“We started eating stray dogs, cats, monkeys, snakes, eels…eventually we started eating sweet potatoes… I ate sweet potatoes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner—boiled, roasted, fried, and raw.” (Audio Interview, 10:25)

Severo K. Guerrero, Jr.

War: World War, 1939-1945 Branch: Army Unit: 9901st TSU-SGO Detachment, Medical Corps Service Location: Philippines; Camp Lee, Virginia; Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Washington, DC; Camp Detrick, Maryland; Chicago, Illinois Rank: Major Place of Birth: MI

Born in Michigan in 1924 to Filipino parents, Severo Guerrero spent the first six years of his life in Chicago. His family returned to the Philippines in 1930, and beginning in December 1941 he lived under the Japanese occupation until his repatriation in April 1945. During the latter part of the occupation, he became a teenage guerrilla fighter working with the underground resistance movement. In August 1944, he was captured and spent five months in the Santo Tomas interment camp. Guerrero’s interview recounts the intense food shortages his family experienced during the occupation, his work as a tank rider with the American forces, the ever-present risk of execution during his internment, and his post-war career with the American military as a tropical medicine physician.