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Post by Registrar on May 24, 2017 10:31:35 GMT 8
By all indications, the prices for the Corregidor Inn will DOUBLE, making it a two or three star hotel at the price of a top of the range Manila five star hotel. Good value it's unlikely to be.
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Post by Registrar on May 18, 2017 8:45:12 GMT 8
Today I received the following from Melinda Jansen, which I shall share with you:
The further the immediate past recedes, the more necessary and intense we need to be about telling it in a fashion that enables its significance to be propagated. Reading books and putting them on a shelf just doesn't cut it any more.
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Post by Registrar on Mar 13, 2017 10:07:14 GMT 8
Yes, it does have a lower level, which we have inspected extensively. The area is filled with dirt and isn't full height, so getting around in it is somewhat difficult. I'm not sure we got to see the actual concrete floor. At the time, Danny Howell and I were looking for whether there was evidence of a passageway link between the telephone exchange and a stairway up from Middleside Tunnel. The original plans for Middleside Storage System were to go under the exchange, under the USAFFE building and to exit towards a road on the other side of the Senior Officers' Qtrs. My recall, which may be faulty, is that work on the tunnel was halted in the 1930's, for political reasons. One of those conferences where America makes a defense concession in the hope that the other side will make a similar concession, and then they both pretend they are complying, but cheat.
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Post by Registrar on Mar 10, 2017 9:32:10 GMT 8
10 March 2017 Welcome ltcpowellret to the Board who has written us as follows: "Hello. My name is Gregg Powell. I would like to become a member of Corregidor.proboards.com. Before I retired from the Army in 2010, I was fortunate enough to have worked in the Philippines on and off for 4 years. My wife is a Filipino, and I go back every year. I'll go back this year in April, and one of the things that I plan to do is document the condition of each of the Bata'an KM markers. Looks like this was already done at least once back in 2007 - also the year that I drove along the route from Bata'an Mariveles to Camp O'Donnel in Tarlac. Would be happy to share the pictures with this forum. Regards. LTC Gregg Powell, US Army (Ret.)" EXO: Welcome! While it's not featured via a thread on this board, one of our members, Bob Hudson, has been documenting the Bataan markers comprehensively, and posting sample images on one of his Facebook pages. Bob has been travelling the length, breadth and depths of Bataan restoring the markers, for which he deserves either a leather medal or to be committed, I can never decide which. You fellows clearly need to get together on this. Bob lives in a deep underground in a secret tunnel built under stately Hudson Manor in Limay, from where he strikes terrific terror into the hearts of negligent road workers across Bataan and Tarlac.
If you are going to be on Corregidor 6 May, look for us.
________________________ 10 March 2017 Welcome pemsww2 to the Board who has written us as follows: Hi, I'm interested in rejoining this website about historical Corregidor, I'm into collecting facts & things from Philippine ww2. I hope you will accept my request..thank you and God bless!
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Post by Registrar on Feb 24, 2017 11:24:44 GMT 8
From: Angus Lorenzen Sent: 24 February 2017 To: George Baker and others Subject: Re: Encounters with STIC guards
George needs to use a little caution when telling this tale of his life in Shanghai. He says that he live in the American Concession, but the U.S. had no concessions anywhere in China, including Shanghai. It had made a strategic decision to not take extra-territorial control of land in the Treaty Ports as so many European nations had. The closest it came was to take over the German Barracks in Tientsin after the end of WW I, just as the Japanese had taken over the German concessions in Shanghai and Shantung.
The U.S. Army stationed a battalion from the 15th Infantry, headquartered in the Philippines, at the German Barracks. As a member, then Commander, of the American Legion, my father had close contact with the officers stationed in Tientsin. Many of the Company Grade and Field Grade officers who served there later became military leaders during WW II, including Eisenhower and Bradley. My father allowed the officers to vacation on a houseboat that he rented each summer and provided prizes for the contest that the unit ran at the end of each training year.
President Roosevelt returned the battalion from Tientsin to the Philippines after the Panay incident in order to avoid conflict with the Japanese Army that had occupied Tientsin after the incident at the Marco Polo Bridge in 1937, which was the start of the Sino-Japanese war, and some historians are now saying was the real start of WW II. A company strength contingent of Marines remained at the German Barracks and were deployed as guards at the U.S. Embassy in Peking and at the Consulate in Tientsin.
The U.S. started pulling its diplomats out of China in 1941, and the Marine Contingent was scheduled to ship out from China on December 12. On the morning of December 8, the Marines were surrounded by Japanese troops with heavy weapons and forced to surrender. They were used as slave labor on the Burma railroad and most did not survive the war.
In the 4 ½ years from the time Japan occupied Tientsin until Pearl Harbor, the Japanese more or less left the people in the concession alone, only making life more difficult through bureaucratic hindrance. An example of this was that we were on home leave in England when the European war broke out, and the ship on which we were to return to China was requisitioned by the Royal Navy. My uncle, who headed shipping for Imperial Chemical Industries was able to get us berths on the Haruna Maru, a passenger/freight ship going directly from Liverpool to Tientsin with a few stops on the way for cargo operations. Most of the passengers were Japanese businessmen and a few British who felt the expedience of being on the hated Japanese ship was worth it to get home to China. When we arrived in Tientsin after a 6-week voyage we were anxious to get off the ship and to our home. All of the Japanese passengers were allowed to depart immediately, but we Westerners were told there would be a delay until the next day so our papers could be properly checked. After learning this disappointing news, my father bounded up the gangway and got us out of there, having used his vast knowledge of cumshaw to bribe some Japanese officials.
When Pearl Harbor was attacked, my brother was going to college in Shanghai. He escaped from the occupied city and joined a guerilla band in the countryside.
That covers a couple of points in this email chain.
