Malcolm Douglass, the oldest Brandon High School alumnus to die in World War II, was the class president and valedictorian of the BHS Class of 1927. He was awarded a scholarship to UVM, but, very unusually for those days, went out west to the University of Arizona, where he had an uncle who was a professor. Arizona wasn’t for him; he wanted the sea. In the fall of 1928, he began again at the US Naval Academy, from which he graduated as a member of the Class of 1932. He fenced, played baseball, ran cross-country, and judging by his yearbook, was very popular.

“More than anything, this young man was attracted by the call of the sea, and – we think – he is to be one of our future admirals,” his yearbook page declared. “At Annapolis [a nickname for the school] Mac has been tremendously successful. Friendships were always awfully easy to make [for him] … Regulations, to him, too, were always easy to observe – and never with a criticism. Thus, years have come and gone in which a lot of things have been accomplished. Now we are looking forward to a famous future life.”

This was the assessment of his peers.

Douglass served on a number of ships in the peacetime navy of the 1930s. When the war broke out, he was a lieutenant, stationed in the Philippines. Among the last American holdouts, he was taken prisoner by the Japanese on the island of Corregidor on May 6, 1942. Oddly enough, he was not the only alumnus of Brandon High School captured by the Japanese that day. Paul Kelsey of Brandon was the last man to shake Douglass’s hand when they were captured. He last saw Douglass that September 22nd. When Kelsey returned home after almost three years in prison camp, one of the first things he did was visit Douglass’s parents.

Douglass spent two years and eight months in a Japanese prison camp in the Philippines. Japanese prison camps were notorious hellholes, known for starvation, malnutrition and torture. Kelsey evaded all questions about camp conditions when he returned to Brandon. “I don’t wish to say anything which may hurt the welfare of those still in Japanese hands,” he explained to the Rutland Herald in March of 1945. The Japanese held American officers who had surrendered in contempt. We can be sure that Douglass suffered in the prison camp.

By the time Kelsey spoke to the Herald Douglass was dead. In October 1944 the US invaded the Philippines. In December the Japanese evacuated American prisoners who were officers, intending to remove them to Japan. The ship carrying Douglass was attacked and sunk on December 15. Douglass survived, and was transferred to another prison ship, called the Enoura Maru, which made it to Taiwan. It was in turn bombed by a plane from the USS Hornet on January 9, 1945. (The Hornet was unaware that the unmarked Enoura Maru was a prison ship with 1,300 Americans on board.) Douglass was fatally wounded. He died on January 10, 1945. He was 36. His body was dumped in the North China Sea.

His name is listed on a monument in the Manila American Cemetery and on the town World War II monument in Lempster, New Hampshire; he had been born in New Hampshire and his family had returned there after he graduated from high school. His family erected a cenotaph to him in Forest Hill Cemetery in Charlestown, New Hampshire. He left a widow, Kathryn. They were childless.

Kevin Thornton is a historian who lives in Brandon.