First Into Nagasaki (10 page)

Private Alf Adames (Ma Wollumbi):
“The large numbers of prisoner deaths often necessitated the use of communal graves.”

Private N. Moylan (Kyogle):
“We were forced to work even with bodily temperatures of one hundred and three to one hundred and five degrees.”

Private Don Tweedie (Willoughby):
“I am deaf from vitamin deficiency, and often have been beaten because of it.”

Private Tom Kershaw:
“Electrical torture was an amusing game for the Jap guards.”

Private Viv Doland (Derwent Park):
“Live wires were tied around the stomachs of prisoners for punishments.”

Sergeant Wilkinson (Wollstonecroft):
“A Jap officer walked into a hospital ward and said, ‘Hurry up and die, I need your clothes and boots for the other men to work in.’”

Private Lyle McCarthy (Sydney):
“Bootless prisoners were thrashed for not moving quickly over sharp stones.”

Private Ronald Marshall (Inverell):
“I witnessed a friend beaten unconscious because he was too sick to hold a jackhammer.”

Corporal Taylor (Mossvale):
“No spark of humanity burns in these people.”

Officers’ Steward Donald McLean (Sydney):
“East is east and west is west and never the twain should meet.”

Sergeant Robert Thomson (Hackney):
“I’m now an unemployed coal miner!”

Sergeant Edward Head (Adelaide):
“Japanese civilians must be happier now that the army yoke has been lifted from their shoulders.”

Sapper Arthur Moore (Newtown):
“Our release is a godsend, thanks to the atomic bomb.”

Driver Pat Lynch (Warracknabeal):
“Not enough Japanese were killed.”

Sergeant Louis Trouchet (Perth):
“Drop more atomic bombs after the evacuation of all prisoners of war.”

Able Seaman Percy Bullivant (Sydney):
“Three and half years in Burma, Thailand and Japan—now headed for heaven.”

Private Thomas Campbell (Melbourne):
“The death roll of prisoners is a monument to the treatment we received.”

Able Seaman Alec Murphy:
“Uncle Sam’s air supplies are a godsend.”

Private Joseph Lonsdale (East Perth):
“Let us not forget those lads down under the earth. The Japanese have a big debt.”

Private Roy Hamilton (Epping):
“We who are left are very fortunate, but let me also remember the boys the Japanese have murdered.”

Gunner Robert Carroll (Leeton):
“No punishment could be too severe for the Japanese camp commanders and guards.”

Gunner Anatole Voevodin (Brisbane):
“Three and half years of torture and starvation, yet they still could not break our spirit.”

Gunner Neville Daniels (Lidcombe):
“Civilized people cannot imagine the treatment received by prisoners of war.”

Driver Fred Ward (Norseman):
“There were numerous acts of cruelty. Prisoners bashed into unconsciousness, electric shocks passed through the body.”

Private Alan Beattie (Perth):
“The Japanese made prisoners drink water in large quantities, and then jumped on their stomachs.”

Gunner Tasman Knight (Hobart):
“War maims, slays, and cripples men. But not to the extent of Japanese treatment.”

Sergeant John Brosnan (Sydney):
“Dutch women were flogged with rifles for trying to get food to their husbands.”

Private Starcevich (Grasspatch):
“When the temperature was below zero, prisoners were stripped and stood to attention for hours.”

Private W. Haynes (East Coburg):
“Since the surrender we have found our Red Cross medical supplies hidden in the coal mine.”

Private Alan Nicholls (Tintaldra):
“The lack of medical supplies killed many of my mates.”

Private Pat Oregan (Wagga Wagga):
“Exterminate them, and please the prisoners of war.”

Corporal Robson (Sydney):
“Save the atomic bomb for the Japanese.”

Private Norm Gough (Loederville):
“Everyone is asking, will all this be forgotten?”

Omuta, Japan—Thursday, September 13, 1945 0100 hours

Allied Prison Camp #17, Omuta, Kyushu

Freedom is at hand for 700 Americans and 1,000 other Allies at this large prison camp dominated by Baron Mitsui’s dangerous and worn-out coal mine. Men are still dying here from the effects of Japanese neglect—three since the surrender—but parachutes floating food and clothing down from the sky have improved life for the men, mostly veterans of Bataan and Corregidor.

