Ralph E. Shuping Sr., 81, Lancaster, passed away Thursday, Jan. 17, 2002, at Lanfair Center.
He was born Sept. 20, 1920, in Lancaster, the son of the late Harry and Blanche Payne Shuping.
He served in the Army Signal Corps during World War II. He was captured in the fall of Bataan and was held as a Japanese prisoner of war for 3 1/2 years. During his military career, he received the Bronze star, the American Defense Ribbon with one bronze star, the American Theater Ribbon, the Asiatic-Pacific Theater Ribbon with one bronze star, the Philippine Defense Ribbon with one bronze star, an Army Good Conduct Medal, World War II Victory Medal, Presidential Unit Citation with Oak Leaf Cluster and the Combat Infantryman Badge. He also was the recipient of two Purple Hearts for wounds received in Bataan on April 6, 1942.
He was a member of American Defenders of Bataan & Corregidor, the POW/MIA Organization of Fairfield County, American Legion Post 11 and VFW Post 1380. He attended Fairfield Christian Church.
He is survived by his wife, Natalija Timchenko Shuping; sons, Ralph Shuping Jr., Chris (Theresa) Shuping, and Herman "Bud" (Jeannie) Smith, Sharon Tackett and Stephanie Ellis; and one brother; Edward Shuping.
He was preceded in death by two brothers, Bernard and Calvin Shuping; and two sisters, Doris Shelky and Marjorie Frazier.
Oral History of WWII by Ralph Shuping
I went into the service in December 1940. I was trained in radar. We were the original radar unit in the Army Signal Corps. In May 1941 we left for the Philippines as experimental units- to see if radar would work in the tropics.
As it got close to December 1941, we could tell that something was going on. We heard about the Pearl Harbor bombing on the seventh and then the Japanese hit us the next day. On the morning they came in to bomb us, I was in the radar unit. I picked them up about 250 miles out. There was a big swarm of bombers coming. I called Clark Field and talked to the general and he said he was sorry: he couldn't send any interception planes; Congress hadn't declared war yet, and he didn't feel he had the authority to declare war on Japan himself. So the Japs came in and blasted our Air Force on the second day of the war.
The Japs bombed us every day. All we had to hold them off were 1917 and 1918 ammunition and hand grenades. And then we ran out of food. If it wasn't for the twenty-sixth Cavalry, we wouldn't have had anything to eat. We ate the horses. That's where we got the name BBBs-Battling Bastards of Bataan!
All up and down Bataan the Japanese tried different landings and we were able to repulse them. They didn't get into us completely until the ninth of April. There were 250,000 Japanese against 27,000 Americans. We were pushed clear back against Manila Bay and had no place to go. So we had no choice but to surrender.
The Japs congregated us on this airfield. You didn't know what was going to happen-where you were going to go, what they were going to do, how they were going to be towards us. They beat us around pretty good on the airstrip. They searched us and took everything away from us-all our wristwatches, rings, eyeglasses, and cameras. We got no food or water. On the tenth they started the "death march". The march out of Bataan lasted nine days and nine nights. It was about 200 miles, and we walked day and night. The only water that we had was when it rained: we scooped water out of the ditch and drank it.
At our first prison camp-Camp O'Donnell-there would be as many as 100 to 125 men a day who were dying of malnutrition and disease. The Japanese didn't allow the American doctors who were with us to have any medicine. The camp was originally a Philippine army camp. They had just bamboo shacks, and there was just one water faucet for the whole company. You'd stand in line for hours and hours just to fill one canteen. It was a day or two after we reached camp that we got any food at all, and that was just a bowl of rice.
Later they sent us to Japan as slave labor. We lost so many men in the shipment from the Philippines to Japan. We were on unmarked freighters, and the American ships and submarines attacked them. Conditions in the ships were terrible. We were locked into a small hold; there were 300 men down there. You couldn't lie down-no food, no water, not a thing. Men suffocated and died. The only thing we could do is pass the bodies up, and the Japs would throw them into the ocean. After eight days at sea we landed in the southern part of Honshu, and from there they put us on a train for Tokyo. And then they put us on display downtown on the Ginza. Kids came down and threw rocks at us. We were there for two days, and then they moved us out to the work camps. I went to a town called Ashio, where we worked in the copper mines and copper factories until the war ended.
