Autobiography of Robert Burton Heer

Robert B. Heer enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps at March Field, CA June 27, 1940 one week after graduating from Polytechnic High School in Riverside, CA. The unit to which Heer was assigned was the 30^th Bomb Sq., 19^th Bomb GP. The group was assigned B-17 Flying Fortress aircraft. One year later, June 1941, Heer was transferred along with other personnel of the 19^th Bomb GP. to Kirtland Field at Albuquerque, N.M. Approximately four months later the entire 19^th Bomb GP. were transferred to Clark Field in the Philippines. On December 8, 1941, one day after their attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese bombed Clark Field and destroyed over half of the B-17 Flying Fortresses of the 19^th Bomb GP. The aircraft were caught on the ground while parked on the sod runways. Many B-17 crews and support personnel lost their lives that day.

A few days later the 19^th Group was reassigned to a site on Bataan Peninsula near the port of Mariveles. On December 29 the remaining members of the 19^th Group were transported by the inter-island ship Mayan on a three-day voyage to the southern Philippine island of Mindanao.

Five months later, Gen. Wainwright ordered all American Forces in the Philippines to surrender to the Japanese. Wearing badly worn shoes and no medical or food supplies most American GIs opted to become POWs believing that the war with Japan would end in a few months. But those few months lengthened into three and one half years. Heer was interned at 7 separate POW camps. The first was Camp Cassisang, Malaybalay, Mindanao where Heer volunteered to be an orderly for POW Brigadier General Joseph P. Vachon. Two hellship voyages later, Heer, Gen. Vachon, and other Mindanao POWs passed through old Bilibid Prison in Manila and on to Karenko POW camp on Formosa where all Allied colonels and generals were interned. Months later, Heer along with other enlisted POWs were moved to Heito POW camp also on Formosa. There they worked in cane fields and removed rocks from virgin land to plant more cane. Early 1944 they were transported to Taihoku POW camp on Formosa. At that camp they either worked constructing an artificial lake or in a railroad roundhouse repairing RR steam engines. One two separate occasions they watched as U.S. Navy Hellcat Fighter aircraft strafed and bombed a Japanese air base installation and aircraft located across the river from the POW camp. During the winter of 1944-45 Heer and other POWs were transported by hellship and ferry boat to the island of Hokkaido where they worked as stevedores at the port of Hakodate. When Spring arrived Heer and the others were relocated by train to Akabira, where they spent intolerable and exhausting days slaving in the coal mines. After the second atomic bomb was dropped on Japan all POWs at Akabira were confined to their barracks. Their captors told them that because of a Typhus epidemic on Hokkaido they would not be working for a week or so. Days later, an old Wurlitzer Jukebox that U.S. Marine POWs brought to Akabira from a POW camp in China was converted to a radio receiver. The first broadcast picked up by this radio was the announcement of Japan’s surrender on August 15, 1945. On September 12, 1945 Heer was finally out of Japanese control and on his way home.