Harold
G. (Snuff) Kurvers
Harold G. Kurvers was
born on 18 May 1918 in St Paul, MN, and with the exception of his military
service is a lifelong resident of the city. He grew up on Rice Street, and
attended Washington High School until 1936. After this he worked a number of
jobs before being drafted into the US Army in April 1941. He completed basic
training at Ft Lewis, WA, and joined the 194th Tank Battalion as a medic. In
September 1941 this unit was posted to the Philippines, to Ft Stotsenberg, north
of Manila and near the USAAF's Clark Field. With the Japanese attack of December
1941, Harold's unit was forced to retreat; he was eventually captured at Bataan,
along with thousands of other American personnel. He survived the infamous
Bataan Death March and a brief stay at Camp O'Donnell (April - June 1942) before
being sent to Cabanatuan, Philippines, where he remained until October 1944.
Like all prisoners, Harold suffered from malnutrition, poor treatment, and
disease.
In October 1944, with the US invasion
of the Philippines, all prisoners were moved from Cabanatuan; Harold spent two
months in Manila's Bilibid Prison before being herded on 13 December 1944 with
1600 others onto a prison ship, the Oryoku Maru, bound for Japan. A day later,
the ship was sunk by US aircraft, with the loss of more than 300 prisoners;
Harold and others were transferred to another prison ship, the Enoura Maru, and,
when that was damaged by US aircraft, to the Brazil Maru, which finally docked
in Japan in late January 1945. Just 400 of the original 1600 prisoners were
still alive.
Now in Japan, Harold was sent to a
prison camp, Fukuoka #17, on the southern island of Kyushu, where he labored in
a coal mine. Conditions were difficult. Harold remained here until the war's end
in August 1945, when he was evacuated to the US. He was discharged in early
1946, but remained until the end of 1946 in Glen Lake Sanatorium, MN, recovering
from tuberculosis.
Once again a civilian, Harold and his
wife Dorothy (married 1946) settled in St Paul and raised three children; Harold
worked 36 years for the US Postal Service, retiring in 1983.
Biographical information and
all interview content © Thomas Saylor, 2001-02
See Photos Link at end of this page
The
following is a fascinating interview:
Interviewee:
Harold “Snuff” Kurvers
Interviewer: Thomas Saylor, Ph.D.
Date of interview: 18 March 2002
Location: living room of the Kurvers home, St Paul, MN
Transcribed by: Linda Gerber, August 2002
Edited by: Thomas Saylor, January 2003
Interview key:
T = Thomas Saylor
H = Harold Kurvers
T: This is the 18th of March 2002 and this is the interview with Harold “Snuff” Kurvers. First, I want to thank you very much for taking time out of your day to speak with me. Thanks a lot.
H: You’re welcome.
T: Snuff, can you tell us a little bit about where you grew up?
H: Yes, I grew up in St. Paul, the Rice Street area. That’s a well-known area in St. Paul. It was a learning experience. It helped me get through where I was. In that area, we used to say, “if you couldn’t take him, don’t mess around with him.” That kind of thinking helped a lot later, when I was a POW.
T: Learning to think on your feet?
H: Yes. It was an education.
T: Did you attend school and high school in St. Paul, too?
H: Yes. [In St Paul I attended] St. Bernard’s, a Catholic grade school, and I went to Washington High School for half a year. Skipped a half and went a half. Then broke a leg and then quit.
T: When you left high school, when was that?
H: In 1936.
T: What did you do with yourself then?
H: I was working different odd jobs. Trying everything. I didn’t play professional ball, but I played ball in the summertime. Looking for odds and ends. Different jobs. It was tough at that time. There were a lot of places that had signs “No Help Wanted.” They had signs there: “No Help Wanted.” I did a lot of different things just for short periods of time. Then finally in 1940 I went to work for the railroad. My Dad worked there, and I used to ask him when there’s an opening, but he didn’t want me to work there. He thought it was a miserable place to work. But finally, after complaining to him about not being able to find anything, he told me they were hiring.
T: You worked a number of odd jobs until 1941, when you joined the Army. Or were you drafted?
H: I was drafted, on April 14, 1941.
T: How did you react to getting a letter that you were to be drafted?
H: I accepted it, I knew it was coming up. I didn’t relish it, I knew it wouldn’t like it, and I didn’t. That regimentation, I didn’t go for that.
T: Was it a way, in a sense, to at least have some kind of stability? Was that a welcome for you or would you just as soon stay out of the Army?
H: I would just as soon have stayed out.
T: How did your loved ones respond to you joining the military, your grandmother and your Dad?
H: Oh, my grandmother, I grew up with her, but she died before I was drafted. My Dad didn’t care for it too much, but he knew. You were drafted and it was like a duty and I accepted it as such. I didn’t care for it but I didn’t rebel.
T: You just showed up when they told you to.
H: Yes.
T: Were did you go for basic training?
H: We were inducted at Fort Snelling [in Minneapolis]. We were there about three days and went to Fort Lewis, Washington. I joined the 194th Tank Battalion.
T: When were you sent to the Philippines?
H: September. We left sometime about September 6, 1941. We left Fort Lewis and we got there on the 22nd, I think. These dates are approximate.
T: So before the end of September you were in the Philippines.
H: We got there about the 22nd. We pulled into Manila Bay on, I believe, the 21st or 22nd, a nineteen day trip. I saw the city. I said, “I’ve seen it. Let’s go back.”
T: What was the general mood among the guys that you were with, that some kind of war was coming or not?
H: Just wondering, I think. There was nothing definite. I don’t think we thought about it that much. In fact, we had a … Bill McKeon, two days before the war erupted he said, “They wouldn’t dare, they wouldn’t dare! We’d wipe ‘em out in three weeks!” He heard about that the rest of his life.
T: When you were in the Philippines, did you think about why we had been sent to the Philippines? After all, you were a tank battalion.
H: Yes. We wondered what we were doing over there. That terrain over there, we wondered, what were tanks going to be doing? But not being Army intelligence, not thinking about what would be proper over there, I think we just accepted it.
