While Japanese soldiers marched over and around him, Joe Gillis played dead for twenty-eight hours to avoid capture.

In 1921 Joe Gillis was the last son born in West Virginia to John and Victoria Gillis. The couple, along with their sons John, Frank, Julian and Joe and daughter Ann, moved to Fresno, California. Joe attended Fresno schools until the family relocated to the Pajaro Valley. He continued his education at Notre Dame Academy in Watsonville. When his father died, his mother opened the New York Bakery to help support the family.

After completing high school, Joe worked at the Santo ranch in the Springfield district of the Pajaro Valley. When his mother married Mr. Santo, Emil Morrello, a son of Santo's from a previous marriage, became Joe's stepbrother.

In 1940 Joe Gillis and Emil Morrello joined Company C of the 194th Tank Battalion in Salinas and the following February were sent to Fort Lewis, Washington, for train- ing. In September the company was sent to the Philippine Islands. Following the Japanese invasion of the Philippines and the fall of Manila, the 194th Tank Battalion helped form the Bataan Peninsula's last line of defense.

On Christmas Day 1941, Joe and Emil, along with three other members of a tank crew, found themselves forward of friendly lines and surrounded by Japanese. When their tank became disabled, the crewmen searched for an escape route back to friendly lines. Two of the men chose to strike out alone and arrived safely back within US lines. Joe, Emil and William Hall, all from Watsonville, encountered a large Japanese unit approaching them. The only recourse open to them was to fight, run or play dead. They chose the latter and for twenty-eight hours as Japanese troops moved around them and in some cases stepped over them, they lay on the ground without flinching a muscle. After the last Japanese unit had passed, they got up and quickly made their way back to US lines.

Avoiding capture was only temporary for Joe Gillis; on April 9, 1942, U.S forces on the peninsula were forced to capitulate. Corporal Joe Gillis survived the Bataan Death March and over a year of imprisonment at Cabanatuan Prison, but his end finally arrived on November 23, 1942.

On Wednesday July 28, 1943, Mrs. Victoria Santo received a wire from the Red Cross notifying her that her son Joe had died in a prison camp. Emil Morrello survived the prison camp ordeal and returned to Watsonville. It is believed that the body of Joe Gillis was buried in the vicinity of the Cabanatuan POW Camp.

(NARA2; WRP January 10, 1942 1:7, July 31, 1943; 194TB; http:// www.proviso.k12.il.us/bataan%20Web/194_Poster.htm)