1921 Census of Canada (01 June 1921): Township 18-Range 19 W4, Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada (family 61) – Leroy Ulrich (4 USA). His family came to Canada in 1919.
1930 United States Federal Census (12 April 1930): Kemmerer (Ward 2), Lincoln County, Wyoming (sheet 19A, family 99, 213 Opal) – Leroy Ulrich (13 Utah).
His parents had divorced by 1924 and he was listed in the 1930 census under his mother's new married name.
1940 United States Federal Census (03 April 1940): Kemmerer, Lincoln County, Wyoming (sheet 3A, household 45, 213 Opal) – Leroy Whitehead (23 Utah, electrician, Power House). His family had lived in the same house in 1935. Orral had completed four years of high school.
Orral L. Whitehead (1916 Wyoming), a resident of Santa Cruz County, Arizona enlisted as a Private (S/N 19011056) in the U.S. Army Air Corps on 14 October 1940 in Salt Lake City, Utah. His enlistment was for the Philippine Department. Orral was single, had completed 4 years of high school and had been working as "Semiskilled mechanics and repairmen, motor vehicles".
Private Whitehead was assigned to the 7th Materiel Squadron, U.S. Army Air Corps and stationed at Albuquerque, New Mexico. In September they received Special Orders #135 and were sent to California by train for overseas duty. Orral left for the Philippine Islands with the 335 members of the 7th Materiel Squadron on 04 October 1941. "We left the US 4 Oct 41 on an old Army Troop ship called "HOLBROOK". We were escorted by a light Cruiser CHESTER, from Honolulu onward to the western Pacific under blackout conditions (means no smoking above decks after dark, throwing trash or garbage overboard was a grave sin, as any enemy could follow our trail. We did a zig zag course until we reached Manila, P.I. on 23 Oct 41.
We were unloaded in Manila in the dark, trucked at night to Clark Field, and only a hand full of men were fortunate enough to visit this beautiful city by daylight hours, as we were there only 45 days before we were greeted by the Japanese invasion." Source: Ray Thompson's Personal Story "My HELL ON EARTH"
They were stationed at Clark Field. The 7th Materiel Squadron was the ground support for the 19th Bombardment Group's heavy bombers, the B-17C & Ds. They were the guys trained to keep the aircraft flying, instrument and engine mechanics as well as other specialists. A materials squadron is just like the Quartermasters for the Air Corps.
On 08 December 1941 at 12:35 p.m. (nine hours after the Pearl Harbor attack) 181 Mitsubishi bombers and 84 Zero fighter-bombers from Formosa attacked Iba and Clark Fields. The Japanese bombed and strafed Clark Field for a little less than an hour, leaving the base in total ruin. Most of the US planes were destroyed on the ground. "Thus after one day of war," Louis Morton writes in The Fall of the Philippines, "the Far East Air Force had been eliminated as an effective fighting force." Of the 35 original B-17's assigned to the 19th Bombardment Group, only one survived, a B-17D called "Alexander the Swoose".
Following the Japanese air attacks and the subsequent landing of Japanese ground forces on Luzon, General Douglas MacArthur activated War Plan Orange. This plan called for the gradual withdrawal of American and Philippine forces to the Bataan Peninsula, where they could await reinforcements from Hawaii and the U.S.... reinforcements that never came. On 24 December 1941 the 7th Materiel Squadron was ordered to move to the Bataan Peninsula. They arrive at Cabcaben, Bataan the next day.
"...Shortly after our arrival in Bataan our outfit was ordered to Mindanao. The boat was sunk before it docked and we were assigned to a front line sector.
With no planes to man, the men from the 7th MATS were combined with the men from the 27th Bomb Group, who also had no planes, and they were assigned infantry duty as part of the Bataan Defense force. Their group became the 2nd Provisional Infantry Regiment. "Their newly formed units were referred to as Provisional Infantry Regiments. These Provisional Infantry units were composed of air men, who in most cases had never had any infantry combat training. Most had to be taught how to put bullets into their rifles and how to use hand grenades, and how to dig a proper foxhole. It was akin to on-the-job training. Although clumsy, at times, comical, and, at times, very shaky, they performed valiantly. It was not pretty, but they did their job.
On 31 December 1941 the 7th was moved forward to the Orion Line, where a second battle front had been established. The squadron was given old WWI weapons that many of the men had never fired. "So here we were the ill prepared Army Air Corps on duty as Provisional Infantry until the time of surrender."
