Blood Brothers by Eugene C. Jacobs (i can read book club TXT) 📕

JAPANESE PRISONER OF WAR CAMP NO1, CABANATUAN

Toward evening we arrived at the gate-made of slender poles and barbed wire-which I immediately recognized as one of the camps built prior to the war to house a division of the Philippine Army. It was located on several hundred acres of treeless wasteland (formerly rice paddies) near the foothills of the Sierra Madre Mountains. It consisted of some one hundred cantonment type barracks with walls of nipa and roofs of swali and cogan grass.

Within the barbed wire enclosure, many of the seven thousand half-naked, starved bodies, the “captives,” slowly milled about camp. In the several guard towers along the fence, sentries closely scrutinized their movements. The arrival of our old truck and its handful of new captives were scarcely noted in camp.

I made my “duty calls” on Col. D. J. Rutherford, C.A.C.,

Camp Commander, on Lt. Col. Leo Pacquet, Group II Commander, and Col. Gillespie, Medical C. O. Group II Dispensary proved to be a small, twenty by twenty foot grass shack. In one corner was my two-by six foot bamboo slat bed for the next several months.

Although my weight was down from 165 to 120 pounds because of amoebic dysentery, I was still relatively active and in fair health. How lucky I had been to have missed the starvation, the many diseases, the battles and bombings on Bataan and Corregidor, and most of all, the “Death March,” which had taken so many thousands of lives, “slaughtered by the Japs.”

“Thank you God!” became my frequent and fervent prayer.

Shortages: The first shortage of which I became aware was water. The deep well in camp required diesel fuel or coconut oil to run the engine-to pump the water to a central water tower, from which it went to one outlet in each group and each mess hall, and several outlets in the hospital. Since fuel was always in short supply, there was usually a shortage of water. By standing in line for an hour, I obtained my first canteen of water (which could only be used for drinking). Baths were obtained by standing under the eaves on rainy days. Fortunately the rainy season was beginning.

Chow: The evening meal was my introduction to the diet. I had been warned that I would only need my canteen cup for dinner. After waiting in a long line, I received one half cup of lugao (a thin watery rice soup) and some foul tasting greens, a very skimpy meal compared to those I enjoyed with the guerrillas chicken, eggs, pork, fruits, and vegetables.

As the days went by, the diet did not improve just lugao and greens day after day. On a rare occasion a small amount of mongo beans or corn might be added.

About once a month, a carabao (water buffalo) was killed and added to the soup for from 6,000 to 12,000 captives, after the Japs had removed all of the choice cuts. We believed ourselves lucky when we could find a shred or two of meat in the soup.

Our captors reasoned that slow starvation would make us too weak to resist authority or to attempt to escape. To further insure our servility, the Japanese divided us into groups of ten “blood brothers.” If one attempted to escape, the other nine would be severely punished. Recaptured escapees were paraded around camp by American guards for twenty four hours and then used for bayonet practice by the trainees and Koreans.

First Night: During the first night in camp, I spent several hours walking under the stars, just thinking. Life had been much better with the guerrillas; I was free to go many places not occupied by the Japs. I ate much better.

But what was done was done! There was no question that the captives in Cabanatuan P.O.W. Camp needed all of the medical care I could give them. From that point of view, I reasoned that I was in the right place. .

I wondered if Judy could see the same stars that I could the hunter and his two dogs, and the Southern Cross. When we lived in Garden Court (near Nichol’s Air Field), we used to delight in watching the moon and the stars shimmering in Manila Bay. It seemed a lifetime ago.

Apparitions: The next morning, some three hundred pathetic, skeletonized human beings, Americans, lined up in front of Group II Dispensary, all hoping for miracles. Several of the patients recognized me from Manila, where I had treated them at Sternberg Army Hospital, or the dispensaries of the 57th Infantry Regiment, or the 14th Engineer Regiment at Fort McKinley.

With their shaven heads and their considerable weight losses, I had great difficulty in recognizing them. These were the pitiful survivors from Bataan and Corregidor, the “Battling Bastards of

Bataan,” and the remnants of the “Death March.” One by one I listened to their stories and tried to help them.

Since there was very little medicine to give out, most of the therapy had to be improvised. Those with dysentery were told to take a teaspoon of charcoal from the mess hall stoves after each meal, and to sleep on the right side so not to irritate the sigmoid colon. They were to wash their hands after each trip to the latrine in spite of water shortages.

Malaria patients were given one quinine tablet after each chill hoping to alleviate symptoms. There was never enough to attempt a cure.

Both “wet” and “dry” beriberi cases were prevalent. There were no vitamins to treat them. We tried to make yeast cultures; the process was too slow, and we could never see that the cultures did any good. Hundreds of beriberi cases died each month.

Scurvy came on suddenly in large numbers of captives several times each year. When we could persuade the Japs to obtain a lime or two for each captive, the cures were remarkable.

