Dr. Kelly Crager’s article, “‘God Knows What’s Going to Happen to Us’: The ‘Lost Battery’ of Texas’s ‘Lost Battalion’ in World War II,” will appear in the Southwestern Historical Quarterly in the July 2008 edition. The article presents a history of the little-known E Battery of the Lost Battalion, whose members were captured by the Japanese on Java in March 1942 and who spent the remainder of the war laboring for their captors in the Japanese home islands. His account follows the men throughout their experiences and attempts to explain their high survival rate; one of the most important factors for their survival was the comradeship shared among these Texans POWs. Dr. Crager based this study on oral history interviews with survivors of the experience, as well as on governmental and U.S. Army documents gathered at war’s end. Dr. Crager is the current head of the Oral History Project at the Vietnam Center and Archive.

Texas State Historical Association