Angus Lorenzen
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Post by Registrar on Feb 24, 2017 11:21:36 GMT 8
From: George Baker Sent: Wednesday, February 22, 2017 2:55 PM To: (list redacted) Subject: Re: Encounters with STIC guards
My contribution to encounters with Japanese sentries in STIC is minimal. I was walking along the east side of the Main Building, I was going north, just past the commandant’s office, when a soldier approaching along the road towards me. I realized that I had to bow, so I did so without stopping, from the shoulders down The acknowledged what I had done, but continued on his merry way. Perhaps he was going to a meal and did not want to delay eating. Who knows? But for someone from Shanghai, our meeting Japanese soldiers occurred on a daily .basis from August 1937 on, In that month, Japan launched a full scale attack on China. Shanghai and all the Treaty ports became islands in a land occupied by Japan. We lived in the American concession, Hongkew, north of the British concession, separated from it by the Soochow Creek. The Japs quickly occupied and controlled Hongkew with the help of some 20,000 Japanese residents living north of the Soochow Creek. They started to inspect all houses occupied by the foreigners, and came to ours. I recall that as they entered the front door, I was halfway on the stairs, facing them, and screamed at them that this was a British house and that they should go away. After that incident, my father hung a Union Jack on the front verandah to denote that British lived in the house. To effectively control movement between the two concessions, the Japs closed all the bridges across the Soochow Creek except for the Garden Bridge. One attachment show two sentries on the Bridge, a Japanese on the north end and a British on the south. I was attending kindergarten at the Union Church in the British concession in the later years before 1941, and the amah would take me to the Church. We had to stop and she would bow and se encouraged to do the same – though I can’t remember if I did or not. Sometimes my youngest sister would accompany me and amah, and she had a vivid memory of having to stare down at those brown jack boots that the officers wore. I think the ordinary ranks wore puttees. The start of the war had the Japanese cruiser, Idzumo, sitting in the Whangpoo, shelling the Chinese troops north of Hongkew. The Chinese aircraft attempted to bomb it, but the pilot’s aim was bad, and consequently bombs fell in the Nanking Road, killing thousands of people. The British consul arranged to have the Brits evacuated to Hong Kong until December 1937, when we returned to our homes. Additionally, at Nanking (the Chinese provisional capital), the American legation was in the process of evacuating their consulate to go to Chungking on the USS Panay. The Japs proceeded to attack the Panay and the British river boats, and sunk the USS Panay. Luckily the casualties ere light, only one dead, but the act was against all the rules of war. FDR was in a quandary, and to make it worse, there were some news cameramen on the Panay who filmed the incident. The incident was never reported to the public, and the Japan settled with a $2 million indemnity payment. To sum up our experiences. in the decade from 1932 to 1941, the family had to evacuate our home three times because of Japanese aggression in China. The first was the year after the annexation of Manchuria, 1937 was the second and the third resulted in our being interned in STIC. George
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Post by Registrar on Feb 24, 2017 11:17:22 GMT 8
Lou Jurika adds a note he's received from Bob Hudson who has now weighed in with his resources. ______________ On Wednesday, February 22, 2017 7:11 PM, Bob Hudson wrote: To all, Sorry to interject but but being a long time researcher and a store house of documents, I have thee PDF files listing all who were liberated from the Japanese in the Philippines, mainly Santo Tomas, Los Banos, Bilibid and Cabanatuan. Perhaps Muntinglupa as well, but I am not sure. When I opened and read this email from Lou, I thought I would look for Greg on the files I have. He was listed with I believe to be his mother Madge who was listed as 39 years of age and Greg as Seven. I am adding that one page below. I am adding these files to my Media Fire Account where I can send the links through email for anyone to look through and find familiar names. I also have the transportation records containing civilian names and which ship they boarded to return to the U.S. in 1945. Those records are not alphabetical and it is quite a task to go through ships manifests to find one name. Good day to all. Bob Robert L. Hudson bataanson.blogspot.comwww.west-point.org/family/japanese-pow/BLR.htm2nd Vice President FAME (Filipino American Memorial Endowment) Member Bataan WW2 Museum
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Post by Registrar on Feb 15, 2017 8:19:28 GMT 8
14 February: Welcome to KAREEZA1008 who writes:
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Post by Registrar on Feb 9, 2017 14:13:31 GMT 8
T2,
I was most concerned to hear of your heatstroke there. I know how much getting there and tracing Al's footsteps meant to you.
( I tend to punctuate my days there with cold beer.)
I am also disturbed that Corregidor has gone backwards as far as the welfare of visitors there is concerned. You are not the first to suffer.
The board's old friend (Phantom, a.k.a. Tom Aring), a good and very dear friend to me, was moved out of the Inn on one occasion (when he was already occupying his confirmed room!) because the management had booked the entire Inn to some other affair. It mattered not a whit to them that he'd been booked there for some time!) Tom was put into the beach house, which was not airconditioned. Unable to cool down (as he normally did in his airconditioned room at the Inn) he went into a diabetic coma, and was found close to death on the floor of the house. He would have died had Ron Benadero not looked in to see how he was. Has Sun Cruises learned from this?
There's enough dangers on Corregidor already, without corporations making it worse.
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Post by Registrar on Jan 20, 2017 8:23:46 GMT 8
Anyone have a second source that recent visitors to Corregidor got more than they bargained for?
The information is NOT what I would describe as confirmed. It runs as follows:
I am aware that such things have happened before, specifically in 2009, when high winds prevented the return of the boat. At least then, there was room at the Inn. Sun Cruises picked up the hotel tab (Gasp, how generous of them!), but gave only 10% off the price of their meals.
I wouldn't want the 2009 instance (which is confirmed) conflated with the more recent report (which is not), which is why I am asking for a second source.
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