People

Dale Minger

The man that Torvald enlisted with from the same small Iowan town, also POW throughout the war in the Philippines and Japan. One of the last people Torvald asked about before passing away in 2007. Pictured here receiving an honorary degree from Upper Iowa University. 

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Walter Gell

Igorots

Igorot, or Cordillerans, is the collective name of several Austronesian ethnic groups in the Philippines, who inhabit the mountains of Luzon. These highland peoples inhabit all the six provinces of the Cordillera Administrative Region: Abra, Apayao, Benguet, Kalinga, Ifugao, and Mountain Province, as well as the adjacent provinces.

The word "Igorot" is an exonym, derived from the Austronesian term for "mountain people" (formed from the prefix i-, "dweller of" and golot, "mountain range"). During the Spanish colonial era, the term was variously recorded as Igolot, Ygolot, and Igorrote, compliant to Spanish orthography.[2]

The endonyms Ifugao or Ipugao (also meaning "mountain people") are used more frequently within the Igorots themselves, as igorot is viewed by some as slightly pejorative.

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Glenn McDole

Glenn McDole was born in Nebraska in 1921. He moved near Des Moines, Iowa in the 1930s and attended high school in Urbandale, then joined the Marine Corps in 1940 and was stationed in the Philippines. He was at the Cavite Naval base, near Manila, on Luzon when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, initiating the Second World War. McDole became a prisoner of war when Corregidor fell on May 6, 1942. He was sent to Cabanatuan Camp No. 1, then joined a work detail and, along with approximately 300 other men, eventually ended up in a prison camp at Puerto Princesa on Palawan Island on August 12, 1942. 

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