Questions asked in interview:       Why did you join the military?      What was it like before the war started?
Where were you when the war started?    What did you do during the war?
How did you hear about the war ending?      How did you feel?       How did you get home?
How did you manage to stay alive in such conditions?        How do you feel about the Japanese people?

I first enlisted in the United States Navy during my Senior year in high school in 1937 to avoid having to go to our Senior Prom with a girl who had asked me to attend with her. My father talked the Navy recruiter into ripping up my enlistment papers and sent me back to school. I graduated later that year. By 1938, many young men my age were being drafted. I enlisted in the Marine Corps on August 4, 1938 because I felt the Marines were the best branch of the military.

I was assigned to the 4^th Regiment, United States Marine Corps and left for Shanghai, China in May 1939. Military pay for an American soldier was very high compared to the Chinese. I lived off of the base, had my meals cooked and had maid service every day. I was 20 years old and felt like a king.

We were transferred to the Philippine Islands in October 1941 when China went to war with Japan. In the Philippines, the war with Japan started on December 8, 1941. The day the war started I was transferred from the naval station at Luzon to Bataan and then later to the Philippine Island of Corregidor on December 28.

On Corregidor, I was assigned beach guard duty on the East sector of the island as we prepared for an invasion by the Japanese. From December 1941 until June 1942, the battles were so fierce that the shape of the island was permanently changed. Our food and supplies were almost gone and we were on very restricted food rations. On May 5, 1942, the Japanese began their invasion of Corregidor. They invaded in such numbers that we did not have enough ammunition to repel them. Our Commanding Officer, General Wainwright, surrendered on May 6 and we were taken Prisoners-Of-War. We were only about two miles from another island and I thought of swimming to it but I had never learned to swim. Not being able to swim probably saved my life.

From Corregidor, we were taken by ship to a camp called Cabanatuan where I spent the next 21 months as a POW. The living conditions there were very hard. We were given only rice to eat much of the time and very little of that. Men literally cried because they were so hungry. I could endure the beatings we took from the guards but I could never get used to being so hungry. Along with the hunger were dysentery and Beriberi, which killed many men. Each man was part of a group of 12 POW’s. If any member of your group tried to escape, all of the group members were lined-up and shot. Many men died because of these hardships at Cabanatuan.

My job at Cabanatuan was to transport supplies from the villages to the prison camp on a cart pulled by a caribou. There were 21 of us assigned to driving the caribou and we secretly set up a communication and smuggling operation with villagers who were part of the Philippine underground. There were only two places that you could water the caribou and the villagers would leave us messages and supplies hidden in the bushes there. We would learn of how the war was progressing and smuggle quinine, vitamin pills, money and food into the camp. Of course, if the Japanese guards had caught us, we would have all died. In time, they grew suspicious of our activities and I was transferred to Omuta, Kyushi, Japan. By that time, I weighed about 100 pounds.

In July 1944, I was transported to Japan in what the Americans called a "hell ship." We had heard from the Filipino underground how American submarines had been sinking the Japanese cargo ships not knowing that the cargo on these ships were American soldiers. Five ships made the trip from the Philippines to Japan at the time I was sent there. We were packed into the hold of the ship like sardines. We were on this ship for approximately two months. Four of the ships were sunk by torpedoes and all aboard those ships were killed. A torpedo struck the ship I was on but it did not sink.

As bad as the conditions were at Cabanatuan, it was a vacation resort compared to Camp #17 at Fukuoka, Japan. We worked 12 hour shifts in the coal mines with no breaks. These mines had been condemned by American engineers years before the start of the war but the Japanese had reopened them and forced prisoners to work in them. They were very unsafe to even be in, much less work in. We lived in constant fear of cave-ins, which happened all the time. It got to the point that men would do anything to get out of going in those caves, even beg you to break their arms. A certain amount of coal had to be removed from the mine each day and we were beaten with clubs, shovels, iron bars and kicked by the Japanese guards in charge of our work group if we failed to make our assigned goal. On top of everything, the Winters at Fukuoka were bitter cold and we had little clothes. Many men had no shoes.

So many men died during this time that there was a constant supply of new prisoners being sent in to replace them. In February 1945, a close friend of mine, Carl Gordon, was transferred to Camp #17. When he arrived he did not recognize me at first. By then I weighed less than 90 pounds.

On the 15^th of August 1945, the Japanese began to feed us better and did not make us work in the mines. We felt that the war must finally be over but we had been disappointed so many times before it was hard to believe it might be true. Camp #17 was only 50 miles from Nagasaki and when the atomic bomb hit the city we felt what we thought was an earthquake, but we had no idea what was happening. War correspondents arrived about three days later and told us about the wars end. I cannot describe how excited everyone was to hear that. The news about how the war ended sounded to me like something out of a Buck Rogers story.

We were told that we could wait at Camp #17 until transportation could get there or that we could try to make it to the Konoya Airfield on our own. We were told it was very dangerous to try to go ourselves because news that the war had ended may not have reached everyone in Japan. In spite of the danger, a number of us made the journey. We could not stay at that camp any longer.

We were transported by Army transport to Okinawa where I stopped at an American Red Cross canteen. I sat at the counter and ordered a bowl of ice cream. Just as the ice cream showed up, someone tapped me on the shoulder. It was my brother, Cec, who was a radar technician on Okinawa. He was the first family member I had seen or heard from in over six years. We never received any of the mail our families sent us in prison camp. We talked for so long my ice cream melted before I got to have a bite of it. Cec laughed several times while we were talking because he noticed that I would often use a Japanese word in place of an English one when I talked.

When I finally returned to the United States I was hospitalized at the Oak Knoll Naval Hospital in Oakland, California, about a mile from my home. Before the war, I had taken out a $10,000 life insurance policy and named my parents as beneficiaries. I walked in the back door of my parents house at about 4:00 a.m. and my dad was sitting at the table waiting for me. When he saw me he shouted, "Well, Ma, there goes $10,000!"

I do not hold any grudges against the Japanese people for the war. Like any other people they have their good and their bad. I had a cut on my leg at Cabanatuan that I would have probably died from had it not been for the kindness of one Japanese guard in making sure I received medical treatment for the wound. On the other hand, there was a civilian guard in Japan called "Sailor" that I swore for many years after the war, I would kill on sight, if I ever saw him again. He was a brutal murderer and almost beat me to death. I carried around a hatred for him for many years. It was not until the early 1980’s that I learned he was hunted down and executed for war crimes after the war ended.

I have to give credit to God for keeping me alive during those hard times in the war. Every night I watched the sunset we wondered if it was my last one. God gave me stubbornness that refused to let the enemy beat me and a sense of humor that let me see the funny side of life even in the middle of the worst times.

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