Just 60 years ago a young soldier from Albert Lea was taken prisoner by the Imperial Japanese forces which had invaded the Philippine Islands.

Friday, January 04, 2002

Just 60 years ago a young soldier from Albert Lea was taken prisoner by the Imperial Japanese forces which had invaded the Philippine Islands. This reminder of what happened to George (Breezy) Gregerson recently came in a letter from his boyhood friend, Fred Fretheim, who now lives in Bloomington.

These two Albert Lea High School graduates and later CCC camp veterans became &uot;knights of the road&uot; in the fall of 1935, Fred wrote:

&uot;(Breezy) spent a short period of his life &uot;riding the rails&uot; along with thousands of out-of-work young men on the hobo trail. During that short period of a couple of weeks, he rode in open boxcars (the hoboes choice); railroad gondolas (open coal cars); reefers (refrigerator rail cars when, empty, the hoboes obtained access by crawling down inside the ice compartments through small doors on top); and he had one wild night ‘riding the blinds’ (hanging on the outside, between the passenger cars). On another occasion, he and his buddy asked a policeman for a night in jail. They were fingerprinted and locked up in a large squad room type cell. The next day, Breezy and his cell mates were loaded onto a flatbed truck, driven to the city limits and told, ‘Don’t come back!’ From then on, he slept in the back seats of automobiles on used car lots. On the return trip, Breezy was pulled out of a boxcar on the Illinois border by a burley railroad detective, known as railroad ‘dicks,’ who pointed to a nearby highway with a warning that if caught again on railroad property, he would ‘shoot first and ask questions later!’

&uot;As war clouds gathered prior to World War II, many former CCCers joined the military well before Pearl Harbor and Breezy was one of them. During the winter of 1940/41, he noticed an article in the Albert Lea Tribune, his hometown newspaper, about duty in the U.S. Army in the Philippines and decided to volunteer. The next day, he quit his job at the Wilson Packinghouse and although he later had second thoughts about it, he decided to go ahead with it, because, as he said at the time, he had already said his goodbyes – ‘even to Grandma.’&uot;

Breezy and the other replacements arrived in Manila, Philippines, in June 1941 and he became a machine-gunner with the 31st Infantry Regiment.

For nearly all of the World War II years George’s parents, Tillie and Gilbert Gregerson, had no idea at all regarding the real status of their oldest son. He was reported as missing in action on May 7, 1942. The official notification of his death came on June 5, 1945. Fred’s letter continues:

&uot;In late 1945 or 1946, Breezy’s younger brother, James Gregerson, while on duty with the U.S. Army, in the Philippines, learned that Breezy had survived the infamous ‘Bataan Death March’ but died of dysentery in Camp O’Donnell on June 17, 1942. During the brutal march of approximately 65 miles from Bataan’s southern tip, just north of Corregidor, to Camp O’Donnell, near the Zambales Mountains to the north, the hungry, tired American prisoners, many sick with malaria, were shot if they fell out of line for any reason. According to information from another Minnesota veteran of the march, Breezy, at the risk of his life, assisted others along the way.

&uot;James Gregerson found his brother’s grave at the USAF Cemetery #1, Camp O’Donnell. A mass burial, Breezy shared the grave with eight other former American prisoners. Years later, the body of George Gregerson and the others from that cemetery were reburied in the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial, 60 miles south of Camp O’Donnell.&uot;

His brother, James, was employed for 41 years at Interstate Power Co. and died on Dec. 19, 2000.

Very special thanks go to Fred Fretheim for furnishing the information used for both this column and the previous column.

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Feature writer Ed Shannon’s column appears Fridays in the Tribune.