carl e creamer and takao

Artist's commentary

Original

Officer of the IJN crusier Takao checking the pulse of a American pilot from a B17 bomber shoot down during the Aleutians Islands Campaign, June 1942.

"This photo gets mislabeled as a B-17, I’ve done it myself a few years ago. It was actually a PBY that was shot down with a crew of 3 and they would all survive:

Pictured is believed to be AOM3c Carl E. Creamer, one of three surviving members of a PBY crew shot down by Zero's on 3 June 1942. All three became POWs and survived their captivity.

https://www.reddit.com/r/wwiipics/s/Sd9eju2F3d"

https://pacificwrecks.com/aircraft/pby/cusick.html

Mission History
On June 3, 1942 took off from Dutch Harbor Seaplane Base piloted by Lt(jg) Jean C. Cusick on a patrol mission. At roughly 10:00am over the Bearing Sea this Catalina was spotted and intercepted by A6M2 Zeros from Junyō 1st chutai led by Lt. Yoshio Shiga and claimed as shot down by pilots Kobota and Hasegawa. This aircraft crashed approximately 200 miles southwest of Dutch Harbor. Six of the crew died in the crash and presumably went down with the aircraft. Three of the crew survived the crash or bailed out and deploy a life raft.

Fates of the Crew
The three surviving crew: Hunt, Creamer and Brown were at sea for approximately five hours before they were spotted and rescued by Takao and became Prisoners Of War (POW) and were transported to Japan and detained at Ofuna. Afterwards, the Japanese photographed one of the prisoners, likely Creamer after capture and published in Japan.

At the end of the Pacific War, Hunt was detained at Osaka Main Camp Chikko Osaka 34-135. Creamer was detained at Tokyo POW Camp Branch #2 (Kawasaki) Tokyo Bay Area 35-139. Brown was detained at Zentsuji POW Camp (Hiroshima #1) Shikoku Island 34-133. All three survived captivity until the end of the Pacific War and were liberated and returned to the United States.

Creamer passed away on August 23, 2012. He was buried on August 28, 2012 at Jacksonville National Cemetery in Jacksonville, FL.