Pvt. Thomas Peter Motosko

Parents: George & Barbara Motosoko

Siblings: 2 sisters, 4 brothers

Graduated:

    - Woodrow Wilson High School - 1940 

Inducted:

    - U. S. Army

        - 25 March 1941 - Cleveland, Ohio

Training: 

    - Fort Knox, Kentucky

    - Camp Polk, Louisiana

Overseas Duty: 

    - Philippine Islands

Engagements: 

    - Battle of Luzon

    - Battle of Bataan

Prisoner of War:

    - 9 April 1942

       - Death March

            - POWs started march at the southern tip of Bataan

                - POWs ran past Japanese artillery firing on Corregidor 

                - American artillery on Corregidor returned fire - shells landed among POWs

            -San Fernando - POWs put into small wooden boxcars used to haul sugarcane 

                - During train ride between San Fernando and Capas, Motosko recalled that those POWs who died

                   couldn't fall because the POWs were packed in the small wooden boxcars, "They couldn't fall. They'd

                  just be standing there, next to you, dead."   

            - Capas - POWs left boxcars - the dead POWs fell to the floor

            - POWs walked the last ten miles to Camp O'Donnell 

POW Camps: 

    Philippine Islands: 

        - Camp O'Donnell

            - unfinished Filipino Army training base 

            - Japanese put camp into use as POW camp

            - one water spigot for the entire camp

            - as many as fifty POWs died each day 

            - POWs went out on work details to get out of camp 

        - Cabanatuan

    Japan:

        Hirohata #12-B 

            Work: Laborer Seitetsu Steel Mills

Hell Ship: 

    Coral Maru

        Departed: Manila - 20 September 1943

            Note: Ship stopped Takao, Formosa

        Arrived: Moji - 5 October 1943

Liberated: September 1945

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