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Chapter 17A
DOWN ON THE FARM
•••••

As time passed, we managed to organize our camp much better than it was when we first arrived. The Japanese high command decided to allow us to farm some land near camp. For our labor we would get a small portion of what we grew. A little something was better than nothing.

Each morning a large group of physically able men lined up for roll call and then marched to the farm, always closely guarded by soldiers carrying rifles with fixed bayonets.

We spent our days hoeing, planting, moving dirt, and fertilizing the plants with human excrements from the latrines. In time we grew and harvested okra, camote, corn, cabbage, rice and cassava. Almost all the produce went to feed the Japanese army. We actually were allowed to keep very little of what we grew.

Pig weed had taken over the farm and we were kept busy trying to get rid of it. The weed is a nuisance and grows wild in the Philippines, and it has little or no food value. However, if guards were agreeable, we carried armloads of the stuff in to the camp where we boiled it in tin cans at the quan stove. We ate until we were bloated.

Contrary to what one might think, the farm was not a pleasant place to work. We were constantly surrounded by stern guards, one of whom was always the overseer. Overseers were picked for their meanness. Farm guards were exceptionally cruel and gave orders which were always accompanied by kicks and blows from pickax handles. Without except, when they shouted out an order, a kick followed. It was expected.

It didn’t take long for us to choose appropriate names for each guard. Donald Duck was a neurotic with a bad temper, just like the cartoon character when things didn’t go his way. He would rave and rant at us in Japanese and vent his frustrations by running up and down our line striking mercilessly whoever was nearest with a shovel or anything that was within reach. He even sounded just like Donald Duck.

Then there was Charlie Chaplin. His behavior toward us was similar to Donald Duck’s except that his actions were not accompanied by raving or ranting. Charlie’s beatings were given in silence, just as Chaplin had performed in the silent movies. Except Chaplin’s antics were funny; his were not.

One of the Seven Dwarfs from Snow White was also represented. He was Smiley. He appeared to be in good-humored all the time, with a happy, pleasant smile on his face. Only it wasn’t a smile! It was his natural expression that served to cover up his mean disposition. His favorite way of venting his frustrations was to find any excuse he could to beat someone with a pickax handle. He loved to beat up prisoners for the fun of it. There were many instances when we had to carry men back to the barracks on stretchers after he had worked them over. His superiors did nothing to stop him. They thought it was humorous.

One afternoon I was caught haplessly in Donald Duck’s wrath. We were planting cabbages under his supervision and as we were bent over, putting the small plants into the ground, Donald came running toward me yelling and screaming at the top of his lungs. I knew for some unknown reason I was in trouble and quickly came to attention. Lucky for me there were no farm tools within his reach. He came up and struck me with both his fists, knocking me to the ground. I bounced up, and again he knocked me to the ground. Somehow, with all the effort I could muster, I continued to get back on my feet after every blow. He must have been hurting himself for he finally gave up in disgust and walked away. It was then I noticed a guard had been standing by with a fixed bayonet, waiting for me to do something. Fortunately I hadn’t. That night I had a difficult time sleeping with my bruised and battered body.

One man who knew Japanese better than most of us came up to me that night as I lay in pain and explained that Donald Duck had complained that I was planting the cabbages one inch too deep in the holes. “Be more careful next time,” he said. His words weren’t much of a comfort.

Fertilizing the fields on the farm was not very popular among the men, for obvious reasons. We were ordered to dip the human excreta out of the latrines and load it into fifty-gallon gas drums. Each drum was then suspended on two poles which four men carried out to the farm where the contents were scattered over the fields. Most of us had no shoes so it was necessary to walk barefoot over the newly fertilized ground. The smell from the fields was abominable. As the result of fertilizing with human waste, everything grown on the farm had to be cooked before it could be eaten. No farm worker ever dared eat raw vegetables.

When we first came to the prison camp at Cabanatuan, water had been scarce. As storage was increased, our water supply became more and more adequate and we could even shower regularly. However, not all the men bathed for various reasons. Some were too weak to even attempt it, while others had lost their spirit and didn’t care whether they were clean or not. Dirt and filth didn’t seem to bother them.

Some of us were proud possessors of five-gallon cans which we cherished dearly. We warmed our bath water by filling our cans in the morning and putting them where they would be exposed to the hot sun all day. By late afternoon, when we came back from the farm, the water was warm and soothing to our dirty bodies. We learned to organize our baths efficiently to make the best use of the warm water. It became a precise ritual. Using a canteen cup as a dipper, a bather would slowly pour the first cup over his head and let the water run down his body. The next cup he would pour over the left shoulder with the left arm stiffened against the body. The third cup was poured over the right shoulder with the right arm stiff against the body. There was a cup of water for the chest, one for the back, and then one for the right and one for the left hip. Once we were wet, we rubbed our body vigorously. Then we rinsed off our bodies with the same procedure, starting with the head, ending with the hips. We did all this without soap. The vigorous rubbing got much of the dirt from our bodies. And it certainly made us feel much better. We looked forward to our evening baths.

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Chapter 16
CAMP EDIBLES-RATS, CATS AND DOGS
•••••

Among the loot the Japanese had seized after the fall of Bataan were several hundred cases of canned milk. For the 50,000 men interned, the camp was allotted a few cans per day. These we gave to the men who suffered the most from malnutrition. If nothing else, it didn’t cure them but it helped keep them alive a bit longer.

Aside from nutrition for the dying, the milk cans had another great importance to our medical staff. The labels were carefully taken off, reversed, and used for keeping records. The Japanese did not issue paper of any sort for our medical staff to use.

The Japanese did allow one group of men in camp a special privilege. The electricians, the men in charge of the camp’s electrical system, were given permission to dig pits to trap wild dogs. We could tell when they were successful; we could hear the howls of the wild beasts after they had fallen into the traps. As a result the camp electricians were well-nourished from the protein from the dogs they ate. They were one group who didn’t suffer from any malnutrition diseases.

I had the honor of being invited one night to dine with them. I had helped them build a “quan” stove, and the meal they cooked and invited me to share with them was dog meatloaf. It was actually quite good.

I had helped build the quan stove as a project to keep busy. I believed that keeping myself constantly occupied would also go a long way toward keeping my mind busy, and keeping my mind busy might perhaps help me stay alive. I knew I could not dwell upon the suffering going on all around me. Building quan stoves was but sure way to keep busy. It also got me some free meals from time to time.

The stove got its name from the word “quan” we used in camp to refer to food of any description. Quan meant the morning meal, the evening meal, all kinds of food or anything related to food.

We made the stove out of adobe bricks and four 44-gallon gasoline drums. The fire box was exceptionally long. The stove had a grill made from a half drum to cover the top. The half sections of the drum which we didn’t use for the quan we used to sterilize mess kits. The other two drums became the ovens. A single fire roared under and over the gasoline drums and serviced the whole stove. We were able to heat water, grill, and bake simultaneously.

