About the author: Joe Whitener Keever (March 21, 1918 — July 9, 1996). An October 7, 2018 item in the article, “POW Descendants undertake trip of reconciliation and healing,” mentions the author’s daughter, Anna Keever Lyon, and contains these basic details about the author:
Joe W. Keever, a Staff Sergeant with 60th Coast Artillery Corps of the U.S. Army stationed on Corregidor. He survived imprisonment on Corregidor and at Cabanatuan as well as a hellship to Manchuria to be a slave laborer for Mitsubishi at Mukden.
An obituary for July 10, 1996 mentions the author’s passing the day before, July 9, 1996:
Mr. Joe Whitener Keever, 78, of 1158 Johnsontown Rd., Thomasville, died Tuesday evening in Community General Hospital.
About the diary: Found online in the American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor Library website, as Joe Whitener Diary. The Philippine Diary Project has published on those entries related to the author’s service in the Philippines, and departure from the Philippines, November 1941 to October 1942.
The entries are written in a stream-of-consciousness style. Where dates aren’t specifically mentioned, the text is presented verbatim. Where, however, a date serves to indicate one part of the entry was written after the date that begins the entry, then it has been presented as a separate entry, though itself containing a longer stretch of time. For example the December 29, 1941 entry seems to begin on that date, but merges all other events up to, and beyond, April 29, 1942. Where that date was mentioned, a new entry was begun.