From the very beginning, the men on Bataan were cut to 1/2 rations, and very soon, to 1/4 rations. About four weeks later, they were living on 1/8 rations, that is, when food was available to them. Towards the end, it was changed to 1/16th of their rations...Quite often, they would go several days with no food, unless they could catch something in the jungle." Source: Federico Baldassarre letter
In the wake of starvation came diseases, such as malaria, dengue, scurvy, beriberi and amebic dysentery. The average American soldier lost 15-25 pounds and malaria was as high as 35 percent among front line units.
The Japanese started their final offensive of Bataan on Good Friday, 03 April 1942. By the evening of April 8, the situation was clearly hopeless. With ammunition, rations and supplies practically exhausted and most of his best units destroyed, Maj. Gen. Edward P. King, commander of the forces on Bataan, was convinced his troops could not physically resist any more and decided to surrender to prevent further loss of life. On 09 April 1942, Maj. Gen. King surrendered the Luzon Force to the Japanese. Numbering more than 75,000 Filipinos and Americans, it was the largest American army in history to surrender.
Following the surrender, the weakened and diseased defenders of Bataan, including Corporal Orral L. Whitehead, were subjected to infamous Bataan Death March by their Japanese captors. When the Fil-American soldiers began the Death March they were in terrible physical condition. For 6 to 9 days (depending on their starting point) they were forced to walk the roughly sixty-five miles to San Fernando, enduring abuse by Japanese guards and seeing the deaths of thousands of fellow soldiers. At San Fernando, the Japanese stuffed about 100 men into steel-sided boxcars for the twenty-five-mile trip to Capas. The scorching hot boxcars were packed so tight that the men could not even sit down. When the train arrived at Capas the POW's were offloaded and marched the final nine miles to the POW Camp O'Donnell (#4) in Capas, Tarlac Province, Central Luzon, Philippines.
Surviving the brutal treatment by the Japanese at Camp O'Donnell (about 1500 American and 22,000 Filipino prisoners of war died in just three months) Corporal Whitehead was transferred to the Cabanatuan POW Camp No. 1, approximately 8 kilometers east of the town by the same name.
In early June of 1942, prisoners from Camp O'Donnell began to stream into Camp No. 1, joining the men from Corregidor and increasing the number of prisoners to over 7,300 men. Because of the poor health of the men from O'Donnell, the death rate at Camp #1 soared.
Corporal Orral L. Whitehead died on 28 July 1942 of *dysentery in the Barracks Hospital Area, a prisoner of the Japanese at POW Camp 1, Cabanatuan, Nueva Province, Luzon, Philippines 15-121. He was one of 22 men to die that day. By the time the camp was liberated in early 1945, 2,764 Americans had died at Cabanatuan in 2½ years. 90% of the POW deaths in Cabanatuan were men from Bataan.
*"While the Japanese official cause of death was listed as dysentery, one of the survivors of the Cabanatuan traveled to Kemmerer, Wyoming and visited my Grandmother Dorothy Whitehead Ulrich and my Father Carl – Orral's younger half-brother, in 1946 and told her he was a friend of Orral's and had promised Orral that he would say goodbye to his Mother and relate that he had been "...used for bayonet practice by the Japanese, then with the butts of rifles his gold tooth extracted..." Source: https://cnac.org/emilscott/whitehead01.htm
He was buried in a communal grave in the camp cemetery along with other deceased American POWs who died that day. After the war, all the remains in the Cabanatuan Prison cemetery that could be found were disinterred (between December 1945 - February 1946) and brought to 7747 USAF Cemetery, Manila #2, Philippine Islands. He was reburied in Block 3, Row 3, Grave 375 (D-D 12263). The deceased in Manila #2 (over 11,000 American soldiers) rested there until their removal to the American Graves Registration Service Manila Mausoleum in the summer of 1948. From there, according to the wishes of his next of kin (father, Mr. Orral T. Whitehead), Corporal Orral Leroy Whitehead was buried in his final resting place in the 7701 Ft. McKinley Cemetery (now known as the Manila American Cemetery) – Plot L, Row 4, Grave 12.
Of the 335 men in the 7th Materiel Squadron as of 31 October 1941 in the Philippines, 193 men or 58% died between 1941 - 1945. Of that number, 181 men or 54% of them died as POWs of the Japanese after they were surrendered.
Orral was the second son to die in World War II. His brother, Storekeeper Second Class Wallace Albert Whitehead went missing in action on 01 March 1942 when his ship, the cruiser U.S.S. Houston (CA-30) was hit by multiple torpedo's in the Battle of Sunda Straits between Java and Sumatra (now part of Indonesia). Only 368 of the 1,061 crew members aboard survived and many of them died in captivity at the hands of the Japanese. Wallace in memorialized on the Tablets of the Missing in the Manila American Cemetery.
