This area on the other side was known as �Monkey Point.�  I had never been there before.  As we came out the other end we saw the most horrible sights I have seen.  Machine gun nests and dead men shelled and bombed.  This is where the invasion took place.  These men were swelled bad.  Lots were in sitting position and seemed to be looking at us.  As we got closer we could see the maggots, their eyeballs had been eaten out and just trails of maggots on the mouth, nose, eyes and ears!  I can hardly believe these men were all buried, but I don�t know.

 We marched on about 1 mile to what was known as Street Car Barn.  There we set up temporary camp for awhile.  During this deal all shelling and bombing stopped.  The first time for about 5 months that we didn�t have to hear the shells shrieking and the concussion of the bombs.

 The following day the Japs flew about 100 bombers over us very low at about 500 ft.  I think that was to prove their power yet.

 At this time there was a lot of malaria among us, along with other diseases, including dysentery.  So one of our first jobs was digging latrines.  I was still very healthy. So I was on some of the main details. At first we dug them 12 ft. square.  After a day or two we heard someone fell in and drowned.  By the next two days there were about five more deals like it.  It was suicide, sick and despondent, no chance for hospitalization.  Therefore they put guards around them until we got new straddle trenches dug and the big ones filled up.  It is hard to fill in a straddle trench.

 It would be hard to guess the count of men in this camp.  My guess would be from 5,000 to 7,000 men.  One day the Japs called for a large detail of men.  There were probably 1,000 of us volunteered.  We carried dynamite all one day out of Malinta Tunnel and threw it in the bay.  There had to be tons of it.  They treated us really good that day, even some of our American officers seemed to be in charge.  At noon we got C Rations that were found in the tunnel and at night we got some to take with us. 

 Then one day a nice looking (if there was) Jap came along, wanted a small detail to go on the main part of the �Rock.�  He picked 4 or 5 of us and we started out.  He seemed to be easy going.  Anything we wanted to do seemed to be OK.  We never did any work that I can remember.  He just wanted a look around and wanted us with him in case of a booby trap or something. 

 Of course, even by then, our main thoughts ran to food, so we went through the kitchens of the Main Batteries looking for canned food, etc.  We walked most of the day.  I think he was a newsman or propaganda.

 At one Battery I found a nice large slab of bacon which seemed to be in the best of shape.  It was wrapped good.  I asked him is it was OK to take it.  In sign language he OK�ed it so I brought it back. 
-6-

 

The Headquarters Building on Topside - The Ruhlen Collection

 

As we were coming back that night we saw a ship docked at a dock close to Malinta Tunnel.  When we got to our temporary camp, they told us that we would load out the next day.  Get packed, eat a meal, if we had it.  So in the morning about three of my buddies and I pooled our contraband and had a big breakfast.  We fried up the whole slab of bacon and had a feast.  About 10:30 or 11:00 AM we lined up in columns of two, headed for the ship.  It was slow going.  It was about 5:00 to 5:30 PM when I got to the ship.  At about the same time I had the diarrhea, but good.  Also the ship latrines were full.  Lucky I was on the top deck, so several of us spent the night perched on the deck rail squirting at Manila Bay some 25 or 30 ft. below.  Every so often a Jap guard showed up and made us get off.  So as he left we returned.

 The next morning, May 25, 1942, at the first sign of dawn, we started moving.  I was still at it.  It took till about 11:00 AM to get near Manila.  The Manila docks were full of ships unloading and loading contraband, so they dumped us in the bay.  The water was eight feet deep but the bottom came up fast.  I never really was a swimmer, besides we had everything we owned on us, blankets, clothing, mess kits, canteens, and everything.  Well, they had two or three rope ladders over the top rail to the water. When they got the ladders full of men here came the bayonets � keep going, no coming back.  Everyone had to go under several times, however, I made it by 12:00 Noon on the beach.  There we were met with the horse cavalry.  Don�t know how many drowned, but there were some.  Even some we dragged up on the dry beach didn�t live.

