Allied Prison Camp #17, Omuta, Kyushu
Midwesterners now impatiently awaiting their return home saw a pillar of cloud following the atomic bomb form across Nagasaki Bay. Today they told their impressions to a Chicago Daily News correspondent. They are members of the 1,700-strong Allied camp which is probably the largest in Japan. Many have been working eight to ten hours daily in a low-ceilinged coal mine owned by Baron Mitsui, who is still residing unrestricted and roaming at large here.
Albert Dubois (Webster, Wisconsin): “Smoke from that atomic bomb made Nagasaki look like a mass of blackness for six hours afterward.”
Lester Tennenberg (Chicago, Illinois): “We saw the cloud rising up from the ground over Nagasaki and admired it, but only learned after the surrender that it was an atomic bomb.”
Sergeant Wallace Timmons (Chicago, Illinois): “I think the Japs were seriously frightened by the incendiary bombing before the atomic bombs.”
Stanley Lukas of Chicago, a civilian employed by U.S. Army Ordnance in Corregidor, said, “I only heard about the atomic bomb, because the Japanese had me underground in the coal mine.”
Sergeant Harold Fowler of Peoria and Sergeant David Garrett of Carbondale, both mechanics with the 17th Pursuit Squadron, said, “At evening roll call after coming out from the mine, we saw a strange haze over Nagasaki. That was all we saw of the atomic bomb.”
Sergeant James Bashleben (Park Ridge, Illinois): “About seventy-five percent of Maywood Company were living after Bataan, but I lost track of things after the long death march to Camp O’Donnell.”
Robert Johns (Pekin, Illinois): “On Bataan, with the 200th Coast Artillery, I weighed 170. The Japs had me working in ‘meso nooky.’ That’s the water-covered portion of the mine floor. My weight went down to 115, but I’ve added some since our planes began dropping us rations.”
Stanley Kyler (Dekalb, Illinois): “I’ve been working twenty-two months for Baron Mitsui. Four months was driving hard rock, and eighteen months was shovelling coal, twelve to fourteen hours a day. The Japanese often made us extractors work two hours extra.”
Sergeant Warren Lackie (Aitkin, Minnesota), said: “When the Japanese brought me from Bilibid Prison in the Philippines, we were bombed off Olangapo and I got crushed in a falling hatch cover. I thought I was done for when I was carried ashore at Moji, in Japan. I’ve thrown away the crutches now and manage well on canes. I’ve gone from 82 to 135 pounds.”
Annapolis graduate Lieutenant Edward Little (Decatur, Illinois), captured on Corregidor: “I saw the atomic bomb over Nagasaki, when from a red ball suspended in the air it began to mushroom upward like an ice cream cone. The core stayed red for about twenty minutes. I got the impression that a fire was burning in the cloud. The Japs were very concerned, they kept pointing their swords toward Nagasaki and jabbering. They knew about the first one at Hiroshima and were as worried as we were ignorant.”
Omuta, Japan—Tuesday, September 11, 1945 2200 hours
Allied Prison Camp #17, Omuta, Kyushu
Within view of the cloud rising up from the atomic bomb over Nagasaki, prisoners from the New Mexican 200th Coast Artillery at this, the largest Allied camp in southern Japan, are waiting eagerly for orders sending them homeward. They have worked twelve-hour days for many months in Baron Mitsui’s coal mine on their hard road from Bataan, but liberty is now at hand.
Benny Daugherty (Alamogordo): “When I saw the atomic bomb’s smoke over Nagasaki it was one hour after it had been dropped at eleven o’clock. We were marching to work in the Mitsui coal mine and I saw the smoke turning from grey toward black. Our eyes rose up because fires were catching in the town.”
Robert Dunlap (Carlsbad): “We discussed the smoke rising over Nagasaki and wondered whether it was bombing or a cloud, and could not make up our minds.”
Corporal Agapito Silva (Gallup): “I missed the bomb by being in the mine. Our work was so long, so dangerous and so rough that it caused some men to deliberately get their arms broken in order to escape from being underground.”
First Sergeant Manuel Armijo (Santa Fe): “To us, Japanese treatment meant frequent beatings and being ill-clothed and ill-fed, which caused some stealing due to hunger. We passed a very hard winter.”
