About the author: Godfrey C. Ames (May 4, 1912 — January 31, 1945). Graduate of West Point, Class of 1937. Captain, U.S. Army, Commanding Officer, Battery C, 60th Coast Artillery, Corregidor. Held a P.O.W. at Cabanatuan Camp No 1. Died in Fukuoka, Japan.
About the diary:
The first part is composed of copies of letters, December 7, 1941 to January 30, 1942, along with clippings.
His diary per se, according to his own manuscript, begins on February 17, 1942, with a visit to Bataan. The document ends on March 29, 1942.
Book 5 has entries from November 26, 1942 to November 26, 1943.
The author’s own daughter, provided the tale of her father’s diaries in a message in the Corregidor 503rd Pct. Btln. Website’s message group:
I appreciate my father’s Diary entries being on this site, and wish to tell the exact “provenance” of the over 500 pages he wrote and buried at Cabanatuan. The diaries were recovered postwar, found below the floor boards of the Chapel Bldg, in a large mayonnaise jar. Dad had been selected to go to Japan on the 3 vessels of the Oryoku Maru. Before he left he told an officer friend, who was an amputee, and not selected to go to Japan, where his diaries were hidden. After the War, the diaries were recovered and photo stated byWACS in Manila, I presume.The originals were returned to my mother, in the States, Rockaway Beach NY. Sadly over the years most except the first booklet were lost.
In the early 1960’s Mom was contacted by the Belote brothers who were writing “Corregidor,Saga of a Fortress.”, asking her permission to quote from the “diaries,” photostats in the Army Records Center in St. Louis.We were thrilled that those existed. I typed the first booklet in the late 50’s, at my job as a secretary at IBM’s Corporate Hqs in NYC, encouraged by the executives in our department who were WWII Vets. That copy was given to family and eventually to others. Then when I had time, quite a few years later in the 1980s, I went to the U S Archives Bldg, to the attic of that old edifice, still in downtown DC, and the archivists were terrific in their help. I found all of the diaries, plus others such as Capt. Paul Cornwall’s book there as well.
During the l980’s I typed most of the booklets, that were semi-legible. In 1885, my Mom and I returned to Corregidor with the West Point Memorial tour, sponsored by my Dad’s USMA Class of 1937. I stayed after the tour left for the States for three days on Corregidor, at the old Corregidor Inn, run by Patsy an Charlie Altomonte. Her Dad, Gen. M.Q. Salientes was a Classmate of my Dad’s. Al McGrew and his wife Marjean were among the guests there, as well as several other former Corregidor POWs. I gave Al McGrew a copy of Dad’s diary, and he also shared it with Mr. Lindgre, I had also sent it to Mr. Miller, the Historian of the ADBC, and to men with whom I became to know who were surveyors of “C”Btry. Chicagp. That is the provenance of the Diaries of Capt. G. R. Ames.