1930 United States Federal Census (12 April 1930): Kemmerer (Ward 2), Lincoln County, Wyoming (sheet 19A, family 99, 213 Opal) – Leroy Ulrich (13 Utah).
His parents had divorced by 1924 and he was listed in the 1930 census under his mother's new married name.
1940 United States Federal Census (03 April 1940): Kemmerer, Lincoln County, Wyoming (sheet 3A, household 45, 213 Opal) – Leroy Whitehead (23 Utah, electrician, Power House). His family had lived in the same house in 1935. Orral had completed four years of high school.
Orral L. Whitehead (1916 Wyoming), a resident of Santa Cruz County, Arizona enlisted as a Private (S/N 19011056) in the U.S. Army Air Corps on 14 October 1940 in Salt Lake City, Utah. His enlistment was for the Philippine Department. Orral was single, had completed 4 years of high school and had been working as "Semiskilled mechanics and repairmen, motor vehicles".
Private Whitehead was assigned to the 7th Materiel Squadron, U.S. Army Air Corps and stationed at Albuquerque, New Mexico. In September they received Special Orders #135 and were sent to California by train for overseas duty. Orral left for the Philippine Islands with the 335 members of the 7th Materiel Squadron on 04 October 1941. "We left the US 4 Oct 41 on an old Army Troop ship called "HOLBROOK". We were escorted by a light Cruiser CHESTER, from Honolulu onward to the western Pacific under blackout conditions (means no smoking above decks after dark, throwing trash or garbage overboard was a grave sin, as any enemy could follow our trail. We did a zig zag course until we reached Manila, P.I. on 23 Oct 41.
We were unloaded in Manila in the dark, trucked at night to Clark Field, and only a hand full of men were fortunate enough to visit this beautiful city by daylight hours, as we were there only 45 days before we were greeted by the Japanese invasion." Source: Ray Thompson's Personal Story "My HELL ON EARTH"
They were stationed at Clark Field. The 7th Materiel Squadron was the ground support for the 19th Bombardment Group's heavy bombers, the B-17C & Ds. They were the guys trained to keep the aircraft flying, instrument and engine mechanics as well as other specialists. A materials squadron is just like the Quartermasters for the Air Corps.
On 08 December 1941 at 12:35 p.m. (nine hours after the Pearl Harbor attack) 181 Mitsubishi bombers and 84 Zero fighter-bombers from Formosa attacked Iba and Clark Fields. The Japanese bombed and strafed Clark Field for a little less than an hour, leaving the base in total ruin. Most of the US planes were destroyed on the ground. "Thus after one day of war," Louis Morton writes in The Fall of the Philippines, "the Far East Air Force had been eliminated as an effective fighting force." Of the 35 original B-17's assigned to the 19th Bombardment Group, only one survived, a B-17D called "Alexander the Swoose".
Following the Japanese air attacks and the subsequent landing of Japanese ground forces on Luzon, General Douglas MacArthur activated War Plan Orange. This plan called for the gradual withdrawal of American and Philippine forces to the Bataan Peninsula, where they could await reinforcements from Hawaii and the U.S.... reinforcements that never came. On 24 December 1941 the 7th Materiel Squadron was ordered to move to the Bataan Peninsula. They arrive at Cabcaben, Bataan the next day.
"...Shortly after our arrival in Bataan our outfit was ordered to Mindanao. The boat was sunk before it docked and we were assigned to a front line sector.
With no planes to man, the men from the 7th MATS were combined with the men from the 27th Bomb Group, who also had no planes, and they were assigned infantry duty as part of the Bataan Defense force. Their group became the 2nd Provisional Infantry Regiment. "Their newly formed units were referred to as Provisional Infantry Regiments. These Provisional Infantry units were composed of air men, who in most cases had never had any infantry combat training. Most had to be taught how to put bullets into their rifles and how to use hand grenades, and how to dig a proper foxhole. It was akin to on-the-job training. Although clumsy, at times, comical, and, at times, very shaky, they performed valiantly. It was not pretty, but they did their job.
On 31 December 1941 the 7th was moved forward to the Orion Line, where a second battle front had been established. The squadron was given old WWI weapons that many of the men had never fired. "So here we were the ill prepared Army Air Corps on duty as Provisional Infantry until the time of surrender."
From the very beginning, the men on Bataan were cut to 1/2 rations, and very soon, to 1/4 rations. About four weeks later, they were living on 1/8 rations, that is, when food was available to them. Towards the end, it was changed to 1/16th of their rations...Quite often, they would go several days with no food, unless they could catch something in the jungle." Source: Federico Baldassarre letter
In the wake of starvation came diseases, such as malaria, dengue, scurvy, beriberi and amebic dysentery. The average American soldier lost 15-25 pounds and malaria was as high as 35 percent among front line units.