We had no idea how the war was going-or what was happening back home. In the four years that I was a prisoner of war, I got two postcards from home. I was considered missing in action for 11 months before word got through the Red Cross that I was still alive. In my own mind, I never had any idea I was not going home. I just lived from day to day.
On the fifteenth of August 1945-we didn't know about V-J Day yet-they locked us in the camp and all of the guards disappeared- all except the camp commander. Then on the twenty-ninth American planes flew over and dropped in magazines, newspaper, and other literature. They dropped food, cigarettes and everything. Everybody went outside and jumped around. I weighed 90 pounds and was sick with malaria, dysentery, and beriberi.
I still have nightmares about it all: I'm refighting the war and refighting the prison camps. Sometimes it really gets bad.
He was born Sept. 20, 1920, in Lancaster, the son of the late Harry and Blanche Payne Shuping.
He served in the Army Signal Corps during World War II. He was captured in the fall of Bataan and was held as a Japanese prisoner of war for 3 1/2 years. During his military career, he received the Bronze star, the American Defense Ribbon with one bronze star, the American Theater Ribbon, the Asiatic-Pacific Theater Ribbon with one bronze star, the Philippine Defense Ribbon with one bronze star, an Army Good Conduct Medal, World War II Victory Medal, Presidential Unit Citation with Oak Leaf Cluster and the Combat Infantryman Badge. He also was the recipient of two Purple Hearts for wounds received in Bataan on April 6, 1942.
He was a member of American Defenders of Bataan & Corregidor, the POW/MIA Organization of Fairfield County, American Legion Post 11 and VFW Post 1380. He attended Fairfield Christian Church.
He is survived by his wife, Natalija Timchenko Shuping; sons, Ralph Shuping Jr., Chris (Theresa) Shuping, and Herman "Bud" (Jeannie) Smith, Sharon Tackett and Stephanie Ellis; and one brother; Edward Shuping.
He was preceded in death by two brothers, Bernard and Calvin Shuping; and two sisters, Doris Shelky and Marjorie Frazier.
Oral History of WWII by Ralph Shuping
I went into the service in December 1940. I was trained in radar. We were the original radar unit in the Army Signal Corps. In May 1941 we left for the Philippines as experimental units- to see if radar would work in the tropics.
As it got close to December 1941, we could tell that something was going on. We heard about the Pearl Harbor bombing on the seventh and then the Japanese hit us the next day. On the morning they came in to bomb us, I was in the radar unit. I picked them up about 250 miles out. There was a big swarm of bombers coming. I called Clark Field and talked to the general and he said he was sorry: he couldn't send any interception planes; Congress hadn't declared war yet, and he didn't feel he had the authority to declare war on Japan himself. So the Japs came in and blasted our Air Force on the second day of the war.
The Japs bombed us every day. All we had to hold them off were 1917 and 1918 ammunition and hand grenades. And then we ran out of food. If it wasn't for the twenty-sixth Cavalry, we wouldn't have had anything to eat. We ate the horses. That's where we got the name BBBs-Battling Bastards of Bataan!
All up and down Bataan the Japanese tried different landings and we were able to repulse them. They didn't get into us completely until the ninth of April. There were 250,000 Japanese against 27,000 Americans. We were pushed clear back against Manila Bay and had no place to go. So we had no choice but to surrender.
The Japs congregated us on this airfield. You didn't know what was going to happen-where you were going to go, what they were going to do, how they were going to be towards us. They beat us around pretty good on the airstrip. They searched us and took everything away from us-all our wristwatches, rings, eyeglasses, and cameras. We got no food or water. On the tenth they started the "death march". The march out of Bataan lasted nine days and nine nights. It was about 200 miles, and we walked day and night. The only water that we had was when it rained: we scooped water out of the ditch and drank it.
