We just returned from spending some time with Karel Aster at his home on Captiva Island, FL. He was a Czech patriot from WWII. Shortly before his capture,
he had been working with the U.S. Army.
Karel Aster is second from the left in the front row of the first image. The photo is from his graduation from the Bata school in Zlin, circa 1936. Karel regularly played ping pong with J.A.Bata. I did short video interview with Karel and asked him about his memories with Bata. He still has a very accurate memory.
Karel is a member of our family through the Gerbec side (through J.A.Bata's wife). He was also for a short time one of J.A.Bata's secretaries. He was working on the Bata exhibit at the world's fair in New York in 1939 until the invasion of Czechoslovakia. He was then transferred to Belcamp, MD to the Bata Shoe Company and later to the Bata Hawaii retail network. He 
was in Hawaii during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Then he was stationed in Bataan for Bata. He was captured when the American Army surrendered. The Japanese put him in a POW camp and later brought to Nagasaki as a POW for the rest of the war (about 50 miles from where the atomic bomb was dropped). Unbelievable story. He was a prisoner for most of the war under terrible circumstances. If you see the popular new movie called UNBROKEN (This movie was about the same prison camp in Japan where Karel was brought).
A whole wall in his office is full of medals from WWII. Yet, he does not talk about his story unless you ask him. He is a Czech/American patriot and a man I am proud to know.
More on Karel's story on the following link - http://americanpowsofjapan.blogspot.com/2015/07/annals-of-mitsuis-miike-mine-karel-aster.html
Karel will soon be 97 years old.
John Nash Bata, 20.3.2017
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