William W. Duncan
In 1940 With Europe at war, Congress began to discuss a selective service bill, the first peacetime draft in our history. Practically everyone was speculating as to whether or not it would be passed. By chance I met the pastor of my church, a conscientious objector church, and he said, "What are you going to do if this draft bill is passed?"
To his horrified amazement I replied, "I will volunteer."
That ended the conversation, but he made a special trip to see my mother and told her that if I would start going to church he could get me excused from the draft. When I learned of this it both amused and disgusted me. By suggesting such a proposition, he apparently did not have a very good impression of me. To save my ego, I rationalized and said that perhaps he only wanted to build up his congregation. But how ethically could I have accepted such a proposition when I would only be going to church to be excused from the draft. If I did this I couldn't live with myself and besides I disagree with the pacifist ideas of this fundamentalistic religion, because it seems to me that if a religion, or a way of life is worth having, it is worth fighting for.
The draft bill was passed and in October I registered along with millions of others. On February 27, 1941, I volunteered for service in the Philippine Islands, but was to take four months of training in radar operation at the Signal Corps School at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey.
I arrived at Monmouth with two other rookies, Daniels and Mayhew, in a raging blizzard. We plodded through the snow without overshoes or hats as the weather in Virginia was relatively warm when we left, and we didn't think that we would need them. At last we found the barracks that was to be our new home for the coming four months. We entered and saw soldiers sprawled on their bunks: some were talking, some reading and others sleeping. We were surprised at the friendliness of the group, but learned later that most of them were rookies also. One fellow introduced himself as Delbert Lynn from Ohio, and offered to help us make our beds, an offer which we gladly accepted. This started a lasting friendship among Daniels, Lynn and myself that exists even today. Mayhew stole a watch from his girl friend's father and was sentenced to six months in the brig. We never heard of him after that.
When we had finished over three weeks of basic training, we started to work learning radar. Most of us liked this much better than the drilling, the work details, the prisoner-chasing of our basic training. The latter consisted of taking the prisoners out on work details. Little then did I realize that I was to be on the wrong end of the gun, but for a different reason.
About the middle of June, we organized our own company, The Aircraft Warning Company, Philippine Department (two hundred and five men), in preparation for departing for the Islands. Like most newly organized companies, everything was snafu. We lived in tents, the food was lousy and portions were skimpy and practically everyone was complaining about something or other. Everyone was glad when on July 11 the orders came through for us to leave by train to San Francisco. Arriving there about noon, we directly boarded the ship, President Coolidge, and she sailed at five o'clock that evening, July 16.
All the way to Hawaii the water was rough and the ship tossed and rolled which caused most of us to have an unpleasant sensation in the pits of our stomachs, although only a few were really seasick. However, after leaving Hawaii, the water was smooth as glass and we enjoyed that part of the voyage immensely. There is something about the mysterious blue water that is extremely fascinating and impressive. We spent hours watching the porpoises playing in front of the ship and the flying fish jumping out of the water and sailing along sometimes to a distance of a hundred feet or so.
As we neared the Philippines, with its rainy season in full blast, we saw the most spectacularly colorful sunsets of our lives. We learned later that the Islands are noted for these beautiful sunsets.
We pulled into Manila's Pier Seven on the morning of August 1. A small Army band was there playing to welcome us and we heard several shouts of "Suckers." As we walked down the gangplank into the rain and smelled the odor of a tropical city, we were inclined to agree.
We loaded into trucks and were taken to Fort William McKinley about five kilometers from Manila. It was a beautiful Army Post with its well-kept golf course, lawns, brilliant colored tropical flowers and shade trees. But to our dismay we stopped in front of a group of tents. We had come seven thousand miles to leave tents only to find that we had to live in them here. Adding insult to injury, the grass, ged by the rain, had grown to a height of twelve to fifteen inches and we had to cut it with bola knives. What a home!
If we only had to tolerate our poor quarters, we wouldn't have minded it so much, but the food was very poor also. Many of the fellows, thinking it not worth while to go to the messhall, would buy their meals at the Post Exchange. Mess sergeants are permitted to save some of the ration money to but articles for the Company Day Room. Our mess sergeant tried to save too much and we suffered the consequences. All the money was lost anyway when Fort McKinley was evacuated, but of course the sergeant had no way of foretelling this.