The Japanese started their final offensive of Bataan on Good Friday, 03 April 1942. By the evening of April 8, the situation was clearly hopeless. With ammunition, rations and supplies practically exhausted and most of his best units destroyed, Maj. Gen. Edward P. King, commander of the forces on Bataan, was convinced his troops could not physically resist any more and decided to surrender to prevent further loss of life. On 09 April 1942, Maj. Gen. King surrendered the Luzon Force to the Japanese. Numbering more than 75,000 Filipinos and Americans, it was the largest American army in history to surrender.
Following the surrender, the weakened and diseased defenders of Bataan, including Corporal Orral L. Whitehead, were subjected to infamous Bataan Death March by their Japanese captors. When the Fil-American soldiers began the Death March they were in terrible physical condition. For 6 to 9 days (depending on their starting point) they were forced to walk the roughly sixty-five miles to San Fernando, enduring abuse by Japanese guards and seeing the deaths of thousands of fellow soldiers. At San Fernando, the Japanese stuffed about 100 men into steel-sided boxcars for the twenty-five-mile trip to Capas. The scorching hot boxcars were packed so tight that the men could not even sit down. When the train arrived at Capas the POW's were offloaded and marched the final nine miles to the POW Camp O'Donnell (#4) in Capas, Tarlac Province, Central Luzon, Philippines.
Surviving the brutal treatment by the Japanese at Camp O'Donnell (about 1500 American and 22,000 Filipino prisoners of war died in just three months) Corporal Whitehead was transferred to the Cabanatuan POW Camp No. 1, approximately 8 kilometers east of the town by the same name.
In early June of 1942, prisoners from Camp O'Donnell began to stream into Camp No. 1, joining the men from Corregidor and increasing the number of prisoners to over 7,300 men. Because of the poor health of the men from O'Donnell, the death rate at Camp #1 soared.
Corporal Orral L. Whitehead died on 28 July 1942 of *dysentery in the Barracks Hospital Area, a prisoner of the Japanese at POW Camp 1, Cabanatuan, Nueva Province, Luzon, Philippines 15-121. He was one of 22 men to die that day. By the time the camp was liberated in early 1945, 2,764 Americans had died at Cabanatuan in 2½ years. 90% of the POW deaths in Cabanatuan were men from Bataan.
*"While the Japanese official cause of death was listed as dysentery, one of the survivors of the Cabanatuan traveled to Kemmerer, Wyoming and visited my Grandmother Dorothy Whitehead Ulrich and my Father Carl – Orral's younger half-brother, in 1946 and told her he was a friend of Orral's and had promised Orral that he would say goodbye to his Mother and relate that he had been "...used for bayonet practice by the Japanese, then with the butts of rifles his gold tooth extracted..." Source: https://cnac.org/emilscott/whitehead01.htm
He was buried in a communal grave in the camp cemetery along with other deceased American POWs who died that day. After the war, all the remains in the Cabanatuan Prison cemetery that could be found were disinterred (between December 1945 - February 1946) and brought to 7747 USAF Cemetery, Manila #2, Philippine Islands. He was reburied in Block 3, Row 3, Grave 375 (D-D 12263). The deceased in Manila #2 (over 11,000 American soldiers) rested there until their removal to the American Graves Registration Service Manila Mausoleum in the summer of 1948. From there, according to the wishes of his next of kin (father, Mr. Orral T. Whitehead), Corporal Orral Leroy Whitehead was buried in his final resting place in the 7701 Ft. McKinley Cemetery (now known as the Manila American Cemetery) – Plot L, Row 4, Grave 12.
Of the 335 men in the 7th Materiel Squadron as of 31 October 1941 in the Philippines, 193 men or 58% died between 1941 - 1945. Of that number, 181 men or 54% of them died as POWs of the Japanese after they were surrendered.
Orral was the second son to die in World War II. His brother, Storekeeper Second Class Wallace Albert Whitehead went missing in action on 01 March 1942 when his ship, the cruiser U.S.S. Houston (CA-30) was hit by multiple torpedo's in the Battle of Sunda Straits between Java and Sumatra (now part of Indonesia). Only 368 of the 1,061 crew members aboard survived and many of them died in captivity at the hands of the Japanese. Wallace in memorialized on the Tablets of the Missing in the Manila American Cemetery.
1921 Census of Canada (01 June 1921): Township 18-Range 19 W4, Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada (family 61) – Leroy Ulrich (4 USA). His family came to Canada in 1919.
