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The Lost Battalion (Pacific, World War II) was the 2nd Battalion, 131st Field Artillery, 36th Infantry Division (Texas National Guard) of the U.S. Army. The men of the battalion, plus the survivors of the sunken ship USS ''Houston'', were captured by the Japanese on the island of Java in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) in March 1942. They were prisoners of war for 42 months until the end of World War II. It is called the lost battalion because the fate of the men was unknown to the United States until September 1944. 534 soldiers from the battalion and 368 survivors of the ''Houston'' were taken prisoner. Most of the men were sent to Thailand to work on the Burma Railway, the building of which is portrayed in the film ''The Bridge on the River Kwai''. Of the 902 soldiers and sailors taken captive, 163 died in captivity.〔"History of the Lost Battalion", Lost Battalion Association, http://texasmilitaryforcesmuseum.org/lostbattalion/history.htm, accessed 29 Dec 2014〕 Most of the prisoners of war were from western Texas.〔Marcello, Ronald E. "Lone Star POWs: Texas National Guardsmen and the Building of the Burma-Thailand Railroad, 1942-1944" ''The Southwestern Historical Quarterly'', Vol. 95, No 3 (Jan 1992), p. 293. Downloaded from JSTOR.〕 Sergeant Frank Fujita was a notable survivor who was a POW for three and a half years. He went on to write the memoir ''Foo: A Japanese-American Prisoner of the Rising Sun''. ==2nd Battalion== The parent organization of the 2nd Battalion, the 36th Division, Texas National Guard was mobilized on 25 November 1940. The battalion of Texas soldiers consisted of a Headquarters Battery from Decatur and Wichita Falls, Firing Batteries D, E, and F from Wichita Falls, Abilene, and Jacksboro respectively, a Service Battery from Lubbock and Plainview, and a Medical Detachment form Plainview. The majority of the men were from 18 to 22 years old.〔Marcello, p. 295〕 The Battalion sailed from San Francisco on 21 November 1941 assigned to the Philippines, but with the outbreak of World War II in the Pacific was rerouted to Brisbane, Australia. After Christmas in Brisbane, the Battalion sailed again on a Dutch freighter, arriving on the island of Java on 11 January 1942 with 558 men. The 2nd Battalion was the only U.S. ground force to arrive in the Dutch East Indies. The mission of the Battalion was to help the Dutch defend the islands from a possible Japanese invasion, which in fact began on 27 February 1942.〔"History of the Lost Battalion", Lost Battalion Association, http://texasmilitaryforcesmuseum.org/lostbattalion/history.htm, accessed 29 Dec 2014〕 On 8 March 1942, the allies in the Dutch East Indies surrendered to the Japanese. Among the 32,500 soldiers taken prisoner, mostly Dutch, British, and Australian, were 534 members of the U.S. battalion, 21 men of the original 558 having been transferred and three killed in action. 99 of the American POWs were from E Battery which had been detached from the main body of the battalion. They would have a different POW history than the others.〔Marcello, p. 296〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Lost Battalion (Pacific, World War II)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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