My Hitch in Hell

by Lester I. Tenney

  At first the commander was furious. He jumped up and grabbed his sword. I thought he was going to cut my head off right then and there. Then just as quickly, he sat down and became calm, almost as if a load was removed from his mind. He dismissed me, telling me to go to my barracks, which I did gratefully.

  The following day I was made aware of the serious consequences of the trading incident. At our noon meal, I was in the mess hall just finishing my rice and soup when in came two Japanese guards with fixed bayonets. They had no sooner entered than they started to holler, “Ni-hyaku roku-ju-yon” (number 264). They were looking for me. I raised my hand and hollered, “Hai!” The guards ran to me, grabbed me, and pushed me toward the door. Once outside, they took each of my arms, twisted them behind my back, and led me to the guardhouse in the center of the compound. I was shoved inside the building, and to my surprise, there were seven other men in there. All of them, I learned later, had been trading with workers in the mine.

  They pushed me into a cell with such force that I was thrown about two feet inside, and when I fell, my head struck the floor hard enough to open a two-inch gash in my forehead. I had the cell—a space about five feet long, four feet wide, and five feet high—all to myself. It was not big enough to stand up in or long enough to lie down in. It had solid walls on three sides and bars in the front; I could not see the other men once I was inside. About two hours later, the interpreter came in and informed me that I would get no food and only one small glass of water per day. And, I was told, tomorrow we traders would learn what our punishment would be. I was scared stiff, wondering what was going to happen.

  At the morning’s roll call, we were all marched out of the guardhouse and onto the field in front of the entire prisoner population. After the roll call, the Japanese commander marched over to us. He seemed very nervous and paced back and forth in front of us. He informed us that we had to be put to death for trading with the Japanese in the mine. Trading was against Japanese law, we broke the law, and we had to be punished for it. With a wave of his hand, we were surrounded by about ten soldiers, all with rifles and fixed bayonets. Two of the officers were swinging their samurai swords from right to left, in a full arc. One of the officers abruptly assumed the warrior’s position, squatting down with his feet planted firmly on the ground and the sword held poised over his head with both hands. Then swish-sh-shl He swung his sword down, catching the wind as he imitated a blow to the neck of a victim.

  The guards lined us up, and the commander told each of us how we were going to die. “You, bayonet. You, shoot death. You, number 264, you do good show; we honor you with head cut off.” At that moment I lost control over my bowels. I defecated in my pants.

  The Japanese commander paraded in front of us like a pompous ass, but he was an ass with the power of life and death. First he said, “Like in America, who wants last cigarette?” Not one of us wanted a cigarette. Then he said, “Like America, who wants blindfold?” Again no takers. Finally, the commander said, “Like America, anyone have last words to say?”

  At last he gave me an opening. Obviously, the next move was going to be my last, so I said I would like to say something. He told me to take one step forward and say whatever I wanted. The speech I gave that day was truly extemporaneous, but I believe it saved my life and the lives of the other men waiting to be executed. I stepped forward with my hands tied behind my back and with tears in my eyes. My voice cracked as I said, “Men, don’t try to fool the Japanese; they are very smart. Do what they say and you will live to see your families again. Do what I did, and you will die here in Japan.” The Japanese camp commander began waving his hands and hollering, “Yeroshi, yeroshi.” His face glowed with excitement, he stood more erect than ever before, and his chest was puffed out to its fullest. He impressed us all as being one very happy man.

  I rejoined my fellow prisoners, who were waiting for their executions to begin. Then the commander shouted, “No more heads cut off! No more shoots to death! All men go to esso [guardhouse]. One glass of water and one meal each day for ten days, then free.” I could not believe my ears. The tears in my eyes, first caused by fear, were now from happiness. The six other men condemned to death gave muffled sighs of relief.

