Brightly beams our Father’s mercy

From his lighthouse evermore,

But to us he gives the keeping

Of the lights along the shore.

—Philip Paul Bliss, “Brightly Beams Our Father’s Mercy”

The remaining POWs at Dapecol, including the Latter-day Saint POWs who had remained at the camp, began to suspect that the Japanese were worried about something and that change was coming. Hamblin observed, “We were kept in camp more and doing less work. The guards seemed nervous and kept a continual watch on the jungle.”[1]

Their suspicions were correct. With an increase in local guerilla activity around Dapecol and the Americans closing in, the camp commander had been ordered to close the camp and deliver the POWs dockside for shipment north to Manila and then on to Japan. These POWs had been caught up in the mass evacuation of POWs to Japan.

Yashu Maru

On June 6, 1944—coincidentally the same day the Allies launched the D-Day assault at Normandy, France, and a few days before the arrival of Rosenquist, the intelligence officer working for Mellnik—the remaining 1,240 POWs at Dapecol (the ones who had not gone to Lasang) were loaded into trucks and the camp closed. Among those 1,240 POWs were the following Latter-day Saints, the last Church members at Dapecol:

• 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 Edmond Wilstead from Provo, Utah[2]

The POWs, blindfolded and tied together with ropes, were crammed into trucks and taken to a dock near Lasang, where they were loaded into the holds of the Yashu Maru, a “small, greasy cargo freighter.”[3]

This was the beginning of their “hell ship” experience. They were all placed in the forward holds, where, as one POW later wrote, “it was as bad as the proverbial slave ships. Included were the sick, the paralytics [likely those incapacitated by beriberi], and the insane. Water was limited, many men had diarrhea, and there were few toilets. We were terribly crowded [and] it was as hot as hell.”[4] Davey wrote that they were so crowded “that only one man in three could lie down and we had to sleep in relays of sleeping four hours and staying up for eight hours.”[5] Nonetheless, their conditions were not all bad. The POWs were allowed some time on deck, and they received another distribution of Red Cross packages that had been sent earlier.[6]

The ship remained in the harbor for six days until finally, on June 12, the ship left Davao, crossed the Moro Gulf, and anchored at Zamboanga on the southeast tip of Mindanao on June 14. While anchored at Zamboanga and in separate incidents, a couple of POWs managed to escape and swim to the coast, where they were rescued by guerilla forces. The Japanese were furious. Before the escapes, POWs had been allowed time on the deck, which allowed them to stretch in the fresh air and to reduce the crowding below; additionally, the hatches had been left open most of the time, allowing in light and fresh air. After the escapes, all POWs were forced into the hot, crowded holds below, and the hatches battened down, leaving them suffocating in darkness and fearing Japanese reprisals. Rations were also reduced.[7] Of that incident, Hamblin wrote:

After much yelling, pushing and kicking, all men were forced into the burning hell of the two small holds. . . . We were cramped and crowded and suffering for air, there being only two small port holes. I think many would have become hysterical, but at that moment someone started a harmonica, and we all started singing. The tension was relieved, and we temporarily forget our troubles. . . . Under such conditions a day can seem like a year.

Many days were spent with no relief from the sweltering heat except when it rained. Those who were sitting directly below the hatches would get wet and call for the hatches to be put on. When they were on, the men in the corners would smother for air and plead for them to be removed. Sometimes at night we would be suddenly awakened by someone having a nightmare and screaming. This torture went on for what seemed like months.[8]

On June 17, the POWs arrived at Cebu City, disembarked, and were marched to an old metal warehouse. About a thousand were crowded into the warehouse, and the rest—about three hundred—were left outside in the dirt in a wire stockade. Inside it was hot and suffocating; those outside endured the misery of the hot sun, flies, and mosquitos. It later rained, and all were forced inside. They were cramped and miserable, with many suffering from diarrhea and malaria. The food was inadequate and poorly prepared.

