By contrast, the prisoners taken from Corregidor ate well until the last days of fighting. The main quartermaster, with full control of all supplies, was headquartered on Corregidor. As the war continued from December to April, transporting large amounts of food or other supplies to the Bataan peninsula became more hazardous and difficult; therefore, food on Corregidor was plentiful. Thus, while the men on Bataan had fourteen to seventeen ounces of food per day, those on Corregidor had forty-eight to fifty-five ounces per day. Furthermore, those who were not wounded during the fighting on Corregidor were in pretty good health. Malaria did only mild damage to those on Corregidor, but it struck 99 percent of us on Bataan, whose jungles were known to have the heaviest infestation of malaria-carrying mosquitoes in the world.
Ultimately, none of the assumptions the Japanese made about the forces on the Philippines were realistic or based on solid intelligence. In the opinion of many, the assumptions, which were discussed at the end of the war at the war crimes trials, were made to justify the treatment meted out to the men on the march. The Japanese had no way of knowing the real situation on Bataan, and they did not really care. At their courts-martial, many high-ranking Japanese officers who served in the Philippines said about the same thing: “I didn’t really know the situation or condition of the Americans and the Filipinos.”
Actually, after looking at a map of the Philippine Islands and especially of Bataan, it is easy to see that the Japanese could have saved themselves a great deal of trouble. Had the Japanese just kept a small force of fighting men along the Pilar-Bagac line, we would have been our own prisoners of war, under our own command. In fact, we often said, “If they leave us alone now, we will be the first POWs with guns and ammunition, taking orders from our own officers.” The bottom line was we had no place to go. Going north we would have come into contact with the enemy. Going south, east, or west, we would have ended up in the water. If the Japanese had just left us alone, we would have starved and would eventually have been forced to surrender. This strategy would have allowed the Japanese a two-month head start on their conquest of Australia and their dreams of ruling the entire Southeast Asia territory. The Japanese ego, however, insisted upon a clearly defined defeat of the U.S. forces in the Philippines. They were then faced with the problems of dealing with almost eighty thousand disorganized and diseased military prisoners, as well as twenty-five thousand civilians.
That morning of April 10, the Japanese marched us to the main road, a distance of about half a mile. During this short march, the Japanese soldiers hollered and prodded us with their bayonets to walk faster. Once at the main road, we waited for three hours, standing, sitting, or resting any way we could; but talking was not allowed.
Down the road, we saw a cloud of dust from which a group of walking and shuffling U.S. and Filipino soldiers emerged. When they passed us, we were told to join them and to start walking. For our group the Bataan Death March began at kilometer marker 167, about two miles east of Mariveles. It had originated at the tip of Bataan in the barrio of Mariveles, where many of the U.S. and Filipino soldiers had congregated and where the Japanese had made their main landing on the Bataan peninsula.
If only we had heeded General King’s message to save some vehicles for moving our forces to another location, if we had not destroyed all of our trucks, maybe we would have been able to ride to prison camp. For some unknown reason, or just being in the right place at the right time, a few of the American prisoners ended up riding all the way to our first prison camp, Camp O’Donnell. We walked.
The road we marched on was about twenty feet wide and constructed of rock covered with crushed stone, then a layer of finely crushed rock, and a final coat of sand. The sand, when put down, was intended to make the road hard enough for small automobiles, Filipino carts pulled by carabao, and of course, pedestrians. By the time the march started, the road had already been overused, not only by all of our heavy trucks but also by our tanks and half-tracks whose metal and hard rubber tracks made the road a shambles for driving, much less for walking. The entire road was now nothing more than potholes, soft sand, rocks, and loose gravel. Walking on this terrain for short distances would have been bad enough, but walking for any long distance or for any extended period of time was going to be a painful and difficult experience.
We started our march in columns of fours, with about ten columns in a group. By the end of the first mile we were walking, not marching, and not in columns at all but as stragglers. What was at first an organized group of about forty men was now a mass of men walking or limping as best they could. We had no idea what our final destination was. Many of us felt that we were headed for death. It was just at this time that I decided if I were to survive it would be necessary to have a plan of survival. I thought back to the night before, before we were captured, when I determined that I had to really believe that I was going to survive and get home. To do so I had to set attainable goals, like making it to the next bend in the road or to the herd of carabao in the distance. And of course I had to dream, for it was my dream that kept me going.
After watching everyone being stripped of just about everything we owned, I placed my picture of Laura in my sock, on the ankle side of my boot. She gave me inspiration for my dream, and I reasoned that without a dream, no dream could ever come true and my resolve would weaken. I did not want the enemy to take away the very thing I was dreaming about, the reason why I had to live, to see Laura again, and to make my dream become a reality.
We did not march very far before we found out what kind of treatment was in store for us. After the first shock of being taken prisoner wore off, we realized that how we were outfitted when we were taken from our bivouac area was how we were going to spend the balance of our march. For instance, those who left without a canteen had no means of getting water, even if it was available. Those who left without a cap or headpiece walked in the broiling hot sun and midday temperatures well above one hundred degrees without any head protection. They also suffered the pain of stinging rain during those periods when it would pour down in buckets and the wind-blown dust made seeing difficult.
