This is Kep Johnson, interviewer for the
National Museum of the Pacific War. Today is
May 15, 2002. I am interviewing Mr. Weldon
Hamilton. This interview is taking place at
the Omni Hotel in San Antonio. This interview
is in support of the Center for Pacific War Studies,
Archives for the National Museum of the Pacific
War, Texas Parks and Wildlife, for the
preservation of historical information related
to this site.
And for you to introduce yourself, I'd like you
to identify yourself, your name, address.
I'm Weldon Hamilton, and I live in Las Cruces.
My address is 007 Happy Trails Drive, Las
Cruces, New Mexico, 88005.
And your date of birth?
I was born the 21st of July, 1921.
And your parents' names and where they came from?
My dad was Frank Hamilton. He was born in
Wyoming, Iowa.
My mother's name was Myrtle Bullock, and she
was born in South Dakota.
I have one brother and two sisters.
My brother is Irving Hamilton.
He lives in Austin, Texas.
I have a sister who lives in Merrick, New York,
and a sister who lives in Yellville, Arkansas.
Would you describe your years of education for us?
I graduated from high school and I went to
Salina High in Salina, Kansas.
Then I went one year to Kansas Wesleyan, a
Methodist college in Salina also.
After I completed my career in the military for
twenty-nine years, I went back to college again.
First I went to the College of San Antonio,
then I went to Southwest Texas in San Marcos,
Texas, and I completed approximately over all
ninety hours.
Tell me about your enlistment into the armed
forces back in 1940 or 41, whenever it was.
When and where did you enter the service?
I was going to Kansas Wesleyan University at
the time, and we were all building up to
obviously the second World War II was coming,
it was pretty obvious to everybody, and everybody
I was getting good jobs either in the military
or in defense, so I decided I wanted to enlist
and get into it.
So I enlisted in the Air Corps.
They sent me to Jefferson Barracks, Missouri,
on October 5, 1940.
I went to Jefferson Barracks, Missouri, where I
took my basic training.
And then I was transferred to Scott Field,
where I stayed approximately six months.
Then I was moved to Hamilton Field, which was
just north of San Francisco.
How did you happen to pick up the Army Air Corps?
I took a flying course that the college was
giving out about that time.
They wanted to get 100,000 civilian pilots, so
they allocated training to so many college
students in every college in the United States
as far as I know.
Kansas Wesleyan was authorized ten and I was
one of those, which got me interested, but
I guess I was always interested in it, in the
Air Corps, just the whole idea.
I thought it was exciting, romantic, and a lot
of fun.
Were you a pilot in the Air Corps? No.
I ended up going to cook school, which is way
down on the social level, you know.
Most people consider that's a pretty
insignificant position.
As it turned out, I found that to be a great opportunity.
It was great during the war.
It was great in the field.
were more effective there than I would have
been in many other things, and it turned out
my entire career in the Air Force was greatly
enhanced by being in what we called a services field.
My outfit was on maneuvers in the South at the
time, and at the time I graduated, this outfit
was going overseas to the
Philippines. They needed somebody to fill in
their spaces, so I was considered a
casual at the moment, then I was grabbed up and
went directly to the Philippines.
With whom? 34th Pursuit Squadron. The 34th
Pursuit Squadron was equipped with P-40s,
and they had their P-40s ship taken, in those
days they took the ship, planes of
apart and shipped them on a boat separately. So
our planes were behind us.
So as we got in there on the 20th of November
of 1941, our planes never got
there. When we got there what we did get was
they scraped up some old P-35s and
we had some 20 of those and they were very
ineffective. They weren't
what we really needed for that kind of war.
So you landed the 20th of November in Manila,
and your unit was to go to where?
We went to Nichols Field, and Nichols Field is
just right outside of Manila.
And we were out there until the 29th.
On the 29th, they told us that we were leaving
town in a hurry and said, get what you can
and get on the truck.
I asked what was going on and they said, well,
a lot of people think the war's already started.
And we went out to Del Carmen Field near Clark
and it was just a sugar cane field that the
cane had been cut by the 803rd engineers and it
was just dust and the engineers had put
up tents for us and we had our planes, I
believe we had twenty-four.
That was a P-35? Right.
Did you have a pretty full complement of personnel?
Yes, we were pretty well-yes, as far as I know,
we were up to strength.
We had 238 people in our upgrade.
What about munitions?
Did you have what you needed in the way of
munitions to fire the planes?
We had that, but the P-35s only fired the .30
caliber machine guns, so they weren't-but
we had the ammunition we were supposed to for that.
And, of course, we had no, at that time, no
anti-aircraft weapons or any anti-aircraft support.
But none was furnished to us.
Nothing supporting us to protect us from aerial attack.
And of course, that was on the 29th, and the
war started on the 8th, so we're only talking
about nine days.
In fact, the base commander went over to Clark
Field a few days after there-well, it was-when
he got back he said, we will have war within
seventy-two hours.
The Japanese have eight hundred planes on
Formosa and they will attack.
He said, get out there and dig some holes and
maybe half of us will go home.
And it turned out that way just almost to the hour.
How did you and your unit first get involved in
the war?
Was your field bombed in the early stages?
Well, of course the morning the war started
Clark was attacked.
Clark was only just-it was in sight of where we
were, and our planes, when they started
in Clark where they told our planes to get up,
but of course by the time our planes got
up it was all over, all our planes were blowing
dust and getting off the ground, and it was
all over by the time they got up there.
As I said, the P-35 wasn't worth a lot anyway,
but the damage was all done by the time our
planes got up there.
On the 8th, the Japanese were beginning to land
some troops on the northern Luzon, and
Our squadron went up there and attacked the
ships that were landing, and our commander
flew over a ship, and as he flew over firing at
it, it blew up and blew him up and his
plane and the ship.
They all came back and landed at our field at
El Carmen.
In the meantime, because the war had started,
we had all moved out of our tents and all
the personnel had moved under a big tree, and
so the planes had no more and got back
and lined up in the good old-fashioned way,
one, two, three, like soldiers do, and
here comes strafing planes. They came, made a
long sweep around. You hear that
whining noise we knew we're in for a big
trouble, and they just dove down across
the field and just cut them to pieces. Every
plane we had was destroyed, all in a line.
Once the planes were gone, what was your mission?
We were temporarily-nobody knew how many planes
we had or where they were or what was
going to happen.
So after the initial shock, we stayed there
until nearly Christmas Day with the idea that
any planes that were available could land there
and we'd protect the field and if anybody
came, if any help came, whatever, we'd be there
for it.
And the Japanese would bomb us a little every
day, I don't know whether they just saved
some for every mission, but they came over and
bombed us every day.
So then we moved into town, Del Carmen, and at
that time, of course, the Japanese were
coming in fast.
They were coming down Luzon, and a captain came
in, and it was Christmas Day, and we
We had Christmas dinner and we asked him how it
was going at the front.
He said, not good.
And I said, well, we've been hearing the radio
and it says we're holding on all fronts.
He said, that means we're retreating just as
fast as they're advancing.
Yeah, at least we get Barsad and they can keep theirs.
And so then right after Christmas Day, we
pulled out, went on down to the mouth of Bataan
at Orani and that was the road basically the
only road leading into Bataan.
So everything that was going to Bataan had to
come through Orani.
What was the purpose of setting you down there?
Well we're gonna
the original plan of course was to everybody
would withdraw to Bataan and
that's where they'd make the stand until help came.
Two things went wrong with that. One no help
was coming
and the second was MacArthur had been getting
quite a bit of stuff in so
in the original idea, once the attack came, he
thought maybe he could hold all or most of Luzon.
