Melvin H. Rosen

Please join us for the funeral at Arlington National Cemetery (ANC), with full military honors, on October 18, at 1100 hours. Please be at the Administration Building no later than 1030 hours. For information and directions to Arlington National Cemetery, click here: www.arlingtoncemetery.org/directions Following the burial, please join us for a buffet lunch at the Spates Community Club, on Fort Myer. Details and directions will be provided for you at the funeral service. Col. Melvin H. Rosen: Survivor of the Fall of Bataan, the Death March, the Three Hell Ships, and 3 1⁄2 Years as a Japanese POW COL. (Ret) MELVIN H. ROSEN Born: June 8, 1918 Died: August 1, 2007 MELVIN HERBERT ROSEN was born in Gloucester, MA June 8, 1918 to Joseph and Bertha (Pepper) Rosen. His parents were both immigrants from Czarist Russia who met and married in the United States. The many relatives they left behind in what became Poland after WWI, including Mel’s maternal grandfather, perished in the Holocaust. Mel attended Gloucester High School, and graduated as Class Valedictorian in 1935. Gloucester High had a 4-year Junior ROTC program, in which he participated. He was much impressed with his ROTC training and served as a Cadet Captain and Company Commander. Junior ROTC started a lifelong love affair with the United States Army. Following high school, he was awarded a full-tuition academic scholarship to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. where he enrolled in Aeronautical Engineering in 1935. While at M.I.T., Rosen took a competitive examination for a Congressional appointment to West Point and received a second alternate. His principal and first alternate both having failed to meet entrance requirements, he entered West Point with the class of 1940. In 1936 all incoming cadets had to choose between mandatory Catholic or Protestant church services. During Plebe year, Rosen joined with a small group of other Jewish cadets who gave up their only free time, on Saturday afternoons, to attend voluntary Jewish services in the office of the Protestant Chaplain. This was the genesis of the first Jewish Cadet Chapel Squad in history of the United States Military Academy (USMA). Upon graduation from the USMA in 1940, Colonel Rosen requested and received duty in the Field Artillery at Fort Stotsenburg, Philippine Islands. He was certain that the Japanese would attack the U.S. and that the Philippines was the only next logical target, and, therefore, they would have the best of everything in place there. After attending the Basic Officers’ Course at Fort Sill, OK, Rosen arrived at Fort Stotsenburg in January 1941 and was assigned to the Philippine Scouts (PS). He found magnificent Scout soldiers, and WWI and pre-WWI equipment. As a 2d Lieutenant, he organized and commanded “E” Battery, 2d Battalion, 88th FA of the Philippine Scouts (PS). Actually, he was the only officer with the battery at that time. On December 8, 1941 (December 7 in the United States), Colonel Rosen was a 1st Lieutenant and the Assistant S-3 (Operations Officer) of the Provisional Field Artillery Brigade. The unit was under attack by the Japanese within hours after Pearl Harbor. Colonel Rosen immediately found himself in combat. Eleven days later he was promoted to captain on the first battlefield promotion list of WWII, after having been a 1st Lt. for 69 days. He later requested and received command of the battery that he had organized months earlier. He fought with this “E” Battery, 2d Battalion, 88th FA (PS) until Bataan was surrendered 9 April 1942. He then became a POW of the Japanese. When Bataan was surrendered on April 9, 1942, Colonel Rosen made the notorious Death March. Later, he was sent to the Davao Penal Colony (DAPECOL) where he was kept for two and a half years — planting rice, weeding rice, harvesting rice, and lumberjacking. As the American forces pushed their offensive north, the Japanese moved most of the prisoners in DAPECOL back to Luzon. On December 13, 1944, the Japanese again moved a group of about 1619 American POWs, including Rosen, north to Japan. This turned into the infamous “hell ships” trip. The Oryyoku Maru, unmarked of course, was bombed and destroyed by U. S. Navy dive bombers. The survivors (Rosen among them) jumped off the burning and sinking ship and swam ashore. They were rounded up by the Japanese and later put aboard the Enoura Maru. This ship, also unmarked, was bombed and destroyed