  The guards led us back to the guardhouse and put us in our cells. I was alive, that was all I could think of. I had just met one more goal in my quest for returning home. On the second day in the guardhouse, our one meal was brought in by my best friend, Bob Martin, who had been injured in the coal mine and was unable to walk without a very bad limp. He was assigned kitchen duty, and one of his responsibilities was to feed anyone in the guardhouse. When he got to my cell, he filled my bento box to the very top and packed it down real tight to get as much rice as possible in the box. Eating one ration a day was not going to be easy, but I would have to contend with it if I wanted to go home someday.

  The following evening one of the guards came in, and as he looked at me, he banged the metal bars of my cell with a club he was carrying. He screamed at me, using a Japanese expression that we Americans knew well: “Dami, dami” (no good, no good). He looked at me and put his fingers to his lips, indicating that he wanted me to keep quiet. He then whispered, “Number 264, what are you doing in here?” I told him I was caught trading with the Japanese in the mine. I quickly added, “I didn’t tell I was trading with you, only those Japanese in the mine.” At that moment his face broke into a wide smile. He laughed a little and said, “Tomodachi, yeroshi” (my friend, very good). As he left, he waved to me, mumbling something under his breath.

  Around midnight I heard a hissing noise. As I opened my eyes, I saw the same Japanese guard outside my cell, trying to get my attention. When I became fully awake, through the bars he handed me two large rice balls, with the rice firmly packed around a little something extra in the center. One had pieces of chicken and the other had small pieces of fried fish. I quickly and quietly devoured the food; actually, it was the best meal I had had in months.

  Between Bob and the grateful Japanese guard, when I was released from the guardhouse at the end of the ten days, I weighed several pounds more than when I went in. Still, I did not recommend this weight-gaining program for anyone else.

  CHAPTER 14

  BOMBS AND BEATINGS

  The winter of 1944 in Japan would be hard to forget. Food was in short supply, and the U.S. fighting forces were getting closer and closer. As the war moved directly into Japanese cities, the people became more and more resentful of our very existence. The guards and the civilians in the mine found all kinds of excuses to beat us. Instead of merely hitting us with their hands or fists, the Japanese used shovels, picks, and sections of steel chain, which was used to move coal from one place to another. They swung the chains around overhead until they reached a high speed. Then, using the chain’s momentum, they inflicted brutal blows upon our bodies.

  I was hit with the swinging chain three times, all within a month or two and always for the same reason: the Americans had bombed one of the Japanese cities and killed some of the residents. I had expected some form of retaliation. When I was hit with the chain the first time, it fell across my lower back. I felt as if my back had been broken in two. Down I went with a THUMP, flat on the mine floor. When I was finally able to get up, I was bent over like a question mark. Someone took me to the spot where the train picked up riders who wanted to go topside. Once I arrived at the top, I asked if I could get into one of the tubs. Apparently, the officer in charge noticed my bent position and the bleeding marks on my back, so he allowed me in the tub at once. The hot water felt real good on my back muscles, and I soaked in the water at least thirty minutes.

  After I hobbled back to camp, Doc Hewlett put me onto a stretching bed he had made out of thin slats of wood. The bed formed a slightly convex curve from the head to the toe. With my head at one end about six inches lower than the center and my feet also six inches lower than the center, I felt my body being stretched out. I stayed in this position on and off f
or three days; then when I felt better, I went back into the mine.

  The second and third times I was hit with the swinging chain happened within a few minutes of each other. During this attack, when one Japanese worker finished with me, he handed me over to another one. The first man had caught me squarely in the chest with the swinging chain and knocked me about twenty feet from where I had been standing. The second man hit me right in the middle of my face. The pain was so severe that I forgot about the pain in my chest. My cheekbones were gashed; the skin above my eyebrow was broken; my nose, once again, was smashed; and my entire chin was gushing with blood. When the second Japanese worker saw what he had done, he became very nervous. He realized that if he had hurt me too severely I would not be able to come back to work the following day, and that was not acceptable to the mine operators.

