Samuel Alton Madison was born on October 26, 1915, in Portia, Lawrence County, Arkansas. He was the son of Robert Samuel Madison and Lura Etta Forehand Madison. He attended Jonesboro State College for a year before earning admission to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point on July 1, 1935. Upon graduation on June 12, 1939, he was commissioned into the Coast Artillery Corps. His first assignment was at Fort Winfield Scott, California, after which he traveled via Army transport through the Panama Canal to the Philippine Islands, where he was stationed at Fort Drum, a heavily fortified island guarding Manila Bay.

By August 1941, Sam remained confident in U.S. defenses, but the Japanese invasion of the Philippines changed everything. When Fort Drum was forced to surrender, he endured the Bataan Death March and spent three years as a prisoner of war on Luzon. In late 1944, Sam was among the final group of POWs shipped from Luzon to Japan. On December 14, 1944, his transport ship was sunk, but he survived and was sent to a prison camp on Honshu Island, where he died of colitis on February 3, 1945. He is now buried in the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial, Manila, Capital District, National Capital Region, Philippines.

Source of information: www.findagrave.com, weremember.abmc.gov, alumni.westpointaog.org