About the middle of September we received one portable radar unit. We assembled it in front of our tents and everyone used it for practice until October 15 when the Third Detachment, headed by First Lieutenant C. J. Weiner, took it to Iba Field, Zambales, on the west coast of Luzon. This left the rest of the company with no equipment at all. To keep us busy, the company commander temporarily assigned some of us to Nielson Field, Army Air Force Headquarters. There I learned that the Air Force had only one hundred and sixty-eight operational airplanes in the Philippines and these included trainers, small transports, observations, thirty-five B17's and the awkward P40's.
One stationary and three more portable radar units arrived around the middle of November. Second Lieutenant Weden, heading the First Platoon, took one of the portable units to Tagaytay Ridge about thirty-five miles south of Manila. It has an altitude of about one thousand feet and this makes its climate much cooler than that of Manila. To look down the steep slope of the Ridge into the beautiful tropical valley below in which nestles Taal Lake and in its center the famed Taal Volcano, is a view never to be forgotten.
I was assigned to the Second Detachment led by Lieutenant Jack Rogers. On December 2, 1941, the orders came for us to move to Mambulao in southern Luzon. The highway between Manila and there was not completed; consequently we were compelled to travel by ship all the way around the southern tip of the island and back up the Pacific coast. This was a very pleasant trip as we travelled "first class" on a small freighter. At 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. we would be served "tea." Most of us enlisted men were not accustomed to this kind of luxury. We stopped at a small island and we were allowed a few hours shore leave. We learned that we were the first American soldiers to land on the Island. Agriculture was the mainstay here and bananas sold for five centavos or two and one-half cents a dozen.
We disembarked at Paracale on December 6 and proceeded to set up our equipment. The following day the commanding officer called us together and said, "We are now at war with Japan. The Japanese have just bombed Pearl Harbor in the Hawaiian Islands. This means that we must keep our radar unit going twenty-four hours a day. We have been sent here to warn Manila of any possible air attacks from the south. Everyone has his job and I will see that he does it. Dismissed."
This came as a great surprise to us, even though flights of Japanese aircraft were observed over the Islands by the Third Detachment at Iba Field for the past two weeks. We were astonished at the foolish Japanese, attacking a country as mighty as the United States. Everyone started talking at once and we took the matter rather lightly. We felt that it would be just a little skirmish and that we would lick the Japanese in very short order.
The following day the Japs bombed and strafed Iba and Clark Fields on Luzon. We weren't quite so confident when we received the report of the damage done by these Jap raids. The radar at Iba Field had traced the flight from a hundred and ten miles out at sea until the time they started dropping bombs. The fifty-four heavy bombers and the twenty-four pursuits wrecked all installations on the Field and completely wrecked the radar equipment. From the Third Detachment, composed of thirty-six men, five were killed and ten wounded. I felt sorry for these men and thought how lucky I was not to be one of them. Later in prison camp, I felt that perhaps the five that were killed that first day were the lucky ones after all--at least their suffering was over.
The damage at Clark Field was as bad as that at Iba. About half of our thirty-five B17's were destroyed on the ground and also several of the pursuits.
Nichols Field had also been bombed and strafed with the same disastrous results as the others. Thus all of the hangers and buildings of our best airfields had been destroyed. the deep gaping holes in the runways were insignificant as they were soon filled by bulldozers.
After five days of bombarding the Islands, the Japs landed at Aparri (northern Luzon) and Legaspi (southern Luzon) on December 12. On the thirteenth, with eighty-four transports, the Japs made another landing at Vigan, near Lingayen Bay.
We had received this news by our portable radio. Events were going just opposite the way we had expected. The Japs had made large gains on all fronts. We began to get worried since our detachment of thirty-six men was the only American troop in southern Luzon and there were only two companies of Filipino constabulary troops to ward off the thousands of Japanese that were getting closer every day. Orders came through on December 17 to destroy our stationary radar equipment, but to take our portable one as far as we could and then to carry through the jungle the most valuable parts. This proved to be an exceptionally tough assignment. Our head cook, snafu as usual, had brought along only a few tins of salmon and canned fruit juices which lasted only a couple of days. Moving those fourteen-ton vans was no easy job through that jungle road, especially when the vans were constantly getting stuck.