  When I got back to the camp that day, Doc Hewlett just looked at me in disbelief and asked, “Did you want to get out of work that badly?” While the effects of this beating appeared only on my face, Doc noticed a grating sound as well as a bone movement in my left shoulder and right leg. He found my left scapula was broken near the shoulder. He put my left arm into a sling that was pulled tight across my chest to prevent any movement of my arm or shoulder. Then Doc said, “You can still shovel coal with one hand.” He could not find anything wrong with my leg except a severe contusion.

  The medics watched my progress for weeks. After a consultation between the doctors and the medics, they decided that I had a disease of the bone and that they should amputate my left arm at the shoulder. At my insistence, they agreed to wait till the last possible moment before operating. Until the operation, however, I still had to work in the mine because by this time so many men in the camp were too sick to even walk to the mine, let alone work in it.

  I tried to comprehend why the Japanese were beating us so often and so severely. I even accepted the fact that the grief and frustration of finding out that a relative or good friend was among the dead or injured in that day’s bombing could cause our captors to go temporarily insane. In the mine one day, a Japanese civilian went berserk when he saw me picking at the coal in a very relaxed manner. Without warning, he rushed at me and screamed in Japanese that I had killed his father. He brandished a pick in wide circles over my head and then crashed it down onto my skull. I was lucky; it hit me broadside instead of with the point. I was knocked unconscious for what I was told was a good five minutes.

  We did not have newspapers to tell us how the war was going, but we used the way we were treated as a barometer. We would often infuriate the guards or Japanese workers by laughing while being beaten. Of course, the reason for our odd reaction was that we were in effect getting our news on the war’s progress.

  It was near Christmastime when I received some mail from home. The cards did not say much—after all, they had been censored by both the Japanese and the Americans—but just getting some mail made me feel that I was missed. One piece was postmarked August 2, 1943, from Detroit, Michigan, and I got it sometime in November 1944, fifteen months later. It still was nice to hear from my family. Better late than never.

  During this period of our captivity, the Japanese commander called me into his office for questioning. The interpreter handed me a Christmas card that was addressed to me but had been opened by someone else. The card had the normal holiday salutation and then personal signatures all over it. The front, the inside, and the back of the card were covered with names. Under each name, I saw was a code number, and the Japanese wanted to know the secret of the code. Nothing short of telling the commander the actual code would do, but I did not know what the code was. In fact, I did not even recognize any of the names on the card. I saw names like The Shelbys, and then right below the name was a number, say 1204. It was this number they wanted to know about. I told them I could not help them because I did not know anything about a code.

  My answer did not satisfy the commander, and he told the interpreter to bring in the guards standing right outside his door. When the guards came in, I heard the commander give them a series of instructions. One phrase I caught was, “Bassuru, bashhinai” (punish, or punish him). The guards hollered for me to stand at attention and then began beating me with their rifles. Only a few minutes later, they started hitting me with a wooden baseball bat. They continued to ask me questions about the Christmas card and the numbering code. I kept insisting that I did not know.

  After a good thirty minutes of continued beating, it all of a sudden dawned on me that the numbers under the names were apartment numbers. My folks lived in a building of about forty-eight apartments. At last I had figured out the code, but I did not know how to explain it to the Japanese. I began by saying, “Watasewa hanashi” (I will talk). They stopped beating me and pushed me to the commander’s desk. There I asked for a piece of paper and a pencil, and I drew a picture of a large eight-story building, with six apartments on each floor. I then numbered each apartment and placed a name alongside each. I looked at the commander, whose face flushed with anger. It then changed to a slow smile as he said, “Ah so,” meaning he understood. He laughed and tried to brush aside his embarrassment. He then handed me a few more pieces of mail and allowed me to return to my barracks. With blood oozing from my face, head, and back, I fell on the floor next to my bedding, read the brief messages on the cards, and then passed out.

  In the spirit of the holiday season of 1944, Major Mamerow informed all of us Jewish men that he wanted to help us celebrate Chanukah. He offered to post a series of American guards at the entrance to an air-raid shelter so that those of us who wanted to attend religious services inside could do so without the Japanese disturbing us. We had discovered long ago that the Japanese were very anti-Semitic. In our conversations, a few of them insisted that Adolf Hitler was doing the right thing in imprisoning the Jews, that the Jews caused the war, and that President Roosevelt was Jewish. They even went so far as to accuse John D. Rockefeller of being a Jew. According to the Japanese, if a man in the West had power or money or owned a newspaper or radio station, he had to be Jewish.

