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With the cold weather on hold, this weekend is a perfect time to go for a relaxing bike ride...

Darwin 12 30 23

Cowboy State Daily is Wyoming’s largest newspaper with Wyoming’s most experienced journalists. 

<title>Daily Darwin: Saturday, December 30, 2023 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Daily Darwin: Saturday, December 30, 2023

 With the cold weather on hold, this weekend is a perfect time to go for a relaxing bike ride...

Kolby fedore

Kolby Fedore

Wyoming Life

After the engines shut down and 19-year-old Jerahleigh Johnson climbs out of her demolition derby car, people finally get a good look at the person who has been smashing them into oblivion.

[{"type":"text","text":"Off comes the helmet and out falls her long blonde hair."}]

“I've had grown men say, ‘I haven't been hit that hard in years, let alone to have it be some little girl,’” said her dad, Jeremiah Johnson.

Jerahleigh lives in Saratoga and spends her summers fixing up old cars for the express purpose of busting the crap out of them in dirt arenas around the West.

Her latest machine is a hulking early-1980s Cadillac painted red, white and blue, with white stars scattered across its rear quarter panels and two exhaust stacks punching through the hood.

[{"type":"text","text":"It started the season looking downright patriotic."}]

Today, the hood is buckled, the doors are cratered and the front end looks like it has been worked over with a giant sledgehammer, which is the whole point.

[{"type":"text","text":"“You're going into a purposeful car wreck,” she said."}]

Then she grinned, because for Jerahleigh, the part most people would consider horrifying is the funnest.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"She Wanted In"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Jerahleigh grew up in the garage."}]

Her dad got into demolition derby about 20 years ago, so her childhood was surrounded by tools and old cars waiting to be torn apart and rebuilt, with nights and weekends spent turning ordinary automobiles into Mad Max machines.

One of her younger brothers started driving before she did, climbing behind the wheel around age 11 or 12. By about 15, Jerahleigh had watched enough.

[{"type":"text","text":"She wanted in."}]

There was no grand rebellion involved, no moment when the sweet Saratoga girl shocked her horrified parents by announcing she wanted to smash automobiles for fun.

Her dad was already smashing automobiles for fun. Her brother was smashing automobiles for fun.

[{"type":"text","text":"Some families play golf."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"The Johnsons “do derby.”"}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Not Holding The Flashlight"}]

Spend enough time talking to Jerahleigh about derby and it becomes clear the crashing is only half of it.

Long before No. 15 rolls onto the dirt, hundreds of hours of labor are invested in making sure it can survive once the smashing starts.

[{"type":"text","text":"The Cadillac had to be gutted. "}]

Glass came out. Seats came out. The dashboard and much of the interior disappeared. 

A steel cage went in around the driver's compartment, and the car was rebuilt according to the rules of Jerahleigh's class.

[{"type":"text","text":"The family has put about $15,000 into the smasher."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"And Jerahleigh isn't just standing around holding the flashlight for Dad."}]

“The motor that she runs, she put it together herself,” Jeremiah said. “She can do it all.”

She can grind and prepare metal, change her own oil and spark plugs, do a tuneup, install an engine and weld in the roll cage that might ultimately be responsible for keeping her alive.

Jeremiah said her mechanical ability is “above most of the guys, guaranteed.”

That makes the sight of Jerahleigh standing beside No. 15 slightly deceptive. The young woman with the long blonde hair and easy smile didn't just climb into the monster.

[{"type":"text","text":"She helped build it."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Peach Rings "}]

For somebody preparing to intentionally wreck a car, Jerahleigh has a remarkably gentle pregame ritual.

She drinks water, eats gummy peach rings and would appreciate it if everybody left her alone for a little while.

[{"type":"text","text":"Then the fire suit and helmet go on."}]

When Jerahleigh climbs through the gutted shell of the cab and settles into the driver's seat, she might have a strategy, but she knows it won't last.

“It changes the second you strap in the car and they say go,” she said.

[{"type":"text","text":"Everything becomes noise, mud, smoke and split-second decisions."}]

Jerahleigh watches the other cars and looks for openings, trying to protect the parts of the Cadillac she needs to keep moving while searching for opportunities to deliver a hard shot with the parts she can afford to lose.

[{"type":"text","text":"Steve “Grumpy” Diorio noticed that the first time he watched her."}]

The owner of The Grumpy Italian pizzeria in Saratoga, and now one of Jerahleigh's sponsors, knew almost nothing about demolition derby when he met her. The Johnsons had become regulars at his restaurant, and eventually conversation wandered into what their families did for fun.

