Dearest children, God is near you,

Watching o’er you day and night,

And delights to own and bless you,

If you strive to do what’s right.

—Charles L. Walker, “Dearest Children, God Is Near You”

Our story now returns to the POW camp at Cabanatuan on Luzon. The Japanese started distributing POWs, including these Latter-day Saint POWs, from Cabanatuan to other labor camps. Baclawski, Brown’s tentmate from Fort Bliss, was sent to Las Piñas on Luzon and set to work building an airfield. East was sent to a work detail at Clark Field. It was a fortunate move, as the food and working conditions were better, and the officer in charge, whose wife had attended school in the United States, tried to help them where possible.

[1]

In October 1942, Japanese commanders in Cabanatuan were looking for one thousand healthy, “literate laborers” to be transferred to another, undisclosed camp. It was the camp to which Hamblin had been sent earlier. Whether they volunteered or were ordered, Brown, Davey, and Allred were among this group.[2]

In late October 1942, this group of about one thousand men were led out of the camp, marched on foot to Cabanatuan City and then traveled by rail to Manila, where they spent the night on a concrete floor in the Bilibid Prison, a bleak and miserable concrete prison facility in Manila. The next day, the POWs marched down to the Manila Harbor and were loaded in the holds of the Erie Maru, a decrepit, coal-burning freighter. They sailed from Manila on October 28, 1942. While the POWs encountered conditions that could reasonably be described as miserable, this trip on the Erie Maru was by no means the “hell ship” experience they would later endure.

The POWs were crammed into a ship’s hold intended for bulk cargo, not passengers. It was dark, hot, and infested with rats. However, the hatches were usually left open, and the air was fresh. The prisoners were allowed time on deck, and the food and the guards were better than in the camps. There was none of the wanton brutality of Camp O’Donnell, Cabanatuan, or the Bataan Death March. When one of the American officers became ill, the ship’s doctor took care of him for several days, bringing him some pineapple juice and vitamins; interestingly, a shy Japanese sailor gave the ill American officer a small vase of flowers. For POWs, it was difficult to predict the Japanese, as these small incidents of kindness seemed randomly interspersed among the otherwise pervasive brutality and hate.[3]

After eleven days in the holds of the Erie Maru and with stops in Iloilo City, Panay, and Cebu City, the ship arrived on November 7, 1942, at a harbor near Lasang on the Davao Gulf of Mindanao, an island at the southern end of the string of Philippine islands.[4] From there the prisoners were marched about twenty miles deep into the interior jungle, finally arriving at Dapecol.[5] They arrived at the camp about two weeks after the Fifth Air Base POWs from Malaybalay. Dapecol now housed about twenty-one hundred POWs.[6]

To the prisoners already at Davao, including those from the Fifth Air Base group, or the “Foot Locker Fifth,” these new arrivals from Cabanatuan looked like “walking skeletons.”[7] Another description of the new arrivals, and an unintended indictment of their treatment by the Japanese, came from the Japanese Dapecol commander, Major Kazuo Maeda. As recounted by a prisoner, upon their arrival, Maeda “stormed about, declaring that he had asked for prisoners capable of doing hard labor, . . . and instead, he shouted, had been sent a batch of walking corpses.” Maeda promised they would receive food to strengthen their bodies, but that “every prisoner will work until he is actually hospitalized. Punishment for malingerers will be severe.”[8] He was true to his word, except for the part about food.

Unlike Camp O’Donnell and Cabanatuan, which were small military bases hastily converted to prison camps, Dapecol was a Philippine prison colony built in 1932. Located deep in the interior jungle, it was designed as a maximum-security prison along the lines of Alcatraz or the infamous French prison, Devil’s Island, in French Guinea.[9] Dapecol was essentially an island within a large, impenetrable, mosquito-infested swamp, extending nearly twenty miles in all directions. Although tribes of headhunters reportedly frequented the area, little else but giant insects, poisonous snakes, and crocodiles lived in the swamp. The inhabitants of the fringe villages viewed the bog as an evil, supernatural entity. Inmates at Dapecol had included the Philippines’ most violent criminals—most were serving life sentences for murder, and no one had escaped from Dapecol in its ten-year history. Before the arrival of these POWs, the Japanese had moved most of the civilian prisoners to Manila.

Dapecol was a clear improvement over Cabanatuan but was still much harsher than Camp Casisang. Wells provided plenty of water for drinking, bathing, and laundry. There were nine barnlike barracks allotted to the POWs based on rank. In each, 150–200 men were sardined into fifteen intervals of space known as bays. With its own hospital, railroad, and power plant, as well as living quarters for one thousand inmates and a staff of administrators and their families, it was essentially a self-contained city some 140 acres in size.