Nightly Toll: Each day we transferred the most seriously ill patients to the hospital, where there were small amounts of extra food. In spite of the daily transfers, each night several captives died in the barracks. Many of the captives refused to go to the hospital seeing it as the last stop before death.

Mess Halls: There were eleven mess halls in camp-each with one or two large concrete stoves at one end. Large iron caldrons held the rice or soup to be cooked. During the rainy season, there were serious problems getting the wood to burn.

It often appeared that the mess crews were better fed than other captives. The daily diet consisted of two hundred to four hundred grams of a poor grade of rice, containing fine gravel and insects, about one hundred grams of weeds (from carabao wallows), and, on a rare occasion, ten grams of “one” of the following: sugar, coconut oil, beans, camote (sweet potato), corn, or meat. The diet was usually below eight-hundred calories daily, of which protein and fat were less than fifty calories.

Captives, who were able to earn a pittance by hard labor on labor details or on the farm, could supplement their diet with an occasional banana, egg, a few peanuts, or a few mongo beans.

A few captives raised small gardens growing vegetables for their own use. As they ripened, the produce had to be carefully watched to prevent theft. Some captives trapped stray dogs, some ate lizards, grasshoppers and even earthworms.

With food from every available source, the daily diet rarely reached one thousand calories. Fat and salt were almost never available.

Slow Starvation: Starvation, the scourge of the Orient for centuries, devastated the captives held by the Japanese; it was not a starvation bred of poverty, but starvation bred of brutality, sadism and neglect. Murder would have been more humane; execution more legal. A slow, tortured death, however, was more in keeping with the desire of the Japanese to make the “Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor pay dearly for having challenged ‘Dai Nippon.”

We were hearing so much about the “Death March” and “Camp O’Donnell,” I have decided to include several paragraphs on each:

Bataan “Death March”: The “Death March” began April 9th, when the Japanese General Homma demanded that General King surrender his 80,000 Fil-American forces on Bataan “Unconditionally.”

Since Gen. Homma’s prizes, Corregidor and the Philippine Islands, still lay before him, he had no time to worry about the captured Fil-American forces. His shock troops, tanks, trucks, cars, cavalry, artillery, and infantry occupied the only highway from Bataan to the central plain. They were getting into position (on the grounds of Hospitals I and II) to shell and bomb Corregidor into submission. “Why the dirty bastards! They’re using us as shields to fire on Corregidor.”

At the same time, Japanese guards between Marivales and Limay were rounding up the 80,000 hungry, sick, confused, and exhausted captives to march them north on the same highway in groups of one hundred in columns of four.

Guards were continually barking orders: “Get on the highway!

Hully! Hully! Hully! Kura! Stop! Get off the load! Speedo! Sona bitch! Kura! Get on the highway! Stop!” They used their weapons to enforce their directives.

The “March” began at Marivales, proceeded “on foot” for about sixty miles, then by box car for some twenty miles and finally another ten miles “by foot” to Camp O’Donnell. “It was hot, hot, hot and dusty! There was no food; there was no water!” Most captives did not have canteens. Those who attempted to fill their canteens in the ditches besides the road were frequently bayoneted; anyone who couldn’t keep up was slapped, clubbed or

bayoneted in full view of the others.

Heard along the march: “During the day, we had to travel along the highway when it was not being used by heavy equipment going south.” “At night, we were placed in barbed wire enclosures; sometimes there was water; more often there was none.” “As the days passed, the stench of death became very pronounced; bodies were laying along the highway in all stages of decomposition swollen, bursting open, and covered by thousands of maggots.”

The Korean guards were the most abusive. The Japs didn’t trust them in battle, so used them as service troops; the Koreans were anxious to get blood on their bayonets; and then they thought they were veterans.

“If you fell, you were dead!”

“There were things you didn’t want to see! There was the captive that the Jap trucks and tanks had rolled over until he was just a flat ‘silhouette’ in the pavement.”

“The heat was terrible!”

“The Jap kept poking me with his bayonet; fear gave me the strength to go on.”

“To have a close friend a buddy to help you might be the difference between survival and death.”

“As the days passed, the compounds holding captives at night became filthy; sick and dying almost filled the areas. The dead were not being buried. The terrible odor was sickening.”

“Sometimes when the compounds were crowded, they marched us all night.”

“I had 10,000 teeny blisters on the bottom of my feet.”

“The compound was full of people a lot of dust, dirt and filth; I just fell into the dirt and slept.”

“People were going crazy they were ‘nuts!’ sometimes talking to themselves, sometimes screaming!”

“We all had dysentery, and there was no water. Usually there was no food.”

“We finally reached the train a few box cars with doors closed in the hot sun they were stifling hot like a furnace.”

“We were jammed one hundred to a car standing room only. Men fainted, but there was no place to fall down.”

“They didn’t open the door until we reached the destination.

The