Walter Alan Bowsher, Jr. was born in Fort Riley, Kansas. His father was in the Army chasing Poncho Villa at the time. Following his father's discharge in 1922, the family moved to Leesburg, Indiana. Bowsher was educated there until the family moved during his first year of high school. Things were bad during the Great Depression so Bowser left school. His parents were divorced. Bowsher and his father left Indiana and followed crops from the North into Texas. They ended up in Lawton, Oklahoma which was a short distance from Fort Sill. They went to work for the Salvation Army and by the time Bowser was 16 years of age, he wanted to join the Army. He went to Fort Sill and joined a regiment there. It was the time that World War 1 veterans were retiring and recruit replacements were being accepted. He was accepted into Battery F, 1st Field Artillery Regiment. After joining the Army, Bowsher would have drills in the morning and trained on horseback in the afternoons. After six weeks, he began to train with the battery. He became a wheel train driver and instructor for ROTC [Annotator's Note: Reserve Officer Training Corps] school troops. Bowsher was told that in order to advance in rank he would have to become a Mason. It was a long tradition with that particular regiment dating back to George Washington. No other regiments seemed to have that same requirement. Disliking that requirement, he put his three years in and then resigned from the Army. Bowsher went to work in Iowa for a year and a half. After that, he joined the Marine Corps.

Walter Bowsher joined the Marines and went to boot camp in San Diego. He attended sea school there and then was assigned to the USS Lexington (CV-2). His first assignment aboard the carrier was to search for Earhart [Annotator's Note: Amelia Earhart was an American aviation pioneer who was lost over the South Pacific on 2 July 1937] in the South Pacific. He became a shellback on the voyage. [Annotator's Note: Naval tradition is that until a man of the sea crosses the equator on a voyage, he is considered a pollywog, a lowly status. Subsequent to crossing, a ceremony is held where the voyager earns the title of shellback, a far more prestigious position for seafarers.] The carrier returned to the West Coast in time for the World's Fair in San Francisco. The Lexington then voyaged to the Atlantic and met the newly constructed Yorktown [Annotator's Note: USS Yorktown (CV-5)] and Enterprise [Annotator's Note: USS Enterprise (CV-6)] in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Following three or four months of crew training for the new carriers, Lexington returned to the West Coast. She participated in maneuvers around Hawaii and Panama. After having two years of shipboard service, Bowsher went ashore and joined the 15th Marine Regiment. The name was changed to the 1st Defense Battalion and the unit was sent to California for training. After his four years of service were completed in August 1941, the battalion was ordered to Wake Island. Bowsher wanted to see an island so he extended his service for a year and was promoted to sergeant. He was named postmaster for Wake Island, handling both military and civilian mail.

Walter Bowsher had difficulties obtaining stamps. [Annotator's Note: Bowsher was the Marine postmaster in the 1st Defense Battalion on Wake Island in late 1941.] He handled military and civilian mail for Wake. The Japanese envoy to Washington stopped on the flight from Japan to the United States capital. Bowsher was given the task of watching the envoy while he was briefly on Wake Island. Major Devereaux [Annotator's Note: then US Marine Corps Major, later Brigadier General, James P. S. Devereux commanded the Marines on Wake Island] eventually took over for him. Shortly thereafter, Bowsher had swelling occur in his left leg. He was hospitalized for a vein blockage. Surgery was scheduled the same time as the unexpected start of the war [Annotator's Note: 8 December 1941, a few hours after Pearl Harbor had been attacked]. Everyone, including doctors, went to their battle stations. The six patients in the hospitals also went to their battle stations. Bowsher was placed in the magazine with the corpsman to pass ammunition. The swelling went down on Bowsher's leg. Two of the four guns were actually manned. Some civilians volunteered to help. Bowsher took men with weapons experience and formed a gun crew. Training under fire was difficult. It took some days to get them to focus on firing their weapon rather than watching where incoming fire was bursting. [Annotator's Note: Bowsher laughs.] The crew did as well as the other crews. The gun positions were relocated, but Bowsher was ordered to remain in place and fire on anything that moved. The only thing he fired on was a gunboat attempting to cross the reef. He fired several rounds at the enemy. The captain brought a new lieutenant to Bowsher and told him to find something the junior officer could do. He placed him on the switchboard to free up a corpsman there. During the Vietnam war, Bowsher was a policeman in San Francisco. He ran into a Marine colonel who turned out to be the man Bowsher had put on the switchboard on Wake. After the island fell, the defenders were lined up with machine guns at their backs. He thought he would be killed. Instead, Tokyo ordered that prisoners be taken. Bowsher then considered himself as a guest of the Emperor. The Americans were taken to the airfield and scattered out. The Japs [Annotator's Note: a period derogatory term for Japanese] put their captives around the field because it had been mined. Dynamite had been buried but the generator did not work. Next, the captives were moved to a barracks. It was better than being on the airstrip. The Japanese went through the outgoing westbound mail with Bowsher, the postmaster on Wake, observing them. The enemy was more interested in stealing gifts that were sent by registered mail than watching what Bowsher was doing. Bowsher had discovered military sensitive information and destroyed it while the enemy was busy stealing valuables from the outgoing mail. [Annotator's Note: Bowsher laughs.]

