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Jed Boal Reporting A Utah survivor of a brutal episode in American military history shared his story tonight in Salt Lake City. While thousands of American soldiers died around him, Gene Jacobsen refused to be one of them. 62 years ago Gene Jacobsen survived one of the most infamous episodes of World War II, the Bataan Death March. The horror is indescribable, but he always felt he'd make it home.
One day after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor they attacked Jacobsen's air base on Manila. Their planes never got off the ground.
Gene Jacobsen: “Nobody got to the telephone to tell us the bombers were on the way so they took out all of those."
Under constant attack, they held off the enemy on the Bataan Peninsula for four months with little food, until US command surrendered them. The Japanese marched 12,000 POW's 65 miles and brutalized them every step of the way.
Gene Jacobsen: “I never had that kind of experience; they were just savages all the way through. We lost a lot of men on the Bataan Death March."
Seven to ten thousand American, British and Philipino soldiers died, bayoneted or beaten to death. Falling out of line meant execution.
Gene Jacobsen: “They'd just shoot them in the head and leave them lie. We were in the front one day; I said never again. We saw a lot of that killing. I had a lot of faith in our military and I knew one day the Yanks and the tanks would come rolling in, and they did.”
After the march they endured slave labor for more than three years. Gene Jacobsen has a book out next week published by the University of Utah Press. The title, "They Refused to Die."