After the first few hours of marching, however, the men who did have a few extra items with them started discarding them along the road. Some of the men carried knapsacks loaded with a variety of gear: toothbrushes, toothpaste, shaving cream and razors, blankets, and pup tents. The road out of Bataan was strewn with a sampling of these various articles, thrown away at random after the first few miles.
The Japanese guards also began hollering at us in Japanese, which we did not understand. Because we did not respond to their commands as fast as they thought we should, they started beating us with sticks that they picked up from the side of the road. They were trying to get us to walk faster or to walk at a slow trot would be a better description. It made no difference to the guards that we could not understand what they were saying; they just continued repeating the same words over and over again. It dawned on me then that our guards were not the brightest members of the Japanese army. In fact, I concluded, they were most probably the poorest educated and could not connect the fact that we did not respond with our inability to understand what they were saying.
After four or five hours of this constant harassment and beating and of being forced to march in their poor physical condition, many of my fellow prisoners just could not go another step without rest; but the guards did not allow us to rest under any circumstances. One man in my group, Hank, finally limped over to the side of the road and fell in the brush. Within seconds a guard ran over to him. Some of us passing our fallen friend hollered as loud as we could, “Get up, get up!” It was too late. With his bayonet aimed at Hank’s body and while screaming something in Japanese at the top of his voice, the guard bayoneted the exhausted American soldier. After five or six jabs, Hank struggled to get up. With blood trickling down the front of his shirt, he hobbled back into the line of marching prisoners and joined a different group of prisoners who were marching
by at that particular moment.
Hank survived, but not for long. That evening I was told by another friend of ours that Hank had passed out while walking, fell to the road, and was shot by one of the guards. I could not cry; it seemed I was all cried out. All I had left were just memories, memories of a fine young man who did nothing wrong but who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Nothing could be clearer: taking a rest while on the march was impossible, that is, if we wanted to live. But what would we do when we had to defecate? Or urinate? We sadly and quickly found out. In order to live, we had to go in our pants.
On the second day of the march, I saw a Japanese truck coming down the road. In the back of the truck were guards with long pieces of rope that they whipped toward us marching men. They tried to hit any prisoner who was not marching fast enough. They snapped a rope at one of the marchers on the outside of the column, caught him around his neck, and then pulled him toward the back of the truck. They dragged him for at least one hundred yards down the road. His body just twisted and turned; he rolled this way and that way, bumping along the gravel road until he was able to free himself from the whip. By then he looked like a side of beef. As he crawled on his hands and knees and slowly raised his bleeding body off of the road, he screamed at them, “You bastards! I’ll get even with you for this. I’ll live to pee on your graves.” In spite of his physical condition, the welled-up anger gave him new strength. He pulled himself up to his full height and began marching with a new spirit.
Also on that second day, when we stopped at the Cabcaben barrio, I watched a Japanese soldier finish eating rice from his bento box (mess kit) and fish from a can he had just opened. He had about two spoonfuls of fish left in the can, and as he turned in my direction, he looked me in the eye and pushed the can toward me. He must have seen a pitifully hungry-looking soldier, staring, not at him, but at his can of fish. I had not eaten in almost two days, and I was hungry, tired, and demoralized. Without a moment’s hesitation, I took the can. Using a piece of tree bark I found on the side of the road, I scooped out just enough for a good taste. I then turned to my buddy Bob Martin, took one look at his face as he sat there staring at me, and gave him the makeshift spoon and the can of fish. From that moment on, Bob and I were close friends.
Always happy-go-lucky, nothing ever seemed to bother Bob. Maybe the word nonchalant would better describe him. Although only five foot seven inches tall, he was a big man when it came to giving of himself, and nothing was ever too much to ask of Bob. His smiling face always made people feel warm and friendly, and his brown hair and green eyes complemented his effervescent personality. Whether wearing his dress uniform hat or his fatigue cap, Bob always perched it jauntily on the back of his head; it was one of his trademarks.
Watching Bob keeping up his own spirits while at the same time trying to make the rest of us on the march feel better made all of us realize that Bob Martin was someone special. Bob and I shared many experiences together on the march and throughout the war. As of this writing, I am glad to be able to say he is alive and well, and we are still very close friends.
I also clearly remember a good-looking and clean-shaven lieutenant from the 194th Tank Battalion, a man about twenty-eight years old with blond wavy hair. He was a large man, about six feet tall, and I guess before the war he had weighed at least 200 pounds but now, on the march, was closer to 150. He appeared to be quite strong but he walked slowly, carrying a large bundle—first under his arms, then as we walked farther, over his shoulder. Then he tried walking with the bundle on his head. None of us knew what was in the bundle, but we assumed it was the usual type of gear any good soldier would take with him for emergency purposes.