He went to watch her compete, discovering demolition derby was louder and crazier than anything he had expected. But underneath the chaos, he noticed Jerahleigh wasn't simply barreling blindly around the arena. She waited for her opportunities and picked her shots.

[{"type":"text","text":"Now he's one of her biggest fans."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"“I want to see her become a star,” Diorio said."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Blood On Her Face"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Jerahleigh knows exactly what can go wrong."}]

Her biggest fear in the arena was getting hurt, but she's already checked that box.

At a derby in Utah, another car hit her hard enough that she bit through her lip.

[{"type":"text","text":"She kept driving."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"In fact, she kept driving well enough to finish second."}]

Jeremiah remembers his daughter finally climbing out of the car with a big smile and blood running down her face while everybody around her watched in horror. Jerahleigh was so busy talking to the other young drivers and congratulating them that she hardly seemed to notice.

“She didn't even realize that she was needing to go get stitches,” Jeremiah said.

[{"type":"text","text":"She wears a mouth guard now."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Problem solved."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Not For The Money"}]

Jerahleigh figures she's competed in somewhere around a dozen derbies, and she's loved them all.

But despite the occasional giant check, she insists anybody who thinks derby is a clever way to make money has profoundly misunderstood the economics of spending $15,000 on a car and then encouraging people to smash into it.

“We do it for fun,” she said. “If we were doing it for the money, shoot, we'd be losing. We would have quit a long time ago.”

What keeps her coming back is the entire strange, noisy circus of it — the smell of hot engines, mud flying from tires, radiators breaking open and throwing steam, cars disappearing into clouds of dust, and funnel cakes, hot dogs and beer in the stands while the machines below slowly beat one another into junk.

[{"type":"text","text":"Then there are the people."}]

Her father calls them the “derby family” — all those people they race against, compete against or, as he quickly corrected himself, “crash against.”

Jerahleigh's own family is almost always there, too: her mom, her dad and her brothers.

[{"type":"text","text":"And now Grumpy."}]

“I'm not a real big race enthusiast,” Diorio said. “What I am is a family enthusiast.”

That's what drew him to Jerahleigh in the first place. He watched the Johnsons work together — Jerahleigh behind the wheel, her father building alongside her, her brothers helping in the pits, everybody contributing — and saw something he recognized from his own family-run restaurant.

Jerahleigh is the one behind the wheel, but there are always people waiting when she climbs back out.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"More Cars To Wreck"}]

At 19, Jerahleigh doesn't pretend to have the rest of her life mapped out.

College never called to her, and rather than go simply because that's what young people are expected to do, she decided to work and figure things out as she went.

[{"type":"text","text":"“I'm kind of just feeling everything out,” she said."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Ask about derby, however, and the future gets much clearer."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"She wants more."}]

Jerahleigh wants to move into bigger classes with more elaborate builds, tougher competition and, as she readily acknowledges, considerably more money disappearing into cars destined for violent deaths.

[{"type":"text","text":"She wants to get better at building them and better at driving them."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"And she wants to keep hitting."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"‘Overcome And Conquer’"}]

Her father believes the sport has already taught her something considerably more valuable than how to weld or where to aim a Cadillac.

In demolition derby, even a good night goes wrong. You can build the car perfectly, have a plan and execute it well, and still come out of a heat with the front end folded, the wheels pointed in different directions and something important hanging on by a thread.

If you've qualified for the next round, there isn't much time to feel sorry for yourself.

[{"type":"text","text":"You figure out what's broken, fix what you can and go again."}]

“Not everything's going to be perfect,” Jeremiah said. “Not everything's going to be the way it's written in the book how it should be, and you just kind of have to overcome and conquer.”

Jeremiah sees that quality in Jerahleigh, whether she's underneath a car building it, behind the wheel smashing it or climbing back out after something has gone wrong.

[{"type":"text","text":"The car will get mangled. That's inevitable."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"She'll fix what she can."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Then she'll get back in."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"“You got to just stand up and keep going,” Jeremiah said."}]

Jerahleigh Johnson derb5 8 16 26

<title>19-Year-Old Saratoga Woman Rebuilds Cars Just To Beat The Crap Out Of Them | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Saratoga 19-year-old Jerahleigh Johnson can weld a roll cage, rebuild an engine and smash a Cadillac with the best of them. “I’ve had grown men say, ‘I haven’t been hit that hard in years,’” her dad says of Jarahleigh's demolition derby domination.

