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Broke Girls ’
Lifelong Fairfielder Warren C. Sheldon’s book “...The Secretary of War Shares Your Grief: The Brief Existence of Captain Milton Jerome Sheldon,” published in 2000, is a detailed account of the life of Warren Sheldon’s first cousin once removed (Jerome was the son of Warren’s grand-uncle).
How “...The Secretary of War Shares Your Grief...” came to be is nearly as interesting as the almost 400-page book itself. In the foreword, Warren Sheldon talks about his earliest remembrances of Jerome and that would be when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Years after his first cousin had died, Warren asked Jerome’s mother what had happened. Jerome’s mother, E. Ruth Sheldon, for whom the elementary school on Woolner Avenue is named, answered, but not in great detail.
Ruth Sheldon died in 1975 and Warren’s family inherited a military footlocker that used to belong to Jerome. Warren Sheldon’s mother died in 1997 and in January 1999 Warren and his brother went through the footlocker. It was crammed tight with photographs, letters, documents, a machete, a nightstick and newspaper clippings.
Once they examined the material in the footlocker, they knew it was a story that needed to be told and the job fell to Warren. In the book’s preface he describes the finished product as “the reconstructed story of a young man cut down in his prime.”
Jerome’s father, Roy C. Sheldon, was a fourth generation resident of Suisun Valley. Roy’s great-grandfather, Jasper Saxton Sheldon, came from Ohio in 1849 looking for gold. The real fortune he found was in growing fruit in the fertile Suisun Valley.
Roy and Ruth’s only child Milton Jerome Sheldon was born Sept. 22, 1916, in Oakland. In 1922 they bought a house on Texas Street where The Oil Connection is now located. Back then it was outside the Fairfield city limits. Jerome attended San Rafael Military Academy and graduated from the eighth grade in 1930. He then attended Armijo High School.
He appeared to have been a well-rounded student at Armijo as he played sports (football, track, basketball), pursued the dramatic arts, was in the science and math clubs and was the president of the student body his senior year, 1934. He went to UC Davis and later transferred to UC Berkeley where he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in letters and science (military science, political science and history) in 1939. He joined the Army that same year.
The letters that Jerome sent to his parents over the years showed that he was open to discussing nearly anything with them – finances, girls, future plans and more.
In March 19, 1940, he responded to a letter from his folks about flooding in Fairfield. Texas Street was underwater and so were Missouri, Delaware, Broadway, Ohio and Illinois streets. Jerome wrote, “I kept listening to the news reports to see if the town had been swept out to sea.”
In the Oct. 10, 1940, Solano Republican newspaper (predecessor to the Daily Republic), an article read: “Lieutenant Jerome Sheldon of the United States Army left yesterday with his company for the Philippines where he will remain for two years.”
Before he left, he visited home and made a point to see his friends the Collas in Suisun City. Jerome was a good friend of Primo Colla.
In the Philippines, Jerome was assigned to Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s staff about two months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941.
Now, the details of what happened to Jerome, and many other servicemen, are not preserved in the letters, but military historians have covered it in numerous books over the years. Warren Sheldon quotes extensively from the book “Surrender and Survival” by E. Bartlett Kerr and the details are grisly, grim and inhumane. An overview is that MacArthur offered to take Jerome Sheldon with him to Australia, but he declined in favor of going to the Bataan Peninsula to fight with his old outfit.
Jerome was captured by the Japanese army and became a prisoner of war.
Back in Fairfield, after receiving word of his capture, Roy Sheldon raised an American flag in front of his Texas Street house and vowed not to take it down until Jerome came home. David Weir, publisher of the Solano Republican and proud World War I veteran, took issue with Roy since flags were supposed to come down at sundown. Angry words and letters were exchanged between the two.
Jerome was captured with general officers and was fortunate as he rode with them to Camp O’Donnell and avoided the physical perils of the now infamous Bataan Death March.
However, Jerome ended up in a group of 462 officers and men at the Umeda Bunsho Prisoner of War Camp near Osaka, Japan. Soon he was suffering from dysentery, colitis, malaria and malnutrition. He was placed in an area of the camp known as the hospital, but it was without beds or medicine.
From the book: “The men were generally dressed in tropical clothing and they were in Japan with winter coming on. No one had coats and the buildings were not heated. Meals consisted of rice and turnips.”
Jerome contracted terminal pneumonia and died Dec. 15, 1942.
His posthumous Silver Star medal citation read:
“For gallantry in action on Bataan, Philippine Islands, on April 9, 1942. Captain Sheldon, as acting aide to the Chief of Staff, Luzon Force, remained on duty with total disregard for his own personal safety answering telephone calls and delivering messages and orders while the entire area of the Command Post, Luzon Force was swept by exploding shells and small arms ammunition from a burning ordnance magazine in the immediate proximity. For a greater part of the time he was the only available messenger for delivering messages to the various staff sections.”
A Buddhist priest took it upon himself to cremate the remains of the Allied servicemen in the Osaka POW camps. He created an altar to their memory, kept the cremated remains near the altar and prayed for the repose of their souls twice daily.
The 13th Armored Tank Division from Camp Beale, California, welded a framed picture of Jerome Sheldon on the steel side of a tank, which was then named “Fairfield” in his honor.
Jerome’s funeral back home took place Oct. 31, 1948. Warren Sheldon, then 12 years old, was in attendance. It was held at Hansen Funeral Home in Suisun City across from
Tony Wade Back in the day the VFW building. Armed guards stood by Jerome’s urn. After the services, the procession proceeded up Main Street in Suisun, which turned into Union Avenue in Fairfield and made its way to the Suisun-Fairfield Cemetery.
Highway 40, now Interstate 80, went down Texas Street in those days and the procession crossed it at the courthouse. Sacramento to Oakland traffic was blocked for miles in both directions.
The book details the aftermath of Jerome’s death as Roy Sheldon battled the War Department over a life insurance claim for Jerome which was finally paid – a decade later. Roy died shortly afterward.
Warren Sheldon
Courtesy photos The cover of Warren C. Sheldon’s book “...The Secretary of War Shares Your Grief...”, left, and Milton Jerome Sheldon’s 1934 Armijo High senior picture.
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Photo Editor Robinson Kuntz 427-6915 interviewed people who knew Jerome and who lived through the wretchedness of the POW camps. He also visited the United States Monument to World War II in the Pacific. On polished red marble an engraved poem reads:
“Sleep My Sons, your duty done
For Freedom’s light has come.
Sleep in the silent depths of the sea
Or in your bed of hallowed sod
Until you hear at dawn
The low clear reveille of God.”
Reach Fairfield humor columnist, accidental local historian and author of The History Press book “Growing Up In Fairfield, California” Tony Wade at toekneeweighed @gmail.com.