1930 United States Federal Census (12 April 1930): Kemmerer (Ward 2), Lincoln County, Wyoming (sheet 19A, family 99, 213 Opal) – Leroy Ulrich (13 Utah).
His parents had divorced by 1924 and he was listed in the 1930 census under his mother's new married name.
1940 United States Federal Census (03 April 1940): Kemmerer, Lincoln County, Wyoming (sheet 3A, household 45, 213 Opal) – Leroy Whitehead (23 Utah, electrician, Power House). His family had lived in the same house in 1935. Orral had completed four years of high school.
Orral L. Whitehead (1916 Wyoming), a resident of Santa Cruz County, Arizona enlisted as a Private (S/N 19011056) in the U.S. Army Air Corps on 14 October 1940 in Salt Lake City, Utah. His enlistment was for the Philippine Department. Orral was single, had completed 4 years of high school and had been working as "Semiskilled mechanics and repairmen, motor vehicles".
Private Whitehead was assigned to the 7th Materiel Squadron, U.S. Army Air Corps and stationed at Albuquerque, New Mexico. In September they received Special Orders #135 and were sent to California by train for overseas duty. Orral left for the Philippine Islands with the 335 members of the 7th Materiel Squadron on 04 October 1941. "We left the US 4 Oct 41 on an old Army Troop ship called "HOLBROOK". We were escorted by a light Cruiser CHESTER, from Honolulu onward to the western Pacific under blackout conditions (means no smoking above decks after dark, throwing trash or garbage overboard was a grave sin, as any enemy could follow our trail. We did a zig zag course until we reached Manila, P.I. on 23 Oct 41.
We were unloaded in Manila in the dark, trucked at night to Clark Field, and only a hand full of men were fortunate enough to visit this beautiful city by daylight hours, as we were there only 45 days before we were greeted by the Japanese invasion." Source: Ray Thompson's Personal Story "My HELL ON EARTH"
They were stationed at Clark Field. The 7th Materiel Squadron was the ground support for the 19th Bombardment Group's heavy bombers, the B-17C & Ds. They were the guys trained to keep the aircraft flying, instrument and engine mechanics as well as other specialists. A materials squadron is just like the Quartermasters for the Air Corps.
On 08 December 1941 at 12:35 p.m. (nine hours after the Pearl Harbor attack) 181 Mitsubishi bombers and 84 Zero fighter-bombers from Formosa attacked Iba and Clark Fields. The Japanese bombed and strafed Clark Field for a little less than an hour, leaving the base in total ruin. Most of the US planes were destroyed on the ground. "Thus after one day of war," Louis Morton writes in The Fall of the Philippines, "the Far East Air Force had been eliminated as an effective fighting force." Of the 35 original B-17's assigned to the 19th Bombardment Group, only one survived, a B-17D called "Alexander the Swoose".
Following the Japanese air attacks and the subsequent landing of Japanese ground forces on Luzon, General Douglas MacArthur activated War Plan Orange. This plan called for the gradual withdrawal of American and Philippine forces to the Bataan Peninsula, where they could await reinforcements from Hawaii and the U.S.... reinforcements that never came. On 24 December 1941 the 7th Materiel Squadron was ordered to move to the Bataan Peninsula. They arrive at Cabcaben, Bataan the next day.
"...Shortly after our arrival in Bataan our outfit was ordered to Mindanao. The boat was sunk before it docked and we were assigned to a front line sector.
With no planes to man, the men from the 7th MATS were combined with the men from the 27th Bomb Group, who also had no planes, and they were assigned infantry duty as part of the Bataan Defense force. Their group became the 2nd Provisional Infantry Regiment. "Their newly formed units were referred to as Provisional Infantry Regiments. These Provisional Infantry units were composed of air men, who in most cases had never had any infantry combat training. Most had to be taught how to put bullets into their rifles and how to use hand grenades, and how to dig a proper foxhole. It was akin to on-the-job training. Although clumsy, at times, comical, and, at times, very shaky, they performed valiantly. It was not pretty, but they did their job.
On 31 December 1941 the 7th was moved forward to the Orion Line, where a second battle front had been established. The squadron was given old WWI weapons that many of the men had never fired. "So here we were the ill prepared Army Air Corps on duty as Provisional Infantry until the time of surrender."
From the very beginning, the men on Bataan were cut to 1/2 rations, and very soon, to 1/4 rations. About four weeks later, they were living on 1/8 rations, that is, when food was available to them. Towards the end, it was changed to 1/16th of their rations...Quite often, they would go several days with no food, unless they could catch something in the jungle." Source: Federico Baldassarre letter
In the wake of starvation came diseases, such as malaria, dengue, scurvy, beriberi and amebic dysentery. The average American soldier lost 15-25 pounds and malaria was as high as 35 percent among front line units.