19-Year-Old Saratoga Woman Rebuilds Cars Just To Beat The Crap Out Of Them

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Jackie Dorothy.

Jackie Dorothy

Around Wyoming

Editor's note: This story includes graphic and disturbing descriptions of torture and inhumane prisoner of war conditions. Read at your discretion. 

After more than 80 years, a 32-year-old Casper man believed to have been killed as a prisoner of war aboard one of the infamous Japanese “hell ships” during World War II may finally be close to being found. 

John Clarke Goldtrap, a young husband and father, was listed by his captors as one of the 284 Americans who died after the Japanese hell ship the Oryoku Maru was destroyed on Dec. 15, 1944.

The POW transport ship sunk to the bottom of the ocean and has remained there, virtually undisturbed, until now.

The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA), working with the Navy and the Philippine government, are 

Divers have recovered American military footwear, an identification bracelet, broken eyeglasses, medical equipment and material that may be human bone. 

[{"type":"text","text":"The work is expected to continue in the coming year."}]

The DPAA said that the recovery effort has significant challenges that will require its team to employ advanced underwater recovery and identification techniques to ensure the mission is conducted with the utmost care and dignity.

Modern archaeology and DNA testing may then restore names to some of those remains, correct wartime records and allow families to bury men who have been listed officially as missing for nearly 82 years. 

For Goldtrap, it could finally reveal whether he died inside one the hell ship, in the water or after reaching shore. 

It is the fulfillment of the promise made to American servicemen that those missing in action will not be forgotten.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Sinking The Oroku Maru"}]

The air strike in which Goldtrap was killed is known as the Oroyku Maru Disaster because it was Allies who sunk the ship. 

Another Wyoming solider, Staff Sgt. Joseph Henry Robertson of Rock Springs, survived by swimming to shore and enduring another hellish eight months as a prisoner of war of the Japanese.

According to the Department of the Army, on Dec. 13, 1944, Japanese forces in the Philippines began the transfer of 1,621 Allied prisoners of war to Japan.

Goldtrap, Robertson and the other POWs were to make the journey aboard transport ships whose harsh conditions and extreme overcrowding led survivors to refer to them as “hell ships.” 

These ships lacked markings that would distinguish them from any other military target and were often attacked by Allied forces who could not identify them as POW transports.

On Dec. 14, 1944, Allied aircraft attacked the first of these transport ship, the Oryoku Maru, in Subic Bay in the Philippines, killing many of Allied POWs on board. 

War crimes were committed on that day as Japanese soldiers shot many of the escaping prisoners as they tried to swim to safety, while others drowned in the attempt.  

, the officer was listed as dead by his Japanese captors, but the information was unreliable since the first number of dead was listed as “about 250.”  

As a commanding officer, Goldtrap was confined in the ship’s rear hold, although it is unknown just how he met his death.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Worse Than Bataan Death March"}]

The stories shared by hell ship survivors paint a horrific picture of human brutality and suffering.

Ben Skardon was one of these men packed into the rear hold of the Oroku Maru where Goldtrap was believed to have been kept.

In a 2015 interview with the National World War II Museum, Skardon said that it was total chaos of the worst type as they were loaded into the hold.

He had found a spot pressed against another soldier on the floor, “one in the crotch of the other.” 

All around him, men were breaking down, going crazy, yelling and pleading. Skardon passed out from lack of oxygen and others helped move him to where he could get air.

Many of the men on the Oryoku Maru had survived the Bataan Death March and described the conditions crammed into the ship a living hell, worse than the infamous march.  

First-person accounts were preserved in the book “The Rising Sun” by John Toland from men who kept forbidden journals and recorded the hell they barely survived.

Major Virgil McCollum, wrote Toland, was a veteran of Bataan who said the hell ship was “the most horrible experience imaginable and probably unprecedented in the annals of civilization.” 

As the dim light of dawn filtered through the hatch, several score bodies lay lifeless — suffocated or murdered.

“Many men lost their minds,” a colonel later wrote in his official report, “and crawled about in the absolute darkness armed with knives, attempting to kill people in order to drink their blood or armed with canteens filled with urine and swinging them in the dark.”

Major Roy L. Bodine would have been in the same hold as Robertson, packed amidships, three decks down with 300 Army and Navy medics and civilians. 