At our first prison camp-Camp O'Donnell-there would be as many as 100 to 125 men a day who were dying of malnutrition and disease. The Japanese didn't allow the American doctors who were with us to have any medicine. The camp was originally a Philippine army camp. They had just bamboo shacks, and there was just one water faucet for the whole company. You'd stand in line for hours and hours just to fill one canteen. It was a day or two after we reached camp that we got any food at all, and that was just a bowl of rice.
Later they sent us to Japan as slave labor. We lost so many men in the shipment from the Philippines to Japan. We were on unmarked freighters, and the American ships and submarines attacked them. Conditions in the ships were terrible. We were locked into a small hold; there were 300 men down there. You couldn't lie down-no food, no water, not a thing. Men suffocated and died. The only thing we could do is pass the bodies up, and the Japs would throw them into the ocean. After eight days at sea we landed in the southern part of Honshu, and from there they put us on a train for Tokyo. And then they put us on display downtown on the Ginza. Kids came down and threw rocks at us. We were there for two days, and then they moved us out to the work camps. I went to a town called Ashio, where we worked in the copper mines and copper factories until the war ended.
We had no idea how the war was going-or what was happening back home. In the four years that I was a prisoner of war, I got two postcards from home. I was considered missing in action for 11 months before word got through the Red Cross that I was still alive. In my own mind, I never had any idea I was not going home. I just lived from day to day.
On the fifteenth of August 1945-we didn't know about V-J Day yet-they locked us in the camp and all of the guards disappeared- all except the camp commander. Then on the twenty-ninth American planes flew over and dropped in magazines, newspaper, and other literature. They dropped food, cigarettes and everything. Everybody went outside and jumped around. I weighed 90 pounds and was sick with malaria, dysentery, and beriberi.
I still have nightmares about it all: I'm refighting the war and refighting the prison camps. Sometimes it really gets bad.
Ralph E. Shuping Sr., 81, Lancaster, passed away Thursday, Jan. 17, 2002, at Lanfair Center.
He was born Sept. 20, 1920, in Lancaster, the son of the late Harry and Blanche Payne Shuping.
He served in the Army Signal Corps during World War II. He was captured in the fall of Bataan and was held as a Japanese prisoner of war for 3 1/2 years. During his military career, he received the Bronze star, the American Defense Ribbon with one bronze star, the American Theater Ribbon, the Asiatic-Pacific Theater Ribbon with one bronze star, the Philippine Defense Ribbon with one bronze star, an Army Good Conduct Medal, World War II Victory Medal, Presidential Unit Citation with Oak Leaf Cluster and the Combat Infantryman Badge. He also was the recipient of two Purple Hearts for wounds received in Bataan on April 6, 1942.
He was a member of American Defenders of Bataan & Corregidor, the POW/MIA Organization of Fairfield County, American Legion Post 11 and VFW Post 1380. He attended Fairfield Christian Church.
He is survived by his wife, Natalija Timchenko Shuping; sons, Ralph Shuping Jr., Chris (Theresa) Shuping, and Herman "Bud" (Jeannie) Smith, Sharon Tackett and Stephanie Ellis; and one brother; Edward Shuping.
He was preceded in death by two brothers, Bernard and Calvin Shuping; and two sisters, Doris Shelky and Marjorie Frazier.
Oral History of WWII by Ralph Shuping
I went into the service in December 1940. I was trained in radar. We were the original radar unit in the Army Signal Corps. In May 1941 we left for the Philippines as experimental units- to see if radar would work in the tropics.
As it got close to December 1941, we could tell that something was going on. We heard about the Pearl Harbor bombing on the seventh and then the Japanese hit us the next day. On the morning they came in to bomb us, I was in the radar unit. I picked them up about 250 miles out. There was a big swarm of bombers coming. I called Clark Field and talked to the general and he said he was sorry: he couldn't send any interception planes; Congress hadn't declared war yet, and he didn't feel he had the authority to declare war on Japan himself. So the Japs came in and blasted our Air Force on the second day of the war.