Prior to becoming the postmaster, Walter Bowsher had manned three inch antiaircraft guns. He was familiar with those weapons. He handled whatever was assigned to him. The Japanese focused on the airfield initially and not the gun positions. Their planes came in low and were difficult to track for the antiaircraft guns or defensive aircraft. The gun battery was picked on after that first raid. The fire director was hit so a director for an alternate battery had to provide them readings on altitude and direction of incoming flights. An aviator known as "Hammerin' Hank" [Annotator's Note: US Marine Corps Major Henry T. "Hammerin' Hank" Elrod was one of 12 Marine pilots based on Wake Island] would radio the position of enemy aircraft. When the enemy changed course to avoid antiaircraft fire, he would attack them himself. He was killed in action on Wake Island. He became the first airman to be awarded the Medal of Honor in World War 2. The Wildcats [Annotator's Note: Grumman F4F Wildcat fighter aircraft] had a difficult time but were very effective. Bowsher estimates that his gun battery shot down eight enemy planes. He is pretty sure that a round he fired brought down one of the Japanese bombers. The defenders became dead on their feet after being under fire for a while. The first attempted landing was after Kate Smith dedicated "Red Sails on the Sunset" to the men of Wake Island. "Harbor Lights" made everyone feel bad. Some men were actually crying listening to her sing. Lack of sleep and constant pressure made everyone fatigued. Ammunition was remotely stored but a spontaneous fire detonated the ordnance. Shrapnel was sent out in every direction. When it hit the sandbags around the gun position, the sand would run out. Soon there were no sandbags left and ammunition boxes had to be used as a protective barrier. It was dangerous when close bomb hits would splinter the boxes and cause wood sliver-type injuries. On the last morning of the battle for the island, word came to destroy the antiaircraft guns and report as infantry on the main line of defense on Potter's Line. The enemy never reached that position. The men were lightly armed. Bowsher carried a Springfield rifle [Annotator's Note: Springfield Model 1903 or M1903, .30 caliber bolt action rifle].

Walter Bowsher was captured and then sent to China in February. [Annotator’s Note: Bowsher was a member of the 1st Defense Battalion which surrendered Wake Island to the Japanese on 23 December 1941. Two months later, in February 1942, he was taken to China as a prisoner of war.] He and another sergeant were friends. They and other POWs [Annotator's Note: prisoners of war] were taken aboard a relatively new Japanese ship for the transit. As they boarded the ship, Japanese Army personnel were striking the prisoners. The voyage was miserable. Temporary toilet cans were overturned so it was a mess. The POWs were taken to Wusong prison. It was near Shanghai in low lying land adjacent to the Yangtze River. When the tide rose, water would practically come to the surface of the ground. It was miserable. The POWs were forced to work on roads. While double timing through a village, a letter was thrust at Bowsher. It was addressed to the former British Governor General of Hong Kong, Sir Mark Young. He was in the same camp as Bowsher so he forwarded the letter to him. The letter was from the Englishman's wife in South Africa. It had never been postmarked so it had been passed from one individual to the next to reach him. [Annotator's Note: Bowsher chuckles.] Eventually, he was moved to a better camp but the work was harder. In June 1945, the prisoners were moved to Japan. Halfway through the rail trip through China, Bowsher contracted appendicitis. The train was so crowded that five men had to stand so that Bowsher could lay down. The train stopped and a doctor removed Bowsher's appendix using a door on sawhorses as the operating table and with only a razor blade while Bowsher was held down by four corpsmen. Bowsher passed out from the pain for most of the operation. A wild dog took off with his appendix so Bowsher never did get a chance to check it out. [Annotator's Note: Bowsher laughs.] When the train reached Pusan, Korea, he saw the first evidence of the war. The port was full of sunken ships that aircraft had destroyed. They were there a few days and then taken to Japan.

