1942-1944
Internment
LT Dorothy Still Danner, NC, USN
When the Japanese came they rounded up all the Allied civilians and sent them to the University of Santo Tomas. Although there were some 66 classrooms in the main building, there were still too many people. It was just a mess. The toilet facilities were overwhelmed and sickness began almost overnight. With Japanese permission, the civilians formed an administration committee and appointed a leader. Soon the civilians set up a school for the children, entertainment, and a newsletter, among other things. Santo Tomas was used as a model by the Japanese. They allowed the Swiss delegates to see Santo Tomas, not the POW camps or the other civilian camps.

I was sent to Santo Tomas on March 8, 1942. However, the medical facilities there were still lacking. There was a little hospital set up in what had been a mechanical engineering building. The doctors brought in medicine from their offices. A lot of lab technicians and pharmacists apparently had their own means of bringing drugs in then through Red Cross funds. By the time we got there, they had revamped the rest rooms and had put in showers.

Soon Santo Tomas became too crowded as the Japanese kept bringing people in. They decided to move part of the camp out of Manila. Therefore, they selected a site near the town of Los Banos to house some of the overflow.

Camp O'Donnell
Ruben Flores
We had a burial routine. The same routine, burying POWS everyday, everyday. We would dig trenches with bulldozers, as wide as the bulldozer plate would go. And that day we would go with the bodies, the ones that died the day before. We'd throw them in. The Japanese were always with us. They wouldn't let them place us. You get them from their feet, the other from their arms. Any way they'd fall.

There were several days that we would bury 30, 40, 50. There was one time I remember that we buried over 75. At that time, the one time we buried the most, the hole wasn't deep enough for all of them. But the Japanese wanted us to throw them all in there. They'd come with the bulldozers and throw the dirt over them. The next day - it was monsoon season, raining all the time. The next day, we'd go out there to bury others. The ones we buried yesterday or the day before some would have their feet sticking out, their hands gnawed by wild animals, and the water that would lay on top would be as red as can be from the blood from where the animals would eat their flesh.

Our own doctors [at the POW camps], they didn't have any medicine. For dysentery, you know what the doctors would give you? They would burn a log, or logs and then with a piece of glass off a broken bottle, you'd scrap off the black stuff, take that and scrap it out and [they'd] give it to us with a spoon. You know that would help for dysentery.

Prison camps
Mike Pulice
After Corregidor surrendered about the middle of June they loaded all of us patients onto trucks and drove us to Manila, to Bilibid prison. I was there from about the middle of June to the middle of August. About the first week of August they took us up to Cabanatuan. That was my second camp. While I was at Bilibid, this Filipino that took care of me in the hospital. He used to come by - they used to let the Filipinos come into camp and sell fried bananas. I conned him into staying in my place and I'd go out and stay with his folks and buy medicine on the outside. So I had quinine pills and sulphur powder [an anti-biotic]. I guess that's one of the reasons why I survived. Oh, I shared that medicine. For one thing, we all took care of each other. We traded cigarettes. Since I didn't smoke I'd trade them for something to eat. I'd be gone a couple of days from Bilibid and I would stay with his parents on a riverboat on the Pasig river, right in the middle of town. I'd come back and show the ID and they'd wave me right on in and then he'd come out.

In October 1942 they sent 500 of us to the island of Mindanao. If we wanted meat for camp, during our lunch break, the guys would say we haven't had any meat in quite a while. And someone else would say, "Let's fix that." So we’d hobble one of them [a carabao] in the deeper parts of the water and he'd drown. We'd start screaming and after I took the hobbles off it and they'd let us take it into camp. We'd butcher it. One carabao made a little stock for soup and that was about it. If there was any fruit or something around, we could slip stuff into camp that you would never imagine - like a chicken. You'd just give it one twist and be quick and it wouldn't squawk anymore. You'd put it in your raincoat. They'd always frisk you. But you'd put it in your coat and hold it out and they didn't look in the raincoat. If it didn't show, you didn't have anything. We'd cut the bottom off our canteen and with pitch from the trees we'd put it back on leaving space at the bottom. We could get in with anything!