Regarding an Australian and an American who died today,
Lieutenant Theodore Bronk of Irwin, Pennsylvania,
a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh and the George Washington School of Medicine, said, “Our malnutrition and dysentery deaths could have been prevented if the Japanese merely gave us the medicine belonging to us which they had kept under lock and key. Our men have often died puffed up with edema or suffering from a vitamin or protein deficiency. Our death toll of 125 would have been halved if the Japanese had given us what was needed.”

Ship’s Cook Robert Bickley of Fort Worth
served on
Fisheries II,
one of the Navy’s three wooden ships which fought until the end at Corregidor, the others being the yacht
Mary Ann
and the customs boat
Prairie.
“Our job was to act as advance lookout for raids by Bulkeley’s PT boats behind Japanese lines. We went ahead, and served as the radio contact with Corregidor for radioless PT boats. Our skipper was Ensign Petritz, a 220-lb. football player from Marquette who ended his voyage in December 1944 aboard the
Oryoku Maru.
^*
Through three years of imprisonment, including two years cooking for Baron Mitsui’s coal mine, of the American prisoners I’ve always remembered [Lt. John D.] Bulkeley as the bravest, most efficient officer I’ve ever known.”

Joseph Niespodziani (Bridgeport, Connecticut):
“I spent thirteen months wandering in Luzon after Bataan fell, before the Japanese, along with pro-Japanese Filipino soldiers, caught me when I was down with my second day of malaria.”

Tall
Corporal John Bruer of Eau Claire, Wisconsin,
who fought at Bataan and Corregidor: “Because I’m six feet three, the Japs put me and other big men in the lowest-ceilinged tunnels, right down to three feet. Last August a piece of Mitsui’s defective equipment broke loose, pinning me against the wall. The injury to my back was very painful, making me unable to stoop. Though American doctors pronounced me unfit, the Japs had a rule that no accident without bloodshed could allow your release from the mine. I was forced to continue working underground until April, when they allowed me to change to gardening.”

Corporal Oliver Ard (Pensacola):
“The miners got a breakfast of rice and soup and a small box of rice to keep them going during the twelve hours underground. Some were so hungry they ate both rations before going down, either because they knew that the hot gases down there would sour their food, or because they just could not control their hunger. Those guys always got a beating, because the overseers feared they could not keep digging all day.”

George King (St. Louis):
“We had an overman, during one of my two years underground, who specialized in extra beatings which took place when the gang withdrew into side tunnels waiting for dynamite to go off. This overman named Yumamitsan would say in Japanese, ‘You want a present?’ then let you have it. I saw him order Corporal Jesus Silva of Santa Fe to kneel down because he was not working fast enough building a rock wall. Silva is tall, and being small, Yumamitsan smashed him in the face with a wooden pillar wedge until his face was covered with welts.”

Corporal Ray Brookshire of St. Louis,
a redhaired, baldish veteran of the Bataan death march: “In eighteen months underground here, I was beaten about six times—once by an overman named Denki until the pick handle broke. I’d started eating my rice before he told me, because I saw other men eating. The longer he beat me, the madder he got. I went down three times and finally the left side of my head was covered with blood and I couldn’t rise again. I was working as a gardener when the atomic bombs went off over both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Hiroshima we saw from the beginning, when it was a flash, then opening like a white chute upward. Nagasaki we noticed only when the cloud was fully developed and airplanes were flying overhead. We overheard Japanese civilians looking toward Nagasaki say, ‘They’re giving us a present.’”

Corporal Isadore Sabbota (Detroit):
“Our worst overseer was one we called Flangeface. He would sleep for an hour while we worked, then get up, look at the trough where were shoveling, slug us with anything handy, then go back to sleep.”

Corporal Robert Hailey (Italy, Texas):
“I got along fairly well with most of the overmen, but Flangeface always beat me whenever he could. Another who we called Sugarlips often beat me with a stiff wire or a
noko,
which means saw.”

Corporal James Brock (Taft, Texas):
“I was most often overworked by a boss we called Shitbird, usually with a hammer handle or a
mairugi—
that’s a small timber. He hit everybody who passed him, whether you belonged to his shift or not. I’m sorry he’s disappeared since the camp was liberated.”

James Ball (Rochester):
“Due to my feet swelling with beriberi and my bad eyes, the Japs allowed me to change from the mine to gardening. I saw the big white cloud rising after the bomb, but I never guessed what it was.”

