The day dawn is breaking, the world is awaking,

The clouds of night’s darkness are fleeing away.

—Joseph L. Townsend, “The Day Dawn Is Breaking”

By mid-1945, events in Japan were accelerating toward a conclusion. The bombing raids were increasing, and more and more plants were closed due to the bombings. The POWs and the guards began hearing rumors about two incredibly large bombs and the devastation they had brought.[1] They were the atomic bombs the United States had dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945.

While the decision to drop the atomic bombs remains controversial to this day, there was no controversy among the POWs. They had a keen awareness of the irrational and suicidal tenacity with which the Japanese would defend Japan from an Allied invasion and the likely cost in human lives, both Japanese and Allied. They also knew the Japanese intended to kill them if there were an invasion. As Wilson said, “There is no doubt in my mind that the use of the atomic bomb saved our lives. . . . Even though thousands were killed by these bombs, additional thousands of American and Japanese lives were saved because an invasion was avoided.”[2] There is probably not a former POW alive, these Latter-day Saint POWs included, who is not thankful for the atomic bombs.[3] To further seal Japan’s fate, Russia also declared war on Japan.

On August 15, 1945, the POWs were left in camp or isolated in small areas at work while the Japanese guards and camp commanders huddled around speakers to listen to a recorded broadcast from Emperor Hirohito. He informed them of the Japanese surrender. It would be a few days before most of the POWs were officially informed of the surrender, but with the Japanese uncharacteristically not requiring them to work, the prisoners suspected as much.[4]

The Japanese announced the surrender in different ways in the camps and in some camps it was not announced at all; the guards just left. At the camp in Jinsen, Korea, where Davey was imprisoned, it was likely handled best:

The Japanese camp commander lined up the American prisoners and lowered the Japanese flag. Japan had surrendered to the Allied forces. The Japanese commander of the prison camp went over to [Davey] and shook his hand, saying “The war is over, we are no longer enemies; we are friends.” After three and one-half years of waiting, praying, and hoping, peace had come. . . . Pandemonium reigned. Men laughed, babbled, chattered, whistled; they did everything but sit still or sleep. They were free men again.[5]

While the war was over and they were free men again, the POWs were nevertheless instructed to remain in their camps for two weeks to allow the Allied forces to reach them and also for their own safety.[6] Japanese civilians, with tragic losses from the bombings, had become quite hostile to the POWs. Allied commanders believed they would not “pass up a chance to kill an American.”[7]

Goodliffe explained that after the surrender, the Japanese guards patrolled outside the camp gates because they were “afraid that we were going to get out and take revenge for the atrocities that they had committed on us.” The prisoners patrolled inside the camp because “we were afraid that they were going to try to get in at us because of the Americans dropping these atomic bombs and killing so many people.”[8] Patterson recalled being advised not to eat or drink anything the Japanese gave him because it may have been poisoned since “they still have hatred for you.”[9]

Nonetheless, with the surrender, the POWs had free access to the food supplies in the camps, including the Red Cross packages that the Japanese had been keeping from them.[10] The POWs were instructed to paint PW in large letters on the roofs of their camps. Soon planes came in low, seeking to locate the POW camps so supplies could be dropped. Hamblin wrote, “A day or two later (after the surrender) a friendly plane came in so low that we could see the pilot. He circled over our camp and waved his arms time after time. The men went wild with joy and excitement.”[11]

A few days later, the air drops began. B-29 bombers flew in low over the camps, dropping from their bomb bay doors fifty-five-gallon drums full of goods and supplies, hanging from brightly colored red, blue, yellow, and green parachutes. Christensen later recalled that “seeing those large cans of supplies floating down from the sky on parachutes was better than Christmas, Thanksgiving, and the Fourth of July all rolled into one. We feasted. We gorged. Many of us, being unaccustomed to so much food, became sick.”[12]

Clarence Bramley, the Latter-day Saint POW from Long Beach, California, concluded that they now needed a flag to fly; he fashioned an American flag from the parachute material. He brought it home with him, and in 2005 it was displayed at Brigham Young University as part of its “Remembering World War II: Pearl Harbor and Beyond” exhibit at the Harold B. Lee Library.[13] Davey brought some parachutes back home with him as well and, following a Latter-day Saint artistic tradition, his sister-in-law made a quilt of them in remembrance of that event.[14]

Unfortunately, some of the drums broke loose from the parachutes or the chutes never opened, creating a danger for the POWs below who were anxiously awaiting them. Davey recalled that his greatest danger from a bombing in the war was from these barrels falling unimpeded from the sky. The only safe place was outside the camp. Upon returning from outside the camp where the POWs had gone for safety, Davey found that “two items covered the camp from one end to the other, cocoa and pea soup.”[15]

Hamblin wrote of a similar experience: “Some [of the barrels] came loose from the parachutes [and those that] hit that hard ground burst and splattered all over. The first one I came to was a fruit cocktail. I had my first taste of canned fruit in over three years. One load dropped [where it] was very rocky and the package was broken. When we arrived, we found Hershey bars and chewing gum scattered. . . . We sat down and ate chocolate until it melted and ran out our ears.”[16]

In addition to food, the dropped supplies included medicine, clothes, and magazines. Among the magazines dropped was a copy of an issue of the Improvement Era, a Church publication. A POW found it and gave it to Hamblin, who “devoured everything in its pages.” From it he first learned of the death of President Heber J. Grant. He also read a copy of an issue of Life magazine. From that issue, he first learned of the sinking of the Shinyo Maru and the fate of Brown, Ernest Parry, and the other Latter-day Saints from the branch at Davao.[17]

