Preserving POW memories
Descendants of Bataan, Corregidor survivors to meet in Albuquerque
More than 25 years ago, Jan Thompson spent an evening rummaging through a suitcase and found insights into parts of her father she had not known well, the parts shaped by war, hell ships and prisoner of war camps.
Her discoveries that night sparked an intense interest in World War II in the Pacific and POWs that pushed her to make three documentaries, including 2013’s “Never the Same: The Prisoner of War Experience,” and got her involved with the American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor Memorial Society.
Thompson is president of the national organization, which is holding its annual convention in Albuquerque Thursday through Saturday.
Her father, Robert E. Thompson, a Navy veteran of World War II, was captured by the Japanese and suffered terrible ordeals as a prisoner of war, including transport, on Japanese hell ships. But he survived to come home.
“My dad hardly ever talked about it,” said Jan Thompson, a professor of radio, television and digital media at Southern Illinois University. “And when he did, it was only one or two words when I asked a question.”
But one night, at her parents’ home in Naples, Fla., Jan went through a suitcase filled with things that had been collected by her father’s mother.
“My father was an only child and my grandmother kept everything in meticulous order,” Thompson said during a phone interview. “My father was stationed in the Philippines two years before the war started. In the suitcase, there were telegrams from my father, letters from my father before he was captured,” she said. “Then, there were about 40 letters from my grandfather and grandmother to my dad, letters that were never delivered and were returned to them. It was as if my grandmother wanted someone to find them.”
The organization Thompson heads today is the offshoot of a group formed in 1946 by those taken captive on Bataan and Corregidor. But Thompson said that group was disbanded in 2006 as members died off or became too infirm to travel to conventions. The new organization is made up largely of the descendants of those survivors.
“It has been good for the kids,” she said. “There’s always that curiosity because we are cut from the same cloth. Some of our fathers didn’t talk about (their war experiences), some did and some did not come back at all.”
Of the more than 26,000 Americans taken prisoner by the Japanese, Thompson said, nearly 11,000 died in captivity. Her father died in 2012.
“The biggest honor we can give them is to preserve their memory,” Thompson said. On average, between 200 and 250 people attend the conventions, and Thompson hopes a few survivors will be at this week’s convention in Albuquerque.
“They are all in the mid to late 90s,” she said. “When they do show up, we treat them like kings.” Convention highlights include:
■ 10:30 a.m. Thursday: Margaret Garcia of Albuquerque talks about “Tell Me Another War Story,” her book about her father, Evans Garcia, who fought with the New Mexico National Guard’s 200th Coast Artillery in the Philippines and was taken prisoner..
■ 3 p.m. Thursday: Panel discussion with former POWs and family members who traveled to Japan last year as guests of the Japanese government.
■ 1:30 p.m. Friday: Caroline Burkhart presents “27th Bomb Group, Evaders in the Jungle.”
■ 2:30 p.m. Saturday: The screening of “Paper Lanterns,” about a Japanese man who survived the Hiroshima bomb and pursued a quest to discover the identities of 12 American POWs killed by the bomb. Screening is free and open to the public.