The Japanese permitted us to build our quan stoves and allowed us to cook anything we wanted, which meant anything we could find that was edible. Our menus consisted of rats, stray cats, wild dogs, snakes, cockroaches and pig weed. The meals were occasional. Whenever we could catch something, and whatever it happened to be, it was devoured with great pleasure. We eagerly gobbled up everything and anything.

Every time the subject of rats came up in Cabanatuan, my thoughts would revert to my home in North Beach, the Italian district in San Francisco. Our flat was only a few blocks from the waterfront where rats had a field day.

The downstairs in our flat was always heavily laden with the pungent smell of fermenting wine. A spooky alley led from a small yard in the rear of our flat to a parking street in the back. We had to pass dark, damp cellars to reach the street. Huge rats thrived in the farthest recesses of the cellars. Unafraid and defiant, they would scurry up and down the alley during the day, march boldly through the yard, and pass from one flat to another. They held an undisputed reign over the entire basement area, which was never challenged unless an adult descended the stairs to draw wine from a barrel.

Due to the dreaded fear we kids had for rats, we seldom used the alleyway, wine cellars or yard. Never, in a million years, would I have thought back then that I would one day enjoy “rat a la Cabanatuan” as the main course on my dinner table. What the urge to survive can do to one.

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Chapter 15
THE YOUNGEST PRISONER IN CAMP
•••••

In the camp Cabanatuan there was a young boy who was always cold, even when the sun was shining. He was no more than seventeen and had obviously falsified his age to get into the service.

When the boy first appeared in camp, he had very little clothing and he walked around in the nude. Someone felt sorry for him and gave him a heavy woolen army coat that hung to the ground. He wore it day and night, even when the sun was shinning its hottest. We called him Yardbird, and there wasn’t anyone who didn’t like him. But the poor kid lacked stamina, and the will to continue. We found Yardbird dead one morning, wrapped in his army coat. Even the doctors didn’t know why he had died. They say you can’t die of fear, and that home sickness doesn’t kill you, but I think they’re wrong. The boy must have missed his family. We sadly carried him out to the graveyard. Always when we buried our dead, we put them to rest without one stitch of clothing. We buried the boy in his overcoat, and it was the first time no one objected. I thought often about that boy throughout my stay in prison. Why did the Japanese have to take his life away from him? Why do the young have to die for someone else’s crimes?

Beriberi also took its toll. It was a common malnutrition disease caused when rice is a major portion of anyone’s diet. Beriberi results from a deficiency of thiamine and minerals and in extreme cases can lead to a gradual degeneration of the nerves and even heart failure. The symptoms are an overabundance of fluid in the tissues.

Before the 1800s almost half the sailors of the British and American navies were likely to develop beriberi and many died of it. It was the Japanese who found the cure for beriberi when in 1870 they began adding fish, meat and vegetables to their regular diet, but in spite of this knowledge they did nothing to alleviate beriberi among the prisoners at camp Cabanatuan.

One method we used to check to see if we had beriberi was to push the flesh in our leg inward with the thumb. If an indentation occurred and the flesh remained indented, fluids were present, and we knew we had a form of beriberi. There were many men with advanced cases of the disease scattered around camp. I stopped to talk to one man who sat on the edge of his sleeping pallet. His legs were swollen and his abdomen was so distended that it rested on his thighs. His scrotum was the size of a volleyball. He sat there naked, unable to avoid the filth around him or move or help himself. I wanted to help him but here was nothing I could do. A couple vitamin B capsules or a little meat would have cured him.

The pain caused by beriberi can be excruciating. It affects lower extremities. The men who suffered the most complained about the pain in their feet being unbearable. Some of them could barely walk, and others, who were unable to walk, sat holding their toes all day and most of the night. Sleep was almost impossible for them.

Every other type of tropical disease was found in some form or another in camp. Many men developed ulcers in their intestines; some developed ulcers in their eyes from lack of vitamin A.

Another common malady was ‘jungle rot.” It was dreadful. The inflicted had open sores, some the size of the palms of their hands, that would not heal. The few ointments we had were not effective since the underlying problem with jungle rot was not the lack of vitamins but Under The Rising Sun that of malnutrition, exposure and dysentery. The latter kept our bodies in extremely poor physical condition and susceptible to the rot.

Men with red hair and fair skin suffered the most. They were more vulnerable to skin disorders since they couldn’t stand the bright sun on their bodies. And there was no escaping the sun when prisoners had to go on work details.

Many men became victims of their own attitudes, which were reflected in their behavior. They didn’t seem to have the will to live, so they lay idly in their bunks day and night. After they had lain for a few weeks with no exercise and with their knees flexed, what muscle they had left became so stiff that they were unable to straighten their legs. They lost their appetites, refused to eat, and in a short time they became racks of bones and died.

We built latrines all around the camp. These were long, narrow, deep ditches covered with benchlike structures that had holes in the top similar to the old outhouses. The benches were not enclosed, but open to the weather. Some had six holes; others had twelve. They were constantly in use day and night. We also had thousands of little red ants that were a nuisance around the camp. They were extremely antagonistic and their bite was painful.

One night at the height of one of my many bouts with dysentery, severe cramps hit me and I rushed outside the barracks and headed for the latrine. The moon was full and I could see several men already sitting on one end of a twelve-holder. I saw little chance for privacy so I ran down to the hole that was farthest from the men already seated. No one was sitting there. Pulling down my shorts, I quickly sat down and let go.

Immediately I came out of the hole like a rocket headed for the moon. I must have leaped several feet in the air, screaming at the top of my lungs. I had sat on a swarm of little ants. They had immediately attacked my buttocks and genitals and were biting me severely. My

screams awoke the camp. Men came running out of their barracks to see me jumping around in circles in the moonlight, slapping at my bottom, like someone who had stepped on hot coals. At first they thought I must have flipped my lid, had gone mad. When they did learn what had happened, there was nothing anyone could do. It took me about ten minutes to pluck the ants from my body. I had to make several more trips to the latrine that night, but I didn’t mind giving up my privacy to avoid the red ants.

The Japanese never interfered with our religious worship. We had a devoted group of chaplains in camp and they did everything possible to help the men with their problems. Religious services were conducted daily and many prisoners who were able attended. Altars of the various denominations were placed around the camp. The Catholic altar was set up near one of the latrines, and as a result, I was able to attend mass sitting in the latrine. It was to say the least convenient. The location of the altar made it possible not only for me but for any prisoner with dysentery to attend the service. We had the choice of sitting with the group at the altar or on the nearby twelve-holer. Sacrilegious? Maybe, but we were all sure that the Lord was making allowances for our condition.

Often when I attended mass my thoughts wandered back in time to the weekends I spent at Shelter Cove. Sunday morning was always church day, but Saturday nights was the time we would howl. How crystal clear these memories were to me in Camp Cabanatuan. Sometimes I felt I was there in the cove.

