When he entered the Army Air Corp in 1939, Tony Bilek weighed about 165-170 pounds.
After World War II, the Bataan Death March and working in the coal mines for the Japanese, Bilek weighed just 113 pounds.
Thursday, Bilek spoke to students and guests in Dave Hoffert's class at Warsaw Community High School. He covered topics from the death march, to the atomic bomb to the day he and other prisoners of war were liberated.
Bilek, now 89, was born in Chicago, Ill. He joined the Army Air Corp in May 1939 to learn a trade, metallurgy. He went to boot camp where he was interviewed to see where he would best be suited. It was metal working.
"All I did was repair air craft from then on through the war," Bilek said during a short interview before talking to Hoffert's 1 p.m. class.
After finishing school on metal working, Bilek and other men were shipped off to foreign stations. Bilek ended up in the Philippines. Any airplane that broke, Bilek said, he had to go out and fix. "Due to my past experience, I was pretty good at it," he said.
While Bilek was at Bataan, 23,000 American soldiers were forced to surrender. Bilek said they all were ordered to dispose of their equipment and go to the nearest road. There, the Japanese were waiting for them. The Americans were corralled and marched out.
The death march was about 60 miles during April. April is the hottest month in the Philippines, Bilek said.
"I'm very emotional. I get shook up, especially when I talk about my buddies I lost over there," Bilek said.
Even though he finds it difficult to talk about, he said, he wants everyone to know about it. It's the only way the truth about Bataan gets out, he said. The State Department abandoned 23,000 American troops over there at Bataan, he said. "It was swept under the rug."
He's spoken to churches, schools, civic organizations and "anybody that will listen," Bilek said. "They're very attentive. Very solemn looking. No smiles unless I tell something funny, which I do. But they want to hear about it," Bilek said.
While speaking to Hoffert's class, Bilek said he was in Winona Lake when he was 10-11 years old at the Chicago Boys Club. It was one of his many memories that helped him survive the war, he said.
"The war started, of course, at Pearl Harbor. Shortly thereafter, they bombed us at Clark Field," Bilek said. He was there.
After the bombing of Clark Field, General Douglas MacArthur was moved down to Bataan. "The 23,000 U.S. boys were left alone against the whole Japanese Army. Better than 50 percent died, never came back," Bilek said.
There was no plan. The American boys only had ancient weapons and gear.
"People ask me why I made it, why I came back. I tell them that I wanted to make it," Bilek said.
Along the death march, men started dying of things like dysentery. Bodies were just pushed to the side of the road. Bilek said they lost about 50 men a day.
Many of the men who died were Bilek's friends. "I had no way to help them. I had as much as they did - nothing," he said.
Along with the American soldiers, 50,000 Phillippinos were captured along with them. They died at the same rate. Bodies were lined up in trenches like sardines.
After a year at one camp, Bilek said, he ended up at another camp for a year. Then he volunteered to go to Japan to get out of the camps. For 60 days, he and others traveled in an old freight to Japan. When they arrived, about 200 of them were taken to a coal mine camp. For the next year, they became coal miners.
Bilek said he worked more than 10 hours a day in the coal mine.
"Maybe that's why I'm here today," he said. "I did that hard work. I didn't lay around feeling sorry for myself."
Bilek said they also could see the cloud from the atomic bomb that dropped on Nagasaki, Japan. At the time, he said, they didn't know what they had seen. It was only later when a news correspondent told them that they realized what it was.
On the day of their liberation, Bilek said they were lined up. The Japanese commander got on his pedestal, spoke down to them in Japanese, and the interpreter translated. They were told the war was over. They were going home. There were 2,000 men there, Bilek said, but you could hear a pin drop after the announcement.
Bilek has written a book about his experiences titled "No Uncle Sam: The Forgotten of Bataan."
For more on Bilek or Hoffert's students' work on World War II veterans, visit online at http://www.hofferthistoryclass.com/Mr._Hofferts_Class_Website
