you could have fit 123 caskets in there.

[00:33:21]This is the only one for any of these group burials I've seen where they did this. And I think because of what happened and why it happened, that's why they elected to do this.

[00:33:30]>> Yeah, makes sense. Especially if there have been family members, as you say, they're persevering to get an individual grave bat. This was the the best they could do to to sort of to sort of accommodate that request without actually without actually doing it.

[00:33:47]>> Yeah. Well, the families were all notified of when the burials were going to take place and they were welcome, matter of fact, encouraged to attend if they could. The government didn't pay for that. The government paid for the repatriation of the family member, but not if they were uh they were invited to go. The services military undergard was brought over from uh Scott Air Force Base, which is nearby. Uh and there would have been a joint service uh thing. We'll see that in one of the other ones later on. So, uh, it was done to the best of the government's ability, uh, to do that. I just never seen this level, and I don't think you'll ever see it again where you're having this many individual caskets, um, set up for basically a group um, burial like this.

[00:34:34]So, all right, moving on. So this stone is unique in the cemetery or mostly I think there might be one other the family members of the victims petitioned and got permission to place a bronze plaque at the base of the stone talk explaining what happened why they why these 123 people are here. Uh and they're the only one that has that. Um and that's a relatively new addition.

[00:35:05]And I think it's only been maybe in the last 20 25 years or something like that that that uh that flag has been um been in place.

[00:35:16]All right. Now, we're going to move on to uh Oh, I'm losing my mind here. Uh sorry, I'm having a having a bad day right now.

[00:35:28]Oh, the first B29 crew. Sorry, folks. H I think I need a drink. Um, no worries.

[00:35:36]It's bit early for you to have a drink.

[00:35:37]I could have a drink. It's [laughter] It's It's coming up at six o'clock here, but it's too early for you.

[00:35:41]>> It's five. It's five o'clock somewhere, mate. It's five o'clock somewhere, >> I suppose. So, if we average out our time zones, I suppose it's okay. Yeah.

[00:35:49]>> Yeah. Anyway, so sorry folks, I momentary brain fart. Uh, so this is the first B29 crew um shot down over Japan.

[00:35:58]And you notice at the bottom of the left column, we have a civilian, William T.

[00:36:05]Trinkle, and we'll talk about him here in just a moment.

[00:36:11]So the crew is uh B29 serial number 426230 Lmber Dugan uh from the 70 792nd bomb squadron 40 468 bomb group.

[00:36:30]Anyways, this is my u so they're front of the B29. This is the only photograph I was able to find of the crew. And then this is the uh the group uh logo here.

[00:36:41]But uh the civilian was a uh correspondent for Newsweek and he wanted to go on that raid. Matter of fact, there were several uh correspondents that went on the raid because it was the first raid from China to Japan, Operation Matterhorn, which uh and then his death was reported through Japanese radio, then to Berlin radio, then picked up by the US. And a lot of times that happened. A lot of stuff would go, the Japanese would broadcast it, the Germans would rebroadcast it, and the Americans would pick it up that way because we had trouble apparently picking up uh Japanese radio uh from the US short wave.

[00:37:29]All right, so we have two maps here. one on the left showing the operational range of a B29 from various bases. So the China bases are here, central China.

[00:37:39]So they barely just cover uh Hyushu and and then here on the right is the targets from China. again, Hyushu and in particular um Yamata, which we'll talk about here in a minute, uh was the site or the target for the first raid. And then this is a photograph taken at a later raid over uh Yamata. It was referred to as the Pittsburgh of Japan.

[00:38:09]It was a steel making center. Uh so they wanted to take out the steel industry.

[00:38:14]Now, this looks like it's a daylight raid. I believe the 16th raid was a night raid um because it's listed as uh being shut down sometimes either 15th or 16th of uh June.

[00:38:29]Now here in the center is a photograph of the crash site I believe taken after the war.