Over the ensuing days, the POWs were taken to ships anchored off the Japanese coast or to airports to start their journey home. Rohlfing wrote, “We members of the Church gathered together for a prayer of thanksgiving that we had survived. On September 4, 1945, we marched out of camp waving flags some of the men had made, while U.S. and British planes buzzed overhead.”[18]

On the ships they were stripped of their clothes, “deloused” with decontamination showers spraying DDT, and given hot showers and new clothes. Most importantly, they were fed. The ships’ galleys were never closed to them. It was an eating marathon, and although their stomachs at first struggled to hold it, they began to put on weight.[19]

For the liberated prisoners, there were different routes back home, but most went to Okinawa and then to Manila. At Manila the POWs saw a ruined city but were nonetheless astonished at the sight of American supplies and equipment stacked up for miles in anticipation of the invasion of Japan. Warmly welcomed, they were placed in a rest camp at Nichols Field, where they were given food and treated to nightly movies. In Manila, Hamblin, Hansen, and Carl Rohlfing attended a Wednesday night meeting of Latter-day Saint servicemen. Hamblin noted, “We were all asked to talk but it was hard for me to say much. My heart was too full.”[20]

The men continued to recuperate and gain weight in the Philippines, and then they made the voyage back to the United States. It was an emotional moment for these soldiers and former POWs as the outline of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge with its unmistakable shape and orange vermillion color slowly came into view. For them, the “Golden Gate” was “just as much a symbol of freedom as the Statute of Liberty had ever been to anyone.”[21]

They received warm and enthusiastic welcomes. With family members having been advised of the POWs’ expected arrivals, parents or other relatives living nearby were often there to greet their returning sons and relatives. Christensen met his father and brother in San Francisco. Of that meeting, Christensen wrote, “It was quite a reunion. No one could say a word. We just stood there with our arms around each other.”[22]

In that era, telephone calls, especially long-distance calls, were still not common and were reserved for special occasions. The army arranged for the returning POWs to make calls home; every POW wanted to make a call, so each had to wait his turn. Family members were usually advised of approximately when they could expect the call. They often took turns sitting by the phone so they wouldn’t miss the call.[23]

[Insert George Brown: Letter from Franklin D. Roosevelt acknowledging the death of First Lieutenant George R. Brown. Courtesy of Robert C. Freeman.]

It was not the War Department telegram advising families that their son or brother was alive that most resonated with that truth, but that first phone call. It was the moment when the parent, brother, sister, or wife first heard the familiar voice that it became real. They were not long calls, but the important message was not delivered by the words of the conversation—it came with the hearing of a familiar voice, alive and coming home. Hamblin described his first call home: “Mother was too overcome with emotion to say very much, only to ask how I was. . . . Then my sister Sylvia took the phone with no better results, so I then talked a few minutes with my sister Helen. There was very little said, but just the sound of their voices was worth more than a million to me.”[24]

Of the Latter-day Saint POWs identified as likely participants in the branch at Dapecol in the Philippines, the following survived their captivity to return home:

• Private First Class Rex D. Bray from Provo, Utah
• Private First Class Allen C. Christensen from Tremonton, Utah
• Captain Robert G. Davey from Salt Lake City, Utah
• Private First Class Charles L. Goodliffe from Park Valley, Utah
• Private Orland K. Hamblin from Farmington, New Mexico
• Staff Sergeant Peter (Nels) Hansen from Weiser, Idaho
• Corporal Kenneth B. Larsen from Salt Lake City, Utah
• Private First Class Lloyd Parry from Logan, Utah
• Private James Patterson from Sunnyside, Utah
• Corporal Carl D. Rohlfing from Salt Lake City, Utah
• Corporal Donald L. Vance from Fairview, Utah
• Corporal Ralf T. Wilson from Alta, Wyoming
• Corporal James Edmund Wilstead from Provo, Utah

Although there would be more time recovering in hospitals from the various diseases that accompanied them to the US, these Latter-day Saint POWs had survived and were finally coming home.

Notes

[1] Goodliffe, “Recollections,” 14; Springgay, “Davey,” 55.

[2] Wilson, in Courage in a Season of War, 327.

[3] Michno, Hellships, 276.

[4] See, for example, Hamblin, “My Experience,” 26; Christensen, “My Life Story,” 23–24; Jacobsen, We Refused to Die, 210–13.

[5] Springgay, “Davey,” 55.

[6] Springgay, “Davey,” 55.

[7] Bray, “War Memories,” 27; Jacobsen, We Refused to Die, 214.

[8] Goodliffe, “Recollections,” 14.

[9] Patterson, “Interview,” 40.

[10] Jacobsen, We Refused to Die, 212; see also Springgay, “Davey,” 55.

[11] Hamblin, “My Experience,” 26; see also Bray, “War Memories,” 27; Heimbuch, Lucky Ones, 104–5 (similar account of navy carrier planes locating camp followed by air drops from B-29 bombers).

[12] Christensen, “Two Pieces of Paper.”

[13] Exhibit “Remembering World War II: Pearl Harbor and Beyond,” L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University. The exhibit ran from fall 2005 to spring 2006. A virtual exhibit can be viewed at http://exhibits.lib.byu.edu/wwii/index.html.

[14] Springgay, “Davey,” 58.

[15] Davey, “Last Talk,” 7; Springgay, “Davey,” 56.

[16] Hamblin, “My Experience,” 26.

[17] Hamblin, “My Experience,” 26.

[18] Rohlfing, “Carl D. Rohlfing,” 2.

[19] Goodliffe, “Recollections,” 17; Bray, “War Memories,” 27.

[20] Hamblin, “My Experience,” 27.

[21] Jacobsen, We Refused to Die, 240.

[22] Christensen, “My Life Story,” 28.

[23] Springgay, “Davey,” 58.

[24] Hamblin, “My Experience,” 28.