John Eric Olson (November 27, 1917 – October 2, 2012) was a U.S. Army Colonel, West Point graduate (class of 1939), and one of the last surviving officers of the Bataan Death March of World War II. He was also a military historian and author of three books, as well as numerous magazine articles dealing primarily with his experiences as a prisoner of war in the Philippines and in Japan from 1942 to 1945. Early life Olson was born at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, on November 27, 1917, the only son of Hans Oscar and Clara (Nee Carr) Olson. He grew up primarily in Holly Springs, Mississippi. After graduating from high school, he attended Marion Military Academy (Alabama) for a year before earning a Congressional appointment to West Point. Upon graduation in 1939 he was deployed to Fort William McKinley in the Philippines as a Second Lieutenant. World War II As the Japanese invasion of the Philippines began in 1941, Olson was assigned to the 57th Infantry Regiment of the Philippine Scouts on the Bataan Peninsula. The U.S. forces in the Philippines were ordered to surrender to the Japanese in April, 1942. Olson was captured and joined more than 9600 U.S. soldiers and nearly 50,000 Filipinos who made up what came to be known as the Bataan Death March. He was first imprisoned at Camp O'Donnell prison where he was appointed Assistant to the Adjutant, keeping secret records for the prison. Before being transferred to Cabanatuan prison, in June, 1942, he managed to bury all his reports in the nearby jungle. In 1948 he returned, exhumed those records, and nearly four decades later used them to write his history of the camp. Shortly before leaving Camp O'Donnell, he and another prisoner were given a sack of cement and ordered to create a monument to the soldiers who died on the Bataan Peninsula. Before starting to work, he was ordered elsewhere. But years later, while conducting research on the war, Olson came across a photo of General Douglas MacArthur pointing to a small cross in the brush. It turned out to be the work of the other soldier, whose name Olson cannot recall. Thirty years later Olson headed up an effort that managed to raise enough funds to bring the cross to the U.S. where it is now on display at the National Prisoner of War Museum, Andersonville, Georgia. After transport to