The Japanese started their final offensive of Bataan on Good Friday, 03 April 1942. By the evening of April 8, the situation was clearly hopeless. With ammunition, rations and supplies practically exhausted and most of his best units destroyed, Maj. Gen. Edward P. King, commander of the forces on Bataan, was convinced his troops could not physically resist any more and decided to surrender to prevent further loss of life. On 09 April 1942, Maj. Gen. King surrendered the Luzon Force to the Japanese. Numbering more than 75,000 Filipinos and Americans, it was the largest American army in history to surrender.
Following the surrender, the weakened and diseased defenders of Bataan, including Corporal Orral L. Whitehead, were subjected to infamous Bataan Death March by their Japanese captors. When the Fil-American soldiers began the Death March they were in terrible physical condition. For 6 to 9 days (depending on their starting point) they were forced to walk the roughly sixty-five miles to San Fernando, enduring abuse by Japanese guards and seeing the deaths of thousands of fellow soldiers. At San Fernando, the Japanese stuffed about 100 men into steel-sided boxcars for the twenty-five-mile trip to Capas. The scorching hot boxcars were packed so tight that the men could not even sit down. When the train arrived at Capas the POW's were offloaded and marched the final nine miles to the POW Camp O'Donnell (#4) in Capas, Tarlac Province, Central Luzon, Philippines.
Surviving the brutal treatment by the Japanese at Camp O'Donnell (about 1500 American and 22,000 Filipino prisoners of war died in just three months) Corporal Whitehead was transferred to the Cabanatuan POW Camp No. 1, approximately 8 kilometers east of the town by the same name.
In early June of 1942, prisoners from Camp O'Donnell began to stream into Camp No. 1, joining the men from Corregidor and increasing the number of prisoners to over 7,300 men. Because of the poor health of the men from O'Donnell, the death rate at Camp #1 soared.
Corporal Orral L. Whitehead died on 28 July 1942 of *dysentery in the Barracks Hospital Area, a prisoner of the Japanese at POW Camp 1, Cabanatuan, Nueva Province, Luzon, Philippines 15-121. He was one of 22 men to die that day. By the time the camp was liberated in early 1945, 2,764 Americans had died at Cabanatuan in 2½ years. 90% of the POW deaths in Cabanatuan were men from Bataan.
*"While the Japanese official cause of death was listed as dysentery, one of the survivors of the Cabanatuan traveled to Kemmerer, Wyoming and visited my Grandmother Dorothy Whitehead Ulrich and my Father Carl – Orral's younger half-brother, in 1946 and told her he was a friend of Orral's and had promised Orral that he would say goodbye to his Mother and relate that he had been "...used for bayonet practice by the Japanese, then with the butts of rifles his gold tooth extracted..." Source: https://cnac.org/emilscott/whitehead01.htm
He was buried in a communal grave in the camp cemetery along with other deceased American POWs who died that day. After the war, all the remains in the Cabanatuan Prison cemetery that could be found were disinterred (between December 1945 - February 1946) and brought to 7747 USAF Cemetery, Manila #2, Philippine Islands. He was reburied in Block 3, Row 3, Grave 375 (D-D 12263). The deceased in Manila #2 (over 11,000 American soldiers) rested there until their removal to the American Graves Registration Service Manila Mausoleum in the summer of 1948. From there, according to the wishes of his next of kin (father, Mr. Orral T. Whitehead), Corporal Orral Leroy Whitehead was buried in his final resting place in the 7701 Ft. McKinley Cemetery (now known as the Manila American Cemetery) – Plot L, Row 4, Grave 12.
Of the 335 men in the 7th Materiel Squadron as of 31 October 1941 in the Philippines, 193 men or 58% died between 1941 - 1945. Of that number, 181 men or 54% of them died as POWs of the Japanese after they were surrendered.
Orral was the second son to die in World War II. His brother, Storekeeper Second Class Wallace Albert Whitehead went missing in action on 01 March 1942 when his ship, the cruiser U.S.S. Houston (CA-30) was hit by multiple torpedo's in the Battle of Sunda Straits between Java and Sumatra (now part of Indonesia). Only 368 of the 1,061 crew members aboard survived and many of them died in captivity at the hands of the Japanese. Wallace in memorialized on the Tablets of the Missing in the Manila American Cemetery.
1930 United States Federal Census (12 April 1930): Kemmerer (Ward 2), Lincoln County, Wyoming (sheet 19A, family 99, 213 Opal) – Leroy Ulrich (13 Utah).
