John Ginzl comes home

His boyhood home at 1318 Eagle Street still stands strong.

Brown Street still rolls through a portion of town, site of Rhinelander’s first annual nighttime bicycle race in 1934, won by the crazy-legged teen aboard his bike Flying Gingerbread.

The Rhinelander paper mill, where he was the first employee to heed Uncle Sam’s call for World War II and join the service, is still a solid presence, still employing seemingly half the town.

Rhinelander is where so many of his family members awaited his return, learned of his death on the opposite side of the planet and lived out their own lives for him.

They’re resting at Forest Hill Cemetery.

Beginning Sunday, he will, too. John “Jack” Ginzl is coming home.

Born Dec. 6, 1917, John Ginzl, also known as “Jackie,” grew from a Boy Scout with a love of birds to a basketball star at Rhinelander High School, Class of 1936, before becoming a member of the United States Army Air Corps in the service of his country. 

A welder assigned to the 17th Bombardment Squadron, 27th Bombardment Group on the Philippines’ Bataan Peninsula, he was taken prisoner by Imperial Japanese forces on April 9, 1942, at the age of 23 with the surrender of U.S. forces on Bataan. That was the first of his 1,006 days in captivity, one of the lengthiest terms on record.

John’s older twin brother, Joe, would become a bombardier in Europe, completing at least 34 missions.

“I’ve been looking for the invasion of the Philippines any day,” he wrote to the Rhinelander Daily News. “I’d sure give a lot to see Jackie again.”

John Ginzl survived the Bataan Death March and was among a shipful of prisoners of war (POWs) transported by the Japanese to Manila aboard the Oryoku Maru in 1944 when a U.S. carrier-borne aircraft attacked the ship, having no idea there were POWs aboard. He survived that, too.

However, his captors then put him aboard the Enoura Maru for transport to Takao, Formosa, now known as Taiwan.

That ship also had no outward sign that it was carrying POWs and when U.S. forces attacked and sank it on Jan. 9, 1945, Ginzl was among those aboard reported to have lost his life.

After the war ended, a American Graves Registration Command (AGRC) search and recovery team recovered 311 bodies from a mass grave on a beach in Takao, Formosa in May 1946.

Those not able to be identified were buried in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, Hawaii.

That was 80 years ago this month. 

The flow of time has certainly brought scientific and technological improvements, though, and the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) put them to use.

In late 2022 the DPAA began disinterring and analyzing the remains of those linked to the Enoura Maru in late 2022.

According to a DPAA press release, scientists with the DPAA used anthropological analysis and circumstantial evidence. Other scientists from the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System were part of the effort, using mitochondrial and Y-chromosome DNA analysis.

What they found prompted them to contact John Ginzl’s oldest living relatives, nephew Richard Ginzl of Wisconsin Rapids and niece Mary Rawnsley of Texas, for DNA samples to make sure — and verified that “Jack” Ginzl had been found at last.

His nephew Bruce Ginzl, now 78 and the fourth of five children of John Ginzl’s brother Wesley, joined his siblings in meeting with U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class Aaron Harris last December to make arrangements for his uncle John. 

The choice to bring him back to Rhinelander, to rest at the feet of his parents Joseph and Mary among other family members, was a natural one. 

“My mother and dad are also at Forest Home Cemetery,” Bruce said. “Sister Alice is at Forest Home Cemetery. Joe and his wife are at Forest Home Cemetery. So it just made sense for us to bring Jackie back and put him at the foot of the hill.”

His remains will be flown to Milwaukee today (Friday), removed by soldiers and then transported in Hildebrand-Russ Funeral Home’s hearse, accompanied by Harris and a motorcade of at least a dozen Patriot Guard Riders back to Rhinelander.

Law enforcement vehicles and others will join the procession to welcome him home.

Following cremation on Saturday, there will be a visitation this Sunday from noon to 1:45 p.m. and a memorial service will be held in the Rhinelander High School gymnasium starting at 2 p.m.

Burial will follow at Forest Home Cemetery.

“The whole thing is absolutely amazing,” Bruce Ginzl said. “It really is — how they take care of their own and get them here.”

He said that the gymnasium at the high school should be reserved “because they’re expecting a thousand or more people at this service.”

“My siblings, the five of us, will all be there with our extended families, which amounts to about 30 of us,” Bruce Ginzl said. “We had a family reunion probably 10 years ago but at that time, we didn’t have all of the grandchildren and great-grandchildren. So it’s going to be a phenomenal situation for us.”

The visitation and memorial service are open to the public. 

Ardith Carlton may be reached at [email protected].