We came to the end of the road on December 20. There were numerous cars parked there by American civilians, many with their wives, some of whom had young babies. These people had failed to take the warning from the Army to get out of the Philippines. Seven men were assigned to guard the radar unit while the rest of us took the most valuable radio equipment from the radar unit, lashed it to bamboo and set out through the dense tropical jungle, taking the civilians with us. Ralph Bowland, from Indiana, and I were carrying a receiver set which weighed about seventy-five pounds. We also carried a canteen of water, a Colt .45 and extra clips of ammunition for it. We had travelled only a few kilometers when darkness began to overtake us and we stopped at an old abandoned nepa (rush fiber) shack for the night. The next day we left at daybreak to continue our grueling journey. At one place we came to a cliff that had logs lashed along its side to walk on and small poles overhead for handholds. Since one hand had to be used to carry the radio, it was a ticklish proposition to cross the logs with only one free hand.
All that day we stumbled through the jungle wading through the rivers and muck and never removing our shoes. Many of the guys hid their equipment along the way to make the going easier. Ralph and I carried ours until nightfall when we ditched it. We felt justified in doing this as we had carried ours farther than anyone else.
At dawn we started the trek once more, but by now we were so weak from lack of food that we had to rest about every hundred yards. About noon we ran into a road and then we know that we were through the worst of it. After hiking a couple of kilometers down the road we came to a small village. There the Filipinos fed us and we began to feel better. Lieutenant Rogers abandoned his plan to go back after the equipment and made arrangements for our transportation back to Fort McKinley.
In the meantime, the Japs, coming up from Legaspi, had caught up with our seven guards left at the equipment and they had their first tangle with them. They held them off long enough to dynamite the radar set and then slipped off into the jungle. Only three of them made it back to Bataan. Two of the others were picked up later by the Japs. One managed to stay away from the Japs and became a guerrilla, the other was never heard from.
We piled into the buses that had arrived to take us to McKinley with a joy that we could not hide. All of us were thinking of the same thing--American food. The trip was uneventful, but we later learned that we had left just in time. The Japs were making an unopposed landing at Atimonan just as we were driving through there. We arrived at Fort McKinley about three o'clock in the morning on December 24 and went straight to bed. Upon waking next morning we were surprised to hear that all forces were going to evacuate to Bataan and Corrigedor.
We gathered up our belongings in barracks bags, climbed on the trucks and headed for Pier Seven in Manila to take a freighter across the Bay to Mariveles, Bataan. It still gripes me that our Christmas turkeys were ready to be roasted and we had to leave them back in camp. We stayed on board ship all night and disembarked next morning at seven to hike twelve kilometers to Little Bagio at Kilometer Post 168.5 form Manila. My Christmas dinner consisted of one-half a tin of canned food and half of a coconut!
The Japs kept pounding us at the front lines with everything they had. They would shell the coast line from their warships and as we only had about a dozen planes left when we evacuate to Bataan, they had undisputed air control and could bomb and strafe at will, especially since our anti-aircraft had run out of good ammunition and had to use some left over from World War I that was marked "Corroded - Do Not Use." Only about forty per cent would detonate when fired.
A few weeks after we were in Bataan there was a message from President Roosevelt which said in part: "If anyone can tell me how to send aid to the Philippines, I will be glad to do it." When I read this, my morale dropped to a new low. Then I was almost sure that we were not going to get any help. When MacArthur left, it confirmed my beliefs even more, and I knew then that we were in a bad spot.
Food began to get more and more scarce. After about a month we were cut down to two skimpy meals a day. We stayed hungry all the time and were always on the lookout for wild fruits and animals. Many of the fellows killed and ate monkeys, iguanas (large lizards) and wild pigs. Malnutritional diseases began to show up. These made the soldiers more susceptible to dysentery and other tropical diseases, which became more and more prevalent every day.
Around February 1, 1942, I was sent to Kilometer Post 191 to work at my old job of scope operator on a radar set. Previous to this all I had been doing was guard duty. I stayed there for about a month and then was sent along with four other men, headed by Lieutenant Rogers, to Bataan Field. There we were attached to the Twenty-first Pursuit Squadron commanded by Captain Dyess. We were assigned to another radar set intended to guide American planes to the field.
