1 Papers of John Monroe (Jack) Owens, Jr. Compiled by Joe Owens January 2005 Updated September 2018 2 Table of Contents Foreword ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3 Jack’s Manuscript ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 5 Tagastia Son--------------------------------------------------------------------------------77 September 21, 1944 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 79 Thirty-nine Days of Hell -------------------------------------------------------------------- 80 One of the Stories Jack Told ---------------------------------------------------------------- 82 Prisoner release photo ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 83 About Photo------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 84 Waiting for Jack ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 85 The Day Jack Came Home ------------------------------------------------------------------ 87 Uncle Jack and that Grindle----------------------------------------------------------------- 89 Growing Up With Jack Owens-----------------------------------------------------------93 Early Letter from Jack ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 98 Letter to Alice --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 99 Jack’s Letter (Pearl Harbor) -------------------------------------------------------------- 101 Empty Envelope (Nichols Field) --------------------------------------------------------- 102 Letter from CH Owens--------------------------------------------------------------------- 103 Telegram (Prisoner of War) ------------------------------------------------------------- 104 Card from Imperial Japanese Army ----------------------------------------------------- 105 Letter from Aunt Jane ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 106 Postcard from James L. Rhodes ---------------------------------------------------------- 107 Jack’s First Letter After Release --------------------------------------------------------- 108 Jack’s Second Letter After Release------------------------------------------------------ 110 Letter from William A. Owens ----------------------------------------------------------- 111 Letter from William A. Owens (#2) ----------------------------------------------------- 112 Will of William A. Owens ---------------------------------------------------------------- 113 President Truman’s letter ------------------------------------------------------------------ 114 Letter from William A. Owens (#3) ----------------------------------------------------- 115 William Owens’ Legion of Merit -------------------------------------------------------- 116 Moments in Time --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 117 Photo of Young Jack’s Family ----------------------------------------------------------- 118 Later photos of Jack ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 120 Bataan Death March Route --------------------------------------------------------------- 121 Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor Membership Card----------------------------122 Acknowledgements----------------------------------------------------------------------123 3 Foreword John Monroe Owens, Jr., known to his friends and family as Jack, was born in 1921, the oldest of eight children. He died in 1987 at the age of 66 of emphysema due to years of smoking. After his military service in W.W. II, he was a truck farmer near Blossom, Texas and raised peaches, watermelons, tomatoes and other fruits and vegetables for sale. He was active in hunting and fishing and seemed to enjoy a good life even though he had been given a 100% medical disability from the military and died so young. This is a collection of a few things written by him and about him, gathered together by me, the youngest of his siblings. By far the most important document here is the story that Jack wrote about his W.W. II and POW experiences after he returned from that ordeal. After returning to the States, Jack had attempted to attend Paris Junior College where his sister Alice was enrolled. He just was not able to sit in class, it seemed, after what he had been through. Someone suggested he sit down and write some of his wartime experiences as a means of therapy and that’s how we have this story now. His original story has now been digitized and made accessible through the efforts of Lisa Johnson, a history professor at Paris Junior College in Paris, TX. Jack spent a lot of time in the Veteran’s Administration Hospital in McKinney, Texas, and that’s where he met Rose Ellen Ward, one of the medical workers there, and they were later married. I remember Jack sitting in our living room in a ladder-back chair with a rawhide seat, hunched over the piano bench, writing his story on thin, onion-skin paper with pen and ink. As I think about it now, that must have been a difficult posture in which to write, but we had no other table in our living room on which to write. It would have been too cold to write anywhere else in the house since our little wood stove could heat only the living room. My sister Alice had rented a typewriter because someone had hired her to do a fairly large typing project. Alice would pick up Jack’s handwritten pages and type them up on a manual typewriter, making a regular page and one carbon copy. She would have to ask him to decipher his scrawl at times. It must have been many years later before I read his story. Since I was in the second grade when he wrote it, I didn’t know how to read very well and I’m sure my parents would not have let me read it even if I had been capable. In about 1985 I looked for the story so I could make copies for my brothers and sisters. Jack’s son John Owens had a copy of the story but probably not the original copy. John gave it to me for distribution to my family. Unfortunately, I discovered that pages 9 and 10 (of the 72-page document) were missing. My brother Alfred had the carbon copy (or maybe just the handwritten story, I don’t remember which) and I used that to type up pages 9 and 10 after making some small editorial changes for the sake of clarity on these two pages. Jack’s manuscript has been through several changes (intentional and unintentional) since Alice typed up the original version. John Owens, while he was in college, had someone retype it. That version was missing pages 9 and 10. Lisa Johnson had a slightly different version which she used to have her students retype it as a digital document. When I compared the versions, I found many typos and missing sentences. I tried to bring these two versions into agreement and I also made spelling and capitalization corrections, as well as changing some sentences to make meanings clear. 4 In 2002 I discovered a few precious items my mother had saved from the WW II period. Besides some old letters, which will be included herein, I found four phonograph disks, 6-1/2 inches in diameter, with a printed label “A PERSONAL MESSAGE FROM A SERVICE MAN THROUGH FACILITIES PROVIDED BY AMERICAN RED CROSS.” The disks appear to be thin cardboard with a celluloid coating on each side. According to Jack’s writing on the outside of the envelopes, he recorded these disks at Brooke General Hospital, Fort Sam Houston, Texas. These were likely created within a period of three months from the time he returned home in October 1945. After I modified a turntable to operate at the required 78 RPM, I transcribed the three stories that he recorded on the disks. These transcriptions are included with this document. I have also included “One of the Stories Jack Told”. John included this material when he gave me the main story. This was written in long hand with the title “This Is One of the Stories He Told.” As far as I know, John wrote out this story after hearing Jack tell it to other people later in life. The event is mentioned on page 56 of Jack’s Story. There is a remarkable photo taken as Jack was walking out of a POW camp moments after his release and I describe how we obtained the photo. Included are stories written by my brother Charlie and me about what we remember about Jack during the war and at the end of it. I also have added a story written by Charlie’s son Eddie about Jack and one of his fishing expeditions in his later years. (I suppose that I must explain that Jack had become estranged from his wife Rose and was living with Velma Pool when the events of Eddie’s story took place. Jack and Velma lived as man and wife until Jack’s death.) Eddie enjoys creating and telling oral stories and this story is one of those—it is transcribed here as a practical matter. Jack's son John Owens recently wrote some memories of his childhood years (Growing Up With Jack Owens) to better describe Jack's life and experiences after his WWII ordeal. These interesting stories show why Jack was such a respected member of the community. I found several letters that my mother had saved regarding the early war years and before. I included the various letters and documents in chronological order. Since these letters are sometimes hard to read now, I transcribed them just as they were written, except I often corrected the spelling of Phillipines to Philippines. Any comments of my own are enclosed in brackets [like this.] I let my friend, O. Wendell Cockrell, whom I had met while we