The Singoto Maru and Bilibid Prison

After three days, the POWs were brought back to the dock to help load a ship. No one knew its name, but the POWs came to call it the Singoto Maru (meaning “work ship”). After working as stevedores, the POWs were loaded into the holds of the ship. It was a smaller ship, and the crowded conditions were worse than before. To further add to the misery, the ship had last been used to haul coal—and, of course, it had not been cleaned. No one was allowed on deck, and the hatches were kept closed.

A POW described the conditions aboard that ship “as the worst you could possibly think about—filth of all kinds.” The rice ration was cut. One man “went stark raving mad and had to be chained to a post. . . . Altogether . . . fifty-six men [were lost], and they were simply lifted up to the main deck with ropes and then thrown over the side.[9] On June 24, the ship docked at Pier Seven in Manila, and the POWs were marched to the Bilibid Prison. It had taken them nineteen miserable days to make an eight-hundred-mile trip that ordinarily would take only three days.[10] This, however, was only the beginning.

Bilibid was an ugly, inhospitable, old concrete civilian prison in Manila that the Japanese had converted to a POW camp. It was used as a hospital for the sickest POWs and as a transit camp to hold POWs until they could be shipped to other camps.[11] Those Davao prisoners who had previously been at Cabanatuan, such as Davey, were familiar with the camp, as they had stayed there briefly before being shipped to Davao. Bilibid was also used as a depository for mail and packages sent to the POWs from the United States. At Bilibid, both Davey and Hamblin received packages and letters from home, some that had been sent almost a year earlier. Hamblin wrote:

I was lucky, for I received two packages, one from my sisters in Mesa, Arizona, and the other one had been ordered, packaged, and sent from Albuquerque through the Bataan Organization. Mother was in Farmington, New Mexico, and had not received a permit to send a package. Fearing she could not get one mailed from Farmington in time to go with the others from there, she solicited the aid of the Bataan Organization with the result as stated. This shows how cooperation worked in these trying times. Those packages sent by this organization all contained the same things and each contained a pipe and tobacco. I traded mine for food. It was nice to receive personal packages from home. There was a wool sweater, gloves and plenty of soap; an item that was really scarce in the prison camp.[12]

Three days after their arrival, about nine hundred POWs—a group of officers that included Davey—were moved to Cabanatuan. After a few days, those remaining at Bilibid were divided up among several hell ships and shipped to various camps in Japan. The sick POWs, however, remained at Bilibid.[13]

Hansen, Hamblin, and likely Patterson, Christensen, and other Latter-day Saint POWs, were among eleven hundred POWs loaded into the holds of the Canadian Inventor, a Japanese freighter ship that sailed from Manila for Japan on July 2, 1944.[14] Kenneth Larsen from Salt Lake City was among sixteen hundred POWs abroad the Nissyo Maru that sailed for Japan a few days later on July 17, 1944.[15] Rex Bray and Charles Goodliffe, along with more than thirteen hundred other POWs, were crammed into the holds of the Noto Maru and sailed to Japan on August 27, 1944.[16] While the voyage on each of these hell ships was horrific in its own unique way, in many respects the misery and terror were similar. The experience of those aboard the Canadian Inventor is likely representative, and we have several accounts of that voyage.

The Canadian Inventor—the Mati Mati Maru

The Canadian Inventor was an aging captured vessel one POW described as “an old freighter of dubious seaworthiness”; another called it “an ailing and miserable old tug.”[17] The holds were about twelve feet deep, and crude wooden shelves had been built around the hold about halfway down. The POWs were placed in two layers, one layer being on the floor and the other being on this shelf. Each person had a space of about twenty inches by sixty inches. A POW on the ship described the living arrangements: “By sitting down, with our knees drawn up, we could all four sit down at the same time. In order to lie down, even in a curled-up position, we had to take turns. With only five feet it was impossible to ever lay down full length, unless the people in the next section made room for you in their section. Since they had no place to go, we never once during this entire time [sixty-two days] were able to lie down and stretch out.”[18]

