Camp O'Donnell
          We ended up in Capas and from there we marched to Camp O'Donnell which was about eight miles and Camp O'Donnell was the first prison camp that we were in and that was the worst prison camp of all.

          It was six months after I was captured that my family was finally notified that I was a prisoner of war. My poor mother was going crazy not knowing where I was or if I was even alive.

          I've been asked if I thought at any time that I was going to die and no I had a feeling that I was going to make it because of a dream I had before the war broke out. In my dream I saw the face of my brother Willie and I was talking to him and then I saw a black cloud coming across and he got lost in the cloud and after the cloud passed I saw his face again. I wrote him a letter and told him "Brother, I think something is going to happen, because I had a dream and in the dream I could see you clearly and then I saw this black cloud coming across and I couldn't see you anymore but then I got to see you again meaning 1 guess that I won't see you for a long time, but that I will be seeing you again. So because of that dream I had a feeling that I was going to make it back.

          When we got to Camp O'Donnell there was nothing there, no facilities of any kind, no buildings, no beds - just nothing there. The fellows that got there before we did cut down grass to built beds and as soon as I walked through the gate, the first prisoner I saw was Cruz Garcia. He recognized me and called out "Banegas, Banegas, come here!" So I went to him and he told me he had about three or four boiled eggs and that he would share them with me and that he had enough cut grass to make beds for both of us. So we built our beds from the cut grass. Cruz Garcia was from Las Cruces and I think he was from Battery C.

          All us from the "Old Two Hon'erd" were very close and we tried to take care of each other. Guys from other outfits talked about how we stuck together calling us "dammed New Mexicans"! We were Anglos, Mexicans, and Indians. The tougher it got, the closer we stuck together. (For the Record: Because the 20ath had gone in total, and the state was thereby represented so heavily in the Philippines, New Mexico suffered more casualties per capita than any other state in World War II.)

          Water there at the camp was very, very scarce. There was one faucet with a stream of water the size of my little finger and very low and this was for the thousands of prisoners that were in that camp. We formed lines with our canteens to get water for the very sick who couldn't get up. The lines were very long and the Japanese were so mean they would turn off the water as we were standing in line waiting our turn. But I stayed in line sometimes till midnight or even the next day until they turned the water back on. At that time I was so weak, I had my canteen trying to help my buddies that were even weaker, my knees would give way and I'd fall and get up again and walk a few more steps to get closer to the faucet to get the water.

          Now for food, the Japanese gave us sacks of rice that we put in a big pot but there was no way of washing it before we cooked it. We, the Americans didn't know how to steam the rice. We boiled it and it was so watery. To get water for cooking the rice we went to a little river close to the camp, but the water was so dirty we had to walk toward the middle of the river to try and get cleaner water. As we stepped on the edge trying to get closer to clean water, big clouds of black dirty water came up, so we had to wait until that settled to fill our bucket of water to cook the rice. That gives you an idea of how much bacteria there was and why so many of the prisoners died from dysentery.

          In the prison camp we had several details, one was a wood detail and there were so many dead prisoners every morning that they had several details to take care of them. One detail was to gather the dead bodies that died that night, another detail was to carry them to the gate and the next detail would then carry them to the grave sites which were large holes. There was a detail to dig the holes as well. This detail had to dig three or four holes every day and they were filled every day. The holes were about 10 by 12 and 4 four feet deep. We had to pick up the dead bodies and put as many as we could into the hole, but before we covered the hole with dirt we had to jump into the holes with our bare feet to pack their bodies in because their legs or arms would be sticking out and if we didn't cover them completely the dogs would come and eat from the bodies.

          These details were rotated among the prisoners. Nobody wanted to be on the burial detail, so the guards offered us a biscuit if we served on that detail. You know, some of those bodies that we had to bury had already been dead for two or three days. When we went to pick them up they were so swollen and their skin would also come off their hands or legs when we tried to pick them up. Nobody wanted to be on that burial detail.

          I remember one day that I was on the burial detail I came across on the ground what looked like a log covered with mud, but it wasn't, it was a prisoner. It had rained the night before and he must have gotten cold, so he rolled in the mud. The next day the sun dried the mud on him making him look like a log. I thought he was dead and when I tried to pick him up he moved so I knew that he was still alive. I bent down to check on him closer, he was on his side, and I noticed that he had a real red spot on his tail bone and when I rolled him over on his stomach I saw that the red spot was actually a hole on his tail bone and it was full of maggots. It's an awful feeling to see a live human being full of maggots. It was bad enough to see a dead prisoner full of worms, so you can imagine how awful it was to see a live human full of maggots. The maggots were swarming in that hole in his tail bone.

          A lot of our prisoners were killed by the Japanese themselves, then they made our Commanding Officer sign a paper saying that they died from natural causes. At one point towards the end of the war, the Japanese built a big cross and wrote whatever names on it. They wanted to make the Americans believe that those whose names were on the cross were buried there. But that was not true.