[00:38:38]On the upper left is a map drawing by the Japanese kind of showing what the crash site looked like right after the crash. Now, according to the information that I've seen, the plane was shot down going leaving the target, but here there's depictions of bombs being there, but I think it might be like oxygen cylinders or something like that. The Japanese are misidentifying. I don't know. And on the right is a marker uh where the Japanese took the crew and buried them uh initially.

[00:39:19]And here is the article from the St. Louis Post Dispatch about the um the burial. Um they would have all they were all placed in one casket uh together.

[00:39:31]Um, I'm assuming the I'm not sure if the Japanese cremated the range they found or how that all worked, but they uh they were buried in a single casket with an honor guard from Scott Air Force Base.

[00:39:49]All right, the next one we're going to talk about is um Fukua uh Fukua P camp number one in Japan in Kyushu. Um this is the one that has the 100 allied PS.

[00:40:07]Um there are 71 Americans, 18 British, 10 uh from the Netherlands, and three Australians.

[00:40:18]And I'm going to talk about somebody from the Netherlands. We don't talk about the Netherlands, I think, enough in the Pacific. Um, and this uh gentleman I was able through the Netherlands Warg Graves um foundation, they had these photos and information on him. Uh, Sergeant Hermanis, no use. Um, Gunner was helping me and I think I may have just made Gunnar cringe. So if Gunner's cringing in the sidebar, I'm sorry, Gunnar. Um, so he was a pharmacist and captured on March 9, 1942 when Java fell. From the information I have, he joined in 42. So I think he might have been conscripted into the military once uh the Japanese were on the move. He was transferred to Japan. I nailed it, Scott. Thank you. um nailed in Japan in early uh in early October 1943 and arrived in Fukua on October 12, 1943.

[00:41:18]And this must be his wife here. Um um I think so.

[00:41:24]So map on the left shows Kyushu and Panchu just in case for those who are not familiar. And then on the right, Fukua is over here. Uh this is the whole province. And then just for reference for the bomb group, that's Yataba over here. What makes things very confusing is that Fukua becomes a name for every P camp on Kyushu and there's like 30 of them because they would break people up into small groups to work at various groups. So there would be a P camp at Yatama working in the steel mills, uh working on various things. There's a whole list I posted with, uh Woody.

[00:42:03]There's actually people in Japan really researching the P camps, yellow P camps in Japan. And matter of fact, the photos from the B29 came from a Japanese group researching B29 crash sites um in uh Japan.

[00:42:21]And we're going to talk about the next we're going to talk about is Commander George Brooks, United States Navy.

[00:42:27]and he was the uh uh naval academy class in 1921.

[00:42:34]And at the time uh just part of in 1940 he took over command of the USS Wan a u patrol boat on the um in China.

[00:42:45]He then with the other group sailed that boat on the lower right hand corner from Shanghai to Manila open ocean. um uh left in November uh 20, 1941 and arrived in Manila December 4, 1941 because Admiral Hart knew something was in the wind and he evacuated everything he could out of China uh before the war started. So he was uh he was he was tuned in.

[00:43:16]Um Commander Brookke won the Navy Cross for his actions as command as CEO of the Luzon Um you can see the information there. LZ was scuttled in 40 uh May 642.

[00:43:30]He did survive two hell ships and there's a ship sunk in Menila Bay and then he the other ship was anchored in Formosa.

[00:43:44]Excuse me a second. My dog is deciding to try to eat bags. um Formosa and then that ship was hit by uh US aircraft and then they had to transfer to another ship. So uh he had quite the journey to get there and um what I uh I need to back up real quick.

[00:44:06]I missed something. So the um Mr. Hermanis died in December 16th, 1944 from pneumonia and Commander Brookke died in February 28, 1945 from dabbility as this listed. But basically he they got worked to death. These guys were working apparently in um some sort of mine uh there in Kyushu and basically for the most part were worked themselves worked to death by the Japanese.

[00:44:38]And then this is an article talking about the burial um of the tomb when they were done. They were all cremated.

[00:44:45]The cremated remains were turned over to uh the US because US had occupied Japan.