Although a prison camp, Dapecol functioned as a commercial enterprise powered by POW slave labor for the benefit of Japan’s “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.” It was largely an agricultural facility with a poultry farm; orchards with lemons, limes, papaya, bananas, coconuts, and apples; and fields (plowed with some ornery brahma steers) with cassava, camotes, corn, peanuts, and sugarcane. The camp also included a sand and gravel pit and various support and repair shops. The prisoners felled giant mahogany trees to supply logs to a Japanese sawmill down the river. Both officers and enlisted men were required to work.

Rice, however, was Dapecol’s most important cash crop, with around six hundred rice paddies worked by 350 to 750 prisoners in an area known as Mactan. The rice detail was the most demanding and probably the most dangerous for prisoners. It was backbreaking, stooped labor in the hot, tropical sun. In addition to the hard labor and cruel guards, cobras and rice snakes filled the paddies. The snakes were, of course, a danger, but for the POWs they also presented an opportunity, as the POWs often tried to catch the snakes for food. Christensen recalled the prisoners in the rice paddies catching a python, which was later carved up and eaten.[10] Of greater concern, however, was the risk of contracting schistosomiasis from a parasitic flatworm that penetrated sores and caused debilitating rashes, headaches, cerebral hemorrhages, and nausea.[11] James Patterson contracted schistosomiasis at Davao and required treatment for years after the war.[12]

A prisoner’s daily ration consisted of between 350 and 600 grams of rice, depending on his work assignments.[13] For perspective, a soldier’s daily ration in the peacetime US Army at that time was four pounds seven ounces, or 2,013 grams.[14] The prisoners were sometimes also fed kang kong, a weed that grows in the swamps and drainage ditches, which the Japanese presented to the prisoners as “fresh vegetables.”[15] Especially dispiriting was the fact that fields with a rich variety of fruits and vegetables surrounded the POWs, but those foods were never included in the POW rations, and attempts to steal them were severely punished.

In addition to the inadequate quantity and diversity of food, there was another problem with the rations. A prisoner’s rations consisted for all practical purposes of only rice, but it was polished rice. A former POW at Dapecol described the effects of a diet of polished rice: “We soon found out that the rice has disadvantages other than general tastelessness. Polished rice contains no vitamins, and in a few weeks the effects begin to tell in badly aching feet (the first signs of beriberi), sores inside the mouth (the first signs of scurvy), and swollen ankles (edema).” [16]

The cause of beriberi is simply the lack of thiamine, or vitamin B1, which is found in the rice bran. The Americans knew that by polishing the rice, the Japanese were robbing them of its most beneficial constituents. But their pleas for unpolished rice were repeatedly denied, apparently for no reason other than “deliberate maleficence.” Eventually, someone broke the rice-polishing machine at Dapecol, and it never worked again. Whoever broke the machine likely saved many American lives as hundreds of beriberi sufferers’ conditions subsequently improved.[17]

Both Hansen and Davey suffered from both dry and wet beriberi (dry beriberi affects the nervous system, and wet beriberi manifests in the accumulation of fluids and swelling). Their symptoms likely began in Dapecol. But beriberi was just one of the many maladies common among these POWs due to malnutrition. There were also scurvy, pellagra, and impaired vision, in addition to the ever-present malaria, dysentery, and open sores. The air corpsmen from the Fifth Air Base group came to the camp in better condition than many other POWs, but in time they too began to experience the effects of malnutrition. Referring to their time at Dapecol, Christensen wrote, “The men were now starting to get diseases. The lack of citrus with that essential ingredient of acid gave us scurvy. Malnutrition brought on many things such as beriberi, dysentery, diarrhea, stomach trouble, eye trouble, and just plain degeneration of body and soul.”[18]

Many of these POWs, having entered the army in the midst of the Great Depression, were already resourceful and skilled at scrounging. The farm-based economy of Dapecol with its chickens, orchards, and vegetables provided an opportunity for prisoners to supplement their rations. Although the Japanese instituted searches to prevent prisoners from stealing and severely punished those who were caught, the prisoners became skilled in pilfering food and smuggling it back into camp. Doing so was essential to their survival.[19] Also, in the early days of captivity at Dapecol, the Japanese allowed POW barrack leaders to rotate work details, allowing them the flexibility to put a POW suffering from scurvy on an orchard plantation detail that would afford him the opportunity to steal a lime or lemon to cure the scurvy.[20]