So they didn't go into the immediate mode,
which they should have. Everybody run for Batan
as fast
as they could get there, and carry everything
out of Manila if they could. So a lot of stuff
was in
Manila that might have been taken out and
wasn't. But we did make a fairly orderly
retreat in Batan.
But the whole idea was to retreat in Batan, and
we were sitting at the mouth of Batan.
And, of course, we could hear them coming down
the road, you know, just as soon as they
crossed the Klumpet Bridge.
Everybody was cut off from the south, so
everybody could get down there that was trying
to get there.
You basically became an infantry unit. Yes.
They told us that we were provisional infantry
and gave us rifles.
Not what you'd been trained for, exactly.
Not exactly.
But then when you get down to basics, everybody
in the Army was supposed to have a secondary
MOS as an infantryman, really.
Not that they were really trained for that, but
they were supposed to expect that.
So what was the date when you moved down into Bataan?
We moved Christmas, we moved to Orani, which is
actually in Bataan, it's the mouth of Bataan.
And we moved on down, and by New Year's Day we
had been sent to kilometer 191, which was
Agaloma Bay, Quinan Point.
And there we were on beach defense, we had two
bays, and we were supposed to intercept
any landings that might come.
Very fortunately, or unfortunately, that's
where the Japanese decided was the best place
to land.
So their strategic plan was to cut that road.
If they could cut that road, then the front
would be cut completely in two, and I think
it's obvious to anybody that looked at it that
at that time the rest of the troops would
have been divided and cut up very easily
because they couldn't retreat and they couldn't hold.
But it was only two miles of road, but a lot of
luck and a lot of help we held there.
But we got to, from a historical point of view,
and being as I survived, I look at things
as a historical thing, that all kinds of things
depended on us holding at a hill in the bay.
And we did.
They landed somewhere around 750 men on that
place and dug in, and then four days later
they tried to land a much larger force.
if they'd have got in and got secured they most
certainly would have taken the
road. But we turned every single one of them,
there were 30 barges, and we turned
them all away. We had, we had 20, 30 caliber machine
guns, we had 13 twin 50s, we had a 295 mountain
gun, and a four-inch naval gun.
And so when the barges were coming in, all the
machine guns would be firing, you could
see the tracers, so you could see the little
pinkies going into the barges, so you knew
they were hitting them.
Then several PT boats came up and ran in
between the barges, firing at the barges.
And three airplanes, I don't know where they
come from, but they came over to help, and
we were getting some help from firing from
Cregador, which had the big guns on the Cregador.
So it was a real dramatic sight.
I went up to pick up a wounded man on the
point, to stand up on the point and see all
this going on in the water in front of me.
I expect it was quite a scene.
Yeah, it was just absolutely incredible, yeah.
And so you held there for how long?
Well, we turned those away that night, and then
it was another two weeks before we wiped
out the first 750.
They were dug in, and of course, we only had
238 people there.
But by morning, the night they landed, more
people were coming in, because the people
that were running the show, of course, realized
how important that was.
They sent in some of the 45th Scouts and the
57th Scouts, and they sent in-
-South Philippians? -Yes.
Well, they were-Scouts are kind of a strange
thing, or Filipinos, yeah, but they kind of
were U.S. Army too.
They weren't just constabulary, they were good,
good troops, yeah.
And then we had several other Air Force groups
that came in.
They just ran anybody down there they could to
stop that.
Then they brought 155s up on the road to fire
on where they were concentrated.
After you turned away the attempt at landing
there, the attempt to cut the road, was that
where you stayed?
Did you use it to protect that-? Yes.
Yes, we stayed on the beach.
Of course, nobody knew what was going to happen
then, and Ben Sweet wiped them all out.
They had to come up and bury all those people
that were up there, and, of course, we had
to watch the beach.
We shot one plane down after the battle was over.
The guy came around in a plane making a low
turn, and they got him in a machine gun.
Now he was down in the water, so they fired at
him with a four-inch naval gun.
So we got one plane with a four-inch naval gun.
But anyway, yes, we just kind of stayed there
until the end came.
We were cooking an iguana, they looked like a
young alligator, and the night before we
surrendered, we'd caught this iguana and cooked
him up like it would a chicken or
something. And there was an enormous tree where
we were at. Japanese warships were
sitting out there. They'd fire inside, and
every time they thought about it. And this
whole tree caught on fire. Fortunately it was a
jungle so it was only one to burn, but
here we got a tree. Yeah, we'd get fire from
the naval gun. They'd just sit out there.
And they would fire when they were in the mood,
you know.
And you were in that same location at the time
of the surrender?
Yeah, at the time of the surrender we were in
the same place.
Tell me about your unit movements and personal
movements then for the next couple of weeks
or whatever.
Well, they told us to-they called and said that
General King had gone forward to surrender
and that we would be surrendering and destroy
all our weapons, and that was an early morning
Now, I don't exactly know when King went
forward, but anyway, we got-it was about five, six
o'clock in the morning-we got word to destroy
our enemies-our guns.
And about eight, then they called back down and
said the Japanese refused to take our-accept
our surrender, hold up and throw our guns away,
because we'd already been doing all that.
But it wasn't a little bit, and they called
down and said to go ahead.
The Japanese had told them to-there were no
terms to surrender where we were.
Then they told us to stay where we were, and I
told my sergeant, I said, we were right
by the cemetery where they buried all these people.
In fact, there were guns laying around, there
were holsters, there were hats, and everything
the Japanese wore was all around everywhere.
And I told my sergeant, I said, man, if we
surrender here,
we're dead ones for sure.
Now, let's go up to CP.
So he said, OK, up to command post.
And up to command post, then they said, well,
it'd be safer if we went to the main road.
Maybe we could surrender at the main road.
It'd be better.
So we went up to the main road, and we waited
up there.
Somebody found some C-rations about that time.
I suppose somebody had a private catch
and realized he couldn't use them anymore.
So we all got a little C-rations.
And so it was getting kind of late in the afternoon.
and three Japanese tanks come rattle around the corner.
And we thought at first maybe they were our own tanks,
but then we realized they weren't.
And of all things, the guys waved at us, you know?
Couldn't imagine anything like that.
Little bit of whole track load of Japanese soldiers
came along and they had all their battle gear
and everything and all the little fishnet deals.
And they asked us what we were doing,
why we were in the war, and it was just almost friendly.
just so wow here it is a beautiful sunny
afternoon big shade trees you know these
guys almost seem friendly you know but that was
the end of friendly and so then
they told us to march to Marvalis so they
started down the road we went
down the road we're just walking down the road
towards Marvalis it's at the
tip of Batan.
Clarence, the southern tip.
Yeah, Batan.
Here's the Batan Peninsula here.
Apparently you were up in this- Yeah, Manila Bay.
Yeah, Mar Vela.
You were in this neighborhood with your own
holding actions? No.
This is the outside over here, so here's where
we were holding.
Down here is Mar Vela's.
We had to march down here to Mar Vela's, so a
lot of people say how far was the march?
And whatever they say was the distance from
here to Mar Vela's.
So we had to march down here to Mar Vela's.
And we went down to Mar Vela's, and we had to
march down here to Mar Vela's.
See, this is the outside over here, so here's
where we were holding.
Down here is Mar Vela's, and we had to march
down here to Mar Vela's, so a lot of people
say how far was the march, and whatever they
say was the distance between 91 and Mar Vela's,
which was about 10 miles.
So we surrendered right there at the end, just
Cregador's around this side, and it's
just a little bit, Cregador's a little further.
So we surrendered down there and that's when
they started, well of course they abused us
getting down there, you know.
They broke people's glasses and if they had any
Japanese thing of any kind, they were
killed even, you know.
