Veteran tries to connect with distant relative’s POW experience

Serendipity

In 2019 I drove 3,300 miles and 72 years into the past when I connected with my paternal biological family. Thanks to DNA technology I suddenly I had five new brothers and a new sister whose unconditional love and acceptance have been amazing. Over the past five years they’ve shared history of our family with me. As a youth, I spent four years in the military, so when I learned that I had a distant relative, Andrew O. Grignon Jr. who was a Japanese prisoner of war (POW) during WWII, I had to learn more about him.

Andrew O. Grignon Jr. grew up on a farm in Wisconsin. I recently began searching for his surviving family members. A 1936 newspaper account documents an early act of Andrew’s bravery: Winneconne, Wis.–(Special)—Russell Grignon, who lives two miles west of this village, had a narrow escape from death Sunday evening in the hunting shanty of Henry Sparks, near Land O’ Lakes. Andrew Grignon, with his sons Andrew Jr. and Russell, stayed with Mr. Sparks at his lodge. Sunday evening, after returning from a hunt for deer, one of the men lighted a gasoline stove which exploded within a few minutes, filling the entire room with flames. Russell’s clothing was ignited, and he called for help. His brother, Andrew Jr. threw him into the snow and rolled him over, and over, thereby saving Russell’s life, but burning his hair and eyebrows. Neither was seriously hurt. The shanty was entirely destroyed….

Russell, the brother Andrew saved, lived a full life and named one of his children after the brother who saved him. As I continued my quest into Andrew’s life, through findagrave.com, I learned about his horrifying POW experience on the infamous Japanese “Hell ships.”

“Andrew Grignon was one of 1,622 Japanese Prisoners of War boarded onto the Oryoku Maru at Manila. The ship sailed on December 14, 1944, for Subic Bay. After arriving there the same day, it was bombed by American planes while it was picking up Japanese personnel. As dusk came, the planes broke off the attack. The next day, the planes returned and resumed the attack. The Japanese abandoned ship. They then ordered the POWs to abandon ship during an air raid on the ship. When the American pilots saw the large number of men climbing from the ship’s holds, they stopped their attack. As the POWs swam to shore, the POWs were shot at by Japanese soldiers with machine guns. The surviving POWs were herded onto tennis courts. Those who stated they were too sick to go on were taken into the mountains and beheaded at a cemetery. The remaining POWs were taken to San Fernando La Union and boarded onto a second ship, the Enoura Maru, which reached Takao, Formosa. While in harbor, on January 9, 1945, the ship was bombed by American planes resulting in the deaths of many POWs. They were buried in a mass grave on the island. The survivors were put on a third ship, the Brazil Maru. Those who died on this ship were thrown overboard before the ship reached Japan on January 29, 1945. Only 403 of the POWs, who boarded the ship at Manila, survived the war.”

Have you ever had a sense of coming full circle in life? The summer of 1966, during my first deployment to Vietnam, some shipmates and I had the opportunity to visit Manila American Cemetery in the Philippines.

Walking through shaded halls, I studied the 36,286 names honoring those killed in action (KIA), body not recovered, each memorialized on the Walls of the Missing. Stepping out of the hall, I gazed in awe across groomed vistas of white crosses honoring an additional 16,859 buried.

I remember asking myself, how is it that this many people died? I was 18 that spring, and it was the first national cemetery I had ever seen. Coming from a northern Minnesota isolated farm kid background, what I was looking at was beyond my worldview. Today I searched the Walls of the Missing and found my ancestor.

Walls of the Missing: This person was listed as “missing in action”. GRIGNON, Andrew O, Second Lieutenant, 201st Philippine Engineer Battalion, U.S. Army, Service# 0-890037, Enlisted: Wisconsin, d. 9-Jan-1945, Walls of the Missing, World War II, Purple Heart

Today, I pause and reflect as I honor my distant relative’s memory. I try to imagine the horror that he experienced. A generation later, after I was wounded in Vietnam, I received succor in a military hospital in Japan, from descendants of those whose countrymen murdered my ancestor.

DPAA

Want to search for any POW/MIA?
Visit dpaa.mil.
Did you know The American Legion has fought tooth and nail to keep this federal agency in tact? It is the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.