We had two or three radios in camp. We had one in the barracks were in. I helped hollow out one of the columns in the barracks. We hollowed that sucker out and it was the hiding place for the radio. At night our barracks chief would get it out and write everything that was said. We knew where we were all the time. Rumors were the biggest thing in camp, just like any organization. When we were first surrendered, they'd say I think we're going to get some reinforcements. Before the surrender the Filipinos would say, "Joe, we heard MacArthur's coming back." Oh yeah, ... heck it was just guys that had been surrendered in Singapore or Shanghai or Malaysia.

Clifford Martinez
They were taking us to what they called Cabanatuan One Prison Camp. And I marched, I guess almost half way, and finally gave out, so they threw me up on a truck.

And we come up to this camp, now the three buddies of mine, Professor Lee, Shorty Jordan, and this other guy. We got in the truck. I was told later these guys, instead of turning to the camp they kept going. They picked them up about five miles down the road and they beat the hell out of them and they asked them what they were doing. Well, they said the war's over we're looking for a job. So they brought them back, tied them to posts in a standing squat position, beat the hell out of them, every time they turned around. They held them there for four or five days. Then they got the whole camp, like this, they dragged them down made them dig their own grave, which wasn't very deep. You weren't able to dig very deep. And they made them stand up and they shot them. So when they were filling the graves, the officer came down and coup-de-grace three of them. Well, that was the first killing that I'd seen, in prison camp.

But they gave us half a mess kit of rice kind of soupy stuff and a one canteen cup of water a day. And nobody could take a bath or anything else. And I was constipated, I got constipated. I went approximately six days without a bowel movement. Well, there was a bunch of us that way. So finally one of the guys come in off details, they had details going out in another camp down the road. So he came back, I told him "Damn I wish I could shit," you know. He says "Hey, I got some caramel pony sugar, eat some of it. That'll make you go". What it was a clump like this about [5 inches] around and [1 inch] thick. What it was, it was scrapings off the top where they boil, make sugar. So, I ate about damn near half of it. I guess about 10 or 12 hours later I got a pain. At the end of the hill they had ditches dug, nothing covering it, just ditches.

So I started running down that hill and there was little ditch like this and I came down like that and I just shit all over to hell I'm tellin' you. They had water faucets with strict orders not to use water, but I'm full of shit so I take my pants off, wash them. Here's this 90-day wonder second lieutenant there caught me. I said, "I just shit all over myself. I had to wash." That's no excuse. I'm gonna turn you in."

This was an American?
Yeah, an American officer, lieutenant, 90-day wonder. So he went up to the officer's barracks, told them what happened and they said well bring them in and asked me my side. I told them I said, 'I got one pair of pants, I got the shits I said I fell down, I shit all over myself there's a water faucet that way, I washed my pants." He said "Well you know you're not supposed to use water." I said "I know, but sir, I had to do something, I had to have clean clothes." He said "Well, hell, Lieutenant, you wanna be that way about it you go ahead and punish him." So we got back to the barracks, he says "Alright we're gonna put you on half rations." The guy looked at him said "You crazy? We're only getting half rations." "It's alright, he disobeyed a direct order." So they put me on half rations. Time come to give half rations, here comes a guy - spoon of rice, another guy - spoon of rice. See, there was thoughtfulness among the guys themselves and they sacrificed themselves to make sure I got my share of rice. The lieutenant didn't see that.

So were you sticking by your buddies from here and Ft. Bliss that you'd known?
My own outfit, I don't know what happened to them. I never seen any of them after we left Corregidor, I never seen them anymore. Guys from the 60th and some other outfits had got here, but I was in more with the 200th and the 515th throughout the Cabanatuan days.

Why was that?
I don't know, see I don't know what happened. I couldn't find any of the guys, none of them. See, some of them were sent to some other camp down in the southern part of the island. I never made contact with my outfit until some time last year, a guy by the name of Smith I met in Ft. Bliss. Anyway, I was in mostly with the guys from the 200th and the 515th.

What were they like?
I knew a bunch of them from here [Las Cruces] before the war. They didn't get over there till November of '41. But a bunch of them I knew. Cruz Garcia, he's dead now, Lecho [Lorenzo] Banegas, a whole bunch I knew. And I met up with this buddy, this guy from Belen. His name was Benny Valencia. He was state champion boxer before the war and he'd been in the highway patrol. But I got buddy buddy with him. He was a big guy, but he got down pretty thin. They made up a bunch of details. They told us we could put in a garden and we were going to get vegetables from the garden, we were gonna go half and half. Well, the good stuff that grew on the bottom was their half, the stuff on top was our half. Like sweet potatoes, they got the [sweet potatoes], we got the sweet potato vines. Tastes something like spinach. It was pretty fair.