He described the constant prayers and the chaos that quickly took over as men went mad from lack of water, oxygen and sanitation.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Waiting For Rescue Or Death"}]

Another American soldier, Lt. Col. Curtis Beecher, was in the forward hold which had just recently transported horses and had never been cleaned.

Within moments, the 700 men crammed into the hold were drenched in sweat and, already weak from two years of imprisonment, began to go mad.

A dozen men, crazed by thirst, went berserk; they slashed at the throats and wrists of companions to suck blood. The panic turned the hold into bedlam. 

[{"type":"text","text":"Men began to drop dead, some silently while others thrashed wildly."}]

When the bombing from the Allies began on the unmarked ship, many of the POWs on board cheered. Over the deafening roar of the attacks, men prayed and waited for rescue or death.

As the temperature reached 110 degrees, riots again erupted, according to Toland. 

Men collided with one another in the dark, slipping and falling in their own feces. The sick were trampled, and wild, deadly fights erupted. Men dropped to their knees like animals to lap up sewage running in open drains.

When the ship was sinking, men escaped the hull by jumping into the sea. Skardon described how a bomb killed many of the men in the rear hold with him while he crawled over their bodies to reach the deck.

“Those men saved my life,” Skardon said, explaining that they had taken the brunt of the bomb and he was able to escape. 

[{"type":"text","text":"Goldtrap was not so fortunate. "}]

He was either one of those killed in the rear hold by suffocation, murder or the bombing. Another possibility is that Goldtrap made it into the sea and was one of the 55 soldiers who were either shot for trying to escape or drowned.

His life that had been so promising in Wyoming had ended brutally with an estimated 21,000 other POWs lost in the hell ships.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A West Point Graduate And Proud Casperite"}]

As a teenager, Goldtrap enrolled in the Citizens’ Military Training Camp at Fort Russel and then served in the Wyoming National Guard before heading off to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

Goldtrap had a promising military career ahead of him and often appeared with his wife, Caroline, in the social section of the Casper newspaper. They were also the proud parents of a little boy. 

Goldtrap served at Fort Francis E. Warren before heading off to Infantry School. 

On June 1940, the young officer sailed to the Philippine Islands and joined the 57th Infantry Regiment, the Philippines Scouts. His wife and son returned to live with her father in Casper to wait for Goldtrap's return home.

Then on May 7, 1942, Goldtrap was reported missing in action following the fall of Mindanao. 

He was subsequently confirmed as a Japanese prisoner of war and survived more than two and a half years in enemy hands. 

His wife received messages saying that he was well, and another serviceman saw him alive in June 1944.

Six months later, as the Japanese attempted to move him to Japan, Goldtrap was declared dead after the Oryoku Maru was sunk.

According to his personnel records, attacks on these POW transports ultimately resulted in a series of death notifications from the Japanese government through the International Red Cross, and some casualties were given up to five different dates of death at various locations during the transfer.

Witness accounts from surviving POWs offer detailed information for a handful of casualties, but the specific dates of loss or last-known locations for many of these POWs are based on the most recent reported date of death.

Although Goldtrap was reported to have died during the destruction of the Oryoku Maru on Dec. 15, 1944, no known eyewitness account has yet established precisely where or how he died, and his family was left wondering how he had met his fate.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Wyoming Survivor"}]

Meanwhile, another Wyoming serviceman was aboard the Oroku Maru in a different hold. 

Robertson, a medic, had been a captive for two years when the Oryoku Maru was bombed. Although Robertson was able to swim to shore, his torture was not over.

The Army said that survivors of the bombing were put aboard two other hell ships, the Enoura Maru and the Brazil Maru, to continue on to Japan. 

While anchored in Takao Harbor in Formosa (present-day Taiwan), the Enoura Maru was attacked by Allied aircraft from the USS Hornet (CV 8). Survivors of the Enoura Maru bombing were loaded onto the Brazil Maru, which reached Japan on Jan. 30, 1945.

As a result of these incidents, many Allied POWs, such as Goldtrap, were lost at sea between the Philippines and Taiwan, while anchored in Taiwan, at sea between Taiwan and Japan, and in Japan.

When Robertson was finally freed two years later, he gave his sworn testimony at F.E. Warren. 

It was prepared for the War Crimes Office in connection with Japanese naval medical officer Satoru Nakazawa and conditions at Nichols Field, Las Piñas and Bilibid Prison.

