THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, May 23, 1996 TAG: 9605230343
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B9 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY VANEE VINES, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 40 lines
Three World War II veterans stopped at Suffolk's Nansemond River High Wednesday to breathe life into the past for nearly 60 11th-grade U.S. history students.
Their visit helped textbook lessons and classroom lectures sink in, several students said.
The men - Jenro Lambaiso, Norman Matthews and Clyde Barnes - had spent years in Japanese prison camps.
It was the early 1940s. They were on the Bataan Peninsula in the Philippines, the scene of heavy fighting between Allied and Japanese forces from January to April 1942.
The area didn't fall to Japan until April 9, 1942.
Matthews, imprisoned in the Philippines and later taken to Japan, was a POW from April 1942 to September 1945. Lambaiso, first imprisoned in 1941, was a POW nearly four years. Barnes also was imprisoned nearly four years.
American forces retook Bataan in 1945.
The three men, now in their 70s, calmly shared tales of prison hardships, mental toughness and civic duty.
``They need to learn that a threat is always there - whether we know it or not,'' Lambaiso said before the presentation, organized by teacher Hazel White.
``They have to know how to survive.''
Jennifer Colvin, a 16-year-old junior, said the first-hand accounts were intriguing.
``I think it's really neat and a really good experience to listen to people who have actually been through it,'' she said. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
JIM WALKER/The Virginian-Pilot
Norman Matthews, right at microphone, Clyde Barnes, center right,
and Jenro Lambaiso, all of whom spent years in Japanese prison camps
after the fall of Bataan in April 1942, spoke Wednesday at Suffolk's
Nansemond River High. American forces retook Bataan in 1945. by CNB