At about this same time on platoon of our company was called upon to assist in wiping out a fairly large beachhead which the Japs had made behind our line by landings from the sea. Only about two or three out of this group had infantry training experience. In fact, the majority of them had not even fired a heavy calibre rifle before. They were just assigned rifles and told to go. This skirmish was very close to our radar unit and the whine of ricochetting bullets from small arms fire was so commonplace that we no longer ducked.
Around March 20 the Japanese had received reinforcements and were blasting us from all sides. It was heartbreaking to see their planes flying at low altitudes, bombing and strafing at their leisure with almost no opposition. General (Colonel?) George, Chief of the Air Corps, left about this time and my morale dropped even lower, if possible. What is going to be our future? To be killed or to be captured? Neither was very pleasant to think about, but I was certainly glad that I had taken out an insurance policy.
On April 8 the Jap Air Force dive-bombed our bivouacs. The bombs landed about thirty feet from me, but as I was hugging the ground, all the shrapnel went overhead, completely cleaning the trees of branches. The bombs completely demolished one building and nothing but splinters of it were found. However, only one soldier was injured. That same day the Jap Infantry broke through our front lines and the situation was critical. The company commander lined us up and told us to get ready to move out and to bring only our light packs, rifles, and Colt .45's. I thought for sure that we were going to be sent to the front line in an attempt to stem the horde of Japs troops streaming through. I also wondered how effective we would be as we had not been trained in infantry warfare. I then prayed for the first time in this war, and one of the few instances where I used prayer during my war experience. It was a short prayer--and perhaps a selfish one, as many prayers tend to be. I asked that I would have the guts to meet the unknown and take what was coming when I met the enemy at the front lines. And that was all. It was not until quite a few hours later that I learned that we were not going to the front line but that we were evacuating our position. General King was force to surrender Bataan the following day.
My feelings were so mixed that it would be impossible to describe them. Perhaps the greatest was an anxiety of what the Japs intended to do with us. We were soon to find out. They lined us up and searched us, stripped us of watches, rings and other personal belongings that took their fancy. then we started on the long trek out of Bataan to San Fernando, Pampanga. Known as the "March of Death," it was like a horrible nightmare from which there was no waking. We were ordered to line up into columns. C. J. Daniels and I paired off and vowed to stick together as closely as possible. As we walked along the dusty winding road (as this was the dry season), we speculated as to where the Japs were going to take us and how they would treat us. It is a damned good thing that man cannot see into the future.
Soldiers weak from diseases and lack of food in Bataan began dropping out by the hundreds. The terrific heat and lack of water took the toll for many others. Because these men couldn't walk any farther, the Japs would bayonet or shoot them so they wouldn't be burdened with stragglers. Although I did not see it, I heard on two occasions where the Japs force other men to bury some of the sick alive. I believe this to be true because one of my friends form the American Thirty-first Infantry told me that the Japs had made him do this very thing to some Filipinos. He said that if some of the sick men tried to crawl out of the grave, the Jap soldiers would whack them over the head with a shovel and then cover them with dirt. If you want a picture to remember, think of these sick men appealing to their friends as they were being covered. He cited one particularly pathetic instance where one Filipino was yelling muffled good-byes to his buddies even after he had been buried with several others in a shallow grave. Man's inhumanity to man!!
I saw numerous men get beaten with a baseball bat and bamboo poles. Daniels and I were extremely lucky to be among the first to get out of Bataan: we were only beaten once. Later the Japanese got much rougher and began shooting and bayonetting at the slightest provocation.
In spite of all the horror of the "March," it was good to be out of the jungles of Bataan, to see the open sky, to hear the voices of children at play, to see women even if I couldn't touch, and to be back in civilization such as it was. MOst of the towns were only charred ruins. There was practically no construction in progress. Here and there were patched-up buildings in which the Filipinos were living. This was a depressing sight for us.
We lost all count of time, but the trek lasted from six to eight days. The Japs made no attempt to feed us except for the last couple of days and then they only gave us rice. When we arrived in San Fernando, the Japs herded us into a large stockade with a high fence around it. There were no toilet facilities, and because of dysentery the place was soon covered with excrement. We were glad that we had arrived there during daylight hours so we could pick a place to sleep that night! This night proved to be a real nightmare. Many of the guys, separated from their buddies by the hectic march out of Bataan, plaintively yelled out the names of their army units in the hope that they could get together with someone they knew. They hoped to get some comfort in sharing their misery with a buddy. I perhaps will never forget this pathetic scene.
