Ben Steele was an American soldier in the Philippines at the beginning of World War II. When American forces on the Bataan Peninsula were surrendered in 1942, Steele was one of tens of thousands of American and Filipino troops forced to go on the Bataan Death March. He spent the next three and a half years as a POW in several labor camps, including the infamous Tayabas Road Detail. During his captivity, he survived beriberi, dysentery, pneumonia, blood poisoning, malaria, and the death ships. When the war ended, he was working in a Japanese coal mine less than 80 miles from Hiroshima.

Like many survivors, Steele struggled with memories of his captivity. As he came to terms with what he had seen and experienced, he began to draw from memory. Over the next decades, Steele became a critically acclaimed artist of the American West, but the Bataan Death March and the labor camps were never far from his mind. Steele passed away at the age of 98 on September 25, 2016. His drawings of his experiences in World War II have been donated to the MacArthur Memorial where they will be preserved in perpetuity.

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