 As we rested up a bit, we were herded up to the road by Jap guards.  We were lined up in columns of four and headed for Manila.  As we walked there were a lot of sick, etc. that walked slowly; that�s where the horse cavalry tried to hurry us along (our own horses, that is, with Jap riders).  It wasn�t working too well, so they tried to run over some of us to make examples for others.  A horse will never run over a man.  They tried and tried, beat the horses, etc.  Sometimes they would get close enough, the horse would slide his feet, even touch a man, but never run over him. 

 The day was hot as it always was in Manila.  We walked all afternoon on the streets of Manila.  I think it was to show the Philippines that they had us under captivity.  I was over my diarrhea by then, but weak from it.  On these hikes or forced marches, if anyone fell out of ranks to rest we just didn�t see them again.  We had one break to get water. 

 About 7 PM we arrived in Bilibid Prison.  Don�t know how many, probably 1,000 men.  You just don�t get any information.  Lucky if you know where you are at yourself, let alone the rest.  We lost a man every block, I estimated.  I don�t know.

The ship probably went back to Corregidor for more loads.

 Well, they did feed us rice that night in Bilibid.  This was an old established prison, very large.  I wasn�t feeling too well that night, remembering my night before deal, so I didn�t eat much.  From that morning on it was another 17 days before I had another stool.

 
-7-

 

 

The Hyde was the transit boat to Manila - The Ruhlen Collection

 

 

The next morning, before daylight, the Japs sorted us about 500 men.  They fed us.  I was in the first group.  They herded us out of the gate and headed us for the railroad, probably 30 or 4 blocks, then started loading us into cars.  They told us 100 men to a car.  The Philippine cars are much smaller than the ones in the U.S.  Only 4 wheels.  Well, by the time 85 men got in a box car it was full.  Once again here came the maniacs with fixed bayonets.  When they got done, they had 100 men in each box car and room for 2 Jap guards to boot.  Jammed in so tight we couldn�t even lift and arm or a leg.  This was just before daylight.  About daylight we started moving.  When the sun came up it really got hot in there.  Men started fainting.  We were so crowded they couldn�t even go down.  They finally got the doors open a little further but no good.  I happened luck out once more, as I was one of the later ones in.

 Well, at about 2:00 PM we arrived at our destination and unloaded, which was a relief.  There were no toilets in the box card, therefore the stink was very bad, no chance getting out.  We hiked about a mile to a large schoolhouse, sort of a country school.  We had good water and once more we had some plain rice, nothing else.  We slept in the open that night.  Most of us had one G. I. blanket left.

 The next morning we again were aroused before daylight by Jap guards.  We had plenty of them, don�t think we didn�t.  Somewhere along I line one took up with an empty bottle, either a quart or 1/5, so I had that and an army canteen, which I filled with good water. Kept it in the gas mask case.  We had rice again before daylight, then we lined up.  They told us or we misunderstood that we had to walk 13 kilometers, or about 8 miles.  We walked till noon and no sign of camp site.  We lost men right and left.  A favorite trick of theirs was if a man went down they would tromp their boots on his fingers.  If they did not get up, I really don�t know, but we would never see them again.  About 4:30 PM we got to Cabanatuan, which was about 13 miles or 21 kilometers.  However I had the extra bottle of water so I started nipping at it.  We had officers and men telling us not to drink any water on the forced march until we got to the end.  I had this bottle empty before we got a quarter of the way and threw it away.  Then I sipped on my canteen.  It was dry before we got to camp.  One major that did a lot of talking did not drink water on the trip.  When we arrived he said �Men, drink.�  When his lips touched the canteen and he started drinking, his knees buckled and he fell in a heap.  We march on, maybe one miles more and I never saw him again or heard his voice.  I think I had followed too many threshing machines in Iowa, S.D., and N.D.

 This Cabanatuan Camp was Philippine Army Headquarters.  There we met up with the Americans from Bataan and a few other places.  I suppose something like 12,000 to 15,000 men.  They were somewhat set up, cast iron quallies for cooking rice.  We didn�t have dinner that day, but got fed rice that night.