The next morning we were loaded into small railroad boxcars that were so crowded that all had to stand except for a few of the sickest. The guards closed both doors of the car which caused the air to become quite foul in a short time. I think that I had a touch of claustrophobia and became a little panicky as I was afraid that with so many people in such a small space we would surely suffocate. Motivated by this anxiety, I slowly moved around until I found a slight crack in one of the walls and I felt better upon feeling the fresh air coming through. however, it surely was relief when we arrived at Camp O'Donnell.
When the war started, Camp O'Donnell was in the process of construction fro the Seventy-first Philippine Army Division. The water supply had not been sufficiently developed. Consequently, we suffered. There were only two small spigots, so most of the water had to be carried from the polluted Bamban River for the forty-five thousand Filipinos and the eight thousand Americans. To get a canteen of water from the spigots, we often had to wait in line from twelve to fourteen hours. Water from the river should have been boiled before using, but many of the Filipinos were so thirst-crazed that they drank the water directly from the river. Because of this, they had a much higher death rate than we.
Malnutrition, dysentery, malaria and lack of will to live began to take their deadly toll. Americans began to die at the rate of about forty to fifty a day, Filipinos about four hundred a day. We dug large graves and buried ten together. Even doing this it was hard to keep up with the death rate. I kept thinking to myself: "Will I be next? Will someone be carrying me out next week? Next month? If not, when?" I tried not to think about it too much and, like most of the others, I attempted to avoid the dismal burial details because they were so depressing. However, this work had to be done and we all took our turns.
After about two weeks in O'Donnell, I had a case of diarrhea. I then knew how the others felt. I went to the so-called hospital and saw the patients lying there on the dirty bare floor (there were no beds), covered with their own excrement, looking like skeletons because of malnutrition. The hospital building, a cone story affair, was built three to four feet off the ground because of the heavy rains. This space underneath was used as the morgue. Many of the patients would crawl under with the corpses knowing that they were soon going to die anyway. And they did!
After about two weeks in O'Donnell, the Japs gave orders for the generals and most of the colonels to get ready to leave for Japan. General King gave a short speech that raised our morale--a speech that I will never forget. I do not remember the exact wording, but in essence he said, "Men, before leaving for Japan, I want to tell you what gallant fighters you are. You did not surrender; I surrendered you. If we have kept the Japanese from taking Australia, then all our sacrifices have not been in vain. Keep faith with your nation and hang on until they get here. God be with you!"
In twelve weeks the death total was about twenty-seven thousand Filipinos and about seventeen hundred Americans. This place became such a hell-hole that we were glad that the Japs started transferring all but the sickest patients to Cabanatuan, Nueva Ecija. Daniels and I were among the first to leave.
Cabanatuan Camp Number One was very similar to O'Donnell. The barracks were made of woven nepa. The floors were of bamboo slats upon which most of us had to lie without blankets. At first the problem of water wasn't much better here, but after a couple of months it improved considerably. Our food here was similar to O'Donnell also: rice, sweet potato tops, a few sweet potatoes and a huge piece of carabao meat, about the size of the end of your finger, twice a week if you were lucky.
The death rate here was soon to exceed that of the Americans at O'Donnell: two thousand the first two months! The hospital here, because of lack of equipment, medicine and food, was really a morgue as few persons ever came out of it alive.
One night the Jap guards caught six men going through the barbed wire fence. They had been going nightly to a Filipino's home to get something to eat. Perhaps you may wonder why they returned once they were out? They were in poor physical condition; also there was no place for them to go. While most of the Filipinos would hide you, a few would report you for the reward the Japanese had posted. Then the Filipinos hiding you would be killed or beaten badly. There were Japs everywhere and an American would have stood out like a sore thumb. To get back to the six men: they were tied up in the hot tropical sun all day with no water to drink. In the late afternoon they were made to dig their own graves and then they were shot. Purposely the Japs did this within sight of camp so that the rest of the prisoners could see that they meant business.
