PGR_NTX Patriot Guard Preliminary Itinerary: HOTH: The Lost Battalion, Farmers Branch, TX, 16 AUG 08

Tue Jul 29 06:55:52 CDT 2008

Preliminary Itinerary 

Ride  Captain:      William (Bill) Crow (LASER)  
817 360-1819, _aqsi6 at msn.com_ (mailto:aqsi6 at msn.com)  
Mission  Profile:  NTX Patriot Guard Riders HOTH: Support the Lost Battalion  
Association Annual Reunion, August 16, 2008, 10:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.. 
Preliminary  Stage Information:  09:15 a.m. at the Omni Hotel at US  Highway 
635 at Luna  Road in Farmers  Branch, Texas. 
Further  information to follow in the Final Itinerary.  Please hold all 
questions until final  itinerary is published.  Plan to support this  mission.  We 
need a minimum of 50  riders.  More are welcome.  This is very  special. 
This is an opportunity to see and meet some of the last  living Heroes of 
World War II.  All  were POW incarcerated by the Japanese.  This HOTH may be (is) 
a once in a lifetime privilege for our North Texas  Patriot Guard Riders as 
these men are survivors of the harshest form of human  abuse ever recorded and 
are true living American Heroes. 
The  following is a brief synopsis of the history of the Lost Battalion and 
the men  of the USS Houston that we are supporting.   

History of the Lost Battalion: 

2nd Battalion,  131st Field Artillery, 36th Infantry Division, 
Texas Army National  Guard 
And   
Survivors of  the USS Houston, “The Battle of the Java Sea” 
It is  with  great pride and historical  interest, the 2nd Battalion 131st 
Field Artillery, 36th Infantry Division, Texas  Army National Guard is the "Most 
Decorated Unit" in Texas War History and the  Heavy Cruiser USS Houston is 
the "Most Decorated Vessel" of its class in the US  Fleet. 
The Lost  Battalion Association is composed of the men of the 2nd  Battalion, 
131st Field Artillery, 36th Infantry Division, Texas Army National  Guard  
and those men who swam ashore from the  Cruiser USS Houston (CA-30)  during the 
"Battle of the Java Sea", when she  was heavily battle damaged and sank, and 
those who survived 42 months of "Hell" as  prisoners of the Japanese during 
World War II. 
The Japanese incarcerated all of  the American prisoners from the 131st  
Field Artillery (less E Battery) and the USS Houston together in the 10th 
Battalion Bicycle Camp, a former  Dutch installation in Batavia  (Jakarta) Java.  
Battery E  remained in the Soerabaja area until moved to  Nagasaki and other areas 
in  Japan via  Batavia and  Singapore in Nov  and Dec, 1942.  Thus, two units 
(Army and Navy) of the American Armed  Forces consisting of 902 men, 
disappeared from the face of the earth, seemingly  sacrificed in hopeless effort to 
save the Netherlands East Indies from  overwhelming numbers of the Japanese Army 
and Navy. 
What was to become an  unbelievable string of events which, for some, would 
last for three and a half  years and was to mold the Prisoners of War (POW) of 
the 2nd Battalion 131st Field Artillery and the  USS Houston together in a 
bond closer than blood.  This Army and Navy  group of POW suffered together 
through 42 months of humiliation, degradation.  physical and mental torture, 
starvation, and horrible tropical diseases with no  medications.  Many have said the 
hardest part was watching friends die  slowly, day by day, with the survivors 
often thinking, fleetingly, that maybe  they (the dead) were "the lucky 
ones". 
The men were brutally treated and  forced to work in hot steaming  jungles 
and the monsoon seasons of Burma chopping down trees, hand building road  beds 
and bridges, laying ties and rails with primitive tools in  construction of the 
now infamous "Burma-Siam Death Railway"   Some of the men were mining coal 
and/or working on the docks in Japan while  living in horrible conditions 
without heat or sufficient cover during two  Japanese winters, where real starvation 
was a daily companion.  
Of the 902 men taken POW, 668  were sent to  Burma and  Thailand and  worked 
on the "Death Railway" (Bridge on River Kwai of  historical fame).  Of the 
total 163 who died in POW camp, 133 died  working on the railroad.  After 
completion of the railroad, 236 of the men  were disbursed to Japan and other South 
East Asian countries to work in coal  mines, shipyards, docks etc and a few 
remained at "Bicycle Camp" in Java. 
Moving from Java to Singapore by  Japanese transport ship and then to Burma, 
Thailand or Japan, the men were  packed like cattle in the ship lower holds, 
taking turns sitting, standing,  squatting, or laying down while suffering from 
sea sickness, dysentery, malaria  and or other tropical diseases.  They stood 
in their own or their  neighbor's filth, because it was impossible or not 
permitted by the Japanese to  get to the ship side latrine on the main deck.  
During the Japanese transport of  the prisoners of war, many of the men were 
killed by American submarines  and  American bombers attacking the  Japanese 
transport ships while they were en-route to  Singapore and  Japan..   When 
liberated, the men were found to be scattered throughout many locations in  South 
East Asia, Java,  Singapore,  Burma,  Thailand, French  Indochina,  Japan,  
China and  Manchuria, and other locations. 
Since the Battalion had  disappeared when the island of  Java had 
surrendered, no one knew  where they were, the War Department knew nothing and nothing 
was heard from them  for 42 months.   
So each year since 1945, the  survivors of the POW "Hell", along with their 
families, meet each August to keep  their “Bond of Brotherhood” strong and to  
remember and pay honor to those who died in Prison Camps and the 575 who have 
 died since liberation and the 646 who died in action, in a futile effort to 
save  Java. 

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