Posted on 10/22/2009 5:10:59 AM PDT by Saije
Billy Lynch left Dorchester 72 years ago, and they’re pretty sure they’ve finally found him, a long way from home, deep in the ground in China.
Staff Sergeant Billy Lynch was a Marine. He grew up on Victory Road, and if you go to the corner of Victory and Neponset Avenue, you’ll see the black street sign with the gold star that commemorates William Joseph Lynch Square. It is a place of honor for a Marine who disappeared 67 years ago.
He left Neponset for the Marines in 1937, right out of high school, and never came back. He was stationed in China when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and then went to the Philippines and was there when the Japanese invaded. After the battle of Corregidor in 1942, the Japanese took him prisoner.
They beat him but couldn’t break him. As soon as he could run, Billy Lynch ran from the prison camp. The Japanese caught him and beat him again, worse, and then they put him on a “hell ship’’ to China, with no ventilation, no toilet, no water, no food. It was a death march at sea.
A lot of POWs died on the hell ships, but Billy Lynch wouldn’t give his captors the satisfaction. They stuck him in a prison camp called Mukden and he escaped again. Some of the local Chinese hid him, but a 6-foot white guy from Dorchester stood out in Manchuria, and the Japanese recaptured him.
They beat him again, and there would be no third escape for Billy Lynch. He was sent to another camp, Port Arthur, now known by its Chinese name, Lushun. Billy Lynch’s captors tortured him, peeling the skin from his body before killing him, cutting him up, and stuffing his remains in a barrel that was sealed.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
Semper Fi
The boy who is going to make a great man must not make up his mind merely to overcome a thousand obstacles, but to win in spite of a thousand repulses and defeats. - Theodore Roosevelt
Tears. RIP, marine.
..are we really going to surrender our sovereign nation to the Marxist pretenders ?
NO and NEVER!
Japanese troops practically vivisected him. Of all the ways to die, it doesn't get much worse than this.
So, you wanna buy a Toyota? I hear they are great cars.
I can't find it in me to blame the Japanese civilians of today. Sins of the fathers and all that... Besides, we won the war and burned many of their cities to the ground in the process, using both napalm and nukes. That's payback enough for me. But my preference is always for domestic makes over any foreign make. Fix Or Repair Daily rules...
“Epitaph”, not “epilog”. But your message remains valid. God bless all those who fight for the Constitution.
A sad but heartwarming story reminding us of why the USofA is so great. He must have been one h3ll of a Marine.
Salute!
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