T: What was camp like in the Philippines? You were at Fort Stotsenberg, right?
H: Fort Stotsenberg, yes. It was pretty good duty. We had a siesta from noon until three because it was ungodly hot there. I said before, I was a medic, and we were supposed to get some training, and there wasn’t hardly any training whatsoever. It was terrible.
T: Were you expected to do the job of a medic even without the training?
H: Yes. We were line medics. Any casualties or anything went to a hospital. I think they were called base hospitals. Most of our cases we had when we were on Bataan were malaria cases. The injured, we didn’t take care of any of that in a line hospital. If you were with a unit when somebody got hit, I suppose you would, but we weren’t with them. We were just living on base here, taking care of the guys that came in with malaria, dengue fever, whatever.
T: So very different than treating casualties.
H: Yes. Most of mine was as a driver, driving ambulance.
T: So you did a lot of transporting?
H: Yes, that’s what I did. We had four crews. It was just a short time before we went overseas that they formed that medical detachment. They drafted us draftees into that because the national guardsmen didn’t want any part of it.
T: You didn’t volunteer for overseas duty, did you?
H: No.
T: On the 7th of December 1941, the Japanese attacked not only Pearl Harbor but many other locations in the Pacific, the Philippines included. What were you doing when you heard the news that the Philippines was being attacked?
H: We woke up. We heard that Pearl was being hit. Being across the dateline we were hit the same day. To us it was about six o’clock in the morning that Pearl was hit. That makes me think it was about six o’clock at night at Pearl, wasn’t it?
T: Pearl was hit on Sunday morning.
H: Was it morning?
T: Yes, Sunday morning.
H: Yes, that would have been six o’clock in the morning to us. So at noon [local time] we got hit. We were on Clark Field. The tanks and that were around Clark Field. I can remember when planes started coming over. We looked up and talked about a beautiful formation. Which planes are they? All of a sudden bombs started dropping. We knew—it was Japanese. So we got hit the same day as Pearl, but the notoriety goes to Pearl.
T: All the notoriety, yes. These were Japanese carrier-based aircraft attacking you?
H: Yes, or maybe it was land-based aircraft. Like it was six hours later. Our planes were up, went over Formosa, and some of the guys heard this in camp, and thought it might be rumors. But later on, I talked to other guys, and no, it was true. They wanted to drop but they couldn’t get orders to drop. Here Pearl had already been hit, but war had not been declared. Bombs dropped.
T: Right.
H: They didn’t do it, but they could have. They landed. They came back in right about the noon hour, and they wiped out our air force. Just came in. We wound up with, I don’t know, a handful of P-40s or whatever.
T: How did you react personally to the war suddenly being a real thing?
H: I don’t know. It was a scary feeling. One incident: we had a fella with us that was a college graduate. He had a degree in journalism. I was kind of envious of him. He was about the same age [as me]. He had all this going for him. And the first day of that bombing we hit the dirt. This guy, with the degree, didn’t have moxy enough to go down. And we were screaming at him. I thought, “Books aren’t everything.” It’s strange that I should remember that. We scattered around. It’s something different. I was carrying a .45 [caliber pistol]. You’re not going to hit a plane with a .45, but you’re doing it anyway, you’re firing it.
T: Is it just sort of an automatic response?
H: Yes. You may as well go after them.
T: So I take it that the ground fire was pretty ineffective against the planes?
H: Yes. I saw a couple planes go down, but I don’t know what got them. I have no idea. I don’t think any of ours got up there. I can’t remember if any of our planes got up there or not. We were eating at the time. The planes were all…. I don’t know if any of them were camouflaged or not, I can’t remember that. But they wiped us out that first day.
T: Did your unit then move from positions on Clark Field to somewhere else?
H: Yes. We never got back. Most of us, almost all of us, never got back to that area again. Everything we owned was in that place. We don’t know if it even was destroyed. We never got back to that. We went to different places—went up north in Luzon, went down south to Well. They were trying to cover all these areas, with tanks going to different places where there were supposed to be landings. We lost a couple of tanks in A Company, a couple [from a unit that came from] Brainerd [Minnesota], they lost some tanks on that. You’d had to talk to those guys who were in the line outfit to give you better detail.
T: What was your experience at this time as you moved away from Clark Field. What are you doing and what’s going through your mind?
H: I don’t really remember. A lot of wondering what was going on. What’s happening? You’re put in that position. I don’t know if you even have time to think. It was really chaotic.
T: Were Japanese aircraft occasionally bombing your position where you were?
H: Yes, oh yes. We got back on Bataan. They were shelling quite a bit, and bombing. Not getting much sleep. Pretty much blurred all the time. Every place we went, I don’t remember digging that many foxholes because everyplace we went there was… Let me tell you, as we moved back into Bataan they were already dug so we were using them.
T: Was the lack of sleep a problem?
H: Yes. We were kind of beat. The big thing was lack of food. The day the war broke out we went on two meals a day, and shortly after the first of the year [1942] we went on two meals of rice. So all of us, most of us, lost weight. I weighed about a hundred and fifty-five pounds and, I would guess, I wasn’t near a scale, but I would guess I lost about twenty-five, thirty pounds. All of us, the fatigues we had, there wasn’t a uniform then per se, they were just hanging on us. The ring I wore would almost fall off [my finger].
T: American troops were finally surrendered in early April.
H: On April 9th 1942, yes.
T: What was the condition of the troops from your perspective about that time before the surrender?
H: The thoughts?
T: The condition, the thoughts perhaps, or just the mental and physical condition.
H: We were tired, tired and beat. The thoughts . . . It was up in the air. We didn’t know what was going to happen. Rumors fly like crazy at times like that. We were thinking that they were going to take us to Manila. Even before the march, we wondered what was going to happen. Then we sat talking about if they were going to take us to Manila and we were going to be freed, you know, exchanged for enemy prisoners or whatever. It was wild thinking—rumors like crazy. Well, not so much there, but [later] in camps. Rumors were just wild.
