34 degrees in The City of Amsterdam at 7:07AM

Mohawk Valley Weather, Thursday, February 1, 2024

Friday, February 2, 2024-Episode 508-Jerry Madden discusses his historical novel Steel Valley: Coming of Age in the Ohio Valley in the 1960s.  Madden sets his story in the Rust Belt in cities like Steubenville, Ohio, where the steel mills have moved out.   

Friday, February 9, 2024-Episode 509-Highlights Edition from 2023 and 2024` with excerpts from podcasts on Civil War volunteers from Saratoga,  the story of Benedict Arnold, an ancient elephant tusk found in Maine and much more.

Friday, February 16, 2024-Episode 510-Former Albany Politico bureau chief Terry Golway is author of I Never Did like Politics: How Fiorello La Guardia Became America's Mayor, and Why He Still Matters.  Golway tells the story of LaGuardia’s life through colorful episodes that sound familiar to people today.

Friday, February 23, 2024-Episode 511-Photojournalist Richard Frishman and essayist and professor Dr. B. Brian Foster are authors of Ghosts of Segregation, a photojournalism collection depicting a visual history of segregation through the buildings and landscapes where racism has left its mark.

Triumph after three years as a Japanese POW
By Bob Cudmore

Michael Swann's mother told him, "Don't ever talk to your father about the war." Many years later after their father had passed Michael and his brothers learned some of the reasons.

Michael's father, Alton R. Swann, was born in Schenectady in 1916, son of Ora and Helen Swann. At eight years old he moved to Gloversville with his mother and four siblings after Ora Swann died.

Alton was on the debate team, edited the school newspaper and excelled in track at Gloversville High. After high school he graduated from Gloversville Business School in 1937. He was hired as an accountant at Schenectady General Electric.

He was drafted by the Army in May 1941. He was assigned to Clark Air Base in the Philippines with the 803rd Engineer Battalion.

Within hours of the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, a Japanese bombing attack on December 8 resulted in destruction of Clark Field. Swann was reassigned to the battle for Bataan which the Americans lost to the Japanese. He fought at Aglaloma where his 803rd battalion was decimated.

Swann was put on board a transport ship which took survivors to the American island fortress of Corregidor. Swann told his eldest son that his superiors were impressed he was able to maintain his composure when Japanese planes strafed their ship.

Corregidor surrendered to the Japanese in May 1942. Taken prisoner, Swann survived a death march on Bataan where hundreds were killed or died while marching to internment camps.

He was held at Camp 10C in the Philippines until September 1944 when transported to Japan aboard a "hell" ship, the Noto Maru. Hundreds of prisoners were forced to stand upright in the hold in tropical heat. U.S. submarines mistakenly sank many such overcrowded ships carrying American prisoners.

In Japan he was imprisoned at a POW camp and used as slave labor, shoveling manganese ore into furnaces. Tooth decay and gum diseases developed. Other prisoners developed malaria, beriberi, and dysentery. Treatment by prison guards was brutal.

Liberated in September 1945 after the Japanese surrender, he was put aboard a hospital ship, the Monitor, where he wrote his fiancé, Glendean Brooks in Gloversville, asking if she was still waiting for him. She was.

He spent time in Manila before returning to San Francisco aboard the transport Bolivar. All his teeth were pulled, and he was fitted with dentures.

For his part in the Philippines campaign, Sergeant Swann received the Purple Heart, Army Good Conduct Medal and various campaign ribbons.

In his first letter home he said memories of loved ones "brought him through experiences better left undescribed." Alton's mother received a telegram saying her son was on his way home. He arrived in November.
Alton married Glendean at the parsonage of Gloversville's Methodist Church Thanksgiving afternoon, 1945.

Their son Michael Swann was born nine months later. As a child he never was really aware of it but his mother told him his father suffered from what we would call PTSD. He had a lifelong issue with sleeplessness and nightmares of the war.

Alton went back to work at Schenectady GE. The couple had two more sons, David and Thomas. In 1953 Alton was transferred to a GE plant in Connecticut and lived many years in Monroe, Connecticut.

Alton's son Michael made frequent business trips to Japan. He was "humbled by a visit to the site of the Nomachi POW camp near Toyama." The factory where his father slaved still stands.

Glendean Swann died in 1992. Alton Swann died in 2002 at age 86. Burial with full military honors took place at Pine Hill Cemetery in Southbury, Connecticut.