98-Year-Old WWII Veteran Finally Honored for Fighting Japanese in Philippines

Nearly eight decades after defending the Bataan Peninsula from invading Japanese forces and subsequent years suffering as a prisoner of war, WWII veteran Daniel Crowley, 98, finally received his Combat Infantryman Badge for his service with the Provisional Army Air Corps Infantry Regiment.

“The event that is happening here today is nearly 76 years late in coming,” said Gregory J. Slavonic, acting undersecretary of the Navy during the Jan. 4 ceremony at Bradley Air National Guard Base in East Granby, Connecticut.

Crowley was assigned to Nichols Field (today’s Manila Ninoy Aquino International Airport) in the Philippines in 1941 as part of the U.S. Army Air Corps. Soon after the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, Japan also launched offensives against U.S. military facilities throughout the Pacific. Armed with an antiquated machine gun, the untrained Crowley was made a provisional infantryman and asked to help defend the base against the Japanese advance.

After being forced to abandon the airfield, the surviving ground crew and airmen were made members of the Provisional Army Air Corps Infantry Regiment on Bataan.

‘Slight technicality’

“He was a combat infantryman, but he didn’t sign up with combat infantry — he signed up with the Army Air Corps — and that was the slight technicality which kept him from getting the award,” said Kelley Crowley, Daniel’s wife.

The Combat Infantryman Badge, awarded to infantrymen and members of Special Forces with the rank of colonel and below who served in active ground combat, is something Crowley never thought he would receive. Until recently, though, the Army had resisted giving the award to provisional soldiers who fought on Bataan. Crowley made his last attempt at obtaining the honor a few months ago.

“I wasn’t the only one, remember — there were thousands like me who were designated something else. When the war started, they suddenly had to become infantryman, without any training,” he said.

Daniel Crowley appears in his military uniform before shipping off to the Philippines in 1940.

Courtesy U.S. Army

After the Bataan Peninsula was overrun by Japanese forces in April 1942, Crowley’s unit made its way to the town of Mariveles to surrender. But in a bid to avoid being captured, he and a number of soldiers hid in the breakwater near shore until nightfall, when they swam three miles to Corregidor Island in Manila Bay. There Crowley fought alongside the 4th Marines, but he became a prisoner of war when U.S. forces surrendered in May.