There is an additional group of 60 US POWs which we can account for but who were never affiliated with the 2 main groups (TXNG and HOUSTON) but who spent time either on Java or at Changi or both. Forty-six of these were Mer Mar from three different ships. The other 14 were AAF members who fell into the hands of the Japanese in various ways.
None of these men was ever affiliated with the Thai-Burma Railway. According to an AAF website:
http://www.usaaf-in-cbi.com/308th_web/msn_19p1.htm
“In March 1942, four airmen (308th BG?) reached Tourane (now DaNang), by launch from the Philippines. The four were turned over to the Japanese on the orders of Indochina’s governor general, Vice Admiral Jean Decoux. Four of these men toiled for the rest of the war on the “Railroad of Death” in Thailand made famous by Pierre Boulle’s novel, Bridge Over the River Kwai. [Free French Lieutenant Boulle was himself one of Decoux’s prisoners after he was captured trying to establish a resistance organization in the colony].
Thereafter the Japanese demanded that all allied prisoners captured by Decoux’s forces be surrendered on the spot without the formality of obtaining the admiral’s agreement first. At the end of August 1943, enraged at the beginning of a bombing campaign in Tonkin by the 308th Bombardment Group based in China, Decoux accepted the Japanese demands and issued orders to his administrators and military commanders to surrender all captured non-Asiatics to the Japanese on the spot. Fifteen days later, on September 15, 1943, the 308th conducted its 19th mission after joining the 14th Air Force in China. Its target was a French cement plant in Haiphong.”
We have a roster from the Mansell Collection that lists 6 crewmen from the 308th Bomb Group who were transferred to Changi from Vietnam. I can only assume that they were somehow involved in these raids and were shot down. There is no evidence that any of them ever worked the TBR. One other fighter pilot, COL Harry Melton from the 311th Fighter Sqdn was also transferred to Changi. He died in the sinking of the Hellship Rakuyo on 14 SEP 1944 by the SS-383-Pampanito. The other 6 were liberated from Singapore. COL Melton’s family has worked hard to trace and document his history on ANCESTRY.com. Suffice it to say he had a event-filled career and was the Commander of the 311th Fighter Sdgn of P-51s when he was shot down over Rangoon. He is memorialized at the Fort McKinley monument to the missing in Manila.
| O-797468 | CHAMBERS THOMAS Harry | 2LT | Vietnam-308 |
| 12082018 | HAWE JAY NEILAN | S Sgt | Vietnam-308 |
| O-734953 | MANELLA JOSEPH RICHARD | 2LT | Vietnam-308 |
| O-676114 | POWERS ROBERT FLETCHER | 2LT | Vietnam-308 |
| O-707390 | QUARANT JACK DOMENICK | 2LT | Vietnam-308 |
| 13081374 | TRACHTENBERG ABE | S Sgt | Vietnam-308 |
| 34305606 | VANN EARL STANFORD | T Sgt | Vietnam-308 |
| O-20283 | MELTON HARRY R JR | COL | Vietnam-311 |
One other fighter pilot, COL Harry Melton from the 311th Fighter Sqdn was also transferred to Changi. He died in the sinking of the Hellship Rakuyo on 14 SEP 1944 by the SS-383-Pampanito. COL Melton’s family has worked hard to trace and document his history on ANCESTRY.com. Suffice it to say he had a event-filled career and was the Commander of the 311th Fighter Sdgn of P-51s when he was shot down over Rangoon. He is memorialized at the Fort McKinley monument to the missing in Manila.
| O-791369 | Baggett Owen john | 2LT | IJA-Burma |
| O-726248 | Jensen Kenneth Lloyd | 1LT | IJA-Burma |
Their story is told at Sect 3.6.7 of https://www.uspowtbr.com/baggett-jensen/
2LT Baggett became known as the only person to shoot down an aircraft with a pistol.