We had everything in Shelter Cove we wanted; we didn’t have to make the long, bumpy ride to Garberville, the closest town to the cove. The road was very narrow, mountainous and dusty. Sal Russo, the company manager, imported the action to us from town.

Sal would crank the phone and invite everyone in town he could think of to come to our dances Saturday night. The International No. 3 sailed up from Frisco once a week, bringing groceries, meat, fruits, and usually a barrel of wine for our Saturday night parties. This was always a happy event and everyone went to the dock to meet and unload the drag boat.

Our dance orchestra consisted of Mac MacArthur on the violin, Sal Russo strumming the guitar, Salvatore Pizzimenti playing the mandolin and my brother, Tony, squeezing the accordion. We danced to “Over the Waves,” dozens of Italian waltzes and endless marches. What fun we had! The dancing lasted until at least two o’clock in the morning. There were many sore, thumping heads in church Sunday mornings.

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Chapter 14
THE PRISONER FROM SHELTER COVE
•••••

One day, upon checking the roster in one of the wards, I thought I recognized the name of a fisherman who had spent his summers in Shelter Cove. I was excited at the possibility of seeing someone I had known from back home. I planned to look him up the next day.

I did and found him in the ward. He immediately remembered me. We talked the whole day about our mutual friends and experiences we had shared at the cove. He reminded me how his father, like mine, had fished the area for many years. He seemed very happy, not with his lot, but that he had survived diphtheria and been dismissed from the tent a few short days before I met him. He was now recuperating in another ward.

In the days that followed, we spent many hours together talking about the cove and the people we knew. We talked about going out for salmon, and the fog suddenly rolling in, and the times the sea got bad and how some boats had a tough time returning to shore. Our conversations were punctuated with “remember the time” and on and on we’d go. What was so rewarding for us both was the pleasure we had in finding someone in camp from back home. After his bout with death he seemed to have recovered remarkably. I came to see him one afternoon, excited about a friend I had remembered and was anxious to see if he too knew him. He greeted me warmly, as he always did, but as I began to talk his eyes suddenly got a faraway look, as if he were looking far across the oceans, and then, without warning he collapsed. He stopped breathing. We did all we could to revive him, but our efforts failed. The doctor on the ward explained that he had died of paralysis caused by diphtheria. Many of those who had contacted diphtheria and did survive later developed paralysis as an after effect.

The loss of this newly discovered friend made me realize how impossible it was for friendships to last under these conditions. No one was ever sure that he’d live to see another day.

The diphtheria plague raged through the prison camp like a grass fire out of control. It became so serious that a group of Japanese officers finally came for an inspection. What they saw was a pitiful sight, hundreds upon hundreds of prisoners dying. The officers just stood there, in their neat uniforms, sabres hanging at their sides, when a doctor suddenly appeared and placed himself directly in front of the officer in charge of the inspection party. He was fearless, and under other circumstances his action could have led to a severe beating or even his death. “I demand,” he shouted out, within hearing distance of everyone around, “I demand that we receive medical aid immediately.” The officer was obviously astonished and taken back by this sudden outburst, but what the doctor had to say next threw him further off guard. “I am a medical doctor and I know this disease. If we do not receive help, the whole camp will die, everyone, including Japanese soldiers and not only those guarding us. The disease will kill all Japanese as well. It can become a plague that has no bounds!”

He made an impression. Within a few days the antitoxin we needed to combat the disease arrived in camp. Every prisoner was immediately inoculated and the menace of diphtheria was lessened.

The short friendship with my friend from Shelter Cove brought back many fond memories of home. It was as though he opened a flood gate and every night when I lay down to sleep my thoughts turned to Shelter Cove.

The thought of this beautiful secluded spot helped me forget the death and suffering around me. It also helped to sustain me at this time. It gave me something to hang on to, something to remember. I would close my eyes, putting the horrible reality of Cabanatuan out of my mind, and again I would be walking from the dock to the hotel. I had arrived aboard International No. 3 to work for the summer. In my mind I could so clearly see the faces of my brother Tony and Sal Russo, the company manager. They were there to greet me. They led me to the hotel, talking all the way about the good fishing, and showed me my room. The window opened out to the cove, and I could hear seagulls calling. They then anxiously showed me around the area. What a delightful little spot.

Next to the hotel was a small grocery store. “Long ago the building was a trading post,” Sal said pointing out the structure to me. A little farther on we came to another spacious building. “This was the barn when horses were used to cross over the mountains to Garberville,” he continued. Sal pointed to the blacksmith shop that was still there, but now instead of horse stalls there was a large garage, a cooking shack and living quarters for those who worked there. There were also two large tanbark sheds.

The company had five head of yearling calves and two cows which were milked twice daily, some chickens and a hay field.

Tony was the engineer for the company. He was responsible for the refrigeration and ice machine, the saltwater pumps, and the tanbark engine.

I was introduced to the crew. Strange that I could remember all their names, and what names. There was Vince Argento, Toni Davi, Bradley Radcliffe, Charlie Farnsworth and Slim Knapp. Slim was the caretaker; Salvatore Pizzimenti was the salmon splitter.

The pier at that time was used to unload salmon from the small boats for processing in the fishhouse. I had been given the job of helping to unload the boats at the end of the dock and to push the boxes of salmon into the plant, where they were cleaned and iced. It was common to unload sixty or seventy boats during a day, and the job might last until ten or eleven o’clock at night. All the salmon were shipped by drag boat to San Francisco.

Our mornings we spent preparing the large salmon for mild curing. Salvatore Pizzimenti, the salmon splitter, would slice the big fish and take the backbone out. The fish were then dipped into the brine and salted in barrels.

Besides the San Francisco International Fish Company, there were several other companies with short-term storage barges anchored in the cove receiving fish. Pick-up boats carried the fish from barges to Fort Bragg, where they emptied their load and returned for more. The largest total daily catch that I could remember was 140,000 pounds. What relief a mere tenth of those fish could bring to our sick and starving men at Cabanatuan!

Fishing boat crews dreaded the winds that came from the northwest. When they blew, the boats were unable to fish and the men were put to work in the tanbark sheds. During July, the tan oak trees were cut and the bark peeled and stored in the sheds until it dried. After it was processed, it was used to tan leather and fish nets.

Some individuals stuck in my mind more than others. One was Charlie Farnsworth. I used to wonder what he would do if the Japanese had him in camp. He was a no nonsense man. Charlie was a truck driver, and I had the pleasure of working with him. He was also my teacher. He was a skilled woodsman and an expert hunter, and he taught me how to use an axe and how to hunt deer. Charlie was about sixty-two then, and I would wonder if he still might be alive. How I missed Charlie.

