The publication is reproduced in full below:
RECOGNIZING THE LIFE OF WALTER GANN
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HON. TRENT KELLY
of mississippi
in the house of representatives
Wednesday, October 27, 2021
Mr. KELLY of Mississippi. Madam Speaker, I rise today to celebrate the life and service of Corporal Walter Gann, an American hero from Mississippi, who defended liberty against impossible odds in the Pacific during World War II.
Walter, born in Calhoun City on January 31, 1922, joined the U.S. Army on July 3, 1941. By July 15, he was aboard the USS Coolidge deployed to the Philippines as a member of the Army Signal Corps assigned to 409th Signal Company (Aviation) at Nichols Field outside Manila. The plan was to erect radar towers, but none of the equipment needed arrived on the ship with them.
Imperial Japan attacked the Philippines on December 8 and all the critical airfields were destroyed by December 10. Walter's company and the airmen were soon sent on combat duty in the Bataan Peninsula. He was assigned to U.S. Army Forces Far East (USAFFE) headquarters at Little Baguio near the tip of Bataan.
The troops on Bataan, running out of ammunition, food, and medicine, with no hope of resupply or reinforcement, were surrendered by their commanding officers on April 9, 1942. Walter was among 86,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war who were forced on what became known as the infamous Bataan Death March, one of World War II's worst war crimes. In the tropical sun, deprived of food, water, and mercy, the men trekked 65 miles up Bataan to a train station. There they were packed standing 100 to a boxcar for the next 24 miles. Men died where they stood. Survivors marched another eight miles to their first POW camp, O'Donnell.
Walter, POW No. 203, was shipped to Japan in July 1943 packed in the dark, fetid hold of the hell ship Clyde Maru with 500 other POWs. He was sent to be a slave laborer at Fukuoka No. 17 POW Camp attached to the Mitsui-owned Miike coal mine in southern Japan close to Nagasaki. Starved, beaten, and denied medical care, he was forced to dig coal in a primitive mine until the camp was liberated in September 1945. The coal mine is now a UNESCO Industrial World Heritage site, albeit without mention of the thousands of POWs held there or that the mine had remained reliant on manual labor and not modem machinery.
Although asked to testify in Japan at the war crime trials held from 1946 to 1948, Mr. Gann could not return because he remained too sick from the various illnesses he suffered from during his three and one-
half years as a POW. For the remainder of his life, Walter bore the weight of all the horror and inhumanity he had witnessed. When he was able to work, Walter was a truck driver.
In 1949, Walter moved to Booneville, Mississippi, and married Juanita Goddard. Together they raised four children. In 1963, he lost both his wife and his stepson. In his later years, he lived in Chattanooga, Tennessee, until he passed away on October 14, 1980.
During his lifetime, Walter was awarded the Good Conduct Medal, the Purple Heart, the World War II Victory Medal, the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal with one bronze campaign star, the American Defense Service Medal with one bronze campaign star, and the Philippine Defense Medal. He also received a letter from President Harry S. Truman thanking him for his service. Posthumously, he received the Bronze Star Medal for meritorious achievement, the Prisoner of War Medal, and the Presidential Unit Citation with two Bronze Oak Leaf Clusters.
I am grateful for Corporal Walter Gann's commitment to faith, family, and democracy. I am humbled by his sacrifices for our country.
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SOURCE: Congressional Record Vol. 167, No. 189
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