[00:44:52]And [clears throat] in this case, rather than splitting stuff up, the uh decision was made to do a um a group burial in a Jefferson barracks. This burial is recorded with the Commonwealth War Graves Commission as are several other burials at Jefferson Barracks and they're also recorded by the Dutch. So that information is all the governments know where the stuff is. And matter of fact, the Australians noted as well because this photograph uh I got from the Australian War Memorial um showing the burial in a single casket um lots of flowers but single casket burial for those 100 men because it came in one apparently large urn or box. Um, and every Memorial Day the that stone is is decorated with the flags from each uh country, the people that are there.

[00:45:46]That's what no I noticed the first time.

[00:45:48]It's also right at the far end of the section. So, it's right very easy to see. So, I took this photo a couple years ago.

[00:45:58]And next we're going to talk about the the crew of the USSel DD219, a Clemson class destroyer um part of the uh Asiatic fleet.

[00:46:13]And uh what hell of a story it is. So we're going to uh talk about motor machinist made third class Larry Van Diver. Unfortunately, the photo on the right is the best photo I could ever find of him. Uh I think it was taken from a high school uh photo book, but the Zel's down there. He joined uh the Navy in 19 September 1940.

[00:46:38]You're going to love this. His first ship was the USS Arizona.

[00:46:43]And then he transferred from the Arizona to uh September 1941 to the Zel Echi uh Navy base.

[00:46:54]and um Betszo was uh sunk March 1st 1942 in the Indian Ocean.

[00:47:01]Uh Van Diver and 10 others from his ship's company was picked up by the Japanese and brought to Sterling Bay SE Island. But now we're going to talk a little bit more about the the last uh engagement of the Zel because I think it's an important story and amazing.

[00:47:21]So the Zel was about 200 miles south of Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean.

[00:47:29]They had just recently um met up with the USS POS which was a a tanker.

[00:47:37]Uh they were part of a group that was trying to take uh aircraft and pilots and ground crew to Java. At that point a lost cause, but that was their orders.

[00:47:50]They ran into the keto batai. Um, and actually Nugumo apparently was quite mad because he they originally thought this was a cruiser, but it wasn't.

[00:48:03]So he sent two uh two battleships, the Hei and the Kushima, and two heavy cruisers in Tony and Chikmo to get the Ethel.

[00:48:14]Well, uh, this is a bit of, uh, not quite David beating Goliath, but pretty damn close.

[00:48:23]So, you can see here the SOS has four 4-in guns, one 3-in gun, 12 torpedo, two, only nine torpedoes. And, uh, week or two prior, they had been attacking a Japanese submarine, and one of the depth charges prematurely exploded underneath the ship and damaged one of the props.

[00:48:41]So they uh were not able to make their full speed and maneuverability.

[00:48:48]The ship was under command of Lieutenant Joshua Nick's um Academy class 1930.

[00:48:55]This man should have a statue with him as big as anybody's.

[00:49:00]>> But it doesn't. And the reason why none of this is known is because the only people that recorded were the Japanese.

[00:49:08]So I want you to remember this.

[00:49:09]Everything I tell you that's going to happen now is all from Japanese records.

[00:49:14]So, and it's amazing that they record the real stuff.

[00:49:20]So they engaged the exile for an hour and a half and you could see by the side they fired over,300 shells at the ship, sent 26 val dive bombers each with the 550lb bomb to sink one destroyer.

[00:49:44]Nicks during the engagement apparently did everything with that destroyer except put it on its bow and spin it around. He set up smoke screens, off smoke screens, stop, start, flick it around. The Japanese called him, they nicknamed the dancing mouse, which was a a pet that were these kind of does these totally bizarre maneuvers because they couldn't hit it. They hit it once. They they so they fired about 1,200 rounds. They finally said enough of that. Uh Nagumo requested aircraft to come in to hit the util. It took 26 of them to disable the ship. Just disable the ship.

[00:50:28]And before the ship shut down, Nyx pointed the bow of the Yetel towards the Japanese, sort of like the uh naval equivalent of the finger.

[00:50:38]then evacuated his crew and according to Japanese witnesses then stayed aboard ship and went to the bridge. So he was on the bridge of the ship when it went down.

