Today's edition of Flashback Friday remembers one of Jackson's finest young men. Rufus Baker Austin became a Jap prisoner when Wake Island fell and spent the next three years in a Nippon version of hell on earth. Beaten but still brave, he testified years later in Japan as a war crimes witness. His word sent at least one of his captors to the gallows.
Austin joined the Marine Corps when he was only 16 years old. A proud American boy, it was his misfortune to be shipped to Wake Island. The Japs invaded Wake the day after Pearl Harbor and took it two weeks later after the Marines mounted a spirited defense worthy of their legend. Cut off 2,500 miles from home, Austin and his fellow Marines made the Japs pay a steep price in blood in a battle that was later called The Alamo of the Pacific.
Wake fell and Austin's parents worried feverishly for quite some time until they finally received word of his survival in May 1942.
He managed to send them a letter in May 1942.
A later article will show how everything in the letter was a lie.
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| October 1942 |
Finally the word came in October 1945: Freedom!
Young Baker wasted no time when he returned home and got married in December 1945.
A victim of Japanese brutality, the former Sargent returned to Japan to testify at several war crimes trials.
The real truth of what happened to Sergeant Austin emerged in the Land of the Rising Sun. His weight fell to 100 lbs in captivity. A meal was usually one cup of rice. The Japs kept Red Cross food shipments for themselves. Prisoners were given no clothes even when it was freezing. There were no mattresses. They slept on the floor huddled together as animals. Camp staff regularly beat prisoners. The Japs administered savage beatings to Americans who didn't bow low enough for their sadistic tastes. The savages forced the prisoners to work in a condemned coal mine where they were often injured by falling rocks. The former prisoner of war said he and all of his fellow prisoners at the camp would not have survived another winter in captivity. One can't even imagine the horrors that wracked his soul as he questioned himself, his faith, and whether he would ever make it home.
He provided some more information about his suffering in a 1983 Clarion-Ledger article. He saw his fellow prisoners beheaded. The Japs stripped the Marines upon capture, tied them up with telephone wire, and kept them in the overcrowded hold of a ship for three months.
He finally went to a well-deserved rest in Valhalla in 2001.
15 comments:
While I served in SEA, I maintained the utmost respect for my brothers who fought, died and captured in the Pacific Campaigns and all other wars. They were an inspiration. Semper Fi to them and to all services.
Reader made a great comment but then had to screw it up with the last sentence. Yeesh. Was it really necessary? Resubmit without it and it gets approved.
Cary Ashcraft of Clinton and Philip Casio of Greenville (both now deceased) had never met nor heard of each other. I was working in Greenville, at the time, 35 years ago, and was a friend of Mr. Casio and I worked in the agency that also employed Mr. Ashcraft in Jackson. Both were great men, looked up to by many and had advanced in their particular occupations.
I knew that both of them had been prisoners of war and had endured the Bataan Death March during WWII. On one of Cary's visits to our Greenville office it hit me that maybe these two would be OK with meeting each other. I called Philip after talking to Cary and it was on! Philip came to the office and the two of them were given total privacy for two hours in our conference room. I never asked either of them about their visit as it was none of my business. I'm real glad I got to do that for them.
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Great post Kingfish. I was lucky enough to be raised by men of this generation and I will forever maintain my utmost respect for those that served in WW2. Our nation is starving for men of this example nowadays.
Mad Money, I agree with you 1000%. Sad to say, but we will never see another generation of Americans that even comes close to the Greatest Generation. At this point, we are just starving for some REAL men.
America's greatest heroes. All those young men and women who went to fight or support the fight against the Nazis and Facists in Europe, and the Imperial Japanese are absolute American heroes.
So many of them died so we could be here today. So many of people to this day hear the call of country and willingly go defend our freedoms, knowing full well they may not return to the country they so deeply love.
It's just awful when people insult those who fought and died, fought and lived, were held as a POW, went to fight an unpopular war, or did anything in service through the military for this country.
Heroes. People to model your life after. Honor and courage still beat in the heart of our nation.
It's sad to consider but this country may need another depression or world war. To live in abject poverty or go through real life and death is something no one wants to do but it can make you appreciate everything. Both of those events mad men and women such that they built the United States into this great place. Now we are populated by soft whiners and complainers. If the internet goes out for 10 seconds we think the world will end. God forbid we talk about those freaks out west.
A hero indeed! //salute//
Think about this hero and the other members of The Greatest Generation when you watch a pro sports game and some participants "take a knee." I will never watch another pro sports game, ever.
My late father was an Army artillery officer who was in the first wave landing on Okinawa, the bloodiest battle in the Pacific Theater.
Proof that men and women will rise to the occasion when called upon to do so. Deepest respect for all who fought, died or were POW's in this and other wars. Thanks to all of those currently serving who could be called upon to do the same.
12:17 -- I agree. We have become a nation of whiners. There are exceptions. The U.S. Marines are hard to get into and the training is tough. You can't even enter until you pass demanding physicals and see a shrink. The unfit never set foot on Parris Island. And it doesn't end there. Yet, men and some women volunteer for slow promotions and the opportunity to keep be among the few and proud. As an Army veteran I am sad to say my branch has joined the "politically correct" crowd and now drill instructors can't even yell at their recruits. No more "shark attacks" and each recruit must be treated with dignity and respect. And discipline has gone to hell. I would hate to go to war with this new breed. God help the United States.
12:33 thanks for your father's service. My father arrived on Okinawa a little after your father in an Army combat engineering battalion. He passed away 35 years ago today. Still miss him. Those men were great men.
Army has always been fodder.
@2:49 PM - same to you. They were there at the same time. My dad passed in 2005. He was also recalled for the Korean War and served in England, as there was concern that the Soviets would invade W. Europe while the U.S. was tied up in Korea. My brother and I were "Army brats" at RAF Lakenheath.
WOW !!
What a story and what a man.
I'll never forgive the Japanese for what they did to our POW's
I believe that the American people once again would step to the plate if we were to face the threats posed by the Japanese and the Nazis.
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