Sgt. Charles R. Bolt

Sgt. Charles R. Bolt
Service: U.S. Army Air Corp. - WWII Division: 27th Bomb Group, 91st Bomb Squadron (stationed at Manila, PI) Battles: Pacific Theater - Baatan, and Baatan Death March Decorations: Bronze Star, Distinguished Unit Badge w/Oak Leaf Clusters, Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Ribbon w/ 2 Bronze Stars, Philippine Islands Defense Ribbon w/ 1 Bronze Star, and 7 Overseas Service Bars Burial: Paducah, Texas
Sgt. Charles R. Bolt Bio by his son, Leroy Bolt Charles R. Bolt grew up in Paducah, Texas and was drafted into the Army in 1941. After basic training, he and a friend, Leroy Sheets who was from Spearman, Texas, joined the newly formed Army Air Corp. They were trained as airplane mechanics, and were shipped to the Philippines in late November, 1941. Their group had not received their planes when the Japanese attacked the islands on December 7, 1941. The Philippines were isolated in the Pacific after the severe losses the Navy took at Pearl Harbor. They were unable to receive shipments of food or arms, and the U.S. and Philippine Army defended the Philippines from the Bataan peninsula on the island of Luzon. Bataan has extremely rugged jungle terrain with tropic heat. The Americans were dug into defenses and held Bataan for over five months with no help or reinforcements. During this time they were malnourished and sick from lack of food and medicine. When the Japanese broke through and captured Bataan in April, 1942, my father and 76,000 other survivors of the battle suffered through a forced march, which became known as the Death March, with little food or water in the jungle heat. The Japanese were extremely cruel and killed many of the prisoners on the route to prison camp. My father’s friend, Leroy Sheets, was killed shortly after the Death March. I was named Leroy in his honor. My father suffered severe treatment, starvation, beatings at the hands of his Japanese captors. He worked on a jungle road until he was severely injured, and spent ten months recuperating in Billibid prison in Manila where he got down to 95 pounds. He was 6 foot 4 inches and normally weighed about 185 pounds. In 1943, the Japanese began moving American prisoners to their home islands. My father spent about two weeks in the hold of a cargo ship with 1,500 other American prisoners on this journey. The Japanese used the cargo ships to shield their own military convoys from attack by American submarines. The conditions in these ships were unspeakable. My father then spent 18 months working in a Japanese copper mine in the mountains of northern Japan at Hanawa until the end of the war. He would never have returned, and I would never have been born, if the U.S. had not used the atomic bomb to end the war when they did. The surviving prisoners were severely malnourished and mistreated, and yet they are the lucky ones who returned to life in these marvelous United States . Because of my father’s war time malnutrition and mistreatment, he suffered disabilities which prevented him from being able to work after he reached about 50 years of age, and he was awarded a 100% service connected disability by the Veterans Administration. I have a first hand appreciation for the importance of the Veterans Administration programs. They enabled him to enjoy a good life, which would have not otherwise been available to him. Honored on the National WWII Memorial Website
Charles Bolt is a Benjamin Bolt descendant Information and photo contributed by Leroy Bolt All Rights Reserved - 2005 boltancestry.com