Forged by War: a Daughter Shaped by a Wwii Pow Story Black & White edition

About Ken Davis and Candie Blankman When Ken Davis enlisted in the Army at the age of nineteen, he saw the recruiter?s posters on the Philippine Islands and decided it would be a great adventure for a young man from Minnesota. Little did he know this great adventure would be filled with brutality and deprivation that would bring him to the brink of death. Defending Bataan and enduring the Bataan Death March, two prisoner of war camps, a death ward in Bilibid Prison in Manila, a Hell Ship transport, and a forced labor camp in northern Japan would ravage his young body and repeatedly test his will to survive. When Ken was finally liberated in September of 1945, he weighed ninety pounds and had learned lessons few twenty-four year olds could even imagine. It would take three months in three different hospitals to nurse and feed Ken back to his normal weight, but his experience as a prisoner of war would stay with him. His faith and his character forged in the fires of war would carry him through the rest of his life. In one of the hospitals he met another ex-POW who showed Ken a picture of his sister, Hazel Brown. Ken said he was going to marry her. Three months later he did, and contrary to what the doctor?s conclusion that he would be unable to father children, Ken and Hazel had five. Candie, began recording her father?s story in 1992. In 2010 she and her husband, Drew, traveled to the Philippine Islands and Japan to the places where Ken fought and was held prisoner. Writing his story and retracing his footsteps revealed just how much she was shaped by his experience. Ken was forged by war and so were his children. Ken was married for sixty years, and his five children gave him eleven grandchildren and thirteen great grandchildren before he died in 2006. The WWII soldier and prisoner was an incredible human being. Though he survived unimaginable brutality and deprivation he did not survive Alzheimer?s disease. He was diagnosed in 1999 and died in 2006. The story is a testament to the imprint one of the Greatest Generation father?s left on one of his daughters. Candie Blankman is a Presbyterian pastor in suburban Los Angeles. She travels and speaks with a multimedia exhibit created to honor her father and all those who served and sacrificed for our freedom. Candie and her husband Drew have three grown children and are expecting their first grandchild in July.