Melissa Hill
When Frank Woodruff Buckles died at the age of 110, he was regarded as the last living American Doughboy of World War I.
Although the Missouri native never got the opportunity to fight Germans between 1914 and 1918, Buckles would suffer the horrors of becoming a civilian prisoner of the Japanese during WWII.
Buckles was a cousin to Melissa Hill, a local historian and Past Regent for the Joseph Hart Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution.
As the guest speaker during the National POW/MIA Recognition Day event, Hill will talk more about her distinguished relative when the program gets underway at 6:30 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 15 at the Bartholomew County Memorial for Veterans.
Besides Hill’s keynote address, the POW/MIA Recognition Day will also feature vocal performances by Pastor Harvey Leggett, a former Marine, and the Columbus Indiana Children’s Choir.
The names and months in captivity of each of the 55 POW’s and MIA’s will be read by Iraq War veteran Chris Fitzsimmons. The remembrance will also feature the “Southern Indiana Pipes and Drums” and the Bartholomew County Honor Guard.
After lying about his age and being rejected by most military branches, the 16-year-old Buckles was finally accepted by the U.S. Army. But since he was stationed far from the trenches in southwest France, Buckles never fought the enemy.
After his late 1919 discharge, he worked his way through business school and held jobs in both Toronto and New York City. For a time, he worked for the White Star Lines, the same company that built the ill-fated Titanic.
It was 22 years after his discharge while Buckles was running the Manila office of the American President Lines, a container shipping company, that the Japanese invaded the Philippines.
Although he was only a civilian businessman, Buckles was taken prisoner in December 1941. He would spend 39 months in a Japanese prison camp – one of about 14,000 American civilian internees held by the Japanese.
As a prisoner, Buckles developed beriberi, a degenerative disease caused by malnutrition that affected him for the rest of his life. In addition, his weight dropped before 100 pounds. Nevertheless, Buckles continued to lead a daily calisthenics class for his fellow prisoners.
On Feb. 23, 1945, the 44-year-old Buckles and his fellow prisoners were liberated. In 1954, he retired from the shipping business and became a West Virginia farmer.
But Frank Woodruff Buckles was best known for being a leader of a campaign to have the District of Columbia War Memorial turned into the National World War I Memorial.
As Honorary Chairman of the World War I Foundation, Buckles talked with President George W. Bush on March 6, 2008. It would be another 13 years before the Washington D.C. memorial was finally unveiled on April 16, 2021.
When Buckles died in early 2011, his funeral was attended by both President Barack Obama and Vice-President Joe Biden. Although he didn’t meet requirements, the U.S. Department of Defense made an exemption and allowed him to be buried with honors in Arlington National Cemetery.