The ship sailed from Manila on July 4, but the next day boiler trouble occurred, and the ship returned to Manila. There it sat, with the POWs crammed in the oven-like hold, for another eleven days. With the boiler repaired, the ship again sailed on July 16. Outside the calm waters of Manila Bay, the ship encountered a typhoon. With the ship loaded with POWs instead of heavier bulk cargo, it rode high, “rolling like a cork in the waves.” POWs became seasick, and their vomit and the overturning “honey buckets” resulted in an indescribable stench in the holds. There was, not surprisingly, an increase in the number of POWs becoming crazed and screaming out madly in the darkness. Then rain came, providing some respite with fresh water pouring in from the hatches. But that rain also brought colds and influenza.

The ship’s engine kept breaking down, and the voyage was repeatedly delayed as the ship stopped at small islands for repairs. It crept slowly along protected coastlines where possible and waited for days, at times in small bays, to avoid Allied submarines. Two ships in its convoy were sunk by submarines. The POWs had now named the ship the “Mati Mati Maru,” which means the “wait, wait ship.” Some of the officers even discussed taking over the ship. The POWs outnumbered the guards, and some of the POWs could navigate. But they had little food and fuel, and the ship was too slow to get them to any Allied base before being overtaken. The idea was dropped.[19]

For Hamblin, however, it wasn’t all uninterrupted misery in the hold. One of the Japanese officers had spent time in Hawaii before the war and had acquired a liking for American music. On some moonlit nights, when the ship was stalled with boiler trouble and not going anywhere, he gathered some of the prisoners on deck to enjoy a POW quartet singing American music. Hamblin was part of that quartet.[20]

On another occasion, after a POW died on the voyage from beriberi and malnutrition, Hansen was asked by the US commander to conduct the funeral. Hansen asked Hamblin to assist. Hansen opened the services with a prayer, and then a quartet, which included Hamblin, sang. Hansen spoke on the resurrection for about fifteen minutes and then Hamblin dedicated the body to a water grave. The quartet sang another song, and the body went overboard.

Of this burial at sea, Hamblin later wrote, “It wasn’t a pleasant thought . . . , leaving one’s fellow prisoner’s body to be devoured by sharks, and I could not help thinking of his family and friends at home who would have wanted to give him a burial in the good earth. However, there is a promise that the sea will give up its dead at the appointed time. We felt this a great honor, in the absence of a Chaplain, to be selected from a group of hundreds present to render this service.”[21]

On September 2, 1944, they finally arrived at Moji, Japan. A POW later described the experience: “From the time we left Davao on June 6, we had spent ninety-two days traveling under horrendous conditions. One has no idea what a human being can endure until actually experiencing it. This was the end of the most horrible ninety-two days of my life.”[22] Hamblin was more philosophical about the end of that voyage: “As we reached the shore and found ground under our feet, it was a wonderful feeling. However, we were so weak after being on the ship for three months that we could scarcely stand. But, to feel the good earth under our feet, and breathe the fresh air once again, was worth more to us than I can describe with words. I had learned that just the simple things of life, if we are deprived of them, become very valuable. I found the things that I had taken for granted before, now became very precious.”[23]

Following their arrival in Moji, Japan, the POWs traveled by a regular passenger train. Even though the windows were blacked out, compared to the experiences aboard the ship it was pure bliss. The food was better, and they had all the water they could drink. Their destination was the Nagoya Branch #5 Yokkaichi POW camp, the next chapter in their imprisonment.[24]

Notes

[1] Hamblin, “My Experience,” 19.

[2] This list is simply those previously identified Latter-day Saint POWs at Dapecol less those who were aboard the Shinyo Maru.

[3] Michno, Death on the Hellships, 173.

[4] Michno, Death on the Hellships, 173 (quoting Carl Nordin).