T: So before the surrender there was this kind of realization that the surrender was going to happen?
H: I don’t know if we did think that way. I think the guys thought they were going to weather it out, you know, until help came. Our friend [General Douglas] MacArthur promised thousands of planes, hundreds of ships were coming in. It didn’t happen.
T: When the troops were surrendered, how did that impact the mood of people around you?
H: Disappointed, sad. They were down.
T: Was there fear as well?
H: No, because we didn’t know what we were going into. If we’d have known what we were going into there would have been fear, but we had no idea. You’d never been in that situation before, so you didn’t know what to expect. It was, I don’t know, like some of the guys later on said, I don’t think at that time they were ashamed of it, because later General King insisted, “You guys did not surrender. I surrendered you.” But some guys are still carrying thoughts that they gave up.
T: Kind of a guilt thing?
H: Yes.
T: How about for you personally? Do you remember the actual surrender?
H: The only thing I remember is Colonel Miller saying that they had surrendered, and what to do was to destroy anything that [the Japanese] could use. All of the vehicles, everything. Probably a bad move. Maybe we could have used them instead of marching out of there. They say a march, but it wasn’t a march. It was a walk out of there. The conditions we were in, you don’t march—you walk.
T: Did everyone walk out together?
H: We were in groups. Speaking for myself, I wasn’t with the same group all the time. If I felt tired and I saw somebody on the side, another group that was taking a rest and I knew somebody in that group, I broke. I looked around at the Japanese guards. If they weren’t alert to that, I’d rest with them. I don’t know how many days. Some of the guys say how long they were on the march, but I can’t tell you. I think six, seven, eight days. I don’t know because it’s just, if they broke . . . I told you about growing up on Rice Street. I noticed right away that the Japanese, if somebody goofed, they went after the person closest to them.
T: Not necessarily the person who goofed?
H: No, that’s right, and I spotted it. That’s Rice Street education. It’s common street smarts. I noticed that and I was always away from them. I was in the middle. I never got hit once on that march, not once. I got a few after that, but it was unavoidable.
T: On this march what memories or what incidents remain in your mind?
H: Being hungry and thirsty. I remember a sugar cane field. A bunch of us broke into that and got by with it, because usually when we broke out of ranks they shot. But we broke, and broke off some of that stuff. I got some sugar cane. Vividly remember that, sucking on that. You could feel the energy. In that condition, I don’t know if you’re a healthy person, but in that condition I could feel that energy surge through me. It would give you that extra shot.
T: Do you suck the juice from the cane?
H: We were sucking on that, yes. You broke it off and then sucked it. I can only remember that one section there, too, it didn’t happen all the way up. It was just that one area. That’s what I remember about it. I remember a guy by the name Harry Heikila from Superior, Wisconsin. They have water shooting out of a spout, or whatever it is, and I remember breaking for that and he went to that. The Japanese went after him and swung his rifle. The butt of the gun hit him on the elbow and that elbow came out three-quarters of an inch or an inch. He just stared at them and said, “You son of a …” If the Japanese had heard, I think he would have shot him right there, if he’d understood that. He cussed him out like crazy. I can remember one of the cities, the first place they were going to feed us. Some guy tried to get two of them. They broke the ranks and we didn’t get anything. I can’t remember any other place being given rice.
T: Were you fed regularly on the walk?
H: No. No, I can’t remember. That’s one thing in my mind. I remember that one place, and I can’t remember any other places that we were being fed. We dug up some sinkomas. They were a vegetable. When they’d rest us someplace, some farm things that sinkomas . . . I can’t think of what it would be like. It was real juicy. It was underground, and we dug it up. We ate that. And water was at a premium. We just had a cupful of water, or what was in a canteen. I hid a sack full of rice, not a sack full, a sock full of rice, a guy named Harold Van Alstyne and I, and he hid some soup extract or something. We put that in there. We built a little fire and cooked that up one night.
T: What was more important, do you think, a sense of physical strength or a sense of mental strength at this time?
H: That’s a toss up. You had to have that mental strength to go too, you know. Yes, you had to have that. To keep going. And I don’t . . . See, I bank on God so much.
T: At the time, was your faith an important thing?
H: Oh, yes. Always.
T: How did that provide strength for you personally?
H:
I don’t know. I just had that.
I don’t know where I got it. It
was there, all the time. I did a
lot of begging, said a lot of prayers. Praying
made up prayers. I don’t know how
anybody got through that without [faith].
I knew one
fella when we were up in Fort Lewis. We’d
get up and go to our services, you know, different ones, and he was giving us a
little heat. But when we got into
Bataan, I hit a foxhole during the shelling and bombing,
probably all at the same time, and he hit the same hole with me.
And he said, “Snuff, I believe there’s a God.
Would you teach me to pray? I’m ready.”
So I said the Lord’s Prayer, and he said it with me.
T: So in that situation you remember that he had a different attitude.
H: Yes.
T: The Bataan Death March—were there some guys who couldn’t make it?
H: Yes, some of them. They talk about the deaths and that. We were one of the first groups out of there and I saw my share of bodies on the side and, I don’t know, I think some of them were killed. I only had one experience where I thought a guy was trying to get away. And a Japanese guard walked him, there was kind of a hill, they walked around there. I heard the gun fire and [the Japanese] came back alone, so I had to think that’s what happened to him. God spared me seeing any other ones. I saw a lot of bodies, but not the actual shooting of them. And I saw . . . there were gullies alongside the road with water running through there, so if you were thirsty, you went over there and drank some of that, and another half block there’d be a body. I don’t know if the water went through [the corpse], but it went by him.
T: At the conclusion of that march, were people kept together in one camp, the survivors?
H: We went to San Fernando, that was the name of the place I was in. A gathering place for all the guys before they shipped us out. I don’t know how many days we were there, but it was a mess, too. Just laying around with the other guys. Every place you stopped you saw human feces.
T: There were no toilet facilities?