Valentine Dallago (Gallup): “I’ve seen at least a score of men whipped underground by Japanese overseers with a length of dynamite fuse, or struck by a shovel.”
Thomas Barka (Gila): “Our main troubles were a water freshet in the mine, stooping for the low roofs, being obliged to carry heavy timbers and being continually beaten by the Japanese bosses.”
Corporal Ben Montoya (Taos): “Cave-ins came about once a week. Seven months ago a cave-in broke my right leg, and I’ll be glad to get some American treatment.”
Corporal Jesus Silva (Santa Fe): “It was so bad underground that your friend would ask you to go off into a dark lateral passage with him, hand you a crowbar and reach out his foot or arm, and whisper, ‘Will you, please?’ You knew that meant for you break it, which would mean thirty or forty days’ rest for him. For asking the Japanese foremen to remove the timbers preventing my crew from building a wall face, I was severely beaten by three overseers who took turns smashing their fists into my face. They wanted me to go to my knees and ask for mercy but I refused. Finally one took a club and knocked me out.”
Evangelisto Garcia (Hot Springs): “My biggest thrill was June 18th and July 27th by night, when B-29s burned practically all this mining town. I only regretted that they failed to put the mine out of order, because it was hell. I lost track of the times I was beaten up for simply not understanding the Japanese language. They took full advantage of our being prisoners, unable to strike back.”
Sergeant Thomas Nunn of Albuquerque was preparing a lateral passage in the Mitsui mine when he went to fill his flask at a place where water dripped from the coal ceiling. When he returned the overseer was angry, with Corporal George Craig standing helplessly by. He dragged Nunn to the superintendent’s office. The superintendent and overseer gave him a preliminary beating with fists and a small stick, then handed him over to soldiers on the surface. “The soldiers beat me with the handle of a spade, about fifty cutting blows on the buttocks, which left them bleeding. I missed my shift that night. The mine boss complained. Soldiers came and dragged me to jail. They practiced a bamboo torture, forcing me to kneel on a piece of bamboo placed on the floor. I had to keep my toes stretched out behind me, resting all my weight on my knees. I stayed that way, kneeling, for two days and two nights without rest. To weaken me they balanced a pail full of water on my bent thighs in order to increase the weight on my knees. I had to hold the pail with my hands and not let it fall off my thighs. Finally, to increase the pressure even more, they put my head through a short ladder with the long sections resting on my shoulders. They’d take turns pulling down on the ends of this ladder. Then they removed the water bucket and the ladder. The gunze—that’s sergeant—took a mallet like a croquet mallet and hammered me all over my head and face till one eye was completely closed and the other only barely open. Then they forced me go back to work in the mine. I worked for one day. Finally, on July 4th they let me return to my bunk.”
Fred Starnes (Silver City): “I’d been sick and so I was not strong. That increased my beatings. If there was a big nugget and they ordered you to pick it up and you couldn’t, they’d beat you.”
Faustino Olguin of Albuquerque bears a scar on his scalp from a sabre blow by the camp commandant, who still rides about Omuta undetained and unrebuked. Olguin needed a pencil to make out a receipt for the light worn on his mining cap, and borrowed one from the mess sergeant. Possession of pencils or paper was forbidden by the Japanese. The Japanese commandant saw him and began beating him with a sheathed sword. He was then thrown into jail by soldiers who held him foodless for two days. “They kept me kneeling on bamboo at attention all day. Because it was in March, and cold, the Japs also took me out in the wind and poured buckets of water over me, which gave the
m a great laugh.”
Joe Medina (Taos): “I’m a blaster or explosive man. I’ve seen plenty of Japs killed in the mine with a cave-in. But I’ve been fortunate; they never laid hands on me.”