His parents had divorced by 1924 and he was listed in the 1930 census under his mother's new married name.
1940 United States Federal Census (03 April 1940): Kemmerer, Lincoln County, Wyoming (sheet 3A, household 45, 213 Opal) – Leroy Whitehead (23 Utah, electrician, Power House). His family had lived in the same house in 1935. Orral had completed four years of high school.
Orral L. Whitehead (1916 Wyoming), a resident of Santa Cruz County, Arizona enlisted as a Private (S/N 19011056) in the U.S. Army Air Corps on 14 October 1940 in Salt Lake City, Utah. His enlistment was for the Philippine Department. Orral was single, had completed 4 years of high school and had been working as "Semiskilled mechanics and repairmen, motor vehicles".
Private Whitehead was assigned to the 7th Materiel Squadron, U.S. Army Air Corps and stationed at Albuquerque, New Mexico. In September they received Special Orders #135 and were sent to California by train for overseas duty. Orral left for the Philippine Islands with the 335 members of the 7th Materiel Squadron on 04 October 1941. "We left the US 4 Oct 41 on an old Army Troop ship called "HOLBROOK". We were escorted by a light Cruiser CHESTER, from Honolulu onward to the western Pacific under blackout conditions (means no smoking above decks after dark, throwing trash or garbage overboard was a grave sin, as any enemy could follow our trail. We did a zig zag course until we reached Manila, P.I. on 23 Oct 41.
We were unloaded in Manila in the dark, trucked at night to Clark Field, and only a hand full of men were fortunate enough to visit this beautiful city by daylight hours, as we were there only 45 days before we were greeted by the Japanese invasion." Source: Ray Thompson's Personal Story "My HELL ON EARTH"
They were stationed at Clark Field. The 7th Materiel Squadron was the ground support for the 19th Bombardment Group's heavy bombers, the B-17C & Ds. They were the guys trained to keep the aircraft flying, instrument and engine mechanics as well as other specialists. A materials squadron is just like the Quartermasters for the Air Corps.
On 08 December 1941 at 12:35 p.m. (nine hours after the Pearl Harbor attack) 181 Mitsubishi bombers and 84 Zero fighter-bombers from Formosa attacked Iba and Clark Fields. The Japanese bombed and strafed Clark Field for a little less than an hour, leaving the base in total ruin. Most of the US planes were destroyed on the ground. "Thus after one day of war," Louis Morton writes in The Fall of the Philippines, "the Far East Air Force had been eliminated as an effective fighting force." Of the 35 original B-17's assigned to the 19th Bombardment Group, only one survived, a B-17D called "Alexander the Swoose".
Following the Japanese air attacks and the subsequent landing of Japanese ground forces on Luzon, General Douglas MacArthur activated War Plan Orange. This plan called for the gradual withdrawal of American and Philippine forces to the Bataan Peninsula, where they could await reinforcements from Hawaii and the U.S.... reinforcements that never came. On 24 December 1941 the 7th Materiel Squadron was ordered to move to the Bataan Peninsula. They arrive at Cabcaben, Bataan the next day.
"...Shortly after our arrival in Bataan our outfit was ordered to Mindanao. The boat was sunk before it docked and we were assigned to a front line sector.
With no planes to man, the men from the 7th MATS were combined with the men from the 27th Bomb Group, who also had no planes, and they were assigned infantry duty as part of the Bataan Defense force. Their group became the 2nd Provisional Infantry Regiment. "Their newly formed units were referred to as Provisional Infantry Regiments. These Provisional Infantry units were composed of air men, who in most cases had never had any infantry combat training. Most had to be taught how to put bullets into their rifles and how to use hand grenades, and how to dig a proper foxhole. It was akin to on-the-job training. Although clumsy, at times, comical, and, at times, very shaky, they performed valiantly. It was not pretty, but they did their job.
On 31 December 1941 the 7th was moved forward to the Orion Line, where a second battle front had been established. The squadron was given old WWI weapons that many of the men had never fired. "So here we were the ill prepared Army Air Corps on duty as Provisional Infantry until the time of surrender."
From the very beginning, the men on Bataan were cut to 1/2 rations, and very soon, to 1/4 rations. About four weeks later, they were living on 1/8 rations, that is, when food was available to them. Towards the end, it was changed to 1/16th of their rations...Quite often, they would go several days with no food, unless they could catch something in the jungle." Source: Federico Baldassarre letter
In the wake of starvation came diseases, such as malaria, dengue, scurvy, beriberi and amebic dysentery. The average American soldier lost 15-25 pounds and malaria was as high as 35 percent among front line units.