The next morning the Japs had four Americans tied in a hay shed.  They had them backed up to a large pole in the shed and their hands tied behind the pole.  Was impossible for them to sit down or stand straight up.  The Japs claimed they were trying to escape.  About noon that day they hiked these four men to a small ravine about 400 feet from the barracks I was in.  Each had a spade or a shovel.  More Japs arrived at the scene.  The Japs told them to dig a hole.  It was about 10 x 12 ft square and 3 feet deep.  When they got done, a firing squad stepped up and they were shot.  Then they called for an American detail to cover them.  This was done, I think, to plenty of scare into the rest of us.

 

 
-8-

   


The Post's Hospital - The Ruhlen Collection

 

 

This was not a work camp.  We did go on wood cutting details for the purpose of cooking rice, etc.  On these details we sometimes met up with friendly Filipino�s that would sometimes give us brown sugar or maybe candy.  But some of that started dysentery.  Also we had to dig new latrines, straddle trenches, that is.

 Men were dying like flies for the next couple of months, so we were digging graves and burying every day.  One long ditch, placed them side by side and covered.

 By this time about 90% of us had developed malaria to some degree or another.  Some were very bad and a lot of men died from it already.  Quinine was our only treatment.  We did have a good supply at the time we left Corregidor, but in our ducking in the bay, etc., a lot of lost and there was no chance of a new supply.  I did have some.  Had several attacks.  Was advised by a buddy of mine that was in bad shape with it, how to use it.  It seemed to work so I guess I got it nipped in the bud. 

 Next pellagra got started around.  Soon I had it too.  We had doctors with us but no medicine.  All they had was a advice.  They got some form of yeast going that regenerated itself with rice flour added daily.  Whoever had it lined up once a day for about 2 oz. of it.  It tasted horrible, but seemed to work.

 Next we got tropical ulcers.  This is just plain running sores.  I had as many as five at one time, on my arms and legs mostly.  You can get them most anywhere.  They just don�t seem to scab over.  If they do, it is a loose scab.  If you just touch it it will start running again.  That was one reason I wanted to get out of there, because they said it would never heal as long as we were in the tropics.  So when the Japs asked for a detail I always volunteered.  Of course, they always said they would feed us better if we worked, which was a damned lie.

 On August 1, 1942, I got on a work detail.  Went back to Manila, worked on the Nichols Field detail.  We stayed camped at the Pasay School compound.  There we worked under horrible conditions out in the rice paddies, mud was from your ankles to your knees deep.  They had us carry mud to make a ridge to put narrow gauge track on to level an area for a new runway at the airport.  That was about like digging a tunnel through a mountain.  This was supposed to be a Jap Navy project.  We were supposed to be under the �White Angel� as we called him.  Once or twice a week he would get us up at midnight and we would line up and count off.  �Bongo� is the Jap word.  Then he would get up on a platform and screech at us for an hour.  He was always dressed in white.  He claimed he could talk American but I an sure no one ever understood him.  We never saw him in the daytime.  After about five weeks of this, we did walk about three miles to and from work.  One night coming home we were walking on a blacktop street after being in the mud all day, wearing those canvas shoes with hooks in the back and a few pea size gravel inside.  Here appeared the Filipinos.  They were young men with hands full of cigarettes.  We were marching columns of four; they scattered the cigarettes on the street for us to pick up.  We had not had any cigarettes for a long time.  Out came the bayonets and they double-timed us for at least a block so that we could not pick them up.  Through this deal my tender feet got so sore, raw like beefsteak, bled most of the time, but in daytime in the mud they felt fine, but at night they would swell.

 They caught these three Filipinos, tied them up overnight to a flag pole.  The next morning when we lined up to go to work they shot them in front of us.

 
-9-

 

 Benjo = Toilet; Renko = "rollcall"; Bongo = "Number Off!"; Binto = lunch; Shingto = "work party."