My Hitch in Hell

by Lester I. Tenney

  My brother was in tears. Obviously, he did not know how to handle what he told me. To make him feel better, I decided to deal with it. I rapidly regained my composure and said to my brother, in the best matter-of-fact-manner I could muster, “I expected it. I didn’t think she would be able to wait this long.” Then I said, “I’m a survivor, Bun. Everything will work out, you watch and see.” Then I cried inside.

  Still trying to hide my shock, I introduced Bunny to Bob Martin. After a few minutes of joking about how good we looked, my brother asked us to join him at his outfit’s headquarters for dinner and a good night’s sleep. He had informed his commanding officer about the possibility of my coming through Okinawa and was told that if I came through, I could be their guest.

  Next, Bunny asked me why my arm was strapped to my side. I explained as best I could what had happened. He insisted that we go to his bivouac area so that I could see his company doctor and find out what could be done about the arm.

  When we arrived at his company headquarters, Bob and I were introduced around to all of the officers and men. They asked what we would like to eat and what else could they do for us. After telling them that any good American chow was going to be a happy change, I then mentioned my dream of white sheets and fluffy pillows. The commanding officer, after hearing our requests, said, “You fellows can sleep in the hospital ward. It’s the only place with clean white sheets and pillows just like you described.”

  Bob and I were then introduced to the doctor. After a cursory examination of my arm, he told me to remove the sling arrangement and to exercise my arm as much as possible. When he took the sling off, my arm was only about two inches in circumference. Until that moment, I had not given much thought to the problem since I had left Camp 17. So that I could exercise my arm, the doctor tied a rubber ball around my wrist and told me to squeeze the ball as often as I could. Then he told me that I would receive a thorough examination when I got back to the States. The doctor repeated his instructions: I needed to exercise the arm, get some meat on the bone, and restore some of the muscle.

  Now that the examination was over, I said, “OK for that. Now, where’s the chow line?” The doctor had me step onto the scale. Bunny gasped in disbelief as the doctor said, “A little shy of 101.” I was surprised, for I knew I had weighed 185 pounds when I took my enlistment physical. Here I was now, truly just a shadow of myself.

  At about that time, the cook said, “Come and get it! Chow time.” All of the men made way for Bob and me to be first in line. Did we eat! We were told to take whatever and however much we wanted, the treat was on the Seabees. That night, after telling our story to dozens of men sitting around the mess hall, we went to the hospital ward and crawled into our beds between those clean white sheets we had dreamed about so often.

  At first, I could not sleep. I kept thinking about Laura, my future, and what I was going to do now that my dream was crushed. Then I came to my senses and remembered how Laura had saved my life. She gave me the dream I needed, that something to hang onto. I had focused on her in my dream about the future, and without that dream, I felt I might have perished years ago. I realized that in her own way Laura had always been with me. It was because of her that I was in this comfortable, clean bed now. I told myself that the first thing to do was sleep, then afterward I could tackle the world.

  CHAPTER 19

  BACK TO THE PHILIPPINES

  On the next day Okinawa airfield received a hurricane warning, so our flight to the Philippines had to be delayed. Bob and I did not mind the delay at all. We had already been eating, for about an hour, a breakfast with all the things we had dreamed about for so many years. We actually had all the bacon and eggs we wanted, plus hash brown potatoes, bread with butter and jam, and milk. We each had four glasses of milk before we were through.

  At just about that time the storm hit the bivouac area, and the Quonset huts this group of sailors called home flew away. The hurricane lasted about two hours, and for a while Bob and I did not think we would ever get to the Philippines. During the worst part of the storm, all of us were herded into the only brick building within a twenty-five-mile radius. We were mighty lucky to have this building so near. In spite of the raging storm and the crowded conditions in the building, Bob and I talked of the events and challenges ahead. By afternoon the storm had subsided enough that we could leave the building. The first question I asked when we got out was, “When is lunch?” Once again the men in the kitchen gave us anything we wanted, and that was steak and milk.

