San Joaquin County CA Archives Obituaries.....Burdette, Bill February 24, 2006 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.rootsweb.com/~usgenweb/copyright.htm http://www.rootsweb.com/~usgenweb/ca/cafiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: K T bluewolf@onemain.com March 23, 2006, 11:53 pm The Tracy Press Bill Burdette Nov. 13, 1921 — Feb. 24, 2006 Bill Burdette, a retired H.J. Heinz Co. supervisor who was Tracy’s last living tie to the ultra-secret World War II prisoner-of-war interrogation center at Byron Hot Springs, died Friday at New Hope Care Center. He was 84. A native of Spokane, Wash., he entered the U.S. Army before the U.S. entered World War II and served in Alaska. In 1942, he was transferred to Byron Hot Springs, located 14 miles northwest of Tracy, where an interrogation center for Japanese and German prisoners of war was being established at the onetime spa. Mr. Burdette, a master sergeant, served as sergeant of the Army guard, which manned guard towers and foot patrols at the entrance and on the fenced periphery surrounding the former Byron Hot Springs hotel building. The secret base, known only as MIS 1941 P.O. Box 651, Tracy, Cal. (where mail was received) was the West Coast center for prisoner-of-war interrogations. Between late 1942 and August 1945 at the end of the war, 3,234 Japanese and 252 German prisoners were interrogated by intelligence officers and interpreters. The prisoners stayed at the three-story complex for periods of a few days to several months before being sent to regular POW camps in the western U.S. “We never had any high-ranking Japanese officers,” Mr. Burdette recalled in a 2002 interview. “The senior Japanese officers in 1938 pledged their lives to the emperor, and they were seldom captured, since those not killed in combat committed hara-kiri.” He said the lower-ranking Japanese officers and enlisted men were questioned about their hometowns and military units to identify which units were located where in the Pacific. German POWs included four generals. The best known was Gen. Gustav von Vaerst, who had been commander of the Fifth Panzer Army in North Africa. “He (Gen. von Vaerst) and other German generals were quite formal, even haughty. They wouldn’t speak to enlisted men like me, only to senior officers,” he said. Mr. Burdette and other soldiers at the post came to Tracy often, but they didn’t say anything about what was going on at Byron Hot Springs. “Some people suspected what was happening there, but we kept our mouths shut,” he said. It was at the JC Penney Co. store at 10th Street and Central Avenue that he met his wife, the former Sammie LaWanda Morgan. They were married in 1943. After the war, Mr. Burdette remained in Tracy and worked for Pacific Gas and Electric Co. for several years before joining the staff at the Heinz factory in 1950. He moved up the ranks from production worker to leadman and retired as a supervisor in the filling and labeling department in 1984. “Bill loved his job at Heinz,” said his wife. “He had an enthusiastic personality and loved people. He got know a lot of the Heinz workers over the years.” Mr. Burdette, who played softball for league-champion Hill’s Sporting Goods teams in the late 1940s and early ’50s, enjoyed traveling, reading, fishing and rooting for the Minnesota Vikings NFL football team. He was a member of Tracy Post 1537, Veterans of Foreign Wars, and the Tracy Elks Lodge. Survivors include his wife of 62 years, Sammie LaWanda Burdette of Tracy, and a son and daughter-in-law, Danny and Karen Burdette of Tuolumne. He was preceded in death by his siblings, Earl Burdette and Mary Lou Parks. At Mr. Burdette’s request, no services will be conducted. Interment will be private. Hotchkiss Mortuary, 5 W. Highland Ave., is handling arrangements. Published on Wednesday, March 01, 2006, in the Tracy Press. Additional Comments: Volunteer submission - No relation to the deceased. No other information available from submitter. Posted with permission from The Tracy Press http://www.tracypress.com/obituaries/ File at: http://ftp.rootsweb.com/pub/usgenweb/ca/sanjoaquin/obits/b/burdette2358gob.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.org/cafiles/ File size: 4.4 Kb