          I don't know how big the camp size was, but we were thousands in that one camp and we were very crowded. Green flies bred by the millions in the open latrines and maggots swarmed everywhere. In my camp I counted anywhere from 20 to 80 prisoners that died every day. The Filipino camp was separate from ours and those fellows carried their dead out day and night. It was a continuous line. That camp was much bigger because they were so many more of them.

          Trying to escape from the camp was very hard. There was one case where three or four tried to escape through the sewer line by the fence when it was raining really hard. The Japanese captured them and brought them in and just beat the hell of out them that night. The next morning they tied their hands behind their backs and took them to the back of the fence where they had dug the graves and shot them. It was almost impossible to escape because the fence was at least 12 to 15 feet high, and barb wire about every four inches on top of that and more wires in all directions. It was very, very hard to get out. Also to keep us from escaping they put us in groups of 10, and if one from that group escaped and they couldn't find him, the other nine were executed.

Cabanatuan
          From Camp O'Donnell we were moved to Cabanatuan and I don't remember if we marched there or how we got there. Camp O'Donnell was actually closed down. For me that camp was like being in hell. I tell my wife Nina - you know being a prisoner of war and going through what I went through - I felt like I had died and was now paying for all I had done in my life. I really felt like I was going through hell. Camp O'Donnell was really bad. The camp at Cabanatuan was better, the camp was cleaner and the death rate started decreasing and decreasing. On the first day that nobody died we really celebrated.

          At this camp we had a farm of two or three hundred acres that we had to till with pick and shovel, actually with pick axe because there was no plow, no nothing. Here the Japanese planted green beans, corn, and other vegetables for the Japanese troops, not for us.

          In Cabanatuan is where Ruben Flores from Las Cruces was held prisoner also. This is where I came down with diphtheria and thank God I had good friends like Ruben Flores, Able Escalante, Julio Barela, David Telles, and two or three more who helped me so much. Before I came down with diphtheria, I had dry beri-beri and that gave me so much pain, I used to cry and yell all day and night because of the stabbing pain on my legs and feet. It was so bad that I couldn't stand it. The dry beri-beri was caused by the lack of food and vitamins and that dried the fluid in my joints and that's why it was so painful. Some had the wet beri-beri, but I was lucky not to get that one. The wet beri-beri caused swelling, so their faces and their arms from the elbows down to their hands and the legs from the knees down their feet swelled up so much, they looked so bad. Sometimes the skin would break from the swelling and a yellow fluid would leak out.

          There was no medicine for anything. When the doctor had to do any kind of surgery he had to do it with a pocket knife and he couldn't put them to sleep because there was no anesthetic either. Several appendectomies were performed without anesthesia, and so those poor fellows would yell from the pain. I remember helping the doctor by holding the men down while the doctor scraped pus from the sores with a stick. Those poor fellows screamed, but it took the rotten stuff out.

          When I came down with beri-beri my friend Ruben and all the rest would come over after work and massage my legs and feet to ease the pain. Ruben and I have always been very close, we started talking and joking and sometimes we sang together , but we couldn't sing very loud especially when we were working in the fields because the Japanese would punish us. They would hit us with the butt of their rifles.

          Here is where I composed my corrido (ballad) and Ruben Flores and I still sing that corrido together. We used a guitar that somebody made using carabao guts for strings. We also sang "El Rancho Grande," and even the Japs liked that one! A copy of my corrido in Spanish is attached, so is a copy in English that was translated for me by Abel Escalente.

          Another form of punishment that the Japanese used was to force the prisoners to stand at attention on a red ant hill and the ants would climb up their legs and bite them. We could see the ants on them, and if the prisoners moved the Japanese would hit them with their rifle butts.

          One time at this camp we were carrying dead bodies to the holes to be buried when one of the prisoners that we thought was dead suddenly sat up on the stretcher. We got so scared that we dropped the rest of the bodies on the ground and started running. Sometimes I wonder how many bodies we buried that were still alive.

          When I came down with diphtheria my throat and my tongue started swelling up so bad 1 couldn't talk. When I got my ration of rice I couldn't eat it, I'd put a spoonful of rice in my mouth and I couldn't swallow, my throat was so swollen. I let Ruben have my ration of rice in my mess kit and spoon and he ate it and diphtheria is so contagious, but he didn't catch it. I was so sick with diphtheria I had to be dragged over the fenced camp with prisoners that had diphtheria, there was another camp for those with dysentery and one for those with malaria. The diphtheria and dysentery is so contagious they didn't want to put us all together with the rest. But I don't see what good that did because there were billions of flies all over the camps including those in the camps with dysentery and diphtheria so the flies just carried the germs from all the fences that we were in. In the diphtheria fence that I was in was called the "Zero Ward," because once you got into that ward, you didn't come out alive.

Read part 3