Wellsburg museum salutes vets 75 years after Bataan
Ed Jackfert, a former POW from Wellsburg, W.Va., was one of nearly 70 military veterans who took part Friday in the remembrance ceremony for the 75th anniversary of the Bataan Death March, at the ADBC Museum in Wellsburg.
Ed Jackfert, a former POW from Wellsburg, W.Va., participates in the remembrance ceremony for the 75th anniversary of the Bataan Death March, at the ADBC Museum in Wellsburg on Friday.
The 59th Coastal Marines form an honor line Friday during the remembrance ceremony for the 75th anniversary of the Bataan Death March at the ADBC Museum in Wellsburg, W.Va.
WELLSBURG, W.Va. – Seven decades haven’t diminished Ed Jackfert’s memory.
“I was beaten up quite a bit,” he said, recalling vividly the three years, four months he endured a Japanese prisoner of war camp during World War II. The physical abuse affected his hearing and left him with a broken nose.
“I also had beriberi, which caused the problems I have today,” he added of that long-ago disease, which has left him with a burning sensation in his feet.
Despite the horrors of the past and discomfort of the present, Jackfert, 95, stood proudly Friday morning, a former U.S. Army Air Corps member. He was one of nearly 70 military veterans honored during a 75th anniversary remembrance of the Bataan Death March. The event was organized by the National American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor Museum, and drew a number of participants from the tri-state. Jim Brockman of McDonald, who runs the museum, estimated the total crowd at about 125.
Jackfert was not part of the notorious death march, which began April 9, 1942. About 78,000 American and Filipino prisoners were forced to transfer from prison locations in Bataan province, near Manila, to a POW camp run by the Japanese 65 miles away. An estimated 11,000 died during the march through jungles in searing heat, during which prisoners were denied food, water and medical treatment. Those who stumbled or fell were killed.
An Allied military commission later ruled the march to be a Japanese war crime.
None of the estimated 80 march survivors appeared in Wellsburg Friday, but veterans of various ages and branches – and their descendants were on hand. The event began outside ADBC Museum, housed inside Brooke County Public Library, slightly above the banks of the Ohio River. It continued with speeches and a march up Charles Street, and ended with a 21-gun salute, taps and a wreath-laying.
Brockman said his museum is one of only two nationwide that has an annual remembrance of the death march.
Jackfert was accompanied by his wife of 70 years, Henrietta, a spry 91 herself. Both grew up in Wellsburg but did not meet until after WWII. They still reside there.
While stationed at Clark Air Field in the Philippines, Ed Jackfert awakened Dec. 8, 1941 – long before the rise of social media – to an announcement that Pearl Harbor had been attacked two days earlier and the U.S. was at war. After lunch that day, he said, troops there heard the roar of engines they believed to be Navy planes. They were Japanese bombers.
“There was bomb after bomb after bomb,” Jackfert said. “I don’t know how I survived that.”
He was among the American troops who were captured and was transported to a labor camp on board what American soldiers referred to as a “hellship” – where fresh water and food were scarce. Beatings were common at the camps, and increased when the U.S. won a key battle.
Jackfert was imprisoned for more than three years before being liberated Aug. 28, 1945, just before the war ended. Of about 27,000 Americans interned by the Japanese military, 11,000 died.
Jackfert later became a criminal investigator for Attorney General Robert Kennedy in the 1960s, focusing mostly on organized crime and investigations of public officials. He also has written three books, two about the war plus his memoirs. His most profound memory?
“We try to teach young kids,” he said, “that war is only death and destruction.”