Leonard

Pvt. Hugh J. Leonard was born in 1915 in Boyle County, Kentucky to Bessie and Jackson Leonard. He was one of the couple's three sons. With his brothers, he grew up in Perryville, Kentucky. Like many young men of his time, he enlisted in the Kentucky National Guard. Most likely he was attempting earn some extra money to help his family.

On November 25, 1940, Hugh's tank company was sent to Fort Knox, Kentucky for a year of training. They had been designated D Company, 192nd Tank Battalion. At the end of August 1941, the battalion was sent to Louisiana to take part in maneuvers. It was after the maneuvers, at Camp Polk, that the battalion learned it was being sent overseas.

By train, Hugh's company traveled to San Francisco. They were taken by ferry to Angel Island. After inoculations, they boarded ships for the Philippine Islands. They arrived in the Philippines on Thanksgiving Day, 1941.

Hugh lived through the Japanese attack on Clark Airfield on December 8, 1941. The attack took place just ten hours after Pearl Harbor had been bombed. He spent the next four months fighting to slow the Japanese conquest of the Philippines.

It is known if Hugh became a Prisoner of War when Bataan was surrendered to the Japanese. He took part in the death march from Mariveles to San Fernando. There, he and the other POWs were packed 100 men a car into little wooden boxcars that could hold forty men. The men who died during the trip fell out when the living left the cars. Leonard walked the last ten miles to Camp O'Donnell.

Camp O'Donnell was an unfinished Filipino army base. There was only one water faucet for the entire camp. Conditions in the camp were so bad that as many as fifty men died each day. The detail to the bury the dead worked 24 hours a day.

The Japanese opened a new camp to at Cabanatuan in an attempt to relieve the conditions at Camp O'Donnell. Hugh was sent to this camp when it opened. On July 1, 1942, he was selected to go out on a work detail to Davao, Mindanao. Hugh was taken to Manila to the Port Area of Manila for transport. The POWs boarded the Interisland Steamer. The ship sailed Davao, Mindanao, arriving there on July 9th.

During Hugh's time at Davao, he worked to construct runways for the Japanese. The camp was closed on June 6, 1944 and the POWs were taken to Lasang Dock. The POWs were boarded onto the an unknown hell ship in August, 1944. The ship arrived at Zamboanga and waited ten days for the Shinyo Maru to arrive. The Japanese had ordered the Shinyo Maru to Zamboanga to pick up evacuees for transport to Manila.

The holds of the hell ship were hot and steamy. In addition, the longer the POWs were in the holds the stench became worse. On the tenth day, September 4th, the POWs were transferred onto the Shinyo Maru. The ship sailed on September 7th at 2:00 a.m. Before the ship sailed, the hatch covers were secured so that the POWs could not lift them from below. The ship was now part of a convoy designated as C-076. Since the POWs had not heard any air raid alerts, they assumed that they were safe.

It should be noted that on August 18th the United States Military had intercepted the order from Japanese command sending the Shinyo Maru to Zambonga. Someone misinterpreted the order as saying that "750 troops" instead of "750 military prisoners" were being sent to Manila. The U.S.S. Paddle was sent to the area to intercept the ship. A note on this mistake would be added to the information on December 31, 1944.

At 7:37 p.m. the U.S.S Paddle spotted the convoy off the west coast of Mindanao at Sindangan Point. It fired two torpedoes at the ship. There was terrific explosion followed immediately by a second explosion. Many of the POWs in the holds were bleeding and dying. To escape the holds, the POWs began climbing from the ship's holds. The Japanese shot the prisoners as they climbed out. Eighty-three of the POWs were successful in escaping the holds and jumping overboard. As they swam to shore the Japanese fired at them.

According to the POWs in the water, there was a tremendous crushing sound. The ship seemed to bend up in the middle and then sank into the water. Of the 750 POWs who were boarded onto the ship, 83 were rescued by Filipino guerillas and returned to U.S. Forces.

It is not known if Hugh died when the Shinyo Maru sank or if he was shot while attempting to escape. What is known is that Pvt. Hugh Leonard died in the sinking of the Shinyo Maru on September 7, 1944.

Since Pvt. Hugh J. Leonard was lost at sea, his name appears on the Tablets of the Missing at the American Military Cemetery outside Manila.