Captain William “Bill” McClure originally enlisted in the United States Army to “go fight the Japs,” he said.

Instead, the Rising Sun resident became friends with Japanese General Tomoyuki Yamashita, later executed for war crimes. And McClure directed the building of a 2,200-bed hospital in just 10 days, using mostly Japanese prisoners of war for the labor.

McClure's fate likely would have differed had he not been diagnosed with a perforated eardrum during training.