Oaklander Fools Jap Guards

How to U.S. Marines smuggled messages, medicines, money and food into a Philippine prisoner-of-war camp while under surveillance of Jap guards was disclosed today as the pair arrived at Luzon, P.I. The men are Sgt. Robert A. (“Scrappy”) Ross, 27, son of Mr. And Mrs. Robert W. Ross, 844 Arlington Avenue, Oakland, and Sgt. Felix J. McCool, 33-year-old son of Mrs. Margaret McCool of 129 Carr Drive, Glendale.

Ross enlisted in 1938, and was sent to serve with the Shanghai 4^th Marines for three years when he was evacuated to the Philippines as war with Japan threatened. Ross arrived six days before the Japanese attacked.
Finally, in October 1942, Ross arrived at the camp and was placed in the hospital, suffering with dysentery.
Then he was sent to drive carabao-the huge water buffalo-hauling supplies between the two prison camps in Northern Luzon and the San Fernando River.
“There were two watering places for carabao en route,” Ross explained, “and at each watering place we would find messages which had been planted by other carabao drivers.”
“I carried many letters written by Filipinos to prisoners in Cabanatuan-and many bottles of quinine, vitamin pills, money and food.”

One day while McCool had stopped his beast-of-burden under the shade of a tree, he conveyed a message by singing a song to a young Filipino girl standing several yards away.
The next day, under the shade of a tree, McCool met the same Filipino girl and this time she sang to him, telling him to buy a certain bag of beans from small boys who would come to the tree in a few moments. Soon the small boys came along and McCool bought the tiny bags, and in them were medicines to treat dysentery.
“A Jap sentry suspected something was going on”, McCool said. He demanded to see the bags of beans and examined them superficially. Then he looked at me and said, “’I speak English well. I also understand English, even in songs! Now, however, I will take a short walk…’”
Ross and McCool became fast friends as the aftermath of their experiences.

Ross was finally transferred to Omuta, Kyushu, Japan, where he toiled in the coal mines for more than a year. Ross left the camp in September, went to Konoya airdrome, where he boarded an army transport, which flew him to the Philippines.

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