Tuesday, August 18, 2015

An Interesting Discovery- Pfc Jack Kirkland POW


I found this folded up among the old pictures I have and at the top it says... 

Thirty one Southern Californians, including seven Los Angeles men, were listed by the Navy Department as being prisoners of war either in the Philippine Islands of in Japan. The Los Angeles men are:

Pfc. Jack Kirkland, U.S.M.C; brother of, J.S. Kirkland, 10500 National Boulevard. 

That was my Great Uncle Jack. He was my grandpa's brother and I had no idea about any of this until a couple of days ago. 

I was looking through one of my old family photo albums because the album itself is falling apart and I need to transfer the pictures to a new album. Well this newspaper article was folded up behind a picture of my grandfather and when I read it I had to call my dad to ask if he had an Uncle Jack because I'd never heard of him before and he told me that he did and he was a prisoner of war during WWII and he lived through that but was later killed during the war. 

I've had this photo album since I was 12 years old and I never knew that newspaper clipping was there tucked behind a picture. I was scanning in a few pictures of my grandpa to share on FB because I recently found three cousins on my dad's side. Even some of them had no idea that our grandpa had a brother who had been a POW. How crazy is that? You just never know what you'll find tucked away in an old photo album.