Griswold

Sgt. Jack J. Griswold was born on December 10, 1919 in South Haven, Michigan to Irving L. & Clara Griswold. With his three brothers, he lived at 843 South 17th Street in Maywood, Illinois, and attended Roosevelt Grade School in Bellwood. In June, 1938, he graduated from Proviso Township High School. After graduation, he worked as a chemist.

In October of 1939, Jack joined the 33rd Tank Company of the Illinois National Guard which was based in an armory in Maywood. In November of 1940, the company was called to federal duty as B Company, 192nd Tank Battalion and sent for training at Fort Knox, Kentucky. In late summer 1941, the battalion was sent to maneuvers in Louisiana. It was there that Jack and the other members were informed that they would receive further training in the Philippine Islands.

In October, the battalion left Angel Island for the Philippines. After stops in Hawaii and Guam, the 192nd arrived in Manila on Thanksgiving Day. Two weeks later they would live through the bombing of Clark Field by the Japanese just ten hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Jack and the other members of the battalion fought to slow the Japanese in their conquest of the Philippines. It was during this time that his family received their last letter from him postmarked December 28, 1941. After four months of almost constant fighting, the Filipino and American forces were surrendered to the Japanese on April 9, 1942. Jack was now a Prisoner of War.

As a POW, Jack was held at Camp O'Donnell and then sent to Cabanatuan. In late 1942, Jack was boarded onto the Nagata Maru for transport to Japan. It was in the hold of the ship that Jack was reunited with Lt. Tom Savage, Lt. Ben Morin, Lt. Richard Danca, Capt. Ruben Schwass and Lt. Col Ted Wickord.

Lt. Danca and Jack were so sick that the other members of the old Maywood Tank Company did not think either would survive the trip. As it turned out, Lt. Danca died as the ship arrived in Formosa, while Jack barely managed to hang on to his life.

The Nagato Maru was unloaded at the Port of Moji on the Island of Kyushu on November 25, 1942. The POWs were divided into three groups and taken across the Shemoneseki Straight to Shemoneseki on the Island of Honshu. There the POWs were divided into two groups. The first group went to Camp Umeda to work in a steel mill, while Jack's group was sent to Tanagawa Camp to build a submarine base.

The train ride to the camp was drafty. According to other members of B Company, the weather was cold and Jack did not have a shirt. This may have resulted in his developing pneumonia. A little under two weeks after arriving at Tanagawa, Sgt. Jack Griswold died of dysentery and possibly pneumonia on December 7, 1942. His body was taken to be cremated by Lt. Ben Morin.

Lt. Ben Morin just happened to be working on the burial detail the day Jack died. According to Lt. Morin, he and Lt. Henry Knox, of A Company, stopped to pick up a body of a dead American for cremation. When he looked down at the body, he realized that it was Jack Griswold his high school classmate. On the trip to the crematorium, the soldiers collected wood to be used to cremate Jack's body. After the cremation, Jack's ashes were given to the camp commandant and would remain with him until the end of the war.

In the fall of 1945, Jack's remains were returned to the Philippine Islands and buried at the American Military Cemetery outside of Manila.