There were amusing times at Shelter Cove, and recalling these moments made me chuckle to myself. There was the time they wouldn’t let us in the hotel and we had to eat outside. They had good reason. We had spent the day cutting hay, getting it ready for storing in the barn. All was going well until the hay mower cut through some skunk holes. A couple skunks dashed out running for cover when our dogs grabbed hold them and shook them by the necks. The skunks sprayed the dogs, us and the hay field. We stunk terribly, and nothing could get rid of the smell. It wasn’t very pleasant eating dinner outside in the cold. But then, even on Bataan in the humid tropics it got cold, terribly cold. And the cold seemed to go right through our weakened bodies.

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Chapter 13
INMATES TO THE LAST
•••••

The rainy season posed a serious problem for burying our dead. The drainage was very poor and some bodies became exposed each time it rained. It was difficult, if not impossible, to cover them when the earth had turned into mud. Often we could hear dogs howling at night, and some of us were convinced that these wild animals were eating our dead.

A new patient came to the ward one day with an unusually large amount of clothing. He had several pairs of Khaki pants, a few shirts, three pairs of shoes and other bits and pieces. We didn’t know how he had acquired it all, but in a week’s time, everything he owned had disappeared. It was stolen during the night as he lay asleep.

During the man’s short stay in the ward, he developed a close friendship with another man who slept beside him. As I walked up and down the aisle, I noticed that they often rested with their heads on each other’s arms. They had apparently found solace in each other’s company. After just a few days in the ward, the man who had so much clothing died of unknown symptoms. His friend followed him two days later.

Homosexuality was not common in the camp. There were a few gay soldiers, but the weakened condition of the men held any sexual activity to a minimum. Nevertheless, it did exist. I remembered one incident involving a gay sergeant and a Japanese soldier. My barracks was next to a Japanese post and we had to bow or salute the guards as we walked past. This gay sergeant always make a bow that appeared to be curtsy and the Japanese soldiers were impressed with his manner. One day, as I happened to be in the barracks with a bout of malaria, I noticed the sergeant resting on the floor when a Japanese soldier entered and flashed some bills in front him. The sergeant and the Japanese left, and we suspected that was the start or their relationship.

Thievery was common and wide spread in the prison camp. There was no place to hide anything. Even as a man lay dying, whatever clothing he was wearing would disappear during the night. In the morning, the dead man would be naked, ready for the graveyard in the same condition he came into the world.

Scurvy, caused by the lack of vitamins, was a serious threat to everyone. We all suffered greatly from the disease. At times my tongue was so swollen I could hardly swallow. My gums bled and my teeth became loose and came near to falling out. Many men did lose their teeth.

The worst threat was diphtheria, and when it suddenly made its appearance in camp, we were really scared. We immediately erected a huge tent that could house a hundred men at a time. Here we isolated patients with the dreaded disease. It seemed to do little good. In no time at all the tent was filled with ailing men. We had no antitoxin or medication to fight the disease. As the number of dead began to mount, each man waited in fear that he would be the next to go.

Sleeping as close together as we had to in such confined quarters in the barracks, it was impossible not to ignore the man next to you. If you didn’t like your neighbor, you could move away providing you could find space somewhere else to lie down. You always moved if you thought the person next to you had a contagious disease. But moving from one place to another was no assurance you were better off.

I had one neighbor, a Dutchman, I came to like very much. We used to lie awake at night and talk about the future. He was very much interested in the delicatessen business, and so he spent much time telling me how he prepared different kinds of sausages and jars of pickles. Our talking about the future seemed to keep him, and me, from facing reality in Cabanatuan.

We had to sleep so close together that we often breathed in each other’s face during the night. One afternoon when I returned from the ward he was missing. I asked where he had gone, and was told he had contracted diphtheria and had been taken to the isolation tent.

I visited him a few days later. From a distance I tried to talk to him. He was unable to eat, and he motioned to me that he was having a hard time swallowing and breathing. We decided that if he were to survive he needed some kind of tube or straw to breathe through. A friend in surgery gave me a pipette, a glass tube used in a laboratory. I was so pleased that I could help my friend that I rushed back to the tent to give it to him. I was too late. I found him dead. I felt myself grow weak and I broke into a sweat. I knew I had been exposed to the same bug that caused his death. Yet somehow I was spared.

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Chapter 12B
Inner Peace and Serenity
•••••

That afternoon I contacted a friend who worked in the kitchen. “Not much,” I said, ‘just a pinch. He gave me a small bag of salt and the next morning I gave this to the dying man in Ward 0. He didn’t have to thank me; his eyes showed his gratitude. I kept the supply of salt coming, and each morning he seemed a little stronger. I was able to spend some time with him. We had conversations either inside Ward 0 or outside on the ground where he lay while the ward was cleaned up. Miraculously, for more than four months, he had survived the horrors of Ward 0. I cannot even begin to estimate how many men I had seen carried out of that dreadful place, and each morning when I arrived I didn’t know if l would see my friend lying on the ground or else heaped up among the dead waiting to be carried to the cemetery.

But he was always there.

After another two months in Ward 0, a total of six months altogether, the man finally managed to get on his feet, and slowly he got better. By sheer determination to live, he continued to improve until he finally was dismissed from the hospital and assigned work on the farm. But his first day on the farm proved to be too hard for him. They carried him back on a stretcher and placed him in Ward O again, naked, and with his head against the wall. He endured the impossible conditions of the ward for another month. Then one morning, he was gone. I was certain he was dead, but when I inquired if he had already been buried, they informed me he was still alive. But he had contacted another disease. They had carried him to the tuberculosis ward. He now had another battle to fight.

I was at Cabanatuan about three months when I began to have trouble urinating. I had the urge to urinate, but the only liquid I could pass was a few drops of blood, accompanied      by much pain. I went to sick call. The medical officer examined me but all he could do was shake his head. That was the extent of his ability to help me cope with my problem. My thoughts focused on Ward 0 and death. I wouldn’t let that happen. In two weeks my urination became normal. Much the same happened with my battle with malaria. I had it bad and continued to have attacks. There was no quinine or Atabrine to help me, and all I could do was let the fever run its course. Somehow it always worked. I never ever knew how sick I really was until my comrades told me afterwards. They said that I jabbered like I had gone insane. There was nothing anyone could have done to help me anyway. Help had to come from within me. I can’t explain it, and I don’t think any medical scientist can either-but it did work.

I tried not to think of death but sometimes it was unavoidable. At times our subconscious thoughts and even our dreams take over and we have no control. I am back in San Francisco with a gang of boys, romping around in the Odd Fellows Cemetery.

Anyone who is observant and strolls down Geary Boulevard in San Francisco can’t help from pausing at Jordan Avenue and marveling at the domed structure that stands at this most unnatural setting. The doomed building is a columbarium, and over years it witnessed the changes that came to the area. Once the cemetery stretched from the foot of Cross Hill to Arguello Boulevard on the west, and from Turk Street on the south to Geary Boulevard, near our family home. The Odd Fellows Cemetery back then was enclosed in some sections by a concrete wall, and in others by board fences.