by Navy dive bombers in Takao Harbor, Formosa. The survivors were put on a third ship, the Brazil Maru. This ship arrived in Japan on January 30, 1945 with about 430 of the original 1619 left alive. More died in the following months. He survived the “Bataan Death March”, the three “Hell Ships”, and three and a half years of Japanese prison camps. When he arrived in Japan in January 1945, he weighed 40 kilos or 88 pounds. He was liberated from Inchon, Korea in September 1945. To read more about this part of Colonel Rosen’s history, please go to: http://www.us-japandialogueonpows.org/ Click on “POW Stories”, then click on “Melvin H. Rosen” Colonel Rosen was evacuated to the United States via Manila, and then hospitalized at Camp Devons, MA, It was while on leave from the hospital that he met Olive Oppenheim whom he married a year and a half later in 1947. He requested an early return to active duty and attended Officers’ Advanced Course No. 1 at Fort Sill, OK. After Colonel Rosen completed the Advanced Artillery Course at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, the Rosens’ first station together was with the 2nd Infantry Division at Fort Lewis, Washington where Colonel Rosen was the Assistant Division G-4, Battalion Executive Officer of the 38th FA Battalion, and 2nd Division Artillery S-3 (Operations and Plans Officer). He then spent three and a half years in the Pentagon as Chief Plans and Policy Officer in the Procurement Division of the G-4 on the Army General Staff. After completing the Army’s Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, he was sent to Heidelberg, Germany where he served in the Procurement Division of Headquarters, U.S. Army Europe. He was joined there later by his wife, Olive, and new daughter Barbara. In 1956 Colonel Rosen took command of the 775th FA Battalion and Dolan Barracks in Schwabisch Hall, Germany. From there he went back to Fort Leavenworth for four years on the Faculty of the Command and General Staff College. In 1961 his son, David, was born, and Colonel Rosen received his promotion to Colonel as well as orders to attend the Army War College at Carlisle Barracks. During this period, he also completed a Masters Degree in International affairs from George Washington University, in Washington, D.C. After graduation, he spent three years with the Defense Intelligence Agency at Arlington Hall Station. Colonel Rosen then had an unaccompanied tour in Korea. On the 20th anniversary of the day he was liberated from a Japanese POW camp in Inchon, Colonel Rosen took command of the area in which his former camp was located. In Korea he commanded the 20th General Support Group and ASCOM District Command totaling more than 14, 500 personnel. He returned to the U.S. in the fall of 1966 to be stationed at Fort Belvoir, Virginia with the Combat Developments Command. He helped to design, establish, and later commanded the Army’s Institute of Land Combat. Colonel Rosen retired from Active Duty in December 1970. He worked as an analyst and project manager for Research Analysis Corporation/General Research Corporation, Litton Industries, and Systems Research and Applications Corporation (SRA). He authored more than twenty studies, technical papers, articles, and booklets that were published — many dealing with United States and foreign Reserve Components. He retired from the industry in 1985. Colonel Rosen was awarded the Silver Star, Legion of Merit with Oak Leaf Cluster, Bronze Star, Purple Heart with Oak Leaf Cluster, Army Commendation Medal, and numerous service medals including three from the Republic of the Philippines. He was also awarded three U.S. Presidential Unit Citations and a Philippine Presidential Unit Citation. In December 1990, the King of Norway, Olav V, awarded the Saint Olav Medal to Colonel Rosen and also awarded the same decoration to Mrs. Rosen. The medal is the highest given by the King to non-Norwegians. Awarding these medals to the Rosens was one of the last official acts of King Olav V before his death in January 1991. Colonel Rosen is survived by his wife of 60 years, Olive (Oppenheim) Rosen; daughter Barbara (Gregg Powell) Rosen, and son David (Jeannette Wrysinski) Rosen; grandchildren Jacob Rosen, Aren and Adam Scardaci, and Heather Powell; great-grandchildren Morgan and Savannah Goodrich; and niece Arlene (Robert) Malech.

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Melvin H. Rosen

June 8, 1918 - August 1, 2007