[00:50:53]They then fired another hund some odd rounds before they finally hit the ship.

[00:50:58]And what I'm going to show you next is the still photo of the one of the last hits. This is part of a film. I did not chose to show the film. It's about a minute and a half long. It's Japanese propaganda film. Take it from one of the ships uh probably a ton believe uh uh showing the being hit.

[00:51:19]But it's nuts.

[00:51:22]It's insane. I mean, it's I don't know. That's the only way I can describe it.

[00:51:29]Now, unfortunately, Van Diver and the 10 men that I talked about were picked up.

[00:51:35]The rest of the crew were left. Now, reportedly the um Japanese said there were some submarines in the air, right? Um they just chose to to leave them there and they were never picked up. They were never seen again and as far as I know, they died at sea and that was it.

[00:51:57]They um they shook them up, picked them uh crew up. This is a picture of her and then sailed back to Celibese where they um turned him over to the Japanese uh naval police on the island. So this down here on the left is the approximate uh location of the util. The util has been found. The Australians uh found the ship uh I think about maybe was close to 20 years ago. Uh because it's a war grave, the location is secret. Uh and then this uh one on the right is uh the syllabies. Uh number one shows the port where they were unloaded and uh uh turned over the uh the naval police and then two is uh Kendai airfield number two where the story tragically ends.

[00:52:54]So this is from the historic war memorial. This is kind of an aerial photograph of the airfield. Uh buildings here, things are uh just kind of a general just give you a tone.

[00:53:04]So um after the war, um during the investigations uh and reports, somebody came forward and said that they had seen prisoners executed at Kendai Airfield number two. and he took him to the site and they dug and they found a grave of five or 10 Americans, five of which had dog tags, one of which was Larry Van Diver and five did not.

[00:53:41]They also found another grave who had a dog tag of a six uh crew member. All have been beheaded.

[00:53:50]the the ones without the dog tag. There is strong supposition that they are Army Air Force personnel that was aboard the Zel. Um the Zel earlier been um escorting the USS Langley which was bringing airore personnel and some planes. The Langley got hit before she went down. They uh evacuated people amongst the ships over there. Zel took some crew. So they think it might be them because somehow during the transfer they may have lost their dog tags or whatever.

[00:54:23]But you can see here uh by beheading and that's the story. Um and it's a sad one uh and a heroic story that I wish more people knew about but they don't.

[00:54:37]>> All right. All right. So we're um and then this the next one here is our uh do.

[00:54:50]>> Oh, sorry. I'm losing my lost my place here, folks.

[00:54:54]>> Don't worry. It's amazing stuff.

[00:54:55]>> Lost lost. Yeah. Sorry about this, folks. Um had this all organized earlier, but my my puppy over here is giving me annoying me. Sort of like your cat, Woody, but my >> Yeah, that's what I do. Blame it on Blame it on the animals. That's what I do. Blame it on the animals that when Maggie comes in and there's problems, blame it on the animals. Yeah. Perfect.

[00:55:14]>> Yeah. So anyway, all right. So, uh, so, uh, comic relief over, moving on. Uh, so here is Los Negros. And Lost Negros, I included this because I stumbled across this file when I was starting to work at this project.

[00:55:30]And this is a very sad story for the family, any family. And we're going to talk we're going to talk about uh tech 5 basil bureak US army um part of the 302nd calvary reconnaissance troop first calvary division he was killed in action March 17 1944 on loene negros islands island uh he was temporarily buried at a cemetery on los negros now during combat conditions so we'll get this out and what I'm going to show next is the map just kind of showing where Los Negros. This is Los Negros and this is Manis uh islands that the first cal was uh working on.

[00:56:15]Now this is um Tech 5's Burk's original report of interment and if you see it is very detailed. Matter of fact, it even has a required who's buried to the right and who's buried to the left of the grave to help double up the identification.

[00:56:36]So, you know, yeah, that's correct. Is this person here's person there? Uh, dog tags are supposed to be left. All those kind of things. So, the paperwork looked great.

