Hugh Zeigler papers

Collection — Container: Single Folder Collections - 2001 Box 11 (01.0278-01.0305), Folder: 01.0300 - Folder 1

Identifier: 01.0300

Staff Only

Scope and Contents

Hugh Zeigler served with the 454th Heavy Bomb Aviation Ordnance Company, handling and caring for bombs, during World War II in the Philippine Islands. He was captured there by the Japanese and spent the remainder of the war in a POW camp. This collection consists of an oral history interview transcript conducted on January 6, 2000.

Dates

Created: 1917-1951
Other: Date acquired: 07/26/2001

Creator

Zeigler, Hugh, 1917-2010 (Person)

Conditions Governing Access

This collection is open to all researchers.

Conditions Governing Use

All requests for permission to quote, publish, broadcast or otherwise reproduce from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the Associate Dean for Special Collections & Archives. Permission for publication is given on behalf of the Florida State University Libraries as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which must also be obtained by the researcher.

Biographical or Historical Information

Hugh Zeigler (1917-2010) was born in Savannah, Georgia in 1917. He was drafted into the U.S. Army Air Corps on June 23, 1941. With the 27th Bomb Group, Zeigler went to San Francisco to be shipped to the Philippines on the U.S.S. Coolidge. He unloaded WWI era equipment in the Philippines, and the U.S.S. Coolidge was sunk when it left. He survived until 1942 when the U.S. Army surrendered in Corregidor. He survived the Bataan Death March (and discusses it in detail), malaria, dysentery, and horrifying treatment. In 1943 he was shipped to Osaka and survived a typhoon. 200 American POW's were combined with British and Australian POWs (his POW # was 300), and he was taken to Camp Sacragimo, where he worked on the Osaka Ironworks and built corvette destroyers. Then in 1945, he was sent to Akinori, where he worked in a copper mining camp. He talked about group punishment and being a POW a month after the war ended.

Nannie Zeigler, Hugh's wife, was born in Havana on 17 October 1922 and attended Florida State University School for Women (FSCW). She later taught Spanish at Florence, South Carolina, and moved to Washington D.C. to work for the Signal Corps, translating Spanish into English in 1944. Then she went to Port St. Joe to teach at Florida High (then called Demonstration School). She couldn't get coffee or a car due to rationing during the war.