Bill Ingram USN USS Houston CA-30, POW of Japan
Posted on 14 March, 2017 by Larry in
Bill Ingram enlisted in Navy about six months before the U S was drawn into WW II on his 17th birthday in June of 1941. He was ordered to the Heavy Cruiser Houston CA-30 as a powder monkey on the 8 in. guns. The part one interview Bill tells of all of the fighting he did aboard the Houston in the first three months of 1942 when the Japanese did as they pleased since no one in the Pacific could stop them. He then tells of the sinking of the Houston on 1 March 1942.
The second hour of the interview tells of his three and a half years of being a POW of the Japanese on the Death Railway, Burma/Thailand Railroad (or The Bridge on the River Kwai movie) project. Bill tells of nearly starving, the horrible disease’s that they suffered and being worked very close to death. There were 180,000 Asians, 60,000 Allied POW’s on the project. Of these 12,000 Allied POW’s died and many times that Asians laborers died during the over three years of the building of the railroad.
After the war the Allies tried 111 Japanese military men with 32 being sentenced to death.