Kenneth L. Waller Bataan Prisoner of War Collection contains materials recording Waller's years as a prisoner of war (POW) in the Pacific Theater, from September 1941 to August 1945. The materials include photographs, an excerpt from a book, an annotated map, and a transcript of an oral history compiled by Waller and Sandy McKennon in 1980. The oral history chronicles the Japanese occupation of the Philippines and their treatment of prisoner of wars through Waller's account of enlisting in the army, being stationed in hospitals in Corregidor and Bataan in the Philippines, encountering prisoners from the "Bataan Death March," being relocated to a coal mining camp in Omine, Japan, viewing the drop of the atomic bomb on Nagasaki, and release in 1945.

Kenneth Leroy Waller was born January 13, 1920 in Chickasha, Oklahoma. His parents Gussie and Elver Waller moved the family from Oklahoma to central California when Kenneth Waller was three years old; brother Donald was born seven years later. Waller graduated from high school in Fresno, California in 1938, and went to work for the U.S. Geologic Survey in Coalinga, California.

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