H: No facilities. And it seemed that they threw up a fence around where you were, just so you couldn’t get away. If they would rest you, it would be in the sun; it would never be in a shady area. It was always in the sun when they stopped. We had one group for one stretch there, I don’t know how long it was really, with guards on bicycles. We were supposed to keep up with them.
T: They were riding and you were walking?
H: Yes. Kura! Kura! Hiako. Hiako. “Hurry! Hurry!” Real fortunate. The last leg, I was really in a bad way. We got some guards that put the sickest, lamest in front so we couldn’t….nobody could go faster than those people. That was kind of a break.
T: For those guys especially, I guess. They didn’t get left behind.
H: Yes. I can’t use the language on tape, but . . . I conked out. I was laying on the side at a rest break, and Harry Heikila and one of them, a guy named Pickel, they wanted to sit with me. “We’re going now.” I said, “I’m not going on. I’ve had it.” They said, “They’re going to kill you.” I said, “Go ahead and let them kill me.” But they picked me up, and I don’t think I was a burden on them. I had my arms over their shoulders. I don’t think they were carrying my weight. I was just more kind of embracing them, and they helped me the last six or seven miles, whatever it was.
T: This is the guy from Superior, Wisconsin?
H: Yes. He died. There’s a guilt feeling there. He died within a month after we got to [Camp] O’Donnell. Pickel, I don’t know whatever happened to him. He might still be alive, I don’t know. Having helped me . . . He did get me out of trouble. It wasn’t that they killed him. I think he had malaria.
T: Malaria killed some but not all who got it, right?
H: Yes. A lot of them had that cerebral malaria.
T: Camp O’Donnell was the first real stop, first permanent stop?
H: First permanent stop. From San Fernando we took a train, packed so you couldn’t move. Some guys said, I don’t know if it ever happened, some guys said [other guys] died in there standing up. They couldn’t even drop.
T: It was that full of guys?
H: Yes, it was that full. And a lot of the cars were closed, with no air coming in. But the car I was in, it seems to me the door was somewhat ajar. I kind of remember that. But I was back [in the car,] I wasn’t near the door. I don’t know how far that was, but then we got off of the train and walked about seven kilometers from Capas to [Camp] O’Donnell. Capas was the name of the town there.
T: Were all the survivors then taken to Camp O’Donnell?
H: Yes. Those that made it, yes, they ended up at O’Donnell. Some of those guys volunteered to get out of there in a hurry. I was one of those people who didn’t volunteer for anything. I didn’t put myself up for anything. I don’t know if it was wrong or not, because with so many dying . . . We had thirty, forty a day dying a day.
T: How long were you in O’Donnell?
H: I was there from the day we reached O’Donnell until, I think, the middle of June or July [1942]. Some time in June.
T: Were guys being slowly taken out of O’Donnell and sent other places?
H: Yes. You volunteered for different details. They referred to them as details. This guy I’m reading a book on, he went on a detail of dismantling vehicles and sending the metal back to Japan for their war efforts.
T: You ended up at Cabanatuan. You volunteered for that detail?
H: No. We were, I don’t know how many of us there were, we were sent there that time. We went over there, and thought it would be a better deal. We got there…
T: Was O’Donnell a bad deal by this time?
H: Oh, yes. It was right from the word go. Guys had no water there—I think twice a day, an hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon. A continuous line. People waiting in line to get water. Some of the guys who weren’t able to get there had their buddies, the one next to them, going up there with their canteens. If they had a canteen. There were some guys that had bamboo. I don’t know if you’ve seen bamboo, about like that. (cups hands) They’d hollow that out and make like a cup and get water in that.
T: Anything that would hold water.
H: Yes.
T: Was there a problem with overcrowding or with food at O’Donnell as well?
H: Yes. There were between ten and eleven thousand men that surrendered and I think about a thousand died. So there were nine or ten thousand in that camp.
T: You said guys were dying left and right at Camp O’Donnell.
H: Yes. Thirty or forty a day died. With us it was twelve hours a day, the Filipinos it was twenty-four hours a day. They were in a camp across the road from us, up a ways. I don’t know how far away. But it was a continuous stream of bodies going by, being carried by the people that were on this detail. They carried the dead away from there.
T: So our prisoners were detailed to take the dead corpses out?
H: Yes. It was a mass grave that they buried them in. It wasn’t very deep, either, because . . . I keep thinking of the people that want to bring their loved ones back, and I suggest you don’t, because you don’t know. Some of them were not wearing dog tags. I wasn’t strong enough to be on any of those details, those burial details. But they said that it was mass graves, and they weren’t buried that deep. Rainy, suddenly wash the bodies up again. I never was out there.
T: You mentioned your health being not so good in O’Donnell.
H: I had beri beri quite a bit. Legs were swollen up and I remember, you get very tired. At night, we slept on the ground, and I would lay with my legs above my head, and the next day I would get up and no one would recognize me. All that water went into my face. I think a lot of people had heart problems because of that. So far, fortunately, I don’t think I’ve had any.
T: When the word came for you to go to Cabanatuan, how did you feel?
H:
I don’t know. It seems like
you’re a zombie. You take anything as it comes. You just don’t even think
about what’s going on, in my case. I can’t speak for anybody else, but you just take it.
You’re going to go someplace better. But it was better after a while.
The guys from Corregidor were over there who had fared pretty well throughout
the war as far as eating, and that so when we got to the camp, they looked
great.
In fact,
there was this fella named George Grul. I saw him, he got hit on Bataan. He had
some shrapnel in his butt and stomach, and he was in the camp.
He looked pretty good because he’d in the hospital.
He wasn’t on that march. And
he looked pretty good. In fact, he
gave me a shelter half. You’ve
heard of a shelter half/ Two guys
in the field would have each have a shelter half. Well he had one half of that,
and he gave it to me, so I had something to lay on. Then he came down with
diphtheria. They put him in the
hospital area. He was in a bad way, so I gave it back to him.
He died about three days later. I
might just as well as kept it. It
was lost completely then.
