These images document Morgan Thomas Jones, Jr.'s (July 15, 1916 - February 1, 2012) ten consecutive weeks of treatment for a rare and aggressive form of neuroendocrine carcinoma, its origins and its aftermath. The effects of this treatment, rather than the cancer, were cited as his cause of death. A lifelong amateur photographer afflicted in his final years with age-related macular degeneration, he asked me, his granddaughter, to document this process photographically as a means by which to then relate to him verbally the visual aspects of procedures he undertook, with reflexive determination and astonishing endurance, almost daily.
These images of and regarding Morgan Thomas Jones, Jr. (July 15, 1916 - February 1, 2012), document ten consecutive weeks of treatment for a rare and aggressive form of neuroendocrine carcinoma, its origins and its aftermath. The presumed cumulative effects of this treatment, rather than the cancer itself, were cited as the cause of his death. A lifelong amateur photographer afflicted in his final years with age-related macular degeneration, he asked me, his granddaughter, to document this process photographically as a means by which to then relate to him verbally the visual aspects of procedures he undertook almost daily. His reflexive determination and astonishing physical capacity to endure and complete, at age 95, such an arduous course of treatment had their provenance in events dating back over 70 years.
A recipient of the Purple Heart and Bronze Star, he served during World War II with the New Mexico National Guard and later the U.S. Army 200th CA (AA) and 515th CC (AA) in the Philippines. There he witnessed the Japanese bombing of Clark Air Base, which forced him and thousands of other American and Filipino soldiers into the jungle until his capture four months later with the fall of Bataan. He survived the atrocities of the Bataan Death March to withstand further hardship in captivity at the notorious O'Donnell, Cabanatuan and Las Piñas labor camps. He later survived six weeks in the hold of an unmarked POW “hell ship†transporting prisoners to Japan, with only water from a dripping line for sustenance and no food. A month after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he was liberated by the U.S. Army from a forced labor mining camp near Kosaka. Ultimately forgiving of his captors, he returned to Kosaka in 1978 as an honored guest of his former guard, Sgt. Masakichi Ogata, who studied English for five years in anticipation of Morgan’s visit. Sgt. Ogata, who died of cancer in 1979, called their reunion the great moment of his life. In 1992, after 45 years of silence about the war, and with the help of his daughter in-law, Morgan first began memorializing his time as a POW, detailed records of which he had inscribed in the margins of the family Bible he carried with him throughout his ordeal. He went on to write two books about his experiences, MacArthur Went South, We Went North—Or Return to Kosaka and Ensnared in a Spider's Web, and spoke of his experiences and his ethos of compassion to many community, veterans’ and military groups and university classes. Of his improbable and lasting friendship with Sgt. Ogata, he told the Los Angeles Times in 1992, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the fall of Bataan, "...we weren't too different. We had hopes and dreams and loved ones, and just wanted to live.†Predeceased by his wife of 52 years, they are interred together at Arlington National Cemetery.