Omuta, Japan—Tuesday, September 11, 1945 2300 hours
To: Commanding officer, Recovered Personnel section, Yokohama
From: George Weller, Chicago Daily News correspondent, Prisoner of War Camp 17, Omuta, Kyushu
september eleven twentythree hours message begins todays drops gratefully received stop unfortunately personnel were injured and installations damaged including two kits on dispensary stop therefore aiming point for camp seventeen containing seventeen hundred persons been moved halfmile southward stop drop ground for camp twentyfive containing four hundred prisoners remains same
paragraph chinese camp containing roughly two thousand received seven drops today which was their first help since surrender stop chinese especially need general issue medicine
paragraph chinese buildings were hitherto unmarked due failure japanese inform chinese of manila agreements conditions regarding marking prisoner war buildings for air drops
paragraph as of september twelfth northward facing roof markings of all three prisoner war camps near omuta will bear under prisoner war inscriptions their respective designations seventeen twentyfive and quote china unquote message ends
Omuta, Japan—Wednesday, September 12, 1945 0100 hours
Allied Prison Camp #17, Omuta, Kyushu
American and Chinese prisoner coal miners emerging from underground darkness in central Kyushu are discovering for the first time that their prison camps are adjacent.
For nearly one month since the surrender the Chinese have been going foodless because their Japanese guards have departed from the camp. Their serious medical condition was discovered today by two parties headed by American doctor Captain Thomas Hewlett, of New Albany, Indiana, and Crystal River, Florida, who was captured on Corregidor, and Australian Captain Ian Duncan, of Sydney, captured in Singapore.
B-29s today dropped the Chinese their first food supplies since the surrender.
Hewlett reported that the nearest Chinese camp commander is a remnant of a party under American-trained Airman Lieutenant Colonel Chiu, which left North China two years ago, then numbering 1,236. Three hundred men died on reaching Japan. The Japanese never provided a camp physician and the Chinese have none. Thus in the Chinese camp every man regardless of condition has been considered by the Japanese fit for underground work. Fifty are seriously ill, about half of these with deficiency disease.
This Chinese camp counted 70 men killed by Japanese guards in two years, plus 120 dead of disease, with 546 still living.
The other coal miners’ camp of Chinese consists of what remains of 1,365 who left China eighteen months ago; 54 have been executed or otherwise beaten to death by the Japanese, and 60 died of mining injuries.
Many of the surviving Chinese are “as thin as skeletons,” with bandages made of rags or newspapers. The camp has one Chinese doctor who possesses neither a scalpel, forceps, thermometer nor stethoscope.
Both those Mitsui mines worked by Americans and those worked by Chinese are defective, “stripped” mines, dangerous to operate because their tunnels’ underpinnings have been removed to obtain the last vestiges of coal.
Another Chinese camp is known to exist somewhere in Kyushu and is being sought by a party headed by Medical Warrant Officer Houston Sanders, of Hartwell, Georgia.
Omuta, Japan—Wednesday, September 12, 1945 0230 hours
Allied Prison Camp #17, Omuta, Kyushu
For hundreds of Americans held in Kyushu prison camps, the atomic bomb bursting over Nagasaki in full view was a signal of their liberation from serfdom in Baron Mitsui’s cruel and dangerous coal mine. Some Bataan and Corregidor prisoners were worked to death here. Captain Robert W. Schott, an energetic dentist from What Cheer, Iowa, has succeeded the Japanese commander. Here are G.I.s’ comments on their coal mine slavery, and on the bomb ending it.
James Small (Gate City, Virginia): “The mine was hard not because of the work, but because the Japanese insisted on our carrying impossible burdens. Many times we took beatings just in order to have two men carry one roof support.”
Sergeant James Bennett (Monongahela, Pennsylvania): “I lost my thumb trying to protect my detail from being beaten up by a Japanese soldier. Rushing things to make the Jap cease his beating, I fell forward and a mine car rolling forward caught my hand.”
Corporal Junious Carroll (Thornton, Washington), who had his hearing impaired by an explosion on Corregidor, has lost his left leg at the shin: “A Japanese overman borrowed my cap lantern, leaving me to go through the tunnel to get another. Seeing no light where I was, the mine train ran over me.”
Joseph Valencourt (Lawrence, Massachusetts): “After the atomic bomb I saw a cloud lit up like a sunset over Nagasaki. But not understanding, I paid no attention.”
Corporal Gerald Wilson (Clovis, New Mexico): “The atomic bomb cloud looked like a giant thunderhead. It kept boiling, getting larger.”
Corporal Richard Burke (Chicago): “The atomic bomb cloud seemed to me like the dying embers of a sunset, but all in one spot.”
Elmer Swabe (San Francisco), captured on Wake Island: “I’ve been in Japan for three years and had just one letter—from my wife.”
