Thieves grab museum's World War II treasures By Chris Vaughn Star-Telegram Staff Writer Working by candlelight, they came and stole the hard-earned treasures of the once-young men from Wise County, men who spent almost all of World War II in Japanese prison camps. The thieves took a sword, a rifle bayonet, a military police armband, Japanese money and a priceless samurai sword, ransacking the rest of the room dedicated to the "Lost Battalion." Not least, they broke the heart of Rosalie Gregg, who serves as the director of the Wise County Heritage Museum and is the widow of a Lost Battalion soldier. "They definitely knew what they had," she said. The break-in at the museum, in the 112-year-old former Decatur Baptist College building off U.S. 287 in Decatur, occurred between Saturday night and early Monday. Decatur Police Chief Rex Hoskins said that he has no "real good leads" on the case but that he does on a church burglary from the same weekend. "We think they possibly may be connected," he said. Hoskins said he and other officers are checking with eBay to see whether a comparable samurai sword has turned up online in the last week, one of the more logical places such a collector's item might turn up. "You couldn't keep it around your house around here," he said. "There's too many people who know what was in that museum." The thieves stole the money in the cash register and in the volunteers' lunch-money box and even took the postage stamps. They also stole a vintage shotgun and an 1883 Colt rifle. Inexplicably, they poured a soda on the museum's computer and broke glass cases throughout the museum. Gregg said wax drips on the floor indicate that the thieves used candles. The losses in the second-floor Lost Battalion room are the most costly. "I don't know if there is a value you could put on some of it," Gregg said. "I would think the samurai sword was worth $10,000. But it's also got a lot of sentimental value." The sword, with Japanese inscriptions on the tang, was given to a Lost Battalion member who testified during war crimes trials. The Lost Battalion -- technically, the 2nd Battalion, 131st Field Artillery Regiment -- was a Texas National Guard outfit from counties north of Fort Worth. The men, sent to the Pacific Theater around the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, ended up on the island of Java to support Dutch forces. The Dutch surrendered March 8, 1942, and the Texans began a brutal ordeal as Japanese prisoners. Gregg said she alerted the only other museum with significant Lost Battalion items, at Camp Mabry in Austin, to keep an eye out for the missing property. Crayton Gordon Sr., a battalion member who lives in Keller, said: "I'll be durned. Rosalie has been real faithful about that museum."