Chester Mann was Born on January 9, 1922, in Hall County Nebraska. He was the grandson of Civil War Veteran and POW- William Wallace Mann who homesteaded in Cairo in 1872. Chester is the son of Norton and Nina (Moriarty) Mann. He was one of 16 children and attended Grand Island High school. He enlisted in the Army Coast Artillery Corp on 27 Aug 1940 at the age of 18.
Chester served under Lieutenant General Douglas MacArthur on Corregidor Island who was ordered by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to relocate to Australia to prevent his capture and to direct further operations. He left Corregidor on 12 March 1942, and on 20 March he made a speech with the famous phrase "I shall return".
The Japanese in Bataan received substantial reinforcements and replacements in March, On 6 April, the US and Filipino forces attempted a counterattack, which ran into a fresh Japanese attack that eventually threw the Allies further back. Over the next two days many Allied units disintegrated, and on April 9th, the Allied forces in Bataan surrendered. About 2,000 stragglers made it to Corregidor Island, while about 78,000 became prisoners of the Japanese and were transferred to camps in northern Luzon on the Bataan Death March.
Chester Mann was taken POW and was part of the Death March through Bataan the men suffered from starvation, prisoners unable to make it through the march were beaten, killed, and sometimes beheaded. Chester with 1780 other prisoners were put on a Japanese POW Hell ship “Arisan Maru” to be transported to Japan. American forces torpedoed and sunk the ship on Oct 24, 1944. All the men escaped the sinking; however, they were not rescued by Japanese. In fact, when they tried to climb aboard private boats they were beaten back into the water. In the end only 9 prisoners survived
A movie called “Sleep my Sons” was made about the sinking of “Arisan Maru”.