T: People died on a regular basis. Did this make it difficult to make friends or have people to depend on?
H: I don’t know. You were kind of on your own. I don’t think you depended upon anybody. You were mostly on your own, I think. It was sad to see [people dying]. Again, you become hardened to that. It bothers you. It did me. I can’t say that for everybody, but it did bother me. I’m thinking, “Am I going to be this way the rest of my life?” No compassion. It was strange. We went to view a body of a person that was caught trying to escape. His head’s caved in and his eye was gouged out. He was dead. [The Japanese] took us shack by shack to go through there, to view that body, and show us what was going to happen to us if we tried to escape. As we were going through there I remember the guys saying, “Look. He’s got a new pair of shoes. I wonder who’s going to get those?” That’s a strange thing to hear when you’re viewing a body like that. Where’s a man’s heart? (pauses three seconds) It’s gone.
T: Replaced by a sense of keeping oneself alive?
H: I don’t know. I don’t know what it is. It’s just a feeling that I don’t care for. Like I say, I speak for myself. I was thinking, “Geez, this is terrible.” You’re tossing those bodies around. I’d worked in a hospital area and was lifting those bodies just like a piece of log, you know. And that gets to you. Well, it didn’t get to you, but you wonder: are you going to be this way the rest of your life?
T: So you felt in yourself, too, a sense of compassion or a sense of humanity kind of drifting away?
H: Faded. It bothers you. It did me. And I’m sure anybody that’s got a heart is going to be bothered. I can remember, getting back home, about five of us went to a movie. It was a tear-jerker. We came out of there and our eyes were all red and it was a terrific feeling—to know that you had that ability to cry.
(1,B,488)
T: Almost a confirmation that it didn’t leave forever?
H: Yes.
T: Very good addition you made there. That was after the war was over?
H: Yes, that was after, when we were in Frisco. About five of us went in. We were going to go to a bar, but it was too early, so we went to a movie. In fact, we weren’t even in uniform. We went in hospital garb.
T: That’s a very interesting point. Were most guys pretty much affected the same way, do you think?
H: I don’t know. I didn’t discuss that that much. I guess they would be, if you had a heart. If you had that compassion before, I’m sure it would be.
T: If you kept your sense of compassion in a situation like this you could go nuts, couldn’t you?
H: Yes.
T: Snuff, what kind of work were you doing in Cabanatuan?
H: I was working on a farm. To begin with, I couldn’t do anything. I was about eighty pounds.
T: That’s skin and bones.
H: Yes. I was in a building with a group of people that were not on the march. There were just two of us that were on the march that were in that building and this guy by the name of Baker he lay there in a fetal position all the time. I’d bring his rice to him. He’d push it away. He said, “We don’t feed our dogs this.” There’s another guilt that came out of me. I tried to force him to eat, but he wouldn’t. Instead of destroying it, I ate it. It’s the guilt thinking that, well, maybe I could have gotten him to eat. I fought to get him to eat, but he didn’t want to eat.
T: Did he die in the hospital?
H: He died there, yes.
T: Did you feel guilty eating his food?
H:
Sure. I brought it for him, not for me, with the full intention of getting it
into him. I tried to get it into him, but he wouldn’t eat. I was able go to
the mess hall and get it. He
wasn’t, so I brought it back here. In
fact I think there was a sergeant, Paddington,
we used to call him “Pop.” Everybody
forty years old was “Pop,” you know. But anyway, he was from Idaho. If I’d
been him that assigned me to that, I’d
have made sure that he got that food and brought it back, because he could not
get out of there.
At
that time they didn’t have a hospital per se.
It wasn’t set up there. He
could have been put there. It was a
guilt feeling. A lot of them say,
“Why? It was just going to go to waste anyway.”
And then I was fortunate, I kept God with me. In that shack was a mess
sergeant and he said, because of the condition I was in, he put me in the
kitchen. That was a guy by the name
of Tony Falletta. He was tall and
skinny, and he’d mention about it, and he’d say it in broken Italian. He spoke perfect English, but he would go into that jokingly.
He said, “Soon you have a big ponzo [slang: stomach] like that,” he said.
And it was true—after I was working a while I was eating properly, not
getting any more than the rest, but I was eating more than I had been eating.
T: Which was next to nothing at first.
H: When you first started out you got the ponzo here, the stomach, you know. Big, strong. It worked out that way. I worked there quite a long time. Then when that broke up I was working on a farm. And then we got shipped to Japan.
T: So between the middle of 1942 and the time you went to Japan at the end of 1944, that’s over two years. You were at Cabanatuan most of that time?
H: All the time.
T: Bilibid Prison in Manila was just a stopover?
H: Stopover. I think we got down there in either September [1944] …the first bombing was September 19th or 20th or something like that. [The Americans] hit Luzon. Then they moved us down to Bilibid and we were there in October sometime, until December 13th [1944]. That’s when we got on that first ship.
T: What other kind of work did you do at Cabanatuan?
H: That was it. Just in the kitchen. Like I say, God was with me. Then I went to the farm.
T: What kind of work on the farm?
H: Pulling weeds out of rice paddies and different things. Want to hear a funny story? We had a colonel, O. O. Wilson, we called him “Zero.” Lieutenant colonel. Full colonels were out; officers were not working at that time. Up until then, and there was such a shortage of people, that they started working some of the officers. They came up with, we called it the Dainty Defecators Detail. A fifty gallon drum that was cut part way. They had punched holes in the sides of this barrel, big strands of wire. They carried this . . .
T: Load of crap?
H: This load of crap on bamboo strips, like that. (both laugh) They had [the bamboo strips] on their shoulder. You’re walking with that thing, and you’ve got to be out of step. If you misstep, that barrel flops back and forth. You have to be out of step. They’re going south, into a south wind, and these two guys are in step. And that thing is going back and forth. He came to our area, and he had from head to toe sprayed with shit. They set the bucket down and he sniffs around. He said, “I don’t know what it is, men, but I smell shit someplace around here.” He’s got thirty-five gallons of it and he’s sprayed from head to foot.
