Never Too Late

Sheldon Empol is a big believer in “better late than never.” On Saturday, the 76-year-old ex-GI will test that theory when the government finally honors him with a Purple Heart--54 years after he earned it on the point of a bayonet in a Japanese POW camp.

Empol will be formally presented with his medal during the Seabee Days opening ceremonies in Port Hueneme at 11 a.m.

The medal, said Empol, will be accepted with pride. “In fact, I feel great,” he said.

Empol was wounded in May 1943 at Camp Cabanatuan in the Philippines. He was already lucky to be alive.

To get to the camp, located north of Manila, he had to survive the infamous 80-mile Bataan Death March, watching many of his buddies die around him--shot, starved, bayoneted, even stomped to death. About 30,000 Americans and many Filipino prisoners made the forced march, existing for several days on a single ration of one handful of rice, a small amount of water, and salt.

But it was not the march that earned then-22-year-old Empol his medal.

In the camp, he dropped a sack of rice he was unloading on the order of a Japanese soldier. The guard stabbed him in the back with his bayonet. Empol survived, and was put to work in the fields the next day.

Following the Philippine internment, Empol endured a Japanese “hell ship” transport to Japan, where he and other POWs toiled in a Japanese steel mill. The soldiers were liberated by American troops two years later, at the end of the war.

“September of 1945, to be exact,” he said.

Empol was never honored for his sacrifice.

Eligibility rules for the Purple Heart didn’t include POWs. He hadn’t been wounded “in action or attempting to escape.”

However, in 1996, the National Defense Authorization Act changed the rules. Now the medal may be awarded to those who were killed or wounded “as the result of enemy action.”

The retired electrician read about the new authorization in American Ex POW magazine.

“I got my papers and medical records together and mailed them to the Army. I figured if I get it, I get it, if I don’t, I don’t,” he said.

He got it.

“My buddy Huston Turner [of Los Angeles], who was in four POW camps with me, is also applying for the Purple Heart,” Empol said.

Despite those horrific years, it didn’t take long for Empol’s life to get back on track.

“I was in that prison camp when I got bayoneted in May of 1943, and three years later, I met my wife Claire on the boardwalk at Atlantic City, in May of 1946,” he said.

Claire, now his wife of more than 50 years, will be at the ceremony, along with their two children, Bruce and Denise, and several grandchildren.