The Japs bombed us every day. All we had to hold them off were 1917 and 1918 ammunition and hand grenades. And then we ran out of food. If it wasn't for the twenty-sixth Cavalry, we wouldn't have had anything to eat. We ate the horses. That's where we got the name BBBs-Battling Bastards of Bataan!
All up and down Bataan the Japanese tried different landings and we were able to repulse them. They didn't get into us completely until the ninth of April. There were 250,000 Japanese against 27,000 Americans. We were pushed clear back against Manila Bay and had no place to go. So we had no choice but to surrender.
The Japs congregated us on this airfield. You didn't know what was going to happen-where you were going to go, what they were going to do, how they were going to be towards us. They beat us around pretty good on the airstrip. They searched us and took everything away from us-all our wristwatches, rings, eyeglasses, and cameras. We got no food or water. On the tenth they started the "death march". The march out of Bataan lasted nine days and nine nights. It was about 200 miles, and we walked day and night. The only water that we had was when it rained: we scooped water out of the ditch and drank it.
At our first prison camp-Camp O'Donnell-there would be as many as 100 to 125 men a day who were dying of malnutrition and disease. The Japanese didn't allow the American doctors who were with us to have any medicine. The camp was originally a Philippine army camp. They had just bamboo shacks, and there was just one water faucet for the whole company. You'd stand in line for hours and hours just to fill one canteen. It was a day or two after we reached camp that we got any food at all, and that was just a bowl of rice.
Later they sent us to Japan as slave labor. We lost so many men in the shipment from the Philippines to Japan. We were on unmarked freighters, and the American ships and submarines attacked them. Conditions in the ships were terrible. We were locked into a small hold; there were 300 men down there. You couldn't lie down-no food, no water, not a thing. Men suffocated and died. The only thing we could do is pass the bodies up, and the Japs would throw them into the ocean. After eight days at sea we landed in the southern part of Honshu, and from there they put us on a train for Tokyo. And then they put us on display downtown on the Ginza. Kids came down and threw rocks at us. We were there for two days, and then they moved us out to the work camps. I went to a town called Ashio, where we worked in the copper mines and copper factories until the war ended.
We had no idea how the war was going-or what was happening back home. In the four years that I was a prisoner of war, I got two postcards from home. I was considered missing in action for 11 months before word got through the Red Cross that I was still alive. In my own mind, I never had any idea I was not going home. I just lived from day to day.
On the fifteenth of August 1945-we didn't know about V-J Day yet-they locked us in the camp and all of the guards disappeared- all except the camp commander. Then on the twenty-ninth American planes flew over and dropped in magazines, newspaper, and other literature. They dropped food, cigarettes and everything. Everybody went outside and jumped around. I weighed 90 pounds and was sick with malaria, dysentery, and beriberi.
I still have nightmares about it all: I'm refighting the war and refighting the prison camps. Sometimes it really gets bad.
He was born Sept. 20, 1920, in Lancaster, the son of the late Harry and Blanche Payne Shuping.
He served in the Army Signal Corps during World War II. He was captured in the fall of Bataan and was held as a Japanese prisoner of war for 3 1/2 years. During his military career, he received the Bronze star, the American Defense Ribbon with one bronze star, the American Theater Ribbon, the Asiatic-Pacific Theater Ribbon with one bronze star, the Philippine Defense Ribbon with one bronze star, an Army Good Conduct Medal, World War II Victory Medal, Presidential Unit Citation with Oak Leaf Cluster and the Combat Infantryman Badge. He also was the recipient of two Purple Hearts for wounds received in Bataan on April 6, 1942.
He was a member of American Defenders of Bataan & Corregidor, the POW/MIA Organization of Fairfield County, American Legion Post 11 and VFW Post 1380. He attended Fairfield Christian Church.