T: He must have realized . . .
H: He knew. Oh, yes. He was a very humorous guy. (laughs)
T: Let me ask you about humor. How important was humor?
H: Such humor was important, yes. You didn’t realize it until after you were out. But there wasn’t that much to laugh about, either. There was, but you didn’t realize it at the time. Later on you think of the humorous things that happened. I don’t know if I laughed when he said that or not, but I remember how humorous that was. They put on some shows there that were humorous. We laughed at that.
T: Were there guys who had trouble laughing or had trouble with a sense of humor?
H: Yes. And none of those came back, I don’t think. Because everybody I know, everybody that I know has got a sense of humor. We were always kidding. They talk about that as a joke.
T: That sounds like it was a really important part of the day to day existence of keeping your head on?
H: The laughter, yes. And we must have been laughing, because so many things….things that referred to the Japs and things…….there was one….There was one Jap they called Horseshit….
T: Among yourselves you called him that.
H: Yes. He knew it. “Watachewa” he’d say, and he’d point to himself. “Watacha.” Horseshit. We go like this (point to shit). One day they went by some pile of manure and they told him, “Watachewa. Horseshit. Onaji. The same, you’re the same.” What? And he worked that guy over. They should never have told him. Some of the guys told him, well onaji means the same thing. So they pointed to that pile of crap on the road, and to him, that’s the same. He found out what he was being called all this time. He didn’t know what it was, and this idiot tells him, which wasn’t very bright on his part.
T: That doesn’t sound like the brightest thing to do. Snuff, what about the treatment from the Japanese? Could we say there were good Japanese and bad Japanese?
H: Pappy Green used to say that the only good one was dead. [The Japanese] killed their own in that camp, too. They had the training area in the back there. I remember we had one guy that we referred to as Fishface. He was training a bunch. I think these guys were Formosans.
T: They were ethnic Chinese?
H: Yes. They were from Formosa [which was occupied by the Japanese during the war,] and they were being trained there. There was a little pudgy guy. He was about a lap and a half behind the rest of them doing the laps around that field. This Swordfish comes up to him with a saber and cuts him. The next thing we see smoke coming out from where they cremated their bodies. Pappy Green says, “There goes another good one.”
T: They were killing their own people?
H: Yes. I don’t say that much, but that one was. We think it was, because the next thing we saw smoke in there. So they were cruel to their own people. In fact, I [told that story one time] on radio. One time a guy calls in and said, “Well, they were cruel to their own people, too.” I said, “That didn’t make it any easier for us, because if you’re getting beat and I’m getting beat, it’s not going to help me any at all.”
T: Did the guards change often or did you see people for quite an extended period of time?
H: These were all has-beens, I think, that they were using as guards. We had a two, Little Speedo and Big Speedo. Big Speedo was really a good one. If he had you on a detail working something, for instance you were picking up stuff and you bypassed a pile of debris that you were supposed to be picking up, he would go over and get the shovel and pick it up and bring it out and would not say anything to you. If another guard would strike you or belt you or whatever, he would go over and nail that guy. So he was good. In fact, after the war was over, there was a, I’m trying to come up with his name . . . anyway, he survived the ship and he came back, and he couldn’t come back to the States yet. He was wanted there [in the US].
T: An American?
H: He was an operator, by the name of Ted Lewin. He opened up a place, I can’t remember the name of the town, in Japan or China or where ever it was. He got Big Speedo as a bouncer. [This American] was wanted here for murder or something. He was from Chicago.
T: So he couldn’t come back here.
H: No. At least that was the talk in camp.
T: So you would differentiate? Do I hear you saying that the Japanese were not all bad, and neither were they all good?
H: The only problem was that we didn’t know who we could trust. Sometimes they could give you a cigarette, then the next thing kick it out of your mouth, so we didn’t know if we could trust them all the while. We had some in the mine [I worked in when I was in Japan] that didn’t bother us, but other ones did. I don’t understand their culture. Just because you couldn’t understand their language, you were belted for that. We couldn’t do that.
T: Because you couldn’t understand the language they would hit you?
H: Yes. They’d say something. The first thing you learned is wakaki nai, which is “I don’t understand.” I’m way ahead of time here [with this story, by the way]. I’m in Japan. We were in the mine drilling and a guy was guiding his jack hammer at my shoulder. He wanted to see how far we had been in there so he could place the [explosive] charge in there. He came and said something to me and I said, “Wakaki nai,” and he said it again. I said “Wakaki nai.” He brought a fist up from the floor just as far as you could. In fact, he hit me hard, and I didn’t go down. I thought I was back in my Rice Street backyard. And then he took my hand and put it over a vent on the side of the jackhammer. I could see his reasoning for that. There was some oil shooting out of the side. It was hitting him in the face, and he wanted to look in there to see how deep we were with that, how deep we had drilled. Now he should have done that right away. Just put it over there. I could see why he would want that because that oil was shooting in his face. If it was reversed, that’s what I would have done. I’d not belted him.
T: How do you think the Japanese perceived prisoners? What did they think of them?
H: I don’t know what they thought. To begin with, they said that we were cowards. They don’t surrender, that they said. There were some that did surrender, but it was a disgrace if they surrendered. Probably there’s a difference.
T: Can you say something about the food at Cabanatuan? What was the typical diet?
H: Rice. A lot of rice. At one time I think, if I’m right, Filipinos were allowed to send rice in to us, and we got an abundance of it. So you get built up to where you’re pretty strong. But rice is all water, and if you get hit with dengue or malaria, then you’re almost down to nothing in a few days again. If the fever is extended a couple of days, you go down. Nine months, ten months, whatever it was, we got enough. We started playing volleyball there, playing softball.
T: So conditions were getting a little better?
H: You know the mess kit? When that started coming in, the bunches of rice, you could hear guys night and day, pounding. The mess kits were that deep (holds fingers about an inch apart). Bend it out and make hold more. It was almost like a bowl. It was that deep (holds fingers closer to two inches apart). Real thin, the metal would be real thin. They pounded it out. Because they’d get it loaded up with rice. You could get all you wanted.