[00:56:46]However, it wasn't. So in um the next year, 19 January 1945, a group uh small group of grace registration folks were taking the bodies out of Los Negros and moving to another site. And then when they moved them, they realized that the information was wrong.

[00:57:10]It was a whole mess. They couldn't identify all the people. The paperwork didn't match up. all sorts of stuff were going on. So, this is part of that report. This is page uh the upper part of the page and this down here is the lower part. But basically here in the upper part they're saying it was under combat conditions. Matter of fact, some people were killed burying the dead, killed or wounded burying the dead.

[00:57:35]So they were trying to not blame the people that were doing the original burial, even though I guess you could some blame, but again, combat conditions, people shooting at you, you might screw up.

[00:57:49]Long story short, they couldn't tell all these people apart. They were eventually able, they brought in a um a forensics uh person from the time trying to find out. They were eventually able to break it down, but they could not get down to this last group of people that involved and they included Mr. Barack.

[00:58:09]And so, and then there were some that were even unknowns now because they couldn't even uh guarantee that they had the right information at all.

[00:58:18]I included this letter. This was sent to the family.

[00:58:22]Uh, and I really the highlighted paragraph I really think shows [snorts] that the people doing this knew this stunk [snorts] >> that you couldn't have your person home.

[00:58:36]They knew it was bad, but it was the best situation that they could do for the amount of casualties and the amount of people that they couldn't be properly identified. You know, what do you do?

[00:58:49]And you don't want to, I guess there's a lot of concern about even today, you don't want to send someone the wrong body or the wrong body parts or the wrong body pieces. And that's part of the reason why today they go through all this effort to try to find stuff even though they're 90% sure they have it.

[00:59:08]Um, a classic example is also connected to um, uh, Jefferson Barracks, the Vietnam veteran, um, the unknown from Vietnam.

[00:59:20]Blasty, they were over what, close to 70% sure it was Blasty and they still buried him as an unknown until the family said, "No, you're >> there's enough evidence here. Go back and recheck." And they did and they moved him out. He's not buried too far from either any of these folks I'm talking about today.

[00:59:42]But this shows that the government, the people working the government knew this stuff. And I really think it mean I think hopefully it meant something to the family that these people realized that I'm sorry you can't have your family member home. We know it stinks, but um this is the best we could do.

[01:00:00]>> Yeah.

[01:00:02]>> All right. So, we're moving on to what everybody's been waiting for. Um, all the uh all the bandit brothers fans uh for first lieutenant Thomas Mian US Army CEO Easy Company 506 PI P.

[01:00:18]So according to the uh records left from my pottery uh June 5, 1944 board C47A 429395 uh from the 91st troop carrier squadron and crash near help me uh what he >> Bville.

[01:00:40]>> Thank you Bersville. Thank you. Uh, and by the way, the I don't know if you've ever seen this, Woody. The uh logo at the bottom is the or I guess the original 506 logo.

[01:00:53]>> Yeah. The one on the monument is the postwar version. Uh because it Yeah.

[01:00:58]>> I like the original one.

[01:01:01]>> Yeah. Yeah. I liked it with the dice. I like that.

[01:01:04]>> Yeah. Um, so, uh, because my friends in the sidebar were yelling me if I did put a C-47 in the slide presentation, but I didn't have a photo of the C-47 to crash. I got one that was a D-Day. Uh, so here you go. U D-Day veteran C47. Um, would have been identical aircraft.

[01:01:26]So, uh, the arrow is approximately the crash site. Um, I love this map. It's a little busy, but I I still like it. Um, that's where that it's not too far from St. Margle, uh, which I think I pronounced a little bit better. Um, and the there is a rumor, and Woody confirmed this for me, that one of the 506 guys reportedly said they took a picture of what they thought was man's aircraft, but it turned out to be something else because there's a lot of confusion about that uh, crash boat of a C-47 that's burned out. I've seen several of them. I will happily tell the real story if you want me to, Scott, at any point. Just just nudge me.