How were the Japanese eating?
They ate pretty damn good. Well, a bunch of guys for them getting extra rice so they must have been doing pretty good. And then they butchered carabao, they got the meat, we got the bones. So they were doing pretty good. I got out of the first detail. It was carabao detail. Well, they used the carabao to plow. And there was a guy, a buddy of mine, Julio Barela was with me on that detail. He is still living in Fairacres.

How were you able to work...?
When you got a bayonet up your hind end and a bunch of clubs around, you just go. I don't know how, but you just go. But this was pretty easy detail. See, you could only work a carabao for a couple hours and you had to put them in a mud hole and get another carabao and go on. Then you had a damn stupid Jap up there with a bayonet, poking the damn carabao in the ass if he didn't move fast enough. But me and Julio got around pretty good on that detail. We had a good guard, we called him Donald Duck. He asked us what Donald Duck meant. "He's a movie star in Hollywood." If he ever found out he was a duck, it would've been something else. But he would let us smuggle sweet potatoes onto camp. He'd give us a break out there, which very seldom they'd do.

Why do you think he did that?
I don't know. He looked like a young kid. He was real good, never cussed us, never hollered at us and he'd give us the butt off a cigarette and stuff like that. He'd give us a break, build us a fire. But if another Jap came around then he'd act meaner. But I think that he was forced into the thing itself and he didn't like it. I think he knew the score himself but he had to do what he was ordered, you know. All I could say about him was he was good, he treated us good. We had other details, they put us pulling weeds. One day I remember this guy Benny Valencia was with me. They beat me. I wasn't pulling weeds fast enough or talking or something and they came up and beat the hell out of me and hit me with a rifle butt in the face and shoulder.

Was that the first time you'd been beaten?
That's the worst beating I got. They he hit me across the back with a pick handle and I heard a snap and I went unconscious. Well, I woke up in what they call the hospital area and boy my back was screwed up. So I stayed there for seven days and they sent me back to the barracks. But Benny Valencia was with me. He'd seen them do it. Then they put me on so-called light duty, which was the carabao detail with Donald Duck again.

They issued us what they call g-strings. That's that piece of string you pull around and put a rag up there. That was all the clothes we had. When we ran out of shoes, we used to make what they call go-aheads, piece of wood, bout the size of your foot, get a rag, nail it here and here that's what you wore. Those were the only shoes we had. You had to make do. You had to make uniforms from what clothes we had. They had to last.

Then we started getting bed bugs. Then we got body lice. We slept on bamboo slats. The barracks were made okay like this. They had what the call bottom bay, both sides divided into seven-man tiers with slats. They did give us a blanket and that's what protected us little bit from the slats. Put half down under you, and half over top of you.

Bed bugs, I tell you, you could bang a slat and it'd be black from bed bugs, so they got to where they gave us 50 gallon drums and you fill them so full of water. They put wooden platform in there. They fill it with water, boil it. You put your clothes in it, your blankets everything in there and the steam would kill the lice and everything. You could take your pants, like this and there'd be bed bugs. I mean fleas and lice - gray backs we called them - in the seams and they'd just eat you raw. So once a week you got to steam the clothes you had. On the farm detail, we wouldn't wear our clothes, kept them to put on at night to keep warm. We'd just wear the damn g-strings.

Ward Redshaw
One of my jobs was in the medical service. I was also chief anesthesiologist. What my job was, was to sit on people who were going to have a limb taken off, or anything painful. I would have my little piece of wood and keep it in his mouth and sit on his chest as they were taking off his leg or what not.

David Johns
We had some officers that were so chicken that they wouldn't back you or wouldn't say nothing or anything. We had one major there in Lipa we called horseface. He'd stay over on the Japanese side. He wouldn't stay with us. The Japanese were feeding him. He was a big jeffe. We were just barely getting along. He had a dog about that big and this dog would be running behind him wherever he went. And the dog was real fat. So he - the dog - was eating better than we were. One night that dog got over into our compound and we caught him. We had 55-gallon drums of water that we used to dip water out to bathe. We stuck him in the drum and he gurgled for about ten minutes and that was it. We butchered him out. We had what was called a quan pot. We cut him up and put him in the quan pot with rice or lugao or corn or anything we could get. We ate anything that came along. We ate carabao, lizard.