Mainly they just bruised, slapped you around,
kicked you, brutalized you, stole anything
you had and everything like that.
In the meantime they were firing on Cregador,
yeah, they were firing on Cregador.
So in many ways everybody saw the hills were
covered with Japanese, most of them stripped
to the waist, and they were firing these big
cannons and cooking their rice, like nothing
was going on almost in a way except these big
guns firing away.
And the guys that were doing that just ignoring
us, so again we looked like we'd gone to a
movie and seen something.
So we got down to Marvalis and they started
lining us up in groups on the march, and then
Then they started us out on the march, and they
just take so many at a time.
On the march they didn't give us anything to
eat, they didn't give us anything to drink.
Once in a while they'd let you stop for a
little bit and try to get a drink, and
maybe a few would get some and then they'd run
them off, but they just never seemed to
make any real drink stops or anything like that.
It was just catch can and if you could catch
any water great if you couldn't I look back on
it now
And I think probably most of the people must
have died in dehydration
When I realized what died I knew they were
dying because they couldn't keep up
I knew they were sick many of them had that
proper rations a lot of people been on the
fourth rations for quite some time
Even then they were just in a many of them had
malaria because we didn't have any what they
call prophylactic
I think they used to give quinine on a regular
basis if they'd take that quinine while
they didn't get malaria, but we were out of
that, so you didn't have any protection.
So an awful lot of guys had that already.
And so they were an awful lot sick, and nobody
was giving us any food.
We never got any food at all.
If you got food, if you had something with you,
or you picked something on the side of
the road, or Filipinos would try to throw you food.
And sometimes people get a little-but most of
that was just negligible, you know.
You just didn't get anything out of that.
Your march was where, to San Fernando?
Everybody marched to San Fernando, yeah.
Of course, like I say, I started ten miles
before everybody else.
I had to walk ten miles before I got to the
starting place, yeah.
Well not actually back down.
You walked down to the peninsula, we were
walking down, then we circled back cab cabin
and started back up the other side.
So when we got to Belanga, they had to strip
all of our clothes off, stand out there naked
with our clothes in front of us, and they came
through and stirred through our clothes
and see if there was anything there they wanted
or anything they didn't want us to have.
When they were pleased with that, then you
could put your clothes back on, whatever you had.
And when I walked out of Belanga, I think by
that time-I have a little hard time keeping
exact dates but probably around six days after
it started and up to that time I
hadn't received any food whatsoever from from
them and virtually nothing from any
other source. So you were six days to? To
Balanga. Yeah we still had several days
to go we still had Labao. I stopped overnight
in Orani. We slept on the
ground. When I got up in the morning they come
up there you hardly light enough to
sea and they started yelling everybody up
everybody up and running through and
they're shooting the bayonet and anybody wasn't
up. We went on then to Lubau and
there was a big tin shed there so we there was
a water line long water line
you'd have to wait for hours to get in the
water line and they didn't give us
any food again anything you had was something
you'd drowned one way or
another and most people didn't have anything
then we went on from there or
Ronnie and Lou Bow and then then on into San
Fernando. And that was just just
killing everybody that couldn't keep up.
Anybody that fell out was just out of
luck. People just say I can't go any further.
I'm too tired. And they knew
they were going to die. I had helped carry a
man one afternoon, two of us, like the
monument shows there. And we'd not more than
got a hold of him to try to bring
him along while he says let me go let me down I
don't want to go and
we say we let you down your dad he said I don't
care I'm too tired to go any
further you know so we just drug him along the
whole afternoon but a person
was taking a terrible risk if they did that
because everybody was fighting for
his life you know and you might be the guys
gonna give up next and just like I
said just before looking back on it I'll bet
you most of them died from just
plain dehydration because they weren't getting
the water and it was too hot and
yeah and you know what dehydration we have this
death march out to White Sands
now and they have to carry people with their
dehydration and they've only been
out there eight hours you know so so if our
people are going to have to be
hospitalized after eight hours imagine what
people are gonna do after six days
days, that didn't have any adequate water, or...
But you said they moved you out in groups?
Yeah, we say that the march was probably at
least 70,000 people, and I'm sure no group
went out with more than 500, you know.
They'd get what they thought was a pretty good
bunch, they'd line them up in column
of fours, and you start going, and the soldiers
were all coming down because they're getting
ready to attack Cregador, so they're trying to
hit you on the outside with their rifle
butts on the outside. And a funny thing about
that was that, well not funny, but
the pathetic thing was people didn't seem to
notice. If you got on the outside
you was gonna get your head cracked with a
rifle, you know. But people would line
up and seem to pay no attention to that. So I
knew real quick that when they
lined up I didn't want to have to get on the
outside. An amazing thing when I
look back is that nobody fought with, I didn't
have to fight to get an inside
Well, I can't imagine everybody wasn't fighting
to get off that outside line, but they were
just kind of like drug people or something
I guess they were just trying to make it and
weren't thinking
Another thing you have a large group of 500 if
you get about three or four
rows back
They'll stop and then they'll go to stop and go
and you're standing and running
Now where you got something terrible if you're
back here a little way back to the back a
little ways
But if you get up close to the front, then you
get a pretty steady deal.
So I knew that I needed to be on about the
Fourth row.
And so I felt those were the little tricks that
needed to survive.
I used to give lectures after I was in the military.
I stayed in for 29 years.
And they'd say, tell people what to do to
survive, you know.
And I'd tell them, well, if it's anything like
what I was in, they line you up.
what you have to do to survive, and that's the
way to do it.
So when you got to San Fernando, about when?
I say between 10 and 12 days from the day I
started, yeah.
How long did you stay there?
We stayed overnight.
We were in an old corral, like a rodeo place,
and it was manure out there and everything
else and dark, and so many people, there wasn't
hardly room to stand, let alone lay down.
So we had to lay down, I kind of left that out
of my book, you know, but it was always
kind of funny.
I thought the guy would get up and go to the
bathroom, it was pitch dark, you know, and
first he'd step in somebody's face and then
he'd step in somebody else's stomach and say,
he'd say, watch where you're going, you know,
and just in a few minutes the guy would just
do it right there.
Anyway, it was pretty pathetic.
And so we slept in that old thing, and the next
morning we got up, and they put us on
a train to Cappus, which is O'Donnell.
And they were jammed in there just as tight as
they could get them in and close the door.
And a lot of guys suffocated in those cars, actually.
I didn't know of anybody that suffocated in my
car, but I know a lot of them did.
And we were just-you just got gnarly-breathed,
it's just hot cars, and close the doors,
you know, it's tropics.
And then we got to O'Donnell, and they let us
out, and we walked the last little ways
into O'Donnell.
We thought, well, maybe we've arrived at a good
place, but that was hell if there ever was.
They were pretty firm in saying that there was
at least 25,000 people died there within
less than two months.
And it was just horrible, at Camp O'Donnell.
was nobody, it was dry, and there was nobody
really healthy enough to bury the
dead. And I was put on a detail, a barrel
detail, and I passed out four times on
the same, marching out to bury people, and they
finally just drove me back, you know.
I didn't even have the strength to stand up,
let alone dig that hard ground. So
they were way behind on burying the people, you
know, and they just, they died
something awful in O'Donnell, and people just
lay there with a green blowflies all
over them, you know, and just not moving.
Nobody looked after them, no medicine if
there was. Nobody, basically nobody able to
look after them. Everybody short on
water. Everybody short on everything for that
matter. So not only was it terrible,
but nobody didn't do anything about it. I was
there about six weeks I guess it
was. I used two months to cover the time. In
fact, I read just the other day there's
a monument out of Capas now says 30,000, but
most of them are Filipinos of course.
