JANESVILLE — On October 21, 1941, 114 men from Janesville, Wisconsin’s Company A 192nd Tank Battalion arrived in San Francisco to ship out to the Philippine Islands. Fifteen men were rejected following physical examinations resulting in a unit later known as the Janesville 99.
After arriving in Manila on Thanksgiving Day, the Janesville 99 began preparing to defend the Philippines from their base on the island of Luzon. Coordinated with the Dec. 7 attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese military began its successful attack on the Philippine Islands.
The Janesville 99, along with thousands of other Allied troops, were captured, tortured and marched to prison camps. Those that were not killed in the initial fighting became victims of the infamous Bataan Death March…