About the author: Arthur Lee Shreve (July 16, 1897 — March 12, 1969) Colonel, Field Artillery, US Army.
The Baltimore Sun published an interesting feature on Shreve, his uniform, a collector, and Shreve’s granddaughter. It contains the following biographical information about the author:
Arthur Shreve was born in Baltimore in 1897 and dropped out of high school after his father’s death. He later joined the Maryland National Guard and began a 44-year career in the military. He was a pilot during World War I, then served in the Philippines during World War II. While there, he was taken prisoner.
He served as chief of the Maryland Military District at Fort Meade during the Korean War. He died in 1969.
About the diary: Digitized and posted online from three sources:
- The US National Archives: “P.O.W./C.I.: A.L. Shreve, Book I, Folder 10,” Diary of Lt Col Arthur Shreve and Unknown Author, Corregidor 1942 and prison 1944, file code 999-2-16.
- Philippine Archives Collection: Lt Col Shreve Diary Book 2 and 3, POWs & Civilian Internees, Box Number 143.
- Perpetuation of Testimony of Arthur L. Shreve, Lt Colonel, 011176, Judge Advocate General’s Department, Department of the Army. Onlu a portion of this document was included in The Philippine Diary Project: the entries from December 13, 1944 to December 27, 1944 (departure from Lingayen Gulf). These entries are presented in diary form, although it is not clear if reference was made to a diary or these were purely oral testimony, or a combination of both. However, as they were presented in diary form, we have decided to include the relevant entries in the Project.
In some instances, some words, particularly of Philippine place-names, were mispelled by the author. Our corrections are inserted as [underlined italics within brackets].