He is survived by his wife, Natalija Timchenko Shuping; sons, Ralph Shuping Jr., Chris (Theresa) Shuping, and Herman "Bud" (Jeannie) Smith, Sharon Tackett and Stephanie Ellis; and one brother; Edward Shuping.
He was preceded in death by two brothers, Bernard and Calvin Shuping; and two sisters, Doris Shelky and Marjorie Frazier.
Oral History of WWII by Ralph Shuping
I went into the service in December 1940. I was trained in radar. We were the original radar unit in the Army Signal Corps. In May 1941 we left for the Philippines as experimental units- to see if radar would work in the tropics.
As it got close to December 1941, we could tell that something was going on. We heard about the Pearl Harbor bombing on the seventh and then the Japanese hit us the next day. On the morning they came in to bomb us, I was in the radar unit. I picked them up about 250 miles out. There was a big swarm of bombers coming. I called Clark Field and talked to the general and he said he was sorry: he couldn't send any interception planes; Congress hadn't declared war yet, and he didn't feel he had the authority to declare war on Japan himself. So the Japs came in and blasted our Air Force on the second day of the war.
The Japs bombed us every day. All we had to hold them off were 1917 and 1918 ammunition and hand grenades. And then we ran out of food. If it wasn't for the twenty-sixth Cavalry, we wouldn't have had anything to eat. We ate the horses. That's where we got the name BBBs-Battling Bastards of Bataan!
All up and down Bataan the Japanese tried different landings and we were able to repulse them. They didn't get into us completely until the ninth of April. There were 250,000 Japanese against 27,000 Americans. We were pushed clear back against Manila Bay and had no place to go. So we had no choice but to surrender.
The Japs congregated us on this airfield. You didn't know what was going to happen-where you were going to go, what they were going to do, how they were going to be towards us. They beat us around pretty good on the airstrip. They searched us and took everything away from us-all our wristwatches, rings, eyeglasses, and cameras. We got no food or water. On the tenth they started the "death march". The march out of Bataan lasted nine days and nine nights. It was about 200 miles, and we walked day and night. The only water that we had was when it rained: we scooped water out of the ditch and drank it.
At our first prison camp-Camp O'Donnell-there would be as many as 100 to 125 men a day who were dying of malnutrition and disease. The Japanese didn't allow the American doctors who were with us to have any medicine. The camp was originally a Philippine army camp. They had just bamboo shacks, and there was just one water faucet for the whole company. You'd stand in line for hours and hours just to fill one canteen. It was a day or two after we reached camp that we got any food at all, and that was just a bowl of rice.
Later they sent us to Japan as slave labor. We lost so many men in the shipment from the Philippines to Japan. We were on unmarked freighters, and the American ships and submarines attacked them. Conditions in the ships were terrible. We were locked into a small hold; there were 300 men down there. You couldn't lie down-no food, no water, not a thing. Men suffocated and died. The only thing we could do is pass the bodies up, and the Japs would throw them into the ocean. After eight days at sea we landed in the southern part of Honshu, and from there they put us on a train for Tokyo. And then they put us on display downtown on the Ginza. Kids came down and threw rocks at us. We were there for two days, and then they moved us out to the work camps. I went to a town called Ashio, where we worked in the copper mines and copper factories until the war ended.
We had no idea how the war was going-or what was happening back home. In the four years that I was a prisoner of war, I got two postcards from home. I was considered missing in action for 11 months before word got through the Red Cross that I was still alive. In my own mind, I never had any idea I was not going home. I just lived from day to day.
On the fifteenth of August 1945-we didn't know about V-J Day yet-they locked us in the camp and all of the guards disappeared- all except the camp commander. Then on the twenty-ninth American planes flew over and dropped in magazines, newspaper, and other literature. They dropped food, cigarettes and everything. Everybody went outside and jumped around. I weighed 90 pounds and was sick with malaria, dysentery, and beriberi.
I still have nightmares about it all: I'm refighting the war and refighting the prison camps. Sometimes it really gets bad.
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RALPH E SHUPING CPL US ARMY WORLD WAR II SEP 20 1920 JAN 17 2002
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