“I March to Honor Mel Waldrop & Y. C. Lindsey, My Uncles”

2001 Bataan Memorial

Death March

Lonnie Milford 'Mike' Weaver joined the National Guard in 1935 at the age of 15. Assigned to HQ Btry 1Bn 200th Coast Artillery (AA), he was captured on Bataan while on a reconnaissance mission, driving through tank and aerial strafing fire.

As a prisoner of war, Weaver was to face a firing squad when one of his “blood brothers” was unaccounted for. The missing man was found dead in a latrine before Weaver and the other POWs were executed.

Weaver labored in the leather factory at Mukden [Manchuria]. He was liberated in August 1945.

Mr. Weaver remained in the military following the war, retiring after 22-1/2 years of service. He died February 1, 1998 at the age of 78 in Paradise, California.

• Mukden POWs

• Mike Weaver, Bataan
Death March Survivor

Mrs. Paul Womack & Nephew

2000 Bataan Memorial

Death March

“First in Spite of Hell” and the “First to Fire”, click here to read about Sgt. Womack’s first encounter with the Japanese on December 8, 1941.

Funeral Today for Woolworth

GEARY, April 28 — (Special) — Military services will be held at 2:30 p.m. Friday in the Indian mission east of Greenfield for Pfc. Jessie Woolworth, 29.

Services will be in charge of the Geary American Legion post with internment in the Indian Mission cemetery east of Greenfield.

Pfc. Woolworth, survivor of the death march from Bataan, died in a prison camp in the Philippines May 29, 1942. He was a graduate of both the Concho and the Chilocco Indian schools and was working in the Navajo Indian service in Gallup, N.M., at the time of his induction.

He is survived by four brothers, Eugene, Concho; Charlie, Watonga; Edward, McAlester; and Sherman, Lander, Wyo.; and one sister, Mrs. Rose Arpan, Cheyenne Agency, S.D.

The Daily Oklahoman

April 29, 1949

Durward Wright

d. Cabanatuan 1942

The War years were devastating for Mrs. Lillie Mae Wright of Portales, New Mexico. Her younger son Warren, one of only two children, was killed on Iwo Jima February 24, 1945. Hope for the safe return of her surviving son, Durward Jr., ended in August 1945, with the arrival of news from the War Department that Durward had died in a prisoner of war camp June 21, 1942 — Father's Day 1942 — the day after his father's passing.

Photo courtesy of Deana McGuffin