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About The Owens Manuscript

Several years ago I assigned my U.S. History students at Paris Junior College oral history projects for extra credit work. The topics students could collect oral histories on ranged widely from the Second World War, to Vietnam, and Civil Rights.

One student brought me this manuscript as part of his project with the request that it be placed in the College Archives. The document was especially exciting for me to read since I was from the same hometown as the manuscript’s author, Jack Owens (photo at right), and remembered him for the exquisite truck farmed produce he grew. As a child growing up in the small Northeast Texas town of Blossom, I was aware Mr. Owens had suffered unspeakable horrors in the Second World War. I had also learned of the “Big War” from my grandmother’s scrapbook that included war era ration stamps and v-mail sent to her from my great-uncles who had fought in Europe.

The stories of far away Pacific battles my middle school history teacher, a veteran of the Pacific Theater with buxom war era girls tattooed on his upper arms, told his students had also fostered my early interest in the Second World War. It was a war that touched and transformed my little hometown as it did hometowns across the nation. Sons and daughters of many Blossom families traveled the country and the world in service or worked as citizen civilians to support the war effort at home. Each had done their part for the war effort.

Jack Owens was one of those Blossom sons whose service and sacrifice was well known locally. I never knew then the details of Mr. Owens torturous trek on the Bataan Death March and his prisoner of war experience that followed since it was spoken about only in hushed tones by grownups and not considered a fitting topic for little girls. As so often is the case, the true story of what Mr. Owens had been subjected to at the hands of his Japanese captors turns out to be many times more horrific and remarkable than my childish imagination could concoct.

Mr. Owens’ story is an important original source, and preserving his story became an important mission for me and my students. The copy of the manuscript was fragile, brittle, and torn in places and needed to be digitally preserved. Photo copies were carefully made of each page, and the pages manually typed into Microsoft Word or Works. The typing of the manuscript was done by students enrolled in my history classes at Paris Junior College over the course of several semesters in 2004-2005. Their names are listed below this editor’s note. Every attempt was made by these diligent students to recreate the original manuscript as Mr. Owens had written it.

I merged the students’ transcribed portions of the document into one Word document, formatted and edited the digital copy. Each sentence was compared to the original manuscript for accuracy. However, occasionally handwritten notes on the manuscript cannot be read with certainty and these instances have been noted in italics in the digital copy.

This electronic copy of Mr. Owens’ manuscript has not been edited for spelling, grammar, or factual errors and is a facsimile of his World War II experiences on the Bataan Death March and as a prisoner of war as written by Mr. Owens and typed by his sister.

Since many civilians and younger readers may be unfamiliar with frequent references to World War II era military weaponry, slang and rank abbreviations, I have included a brief glossary at the end of this digital copy. I compiled a short timeline of the manuscript as an introduction to the document to aid readers by detailing the time frame and locations involved in the story.

Also, I will continue to work with students to add more details to the timeline and glossary during the Fall and Spring 2006-2007 semesters. Portions of the manuscript will be included as a reading assignment in my classes as work on this manuscript continues. Hopefully, Mr. Owens account will be published in the future.

Oral history interviews will be conducted with Mr. Owens’ children to illuminate and clarify aspects of Mr. Owens war experiences. These interviews will become part of the Paris Junior College Second World War oral history collection and will be housed along with the manuscript from which this electronic copy was produced in the A.M. Aikin Archives on the Paris campus of Paris Junior College in Paris, Texas. A similar copy of the manuscript, photos, and additional materials compiled by Joe Owens, Jack Owens brother, is also available in the PJC Archives.

This is the sort of serendipitous find that teachers love their students to discover and explore. The students who helped preserve this document learned more about the Death March, the horrors of war, man’s inhumanity to man, heroism, and the will to survive than I or any classroom teacher or text could ever convey. I am proud this preserved manuscript will provide many future students, scholars, and interested members of the public access to Mr. Owens’ account, thereby continuing to teach these lessons of history long into the future.

Lisa Johnson
Paris Junior College History Department
October 2006

» Download the Microsoft Word manuscript (368K / 212 Pages)

» Download the PDF manuscript (1.3MB / 212 Pages)