When we first moved to our new neighborhood, we listened with awe to the many tales people had to tell about the graveyard. For us youngsters, Old Fellows became a place of mystery and intrigue, and each one of us hesitated to venture near the place. Our parents cautioned us to keep out of the place.

But in time our curiosity overcame our fear. The day arrived when we mustered up enough courage to cross Arguello Boulevard and have a look for ourselves. Peeking through knotholes in the fence, we were amazed and fascinated by the scene before us. High grass, tangled bushes, tall trees, and tombstone of all inscriptions blend to form what appeared to be a wild enchanted forest.

Finding a hole in the fence, we cautiously crawled through and commenced to explore a small area. We left the cemetery feeling confident now. A few days later we returned, and explored a bit farther. After that we became bolder, and soon we knew every corner of the entire cemetery.

How clearly at night in camp I could recall that cemetery. In the center stood a large crematorium. Its windows and doors were barred, and on the east side of the structure towered a square, concrete chimney. Looking down through gratings, we could see a murky abyss and occasionally we caught the glimpse of a rat or snake stirring in its depths. The building had a sinister aspect, and we were afraid to venture too close.

During our explorations, we peeked into open tombs, climbed trees, crawled under bushes. We wondered about different statues, and read names and dates on the graves. We discovered that the bushes made excellent hideouts and the trees and tombstones gave us a good view of the surrounding area. The grounds abounded with all sort of wildlife: quail, robins, woodpeckers, sparrows, and many other species of birds. There were also garter snakes, and, we learned, a few vicious caretakers.

I remembered one day we entered the cemetery and saw a caretaker cleaning up around the graves. Everyone wanted to dash out into the street again before we pounced upon us.

“Now listen, you guys,” I said, being the wise one.

”What are you afraid of? Have we done anything wrong?” “Nope,” answered a little fellow, “but I’m not taking any chances.”

I took up the challenge. ‘Well,” I relied boldly, “if he comes up here, I’m staying.”

About then the caretaker saw us, and leaving his work, he dropped his shovel and rapidly strode toward us. Immediately, the gang scrambled to the fence and disappeared through the opening. I stood fast, acting nonchalant, as if I had done nothing wrong. He walked up to me, grabbed my arm and swung me around. He then booted me twice in the seat of the pants and gave me a shove toward the fence.

“Get the hell outa here, you squirt,” he shouted in anger. Tears rolled down my cheeks. Between sobs, I cried, ‘Just wait till I tell my father. He’s bigger than you are!” Greatly chagrined, I hurried back to the street. Some of the gang had heard what I had said, about my father being bigger than the caretaker, and they began laughing and teasing me. I was so angry I wanted to fight the whole bunch.

My standing up to the caretaker paid off. He became sympathetic. On Memorial Day he paid us to clean the graves. Our pay was fifty cents for a single grave, one dollar for a double and as high as five dollars for multiple plots. I can still hear our cries as we walked through the cemetery shouting: “Graves cleaned and watered.” We sometimes made fifteen dollars apiece on grave cleaning days.

At Cabanatuan the Japanese allowed us to have a service on Memorial Day. The whole camp crowded around the graveyard where we conducted our own ceremonies. I was most impressed by the service given by a member of the Jewish faith. The man was about sixty years of age, over six feet tall, and had a big bushy beard. He resembled a portrait of Moses. He was deeply tanned and his only clothing was a tattered pair of shorts. In a deep resounding voice he sang his service. We all were deeply affected by his presentation. When the time came for the bugler to blow taps, he was usually so overcome with emotion that he could hardly blow his horn.

Every time I gazed out over the graveyard, I couldn’t help thinking of our many dead buried there. They had suffered greatly, needlessly, and with as many as twenty or thirty at a time dumped in a common hole, they could truthfully be called “unknown soldiers.” Their bodies could never be identified.

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Chapter 12A
Cabanatuan, New Hell Camp
•••••

On June 2, 1942, we arrived at Camp Cabanatuan, a prison of war camp for both Filipinos and Americans. What we hoped for the better turned out for the worse. Although it was much larger and had more buildings than Camp O’Donnell, it lacked even the basic essentials. There were no kitchens nor even latrines. And it was completely disorganized. The Japanese simply dumped us inside the gates and turned away. Even their guards failed to provide proper security.

A few men took advantage of the weak security. They had the nerve to sneak out of the camp at night and buy food from the Filipinos. They did this not once but several times. One night, however, Japanese guards caught them sneaking back into the camp. They were taken to headquarters, tied to posts, and beaten intermittently over the next few days. Finally, one morning we were all called out and told to line up. Soon a squad of Japanese soldiers appeared, leading the men. The prisoners with their hands tied behind their backs were lined up before us. A firing squad took its position. An officer gave the order and a volley of shots tore through their bodies. The officer then fired his pistol into each body to make sure every man was dead.

After this incident, Japanese headquarters announced that all prisoners of war would be organized into groups of ten. Every man was assigned to one of these groups. If one man of the group escaped, the other nine would be shot. If a group of ten escaped, nine other groups would face death. There were very few who tried to escape, knowing that they would endanger the lives of other men.

During the first days at Cabanatuan, the food served us was wretched. It came out of poorly equipped makeshift kitchens, was badly prepared and barely provided enough calories to keep us alive. Occasionally we did have a half canteen of greens, but very little meat. Once a week we each had a ladle of carabao soup, served from five gallon cans. If we were lucky, we might get a piece of meat the size of our fingernail with our soup. If the server had a friend in the line and served him from the bottom of the can, his friend would get several pieces of meat. Such favoritism led to arguments and always ended with bad feelings among the prisoners.

Rice that had a strong moldy taste was our main dish, and often our only dish. We had boiled rice in the morning and steamed rice in the evening. It came mixed with bits of rocks, sand, weevils, grubs and rat filth. It was so unclean it was hard to distinguish between a grain of rice and a grub. Most of us felt that it was useless to try to separate the rice from the grubs. We often kidded each other that the weevils and grubs were loaded with protein.

I think we wanted to believe that.

One man in my building was a chronic complainer about the food. He took issue with the moldy taste of the rice, the grubs and the weevils. According to him, the food was not fit for pigs. We all agreed with him, but what could we do? Complaining wouldn’t help. We encouraged the man who complained to eat his food, just to survive. He refused to listen to our pleas. Eventually he lost his appetite, contracted dysentery, and was moved to another building.

About a month later, I was sent to the same building to help with the sick. There on a nearby bunk was the complainer, the man who wouldn’t eat. His eyes were sunken deep in their sockets and his face was distorted. He was lying on his side with his legs bent at the knees in a fixed position, and his back curved outward. He had lain in that position for so long that his back and his knees had become stiff. It was impossible to get him into a flat position. We gently tried to straighten his legs and back, but the pain was so great we discontinued our efforts. In a few days he was dead. He was nothing but a rack of bones covered with skin. This was one of the worst cases of malnutrition that I encountered during my stay in camp.