We were 10,000 of our Americans, but there was
at least 60,000
Filipinos, and the Filipinos died even worse
than we did, which was a terrible
shame on the Japanese part at least, you know.
Well, if I'd have been the Japanese,
I just said send those boys home mama these
Americans picked on you poor boy, you know
Yeah, and I think what I've done for him they
they said
Cool prosperity severe Asia for the Asiatics
Why didn't I send him home and said these guys
were just duped into helping these stupid
Americans out, you know
oh, no, they went ahead and and killed their
boys, you know, and so the
The Filipinos just absolutely couldn't stand
the Japanese, and that was one of the reasons.
Another thing, the Japanese just loved to slap.
Slapping was one of their favorite things.
They slapped everybody, and the Filipinos, if
there's anything they don't want to be
is slapped.
They'd rather be beat up than slapped.
And so I got out of O'Donnell and we went to
Kabanawa, and actually Kabanawa, well,
I want to mention one thing on O'Donnell that I
have in my book, and I always told
in my lectures that when we got into the camp,
the camp commander got up and said, ìWeíre enemies.
We shall always be enemies from generation unto
generation, even unto hundreds of years.
You think Youíre lucky to escape with your lives.
I tell you, the lucky ones are already dead.
The only thing I'm interested in is how many
died, which is obvious that's exactly what
he meant.
We went to Cabanatuan and it was just like that
at Cabanatuan.
Now when I see all that people that died, it
sounds kind of strange when I say that
Cabanatuan, more Americans died in Cabanatuan
than any foreign prison before or since.
3,000 died there, but they were all Filipino, I
mean they were all Americans, mainlanders
or whatever you want to call them.
But that was a horrible camp, too.
And most of those people there died in the
early months of O'Donnell.
Things did get-I mean, things did get a little
better for a while.
Did you get rations at Camp O'Donnell?
Were you given some reasonable amount of food
and water?
I'd say we got probably a reasonable amount-in
O'Donnell, the water situation was horrible
because they turned the pumps off at 11:00 at night.
We'd go up there with canteens and one guy
would maybe take a canteen for 10, 12, 15
people, you know
And so there'd be hundreds of people standing
in lines and they all got 10 canteens, you
know, and the water's just you know
Almost dribbling. Well half of the guys
wouldn't even get any water. You'd be at 11:00
They'd turn the water off and the guy would go
back. Hope maybe get the head of the line next day
so the water was horrible and
Food wasn't good, but they did get issues arise
Then we went to O'Donnell and of course it was
a little better again, but they were dying
like flies, you know, they didn't have any good
thing to go with the rice, and the rice
was cooked very badly.
They were cooked in what we call like woks,
great big pots they cook them in, that burned
bad in there, so the guys weren't familiar with
cooking in a wok, especially a big wok,
And so you'd get your rice, it'd be raw and
scorched and no salt, you know.
And many, many guys would just, they'd get some
of that rice and they'd just say, I can't
eat this crap.
And they'd just die.
Were you cooking your own food or were they
cooking their own food?
No, no.
They had a kitchen.
And of course that's one thing I've always kind
of said and maybe I shouldn't have, maybe
I really shouldn't mention it all that often.
But what we should have done is, I was a cook,
and I don't say I was a good cook, but what
they should have done is be sure they didn't
put anybody in the kitchen that hadn't cooked
for the military before, because you had plenty
of them.
Why in the world put a guy out there that had
just drove a truck, or maybe he's a machine
gun man, and let him figure out how to cook rice?
Put somebody in there that at least cooked some
rice, and they could have even done something
like have maybe cook-offs, you know.
They could say, how many of you now have
actually cooked for the troops?
And then everybody that held up their hands
would get over here and I said, and even you
could have verbally questioned, how do you cook rice?
And they could have screened them out and they
could have got the very best cooks they had.
And maybe we wouldn't have been eating rice
that was both raw and scorched at the same time.
It wasn't fit to eat.
And the guy would bite into that, and they'd
give you maybe a soup with a little sweet
potato or something like that, no salt, or
squash, and you'd bite into that food and
it'd erupt a maggot, you know.
And yet, if you're going to live, you're going
to have to eat it.
And of course, we all got pellagra and scurvy,
and the doctor told me I had the worst case
of Pellagra he'd ever seen.
My hands were all swollen up, big things on the
back of my hands, big blisters on my knees,
and we all had that, and we had scurvy, you
know, because we didn't have any fruit like
we had, so people had bleeding gums and all that.
But beriberi was probably one of the worst
things I had, because your body would really
swell up and your legs would split open.
They'd actually just split down the end, and
then all the fluid would just run out.
Basically, normally the guy at that point, he
wasn't going to live.
He was going to die of infection.
He was too bad of a shape anyway.
And then they got the great big ulcers on him,
but the same thing.
You could see a guy laying there, and it's in
the middle of his back, and you could have
reached in and felt the vertebrae of his
backbone, you know, because ulcer just eating
his flesh away.
And things would grow up, a person's penis, you
know, would grow up.
So that was really terrible, and of course all
these guys got amoebic dysentery, and
they got malaria, and they had cerebral
malaria, you know, and in cerebral malaria they just
go into comas until they died.
How long were you at Cabanatuan?
Two years. Yeah.
It did get better at Cabanatuan for a while.
So this was in 44?
We were captured in 42, and I was there all of 43.
I got in there about the 1st of June, so I was
the rest of 42,
all of 43 and I stayed in there till July of 44
we bet we build a big farm we
dug it all up with Pick Maddox's we built two
complete irrigation systems
like 3,000 of us on work on the farm every day
we didn't get to keep the food
ourselves unless we the only way you got to get
in the food yourself you had to
steal it on the field where you were working
out there, but God help you if you got caught.
So various tricky things went there that people
got to eat.
For example, we'd grow corn, and if you were
working in heavy corn, the guys would
take the little ears and they could just eat
them and cough and all.
So in July 1944, they had a detail going to
Japan, and I figured, oh boy, there's going
to be another death march.
And when the Americans get here, we're going to
have a lot of people dying trying to get
out of here.
And I said, if I can go, I'm going to go.
And they didn't take anybody that had amoebic
dysentery, and as I say, listed as cured.
So I'd had amoebic dysentery, and I never got
cured because I didn't want them sending
me if I didn't have to.
Am I running out of time?
Oh, no.
We've got plenty of time.
I'm just watching you.
Oh, okay.
I volunteered to go to Japan, and I got cleared
from my military so I could go, and so I went
to Billabid.
When I went to Billabid, they marched it down
through the streets of Manila like a parade,
and I felt like I was on a parade because the
people lined the streets on all sides.
It was like a great parade, and there were
enormous crowds watching us, and the guards
were hustling down the street.
For one time we felt like the heroes, I did
anyway, and the only enemies were the guards.
Down the street we could hear music playing,
old Ang Zai.
So we knew that the Filipinos were just trying
to tell us that, we're with you, you know.
We got on a hell ship and went to Japan, and I
read the other day that it was the longest
trip anybody ever took to Japan-it took us
sixty-two days.
And on that ship, we got fed once a day, one
cup of rice, one cup of water.
And you'd wash your-you'd eat your rice, then
you'd take your cup of water and wash
your mesquite in your hands, then you drank the
cup of water.
And of course, that's the only way you could
have survived-you had to drink the water.
You had to try to keep your mesquite clean, and
your hand just automatically got clean
cleaning your mesquite, washing your mesquite.
So on that cup of water, we were 62 days on
that boat, and it was a-those hell ships
were hell.
There's no question about them.