Hell Ships
Ruben Flores
From Cabantuan prison, they took us to the docks and put us on ships - in the holds where they used to transport coal, at the bottom (of the ship). There was no beds, no nothing. They put us in there; they kept putting us in until we couldn't move. They loaded us in three different ships. From there we got to Hong Kong. The reason we got to Hong Kong is because there were two Japanese troops ships and five POW ships and the Americans started torpedoing us. They don't know there were POWs in those ships. I understand they got all three of the Japanese troops and all but ours was damaged.

They would lower a honey bucket and they'd pick it up whenever they felt like it. And when they'd do that, they didn't care how they hauled it up, so you can just imagine the thing splattering. It got real hot in there.

There was the only time I saw the brutality amongst us. There was a time in the darkness in the hold, and you can imagine how dark it would get at night. There was one POW that was killed, and sliced in the throat just to drink the blood. That's how thirsty we were. From then on, everyone slept back to back, guarding each other's back. There was so much yelling, crying, moaning.

Mike Pulice
We were four or five miles off shore when a submarine sank us. The torpedo hit the rear of the ship. I happened to be in a hammock and the cover just blew off and came back down and hit me. That' s when I got my leg messed up. We were all in the water and most of us could swim. But there were only 83 of us that made it to shore. It took me from about 4 o'clock in the afternoon when we got hit, and I made it into shore the next day about 10 o'clock in the morning. By the time I got up to the deck it had already listed enough that I didn't have to jump off the ship. I just swam off. I could see the Japanese motor launches. They had machine guns, one on the front part and one on the back. They were shooting everybody that was in the water that they could see. That's when I got under the hatch cover. One of the Japanese guards saw us, and he was determined that he was going to kill us. He was going to bayonet us. We just held him under until he quit bubbling, and then let him go. The next morning the Filipinos came out about five hundred yards from shore in a dugout and put me in it. I could see, we were out about 4 or 5 miles out. By the time I could see the glare from bonfires they had all along the shore. I crawled up on the hatch cover a slept a while. What woke me up was I could hear an airplane looking to see if anyone was alive. I went under the hatch cover and when he was gone, I started swimming to shore. They never even took me out of that darn dug out. They just picked it up and took me into the jungle.

We had a contingency of Americans helping the Filipinos. That was September 7 and 22 days later a submarine got us out of there. We went to Windy Island, and stayed at a naval hospital. In November, I came back and went under the bridge in San Francisco three years to the day [after I left]. I got back a year before the rest of them did.

Prison camps in Japan
Winston Shillito
We wound up at Yokohama. We had an interpreter that had been born and raised in Vancouver. and graduated from the University of Washington. This man spoke fluent English of course, but not a lot of Japanese. He was not popular with the Japanese and was quartered with the Japanese troops that were overseeing us. The Japanese eventually killed him. They cut his head off for being sympathetic.

We had one man, from Artesia, Tony King, that learned to read Japanese script. He kept us pretty much informed on what was going on from the Japanese viewpoint. We kind of had an idea of the progress of the war. We could see that the Americans were winning the war. But we couldn't predict anything.

Sabotage
David Johns
We built air fields. We'd mix our own concrete and we'd take great big palm leaves and put over a hole, a big hole, and cement it over. And they'd come out and inspect it and it'd look pretty good and after a while they started using the runways. A plane'd come in and land and it'd hit one of those holes there that we had a palm leaf over and it'd flip it. Of course, they'd blame us for it, but we figured that's one plane that's not going to bomb the Americans.

Ruben Flores
We did sabotage anything we could at any time. Their trucks - we used to throw sand in their gas tanks.

Weldon Hamilton
We were always fighting the Japanese. Anything we did to make things difficult for them was fair game. In the mine I worked in under the ocean, when the pumps quit the mine would fill up from the bottom with water. So the B-29's came over and put the electricity out. So the mine starts filling up from the bottom. They send us down to the bottom floor to try to save the big electrical equipment down there.

We were supposed to drag these things out. The guys would get in to their neck and woller around and pretend like they was trying to pull on that thing but they really wouldn't be pulling. We would just be laughing because those big machines were going under water.