[01:02:04]>> Go for it.

[01:02:05]>> Well, so it's um if you go to there's a slide of um you've got late on of Forest Goth standing by the monument. And so Forest Goth um who had landed up near Marmon farm which is much nearer the coast on that photo uh along with Tab Talba and others. On the 7th of June, he is moving back towards well trying to get find find the rest of his guys and he ends up going down the the track past the field where this aircraft was burning and he had a camera with him and he looked at the crash site uh and it was still hot. He couldn't get very very close to it and he thought about taking a photo but he didn't because you know film was expensive and and he felt it was a bit macab to take a photo of a of an air of a crashed aircraft. I mean it wasn't even an aircraft left. It was just you know d ashes and bits and pieces of stuff.

[01:02:56]Then later on when he gets near a san he went past another crashed aircraft which was a 50irst one. And at that one having not taken a photo at the one that turned out to be carrying his own co. He did decide to take a photo. And so the photo you see purporting to be a photo of Mian's aircraft is a photo taken by Forest Goth of the second aircraft he went past on the on the 7th of June. So that's it's actually quite an easy explanation to the story really. But um he of course later on felt very bad that he hadn't taken a photo at the first one because he was standing in a field where men he knew uh had perished. So but but he didn't. Uh and there is there is no photo of the Mian crash despite what the internet says.

[01:03:43]>> Yes.

[01:03:45]So um these uh so on the uh left thanks to uh Jared Ferdick the real from real history. He was very kind. He let me use this photo which is one of man's dog tags. So I don't know why that dog tag got separated from me but it did. Um is at the that's at the Dead Man's Corner Museum I believe. uh if I remember correctly.

[01:04:07]>> And then what I really liked about the photo, the reason why included not was Mian, but the crucifix behind it because Mian was Catholic.

[01:04:14]>> So there's a possibility that the crucifix was me. Can't confirm it. I don't know about the ring, but >> the ring the ring has an apparent uh it could be a TM scratched inside it. So there is it could also be an F. uh and that the M could easily could also be an N, but there's a possibility that it is it is the a ring he had, but his widow wasn't able to confirm that it was or wasn't uh uh so the jury's out on that one.

[01:04:46]>> Yeah, I'm still trying to figure out the dog tag, but that happens. And then uh our lovely host was kind enough to share some of his collection from the site because apparently that site is quite rich in um artifacts. Um, and then he >> and I didn't dig them myself. I was given them by uh a member of the crash recovery team. They had a whole box of stuff that wasn't good enough. So, I didn't I didn't do any digging now. I would feel very weird about digging at a site where people die, but it was the official French um aviation recovery crash uh in about 30 years ago now, and they gave me some spares. So, those shell the the rounds and the bits of metal are from that crash site.

[01:05:26]So, and then uh he would uh Woody was also kind enough to share these two photos with me and I would like Woody if you would kind of give some more background. You talked about Forest Goth being there, but definitely the photo on the right.