  In our camp of about fifteen hundred men, only ten were Jewish; that is, only ten who would admit to being Jewish. On more than one occasion, while working in the mine, a Japanese civilian worker would ask a prisoner, “Is number 313 Jewish? Is number 264 Jewish?” A positive answer always resulted in a severe beating for the Jewish prisoner. So, a strong possibility was that the camp housed men of Jewish ancestry who refused to be identified for fear of Japanese reprisal. Major Mamerow did what he had promised for Chanukah, and we Jewish prisoners enjoyed services without any interruptions. When the services were over and we walked out of the bomb shelter, the Americans standing guard greeted us with a hearty, “Happy Chanukah . . . and a Merry Christmas.”

  Although Mamerow lived to come home and kept his vow to see us as often as possible by attending almost every reunion of the Camp 17 survivors, he never really seemed to be a happy man. As the officer in charge of the prisoners at Camp 17, he saw so many of his men die at the hands of the Japanese that it was just too much for him to cope with. He carried the burden of every beating, of every torture, and of every needless death by disease and starvation with him to the end. At times while still in camp I thought I could sense an impending breakdown just under the surface of Mamerow’s steadfast exterior.

  When Mamerow died in 1991, we survivors paid him our respects and honored him as one of the few real yet unsung heroes of the war. He practiced what he preached, he gave of himself to all who needed him, and he was a true leader of men. What he could not accept, however, was that although he did everything he could in Camp 17, the Japanese still killed dozens of his men. The Japanese high command had made its message clear: even a lowly private in the Japanese army had authority over any American officer of any rank.

  We saw an example of this mind-set when Doc Hewlett refused to send the required number of prisoners to work in the mine. Out of a barracks of fifty, the Japanese expecte
d no less than forty-seven to report for work each day. On this particular day, our barracks had only forty-five men who were well enough to go down into the mine. Of the other five, three were in the hospital ward, and the other two were so sick that Doc Hewlett had put them on bed rest. The Japanese guards responsible for taking us men to the mine would not accept Doc’s explanations. Although we did not know it then the owners of the mine, the Mitsui Company, gave our camp’s guards a monetary bonus for every prisoner who went to work each day. Thus, greed was the main incentive for the guards’ insistence on a high labor turnout.

  When Doc Hewlett refused to send the men on bed rest to work that day, the guards threatened him with time in the esso, or guardhouse. The Japanese and Doc went round and round on this request. Doc Hewlett declared, “The men in the hospital ward belong in the cemetery, and the men on bed rest belong in the hospital. I won’t sent any man to work who I believe is too sick to work.”

  The guards brought the Japanese commander into this disagreement, and he sided with the guards. They gave Doc Hewlett a choice: put forty-seven men from barracks number 4 to work or go into the guardhouse. Doc Hewlett said, “My mind is made up. I can’t send any of these sick men to work today. I would rather be put in the esso.” As he was marched away, the commander called after him, “One more chance to obey, or you will stay in the esso for ten days, with one bowl of rice and one cup of water. You’ll be sorry.”

  In stunned disbelief we watched as they marched Doc Hewlett to the esso, removed everything from his pockets, and pushed him into the main guardhouse. We were all horrified that a good man like Doctor Hewlett, a man to whom most of the Japanese guards came for medical advice, was being treated like a common criminal. It was heartbreaking, but through it all the Doc stood tall. He briskly marched and entered the cell without ever looking back. Everyone in the camp, all fifteen hundred of us, stood at the end of that night’s roll call and shouted out in unison, “Give ’em hell, Doc!” Some of the men talked about striking to get him released, but we quickly dropped the idea when we realized the futility of such an endeavor. Where did we think we were, back in the United States?