When worlds collide...

I've blogged about my job before, but on the off chance that any of my three faithful readers didn't catch that particular post, I work in the archives of the Atlanta History Center. Generally speaking, I love my job--although lately I've been re-evaluating my career path. My particular position, Reference Manager, experiences an extremely high rate of burnout (I'm the third person to take this postion in as many years). The lion's share of the job requires working with the patrons who use our archives, but my boss is anxious to expand our outreach programs and, frankly, I'm barely keeping my head above water just keeping up with the patrons who come to us. The fact that the pay rate for my position sucks doesn't help. But I can't deny that helping people conduct research can be really rewarding. Our patrons generally fall into three major groups--those conducting family history research, those conducting research into their historic home or neighborhood, and faculty and students conducting academic research.

I was helping a couple research their historic home a week or so ago and I suggested they check out the subject files in our very large, very elderly card catalog. They were sure their home had been owned by a local business owner and I thought we might have a business file on this particular merchant. So I'm flipping through the cards, looking for this retailer, and suddenly a card pops out at me bearing the following legend: "Amoroso, Arnold D.--Personality Subject File." Completely forgetting about the two guys I was helping, I stammered out loud "....th th that's m m my great UNCLE!!!!! OMIGOSH, THAT'S MY GREAT UNCLE!!" It was all I could do to drag my attention back to the guys I was helping. It turned out we didn't have any files on the business they were looking for, so I managed to cough up another suggestion or two for them to work with on their own. As soon as I possibly could, I beat feet downstairs to the stacks and pulled the box that contained the file on Ami. There I sat, on the hard concrete floor, hands shaking, while I opened the folder. It was an amazing moment for me.

So let me back up just a tad and explain. My grandfather, Colonel Logan Osburn Shutt, was one of ten children. One of his sisters, Ellen, married a man by the name of Arnold Dante Amoroso in 1934. Colonel was close to all his siblings and I can remember as a child that our visits to Maryland almost always included time spent with the families of his brothers and sisters. I only vaguely remember Ellen and Ami (as Arnold was called), but he was legendary. I had always been told that he was a Bataan Death March survivor and the reverence with which he was discussed was palpable. He died in 1978, just 7 years after my grandmother, so I don't remember him well and I was, of course, too young and stupid to have asked enough questions of my grandfather while he was alive. That's the problem with family history--by the time you're old enough to care, all your sources of information are dead! I had done a little research on Ami and found that he may not have been on the Death March, but that he was, indeed, captured at Corregidor and spent a good deal of time in a couple of Japanese POW camps.

So I was completely stunned to find this file on him at work. I had no idea that he had any Atlanta connections so it was a total surprise to find a March 5, 1967 newspaper article all about him. I went from the newspaper article to our other reference sources and found his death record and obituary also in our collection. The newspaper article, though, was the real gold mine.

Colonel Amoroso had been chief of anti-aircraft defenses in Manila harbor when Japan began its conquest of the "Greater East Asia Co-Propserity Sphere" in early 1941. When General Wainwright surrended the island of Corregidor in May, the Japanese let the survivors have the run of the island--for awhile. When the Japanese began cracking down during their occupation, they sent Ami to Old Bilibid Prison, and later to Camp Cabanatuan. From there, he was sent to Davao, to Mindanao, back to Bilibid, back to Cabanatuan again and then once more to Bilibid before being taken to Japan. It appears that he was on the ship Oryoku Maru that was sunk by American bombers, killing 300 American prisoners. The survivors who made it ashore were rounded up and put on two other Japanese ships to complete their journey to Japan. The ship Ami was on was hit again by American bombers--this time Ami was one of only 88 men to survive.

Ami describes his treatment as sometimes good and sometimes bad, depending on the weather, food, water, and guards. When the camps were liberated in September of 1945, Ami was transported back to the States in a hospital ship, weighing just 88 pounds. He had been overseas for six years and, on his first trolley ride in San Francisco, on the way to the hospital he visited daily during his recuperation, he handed the driver what he thought was a dime. Turns out it was actually a penny. He didn't know the difference.

After the war, Ami served in Hawaii and Panama, and became an ROTC instructor at Georgia Tech in 1950. After his retirement from Tech and the Army, he worked in Atlanta in real estate. He died on March 13, 1978, and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors.

My job can truly suck at times. I guess everybody's can. But how often can you stumble on a piece of unexpected treasure like this while you're working? Even if this is the only time my family history and working worlds collide, it'll be worth it.

Here are two photos of Ami taken in 1971...the first is Ami and Ellen, the second, Colonel and Ami....