Another man, whose name was Wolfe, we called the Human Sump. At chow time he would wander around looking for men who were too sick to eat. The grubs, weevils, rat filth, the moldy taste in the rice, all this had no effect on his appetite. He would plead with sick men to give him their ration of rice. This man was well known and recognized by everyone as he made his daily appearance around the camp. His stomach was swollen, partly from all the garbage he ate, and partly from malnutrition. He too eventually died.

As time went by, we organized our prison life more efficiently. We set aside a hospital area of thirty-three large army barracks capable of holding approximately 100 men per building. These barracks were numbered 0 to 32. Ward 0 was the death ward. We segregated the other buildings according to the different malnutrition-related diseases.

The buildings were similar in size, shape and even appearance to Pullman cars. They were long with a walkway down the middle. The areas on each side of the walkway were constructed of bamboo slats. You could see the ground through the openings where the slats didn’t come together. Ladders led to an upper deck with a floor also made of bamboo slats. There were no separate rooms and the men slept close together, an equal number on each deck.

The month of June came bringing the monsoons, and monsoons in the tropics mean rains. Rain fell in torrents, day and night, unrelentingly. They were accompanied by fierce flashes of lightning and loud peals of thunder. There was no glass in the windows and those near the openings got soaked during the night as they slept.

My first day as a medic assigned to Ward 1 was most disconcerting. It was pouring down rain in sheets, and as I approached the building to go on duty, a couple men were standing in the rain, naked and shivering violently. I found other men in the nude under the building. I asked them angrily what they were doing out in the rain. They told me that they had been thrown out of the building because they had an attack of dysentery and had messed up the bamboo slats and the walkway.

In a fury I entered the building. I quickly made it clear to all prisoners that no matter how bad a man had dysentery he was entitled to stay in his bunk when it was raining. Cleanup would be made regularly every morning, and between rain squalls when necessary. I was determined that they follow my rule.

Serious arguments that often turned into fist fights arose when a man with an uncontrollable case of dysentery sleeping on an upper deck sprayed the man sleeping below him with excrement. Again, there was little that could be done.

We held sick call routinely every morning. But the only medicine we had to hand out was a little sodium bicarbonate and a few ointments. There was absolutely nothing else available for anyone.

Scabies, those nasty little parasites that burrow into the skin, ran wild throughout the camp. Men continuously scratched, like monkeys. The scratching was worse at night. The only way we could eliminate the bug was to boil clothing, but that only helped for a short time. The itch always returned and we learned that scabies, the seven year itch as we called it, was something we simply had to live with. At least it didn’t kill.

The men in Ward 0 suffered from advanced stages of malaria, dysentery and various malnutrition-related diseases. Ward 1, to which I had been assigned, was next door to Ward 0 and I had frequent opportunity to observe what happened in the death ward. Unlike most of the structures, Ward 0 consisted of one large room with a solid wooden floor. As in St. Peter’s ward at Camp O’Donnell, the men were laid close together on the floor with their heads to the wall. As many as forty living skeletons lay naked in pools of excreta waiting to die. Nothing could be done for them. They were seriously ill and doomed to death. Without medicine, we were unable to help them. We couldn’t offer them blankets, or even a dry place to lie down.

Each morning we’d find that twenty-five or more of the forty men confined to Ward 0 had died of either the lack of medicine or from the cold the night before. When the ward personnel came to work, they would carry the bodies out and pile them on the gravel to await burial. Those who remained alive would then be carried outside by the arms and legs and placed on the ground, and not always gently. The attendants used squeegees to push the urine and fecal matter out the door, except for the filth that was stuck to the wood and couldn’t be moved. Our water supply was inadequate to get rid of all of the mess. Flies were everywhere, on the floors, the walls, and all over the bodies of the living as well as the dead who awaited burial.

I remember one man in Ward 0 who refused to give up. He was determined he wasn’t going to die. This man had more courage and fortitude than any one person I have ever known. One morning, on my way to work, I passed Ward 0, and as the living and the dead were being carried out of the building, a weak voice called to me. I turned in the direction of voice, and there I saw a sight so revolting that I gasped and fell back for a second. Before me was a human skeleton lying on the ground, looking up at me. His features were greatly distorted. His nose was pushed to one side; his eyes sunken; his skin like paste.

I could have been looking at Frankenstein’s monster. The poor fellow could not have weighed more than seventy pounds. Feebly he reached out a hand, and then in no more than a whisper he called, “Mario, Mario.”

I fell back farther. I studied the face. The eyes, something about the eyes. I remembered now. I had spoken to this man often at Camp O’Donnell.

“Help me, Mario, help me,” he called again, in a voice hardly audible.

I bent over him and put a hand under his shoulder for support. ”What is it?” I asked. What meaningless words to ask a dying man, for I had no medicine, no blankets, no food that I could give him. But he didn’t ask for any of these. He asked for salt. “Salt?” I asked in dismay. ”Yes, a little salt,” he repeated. He then explained, in words that did not come easy, that if he had a little salt, he might be able to eat some rice. I assured him that I would do everything possible to help him.

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Chapter 11
Moving to Another Camp
•••••

We had occasional inspections by Japanese officers. They strode through camp with surgical masks on their faces to protect them from the foul air and contagious diseases. Other than their quick walk through the camp, they did very little to improve conditions. We were averaging sixty deaths each day. Across the road, Filipino prisoners were interned under similar conditions. According to reports, Filipinos had little resistance to disease and, as a result, as many as several hundred soldiers were dying every day.

Saint Peter’s Ward was the name given-to the ward set aside for men who were goners, prisoners with no hope for recovery. The men in this ward lay dying and naked, stripped of their clothing which had become saturated with their own excreta. They lay on the hard floor with their heads to the wall. A five gallon can was placed in the middle of the room to be used as a latrine. The can was unnecessary, The men did not have the strength to reach it. There was little or no water to clean the floors and the stench was indescribable. The only part of their bodies that seemed to be alive were their eyes. They were fixed, mostly, on the five gallon can.

Saint Peter’s held over thirty patents, and every morning we had to take at least ten, sometimes twenty, who had died in the night, to the graveyard. They were victims not only of tropical diseases, mainly dysentery and malaria, but of malnutrition as well. Starvation was becoming a critical concern. We felt the Japanese intended to let us all die, and thus settle of the problem of caring for their prisoners-of-war. They had to account to no one. They could beat us to death, or starve us to death, and it didn’t matter, even to their superior and high ranking officers.

On June 2, 1942, Japanese soldiers suddenly charged through camp, kicking and butting everyone with rifles, yelling and shouting, ordering us to break camp. We didn’t know at first if we were to be moved to a new location or exterminated once and for all.