During his war crime affidavit debriefing, Robertson said that he was placed on another hell ship after swimming to shore. 

He suffered in the cramped conditions for two months before reaching Japan, where he was tortured and nearly went blind from lack of food.

According to his obituary, Robertson had enlisted on Jan. 30, 1940, at Ft. Douglas, Utah. He was stationed in Bataan as a surgical technician with the Army medical detachment at General Hospital No. 1.

On April 10, 1942, he and companions made their way to Corregidor, where they stayed until it fell to the Japanese May 6, 1942. 

After capture, he was sent to Bilibed in Manila and then to Cabanatuan, a main Japanese prison camp, where he was held 58 days. 

He then was sent to Nichols Field camp and was there until 1944, when he was returned to Bilibed for treatment of his eyes, as his vision was impaired because of a lack of food.

Roberston returned home to his wife, Alice, in Rocks Springs where he worked for the next 22 years as an auto body shop operator. 

The couple had three sons — Joe, Vernon and Richard — when Robertson died unexpectedly after one day of being ill. He was 52 and proud of his service to the end.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Recovering Our Missing"}]

The Department of the Army lists Goldtrap’s case as an “active pursuit.”

Official records state “that Goldtrap was reportedly killed on Dec. 15, 1944, during the attack on the Oryoku Maru; however, these reports often involve information solely furnished by enemy governments.”

With so many unanswered questions of what happened to the young Casper officer and the other Americans declared dead on the Oroku Maru, the DPAA said it will continue to search for the missing servicemen. 

[{"type":"text","text":"The latest search effort is their largest to date on the Oroku Maru."}]

“This mission represents our solemn commitment to provide the fullest possible accounting to families and the nation,” said U.S. Army Capt. Barrett Breland, DPAA team leader for the Oryoku Maru recovery on their official website.

“We carry this responsibility with compassion and integrity, and our success depends on strong partnerships and unwavering respect for the fallen.”

For his service in the Philippines, Goldtrap received the Silver Star, Bronze Star and Purple Heart. He was also promoted posthumously from major to the rank of lieutenant colonel. The promotion was an honor but not a military decoration.

Goldtrap has a marker at Arlington Cemetery in Washington, D.C., and there is now the possibility Goldtrap may have more than just a memorial as searchers look for answers of what happened to the Americans who died on the hell ship Oryoku Maru.

Hell ship inset 1 8 16 26

<title>Wyoming POW On Sunken Japanese 'Hell Ship' May Be Close To Coming Home After 82 Years | Cowboy State Daily</title>

For 82 years, Lt. Col. John Clarke Goldtrap of Casper has been in a watery grave as a POW on the sunken wreck of the brutal Japanese “hell ship” Oryoku Maru. Now his remains may finally be ID'd and brought home. Another Wyoming serviceman on the ship survived.

Wyoming POW On Sunken Japanese 'Hell Ship' May Be Close To Coming Home After 82 Years

The old ash tree had stood for an estimated 60 to 70 years on the west side of the Washakie County Courthouse. It was 3 feet in circumference when, in 1999, a tree company declared the ash was dead and a hazard. 

[{"type":"text","text":"They were wrong."}]

When groundskeeper Heather Shryack discovered the stately ash had been healthy when it was cut down, she was determined it wouldn’t go to waste.

“She's a scrappy little gal, and she really knows her gardening,” said her husband, Terry Shryack. “Heather saw the whole tree was solid as a rock and that there was absolutely nothing wrong with it.”

The Washakie County Commission agreed that it was Heather’s tree and so she promptly hired an oil field company to haul it to her husband’s sawmill, despite protests from the tree company. Heather wasn’t going to be stopped in her mission to save the wood.  

“Everybody's upset when a big tree gets cut down here, without a doubt,” Terry said. “It was a treasure that we weren’t going to let get by.”

Over the years, Terry had made furniture out of the smaller pieces of the ash tree at his house in Winchester, including a rocking chair and small end tables. 

As the decades rolled by, he forgot about the large pieces of the ash tree he had stored in their shed — until he decided to build a table with local artist Calvin “Cal” Fulfer as an ultimate honor to the old ash tree.

The result is a 600-pound table with a river of treasure running through it.

When an old ash tree was cut down by mistake at the Washakie County Courthouse in 1999, the groundskeeper rescued the wood. For nearly three decades, huge pieces of the ash sat forgotten until a Worland craftsman built a 600-pound table from it.

Daily Darwin: Saturday, December 30, 2023

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