After about six months in the prison camp, my eyes began to ache severely. I had to quit working and go on sick call. The doctor told me that I was getting an ulcer in one of my eyes and I had another eye disease the name of which I do not remember. He dilated my eyes to relieve some of the pain and told me what I needed was good food--something that the Japs never gave us.
About the same time my feet began aching even worse than my eyes. The doctors called it dry beri-beri and explained that it was the nerves deteriorating because of the lack of Vitamin B1. Regardless of what it was, it was so painful I was lucky to get a half-hour's sleep out of twenty-four. I saw several of my buddies cry with the pain and would have done so myself had I thought it would have done any good. But how much of this can I take? Will I soon go off my rocker like several others? Or will it be the morgue?
Days, weeks, months meant nothing to us now. We existed from day to day, living only for the day that we would be liberated. We were vaguely conscious that it was nearing Christmas 1942, but we hadn't thought much about it as we hadn't expected it to mean anything to us. Imagine our surprise and delight when we heard that Red Cross packages had arrived and were to be passed out the following day - the day before Christmas. When we received the packages, we were just like a bunch of kids and opened them with fumbling, trembling hands. It seemed too good to be true, but here was reality. We gloated over every item as we took it from the box and compared it with the contents of our buddies' boxes. There was powdered milk, a small tin of butter, a can of Nes-Cafe, a box of prunes, a most luscious chocolate bar which I ate immediately, and a few other minor items. At last we had some food that Americans were accustomed to eating; food that had plenty of vitamins and calories; food that tasted so good that we stretched out the eating of it as long as we could. That is, we all did except one guy who devoured the full eleven pounds at one time and died from it. To the average American back in the States, these packages would have been a very poor Christmas gift, but to us, slowly starving by the day, they were just what the doctor ordered.
As a further morale booster, the Japanese commander gave us permission for an assembly. A group, some of them professional entertainers in civilian life, gave a Christmas program and we all sang carols. I can say truly that this was the most outstanding Christmas of my life. This may sound strange, but now we had some hope of living through this nightmare. For some reason, the Japanese began to give us more native food. The death rate began to drop, partly because of the better food and partly because of better morale. It was good to know that we hadn't been forgotten. Unfortunately, the food was still inadequate, and in a few months returned to the previous diet of mostly rice.
Up until this time I dad stayed away from the hospital because its reputation was just like the one at O'Donnell. The Japanese commander issued an order for all the sickest men to be sent to the hospital. In February 1943 I was sent to Ward Twelve in the charge of Doctor Show of Daytona Beach, Florida. The Japs wanted this ward to be an experimental one as their own men were getting beriberi. We were divided into small groups and each group was given different kinds of vitamin injections. The group I was in received seven spinal injections of Vitamin B1, administered over a period of two weeks by Captain Bertrum, Medical Corps. These treatments had practically no effect upon us; but had we received them six months earlier they would have undoubtedly been very helpful.
About this same time a friend of mine, Leonard Hudson from Virginia, was in the Zero Ward and was expected to die. Very few patients ever came out of this ward alive and lucky indeed were the few that made it head first. Hudson was down to the low weight of eighty pounds. He was very sick and wasn't expected to live through the night. When the corpsman called in a priest to give the last rites, it angered Hudson very much and he told them where to get off and that he wasn't about to die. It was this will to live that pulled him through. I believe that others might have pulled through had they not lost hope and the incentive to live.
The months crept slowly by. If only we had some decent food it would have been easier to bear the bed bugs, the lice, the hard bamboo slats upon which we had to sleep and the lack of the simplest luxuries that even the poorest families in the States enjoyed. AS it was, we supplemented our diet with papaya trees, okra leaves, sweet potato peels and several of the wild plants that we found growing in the compound. A few of the guys set traps for the dogs that roamed the camp at night. They caught several of them, too: one dog would make a banquet for five or six men. One of my friends was generous enough to give me a taste, but that was all. It was delicious, only I wished that I could have had more. Not to be outdone, Joe Herron, a sailor, Sergeant Tyce from the Medical Corps and I caught a half-grown kitten, killed, skinned and boiled it with some okra that Joe had planted beside the barracks. It tasted like rabbit, but unfortunately there was only enough for one meal.