The Japanese started their final offensive of Bataan on Good Friday, 03 April 1942. By the evening of April 8, the situation was clearly hopeless. With ammunition, rations and supplies practically exhausted and most of his best units destroyed, Maj. Gen. Edward P. King, commander of the forces on Bataan, was convinced his troops could not physically resist any more and decided to surrender to prevent further loss of life. On 09 April 1942, Maj. Gen. King surrendered the Luzon Force to the Japanese. Numbering more than 75,000 Filipinos and Americans, it was the largest American army in history to surrender.
Following the surrender, the weakened and diseased defenders of Bataan, including Corporal Orral L. Whitehead, were subjected to infamous Bataan Death March by their Japanese captors. When the Fil-American soldiers began the Death March they were in terrible physical condition. For 6 to 9 days (depending on their starting point) they were forced to walk the roughly sixty-five miles to San Fernando, enduring abuse by Japanese guards and seeing the deaths of thousands of fellow soldiers. At San Fernando, the Japanese stuffed about 100 men into steel-sided boxcars for the twenty-five-mile trip to Capas. The scorching hot boxcars were packed so tight that the men could not even sit down. When the train arrived at Capas the POW's were offloaded and marched the final nine miles to the POW Camp O'Donnell (#4) in Capas, Tarlac Province, Central Luzon, Philippines.
Surviving the brutal treatment by the Japanese at Camp O'Donnell (about 1500 American and 22,000 Filipino prisoners of war died in just three months) Corporal Whitehead was transferred to the Cabanatuan POW Camp No. 1, approximately 8 kilometers east of the town by the same name.
In early June of 1942, prisoners from Camp O'Donnell began to stream into Camp No. 1, joining the men from Corregidor and increasing the number of prisoners to over 7,300 men. Because of the poor health of the men from O'Donnell, the death rate at Camp #1 soared.
Corporal Orral L. Whitehead died on 28 July 1942 of *dysentery in the Barracks Hospital Area, a prisoner of the Japanese at POW Camp 1, Cabanatuan, Nueva Province, Luzon, Philippines 15-121. He was one of 22 men to die that day. By the time the camp was liberated in early 1945, 2,764 Americans had died at Cabanatuan in 2½ years. 90% of the POW deaths in Cabanatuan were men from Bataan.
*"While the Japanese official cause of death was listed as dysentery, one of the survivors of the Cabanatuan traveled to Kemmerer, Wyoming and visited my Grandmother Dorothy Whitehead Ulrich and my Father Carl – Orral's younger half-brother, in 1946 and told her he was a friend of Orral's and had promised Orral that he would say goodbye to his Mother and relate that he had been "...used for bayonet practice by the Japanese, then with the butts of rifles his gold tooth extracted..." Source: https://cnac.org/emilscott/whitehead01.htm
He was buried in a communal grave in the camp cemetery along with other deceased American POWs who died that day. After the war, all the remains in the Cabanatuan Prison cemetery that could be found were disinterred (between December 1945 - February 1946) and brought to 7747 USAF Cemetery, Manila #2, Philippine Islands. He was reburied in Block 3, Row 3, Grave 375 (D-D 12263). The deceased in Manila #2 (over 11,000 American soldiers) rested there until their removal to the American Graves Registration Service Manila Mausoleum in the summer of 1948. From there, according to the wishes of his next of kin (father, Mr. Orral T. Whitehead), Corporal Orral Leroy Whitehead was buried in his final resting place in the 7701 Ft. McKinley Cemetery (now known as the Manila American Cemetery) – Plot L, Row 4, Grave 12.
Of the 335 men in the 7th Materiel Squadron as of 31 October 1941 in the Philippines, 193 men or 58% died between 1941 - 1945. Of that number, 181 men or 54% of them died as POWs of the Japanese after they were surrendered.
Orral was the second son to die in World War II. His brother, Storekeeper Second Class Wallace Albert Whitehead went missing in action on 01 March 1942 when his ship, the cruiser U.S.S. Houston (CA-30) was hit by multiple torpedo's in the Battle of Sunda Straits between Java and Sumatra (now part of Indonesia). Only 368 of the 1,061 crew members aboard survived and many of them died in captivity at the hands of the Japanese. Wallace in memorialized on the Tablets of the Missing in the Manila American Cemetery.
Gravesite Details
Entered the service from Wyoming.
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Records on Ancestry
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U.S., Headstone and Interment Records for U.S., Military Cemeteries on Foreign Soil, 1942-1949
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1940 United States Federal Census
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U.S. World War II Army Enlistment Records, 1938-1946
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1930 United States Federal Census
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U.S., World War II and Korean Conflict Veterans Interred Overseas
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