Pfc. John Daniel Swinehamer

    Jack enlisted in the Maywood Tank Company of the Illinois National Guard.  He was the youngest member of the company who originally had been members of the Illinois National Guard.  

    In November of 1940, Jack went was sent to Fort Knox, Kentucky, when the National Guard company was federalized as B Company, 192nd Tank Battalion.  At Ft. Knox, Jack was transferred to Headquarters Company when it was formed in early 1941.  

    It was at Fort Knox, that Jack was trained to operate all the equipment used by the battalion.  During this training Jack would be involved in one of the more amusing moments for the company.  Jack was uncomfortable riding motorcycles, and since everyone in the company needed to learn how to use all the equipment, he had to learn to ride a motorcycle.  One day during this training, Jack was told by the officer in command of the training to ride the motorcycle down the road a quarter of a mile and turn around and come back.  

    Jack obeyed orders and got on the motorcycle.  He then proceeded to ride it as required.  After fifteen minutes, Jack still had not returned so the officer got in a jeep to find out what had happened.  As it turned out, Jack was found on the other side of Fort Knox still heading east on the motorcycle.  When the officer asked him why he had not turned the bike around, Jack stated that he did not know how to stop it.  Ironically, Jack would become a motorcycle messenger running messages between the battalion headquarters and the B Company of the 192nd Tank Battalion. 

    After training at Fort Knox, Jack went with the battalion on maneuvers in Louisiana.  It was after these maneuvers that the battalion was informed that they were to receive further training overseas.  This information dashed any hopes that Jack had of being released from federal duty.

    In October of 1941, the 192nd Tank Battalion left Angel Island in San Francisco Bay for the Philippine Islands.  After stops in Hawaii and Guam, the battalion arrived in Manila on Thanksgiving Day.  They were rushed to Fort Stotsenburg and spent the next two weeks getting their equipment ready for additional training.  This "additional training" came in the form of action against the Japanese with the bombing of Clark Field on December 8, 1942.

    On April 9, 1942, when the Filipino and American forces on Bataan  were surrendered to the Japanese, Jack became a Prisoner of War.  He took part in the death march and was held as a POW at Camp O'Donnell.  He was next held as a prisoner at Cabanatuan.  It was at Cabanatuan that Jack became so ill that he was placed into "Zero Ward."  POWs in the ward were expected to die. 

    The burial detail at the camp took the bodies of those who died to the camp cemetery and buried them in a mass grave.  Jack was taken to the cemetery and put into a grave.  George Dravo, of B Company, happened to be working the detail and noticed that Jack moved after he had been placed in the grave.  Dravo and the other men on the detail removed Jack from the grave and returned him to the camp.  There, he regained his strength.

    Jack was next sent to Bilibid Prison for processing .  From there, he was taken to the Port Area of Manila and boarded onto the Coral Maru for Japan.  This ship was also known as the Taga Maru.  The ship sailed on September 20, 1943.  After stopping at Takao, Formosa, the ship arrived in Moji, Japan on October 5th.

    In Japan, he was first held in a camp near Osaka.  As a POW he was held at Hirohata POW Camp.  It was while a POW in one of these camps that Jack traded a piece of clothing for another POW's food.  His reason for doing this was that it was winter and he was trying to keep warm.  Somehow the Japanese found out about the trade and decided to punish Jack.  The temperature was below zero when he was called out of formation and made to strip himself bare.  For his punishment, the Japanese made him lie in the snow on his stomach.  Then, the Japanese staked him out.  A red hot iron was placed against his back along his spine.  For the rest of his life, he carried three scars on his back.  

    Next, Jack was made to stand in a large tub of ice water for ten minutes.  What amazed him was that he never came down with pneumonia.

    On May 29, 1945, Jack was sent to Nagoya Camp #9 near Honshu.  There he worked on the docks coaling ships and unloading iron ore for the steel mills.  It was also there that he had his worse experience as a POW.  

    In a letter he wrote to his parents, Jack told how he and the other POWs learned of the end of the war.

    "The 14th (August) we were coaling a transport.  At noon there was a big radio speech going on and all the Japs were listening.  After it was over, one of them called over to our sergeant in charge and told him the war was over.  He (the sergeant) told us what the Nips told him, but we said he was "nuts" because we had heard that stuff for two years, and we just couldn't believe it.

     The 15th we started to fall out and go to work but the Nips told us "yosama" (rest).  The 16th they said it was a religious holiday.  When they told us that, we knew it was over, because that was the first religious holiday they had in three years."

    The former POWs remained at Nagoya #9 until September 5, 1945.   Jack and the other liberated POWs then went taken by train to Honshu to meet the American occupational forces.  He was sent to the USS Rescue to undergo a examination and given new clothes.  He was taken by the destroyer, the USS Warner, to Tokyo Bay and then sent to Okinawa.  From Okinawa, Jack was flown to Manila in the Philippines to be "fattened up." 

    After recuperating in the Philippines, Jack returned home to Maywood, where he married Virginia Wiggins.  Together they raised five children, Sheryl, John, Thomas, Kevin and Kathleen.  Jack reenlisted this time into the Army Air Corp and later the U.S. Air Force.  He remained in the military and retired on July 31, 1961.

    John D. Swinehamer passed away on September 5, 1979 and is buried at the National Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, Hawaii.

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