Walter Bowsher was sent to Hokkaido, Japan to a prisoner of war, or POW, camp. He arrived at Hakodate Number 2 prison camp. The Tokyo railway station had been bombed out. The civilians attacked the defenseless POWs without the guards providing any protection. Helpless men were clubbed and stoned, but they were happy as they saw Tokyo immersed in fire from one end to the other. The POWs knew the Japanese were being hit hard by the bombers. The prisoners were put to work in the coal mines. Bowsher suspected the Japanese were trying to link their islands with undersea tunnels. The men grew so weak that when a mule died, they would be given the carcass. As the war neared the end, rumors of an atomic bomb circulated. No one in the camp on opposing sides knew what that type bomb was. All the POWs knew was the guards were getting ready to leave and an order was on the wall that stated that, should an invasion occur, all the captives were to be killed. There was no invasion. The guards circulated among their inmates and asked for the Allied troops to sign a document stating that they had been provided good treatment. When one particularly abusive guard requested Bowsher sign his document, Bowsher wrote on the paper that the guard should be shot on sight. He hoped that guard would be shot. [Annotator's Note: Bowsher laughs.]

Walter Bowsher was sent to Guam [Annotator's Note: after his liberation from a prisoner of war camp in Japan] where he met up with a sergeant major he had served with aboard the Lexington [Annotator's Note: USS Lexington (CV-2)]. He told Bowsher that they did not find Amelia Earhart but they shot down a Japanese airplane that had her unique altimeter in it. Next to Bowsher's bed on Guam was a Navy chief who had been on the island but never surrendered to the Japanese. He had two children by a Guamanian nurse who had been beaten to death by the Japanese. The children had been raised by mean Japanese nurses. The children hated women as a result. They went back to the United States with Bowsher and the chief. When they flew from Hawaii to the mainland, an actress named Hussey [Annotator's Note: Ruth Hussey] wanted the little girl to befriend her but the girl had nothing to do with her. The children would not have anything to do with their grandmother when they met her in the United States. The returning POWs [Annotator's Note: prisoners of war] were scattered in hospitals around the country according to their home locations. Bowsher reenlisted and was considered for promotion to master sergeant. He changed from artillery to Military Police to gain the promotion. He took courses and became Military Police Chief. He was sent to a weapons test site where security was very strict. The German who was head of the place also taught at the University of California at Los Angles. There was a horse patrol for the compound and Bowsher liked that. Some areas of the reservation had to be patrolled by airplane because horses could not access it. Rockets were being tested at the site. An incident happened in a box canyon on the reservation. Bowsher got to the bottom of an operation to slaughter wild horses for dog food. He put an end to that. He also stopped an illegal gold mining and selling process and later a drug operation.

Walter Bowsher felt the commander of the prison camp at Wusong was the worst person he met. He was named Ishihara [Annotator's Note: Isamu Ishihara was the chief interpreter at the Shanghai prisoner of war camp]. The man had been exposed to an education and experienced lifestyles in the United States. He chummed up to the prisoners to try to get information. Ishihara suddenly got very mean. He pitted the prison inmate groups against one another. He took food from one group to reward another group for doing more work. The POWs [Annotator's Note: prisoners of war] had to work between themselves to equalize their work achievements so as not starve to death. The commander was vicious. A letter arrived for Bowsher from his father. It contained a coded message about the great American victory at the battle of Midway. The Japanese commander interrogated Bowsher about what it meant but he had no success in better understanding the code. Ishihara attacked Bowsher viciously with his sheathed sword. The man was mean to everyone. He would have killed Sir Mark Young, the Governor General of Hong Kong, if someone had not stopped him. After the war, John Hamlet, a chief warrant officer who had been a POW of the Germans during World War 1, decided to locate Ishihara. Hamlet was on the war crimes commission. He discovered Ishihara at the prison camp in Shanghai, at the Bridge House. The war criminal was arrested and tried. Convicted and given a life term, he died only six months later of pneumonia. That was the end of him. [Annotator's Note: Bowsher laughs.]