Brown worked on the camp’s chicken farm, a natural assignment with his boyhood ranch experience. It was also a very fortunate assignment. Sometimes for special occasions, such as a birthday or holiday, Brown stole some eggs, emptied them into his canteen, carefully buried the shells, shook it up, and later shared the “eggnog” back at camp.[21] On occasion, he was able to persuade a guard that an apparently healthy chicken was very sick and needed to be killed and buried in order to avoid infecting the rest of the flock. While killed, such a chicken was not buried; instead, it was dressed and cooked. These successes were more rare than common and always came at great risk, but they provided Brown and others with some meager amounts of needed protein in their diet.

There had also been changes in clothing. Many prisoners at Dapecol wore simply a “G-string” and perhaps a woven hat for clothing, and they typically were barefoot. The G-string was an eight-by-thirty-inch cotton panel with a cotton tie sewn across the top. The wearer tied the tie around his waist with the cloth panel hanging to the rear. He then bent over and pulled the panel to the front, tucked it in under the tie and allowed the remaining cloth to hang down in front. For Japanese soldiers, it was an undergarment. For a prisoner, it was his entire wardrobe.[22]

One POW observed that one “ever-present aspect of prison-camp life in the tropics which seemed to irritate many of us, was its partial similarity to a nudist camp. Nobody wore much clothing; many went around in G-strings. . . . I hardly realized before what a blessing clothes actually are, in that they serve, regardless of style, to cover up the brute.”[23] This nearly naked approach to prisoner attire wasn’t for the comfort of the prisoners in the tropical heat; it was to deter escapes. At Dapecol the prisoners were sometimes not that closely guarded, because there were few guards to patrol a large area, and the Japanese correctly concluded that without clothes and shoes, a prisoner would be less likely to try to escape.[24]

While prisoners at Dapecol were not dying from the level of violence and torture experienced in the Bataan Death March and at Camp O’Donnell and Cabanatuan, the guards—largely Formosan conscripts—were nonetheless mean, arbitrary, and unpredictable. The prisoners were still subjected to beatings and abuse almost daily; at times, they also suffered torture, shootings, and beheadings.[25] Nonetheless, during the early days at Dapecol and due to the influence of Japanese Lieutenant Youke, the guards tended to be less brutal. While the commander, Maeda, was an abusive, hateful man, Youke, who was in charge of the Americans, was generally amiable and often came into the camp at night to visit several officers with whom he had developed a friendship.[26] Brown learned some Japanese while imprisoned, and it might have been at this time that he started his effort to learn that language.[27] A knowledge of even a few rudimentary phrases would have been useful to better communicate with the guards and reduce the risk of misunderstandings.

Except for Davey and possibly Hansen, it appears that these Latter-day Saint POWs were in relatively good health given the circumstances. Murray Sneddon, author of Zero Ward: A Survivor’s Nightmare, was among the POWs sent to Dapecol. When Brown enlisted, he weighed 148 pounds.[28] And Sneddon had a prewar weight of about 150 pounds.[29] While at Davao, Sneddon had a chance to weigh himself on a rice scale. The scale was set to ninety pounds, the minimum acceptable weight for a sack of rice. When Sneddon stepped on the scale, it failed to move—meaning his weight was less than ninety pounds; by how much was not known. Having been on reduced rations since the start of the war and on essentially a starvation diet in captivity, the typical “healthy” POW, such as Brown and some of the other Latter-day Saint POWs, may have weighed less than ninety pounds and been suffering from diseases related to nutritional deficiencies (such as scurvy and beriberi) and tropical diseases (such as malaria).

These POWs were likely able to supplement their diets with something beyond the meager allotment of rice, but it was unlikely that they would have been able to do so in the amounts needed to compensate for the insufficient and nutritionally deficient rations. The most well-fed prisoners were still doing hard labor with only a fraction of the necessary nutritional requirements. In short, although better fed than in Cabanatuan, these POWs were still slowly dying.[30]

The effect of this mistreatment on the body would be easy to see, but what about the effect on the mind and spirit? Christensen explained the situation this way: “The POW learns quickly that it does not pay to resist his captors and adapts himself to a docile life, aimed only [at] keeping alive. His attention is always centered on this one purpose. . . . Because working hard may mean death and cheating often means life, many POWs lost their character-stability. A whole camp is reduced to a very low moral level and nobody cares about much of anything except survival.”[31]

One author asked these questions: “In a Japanese prison camp, under guards holding life-or-death power, what was it going to take to stay alive, stay sane, stay human? When a body is savagely beaten, what happens to the mind and to the spirit? Among starving men, can common human decency survive?”[32]

Just as disease, malnutrition, forced hard labor, and brutal beatings wear down a body, the hopelessness, the despair, the never-ending petty and malicious indignities of the Japanese guards, and the humiliation and shame of what a prisoner is compelled to do wear down a soul over time. In a place like Dapecol, could a prisoner find nourishment for the soul?

