Bill Darnold

November 1, 1945 Davenport Times-Tribune

Private Bill [J.] Darnold, a Jap prisoner since the fall of Corregidor, is scheduled to return to the states. His father, [William] Harold Darnold, of Deer Park, was notified by the War Department. He enlisted in 1941 and soon after was sent to the Philippines. He was employed on the Elmer Reker farm and attended high school here for two years.

January 10, 1946 Davenport Times-Tribune

Sgt. Bill Darnold, son of William Darnold of Deep Creek, spent Sunday at the Elmer Reker home. He was a Jap prisoner for nearly three years. Sgt. Darnold stayed at the Reker home and attended the Reardan high school before entering the service.

November 4, 1946 Spokane Chronicle

Loss of Arm Held No Bar to Success by Young Veteran

Some people may regard the loss of an arm a handicap, but not William J. Darnold 24-year-iold veteran serving as a messenger in the Spokane sub-regional office of the veterans' administration.

He is confident he can do a job just as well as the next one and asserts cheerfully that he is going to prove it.

Darnold tossed mortar shells at Japanese troops on Bataan and Corregidor during the first hectic days of the war. He left part of his right arm in a Japanese prison camp at ' Mukden, Manchuria, and now wears an artificial arm that was fitted at Bushnell general hospital in Utah last February.

Ironically, he lost his arm during a bombing raid by American B-29s on a machinery factory in which he and several hundred other prisoners were forced to work.

Prisoners in Open

William Darnold tombstone (find-a-grave)

Japanese guards herded the Americans into the parade area and a couple of 500-pound bombs that overshot the factory landed in the compound, killing several G. I.s and wounding a number of others. Bomb fragments from the blast struck Darnold and the right forearm had to be amputated by-American doctors in the prison camp.

"I was pretty lucky," Darnold said. "Red Cross medical supplies had just been turned over to us. I don't know what might have happened if we hadn't received them when we did." He was liberated by the Russians after 42 months in the prison camp.

Darnold is the son of W. H. Darnold of Deer Park. He attended high school at Reardan and enlisted in the army July 25, 1941.