Person:Austin Shoffner (3)

AUSTIN CONNER SHOFNER 1916-

Brigadier General Austin C. Shofner, retired, a native of Bedford County, was a career Marine Corps officer and soldier in World War II. Shofner's heroic exploits in the Philippines--his escape from a Japanese POW camp and his work in guerrilla resistance--are remarkably detailed in his diary, which he was able to keep hidden while in the POW camps, as well as protected while hiking through the Philippine jungles. His journal is a valuable historical record of the war in the Philippines and is in the Manuscript Collections of the Tennessee State Library and Archives.

Shofner began his military career in 1941 as a lieutenant and company commander in the Fourth Marine Regiment stationed in Shanghai, China. In November 1941 the regiment was transferred to the Philippine Islands to assist the Philippine army in its defense against the expected Japanese invasion. Shofner fought in the battles around Bataan and Corregidor and received the Silver Star with Oak Leaf Cluster and a promotion to captain in February 1942.

In May 1942 Corregidor surrendered to the Japanese. Shofner and his group were placed in several different POW camps, where they endured many hardships. They were forced to watch as fellow soldiers were beaten and killed or died from starvation and disease. They suffered without medical attention from various battle wounds and illnesses such as malaria and dysentery. Finally, a group of ten Marines including Shofner and two Filipino soldiers took advantage of work details outside the camp walls to escape the Davao POW camp.

The escapees fled through the jungles to the northwest in April 1942 with the hope of reporting POW camp conditions to General Douglas MacArthur. With the help of Filipino guerrillas, they reached Philippine army strongholds in the jungle. There the Marines organized and guided the 110th Division, a group of U.S. military personnel and Filipino guerrillas that maintained a resistance movement around Mindanao. Submarines supplied the 110th from MacArthur's Pacific Headquarters in Australia. During this time Shofner was promoted again, to major. His duties included deputy chief of staff and assistant for operations for the division.

In November 1943 Shofner and two other marine officers boarded the supply submarine and sailed for Australia. There Shofner received the Distinguished Service Cross from General MacArthur. Major Shofner and his fellow marines then joined the First Marine Division and participated in various Pacific Theater battles to liberate the Philippines. Shofner retired in 1959 with the rank of brigadier general.

Carol Roberts, Tennessee State Library and Archives

Austin Conner Shofner, 83; Led Escape at P.O.W. Camp

By Wolfgang Saxon,, November 17, 1999

Brig. Gen. Austin Conner Shofner, the marine who got word to the outside world of the infamous Bataan Death March of 1942 after he engineered the first and only successful American team escape from a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp, died on Sunday, November 13, 1999, at his home in Shelbyville, Tennessee He was 83.

The desperate plight of the prisoners, as reported by General Shofner's 10-man group, led to changes in Allied strategy and tactics in the Pacific that were credited with saving the lives of thousands of servicemen. For his exploits then and as a guerrilla leader afterward, he was decorated with the Distinguished Service Cross by Gen. Douglas MacArthur.

A Marine Corps captain and company commander, he was captured at Corregidor and spent 11 months in several camps. He surreptitiously managed to chronicle those experiences and the subsequent escape in a diary that is kept in the Tennessee State Library and Archives.

Austin Shofner was born in Chattanooga and raised at an ancestral home in Bedford County, Tennessee He graduated in 1937 from the University of Tennessee, where he lettered in wrestling and football.

In prison camp he remembered the axioms of football that had been drilled into him at Tennessee. One seemed especially made for his situation: Play for the breaks, and when they come your way, score.

He did so by recruiting an escape party of soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines who awaited an opportunity for their break. It came on a work detail outside the Philippine prison camp.

The men took their chances and made it to safety by chopping their way through miles of Mindanao jungle. They brought the first news of the death march and the brutal conditions that by war's end had killed thousands of Filipino, American and other Allied prisoners, the victims of torture, starvation and disease.

General Shofner stayed in the Philippines for six more months, leading Filipino guerrillas who rescued 500 prisoners slated for death in one camp. He later led Marine assault battalions ashore on Peleliu and Okinawa, where he earned the Silver Star and the Legion of Merit. He retired from military service in 1959.

He returned to Bedford County and worked as an executive in insurance and finance. He also was active in local Republican politics, the Sons of the American Revolution and the 1st Marine Division Association, among other groups.

General Shofner is survived by four sons, William E., Martin K. and Dr. R. Stewart, all of Nashville, and Michael M., of Shelbyville, and seven grandchildren. His wife, Kathleen King Shofner, to whom he was married for 49 years, died in 1996.