We had a little-like a table, a small table,
five of us under the table, and we were crammed
under there so tight, if one turned over, we
all had to turn over.
everybody have to lay on the left side and if
somebody thought he had to turn
over on his right side, everybody else had to
turn over on their right side. And we had
little life preservers down there, you lay on
the life preservers. Somebody said
ruin the life preservers, but who was worried
about that? And you pick up the
life preservers and they were absolutely brown
with bed bugs. And we're down in
any, and we're down in a hole, there were five
hundred of us in a hole, and at
night they'd roll the canvas back over the
hole, so just filthy hot in there.
I mean, just unbelievable.
Why would they seal it up at night?
Well, I guess, afraid somebody's going to sneak
out or something,
you know?
And go where, huh?
Well, there's a ladder in the water, maybe.
Maybe you've got to swim for it, who knows?
Well, you know, because I always imagine we
might all come rushing up,
you know, and try to take over the ship or
something, who knows.
I suppose you can think of excuses for it
if you spend a lot of time thinking about it.
So 62 days, did you make land along the way?
Yeah, actually we did.
We first stopped at Takao, Formosa, and we were
there a while.
They let us out one day out on the side of the
ship and took water hoses and hosed us down.
Then we got back on the ship and we went up the
northern end of Formosa, at Taipei, and
we spent some time there.
Then we left Formosa and we had a twenty-seven
ship convoy and suddenly they started hollering
American submarines, American submarines, you
know, and everybody started going, and
we had eight boilers on our ship, and we blew
four of them right away, and it wasn't but
a few minutes, everybody went off and left us,
and these destroyers coming up the side
throwing depth charges out, so I don't know
what really happened, but there was no time,
we were all by ourselves.
Anyway, we struggled on into Okinawa, and we
stayed a few days in Okinawa, and there
with three ships there, us and two more,
and they went out, we couldn't get our anchor up,
and the other two went out,
and we understand the other two got sunk,
but we couldn't go because we couldn't get our
anchor up.
A few days later, we got our anchor up
and sailed on in Japan, no problem.
All by ourselves, nothing, just this old Matimatimaru.
We called it the Matimatimaru,
most people that rode on it had no idea
what the name of the ship is.
Now we do have the name, but it was the
Canadian Explorer or something like that, but
it had
a Japanese name.
But most of them never learned.
Everybody wrote on that that it's called the
Matamata Maru, which means it's wait, wait,
wait ship.
Oh, yeah.
Mati means wait. Right.
Maru means ship.
So we got in Japan, landed at Moji, and at Moji
they sent us to Amuta.
It's just across the bay from Nagasaki.
And I was there a year, worked in a coal mine.
Back to Kabalatuan, in the time you were there,
you talked about gardening and putting in
the irrigation system and what have you.
Was that the only kind of work you did?
Oh yeah, well, we worked on the farm.
If we didn't have anything else to do, we
worked on the farm, and they required so many
people every day.
But I did have, one time I had a detail in the
town, I forget even what we went after.
One time I had a detail, went over to a little
community and picked up fertilizer for the garden.
One day I got on a detail to go cut wood,
because they cooked with wood, and we actually
cut mahogany trees for wood.
And then one time they were making a show, The
Birth of Freedom.
I've got a copy of it incidentally at home and
they said it was some of the
best Japanese directors and and of the Japan
and the Philippines and Filipino
actors and everything else. It was a pretty
sorry movie for that kind of
recommendation but they actually took us up in
the mountains and beautiful place
and they had great big Japanese soldiers they
looked like giants compared to most
some we saw I realized now they wanted to use
that for the movie because they
wanted them look that domineering and they had
big equipment big machine guns
there now I was really impressed I thought they
were worried about us but
now I know that they were just making a movie
they wanted to press the people
who saw the movie yeah right but they had us
come up over over a hill and
trees are blowing up around us you know they
gave us rifles to carry and they're
shooting off smoke bombs and everything else.
We had a pretty good time that day.
They brought us a pretty good lunch for a
change. So and I thought boy wouldn't
that be something if someday I'd get to see
that movie and I ended up at a
habit. Oh yes about the farm yeah excuse me.
Well I just wondered you know what
kind of work. One more thing one more much much
bigger than what I just told
you. We made an airfield there too. Oh. By hand.
Okay. That could take some time. We went out
there, yeah. I would, in the afternoon, I could
carry 35 wheelbarrows of dirt. So I
had no time what it was, but I was running a
wheelbarrow. So I'd count how
many wheelbarrows I had. When I'd get close to
35, I knew it was about quitting time, you know.
But we, they cut a place where they wanted,
they cut a trough, a place, and then
they put a little rail track like coal cars and
then the tracks ran through
there and then the job was to dig all the dirt
down and put it in the cars and
take it away until it was all level. Yeah we
did that. It was in the same area. We
walked to it. That took a good while. Oh a lot
of work. We had 3,000 men you
know. Yeah. They're like ants. 3,000 men can
move a lot of dirt. And how about your
treatment while you were there? Well it was
always brutal, you know. They'd beat you for anything.
It just, they'd hit on you. You were always
mistreated and you were always had to work
too hard. I got ruptured there. We had to carry
vegetable racks and they were about six feet long
I suppose in four feet wide and my man on each
corner. I
Wouldn't doubt at all if there were £300 on
those things when we lift them
And when you lift them for men on them on each corner
If it were all equal
It wouldn't be all that bad if you were strong
First place you were weak and the second place
on uneven ground pretty soon. You're carrying
you can be carrying almost the whole thing
Yeah, and one guy suddenly is low, and he's not
lifting anything just because of where the
ground is.
And so you can be, from not bad at all, you can
under tremendous loads and nothing flat.
And your knees will just absolutely buckle.
And they're there watching to see if your knees
don't buckle.
And they'll just beat you for anything.
They'll beat you all the time.
And, of course, they may take guys out on that
and make them dig their own grave and
then shoot them, you know, for punishment.
We had two guys they thought missed world call,
but they didn't.
They were asleep under the barracks, but they
went out and dug their-they had to go out
that afternoon and dig their own grave, and
while we took the roll, they were shot.
The guy I went ashore with in Hawaii on the way over.
He was on a detail on the farm, and he just
kind of wandered off.
Nobody really noticed until he was gone.
So when they got to looking for him, they found him.
They got his eyeballs out, they broke both his
arms, both his legs, and disemboweled
him and brought him back in camp for people to
look at.
Now we hope that he died before most of that
happened to him, but they were terribly brutal.
They just believed in brutality, and in their
defense, if there is any defense, they treated
each other kind of the same way.
A corporal would get a private, knock him down,
and jump up and down on him, you know,
something we never think of seeing in our army.
That's not a defense, but they were kind of
victims of a description of their culture,
they're thinking about yeah they just live
brutality and the courage is
everything if you if you don't act like you're
scared that's your best chance of
surviving if you act like you're scared if they
start beating on you start
whimpering or something you're just going to
get beat that much harder you
mean it's just it's just almost a rule that the
more you act like you didn't
like it the more you were going to get hurt the
more you act like you didn't
care, the less you were going to get hurt.
On the Mate Mate Maru, did you have that kind
of treatment there, or did they just pretty much...
Pretty much left us in the hole, you know,
yeah, they didn't really, just pretty well
left us alone in the hole, we didn't get on
deck that much, you know, you didn't go to
the bathroom.
That was one thing I should have mentioned when
we rolled the canvas back, they had nowhere
to go to the bathroom, there's 500 guys.
Yeah, they got several cans in the middle of
the floor.
No time at all, the cans were full.
500 was the number that they took from the ship?
Americans, and while it was in the front hold,
there was 500 in the back hold.
