John Perkowski's Pasay School Nichols Field Work Detail Account
Note: John was forced to do slave labor at the horrendous work detail known as Nichols Field.
The men where housed at a former girl's school, Pasay Schoolhouse.
When I asked him for any memories of that time, he submitted this account. April 2010.
The first POW detail to NF consisted of 100 men who were delivered by truck from Cabanatuan to the Pasay Schoolhouse located about 1 mile from Nichols Field. The Pasay Schoolhouse had administrative offices which were occupied by the Japs. The commander was a Navy Lieutenant who was dubbed “the white angel” since he was always dressed in a white Naval Officer’s uniform. There were 10 or 12 classrooms in which had been built a structure about 12 inches from the floor and set back about 3 feet from the wall nearest the center of the building. On this platform were Tutamin mats and each man was issued a blanket and a small rectangular straw pillow about 6” by 12” by 3”. The original detail occupied the south side of the schoolhouse using 5 or 6 of the classrooms. One thing I recall is that at dusk, clouds of mosquitoes came out from under the platforms to feast. Dengue fever and malaria soon spread to almost all of the POW’s.The Tutamin straw mats of the schoolhouse were also loaded with fleas. The lack of laundry facilities also led to lice infestations.
The Jap interpreter at Nichols Field was a Naval Officer. Before the war he had been a barber at the Topside PX on Corregidor.
The detail was used to build a diagonal runway at Nichols Field. The Japs provided narrow gauge rails on which small flatcars, with wooden A-frame fittings were loaded at high earthen locations and moved and dumped at lower elevations. The work was sheer labor for an under-nourished and ill POW but each day we were marched to and from Nichols Field and put in a 10-12 hour day filling the forms on the cars and moving it and dumping it. One thing we learned to do was to fill the forms with voids.
We had one nasty American sergeant; I don’t recall his name, who brown-nosed the Japs. I think they gave him some extra chow and he was forever trying to get the POW’s to work faster yelling, “Hayaku! Hayaku! Faster! Faster!” First Sgt. Guy Wardlow, my first sergeant in HG. Btr 59th CA. was the senior non/com at Nichols Field. He had a Filipino wife and children and the kids found out he was at Nichols Field and came to the back of the building and threw candy over the wall. The Japs eventually caught them. I don’t know what happened to them.
One of the men on the detail became deranged. The Japs took him away and it was rumored that the White Angel had executed him with his sword – decapitating him. We never saw the guy again.
After about 3 months at Nichols Field, there was a lot of commotion in the courtyard. Apparently too many POW’s were ill and the civilian engineers (Japs) at Nichols asked that the most ill be replaced. The rooms were emptied into the courtyard one at a time and the Jap Officers and NCO’s and the civilian overseers looked them over to decide who would be replaced. The Japs (military) were drunk and went up and down the ranks asking who was too sick to work. Those that volunteered were then subjected to brutal beatings and more than likely put back into the ranks.
Fortunately for me when our (classroom) bay came out for the interrogation, a Jap civilian engineer looked me over, asked me in English if I was sick and I was. I was shaking from a chill from malaria, then took me and put me with the group to be replaced. There were about 20 of us who were returned to Cabanatuan by truck. When I got back to Cabanatuan I weighed about 90 pounds.