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Aaron Clyde Hopper |
Aaron Hopper, Swannanoa, NC, 1946 [detail] | World War, 1939-1945
Army
194th Tank Battalion
Pacific Theater; Bataan, Philippines; Manchuria
Staff Sergeant
Yes
TN
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Stationed in the Philippines in December 1941, Aaron Hopper wouldn't surrender to the Japanese without a fight. After Bataan fell in April 1942, he and a lieutenant fashioned a homemade float and escaped capture by swimming five miles across Manila Bay to Corregidor. Hopper spent 25 days there at Fort Drum until that facility finally fell. Sent to work in factories in Manchuria, he actively sabotaged production. His memoir includes a stirring account, written by Office of Strategic Services historians, of his rescue at war's end, when Hopper's captors refused to believe that Japan had itself surrendered.
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