Memorial Day | Ferndale's Ring's Pharmacy honors local sons killed in World War II
This week, Ferndale's Ring's Pharmacy is honoring four young men who lost their lives during World War II. The pharmacy's annual Memorial Day display pays homage to four Ferndale natives who served in the South Pacific in the war; those four eventually lost their lives after the Japanese invasion of the Philippines, during the Bataan Death March and subsequent action.
Pharmacist Tom Renner told the Times-Standard that Ring's has been honoring veterans with a display every year for about 30 years.
"It's nothing for us to dedicate a window; … I mean, that's minimal, the minimal investment in time and energy," Renner said, noting that the pharmacy has worked with local families to honor service members who have made extreme sacrifices each Memorial Day.
The display, titled "Bataan Death March, April 1942: How four boys from Ferndale met death in the Philippines," honors Frank Lewis, Morris Boots, Kenneth Rasmussen and John "Bernie" Campbell.
"On April 9, 1942, U.S. Major General Edward King, the commanding officer in the U.S. territory of the Philippines, surrendered to the Japanese a military force of 63,000 Filipinos and 12,000 Americans, all of whom became prisoners of war," the display reads. "Included in these 75,000 men were four men from our region: Morris Boots from the Mattole Valley, Frank Lewis from Port Kenyon, Kenneth Rasmussen from Grizzly Bluff, and John ‘Bernie' Campbell from the Herb Russ's Mayflower Ranch in Bear River.
"All the captured men were in very poor physical condition. During the previous four months - since the December 7, 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor - the Japanese Navy had blockaded the Philippines; very little food or medicine had made it through to the troops.
"Therefore, when the forced march to the prison camp began, fewer than half of the POWs could walk without staggering. Nonetheless, during the days of April 9-11, the Allied prisoners of war were separated into two groups and forced to walk the 65 miles to Camp O'Donnell, which was modified into a prison camp. Military historians estimate that as many as 10,000 men - over 400 a day - died on the march."
According to local documentarian Wendy Crisp Lestina, who made the 2011 documentary "Letters Home" on the area's 439 local men and women serving - and writing letters home to be published in the Ferndale Enterprise - during World War II, those four men all survived the march to Camp O'Donnell, but Rasmussen and Campbell died shortly after arriving.
"We had a 22% of the population, you know, not the male population - 22% of the total population of the Ferndale-Mattole area was in the service in World War II," Lestina said, noting that the national average was around 12%. "It was one of the highest percentages in the country in any community, practically. I mean, it was just unbelievable."
Boots and Lewis survived for two years after the march, but the two lost their lives when they were put aboard the Japanese "hell ship" the Arisan Maru.
"The ship was intentionally unmarked; on October 24, 1944, the American submarine USS Shark torpedoed it, resulting in the largest single loss of American life at sea during the war," Ring's Pharmacy's display notes. "Only nine of the 1,782 men on the Arisan Maru survived the bombing. Frank Lewis and Morris Boots were not among them."
Lestina's 2011 Autry Prize for Public History-winning documentary recounts the experiences of Ferndale men and women who wrote letters home during the war; it's available for purchase at the Ferndale Museum
Robert Schaulis can be reached at 707-441-0585.
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