Walter Bowsher worked on an effort called the Mount Fuji Project which was supposedly building a children's playground, but it eventually was found to be a rifle range. He was reimbursed after the war for personal property, mainly sporting weapons, lost on Wake Island when he was captured. He was aided by a former officer serving on Wake Island. Bowsher served in the 1st Marine Division, MP Company starting in December 1950. He became MP Chief. There was much weird talk about flying saucers. It was prior to him being deployed to Korea. Prior to leaving, he went up on a local promontory and observed something odd. Racing up the river was an object that he could not identify. The base guard shack had seen it and so had the Highway Patrol. He could never fully categorize that unidentified flying object. Another incident while he was MP Chief at Camp Pendleton was with a neighbor near his home in Carlsbad. There was an automobile accident when the neighbor's car was struck by a speeding car. It threw the neighbor into the gutter with gasoline spilling close to him. Bowsher discovered the injured man in the gutter helped get him transported in an ambulance. The neighbor turned out to be Major General Figgins [Annotator's Note: no given name provided]. Circumstances led from one thing to another and Bowsher ended up getting involved with Mrs. Figgins. Later, he was invited by Mrs. Figgins to have a farewell dinner and evening at a hotel with her and another couple prior to Bowsher and the other MP's [Annotator's Note: military police] deployment to Korea. The men made the ship on time, but someone had broken into two jeeps and stolen food. Bowsher set up a watch and caught two sailors. They were brought before their angry captain. The sailors were punished by being made mortarmen in Korea. They were only relieved when the captain returned with their ship at Inchon. By then, the sailors turned mortarmen did not want to leave their unit and return to the ship. Their CO [Annotator's Note: commanding officer] did want them to leave his outfit. The two displaced sailors were in the Navy after all and had to go back aboard their ship. One of them had been awarded the Bronze Star [Annotator's Note: the fourth-highest award a service member can receive for a heroic or meritorious deed performed in a conflict with an armed enemy] and the other had a Purple Heart [Annotator's Note: award bestowed upon a United States service member who has been wounded as a result of combat actions against an armed enemy]. They were good mortarmen but lousy sailors. [Annotator's Note: Bowsher laughs.]

Walter Bowsher was at Pusan and then Inchon during the Korean War. He was told to report to a warrant officer for duty at Pusan. He was assigned to graves registration. Neither of the men knew anything about what to do. They learned from a nearby Army unit responsible for identification and taking care of the dead. After getting the Marine unit set up, Bowsher went to the area of the Inchon landings with a small cadre of men. He was initially involved in fighting against the North Koreans, but, when things settled down, he became the Marine divisional instructor for graves registration. The only man assigned to Bowsher with even remote knowledge of what they were needing to accomplish was a trained mortician sent to him. Bowsher's unit had one man try to fake being dead but was discovered because his body was still warm. [Annotator's Note: Bowsher laughs.] Before the Inchon landings, the fighting was toward the west from Pusan. Bowsher had to retrieve bodies during the push. Bowsher was ordered to join a mechanized unit and get the bodies. The unit turned out to be composed of road equipment, not tanks. He found no one at the location where he was sent. The black unit assigned there had retreated. Other units had done the same. From there, he went to Wonsan harbor, which was mined. Days were spent trying to figure out how to remove the mines so his ship could land. He finally went ashore where posts were sticking up ten to 15 feet. The weather was cold so fires were built. When the poles were extracted, mines were detonated below them. He encountered a USO [Annotator's Note: United Services Organization] show near an airfield in a location previously cleared by South Korean Marines. The next stop was up to the Reservoir area [Annotator's Note: Chosin Reservoir].

Walter Bowsher made two separate cemeteries because he had to bury Russians. [Annotator's Note: Bowsher was assigned to a Marine graves registration unit and was near the Chosin Reservoir.] They seemed more like participants rather than observers during the war. Some were pilots. The Gooks [Annotator's Note: derogatory term for Asians] would fire at anything that moved including those working in the cemetery. He headed north when the action started at Yudam-ni. That was when the Chinese entered the war. Many of the Chinese soldiers surrendered in mass. They were armed with American weapons. They had been former members of Chiang Kai-Shek’s [Annotator's Note: leader of the Republic of China from 1929 to 1975] forces. After the war, they were allowed to go to Formosa because they were not Communists. Near Yudam-ni, Bowsher found his old friend, Windrich [Annotator's Note: US Marine Corps Staff Sergeant William Gordon Windrich] who had fought a good fight but lay dead. Bowsher put one of his dog tags in his buddy's mouth so it would not be lost. [Annotator's Note: Bowsher is emotional during this remembrance.] When Bowsher's orders finally caught up with him in Hagaru-ri, he saw that he was to report back to the United States immediately on the first transport available. He caught it. [Annotator's Note: Bowsher laughs.] Later, Windrich would receive the Medal of Honor. He deserved it. He had been shot to pieces and bled to death refusing to be evacuated. After most of the wounded had been loaded aboard the homeward bound ship, Bowsher went aboard. He returned to the United States and married Mrs. Figgins. [Annotator's Note: Bowsher laughs. Mrs. Figgins was the wife of a Marine Corps major general who Bowsher met when he helped her husband who was injured in an automobile accident.]

