Yesterday, in honor of Memorial Day, the New York Times had an article about a World War II P.O.W. turned artist named Ben Steele. As a private in the Army Air Corps, Steele fought in the battle for the peninsula of Bataan in the Philippine Islands and fell captive to the Japanese. Private Steele and his fellow soldiers were then forced to march to a prison camp in what is now known as the Bataan Death March.
While in a P.O.W. hospital suffering from several diseases, Steele began using burned sticks to make scratches on the floors, which soon turned into well-developed sketches. Eventually Steele completed nearly 50 sketches that documented his experiences in the hospital and in battle; however, all of his sketches were lost when U.S. forces sank a ship that contained the hidden collection.
Private Steele returned to the U.S. after the war and immediately began recreating his lost sketches in order to remember and commemorate the other American P.O.W.s. Steele also went on to become a professor of art at Montana State University and today is one of the last remaining veterans who participated in the Bataan Death March. Some of his images appear here.
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