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- Janesville Tank Company
- During the 1930s, the Janesville
National Guard armory was headquarters
- for the 32nd Tank Company, a unit
of Wisconsin's famed Thirty-Second Division, which had been reorganized
after World War I and equipped with light tanks. In November
1940, as part of the mobilization ordered by President Franklin
D. Roosevelt, the unit was melded with three other midwestern
National Guard units and redesignated Company A of the 192nd
Tank Battalion. Within a year, the Janesville tank company had
been trained and dispatched to the Philippine Islands.
- Following the outbreak of the war
on December 7, 1941, members of
- Company A became the first of 330,000
Wisconsin residents to engage the enemy. During a harrowing four-month
defense of the Bataan Peninsula, short of supplies and devoid
of air cover, the Janesville tank unit fought bravely alongside
other American and Filipino forces until surrendering on April
9, 1942. As prisoners of war, the Janesville men participated
in the infamous Bataan Death March. Of the original ninety-nine
members of the unit, only thirty-five survived imprisonment by
the Japanese.
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- Erected in 1990
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