After Korea, Walter Bowsher served as the San Diego brig warden. In 1953, he was in charge of the escort section of men who received bodies returning from Korea and even some from World War 2. He would deliver bodies west of the Mississippi River and hold ceremonies for the deceased Marines. He retired in 1954. He went to work for the San Francisco State Harbor Police in 1955. He had an incident where the Marines needed help with incendiary grenades. Bowsher could handle the grenades so he found a spot to pull the pins and throw them in the bay. When he noticed a sign saying a cable crossing was nearby, he worried over it for a week before he realized that the grenades had not caused any issues. That was despite the fact that he could see that they burned all the way to the bottom of the bay. Bowsher served 20 years with the Harbor Police. His wife of 32 good years, died in 1983. He became a private investigator for ten years in California. He attended a Wake Island reunion in Louisiana. On the way, he stopped in Arkansas and decided to settle down there. He bought property and has lived there since.

When Walter Bowsher was at the Post Exchange at San Diego, he found out about a cruel Japanese interpreter being apprehended and tried. [Annotator's Note: Isamu Ishihara was the cruel interpreter during Bowsher's prisoner of war incarceration.] The information was provided to him by John Amos. Amos was a retired colonel and friend. He had a wife who was a former school teacher. They invited Bowsher over for dinner and drinks and enjoyed each other's company. He was surprised when he returned to visit the couple and found out that Amos killed his [Annotator's Note: Bowsher does not clearly say it but it can be inferred that Amos had shot and killed his wife].

When the Japanese assaulted Wake Island the second time, Walter Bowsher was ordered to destroy his antiaircraft battery and withdraw to the main line of resistance, Potter's Line. Major Devereux [Annotator's Note: then US Marine Corps Major, later Brigadier General, James P. S Devereux commanded the Marines on Wake Island] was near him. After about 35 minutes, the major told the men to lower the flag and sent his runner to spread the word that the island was surrendering. He was adamant to his men that he did not surrender but was ordered to do so. The troops disabled their weapons. Bowsher had manned one of his antiaircraft guns with a civilian crew. They were a good gun crew and were to get credit for Navy service throughout their defense of Wake and captivity. While on the island, scuttlebutt was that the civilians were going to be evacuated, but there was never any word about relief for the Marines.

While in captivity, Walter Bowsher received few Red Cross packages, and, of those he received, some of them were incomplete. The Japanese took out what they wanted from the packages. Sir Edward Ingle [Annotator's Note: unsure of spelling] was the head of the Red Cross. He tried hard to help the POWs [Annotator's Note: prisoners of war]. In Shanghai, there was a restaurant owned by Jimmy James [Annotator's Note: Jimmy James Skaliski was an American expatriate who owned and operated several restaurants in and around Shanghai, China]. He was an American and adopted the POWs. He was helpful in getting food to the prisoners. When the Communists took over, he returned to the United States and had a restaurant in Texas. He checked and made sure the Red Cross did the right things. He was never imprisoned because he had changed his citizenship to Chinese after serving in the Army in the Boxer Revolution. At the end of the war, the Japanese attempted to intervene in a jewel smuggling operation aboard an Italian ship. They killed a woman involved in the operation. The ship's captain made off with the smuggled jewels by hiding them in his pillow. The war's progress could be followed through a combination of an English broadcasting Russian radio station in Shanghai plus gathering the latest news from Allied airman who were captured. The POWs knew when the Japanese lost an island and had to withdraw closer to their homeland. A Japanese doctor named Shindo [Annotator's Note: unsure of spelling] aided the POWs because he knew his country could not win the war. He helped the POW doctors and corpsmen. He used his own money to buy medicines for the prisoners on the black market. The civilians of Shanghai tried their best to help the POWs. One of the pilots who was shot down over China had to have his legs amputated with a razor blade and a saw with no anesthetic. When Bowsher fought the Chinese in Korea, he noted they all carried little bags of maggots, their first aid kits. [Annotator's Note: Bowsher laughs.] As the war neared its end, the work details slacked up in intensity plus food allotments increased. The Navy communicators went to Hakodate, the capital of the island of Hokkaido, and obtained a radio which they brought back to the camp. They contacted a jeep aircraft carrier [Annotator's Note: American escort carriers, or CVEs, were commonly referred to as jeep carriers because of their small size and because they were commonly used to shuttle aircraft from one location to another]. One of the pilots flew over and parachuted a weapon to the POWs and said for them to shoot a few Japs [Annotator's Note: a period derogatory term for Japanese] for him. [Annotator's Note: Bowsher laughs.] Food supplies, medicines and clothes were then dropped to the POWs. The Chinese and Korean POW camps were also nearby.

