"Antonio Dattorro 51 PT survived the Bataan Death March and 1333 days as a POW in Japan. Before passing away in 2001, he made eight paintings of his experiences there. These paintings are now in the New Mexico Military Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I have his biography and pictures of his paintings. I thought his story and paintings would be of interest to other RISD alumni. I have been his close friend since 1965." —Stanley Freedman

Antonio Dattorro
(9/21/1918 – 3/31/2001)

Antonio Dattorro, 9/21/1918 – 3/31/2001, was a Rhode Island artist whose last project was to recreate with charcoal and paint the terror of the infamous Bataan Death March (BDM) and what he later witnessed in the POW camp during the more than three years of his internment. He did this work between 1979 and 2001. Here is the link to a video with the eight paintings that in November 2021 were accepted by the New Mexico Military Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico. In 1997, under the leadership of Major General Reginald A. Centracchio, there was a showing of Dattorro’s POW works at the National Guard Readiness Center in Cranston, RI.

Antonio was raised in North Providence. Antonio joined the Army Air Corp on September 19, 1940. At first he was stationed in Australia and Hawaii. Then he was stationed at Bataan on the Island of Luzon in the Philippines. Bataan fell to the Japanese on April 9, 1942. After the Bataan Death March, during which many Americans were murdered, he was taken to the Zentsuji POW Camp in the Kagawa Prefecture of Shikoku, Japan. Dattorro was a prisoner there for more than three years. When the Atom Bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, the Japanese guards abandoned the camp. Japan finally surrendered on September 2, 1945.

Dattorro started the march weighing 170 lbs. and came home weighing 86 lbs. He received a broken back by a guard jumping on him, teeth knocked out by being hit with a rifle butt and a pierced arm by a bayonet. Dattorro received two Bronze Stars, two Purple Hearts and the Rhode Island Cross for his service. He credits the garlic he ate, which was planted in crops in camp, with helping him survive.

Upon his return to Rhode Island, he met and married Jennie (Russo) and had two sons, Anthony and Jon. He attended Rhode Island School of Design where he earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting in 1951 and a Master of Art Education in 1953. He was hired by the Providence Public School Department in 1952 to teach art at Hope High School until 1979. In 1977, Antonio displayed a 300-foot continuous painting by the side of his street, Barbara Ann Drive in North Providence. The work chronicled his life, his family and commentary on world happenings. On April 9, 1978, he established an art gallery within Hope High School. He mentored many students and directed them to art schools. In one year, four of the ten RI students accepted to RISD came from his art class. Dattorro said, “I decided I would do only paintings and drawings that couldn’t be sold."