Two Accounts, 28 Years Apart: Testing Hayes Bolitho's Story

Hayes Bolitho survived the sinking of the Shinyo Maru on September 7, 1944. He told his story twice, 28 years apart, and we compared the two accounts line by line.

Sgt. Bolitho, 5th Air Base Group, was interviewed by Dr. Ronald Marcello of the University of North Texas in 1973. In 2001 he wrote his own memoir, which was later published as an eight-part newspaper series.

We recovered every installment, including one that was missing from the web archive. We also transcribed all 124 pages of the oral history, then read the two side by side.

What we found:

The two accounts agree on nearly every checkable fact: the voyage to Manila, the Clark Field attack, the plane crash near Surigao, the Davao Penal Colony escape, the torpedoing of the Shinyo Maru, the fight with guards in the water alongside E. L. Browning, the guerrilla rescue and the evacuation on USS Narwhal.

Some apparent conflicts disappeared once we read both in full. Two sets of pilot names turned out to describe two different flights.

One small question remains open, whether six or seven men were on the Clark Field repair crew, and we are flagging it rather than forcing an answer.

Why we do this: memory changes over time, and a single account, however honest, can be wrong in small ways. When two independent sources agree, the record stands on firmer ground.

When they differ, we say so. This protects the men's stories, supports war-crimes documentation and recovery research, and keeps our newsletters and press releases accurate for families and historians.

If your family has a memoir, letters, an interview or a liberation affidavit from a Hellship survivor, we would like to read it alongside the record.

Read more and download the Transcript PDF and Our Comparison

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