Parents: William T. Bickmore & Ella Viola Rawson-Bickmore

Siblings: 2 sisters

Married

Home: 421 South California Street - Salinas, California

Occupation: sheet metal worker - construction

Enlisted: California National Guard

Inducted: 

    - U. S. Army

        - 10 February 1941 - Salinas Army Air Base

Training: 

    - Fort Lewis, Washington

Units: 

    - 194th Tank Battalion

Overseas Duty: 

    - Philippine Islands

Engagements: 

    - Battle of Luzon

    - Battle of Bataan

Prisoner of War: 

    - 9 April 1942

        - Death March

            - Mariveles - POWs start march at southern tip of Bataan
            - POWs ran past Japanese artillery firing at Corregidor
                - Americans on Corregidor returned fire
            - San Fernando - POWs put into small wooden boxcars
                - each boxcar could hold eight horses or forty men
                - 100 POWs packed into each car
                - POWs who died remained standing
            - Capas - dead fell to floor as living left boxcars
            - POWs walked last ten miles to Camp O'Donnell

POW Camps:

    - Camp O'Donnell

        - unfinished Filipino training base
        - Japanese put camp into use as POW Camp
        - only one water spigot for entire camp
        - as many as 50 POWs died each day
        - Japanese opened new POW camp to lower death rate

    - Cabanatuan

Died:

    - 27 October 1942 - malnutrition & malaria

        - Approximate time of death - 9:00 PM

Buried: Tablets of the Missing - American Military Cemetery - Manila, Philippine Islands

Return to Company C