But we didn't have any connection with the back hold,
so I never even realized until later there
were 500 back and back.
But I found out later there was another 500
back there
that I never even knew about or even heard about.
But there was 500 in each hold.
And you wound up near Nagasaki, you said?
Yes, I was thirty miles right across the bay
from Nagasaki.
Yeah, and of course we were in a coal mine, and
we got beat in a coal mine, too, you know.
The gentleman I interviewed this morning talked
about the coal mine he worked in, which was
over on the other side of the island.
Oh, yeah.
He was over at Fukuoka.
Oh, I was at Fukuoka.
See, Fukuoka was in the southern Japanese island.
I don't know, maybe you haven't got one.
But Fukuoka, we're in a Fukuoka district, we
were Fukuoka Camp 17, but we were Amuta,
was the name of the camp, and it was right
across the bay from Nagasaki.
The bottom island I believe is Kushu, I
believe, and over on the west side, Nagasaki
down there,
a kind of a little loop finger and we're right
across the bay from Nagasaki.
Now on the other side of the island, which is
probably two or three hundred miles, is
another side, you know, let's see, that'd be
the east side, we were on the west side. Yeah.
Yeah, we were, but those were, all those guys,
I think they called them Fukuoka camps, we
were seventeen, Fukuoka three, they had
different names, yeah, and we were Camp seventeen.
So you were there for a year, maybe a little
less than a year.
I got there in September the 2nd, while my
official time of becoming under American control
again was September 13th, and we got there
September 2nd.
So I was actually in Japan for a few more days
than a year.
I had worked in the mine less than that for
several reasons.
One, I got ruptured in the Philippines.
So when I got there, the Japanese looked at me
and they said, oh, show that to American doctors.
They're knife-happy anyway, you know.
So of course, I had to be operated on and work
in a coal mine.
I couldn't work like that.
But we didn't have anesthesiologists, you know,
so they just held you down and operated.
So that was a pretty exciting event.
Redshaw, one of the guys in my Camp 17 with me,
we're in La Crista now together, we're
both in the same chapter, and he always tells
me he's my anesthesiologist.
There were four of them that held me down.
Saved on recovery time, you know.
So, as soon as you were back to able-bodied,
they put you in the-
Yeah, they gave me light duty for two months,
that meant I could run a jackhammer.
So, I was a jackhammer man for two months.
We were in the dynamite crew.
In the coal mine, you worked three sections.
You blow-well, you build a wall.
You build a wall to hold a ceiling up.
Then you drill the hole to get the coal.
And when you quit work that night, you blow it down.
Then the third shift's sight on, and they come
in and shovel out
the coal that you blew down.
Then the cycle starts all over again.
And I was on building, we called it walkable bodies,
built racing until I got on light duty,
and then I was on the jackhammer.
For the jackhammer, we'd have to drill a hole
in like that,
and three ways, one in, one up, and one down.
And then we'd put the dynamite in, tap the clay
in behind it.
And the last thing, we'd do 125 holes a night.
And the last thing we'd do is light the fuse
and run like hell.
We used fuses rather than electric.
Fuses, yeah.
Yeah, fuses.
Yeah, blow her down.
Tell me about the August of 1945.
When did you first hear about the dropping of
the bomb?
Well, we didn't hear until four or five days
after the war was over about the bomb.
We saw it, and it was building up there, a
fantastic cloud as high as the sky.
It looked like the inside of a seashell, pink
and blue, and just like a beautiful seashell.
And it looked like-I never see anything that
looked like it went up forever, you know.
And we looked at it and, you know, we were
thinking of all the oil fires and everything.
So we figured some big oil fire or something.
So we thought Nagasaki caught Hell today, you know.
But we had no idea it was a different type of bomb.
So I think it was about the 22nd, a man came in
from the Chicago Newspaper, and he says,
if you guys want to go home, America has seized
this airfield down on the top bottom of this
island, Kanoia, and if you can get down there,
you can fly home.
There's a plane flying out of there every day.
And he told us about this new bomb that
they-Nagasaki bomb.
That was the first time that you heard about
the war being over as well?
Well, we heard about the war sooner than that,
because the Japanese told us.
Okay, when did they tell you?
Well, we went to the mine that day.
I was on the shift that went to work at 1.
And we were supposed to go down at 1, and
things seemed a little confused around the mine.
There was some women crying, you know, and 20
minutes after, the train hadn't gone yet.
We didn't know what in the world was going to
go on, why in the world we hadn't got
on the train and gone down, and finally they
said, get on the train.
So we got on the train and went down in the
mine and, boy, it was a horrible shaft we
were in that day.
We were under the ocean, and so it leaked
terribly anyway, and it was cold water, you
know, because it was the ocean.
Guys would take baths in that water, they'd get
under it, and it was so cold I couldn't
take a bath under it because I'd get under it
and I couldn't breathe.
I couldn't even breathe.
But there were guys that washed under that
water, but anyway, it was so cold that day
and just dripping water everywhere, and I
thought, oh, my gosh.
Pretty soon they come in and said, come on,
we're going to go topside, you know.
So when they took us on and got us on the
train, they told them we were going to have
a holiday.
So we went up topside, and like I say, the
women were still up there crying, and there
was a Japanese officer sitting there with his
chin on a sword like this, you know, looking
real glum.
And so there was two of us, we sidled up to
this guy and started saying we'd heard the
war was over in Japanese, you know.
He didn't even look up, so we thought, well, he
should have whipped up and whapped us in
the head about now, you know.
So we went back to camp and a day off, you
know, everybody said, maybe the war's over,
maybe the war's over, you know.
You know, about half the people, no, something
else, you know.
Then the next day they said another holiday, so
now more people thought maybe the war was over.
Then the third day they said another holiday,
so then they came out and said that the commander
wanted to talk to us, a Japanese commander.
So we all went down and got in the field out
there in front of him and lined up.
He said, "'Hostilities have ceased.
Let us all be friends.'"
That's how we found out.
And this was, what, the 17th, 18th?
About that, yeah. And then they tried to drop
food to us, you know.
And oh, that was a mess, you know. They came
over with the planes
and they dropped these 60-gallon barrels
with food in them. And boy, they'd hit that
parachute and they'd come loose
in the parachute. They looked like flashlight batteries.
And they hit that ground and flying and
spilling food all over creation and Japanese wires
were electric wires everywhere, you know, and
they're tearing up those electric wires
and electric wires, and they're all throwing spoons.
He was afraid he was going to get killed with
those electric wires.
And one of those barrels went around, hit the
barracks, went right through the barracks
and out the other side.
And the old Dutch chaplain came running out, he
said, them Japs have been trying to kill
me for three and a half years and Americans are
gonna do it and they did
the same thing with cases of food sure the
war's over and they had never tried
that before you know why didn't somebody know
parachuting food and here's 40
cases of canned peaches you know they just come
out and here they are they're
just free-falling that whole bunch. One of our
guys was killed with a case of
peaches. Yeah, and of course these things hit
that and they cut up that back
fence. We had an electric fence and back on a
big board fence. Well, when those 60
gallon barrels started going through that
fence, we didn't have a fence.
They beat the back fence down. So, yeah, we
walked downtown and went down there.
There was a girly place down there, and there
was a sign on the door, and there was some
Japanese out there kind of snickering, you
know, and so we asked them what it said, and
it said, Americans only.
Oh, boy.
Did you have any connection or any
communication at all with the civilian population?
While we were prisoners?
Well, in that period right after the war ended?
Right after the war ended, yes, we did, yes, in
various ways.
One thing, the Japanese were still fully armed.
They were walking the streets with their guns,
everything, officers, the whole thing.
