Gene Samuel Jacobsen, grave - Bataan Survivor - Murray City, Utah - Remembering FEPOW on Waymarking.com

Gene Jacobsen was born Sept 19, 1921 and Died May 25, 2007

"Gene Jacobsen refused to die during the notorious Bataan Death March.

Instead, the young soldier survived a 42-month captivity and returned home - free of contempt for his Japanese captors - to become a prominent Utah educator and author.

More than a half-century after his World War II imprisonment, Jacobsen died Friday at his St. George home of a war-related kidney problem. He was 85.

He leaves behind the riveting personal history of his confinement in the Philippines and Japan, in which 70 percent of his fellow officers in the 20th Pursuit Squadron perished.

The account - which tells of his starvation, torture and ultimate forgiveness of the Japanese - earned him national recognition by the Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge in 2005 and the respect of his peers.

"Gene was a powerful influence for compassion and understanding in our world," Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson said. "The stirring account of his experiences as a World War II prisoner reflects not only his heroism, but his incredible decency and grace as a human being."

Jacobsen returned from war in 1945 to marry his high school sweetheart, Barbara Perkins, who had served as a gunnery instructor in the U.S. Navy WAVES.

Jacobsen never shied from speaking about his imprisonment during World War II and ultimately published his memoirs in the book, We Refused to Die: My Time as a Prisoner of War in Bataan and Japan, 1942-1945.

He wrote of the 60-mile death march to a Japanese prison camp, in which thousands of U.S. troops were fatally shot, bayoneted or beaten. He wrote of soldiers digging their own graves, of prisoners working in coal mines without shoes and of protracted starvation and abuse.

Yet he also wrote of the day he forgave his captors - a moment that molded Jacobsen into a man who spoke ill of no one, his daughter said."

(Salt Lake Tribune article May 27, 2007)
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Type of Resource: Grave Other from above - Please Specify: n/a Relevant Position in Armed Forces: Staff Sargent US Army Air Force Nationality: American Relevant Website: [Web Link] Date if Relevant: Not listed

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