Theodore F Wright

Theodore F. Wright was serving with the 75th Ordnance Company Depot in Manila when the Japanese attacked in December of 1942.  The Americans and Filipinos battled bravely for 4 months and then had to surrender to the Japanese on April 9, 1942.  Theodore survived the Bataan Death March and was imprisoned in the POW Camp O'Donnell, Phillipines.  He died from starvation and dysentary on May 7, 1942 and is buried in the Manila American Cemetery in Manila, Phillipines.

Theodore Wright was born to Nora V. Panell Wright and Justin Ellsworth Wright in Muskogee, Oklahoma on April 4, 1903.  He had two sisters, Grace who was born in 1900 and died in 1915 and Edith Wright born in 1904 and died in 1978.   Theodore's mother died when he was 9 years old and he went to live with his maternal grandmother, Eliza A. Morris in Muskogee for a short time and then he and his sister Edith were placed in an orphanage until they were 16.  They both lived in the Long Beach, California area in the early 1920s  Theodore, contrary to one military record, never married and was not in the clergy.  He initially enlisted in the Army in the mid-1920s and was stationed at several bases in California, once in Hawaii and the Philippines.  He re-enlisted four times and spent most of his military career in the Philippines.