Weldon C. Hamilton, a longtime resident of Las Cruces who survived the Bataan Death March and years as a prisoner of the Japanese during World War II, died April 16 at his son's home in Sebastopol, Calif., the Las Cruces Sun-News reported Sunday. He was 86.

His experiences during the infamous 65-mile death march at the beginning of World War II and his 3 1/2-year ordeal as a POW were chronicled in his book "Late Summer of 1941 and My War With Japan," the paper reported.

Hamilton joined the U.S. Army Air Corps on Oct. 5, 1940, and was sent to the Philippines in November 1941 where he served until the surrender of troops on Bataan on April 9, 1942, according to the Sun-News.

By the end of the war, Hamilton was working as a slave laborer at a coal mine just 30 miles from Nagasaki, Japan, where he saw the mushroom cloud from the second atomic bomb the United States dropped on Japan, effectively ending the war, the Sun-News said.

After the war, Hamilton remained in the service, retiring as a chief warrant office in the U.S. Air Force in 1969, after receiving The Presidential Unit Citations with two Oak Leaf Clusters and the Bronze Star, the paper reported.

He moved to Las Cruces in 1971 and lived there until about six months ago when his health began to decline, the Sun-News said.

Hamilton is survived by his wife, Audrey, of Las Cruces, and five children, Donald, David, Robert, Belinda and Bekki, according to a corrected obituary that ran in today's Sun-News.

He was preceded in death by his first wife, Dora Jean (Bronaugh) Hamilton, the Sun-News said.

Cremation has taken place, and a family memorial service will be held this summer in California, and a memorial service and burial of Hamilton's ashes will take place at a later date, the Sun-News reported. 

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