T: So you had your own mess kit?
H: If you were fortunate. You gained it by attrition. But you had to keep track of it.
T: Was there other food as well besides rice?
H: There was a weed soup. Then we got commodie, it was almost like a sweet potato, and things like corn, we got it when they didn’t want it. To cut that corn off the cob, you’d have to sharpen your knife. We soaked it and made hominy out of it. It had to be soaked for a couple of days it was so hard. All I can say is you’d have to sharpen your knife. And there was a sinkamas, another kind of a vegetable. Mostly weed soup. We’d get piles of it. It was moldy, almost like that (points to a green item in living room).
T: Any fish or any kind of meat?
H: Later on. Not fish. I think we got fish in Japan. No, we got caribou. Not caribou like ours, it’s like a cow. You’d see a piece, a couple pieces in your soup or whatever.
T: That was something that didn’t happen every day.
H: No.
T: Was there enough food?
H: You were hungry all the time. Even when you were full, you were hungry. There was something your system was crying for. Rice doesn’t cut the mustard. Fills you up, but lacks something. You get filled up, but there’s a craving for something. Your body is craving something, whatever it is. Even though you’re full, there’s something you need.
T: Were there rumors about how the war was going outside the camp?
H: Lot of rumors, but you didn’t believe them. Because so many…somebody would start a rumor. We talked about this [when I was on local television,] on Channel 2. I don’t where you got it from. You’d start a rumor at one end of the building, and the guy would run to the other end and see how it had changed by the time it got there.
T: So you learned really not to trust what you heard?
H: That’s right. As an optimist, you were always hoping it was true, if it’s good.
T: But you didn’t believe it, you hoped it?
H: Yes. You were on the edge on that. I used to go to one guy who was from Brainerd, A. B. Thomas, he was in a bad way. Every time I’d hear something good I’d go to him and he would just light up. I knew it was helping him.
T: So you didn’t mind telling him because it seemed to be helping him a little bit.
H: Yes. He would just grin. “Is it really true?” “Well, they say, you know.” Then we found out that some of the stuff about the war going on was true, because there was a radio in camp someplace and they were getting that. Where these Americans were coming up. But we didn’t know that until later on, that [the rumors] were true.
T: When you moved from Cabanatuan in 1944 the Americans were attacking the Philippines.
H: They were bombing there at that time I left there. I just missed the [American] landing by . . . let’s see . . . I think we left there about the 28th of December [1944] and I think they hit Linguyen, troops came there about the 7th or 8th of January [1945].
T: So right after you left Manila.
H: Yes. Right after we were up at Linguyen.
T: How did you get from Cabanatuan to Bilibid Prison? That was your next step.
H: That was a truck.
T: Did you work at Bilibid?
H: No. Just held there. Didn’t do a thing. Nothing.
T: What were the conditions like there?
H: I’d have gone bananas in that place. I don’t know how some people coped in there. They had all the bad cases, the injured, legless, armless, whatever. They were there the entire time. There was a high wall there. Maybe if I’d been right there from the word go, maybe I could have done it. Being able to see around, though, and then wind up in that place . . .
T: Claustrophobic, was it?
H: I still have it. Bad. I wasn’t there long enough to build it up there, claustrophobia. It was aboard that ship [going to Japan] or in the mine [in Japan] that it hit me. Because when I go to church now, I have to be near a door. I don’t want anything behind me. I usually try to get behind kind of a pillar. I always want to know the easiest way to get out. I know about three ways to get out of a place.
T: That has stuck with you?
H: Yes.
T: Were you like that before you went into the service?
H: No. Gosh no.
T: That’s one of the reasons why maybe flying doesn’t agree with you.
H: No. I don’t get on a plane. I was thinking, if I could be the pilot, that I think I’d be all right. If I had control of it.
T: You went from Okinawa to the Philippines after the war on a plane, right? How was that?
H: It was a strange one. I didn’t feel comfortable. We were up in the air and going down, and one of the guys said, “Geez, I hope we go further than we did last time.” I said, “Why?” He said, “We had to go back.”
T: What kind of plane was it that flew you from Okinawa?
H: A C-47 I think it was.
T: So a big transport plane.
H: Yes. And some guys dropped out of one of them. That’s what I heard. They were screwing around with the bomb-bay or something. Somebody screwed around and opened up. There was a person who had his back broken in the mines in Japan.
T: He survived all that stuff and then that happened.
H: We got to talking about that on the ship we were on. When we were in Japan [after the war ended in August 1945, the Americans] dropped food to us. Five cases of fruit cocktail. We didn’t know it at the time, but that’s what it came out to be. Five cases of fruit cocktail broke loose from the chute and came hurtling through the air, and they screamed, “Get out of the way!” Rowland, a guy by the name of Rowland, he was going through a malaria attack at the time, and you’re not with it then. It caught him and tore his leg off. The guys went to see him and he said, “Well, I guess it’s not everybody that can lose a leg to flying fruit cocktail.” And he died a couple days later. Secondary shock.
T: Was it while you were in Bilibid Prison that you learned that you were to be taken to Japan, or did they even tell you that?
H: We knew we were going to Japan. I think that’s where we first learned it. When we left Cabanatuan to go to Bilibid, I don’t think we knew about it then. I think it was when we got into Bilibid [that] we knew we were going to make the shipment. We knew about it because they would say we were going to leave tomorrow, and then the planes would come in.
T: American planes or theirs?
T: So the ironic thing was that the Americans were bombing our ships, actually our prisoners.
H: One thing about that I heard afterwards, and I thought it was terrible if it’s true, they said they had somebody inside the prison that was with intelligence. A rumor now is that he threw something over the fence to whoever was working, “Don’t bomb the next ship going out of here. It’s all prisoners of war on it.” And word came back, This is rumor; we have to sink everything. And to me, if that’s true, why would [the Americans do that] at that stage of the war? What could the Japanese be sending to Japan that is going to be aiding them in furthering their efforts?