[01:05:36]>> Yeah. So, that's forest on uh on the left there with the with the monument that sits in the actual village opposite the church. So, it's it's a few hundred yards away from where the aircraft actually came down, but it's in a convenient place for people to stop and look at. And there's now an information panel beside it, which is which is very nice. And then the other photo is of El Mlung and Don Malarkey who I took to the field where it happened uh god a few years ago now. Um uh I've been there with um Mike Ry's daughter and Ry should have been on that aircraft but the last minute Winters thought there were too many people cuz Winters although he was the not the the CEO he was actually in charge of the loading the loading of the aircraft because it's like the exo's job sort of thing >> and he said no Ry there's too many on that aircraft and he put Ry on another aircraft uh um and and Burr Smith's daughter Susan she said her father was supposed to be on that aircraft as Well, so I've taken two daughters of veterans whose fathers should have been on the aircraft who weren't on the aircraft. Um there um and yeah, so it's it's somewhere the veterans always wanted to go and some where the family members always wanted to go. And at the right time of year, which in fact was the time of year when when when Don and Earl were there, the crops grow a little bit lower where the aircraft sat because all that aviation fuel and rubbish and phosphorus and stuff seeped into the ground and uh it just doesn't grow as well uh in that patch. So, at the right time of year, you can see exactly where the um where the aircraft came down. And the the best the best um understanding of what happened to it is it was hit coming over Santa Mar Glee. So it was it was flying west to east and it was hit possibly by the same 20 mm anti-aircraft gun that is the one depicted in the show that Winters sees as he's as he's landing. Um and what happened is it seems to ignite uh there were Bangalore torpedoes inside the aircraft because it was including because it was the company uh headquarters element uh and Bangalore torpedoes and possibly um Hawkins mines and and quite probably phosphorus uh uh grenades as well and something ignited inside the aircraft and the by all accounts the explosion was instantaneous and just ripped down the inside of the aircraft. It then went into a a sort of a shallow descent and some of the the aircraft side by side saw it go down almost looking like it was going to land but it obviously the the the everybody in the back were dead at this point. The pilot may or may not have been uh alive still and Capaltto the pilot um is buried in the Normandy cemetery because he was thrown out by the uh the impact of the crash and his body was recovered and I think possibly the co-pilot was recovered as well.

[01:08:26]um and they are buried at normally so that's what happened and uh yeah it's one of the privileges of my career is being able to stand in that field with people who have a a connection to I've taken men from other units and people other units to other air crashes but that one sort of became a famous one and um and yeah and and Meian's letter of course is that which I know you put the we put the link to in the description uh a letter he wrote home uh to his wife Um, so yeah, that's um that's that's my that's my input there.

[01:09:01]>> Well, thank you Woody. That was very very helpful. Yeah, because it's the only thing I saw with the crash thing.

[01:09:05]They talked about it going to the right and possibly landing the the uh unfortunately man's uh personal file was lost in the fire. Uh I did check there.

[01:09:17]All we came up with was the stuff related to his internment, which is a quartermaster file separate from his personnel file. So, that was lost. Uh because I know considering the Vander brothers, somebody would have dug that thing out. If it did exist, it would have been all over the place, but it was and I just double checked um on that.

[01:09:37]But so, uh that's kind of my presentation, folks. Um uh I'm hoping there's might be one or two questions. If there's not, that's fine. Sometimes I have a tendency to uh uh to instill um silence in and crowds when I talk. Uh but uh I'm hope you enjoy. This is just an overview. There's so many more stories, but I want you to think about when you go to the cemeteries, the stories are there. It's just not cold stone. I think we um we need to think about that when we go to any of these military uh cemeteries, the stories that are behind what's there.

[01:10:16]Yeah, I think that's a very good point, Scott. And I think I always often say to people the graves may look similar to each other, but the stories behind them are as different as as you know, you that that's the thing. You know, one person is a you know, even at the cemeteries here, normally one person is a crash pilot, the next person is an infantryman. And the fact that you've shed light on these these these group burials is particularly interesting because I you know I I knew that man had was interred there but I had never realized until you explained uh that this was the place where the majority of the group burials went and how how different that process is to the burials of individuals and how they you know as the with the separating of the ashes and and then the Dutch guy ending up being an American you know a decisions had to be made that aren't necessarily the perfect ones, but they have to be made.

[01:11:06]>> Yeah. Well, like I said, well, there's uh I didn't mention that there are uh Indian troops buried here. Uh uh within HS, they were also on uh Kyushu, but another of the Fuko camps. Uh but they died and they were buried here because they couldn't separate out the ashes, I guess, is the situation I run into. Uh, the Australian one's very interesting because apparently it doesn't seem like the Commonwealth War Graves Commission was involved in that decision at all because I don't think they would have allowed that because they had communal graves here that were communal and there is American personnel buried at the Commonwealth War Grave Cemetery in um, Japan. I think it's Yokohama um that it is that. And there's Americans there because they couldn't disinterior the pull apart the uh the the burial. So they are buried there.

