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About Warren A. Wilson

About the author: Warren A. Wilson, M.D. (Stanford, ’30), Major, U.S.A. According to a footnote in Bataan Survivor: A POW’s Account of Japanese Captivity in World War II by David L. Hardee,

Major Warren A. Wilson, Medical Corps, of California was assigned to General Hospital No. 2 on Bataan. He became the third and last American senior medical officer at Bilibid Prison on December 13, 1944.

Hardee’s book states that Wilson replaced Commander Thomas H. Hayes. In Father Found, Duane Helsinger wrote,

Maj. Warren A. Wilson and an Army medical team from Cabanatuan were ordered by the Japanese to relieve the long-standing Navy medical group at Bilibid for the Japanese wanted to send the Navy Bilibid group on this draft. This decision was made in late October. Wilson’s diary, which survived this time in Bilibid, was most revealingas to events during these October to December days prior to the departure of the draft for Japan. The diary indicated that on December 11 Captain Nogi screened 48 people on the draft who had been considered unfit for travel… These men who left Bilibid on December 13, 1944, would shortly begin a series of “Hell ship” trips… Sixty-five percent would not survive the entire trip. Only 25 percent would live to return home.

Arthur Herman, in Douglas MacArthur: American Warrior, states that the first person to greet MacArthur when he arrived at Bilibid Prison on February 7, 1945, to see the liberated prisoners, was Maj. Warren Wilson. The California and Western Medicine Advertiser, Vol. 62, No. 4, included the following (p.53):

“The tides have turned again for relatives of interned Japanese prisoners as news of the safety of loved ones filtered out of the War Department Adjutant General’s office in Washington yesterday. Mrs. Gertrude M. Wilson, 2235 N. Catalina St., expressed her relief and joy when she learned that her son, Maj. Warren A. Wilson, commandant of the war prisoners’ hospital at Bilibid Prison Camp, Manila, has been liberated… (Hollywood Citizen-News, February 8, 1945.)

About the diary: Located in Box 143B, Entry 1067, Philippine Archive Collection, Record Group 407, National Archives, College Park, MD. Included in PVAO. Labeled “Major Warren A. Wilson, 15 Oct. 44 to 14 Feb 45, copied from original by Recovered Personnel.”