[5] Deseret News, March 24, 1945, 7 (quoting from a letter by Robert G. Davey).

[6] Michno, Hellships, 174.

[7] Michno, Hellships, 174; Hamblin, “My Experience,” 20.

[8] Hamblin, “My Experience,” 20.

[9] Michno, Hellships, 175–76.

[10] Lawton, Some Survived, 104.

[11] See Daws, Prisoners of the Japanese, 283; Lawton, Some Survived, 104; Heimbuch, Lucky Ones, 86–87; Michno, Death on the Hellships, 179.

[12] Hamblin, “My Experience,” 20–21.

[13] Lawton, Some Survived, 104; Christensen, “My Life Story,” 17. Michno put the number at five hundred and describes them as those in poor health—not the sickest, who remained at Bilibid, or the healthy, who were to be shipped to Japan. Michno, Death on the Hellships, 179.

[14] Nordin, Hansen, and Hamblin were likely all on the same ship, as Nordin notes that “Hanson” acted as a chaplain in the burial at sea of Col. Weeks, and Hamblin notes that he assisted Hansen in a burial at sea. Nordin, We Were Nothing, 153; Hamblin, “My Experience,” 21. Nordin was on the Canadian Inventor. Michno, Hellships, 179. In their accounts, neither Patterson nor Christensen indicate the name of the ship, but it is evident from their descriptions, in particular the ninety-day duration of the voyage, that it was the Canadian Inventor. Patterson, “Interview,” 10–11; Christensen, “My Life Story,” 17; Michno, Death on the Hellships, 315 (departure date and number of POWs).

[15] Center for Research, Allied POWS under Japanese, “Pacific POW Roster,” http://www.mansell.com/pow_resources/pacific_pow_roster.html; Michno, Death on the Hellships, 182–90, 315.

[16] Center for Research, “Pacific POW Roster” (noting Bray and Goodliffe as having been on the Noto Maru); Michno, Death on the Hellships, 191–93, 315.

[17] Michno, Death on the Hellships, 179.

[18] Heimbuch, Lucky Ones, 88.

[19] Michno, Death on the Hellships, 180–81; Heimbuch, Lucky Ones, 91; Hamblin, “My Experience,” 21.

[20] Hamblin, “My Experience,” 21.

[21] Hamblin “My Experience,” 21. This death and burial is also mentioned in Nordin, We Were Next to Nothing, 153. (A diary entry notes that “Hanson” acted as chaplain.) Although neither Hansen nor Hamblin in their postwar accounts mention the name of the ship that took them to Japan; this note and Hamblin’s account indicate that Hansen and Hamblin were on that voyage of the Canadian Inventor. Heimbuch, who also left Davao at the same time as Nordin, Hamblin, and Hansen, also identifies the Canadian Inventor as the hell ship that took them from Manila to Japan. Heimbuch, Lucky Ones, 91.

[22] Heimbuch, Lucky Ones, 92.

[23] Hamblin, “My Experience,” 21.

[24] Clark and Kowallis, “Fate of the Davao Penal Colony,” note 29; Christensen, “My Life Story,” 18; Ashton, “Spirit of Love,” 176 (Hansen sent to a camp near Osaka); Heimbuch, Lucky Ones, 92–93 (Heimbuch, who was on the Canadian Inventor, refers to taking a train to Yokkaichi). Hansen, Larsen, Lloyd Parry, Patterson, Rohlfing, and Vance, all Latter-day Saint POWs from Davao, are listed on the roster of this camp in Japan. Hamblin is not, but the rosters were prepared at the end of the war at liberation, and Hamblin indicates in his history that he was later separated from Hansen and moved to a different camp. Center for Research, Allied POWS under Japanese, “Nagoya Branch #5 Yokkaichi American Rescue Roster (Nagoya #5 Yokkaichi Main),” http://www.mansell.com/pow_resources/camplists/Nagoya/nag_5_yokkaichi/nag_05_yanks.html.