Walter Bowsher made his first arrest while he was in the Army. He was serving as a temporary military policeman when he came upon some cattle rustlers. He telephoned in to the Lawton Sheriff's Department. He was told to keep an eye on them and make sure they did not leave. When the thieves were preparing to exit, Bowsher fired on them with his pistol. They fired back with a rifle. Luckily, help arrived to assist Bowsher. He was given a citation in recognition of his good efforts. The last arrest he made was for piracy and murder on the high seas. Two youngsters had murdered a boat owner and his wife while offshore. They ran out of fuel and were apprehended by Bowsher and the Coast Guard. Bowsher was with the Harbor Police [Annotator's Note: San Francisco Harbor Police] and made the arrests on the pirates.

Walter Bowsher and the other prisoners were forced to work by the Japanese. The POWs [Annotator's Note: prisoners of war] attempted to destroy some of the work they did without being discovered. Five of the POWs were taken to a race track where they observed the execution of four airmen who had taken part in the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo. The captive flyers were beheaded. The POWs were made to polish brass shell casings until it was discovered that the casings were being damaged. [Annotator's Note: Bowsher laughs.] The POWs worked on damaged roads. One thing that gave him hope was his hatred for the enemy. He knew the Japanese would be beaten and would eventually be asking for help. The Wake Island defenders always tried to make it hard on their captors. The POW camp was surrounded by electric wire. When it rained the inmates would toss a piece of wire or metal on the wire and drive their guards crazy trying to determine where the short in the wire was located. While in captivity, Devereux [Annotator's Note: then US Marine Corps Major, later Brigadier General, James P.S. Devereux had been the commander of the Marines on Wake Island] maintained military discipline in the ranks of the Marine POWs. Discipline was good for the men. Their camp had the lowest level of deaths compared to other camps. There was no bullying in the camp. Food was not taken from other inmates. Some men just gave up and died. Bowsher was able to handle the torture he received. If a man tended his own business, he would not tempt the enemy to abuse him. As many as 1,500 captives were held in the camps with Bowsher. There were the North China Marines, the Wake Island Marines and the Wake Island civilians. Additionally, in the camp were the crews of the gunboat Wake [Annotator's Note: USS Wake (PR-3)] and a British gunboat as well as the Hong Kong British.

Walter Bowsher was made mellow by World War 2. While he was a brig warden after the war, he found that he had empathy for the inmates. War prisoners have a tendency to be pack rats. [Annotator's Note: Bowsher laughs.] He learned to get by on what he had. The country changed during the war. Each of the 20th Century wars seemed to remove the country from what Bowsher had been brought up to believe. Depression era individuals got through prison camp because they had starved to death before being in the military. Life had been very difficult before joining the service. The POW [Annotator's Note: prisoner of war] camp seemed to bring back the tough times. Everything changed in the world after the war. The Wake Island prisoners came home late compared to other prisoners. They were not released until the middle of September [Annotator's Note: September 1945]. They went through Guam and Hawaii rather than the Philippines like most other POWs. Bowsher stayed in the service after entering the United States. He went home to Indiana after hospital leave but ex-POWs were all scattered out. When he returned to Treasure Island and San Diego, he had to get reoriented. All in all, it has been a good life. It is important to retain memories and artifacts of World War 2 and in that regard The National WWII Museum is a significant institution. Bowsher has retained few artifacts from his days in captivity.