Notes

[1] East, “Army Life,” 16.

[2] Springgay, “Davey,” 35; Brown and Zundel, “George Robin Brown . . . His Story,” 16–17; see McCracken, Very Soon Now, 32; Lukacs, Escape from Davao, 108.

[3] McCracken, Very Soon Now, 35–41; Gregory F. Michno, Death on the Hellships: Prisoners at Sea in the Pacific War (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press 2001), 73–75.

[4] Michno, Death on the Hellships, 75.

[5] Sneddon, Zero Ward, 49; Lukacs, Escape from Davao, 116–17.

[6] Michno, Death on the Hellships, 75.

[7] Bolitho, “Japanese POW Story,” part 3, 4; Lukacs, Escape from Davao, 119; see McCracken, Very Soon Now, 44–45.

[8] Lukacs, Escape from Davao, 119; See Cave, Beyond Courage, 256; McCracken, Very Soon Now, 44.

[9] Dapecol is generally described in Lukacs, Escape from Davao, 119–26; in McCracken, Very Soon Now, 43–44; and in Bolitho, “Japanese POW Story,” part 3, 3–4.

[10] Christensen, “My Life Story,” 13.

[11] Lukacs, Escape from Davao, 126–27; Patterson, “Interview,” 21, 34–36; Bolitho, “A Japanese POW Story,” part 3, 6; Bray, “War Memories,” 17; Hamblin, “My Experience, 16.

[12] Patterson, “Interview,” 34–36.

[13] The dipper used to serve the rice determined the size. Rice from the largest dipper contained about 600 grams and was known as the “Mactan Dipper” after the area where the rice paddies were located. Only those working the rice paddies received the ration from the Mactan Dipper. The second dipper, known as the “Workers Dipper,” contained about 500 grams and was used to serve all other workers. The smallest scoop, reserved for nonworkers and hospital patients, contained only 350 grams and was called the “Death Dipper.” McCracken, Very Soon Now, 46–47.

[14] Lukacs, Escape from Davao, 131.

[15] McCracken, Very Soon Now, 45–46; Bolitho, “A Japanese POW Story,” part 3, 4.

[16] McCracken, Very Soon Now, 23–25. In East Asia countries, polished white rice had become a dietary staple generally, not just for POWs. Since the early twentieth century, the connection between beriberi and the nutritional deficiencies of polished rice had been understood. Since thiamine (vitamin B1), which is missing in polished rice, is also found in many other foods, a diet based on polished rice becomes a health a problem when, as was the case with these POWs, the diet is not balanced with a variety of other foods.

[17] McCracken, 50; Springgay, “Davey,” 34; see also Heimbuch, Lucky Ones, 60–61 (dry beriberi cured with eating ground rice hulls).

[18] Christensen, “My Life Story,” 14.

[19] McCracken, Very Soon Now, 47–48; Lukacs, Escape from Davao, 127.

[20] Bolitho, “A Japanese POW Story,” part 3, 5.

[21] Brown and Zundel, “George Robin Brown . . . His Story,” 19; see also Lukacs, Escape from Davao, 127; Cave, Beyond Courage, 258.

[22] Sneddon, Zero Ward, 56; see also Hamblin, “My Experience,” 17.

[23] McCracken, Very Soon Now, 98.

[24] See Sneddon, Zero Ward, 58; Hamblin, “My Experience,” 17.

[25] Sneddon, Zero Ward, 42, 50–52; Lukacs, Escape from Davao, 129–30.

[26] Lawton, Some Survived, 66.

[27] Brown and Zundel, “George Robin Brown . . . His Story,” 20.

[28] Enlistment Record, National Guard of New Mexico, George Robin Brown, December 19, 1940, Physical Examination at Place of Enlistment, NARA Records.

[29] Sneddon, Zero Ward, 3.

[30] Lukacs, Escape from Davao, 131–32.

[31] Christensen, “My Life Story,” 30.

[32] Daws, Prisoners of the Japanese, 19.