Title: "...The Secretary of War Shares Your Grief..."
First published: 2000
Description: General Outline:

This life story of a young man, an only child, born to a locomotive engineer and a schoolteacher, begins with some family background including early training in a military academy for a period of two years followed by four years at the local high school where the subject demonstrates keen leadership ability. This is followed by a BA in Letters and Science from the University of California at Berkeley, as well as a commission as an infantry reserve officer.

While doing graduate work in the fall of 1939 he is called to active duty for six months. Just as the six months are up, his duty is extended for a year. Before the year is up, he finds himself in the Philippine Islands assigned to General Douglas Mac Arthur’s staff about two months after the United States Army Forces in the Far East (USAFFE) is established and about three months before the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor.

He assists in the move from Manila to Corregidor and endures the subsequent bombing. Mac Arthur offers to take him to Australia but he declines in favor of going to the Bataan Peninsula to fight with his old outfit (57th Infantry). His capture includes the infamous "Bataan Death March" and a trip to Japan on a Hell Ship. After he dies in a POW camp in Osaka of multiple diseases, a Buddhist priest cremates his body and preserves the ashes near an altar he has established for the remains of deceased allied soldiers. He delivers the remains to allied occupation forces after the war.

The subject’s father tries to get the U. S. Government to honor a war risk life insurance scheme put together by Congress in 1940. No record can be found, which leads to a ten-year battle between them in which the father ultimately prevails by using much political pressure, including the White House.

The subject had been promoted to the rank of Captain by the time he was captured at the age of twenty-five. The writer is convinced that had he survived the war, he may have retired with the rank of General: he had achieved a coveted Regular Army Commission; his father-in-law-to-be was a Colonel on a first-name basis with General Mac Arthur; he would have survived a great atrocity; many officers thought he did outstanding work and was an exemplary officer; his picture had been in LIFE Magazine. Carlos P. Romulo, future President of the United Nations Assembly, spoke well of him; Nelson Trusler Johnson, Ambassador to China before the war began and Minister to Australia while the war was waged spoke well of him; he had, among others, Silver and Bronze Star Medals to his credit.

Most of this work comes from letters saved by the subject’s parents, who have been deceased for quite some years. This is augmented, slightly, with previously published accounts of the Death March, the Hell Ships and conditions in the POW camps. Letters from survivors of the war are also utilized.
Subjects: Bataan, Battle of, Philippines, 1942, Biography, Japanese Prisoners and prisons, Prisoners and prisons, Japanese, Prisoners of war, World War, 1939-1945, Warfare, Nomads, Vikings, Huns, Medieval Military history, Mongols, Military art and science, History
Places: Japan, Philippines., United States
People: Milton Jerome Sheldon (1916-), Milton Jerome Sheldon (1916-1942)
Time periods: Setting is before and during the beginning of WW II in the Pacific.
LC classification: D805.J3 S465 2000