  That night I stayed up with my brother until dawn. We had a great deal of talking to do about people, places, and things. I wanted to know what my dad was doing now, how my mother had taken the past years, and whether any other family members were in the service. One question would lead to three others; one answer would elicit two more responses. I learned that Laura had received my monthly allotment for the past three and a half years. Then when she decided to get married, she sent my parents a check for the whole amount. I tried to steer any conversation away from her. Although it was not easy, I had to do it if I hoped to maintain my composure.

  Because of the storm’s damage, we stayed in Okinawa another day. We were housed in a tent near the airfield, and a makeshift kitchen was set up just for the eighteen POWs who had come from various prison camps in Japan and through Kanoya. My brother stayed with me that day, and he was flabbergasted at the food the cooks prepared for us. I remember well the meals we had while in Okinawa. For breakfast the second day I had six fried eggs, half a pound of bacon, half a loaf of bread with a quarter pound of pure butter, a small steak with french fried potatoes, and a quart of milk.

  Then by noon we were hungry again. We ate the same stupendous way four or five times a day, only stopping to rest, talk or go to the head (what the navy types called the latrine). At no time did anyone give us any medical guidance in our eating habits or our dietary needs. Eating everything and anything as often as I wanted seemed like the right thing to do then, but a few years later it proved to have severely damaged my stomach.

  At last a B-24 was ready to take us to the Philippines. We were informed that we would be housed for a short period at the 29th Replacement Depot just on the outskirts of Manila. There the army would give us medical assistance and allow us to wire our families of our release and the status of our health.

  The army could not have found a more cooperative and enthusiastic group of men anywhere. Everything the army wanted to do with us was OK. All we wanted was to go home. We only knew we were free men who were going to eat well. Most of us did not give a second thought to our health; it just was not that important at the time. We had too many other things to do or to think about. Being free was all that counted. We boarded the bomber as instructed and even had to wear parachutes. The army was not taking any chances with us, treating us sort of like special cargo. I had said my good-byes to my brother and told him I would see him back in Chicago real soon. I had reassured him that he should not worry about me, that I was a survivor, and that I would get over the anguish of losing Laura.

  The three-hour trip to Manila was uneventful. The island was a sight to behold, with the lush green mountains, the blue ocean and the bay, and the island fortress of Corregidor. Over to the left was Bataan. I could not see much from the air, but I knew that I had to get over there to find my buried treasure. Finding it would make me rich, eliminate all worry, and buy me the finest of everything. This hunt is what I was waiting for, a chance to forget my troubles.

  As the plane landed in Manila on September 7, all of us thought of a takeoff of General MacArthur’s famous line, “I will return.” We shouted in unison, “We have returned!” The plane taxied almost to where an old army truck was standing. When we got off the plane, about twenty Filipinos and fifteen U.S. servicemen were standing around the landing area. We walked down the stairs slowly and deliberately, not wanting to fall and get hurt. We still had on our old Japanese-issue work clothes—nowhere along the line did any o
f the military personnel we encountered try to put us into any other type of uniform—so I guess we looked out of place coming off that plane. All of the people on the ground just looked at us and stared without yelling, waving, or acknowledging us in any way. Nothing was said but we could feel the tension in the air. No one seemed to care whether we lived or died, came home or not. We felt like we were simply an annoying nuisance, something they had to deal with. It was a sad return and not at all what we had expected. I guessed that they felt that because we had surrendered, we did not deserve any welcome-home party.

  We boarded the truck for the thirty-five-minute ride to the 29th Replacement Depot. As we pulled into the area, we saw dozens of tentlike buildings that were designed for sleeping and one very large tent structure that was obviously the mess hall. As we got off the truck, we were asked to fill out a sheet of paper that had spaces for our name, rank, serial number, home address, and three extra lines to put down any illnesses or injuries suffered during the past three and a half years. Three lines! The whole heart-wrenching experience had to be boiled down to three lines. Also on the sheet of paper was a number indicating our tent assignment. As we looked around, we noticed a lot of activity. There must have been three hundred to four hundred men milling around the tents, all neatly dressed in clean and well-pressed uniforms. When we got closer, we realized they were former POWs who had arrived here earlier.