Sergeant Gail Herring (Los Angeles): “Most of my outfit, the 60th Coast Artillery, have had at least one letter since being captured on Corregidor. But I’ve had none.”
Robert Fortune (San Francisco), captured on Wake: “I worked for twenty-six months in a steel mill at Yahata near the camp at Moji and got pneumonia and beriberi. But since coming here in January I’ve gained some weight.”
Larry Sandoval (Albuquerque), his right leg missing two inches from the knee, is one among the American prisoners who paid for the Japanese insistence that this old and dangerous mine be exploited. “I was building a supporting wall opposite the coal face when the ceiling came down.”
Robert Case (West Terre Haute, Indiana) is another victim of Baron Mitsui’s enterprise, with his left leg gone between knee and ankle. “I got caught in a coal-carrying transmission chain, and was carried into the motor.”
Edgar van Imwagen (Palmyra, Ohio), with his left leg amputated two inches above the knee: “The Japs always shoved us in against the coal face without testing whether it would hold, because they wanted to not lose any time. Last December 12th, when I weighed 100 pounds after forty-five days in the mine, the overseer shoved us into an untried coal face. The roof’s pressure, being unbraced, blew the wall in on us. I was bending over, shoveling, and got buried completely. A half hour later the Japanese doctor took off my leg, which healed in sixteen days. A whole bunch of Koreans were buried alive the year before in the same place, and are still there. When Japs came to my bed at Christmas and offered me a gift of two cigarettes, I just lay there and laughed.”
Sergeant Calvin Elton (Dividend, Utah): “I live in a mining town and I knew for all my two years around the Mitsui mine that the Japanese were just using Americans to remove the pillars from an old mine, leaving tunnels unsupported. Accidents were the natural result of such dangerous work.”
James Voelcker (Wetmore, Texas): “In February I got so weak with diarrhea I couldn’t work, and mine overseers handed me over to the military who threw me into the aeso—that’s Japanese for guardhouse. It was cold and the Japanese made me carry water for them. My feet were always wet and finally froze. Gangrene set in and an Australian doctor had to amputate all my toes and both feet.”
Kenneth Vick (Oklahoma City): “I’ve been able to run the camp toolroom, working above ground, because I got hit by three machine gun bullets on Bataan.”
Air Corps Sergeant Ben Lowe (Knoxville, Tennessee), captured on Bataan, who lost his right leg halfway between the hip and the knee: “Our Buntai Joe—that means overseer—refused to go in under this bad coal face, but sent my crew in to dig. When the coal
fell the first nuggets knocked me down, then the whole face buried me. Three weeks later Captain Hewlett amputated my leg.”
Alfred Schnitzer (Portsmouth, Virginia), captured at Corregidor: “I’ve always tried to give the Japanese my best, and when the military put me in the guardhouse, the sentries refused to punish me.”
Sergeant James Justice (Gaffney, South Carolina), taken on Bataan: “I was lifting a heavy coal trough when the foreman began yelling at me. I made some remark in English. He hit me with a piece of coal. I knocked out two teeth on him. He reported me to the military, who slapped me and beat me with a board. Captain Hewlett got me declared unfit for underground work. Two months ago the camp commander beat my head with a two-by-four for not replacing a door after a typhoon blew it in.” Justice is wearing a bandage on his head, where Captain Hewlett took out four stitches.
Earl Bryant (Anaheim, California): “I saw what might have been the first atomic bomb, in the direction of Hiroshima. It was a white cloud, big at the top and narrow at the bottom, on what seemed a bed of black smoke.”
Corporal Dale Frantz (Canton, Ohio): “I missed Nagasaki’s bombing, but I saw the cloud in the opposite direction, toward Hiroshima, on the first bombing. The cloud started small but built up high and fast. It was pure white, with a pinkish tinge. I could see airplanes circling between me and the cloud and suppose now that they were photographic planes. At the time we were puzzled by the whiteness of the smoke and supposed that it must be from a chemical plant.”
Charles Butler (Smithdale, Mississippi): “It was a clear day, with other clouds all high strata. We could see this unnatural thunderhead with straight sides instead of being pyramidal-shaped, and airplanes seemed be circling around watching it.”
First Into Nagasaki Page 6