Late in 1940, the young men of the 2nd Battalion, 131st Field Artillery
Regiment stepped off the trucks at Camp Bowie in Brownwood,
Texas, ready to complete the training they would need for active duty
in World War II. Many of them had grown up together in Jacksboro,
Texas, and almost all of them were eager to face any challenge. Just
over a year later, these carefree young Texans would be confronted
by horrors they could never have imagined.
The battalion was en route to bolster the Allied defense of the
Philippines when they received news of the Japanese bombing of
Pearl Harbor. Soon, they found themselves ashore on Java, with
orders to assist the Dutch, British, and Australian defense of the
island against imminent Japanese invasion. When war came to Java
in March 1942, the Japanese forces overwhelmed the numerically
inferior Allied defenders in little more than a week.
For more than three years, the Texans, along with the sailors and
marines who survived the sinking of the USS Houston, were
prisoners of the Imperial Japanese Army. Beginning in late 1942,
these prisoners-of-war were shipped to Burma to accelerate
completion of the Burma-Thailand railway. These men labored
alongside other Allied prisoners and Asian conscript laborers to build
more than 260 miles of railroad for their Japanese taskmasters. They
suffered abscessed wounds, near-starvation, daily beatings, and
debilitating disease, and 89 of the original 534 Texans taken prisoner
died in the infested, malarial jungles. The survivors received a hero's
welcome from Gov. Coke Stevenson, who declared October 29,
1945, as "Lost Battalion Day" when they finally returned to Texas.
Kelly E. Crager consulted official documentary sources of the
National Archives and the U.S. Army and mined the personal
memoirs and oral history interviews of the "Lost Battalion" members.
He focuses on the treatment the men received in their captivity and
surmises that a main factor in the battalion's comparatively high
survival rate (84 percent of the 2nd Battalion) was the comradery of
the Texans and their commitment to care for each other.
This narrative is grueling, yet ultimately inspiring. Hell under
the Rising Sun will be a valuable addition to the collections of
World War II historians and interested general readers alike.
_________________________________________________________
KELLY E. CRAGER is a visiting assistant professor in the history
department at Texas A&M University. He recently completed his
dissertation at the University of North Texas, where he met surviving
members of the "Lost Battalion" through the university's oral history
program. He lives in Austin.
Number 116: Texas A&M University Military History Series
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