Our group was walking a little faster than the lieutenant, and as I got closer to him, I saw his eyes were bloodshot and glassy, almost as if he did not know where he was. As I passed him, I asked if he needed any help; I got no answer. Then, as I looked toward him again, I realized he was not walking but staggering, first to the left, then to the right. He was not going to make it, that I knew, and I felt awful not being able to help someone who obviously needed help and was going to die. If any of us had stopped for him, we would have had to accept whatever punishment the guard near us felt appropriate.
As the march continued, he fell farther and farther back, hardly able to walk. We had tried to persuade him to throw away unnecessary items, for his pack was too heavy a burden for him under these conditions. He refused and, after stumbling along for several hundred feet, fell to the ground. The Japanese guard overseeing our marching group stopped and looked at the fallen figure. He yelled something in Japanese and without a moment’s hesitation shoved his bayonet into the young officer’s chest. Then with a mighty scream, the guard yelled what we interpreted to mean, “Get up.” Of course it was too late. That bayonet had finished the job the march started, and another good U.S. soldier had died in the service of his country. I could not help but think, There but for the grace of God go I. As I witnessed one after another of these atrocities, I became more and more convinced that what was going to happen to me was, to a great extent, going to be up to me.
While walking forward, we looked back at the sickening scene. There the lieutenant lay in the middle of the road. Within minutes we heard the rumble of trucks coming down the road; the Japanese were moving some of their fighting men in position against Corregidor. Making no attempt to avoid the fallen body, they ran over the dead man, leaving only the mangled remains of what once was a human being.
No sympathy, no concern for us as humans, no burials—the Japanese were treating us like animals. We had no doubt as to how we would be treated as prisoners of war.
We had thought that the first few hours of captivity would probably be the most dangerous, but the horrors we witnessed continued well after the surrender. For the Japanese, their sweet taste of victory should have overshadowed the bitterness associated with their strenuous fighting on Bataan, but it was obvious to us that the Japanese soldiers were committing acts of revenge. Many of them had witnessed the death of close friends only days before, and they wanted to get even with those who killed their comrades. Emotions ran high during the battle, and now their elated feelings of victory, coupled with their vengeful reactions associated with close physical contact with their enemy, made many of the Japanese soldiers barbarians. The warrior philosophy associated with the traditional Bushido code was reawakened when the victorious Japanese achieved the surrender of the forces on Bataan. All Japanese soldiers were indoctrinated to believe that surrender was the coward’s way out, and a soldier who was captured was expected to commit harakari at the first possible opportunity.
Our ignorance of the Japanese language, their customs, and their military discipline contributed heavily to our casualties on the Bataan Death March. While few of us spoke Japanese, we were aware that many Japanese soldiers spoke a little English but did not dare reveal this ability in front of their comrades, for fear of being accused of having pro-American sympathies.
On the march the guards seemed to have most of their fun with prisoners who seemed to be weak. Later, in the prison camps in Japan, the guards and civilian workers seemed to seek out those prisoners who appeared to be big or strong for punishment. Many times the Japanese guards would boast, “Americans are big but weak; Japanese are small but strong.” They had a severe psychological hang-up about being small.
The guards also forced us to go without water on the march, making it one of the most difficult and painful physical experiences I had ever encountered. My stomach ached, my throat became raw, and my arms and legs did not want to move. Words cannot properly explain the mental and physical abuse the body takes when in need of liquid. By the third day, marching without food and water caused us to start daydreaming about food and drinks we had consumed in the past. Simple things like hamburgers covered with cheese and smothered with onions, milkshakes, a beer or even a Coke made our mouths water. Our minds played tricks on us, but eventually we came back to reali
ty—to hunger and thirst and not knowing where or when our next meal or drink would come from. Still, we were forced to push on and to keep going, one foot in front of the other, with our bodies going in the direction of our feet.
Although there were many free-flowing artesian wells located in and around Bataan, the Japanese had no set policy on giving water to us prisoners. Some of the guards would let a few men go to a well for water but would deny others the same benefit. One day our tongues were thick with the dust kicked up from the constantly passing trucks, and our throats were parched. We saw water flowing from an artesian well, and after a long, hard look at the water being wasted and given the fact that there was no guard right at our side, a marching buddy, Frank, and I ran toward the well to drink what we could and to fill our canteens for future use. We reached the well and started to swallow water as fast as we could. First I took some, then Frank took a turn, then I drank again, and then Frank. We took turns until some other marchers saw us at the well.
Within a few minutes, another ten to fifteen prisoners ran to the well for water. At just that time a Japanese guard came over to the well and started to laugh at us. The first five of us drank our fill, and when the sixth man began drinking, the guard suddenly pushed his bayonet down into the man’s neck and back. The American prisoner fell to his knees, gasped for breath, and then fell over on his face. He died without ever knowing what happened—killed, murdered, slaughtered for no apparent reason.
All of us at the well ran as fast as we could to get back into the marching line. Fear filled each of us. My heart pounded like a jackhammer, my eyes popped opened to twice their normal size, and I could not help but think once again, There but for the grace of God go I. Tears streamed down my cheeks as I thought about this young man, murdered and cut down in the prime of his life by a maniac who felt that killing was a game.
My Hitch in Hell Page 8