  Then I heard someone call out, “Hey, Ten-Spot!” I turned and saw, for the first time in more than three years, my good friend Lew Brittan. He was alive and well even though he looked like he had lost about seventy-five pounds from his prewar weight of 195 pounds. We shook hands and then hugged each other in a show of real friendship. Lew had been incarcerated in a POW camp in northern Japan, but he had made it. I knew he would.

  Within a few hours, the army issued us new uniforms and boots, which made us acutely aware of how much we had changed. My new uniform was a size 34, with a waist of twenty-six inches. My original uniform when issued at the Maywood Armory was a size 44, with a thirty-six-inch waist. My shoes were still size ten and a half, but I needed a narrow width instead of the medium width I had worn before.

  When I left Okinawa, my brother loaned me his camera, so I took pictures of all the survivors from Company B, 192d Tank Battalion, who were at the 29th Replacement Depot. I was able to locate only 12 of our original 164 men.

  As we shared our experiences, the discussion finally got around to what happened to Willard Yeast of headquarters company, who had been a prisoner on Palawan. When I heard the story, I started to sweat profusely. Again I felt there but for the grace of God went I.

  As the Allies got closer to winning the war, the most atrocious slaughter of Americans at the hands of the Japanese occurred at the Palawan prison camp in the Philippines around mid-December 1944. The Japanese began planning for this massacre about October 20, 1944, when the U.S. bombing of the area around Palawan began in earnest.

  Each day more and more B-24s rained their bombs on Palawan. Each bomb made the Japanese fear they could possibly lose the war, and they wanted revenge for the destruction that the Americans poured onto them. During these air raids, prisoners would be beaten for no apparent reason, and if they fell to the ground, the Japanese kicked them continuously and often murdered them.

  On December 14, the Japanese received word that U.S. troops were going to land on all the islands of the Philippines. The Japanese ordered all 150 inmates of the Palawan POW camp into three large and two smaller underground bomb shelters. When the men were safely inside, the Japanese soldiers barricaded the entrances and began systematically liquidating all the prisoners. The Japanese guards poured large containers of gasoline onto the roofs of the bomb shelters and then ignited them. The gasoline-soaked dried grass that covered the shelters went up in flames within seconds. As the blazes shot toward the sky, the heat from the fire became unbearable for the prisoners inside. Many of the men in the shelters were overcome by the fumes and heat. Some were trampled to death by their own buddies in their desperate attempts to find an exit. Others who tried to force their way out were met with rifle fire, bayonets, machine guns, and explosives. The Japanese did everything in their power to ensure that no one left the shelters alive. Of the 150 men who entered the makeshift crematoriums that infamous day, 139 died. Eleven of the group were able to escape, and they returned to freedom to tell their story of the Palawan massacre.

  As it happened, in 1944 when we were instructed to build bomb shelters at Camp 17, I had misgivings about how they would be used. I knew the shelters, with only one way in and no other way out, would have been a good place to kill us. Then when the slaughter was over, a bulldozer could have just covered up the evidence by flattening out the shelter so that no one would ever know it had been there. I had been afraid that the Japanese might institute reprisals of this type in our camp.

  As we later discovered, POW Camp 17 in Omuta had the reputation of being the worst camp in Japan. Our work in the mines was the most dangerous forced labor of any prisoner of war camp. In addition to our sadistic Japanese camp commander, the guards treated us American POWs more harshly than prisoners from other nations. For the beatings, starvation, and refusal to provide medical treatment, justice was ultimately served. At the end of the war, our Japanese camp commander was tried and convicted for crimes against humanity and was hanged.

  So, when I arrived in Manila September 7, 1945, at the 29th Replacement Depot, I was not as shocked as many when I heard about the massacre at Palawan. I simply could not believe how lucky we were that the same thing was not done at Camp 17. Abundant evidence was available after the war to prove the atrocities committed in the Philippines were premeditated and based on orders from high-level superiors and not just the field officers. From all of the evidence regarding the Bataan Death March and the occupation of the islands, it appears that the Japanese had a hidden agenda not to allow any of the prisoners to live to tell their stories.