Around the summer of 1944 the Japs cut down on our already pitifully inadequate rations, mainly because the Yanks were "giving them hell" down in the South Pacific and their own food supplies were cut short. In place of the small amount of carabao meat they had been giving us, they substituted dried rotten fish. This fish consisted mostly of scales, bone and eyes and was so unpalatable that the only way we could eat it was to brown it in a kettle, grind it up into powder and sprinkle it over our rice. This powder had a horrible taste, but we felt that we had to eat it because it was the only protein that we were getting.
A few weeks later many of the fellows began to feel nauseated, sleepy, and began to see double. Some couldn't hold their eyelids open; others couldn't hold their heads up. The Japanese, worried because they thought it was sleeping sickness, ordered those men to be put in isolation Our American doctors soon learned that it was from the rotten fish that we had been eating. >From then on we didn't eat our fish.
On the morning of September 21, 1944, we saw a large group of planes coming from the east and heading toward the west coast. Excitement ran high. We did not believe them to be Japanese planes as their flight formation was different. We watched them until they passed out of sight. About when we were ready to admit that they were Japanese planes, we heard the unmistakable blasts of bombs. Then we knew that they weren't Jap planes. It was only a matter of a few minutes until some were heading back our way and at a much lower altitude, too. In fact, we were fortunate enough to see one of these foreign craft shoot down one of the Jap Zeros which fell only about a mile from our camp. As these planes streaked by, we had a good look at the insignia. It was a star with a bar on each side of it. We did not know that the United States had changed their insignia from the traditional circle with a star, but we reasoned that these planes must be either American or Chinese. A sailor said that they looked like Navy Grumans and we found out later that they were. These Navy planes attacked the Island for three days. Then all was quiet. In a couple of weeks the Navy planes bombarded the Islands again. This time they bombed Cabanatuan, a city about eight kilometers away. They also strafed and bombed the small airfield about a kilometer and half from camp. One pilot, strafing this field in a direction toward our camp, did not turn off his guns in time and bullets raked through our camp striking one of the men in the hip.
Toward the end of the year these attacks became more frequent. We also observed flights of big United State Army bombers. Around January 7, 1945, the Japanese pulled out their main body of troops that they had had stationed at Cabanatuan and left only a few guards. On the night of the ninth, we could see flashes from artillery all along the west coast. Toward dawn we could hear the faint booms of the explosions. The Navy ships were shelling in preparation for landings. They made several landings inside the Lingayen Bay at approximately the same places the Japanese had made theirs previously. From then on, planes of all descriptions flew over the camp. Some of the B25's came over so low that we could see the crew waving to us. The Japanese guards were scared of these planes and would run to their foxholes or hide in the barracks until they had left. They issued an order for us to stay inside the barracks and not to wave when any planes were overhead. This order we did not obey. We waved at every opportunity, especially if no guards were in sight.
Ever since the first attack of American planes on Luzon, the Japanese had been transporting as many of the prisoners to Japan as they could. A great number of these men were sunk when our United States' planes and submarines sank the unmarked Japanese transports. These men went through three years of a miserable, living hell, say liberty almost within reach, then died at the hands of their own countrymen. To say that life is ironic would be putting it mildly.
A P-61 circled over the prison camp continually during daylight hours on the twenty-ninth and thirtieth of January, 1945, but we attached no great significance to it. That evening, January 30, several of us were sitting in front of the barracks discussing the battle that was now progressing in northwestern Luzon and speculating upon when the American forces would reach us. We were worried about what the Japs would do to us in case of an attack. Just at the fall of dusk, our conversations were interrupted by blasts of rifle and machine gun fire. As bullets whined overhead, our first thought was that the Japs were trying to annihilate us because of the nearness of the Yanks. We made a dive for the drainage ditches around the barracks and for once we were thankful for the heavy rains that made these ditches necessary. A few minutes later, we heard bigger guns which we thought were Jap mortars. Is this to be the end? With liberation so near, we definitely wanted to live now.
