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Jake
Martinez's Wartime Log Book
Several months ago I was
contacted by a lady from
California
who stumbled onto my website. She told me a wonderful story that has spanned
many decades. More than 25 years ago a tornado went trough her neighborhood. As
she was going through the wreckage of their garage she found a war time log book
belonging to Jacob M. Martinez. As the lady paged through the old WWII log book
she knew that she was holding a piece of history that must be saved and returned
to the rightful owner. For the past 25 years she has been on a quest to find Jake or
his family members. Sadly Jake and his wife have passed away. If anyone knows any of
Jakes’ family members please contact me at the email address posted on the
first page of my website.
Posted on this page are a few of
the pages from Jake’s log book. This book was given to him by the war
prisoners aid of the Y. M. C. A. in one of the parcels the POW’s got while
they were imprisoned. Jake had this empty book to fill while he was a POW in
Stalag 17B. Many men traded cigarettes or food stuffs to have a fellow POW add
something to his log book. If a POW was a good artist he could acquire a lot of
things by sketching pictures or cartoons in a POW’s book.
January
30, 2008
The story of Jake’s logs book has been on the site for several years. Eva the
woman who has been searching for Jake’s family members for almost 30 years has
finally given up the quest. So that the information will not be lost to the
annals of time, she has decided to donate Jake’s book to the Mighty 8th
Air
Force
Museum
. The museum will preserve and in some cases let researchers and the public
access to the logbook. Jake was part of the Mighty 8th so it is
befitting that since family could not be found that it should reside at the
museum.
The Mighty 8th
Air
Force
Museum
has a very extensive data base about the Mighty 8th. If you would
like more information go to:
www.mightyeighth.org
Sharon
Jake's POW Identification Card
Here is a cartoon about 2 cigarettes for one onion.
Another cartoon about food
A cartoon showing allied bombing raids getting too close for
comfort.
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