  For the next few days, we compared experiences and exchanged information about friends—how they were or how they died. Once the sad commentary was over, we started again to act like repatriated soldiers. We ate whenever and whatever we wanted, however; and we came and went as we wished. We had no commander in charge, which was fortunate because we would not have accepted any restrictions on us at the time. In fact, on a few occasions when we went into Manila in the evening, if we did not have transportation and if we saw an empty, idle staff command car, we would just “borrow” it. At one point the Military Police stopped us for driving a vehicle that was reported stolen. They took us to MP headquarters and asked what unit we were in. When we responded, “29th Replacement Depot,” the officer of the day merely said, “Let them go. They’re MacArthur’s boys; nothing we can do about it.”

  After a few days of eating all I wanted and of having as much fun as I could, I wanted to arrange a flight back to Bataan. I knew exactly where I had buried the money. That tree, those large roots, and the number of paces off the road at kilometer post number 167 were etched in my memory.

  By the story I told and the tears I shed, I convinced an air force colonel to fly me back to Bataan in a small Piper Cub reconnaissance plane. A two-seater, it was good enough for me and the box of goodies that I was going to find. In only fifteen minutes, we flew across the bay to Bataan. The colonel landed and taxied to an area that had a few military vehicles. We headed for a jeep. A driver wearing corporal’s stripes was just sitting there, sort of waiting for a fare. The colonel saluted the corporal, then we got into the jeep and told the driver to head for kilometer post 167.

  Within ten minutes we arrived at our destination. I did not recognize anything near it. There were no trees or brush of any kind. I was devastated. Locating my hidden wealth was going to be impossible. With all of the landmarks gone, I slowly came to realize that the fighting, bombing, and shelling from Corregidor to Bataan had all taken its toll on the vegetation and terrain. Then, of course, forty-two months had p
assed, during which time the Filipinos must have scoured the area in search of food and firewood. In sum, I was licked. My dream of wealth came to an abrupt end.

  I decided to tell the colonel the whole story; anyway, it was evident from my dismay that something was wrong. When I finished my account, he reared his head back and laughed uproariously. He told me that on the day of the surrender of Bataan, the serial numbers of all of the bills held in the Philippines, hidden or not, had been wired to Washington for cancellation. The colonel said to me, “If you had found the money, all you could have done with it was use it as wallpaper.” (Or was it another kind of paper he mentioned?) We returned to the Piper Cub and made our way back to Manila. I had suffered another major disappointment, but one that I knew I could live with.

  When I arrived at the 29th Replacement Depot, a medical table had been set up at the back of the mess hall. I was told to make arrangements to see the doctor and answer as many of his questions as possible. For the first time I realized that all of the soldiers’ army records had been destroyed during the surrender of Bataan. The army had no files on any of our awards and special citations or our promotions. Our medical records of our sicknesses and injuries received at any time during our terms of service, especially those years spent at the hands of the Japanese, were gone.

  When I got up to the medic’s table, the doctor asked me if I had any problems I wanted to report. I said, “No, not now.” He then asked me to describe any injuries or sicknesses I had had during the past four years. “You must be kidding,” I said. “How in the hell am I supposed to remember all those beatings and tortures at a moment’s notice?” All I wanted, all any of us wanted, was to get home. We had no time for silly questions and for standing in a long line with other POWs. At no time during our stay at the 29th Replacement Depot were we given a physical exam, and the doctors never advised us as to what we should or should not eat or how much we should eat at one time. We were only asked, “Any problems you want to report?” This charade of taking our medical histories was disgraceful. I felt these people were utterly incompetent in making this “examination and inquiry” of our health. In fact, only today have we begun to realize what a good medical exam would have disclosed and what prompt and proper treatment could have done to prevent many of our sicknesses, our premature mortality, and the constant pain and suffering many of us survivors still endure.