[01:12:00]There's think there's 12. Uh but yeah, the the Australian one just seems like it was done not officially but done. Uh yeah, it was an amazing experience. Like I I've told you there's a gazillion more stories and I hope this inspires people to go and look at each one of these stories and maybe do another, you know, like Woody said, he's always got plenty of topics, but he doesn't have people to talk about them.

[01:12:28]So, come on, folks. If I could do it, you could do it.

[01:12:31]>> Yeah. Well, the the subject came up in a sidebar, but I've never done anything specifically about the Dutch Navy out in the Pacific or the Indian Ocean. Um, uh, we've we've done shows that have covered in, uh, elements of the naval actions.

[01:12:46]The Dutch were involved. Um Jeffrey Cox is coming on I think next month or maybe June talking about his his his latest book and I know that includes some of the Dutch stories but we've never done anything specifically about the Dutch.

[01:12:58]Um Kevin asked about >> the size of the cemetery. How how many acres or hectares is the cemetery and it's still an active one isn't it?

[01:13:06]>> Sorry. It is still active. Matter of fact, they're going to be expanding. I'm sorry about that. It is currently 331 acres. uh has currently 240,000 graves and tournaments and they are going to be expanding uh to add another 35,000.

[01:13:25]Uh but that is an issue. Well, in the United States, if you are a veteran um with a general discharge and above, you are eligible buried in National Cemetery.

[01:13:41]the VA National Cemetery, not Arlington, which is run by the army. So, and a lot of people are taking this up. Even folks that could technically afford to be buried in their own private thing, are taking it up. So, with the number of veterans coming through, they're having to create new cemeteries all the time.

[01:14:02]The old cemeteries are preferred because they have some history and they were placed in beautiful areas. Now, they're just grabbing land wherever. I know like there's one in Los Angeles that just they took an area and kind of grabbed it's kind of like in a somewhat of like a neighborhood. Uh there's some other ones that are uh developing. So yeah, they're that's been a real struggle. In fact, Arlington just gone through as working on an expansion um uh uh up there and they're going to be adding and they're actually going to be making people cremate. uh they're probably not going to allow any more uh full body interments at uh at Arlington.

[01:14:41]>> Well, I mean, the fact there are no questions, well, everyone's just saying you're you are brilliant. Um I think it's because you covered it with such great detail. So, that's fantastic.

[01:14:48]>> Thank you.

[01:14:49]>> Um definitely deserving of a of a of a part two if you wanted to at some point because there there were clearly lots of other group burials you you could have done but didn't. the well the one that I want to do is the uh uh the PB4Y crew that attacked Japanese island by themselves. Um which got the uh the pilot in command the Medal of Honor. Um there's also uh another Medal of Honor winner who was killed at one of the Pesti raids. Um he's here. The the other one I saw that I'll mention this briefly. I know we want to go is there's one that's very interesting. It included f there were 10 people and five of them were aircadets which means they were on a some sort of training mission that the B must have been a B7 and it crashed. Um so that would be an interesting one and they somebody put flags so somebody knows somebody buried there because they put flags and it's not an obvious area. Um and so yeah there's >> there's bunch of other stories that are out there. I just picked uh I picked kind of the biggest ones just because I thought they would be plus Pawan and the Zel uh thing. I'm I I think I may get a shirt. I'm an Zel fan but not the car but the ship. Uh because that's just amazing. And the fact just one last thing Woody for people to realize the commander who should have won the Medal of Honor cannot receive the Medal of Honor because no American witness the action. Of course, >> they will not pull off the actions of the Japanese. So even though he should, he will not or any other award. They they none of those people at that thing got anything other than Van Dyver and those guys got the Purple Heart.

[01:16:34]Everybody else, that's all they received is a purple heart. That's it.

[01:16:38]>> Wow. Scott, it's been fantastic talking to you. So folks, back again tomorrow.

[01:16:43]Uh thanks for your support. Consider becoming a patron and leave a comment afterwards. That's always good for the for the algorithm. Thank you, Scott.

[01:16:49]Thank you viewers. See you again. This is Paul Ward from World War II TV saying enjoy the rest of your Thursday. Bye everybody.