Robert Lapham, WWII Hero, dies

http://www.qctimes.com/internal.php?...&c=2,102 1971


Last Updated: 11:31 pm, Friday, December 19th, 2003


WWII hero Robert Lapham dead at 86
By Thomas Geyer

..
Davenport native Robert Lapham, who led an army of Filipino guerrillas for three
years during World War II and emerged from the jungles of Luzon island a storied
national hero, died Thursday at his home in Sun City, Ariz.
..
He was 86. His wife, Sharlott Junge Lapham, said he had been ill for about five
weeks.
..
“I told him I was going to have to bring in his witch doctor to get rid of all
these evil spirits,” she told the QUAD-CITY TIMES on Friday. “It worked once,”
she added.
..
“(Gen. Douglas) MacArthur pinned the Distinguished Service Cross on him,” one of
Lapham’s boyhood friends, Keith Jurgens, 90, said Friday from his home in
Dallas. “But he should have gotten the Congressional Medal of Honor.”
..




Lapham’s guerrilla activities were extremely important not just to the retaking
of the Philippine Islands, but also to America’s victory in the Pacific Theater
as a whole, Jurgens added.
..
“They blew up bridges and everything else they could think of to impede the
Japanese,” he said. “They made it difficult for the Japanese to move men and
materiel to where the Americans were.”
..
Communication between the guerrillas and American forces was maintained, he
added, so that American
..
commanders knew not just where the guerrillas were, but where the Japanese were
as well.
..
Lapham was the third man, behind President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and
MacArthur, to receive the Philippine Legion of Honor.
..
He was greeted back in Davenport with a hero’s parade.
..
A graduate of the University of Iowa, Lapham had been working for the Chicago
branch of the Burroughs Co. when, as a 2nd lieutenant of infantry in the
Officers Reserve Crops, he was assigned to active duty in the Philippines and
sailed from San Francisco on June 5, 1941.
..
Six months later, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and then the Philippines.
..
Because of the “Europe first” policy, the men in the Pacific Theater of
Operations were left to fight a losing, months-long battle without
reinforcements, food or medical supplies.
..
After MacArthur was evacuated to Australia, Gen. Jonathan Wainwright was given
command of the Philippine defense force. As talk of surrender began, Lapham
sneaked through the lines.
..
In his 1996 book, “Lapham’s Raiders: Guerrillas in the Philippines, 1942-45,” he
explained why he headed to the jungles to fight.
..
“Somehow, I didn’t like the idea of surrendering,” he wrote. “I felt I had
better chances on the outside than in a Japanese prison camp.”
..
It was not until October 1944 that his family learned what had become of him.
For three years, he had been listed as missing in action.
..
In addition to fighting the Japanese, Lapham battled malaria and dysentery.
..
He assumed that reinforcements would come in a couple of months, but the months
stretched into years.
..
“I don’t know what I would have done if I had known,” he said. “Sometimes
ignorance really is bliss.”
..
But the 13,000 men under his command became known as Lapham’s Raiders, and they
harassed and killed the Japanese at every turn.
..
“The Japanese put a $1 million price on his head,” Jurgens said.
..
Among his many exploits was the planning of a raid that freed more than 500
beaten and tattered allied prisoners in a camp at Cabanatuan City. During the
raid, he and his men fought off a tank-led Japanese attack along the escape
corridor.
..
When the war ended, he was 28 and had attained the rank of major. But a
different kind of uncertainty overcame Lapham.
..
“I had been a premier figure among a lot of people for a long time,” he wrote in
his book, “a one-man court of law with virtual life-and-death power over my
domain, and I was emotionally reluctant to step down.
..
“I actually ran a section of that country and that feeling of authority grows on
you,” he wrote. “You get to like it. Everywhere I went, I was regarded as
something like a folk hero. Incredible as it may seem, more than once I awoke to
find my bedroom full of Filipinos who had been standing there for who knows how
long, just watching me sleep.”
..
Like many others in his situation, he took to drinking.
..
He credited Sharlott for the love and attention that guided him back on the
right path. They were married Dec. 7, 1946.
..
“That way, we wouldn’t forget our anniversary,” she said.
..
In 1975, he retired as vice president for industrial relations from Burroughs
Corp., now Unysis, in Detroit. He and his wife moved to Sun City, where he
served on the board of the country club, golfed and volunteered at the hospital.
..
In 1995, he was inducted into the Davenport Central High School Hall of Honor.
..
For years, he continued to receive letters from the Philippines, either from the
guerrillas who had served under him or their children.
..
Lapham also is survived by two daughters, Patricia Lyson, 51, and her husband,
Rollie, and Judith Paul, 47. A son died of leukemia at age 5.
..

..
Thomas Geyer can be contacted at (563) 383-2328 or .

"Garrison Hilliard" wrote in message
...

http://www.qctimes.com/internal.php?...&c=2,102 1971


Last Updated: 11:31 pm, Friday, December 19th, 2003


WWII hero Robert Lapham dead at 86
By Thomas Geyer


Interesting stuff but where was the AVIATION content?

Tex Houston