Corpsman Dean Pronovost of Missoula, Montana,
a Flathead Indian: “I saw the atomic bomb cloud over Nagasaki, white and funnel-shaped, coming down to a point with odd, faint overlaying colors—rose, yellow, and purple—which we thought must be gas from bombed chemical works.”

Boatswain Clarence Taylor of Cloverdale, Virginia, and Long Beach, California:
“At first it was a wool-packed white cloud, then it turned blue inside in five minutes, then after five minutes more turned red.”

Sergeant Joe True of Cheyenne
and a New York lawyer,
Bertram Friedman of Mount Vernon,
were the most capable saboteurs. The Japanese posted a red-lettered sign in the cap-lamp room warning that both men were dangerous. According to True, “We were beaten with hammers, saws, and wrenches. Friedman’s left hand was broken. I once was able to ruin an expensive 350-foot conveyor belt by allowing rocks to fall in the machine. The Japs finally gave up trying to catch us or beat us into submission and just removed us from the mine. Once Friedman and I did the bamboo-kneeling punishment for destroying property.” Both had been on MacArthur’s clerical staff, and were taken on Bataan and Corregidor.

Sergeant Hughy Cox (Alocomb, Alabama):
“Overmen seldom hit you with their hand; it was always with a club, because they could reach you better and it made them bigger. The worst was Haikara, whom we called the Fox because he was a good coal miner himself, quick in movements, with a sharp eye for faulty ceilings. When ceilings fell on our men, the nimble Fox always got out from under. He beat me with a wrench and an iron drill, and for fun he would throw coal dust in my face.”

Sergeant Jack Wheeler of San Francisco
—a onetime insurance underwriter, and on Bataan and Corregidor a sergeant major—has borne probably more administrative responsibility than any American prisoner in Japan. He was sergeant major at two Philippine horror camps, O’Donnell and Cabanatuan, and a hero of Camp #17 at the Mitsui coal mine center here at Omuta. “Our worst period was at first, because as horrible as this mine camp has been, the Philippines were tragic. I’m glad that the atomic bomb spared us prisoners all that an invasion would have meant: further starvation and probably more exposure to battle conditions. When we get home we will have a new appreciation for what America means.”

Sergeant Russell Sayan (Hermosa Beach, California):
“We were underfed in the Mitsui mine and overworked, being gone always from eleven to thirteen hours. I was beaten once by a guard we called Brown Bomber for taking a bath in a fishpond when the water system stopped after an air raid. Brown Bomber hit me fifteen times with a stick six feet long and three inches square. He made me stand straight up, hands extended, in order to prevent my reaching back and blocking blows.”

Oscar Otero of Los Lunas,
a husky New Mexican captured on Bataan, learned Japanese by being chauffeur to a colonel. By refusing to allow him to talk any Filipino, the Japanese furnished the coal mine prisoners with their ablest unofficial interpreter.

Chief Machinist Walter Smith of San Diego and Mount Pleasant, South Carolina:
“Like most Navy men here, I never received a letter from home.”

Pharmacist Jeremiah Crows of Cleveland and San Diego:
“My greatest thrill was August 7th, when I saw eighteen B-29s unload bombs on the zinc factory nearby. But just when we were all feeling happiest, the last plane was hit by an anti-aircraft shell. It turned on its wing and slid downward, falling in pieces. Only one chute came out.”

Chief Machinist’s Mate Louis Vacchiano (South Langhorne, Pennsylvania):
“From weighing 280 I sank to 130 by the first day of peace, thanks to the Japanese comfort system. I never thought reduction was possible, but three bowls of rice daily did it.”

Chief Boatswain’s Mate Charlie Hammon of Oakland and Signal Mountain, Tennessee:
“I escaped the coal mine by breaking my leg in two places in a cave-in. The Japs might have sent me back down, but my muscles became paralyzed due to beriberi, and I was able to hold out until the surrender.”

Henry Sublett of Cisco, Texas,
a Marine captured on Corregidor: “I was down with pneumonia and worked in the mine both after and before. Our first Buntai Joe, or overseer, used to be drunk all the time and beat me every day for my first three months. He always used to start the day off with a few
savas—
meaning ‘gifts’—of blows.”