Theft of WWII Journal Unites Soldiers and Veterans

Separated by more than 7,000 miles, two different generations and two very different wars, a California Army National Guardsman in Baghdad wants to help bring Ben Waldron's World War II journal back home.
Crystal Carreon 

Left, Ben Waldron, 84, of Orangevale holds out hope for the return of the stolen diary detailing his experiences as a POW.

The journal, rough-hewn and gray, was stolen Jan. 26, along with jewelry and cash from the Waldron home. 

In Baghdad, Lt. Col. Robert Spano, part of an engineering brigade from Sacramento, learned of the theft from a Sacramento Bee story online. He felt an instant kinship – he, too, is keeping a wartime journal – and a duty to help.

Spano is offering a $1,000 reward from his own wallet, joining a growing pool of support from other outraged veterans around the country and friends at home who hope the 84-year-old former prisoner of war will see his journal again. A reward fund at a Sacramento bank was being set up this week…

"The thieves that stole this book probably do not even realize what they have on their hands," said Spano, 42, in an e-mail from Iraq. "Hopefully they did not throw it away, dismissing it as a worthless notebook."

The journal had survived with its author to tell of 3 1/2 years of prison captivity after the Japanese army captured Corregidor in the Philippines in May 1942, part of one of the most brutal war campaigns of the modern era. It had survived surreptitiously, hidden in banana trees at Cabanatuan; in the dirt at Bilibid; even inside a prison latrine at Fanatsu, serving as a daily log of executions, slave labor and the beatings that left Army Cpl. Waldron, a former anti-aircraft gunner, unable to have children.

The journal that inspired Waldron's 1989 book "Corregidor, From Paradise to Hell!" had been kept for years locked away in a small, white security box under a bed in the master bedroom – the first place Waldron looked when he came home that Friday from a POW luncheon with his wife, Gerri.

Since the theft, their telephone keeps ringing with an outpouring of support from veterans, other surviving POWs and their families. A man in San Francisco wanted to send a war medal to replace one that was stolen; a woman in Minnesota wanted to buy Waldron's book; a family in Ohio sought to contribute to a reward fund. And a private chat group for POWs lit up with offers of support, heartache and angst.

"This is indeed a great loss of something of more value than silver, gold or precious gems," said WWII researcher Wes Injerd in Oregon, who posted to the site.

There have been sympathy cards and TV appearances. But with every passing day, the Waldrons realize the journal's still gone.

"It's nice, you know," Gerri Waldron said of the support, "but that doesn't heal the wound."

Sacramento County sheriff's detectives are continuing to investigate, but given that it is a home burglary with no description of the culprits, a department spokesman said it is unlikely the journal will surface.

Every morning Waldron, still tall but shaky, looks at his front doorstep.

Maybe it's there. Maybe someone brought it back during the night. Or maybe, he replays the possibility out loud, "if someone walked up and handed me my book, I'd say, 'thank you,' " he said, gesturing a faint smile. "Now, goodbye."

His wife confesses that Waldron has had dreams about the journal since its theft. But he will not tell her what he sees.

During the day, the couple check their newly installed burglary alarm system and still turn up pieces of shattered glass, pieces of the bedroom window that burglars broke through to get inside their home.

Waldron, who says he is beginning to show early signs of Alzheimer's disease, tries to imagine what the thieves were thinking. His mind flashes back to more than half a century ago, as a young soldier imprisoned in Japan, where he forced himself to learn to read the lips and eyes of his enemy captors to survive.

"I'm trying to tell myself it's gone," Waldron said of his original writings. "And, I'm just hurt."

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