Bernard T. Fitzpatrick Papers

Bernard T. Fitzpatrick was born 1915 in Waverly, MN to Florien and Catherine (Shafranski) Fitzpatrick. He completed his education in local schools, then he attended the College of St. Thomas where he graduated in 1938. After college, he worked as an agent for the Banker’s Life Insurance Company.

Fitzpatrick was drafted into the United States Army in 1941 where he served in 194^th Tank Battalion from Camp Ripley, MN. The battalion was posted to Clark Air Base in the Philippines when the Japanese attacked the Philippines and Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. He was taken prisoner by the Japanese in April 1942 at the surrender of Bataan. Along with 70,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war, Fitzpatrick was forced to walk from the southern part of Luzon to a prison camp in the north of the island on what has become known as the Bataan Death March. In July 1944, he was selected for transport from the Philippines to Japan. Once in Japan, he was assigned to prison camp Fukuoka #3 where he worked as forced labor in the Yawata Steel Mills until his liberation on September 13, 1945. Fitzpatrick spent nearly a year in Army hospitals after that before he was discharged from the Army in 1946.

After the war, Fitzpatrick returned to St. Paul where he continued his career in insurance until his retirement in the early 1970s. He married Corinne Hurley on June 19, 1947, and they had eight children (Brian, Kevin, Dennis, Ellen, Colleen, Sheila, Patrick, and Maureen). He served as president of the College of St. Thomas Alumni Association (1956 - 1958) and was an active member of the the Twin Cities Catholic Chorale.

Fitzpatrick returned to the Philippines in 1967 where he reconnected with some of his former comrades and friends. In the 1960s, he began to record stories about his experiences as a POW. In 1993, he published (with co-author John Sweetser) a chronicle of his experiences as a prisoner of war in The Hike Into the Sun: A Memoir of an American Soldier Captured on Bataan in 1942 and Imprisoned by the Japanese Until 1945. The book won the 1994 Minnesota Book Award for nonfiction.

Bernard T. Fitzpatrick died on November 8, 2004.