You look around and you just think it
was-nothing had changed.
But we quit getting food, and we worked for Mitsui.
So our commander called up over at the Mitsui
office and said, ìWe wanted some food.î
And they said, ìNo, they couldnít do that, that
was the Army.î And so the Japanese left
a hundred and fifty rifles there, they just left.
So he went out there and got a hundred and
fifty guys and gave them all rifles and called
Mitsui up again.
And he told them, ìI got a hundred and fifty
armed men over here, theyíre going to come
over to your place if you donít figure out how
to get us some Food.î So they decided
they'd get us food.
That was one thing.
And then another thing was the guy said, one of
the guys said, why don't we go over to Fukuoka?
And there was five of us, and I didn't think
that was too good of an idea, but then on
the other hand I thought, you know, why not?
So we started out from Fukuoka, went down to
get a train, you know, here's officers,
Japanese officers waiting to get on a train.
We just went ahead of them and got on the train.
They stepped back, you know.
I'm not quite sure what we thought, but anyway,
it worked.
And we got to Fukuoka and got off the train,
and there was the Kempe station over there.
It was-the Kempe's is like the Gestapo and the
Germans, you know.
Everybody's afraid of them, all the civilians
and everything.
One of the guys said, let's go over and tell
them we want an interpreter.
I said, oh, yeah.
They're looking real dignified, you know, with
the pretty white shirts.
I've been trying to wear a white shirt ever
since, I kind of admire whites.
The Japanese officers always wore their white
shirts, and it looked so sharp.
Anyway, they're standing out there on the
steps, and our guy said, we want an interpreter.
And boy, they gave us the old fish eye, you
know, they was there in all their glory.
And it was kind of quiet for a little bit.
Just about that time, six Navy fighters came
over the top of that place, like they took
the roof off, you know, they got us an
interpreter, even drew us a map, and we
went out, just got on the streetcar, and I
slashed one arm and this guy grabbed me
by the shoulder. He said, you have to pay. I
said, no. I said, this is not Japan, there
isn't any Japan anymore, in Japanese, you know.
This is America, and MacArthur's in
in charge, and soldiers don't pay, so that was
the end of it.
So we went out to the camp out there, and it
was a beautiful camp, you can imagine.
They dropped these beautiful parachutes, all
colors, red, white, and blue, just beautiful,
and they have seams down like this, so they're
just perfect to cut them for banners, so it
looked like an old medieval campground, you
know, when you went in there, all these beautiful
streamers on poles, you know, and they had
Japanese officers working for them.
Oh, when we'd come up to the front gate, there
was a guy out in front, you know, walking
up and back forth with his rifle, and we-they
were looking over and we looked over, and
we said, what's with Joe here?
They said, don't worry about him, he just
hasn't got the word.
So we had a nice visit and went back to, so we
got back to our place and of course things
were great, you know, now we got our food,
we've got these beautiful tents for our food,
I mean you know, this is wonderful.
And then we decided to go to Kanoia.
So we went down to the train station, a hundred
and fifty of us about, and there was a train
there, and we all started to get on the train,
and the guy says, there's no room.
I said, well, don't worry, we'll make room.
So we rode the train all night long, and we got
in the middle of the night somewhere down
there, and another train in the station, and
the guy we was on the train with, he says,
you're on the wrong train, you should be on
that one.
So we all jumped out and stuck out on the other train.
Well, the guy on the other train says, you were
on the right train, this one's the wrong train.
So now the trains were starting to move, and
everybody was running for the doors and the
windows and everything else, and I was trying
to climb out a window, and a Japanese soldier
come running up to me with a bayonet, and he
was just rushing at me, and I'm halfway
out of the window, you know, and I hollered,
but careful, which means fool, you know, fool,
and he backed off.
So I crawled out the window, and we got on the
other train, and we got down to Kanoia,
the Americans were, and there was a beer truck
sitting there, and there was two
MPs, first time we'd seen any Americans, and
they were there, and we, the guys
started getting beer off the truck, and they
said, you can't do that, and the guy
just laughed and got all, got beer off the
truck. About that time a jeep ran up
and a major in the jeep, and the driver, you
know, and the major jumped out, and he said,
the MPs, they can't drink that beer, and the
guy says, shall I shoot them, Sir?
So you managed to make it out on a train to go
find the Americans, but the Americans hadn't
shown up in Europe?
No, they was only on that-nobody had come there
yet, you know.
See, MacArthur didn't surrender until, let's
see, September 2nd, so it was the 13th the
the day we got there, but there was nobody else
around anywhere.
It took a while for them to get all those areas
covered, I guess.
Yeah, you know how the military has to do that.
They just can't go driving down the road.
They have to go in and-
No, but they pretty much knew where the
prisoners were. Yeah.
They have to go in and force wherever they're going.
They knew where the prisoners were.
Well, to some extent, yeah.
To some extent, yeah.
I'm surprised it took that long.
I'm surprised it took that long, so it was the
13th before they actually got to Europe?
At 14th, when we got out, we went down, walked
down into Kanoia, and they signed us in and
fed us a meal, and that was the 13th.
And then you went back up there, you say?
No, they got me on a plane then and flew me to
the Philippines.
once we returned the military controls what
they call it yeah so they put us on
a plane we flew out the 29th replacement depot
in Manila they give us twice or
right double rations you could but they sure
tried and they had a place like
like a little PX where you get free candy bars
free cokes and everything
else and you just we just eat and drink and pay
for nothing. I wore a Japanese
uniform out. I'm just sick that I didn't keep
it. I took it off and threw it on
the floor where I was at you know. We weren't
supposed to, they told us we
didn't have to do any work till we'd had a
physical examination and we got double
rations so we were just living in high cotton
that's all. How long
Well, I'm not really exactly sure, but, let's
see, I was in probably two weeks, because
I got on a ship, took a ship across the
Pacific, spent two weeks in Madigan General Hospital,
I got to Tacoma, Washington, and then I got to
Fort Leavenworth on the 27th of October.
So I had the overseas ship and I had two weeks
in Tacoma, so that's probably at least
a month.
So I was, and if you give me two weeks, in
twenty-ninth replacement, I just about covered it.
Did you require any particular hospitalization
or anything to cut that off?
No, no, no.
I was still working full-time in the coal mine
even though I was just a little over
a £100, but I was able to work a full day in
the coal mine, so whatever.
Do you have any thought or idea as to why you
were able to keep yourself in pretty decent
condition under the circumstances?
Well, I say decent conditions, and I was, but
of course back in Cabana De Juan, like
I said, I was down probably £80 there, and I
was in terrible shape, you know.
Back when the guys came by and he said, Oh,
you're looking good, Hamilton, I said, You're
doing fine.
I saw him about two weeks later and he said are
you still alive? I said, yeah
He said well, I watched the barrel detail for
four days and I decided just missed you, you know
So, you know, we were in terrible shape for a while
but once they started feeding you a little
something things got a little better way and
Whatever it was I say over the long run. I say
that I was a farm boy
we work
You work from sunup till sundown and then you
work a while after sundown
And we and we were poor as depression time we
ate with anything mom put on the table
We ate and glad we got it. Yeah, and so I think by
expecting to eat anything that was served to a
man and expecting to be working all the time and
being young and
I think that
I'm a great believer in genetics. I think my
family is a bunch of toughies, you know
They there's no all of us kids have seen our 40
our 50th wedding anniversary and all in
Basically good shape, you know, so I think I
had great genetic Background
You spent two weeks in the hospital there at
Tacoma, and then went to Fort Leavenworth.
Were you still part of the Army Air Corps?
Do you remember considering that anyway?
Yeah, you were still Army Air Corps, you know.