The guards then force marched us to the railroad junction, where we were herded and jammed into freight cars. The train moved slowly, and through openings in the bars we saw Filipinos in the barrios, lining the track, heads bowed, their hand cupped in prayers. We had to stop often, and when we did, Filipinos did their best to toss food to us. The guards’ rifle butts stopped us from reaching out. Little food got to us but I will never lose my love and admiration for the Filipino people for how hard they tried to help us. Their loyalty to the American soldiers and the United States never faltered.

The rumor spread that we were going to a camp in Cabanatuan farther to the north. Any camp had to be better than Camp O’Donnell. As I sat jammed in the freight car, pushed far to the rear with my back against the wall, I thought about another move I had once made-when I was a small boy.

I could see it all so clearly. Mama announced one day that we were moving. It was that simple, we were moving. She shooed us out into the street, all seven of us, excluding the baby. The van arrived and the movers began carrying out our furniture and belongings packed in boxes.

Our old home was located on Powell Street in the North Beach District of San Francisco. In a frenzy of excitement, we children stood in the street screaming, hopping up and down, pushing one another with excitement. Attracted by our antics, all the boys and girls on the block had swarmed around to witness our departure.

Suddenly a Model T Ford zoomed around the corner, bounced along the cobblestones, and came to rest at the curb. And who could it be to step out but Papa. As I sat in the dark in that frightfully crowded freight car, rumbling through Filipino countryside to an uncertain destination, I could clearly visualize Papa that day as he had opened the door and stepped out like a conquering hero. The ovation we gave him would have pleased Caesar entering the Coliseum in his chariot.

It almost seemed that I was there and that it was happening all over again. Mama and the baby took seats in the front seat of the Model T while the other seven kids and I crammed into the back. Papa drove us past the marina and through the Presidio to avoid traffic. As we rumbled down the streets of San Francisco, people topped to stare; some shook their heads; others waved gleefully. We left the Presidio, tore down the Arguello Street Hill and, as we neared the bottom, a sharp report rang out and the Ford began to shake violently. Papa didn’t slow down. He informed us it was only a flat tire and it was useless to stop and change it since we had only a few blocks to go to our new home.

Clanking loudly and bouncing up and down, the Model T and its jolly passengers limped up to its destination. Papa opened the doors and we scrambled out onto the sidewalk. Looking up and down the street, I was amazed to see the houses were jammed together-rowhouses they were-and that all the roofs were sharply pointed. Before us stood a large two-story home. What happy memories the very thought of that old house brought to my mind! Unbeknown to us, Papa had built our living quarters in the basement, with bedrooms above.

The heat in the freight car became unbearable. San Francisco was never this hot, I thought. I remembered now, how during the holidays, Nonno and Nonna, our grandfather and grandmother, would spend a few days with us. Nonno was eighty years old at the time. He had a bushy blond mustache and blue eyes. As a young man he had fished in the Mediterranean Sea and served in the Italian army. When he and Papa arrived in San Francisco, they fished the waters of the bay. One year they went to Alaska and spent the season fishing for salmon, where Nonna’s catch for that particular season was the highest ever caught. His first name was Gaetano and as he was the first man from his community in Sicily to come to America. He was called Gaetano-Americana. At eighty years of age, he loved to fence with me. I was then about six years old. Brandishing yardsticks, we would cross swords and Nonno would have his hands full as I darted in and out between his legs.

Nonno was also a wonderful storyteller. I remember so well those stories. Every evening we would sit around the stove. With a twinkle in his eye and a twist of his moustache, he’d tell a story in his fine Italian. Two of his favorites were “The Count of Monte Cristo” and “AliBaba and the Forty Thieves.” He also related many humorous stories that would hold us spellbound at first and then send us into hysterics.

Memories, how they can keep us alive. Our life in the basement had been a happy one, and it was these pleasant thoughts that came back to me aboard the prison train. Throughout the time in prison my greatest force of resistance was my mother’s image, which always appeared to me when I was ill with fever or near death. She had been born in Italy and had not had one day of schooling. She could not speak English; we learned to converse in Italian. She died when I was seventeen. She had a simple childlike faith and a great love for her family.

Beautiful thoughts came interrupted with reality. A prisoner began pounding his head against the side of the rail car, shouting as he did, demanding to know when the war would end. We had no news, no word from the outside world. All we had were rumors, and more rumors. In one month we had left over 1,500 dead at Camp O’Donnell.

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Chapter 11A
CAMP O’DONNELL
•••••

One year and two months after I had enlisted in the United States Army, and twenty days after our surrender to the Japanese, we arrived at the rail junction at San Fernando. From here many prisoners were taken by rail to Capas and then marched the final eight miles to our destination, Camp O’Donnell. There was not room on the train for everyone and some of us walked the whole distance. We had marched fifty-five miles on foot, for twenty days, and we left some 10,000 men behind, rotting by the roadside under a tropical sun. For every mile we walked, nearly 180 men lost their lives. Often on the march I wondered if my family had any idea what was happening to us? Did they know I was alive?

Camp O’Donnell wasn’t the haven we had hoped for. The place turned out to be a group of dismal, unfinished army buildings. As the men struggled in from the march, the living dead, they collapsed in heaps and lay huddled together on the wooden floors. Some crawled under the buildings and lay on the ground. The Japanese made no attempt to relieve our suffering or to organize the camp. Japanese soldiers, except the guards, stayed away from our area, fearful of contracting dysentery and other diseases from their infected prisoners of war. We were given no food or water until the next day.

We began to organize ourselves, the only way we could survive. We put together makeshift kitchens. The Japanese allowed two servings a day consisting of a small portion of boiled rice in the morning and another equally small portion of steamed rice in the evening. A faucet in I he middle of camp provided our water supply. Even our water supply was inadequate. Long lines formed to fill canteens.

During the night, the moans and cries for help were dreadful. Each morning we collected the dead from in and under the buildings. Bodies in twisted forms were placed on litters; it took four men to carry each litter on their shoulders to the graveyard. The dead were dumped in a hole dug the night before. Funeral processions were simple, maybe a few words, and usually took place in the morning.

Camp O’Donnell was infested with hordes of ugly green blow flies. They swarmed by the hundreds on the fecal matter in our latrines, and over the bodies of our dead. They became our curse. We fought them constantly as they attacked our open wounds and our food. We were aware of the deadly germs they carried and did everything possible to keep them away. Often that was impossible. When we received our rice rations, it was already swarming with flies. It was difficult to avoid getting flies into our mouths when we ate. Every spoonful of rice held in my right hand on its way to my mouth had to be accompanied by the frantic waving of my left hand to keep the flies away.

The presence of the green blow flies, as bad as it was, did not compare with the serious threat posed by anopheles, the malaria mosquito. There were very few blankets or mosquito nets available. Those prisoners without nets had no protection from dive-bombing forays at night. Nor did we have quinine or Atabrine to be used for the prevention or treatment of the disease.

