[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 203 (Monday, December 16, 2019)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1595]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




          REMEMBERING WT2c CARL ELLIS BARNES, PALAWAN MASSACRE

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                              HON. TJ COX

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                       Monday, December 16, 2019

  Mr. COX of California. Madam Speaker, today, I ask my colleagues to 
pause in memory of 139 soldiers, airmen, Marines, and sailors who 
perished 75 years ago this month. On December 14, 1944, in the midst of 
World War II, on the Philippines island of Palawan they were massacred 
as prisoners of war (POWs). They had just completed building a Japanese 
airfield that is used today as the Antonio Bautista Air Base, an 
important anchor of the U.S.-Philippines alliance.
  One of the men murdered, Water Tender 2C Carl Ellis Barnes, hailed 
from the Central Valley in California. He had arrived in the 
Philippines from China aboard the Yangtze River gunboat USS Ohau (PR-6) 
days before Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and the Philippines. During the 
next five months of combat, the warship operated in and around Manila 
Bay on inshore patrol. Barnes became a POW on May 6, 1942 when the 
island fortress of Corregidor was surrendered.
  In August 1942, he was taken to Palawan Island on the Sulu Sea with 
over 300 POWs, most of whom had survived the infamous Bataan Death 
March. The POWs were tasked with building an airfield for the Imperial 
Japanese Army. They endured arduous manual labor while being starved, 
denied medical care, and routinely and capriciously beaten. By December 
1944, only 150 POWs were still held on the island and American forces 
were beginning to liberate the Philippines.
  At noon on December 14, 1944, the POWs were sent to their recently 
constructed air raid trenches. Quickly, the Japanese troops doused them 
with buckets of airplane fuel and set them afire with flaming torches, 
followed by hand grenades and machine gun fire. Miraculously, 11 men 
escaped to the sea and were rescued by Filipino guerrillas.
  Thus, today we remember these brave souls who labored and perished so 
far from home. The airfield they built is one of the sites of our 
Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement with the Philippines that helps 
bind our historic alliance with the Philippines. WT2c Barnes is buried 
in Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery, Missouri with most of his 
fellow POWs from the Palawan Massacre. Never Forgotten.

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