Time for the Gold Medal
STATEMENT FOR THE RECORD
To Receive Legislative Presentations of Veterans Service Organizations
12 March 2019
- The 200th Coast Artillery (AA) on Bataan, the first to fire on the invading Japanese forces, was composed mainly of Hispanic Americans from New Mexico.
- The first tanker to die in WWII was Private Robert Brooks, a black man with the 192nd Tank Battalion from Harrodsburg, Kentucky, who was killed on Nichols Field, Philippines.
- Chinese-American, Eddie Fung, and Japanese-American, Frank Fujita, both fought on Java and were surrendered with the U.S. Army 2nd Battalion, 131st Field Artillery, 36th Division (Texas National Guard).
- A statue before the St. Landry Catholic Church in Opelousas, Louisiana memorializes Army Air Corps Chaplain Father LaFleur who sacrificed his life while saving fellow POWs in the sinking of the hellship Shinyo Maru.
- The military nurses captured in the Philippines were the first large group of American women in combat and, counted with the Army and Navy nurses surrendered on Guam, comprised the first group of American military women taken captive and imprisoned by an enemy.
- Over 600 United States Merchant Marines, including one woman Mariner, became prisoners of Imperial Japan. Fifteen percent were killed by Japanese Imperial Navy officers during capture or died in Japanese POW camps.
- The first American POWs of Japan were Marines stationed in China and the last were Navy and Army aviators shot down over Japan.
- An Army Corps of Engineers Master Sergeant, Aaron Kliatchko, who died aboard a hellship is remembered as the “Rabbi of Cabanatuan” POW camp in the Philippines where he consoled Jew and gentile alike.