T: What did the Americans figure it was, maybe munitions, or soldiers?
H: At that stage of the war? I could see it at the beginning, but at that stage? And then kill your own people to stop whatever they were sending, to avoid them getting it to Japan.
T: How did that make you feel at the time?
H: We didn’t realize it until later, until we were told about that. I didn’t hear it in camp but later on I heard about it. I thought, “Geez, that’s a hell of a way to ….” That late in the game of the war they had it going for them. How much could that have changed the face of the war?
T: In other words, the Americans might have known those were prisoners on those ships?
H: Yes. I think that’s a terrible thing. And also, before we got aboard that ship, they started running women and children and elderly Japanese, taking them back to their homeland. I thought, “Hey, that ship is okay,” because they let the Americans know that they were transporting women and children. So we’re going to be all right, they’re not going to hit us. Next day we got it.
T: The first ship you were on was the Oreyoko Maru. Did you move right from the prison to the ship?
H: Yes, we walked. I don’t know how many miles it was. It wasn’t that big a deal. To the port area.
T: You got right on the ship then?
H: Yes.
T: What were the conditions like on board that ship?
H: Terrible. Packed. Just packed. Shoulder to shoulder, belly to back. They went mad that very first night. Guys were cutting throats, sucking blood.
T: So you were standing up?
H: Standing up. Again, God was with me. I was fortunate. I was in the smallest group and our hatch cover wasn’t completely pulled, so we were getting some air. But the forward and after holds were just packed. Nothing.
T: No air coming in?
H: They were the ones that went berserk.
T: Obviously no facilities, no water?
H: No, there was nothing.
T: It makes you wonder. The Japanese must have known that this was going to cause ….
H: Oh, yes. I can’t remember where it was I read it. It said, they didn’t care if we died. (pauses three seconds) They didn’t.
T: Can you describe, from your own perspective, the conditions on the ship and what was around you, and what you saw or experienced?
H: Jammed in. Just screaming and hollering. I say they were [screaming and hollering]. Maybe I was doing it, too, I don’t know. We were in a smaller hold, a smaller group of people. We were shoulder to shoulder and just screaming, hollering, wild.
T: Guys going just berserk, it sounds like.
H: Yes.
T: Was there a sense of fear or anger? What emotions seemed to be most present?
H: Not anger. I don’t know if it was fear. I can remember on the first bombing [of this ship]. Come to think of it, we had enough room because I remember being on my knees and asking God to get it over with. Kill me. I got on my knees and begged. This is hard to believe, but when you’re thinking that way, fear is gone. You want to die. Fear is gone. It’s all over then. But through the bombing I didn’t care. But the next raid, again, the fear is back again. It’s the truth.
T: So it goes away at the time, but it returns again.
H: Yes. I didn’t go to that again, the prayer to get me out of that. The fear was there. I don’t know what I did. (pauses three seconds) It’s a helluva thing to go through.
T: Did the second bombing raid sink the ship? Is that what happened?
H: No. [The American planes] had to come back and sink it. The first and second one just, just saw a lot of harassing and bombs dropping. They had a direct hit on the after hold, blew out the side of the ship. I think there were between three and four hundred killed in that first raid.
T: How many guys were on board this ship?
H: Sixteen hundred and nineteen [1,619]. There were a number of English [POWs] with us there that came up from Singapore, or wherever they came from, that was with us. You can imagine how a person would feel. They came into Bilibid and they were emaciated, dirty, filthy, everything about them. And they told us what they had gone through, the holds in ships. They told us about it.
T: They had been on some ships.
H: Yes. They were telling us about it. They were telling us this story. Now you’re looking [today] at a healthy person. I’m telling you, and it’s hard for you to believe it. They were telling us that story, what’d they’d been through. Then we went through it, and only then did we realize what they were talking about.
T: Even though they told you, you almost couldn’t fathom it?
H: No. Couldn’t fathom it. And the condition they were in. Feces, everything. Bearded and dirty and emaciated. And they were telling us. We said, “Why, sure.” (disbelieving tone) It’s terrible. When we went through it, only then did we realize what they were talking about it.
T: It’s interesting from someone in your shoes, who had been through the prison experience for several years. One wants to think you would be able to believe their story, and yet not?
H: You believe them, but you don’t realize what they’re saying, how bad, what it is, until you go through it yourself.
T: How many days were you actually on the Oreyoko Maru before it was sunk?
H: I think it was the third day we got off of that. Then we were up in a tennis court. I think we were on either two or three days. It was sinking at the time—it was sunk after we got off. They took us off. We went off on our own. We had to dive overboard. Everybody was diving overboard.
T: So you knew the ship was sinking.
H: Yes, we knew. It was on fire.
T: Can you describe that experience ? You were in a hold somewhere and you ended up in the water. Can you go those steps of how you got there?
H: Yes. We were in the hold of the ship. We knew it was on fire. We knew it was sinking. The feeling was there—you knew it was going down. The guys started going up the ladder, to get topside. It was a rope ladder, and this Jap started shooting those guys. They dropped back in the hold and [the Japanese] pulled the ladder out. We were at a loss. What in the hell is going to happen now? And then a ladder comes down. We think [at the time] it’s the Japanese, but I told you [earlier] who it was. It was Lou Kohls.
T: An American who had got topside?
H: Yes.
T: How did he get out there?
H: He was in another hold. They were able to get out. Some of them got out. In fact, some of them got out the side of the ship. There was a hole blown in the side, and some of them went out through that. He heard us screaming and he looked down there ,and he saw us down there and saw that ladder there, and he dropped the ladder. He told me that in Pittsburgh, I don’t know what year it was, 1990 or something like that. It’s the first time I knew that it was an American that did it.
T: Did everyone who was in your hold get up the rope ladder?
H: That I know of. We didn’t get hit down there so I don’t know if anybody died down there during the session we were there. Anybody that could walk got out of there. For me, I looked over the side and oh, God, it was terrible. I told