PGR_NTX Patriot Guard Lost Battalion Reunion Update

Tue Aug 11 18:03:56 CDT 2009

Ladies and Gentlemen,

We will be coming out with a final itinerary for the reunion of the Lost
Battalion very soon but we do want to give you a brief update.

The mission will be this Saturday, August 15, 2009 and it will again be at
the Omni hotel just as last year's was.  We will be doing essentially the
same thing as last year with the flag lines through the hotel lobby out to
where David Hall will have the Liberty Bell set up for these wonderful
heroes to ring.  They will then enter their memorial service, which will
once again be followed by the hot dog lunch where we are encouraged to
attend, eat, and visit with the veterans and their families.just like last
year.

I was told just today that the demand for patches was so great last year
that the organizers have purchased patches to commemorate this year's
reunion.  Only 200 were ordered so be sure to plan on coming and getting
yours.  You never know how many more of these reunions will be planned.

Below is a synopsis that was prepared for last year's reunion about the
brave people we are honoring on Saturday.  You will certainly be proud when
you see these men and their family members come before you and remember that
the very best day of their captivity was worse than anything that most of us
have ever endured in our entire lives.

Steve Lucas

Deputy State Captain

North Texas PGR

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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