Many men became stricken with cerebral malaria, the worst kind, and lacking the necessary medical treatment, died a most horrible death. Constantly throughout the night low moans came from their parched throats and their bodies shook incessantly as they lay naked in pools of their own excreta. We spent endless time trying to force water down their throats. But without quinine or Atabrine, the infected men seldom lasted more than three or four days. They died with white froth on their lips and their arms folded across their chests.

In one of the officers’ buildings, I remember seeing a man stretched out on the floor dying. The odor emitted from his body, while he was still alive, was wretched. His flesh was a yellow ashen color. We watched him die, and within fifteen minutes after his death, the smell permeated the entire area. Everyone shouted for his immediate removal. We didn’t wait until morning; he was buried in a hurry.

I met one man who, after getting to know him, became a good friend. We had a lot in common and during the day we spent our idle time together talking about and comparing our lives back home. At night we all slept jammed together on the floor, and he always slept next to me. I enjoyed our talks, for I always fell asleep with pleasant thoughts of home on my mind. One morning I awoke to find my head resting on his shoulder. I tried to awaken him only to find that he had died silently and peacefully during the night. No more conversations, no more words. He was dead, gone. After that experience, I avoided sleeping in areas where the men were packed together on the floor.

I remember another night in particular. The monsoons had begun and it was raining heavily. Lightning flashed across the sky and thunder shook the buildings. Wanting to get away from the others, I crawled out on a porch that was partially roofed and squeezing myself against the wall, tried to sleep. I began imagining things. ne must wonder what a man’s thoughts are at a time like this. Sometimes a bit crazy. That time I pictured myself as a mongrel dog back home in San Francisco, with his I ail between his legs, sneaking around in the rain looking for a place to lie down.

I remember too when I had welcomed rain and bad weather back home. That was at Shelter Cove where I worked during the summer months. When the weather made fishing impossible and there was no tanbark to process, we roamed the Shelter Cove Ranch on horseback. Charles and Dorothy East, who operated the ranch for Dorothy’s father, William Notley, let us use their horses. We frequently had barnyard rodeos. These were exciting. We took turns trying to ride untamed yearling bulls, while the idle fishing crews and other bystanders enjoyed our attempts to stay on the young bull’s bucking backs.

But the monsoon rains were never welcome in prison camp. I had always thought that when men were caught in a life-and-death struggle such as this they would band together to help each other. I found that under the circumstances as they existed at Camp O’Donnell it was just the opposite. The men, to a great extent, became selfish and animalistic. For example, if a man had money, he could buy a little medicine, which might possibly save his life. On the other hand, if a dying man had no money, no matter how much he pleaded, the black marketeer with medicine would walk past him and pay no attention to his condition.

We came to recognize “blackouts” as a serious symptom of various deadly diseases that affected the camp. Many victims of these blackouts swayed back and forth on their feet, and sometimes bounced up and down like rubber balls. As their knees began to buckle, they would start to fall, but then before they hit the ground, they were somehow able to suddenly bounce up again. It was sad to see and yet almost comical to watch.

My first series of blackouts began one day after attacks of both malaria and dysentery had weakened me. I thought death was near and that I would follow the others who had died before me. If I did, I decided I would leave this world in a blaze of glory. I would spend the rest of my days providing all possible help to those who were worse off than I was. I spent all my time consoling the dying and making them more comfortable. Looking back on this time, I now know that the efforts I put forth for others sustained me throughout my interment as a prisoner of war. If I had lain down all day, like many had done, and felt sorry for myself, I would not have survived. Keeping busy and keeping my mind occupied on things other than dying was my secret.

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Chapter 10
THE DEATH MARCH
•••••

Our life was but a battle and a march

And like the wind’s blast, never-resting, homeless

We stormed across the war-convulsed heath.

– Friedrich Von Schiller

•••••

The dust that enveloped the road was being stirred up by the wheels of trucks and big guns on their way to the front. American and Filipino soldiers emerged through the pall of smoke and dust in endless lines and groups of suffering humanity.

Many suffered from dysentery, and in answering nature’s call, ran to the side of the road. Guards kicked at them and pounded them with rifle butts and ordered them back in line. Human forms writhed in the hot dust of the road, and the further we trod, hungry and disillusioned, the number of dead increased proportionally. We stumbled over bodies, the dying and the dead. They lay on both sides of the road and soon became commonplace to us.

I was in a state of shock and not able to pay much attention to what went on around me. It’s amazing how our minds are able to adjust to shock. I do, however, remember some things quite vividly, like the incident where a squat Japanese guard with a fixed bayonet saw a soldier at the side of the road with his pants down. The guard grinned and then ran his bayonet into the poor man’s behind. Maybe I remember the incident so well because I can’t ever forget the grin on the guard’s face.

The second day we marched into the night. We had no food nor water, and none was offered, but we were thankful of the chance to lie down and rest.

A few days after I joined ranks in the march, we came to a halt in a village that had been demolished by bombs. Some Filipinos were still living there, and when the guards weren’t watching they passed some food to us. Their kindness touched me. I took the chance and approached an older man and asked if he would keep my diary and return it to me after the war. It was a risk but I had little choice. I was certain sooner or later the guards would find it on me and I would be executed on the spot. The old man looked around and nodded that he would do as I asked. I hastily jotted down my name and address and handed it to him. No one saw the transaction. As we prepared to move on I saw him standing in the crowd and wanted to wave to him but dared not. He could have been shot for abetting a prisoner.

The days dragged into weeks. The air was foul with the odor of death. At night we fell asleep where we dropped, and in the mornings we were awakened by outbursts of yelling and screeching. The Japanese guards charged in among us, kicking us to our feet. They then herded us back to the road and started us marching. Walking was torture. Now and again we passed the huddled forms of men who had collapsed from fatigue or had been bayoneted.

Our thirst had become almost unbearable by now. Sometimes one of us was permitted to collect canteens from our comrades and fill them at a stagnant carabao wallows. We held our noses and we drank whatever water we could get.

Prisoners continued to drop, and guards continued their brutal display. There was little we could do for the fallen, except encourage them on. We had learned soon enough that efforts to assist them served only to hasten their deaths and perhaps our own as well. All we could do was encourage them with words. “Don’t give up; we’re almost there,” became our bywords.

The days dragged by, and many prisoners reached the end of their endurance. They went down not singly but by twos and threes. I shall never forget their groans as they tried desperately to get up again, and always with a beaming Japanese guard standing over them with a fixed bayonet. Those who lay lifeless where they had fallen were the only ones free of sinister Japanese brutality.

Bodies were left where they lay, and the stench grew worse and worse with each mile. Occasionally we heard thumping shots from the rifles of guards bringing up the rear, and each shot meant another straggler was dead.

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