Later we found out that the heavier guns were the Ranger bazookas and that they had knocked out two tanks. After about ten or fifteen minutes which seemed like an eternity, we heard someone yell, "The Yanks are here. Head for the main gate." At first we thought that this was just a Jap trick to get us out in the open to make their job easier, but in a couple of minutes we saw one of the tall, husky Rangers. Then we knew that the tide had turned and that we were free. My buddies headed for the gate, but I was determined not to leave my address book behind. I went into the barracks and picked it up. On my way out I noticed someone writhing on the floor. It was an old Navy chief who had heart trouble and the excitement had brought on an attack. I yelled to another prisoner who was passing just outside the door and he gave me a hand in carrying the chief. Because of our emaciate condition, we weren't making very good progress when along came one the the Rangers who put the chief on his back and carried him away with no apparent effort.
The firing around camp was only spasmodic now, but about a kilometer down the road where two hundred Filipino guerrilos were holding a road block against two thousand Japs, the firing was quite heavy. These Japs had been encamped there for about a week, for what purpose we do not know.
About one hundred and fifty of the five hundred and eleven ex-prisoners that had just been repatriated had to be carried from the start. About a kilometer away there were carabao carts waiting to haul these sick men. How the Sixth Rangers managed to get these carts so close to camp without being detected is beyond me. It seems a miracle that they themselves had managed to stay hidden for two days practically within earshot of the camp. We now learned that the P51 had been acting as an observation plane and had had radio contact with the Rangers on the ground. We learned that the Rangers had planned to attack the night before, but luckily they didn't as convoys of Japs had passed through the camp all through that night. Luck was with us at last.
As we progressed farther and farther from the prison camp, more carabao carts were secured; and before we had completed the twenty-five miles to the American lines, almost everyone of us was riding. We certainly needed that ride as we were all soon exhausted because of our malnutritional state. When we arrived at a replacement camp behind the American lines, we were given new clothes and some good food. This made us all feel better.
The report of our rescue was printed and we read that only two Rangers and about twenty Filipinos had been killed, while they had killed about seventy-five Jap guards around camp and about four hundred of the two thousand who had been trying to come to the aid of the prison guards. We felt both sad and guilty about those Americans and Filipinos who had lost their lives in rescuing us; that perhaps we were responsible for their being killed. But we were thankful that the number was as small as it was.
We stayed at this replacement center overnight and then we were sent to another near an airfield in preparation to being flown to Leyte (another island in the Philippine group, south of Luzon), there to take a ship home. We arrived at this camp about seven in the evening. There was a band to greet us and that evening everyone celebrated.
I went to bed early that night and was awakened by the Charge of Quarters who told me that my brother was on the telephone. This was certainly a surprise because I didn't know that any of my four brothers were overseas and I couldn't figure out which one it was. I reached for the telephone with trembling hands and said, "Hello, Duncan speaking." An unfamiliar voice on the other end of the telephone haltingly replied, "Hello, this is Jim, your brother." After a few seconds silence he came out with, "Don't you remember me?" I said, "Sure I remember you, what kind of stories have you heard about us anyway?" He told me that he was stationed on Mindoro, a small island about two hundred miles away, and that he had flown up here after hearing over the radio that I had been repatriated. He spent three days visiting me, giving me all the news from back home and telling of his meeting Maurice, another brother, in Australia while on furlough there. The day after my brother left to go back to Mindoro, we flew to Tacloban, Leyte. This place is noted for its vicious mosquitoes that find their way through even he best of nets. We were all happy when we boarded the General A. E. Anderson Naval Troop Transport, and sailed for home. Our next stop was at Holandia, New Guinea, to pick up more troops that were to go home.
A few days after leaving New Guinea, I was out on the sun deck getting some fresh air when a soldier, who was a stranger to me, came up and said, "Hello, Duncan. Your name is Duncan, isn't it?" I answered, "Yes, but how did you know?" He then told me that he was in the same outfit as my brother Jim, and that Jim had told him that he had a brother in a Jap prison camp and another one in the South Pacific. He didn't know which one I was, but had recognized my marked resemblance to Jim.
The rest of the voyage was uneventful until March 8 we sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge into the harbor. There we were met by scores of small boats of all descriptions with bands on them playing a roaring welcome. The Anderson was boarded by pressmen and photographers who interviewed and took pictures of us. Most of us were not very vociferous, but quiet and subdued and perhaps somewhat overwhelmed by the significance of the event.
When the ship docked, sirens and whistles from all of San Francisco began blowing and bands from alongside the ship began to play "Home, Sweet Home," and other familiar numbers which caused lumps to form in our throats.
Home at last!