Robert Paul Wilson

 

wbailey

 

 

 

Robert P. Wilson

ID: 14029183
Entered the Service From:
Tennessee
Rank:
Technician 5th Class

Service:
 U.S. Army Air Forces, 48th Materiel Squadron

Died:
Monday, July 06, 1942
Buried at: 
Manila American Cemetery
Location: 
Fort Bonifacio, Manila, Philippines
Plot: Row: 12 Grave: 238

Mr. and Mrs. Robert Y. Wilson of Sweetwater have been notified by the War Department that their son, T-5 Robert Paul Wilson, died at Cabantuan Prisoner of War Camp on July 6, 1942.  Until they received this telegram, no official word had been received since June, 1942, when he was listed as missing since the surrender of Bataan on April 9, 1942.  Cpl. Wilson enlisted in the Air Corps in October, 1940.  He survived the infamous “death march” to O’Donnell Prison Camp and back to Cabantuan, his parents learned from the only surviving officer of the 84th Material Squadron, to which he belonged.  Besides his parents, he is survived by four sisters and one brother-Miss Ruth Wilson, Washington; Miss Mary M. Wilson, Chattanooga,; Misses Minnie Sue and Nancy Wilson, Sweetwater, and Edd V. Wilson of Sweetwater.

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MONROE VETERAN IS PRISON CASUALTY

Death of T5 Robert P. Wilson at Cabantuan is Reported

SWEETWATER, Tenn, Sep 15--Robert Paul Wilson, technician fifth grade, died at Cabantuan prisoner of war camp on July 6, 1942, according to a telegram to his parents, Mr. & Mrs. Robert Y. Wilson, of Sweetwater.

Until the telegram from the War Department received recently, the parents had received no official word since June, 1942, when young Wilson was reported listed as missing since the surrender of Bataan on April 9, 1942.

Cpl. Wilson enlisted in the army air corps in Oct. 1940, and received his training at Savannah Air Base.  He landed in Manila Nov. 19, 1941, and was stationed at Fort William McKinley Air Base, near Manila, he wrote his parents.  It is presumed he was still there at the time of Pearl Harbor.

Mr. & Mrs. Wilson learned from a survivor that their son survived the "death march" to O'Donnell Prison Camp and back to Cabantuan.  The last letter received by his parents was written Feb. 8, 1942, while he was serving as a communications man after all air corps equipment had been destroyed.

Surviving, besides his parents, are four sisters and one brother.

Chattanooga Daily Times, Sun Sep 16, 1945

 

The Bataan Death March (also known as The Death March of Bataan) took place in the Philippines in 1942 and was later accounted as a Japanese War Crime. The 60 mi (97 km) march occurred after the three-month Battle of Bataan, part of the Battle of the Philippines(1941–42), during World War II. In Japanese, it is known as Batān Shi no Kōshin with the same meaning.

The "march", or forcible transfer of 75,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war, was characterized by wide-ranging  physical abuse and murder, and resulted in very high fatalities inflicted upon prisoners and civilians alike by the armed forces of the Empire of Japan.

The treatment of the American prisoners was characterized by its dehumanization, as the Imperial soldiery "felt they were dealing with sub humans and animals." Trucks were known to drive over those who fell or succumbed to fatigue, and "cleanup crews" put to death those too weak to continue. Marchers were harassed with random bayonet stabs and beatings.  Accounts of being forcibly marched for five to six days with no food and a single sip of water are in postwar archives including filmed reports. The exact death count is impossible to determine, but some historians have placed the minimum death toll between 6,000 and 11,000 men; other postwar Allied reports have tabulated that only 54,000 of the 72,000 prisoners reached their destination — taken together, the figures document a rate of death from one in four up to two in seven of those on the death march. The number of deaths that took place in the internment camps from the delayed effects of the march is considerably more.

On May 30, 2009, at the 64th and final reunion of Bataan Death March survivors in San Antonio, Texas, the Japanese ambassador to the United States apologized to an assembly of survivors for Imperial Japan's treatment of Allied prisoners of war, on behalf of the Japanese government.

U.S. World War II Army Enlistment Records, 1938-1946

Name:

Robert Paul Wilson

Birth Year:

1920

Race:

White, Citizen (White)

Nativity State or Country:

Tennessee

State of Residence:

Tennessee

County or City:

Monroe

 

 

Enlistment Date:

8 Oct 1940

Enlistment State:

Georgia

Enlistment City:

Fort Mcpherson Atlanta

Branch:

Air Corps

Branch Code:

Air Corps

Grade:

Private

Grade Code:

Private

Term of Enlistment:

Enlistment for the Philippine Department

Component:

Regular Army (including Officers, Nurses, Warrant Officers, and Enlisted Men)

Source:

Civil Life

 

 

Education:

4 years of high school

Civil Occupation:

Farm hands, general farms

Marital Status:

Single, without dependents

Height:

68

Weight:

130

 

 

Researcher and Designer

Joy Locke & Joe Irons