So you transitioned into the Air Force, did you?
Well, see, when the Air Force-in 1947-became
Air Force, and they said, okay, the Air Force
starts today, anybody that wants to stay in the
Army, come down to the office and make
your application.
Otherwise, you're in the Air Force.
And, of course, I didn't want to go in the
Army, I wanted to be in the Air Force.
I got in because of airplanes.
I got in because that seemed exciting to me. Actually-
What made you want to stay in after your
experience in the war, though?
Well, one of the biggest-
You should have gotten out as soon as you got
to Leavenworth.
Well one of the things was a victim of
depression and the depression years and just knowing
I had a job I didn't have to apply for was a
pretty good idea.
But the second, one of the second key things,
I'd had all these terrible diseases, I'd had
amoebic dysentery, I'd had malaria, I'd had
scurvy, Pellagra, Diphtheria, I didn't even
mention Diphtheria, you name it, I had it.
And I thought, well man if I can get out of
here in two years, I've collapsed, nobody's
gonna do anything for me.
If I stay in the service and I collapse,
they're going to say it's service-connected.
So I said, I want to do one enlistment and be
sure I'm going to be all right.
And of course once I got in, I thought it was
exciting and romantic anyway, the service.
My dad was so disappointed he didn't get to go
to World War I, he always kind of passed
that idea on to me, you know.
So the service always had sort of a romance to
me anyway, and when I'd stayed in three
years I just really got to liking it pretty
well. I like a whole lot of things
about it. I thought it was pretty great the
service once I was, especially once the
war was over. We had so many things that, well
I got to be a first sergeant you
know, I'm just a natural recruiter, you know.
Did other members of your family serve during
World War II?
Not, not, not my brother. I had a brother and
he didn't because he was
disqualified, apparently, for colorblind, which
seemed a little odd to me.
But my wife's family was pretty well in the
service, and my sister married a man that
was in the service.
Both of my sisters married men that were in the service.
Were you married before the war, or until after
you got back?
No, I didn't get married until I got out.
Yeah, I was happy I wasn't married at the time
for a lot of reasons.
One of the things, you still had a choice when
you came home, you know.
If you had been married four years, and I was a
prisoner for four years, I was gone for four years.
If you'd all those four years and you've been a
couple of months down the line and said what a
horrible mistake
I made you knew still going back to your same
mistake, maybe but
Anyway, it meant you were wide open you make a
free choice when you got back and I think that
was nice in itself
No, I stayed in the cooking business and like I
said, and maybe I didn't say to you
But it was a wonderful choice even if I'd have
made it looking back now
I couldn't have made a better choice because
Guys that went in what was more or less exotic
fields didn't get promoted as fast as I did and plus
Once I got in going in it
Then I got to be and first I was in charge of
dining halls and I go to base and I'd be charge
of all
the food
then I
Then I became a warrant officer and everywhere
I went I was in charge of all the food.
So I had a very prestigious position, and then
they called it services, so we also included
commissaries, and mortuary affairs, and
housing, all those things, and clubs.
And so I always had prestigious, and it's a
real good field, because when other guys
out on the hot flight line roasting their
sales, I'm in with the coffee pots, you know.
And so looking back, I just couldn't have had a
better field.
I loved being a club officer, that was great,
you know.
You know, I was part of services.
I had eight hundred and fifty houses I rented out.
I mean, I had a B.O.Q. unit with a hundred and
twenty-five men in there, you know, and
a manager to look after them.
I mean, you know, the guy says, Cook?
You were a cook?
I mean-
A little more than that.
Well, what they want to say when they say it
is, I mean, you're a lawyer, you know.
Yeah, whatever.
Did you ever go back to Japan?
No, I never did.
I wouldn't mind going back, but I did go to-
I thought maybe you'd gone back there-
No, I'd kind of like to go.
-during your active duties.
No, I never did.
I went to Alaska.
I went to Greenland.
I went to France.
And those were all wonderful assignments.
I never got back to Japan.
Or the Philippines.
I'd like to be over there, but I don't think I
want to fly over there now, you know.
It might be a day they won't shoot Americans,
you know.
It would be a shame to have that happen.
I had a deal here at an operation a couple of
months ago, and when I come out of it,
they put me up on the seventh floor, and I was
in a prison camp, and all the mattresses
were old mattresses, they were old beds, and
they were killing people in there, you know?
And I'm laying there and I said, I've got-beat
everything all these times, how did I get
myself in this mess, you know?
And I'd be kind of like that if I flew over to
the Philippines now.
I'd probably get over there and catch a bit,
but-do it all over.
Where did you retire?
Lackland Air Force Base.
Lackland, right.
Yes, right.
Yeah, that's where we are, aren't we? Yeah.
Yeah, I was here twice.
I was here at Randolph for five years, and I
was at Lackland about three years.
Yeah, and I retired from Lackland.
I was a housing officer out here when I
retired, and when the Shaw came here, you may remember
when the Shaw of Iran came, well, he stayed in
those old rooms of mine down there.
Well, he came out to Lackland, they put him up
in housing out there.
Yeah, he went to a male. He had, yeah, he had
cancer. They were treating him for
cancer, and then they didn't quite where he was
gonna go, and he came down here, stayed in the
housing down here. The same old place I used
to, used to own, you know.
Then you retired off to Las Cruces. Yeah, I
retired and went back to university. I
went southwest Texas in San Marcos, and I was
having a wonderful time up there, and
And they called me from White Sands and asked
me if I wanted a job out there.
And it was for the commissary, and I'd already
run commissaries.
I knew exactly what that was like.
I had thought maybe I wanted to teach history
because I love history,
just like I'm talking about.
I think I'm so glad that I survived,
and it was really, really a tough life, and it
was horrible,
especially for the people that didn't make it.
But from a historical point of view,
I think it, I just think it's fantastic that I
got in on so much history, and up front,
you know, right up front.
When I went down to Manila Harbor, I saw all
those warships sitting in the harbor, there
was one that was going to the Battle of Leyte,
you know.
When the war ended, I watched the Nagasaki
bomb, you know, just, I got to visit
at wartime Formosa, you know.
I got to see a Japanese army in the field,
just watching like I was at a movie, you know.
I got to see so many historical things like that.
And people say it was terrible.
And it was terrible.
But I think it was a memorable experience.
I think that it's from history.
But I always said, the guys say, when I was young,
He'd say, I was a Gettysburg, you know, really,
you know, you were just totally fantastic,
you know.
And I kind of feel like the same way, you know, yeah.
Well, I certainly appreciate the time you've
given us this afternoon.
This is the kind of thing that will keep
history alive for future generations.
I hope I wasn't too humorous. Levity.
I don't know if it's levity, but you have to be
able to laugh at it a little bit to
survive all of it.
Yeah, I know we have-we were down there
yesterday and some of the guys says, how do
you-and the guys that was there, they say, how
did you stand all that?
These are the same guys that did it.
What does it mean, asking me how to understand it?
Like old Johnson said, you know, he said, being
president is like a jackass in a hailstorm,
you just have to stand there and take it.
And that's what we had to do, was just stand
there and take it, you know.
Well, as I say, I appreciate your time and
information this afternoon.
Thank you.
And I'm about out of my tape anyway, the end of it.
I should have warned you I'm a long way.
We like to let people kind of tell their own
story, you know, as long as you want to.
It's a lot easier for me if I have somebody
that just pours it all out rather than I have
to go-
Try to dig it out.
Dig it out.
That's right.
You don't always know what are the right
questions to ask to get people to open up,
but I think you did a fine job.
Thank you.
I appreciate that.
I appreciate it very much.
Well, thank you.