My feet kept getting worse.  In the mornings I couldn�t get my shoes on, so I finally asked for time off to heal them up.  We had one American officer, Captain Schultz, and a supposed Jap doctor.  They easily agreed, and I was off work for about a week.  I couldn�t stand on my feet at all so I crawled from place to place.

 One night the �White Angel� was giving his speech. �Too many men off work.�  He was going to inspect the sick himself.  He always carried a long sword so we all had respect for him.  I had to walk in front of him so it took a lot of nerve but I stood up and walked.  The blood and puss squirted out of my feet.  He decided to send some men back and get replacements so I think 30 of us out of 150 men went back to the main camp at Cabanatuan.  Later I heard that our Jap Commander had refused to let the �White Angel� have any more men, after he looked us over.

 I was on detail for 6 weeks.  Also I am sure this is where I picked up the shisto bug or worm.

 At the main camp my feet healed fairly fast.  After a month or so we heard of a large detail to go to Japan proper.  I was having trouble with swelling, beriberi, that is.  Also my tongue was sore, my mouth was cracked on each side and my eyes watered badly, felt like they had sand in them.  Even got so I could hardly see over 30 ft.  This slowly kept getting worse.  There was no cure for it there so I volunteered for Japan.  Of course, the story was more and better food, which again was a damned lie.  Bath facilities were none, but we had water in this camp.  My �Jungle Rot� was not getting better, also I was galled under my arms and between my legs which didn�t seem to heal. I will carry these scars to my grave.    

 During this time we had cut the legs and arms off our clothing for laundry purposes and also to have air on our sores.  Our doctors told us these sores would probably last until we got out of the tropics unless were to get medication.  These are the reasons I gambled my life to go to Japan.

 Also, again about the middle of October I had a severe case of diarrhea, felt like dying for about a week but lived through, losing probably another 10 or 15 lbs.  I would guess that I weighed about 120 lbs. when we left for Japan.

 Well anyway, 1500 of us left for Japan on about November 6, 1942.  We were on the dock at Manila.  There they divided us in three bunches of 500 each.  Each 500 men went into separate holds on the ship �Cattle Boat.�  On the one I was in it smelled from spoiled rice and had rats in it.  Of course, we soon out-numbered the rats so they didn�t have a chance.  This hold was about 30 x 40 ft. square.  When they got about 425 men in there it was full, so down came about 4 guards with fixed bayonets.  Soon there was room for the other men.  I would say we had less than two and a half square feet per man.  Now many of these men had diarrhea all the time.  No toilets whatsoever.  It wasn�t over a couple of hour till this place was stinking; also, there was hardly any ventilation.  This was a Hell Ship.  I lost the name but it belonged to Marau Lines.

 Well, they dug up some benjo buckets or wooden pots holding about 15 to 20 gallons each.  Soon they were full.  How do you get them upstairs?  It was a mess.  About as dirty on the outside as inside.

 That night, after dark, they decided they would let some of us up on deck.  I was one of the first up the steps.  Tired as I was, I slept pretty good on deck.  Before daylight they herded us back in the hold.  The first morning there were six dead.  After that it was about six to  eleven per day.

 The second night, soon after we got on deck, we heard distant explosions or that�s what it sounded like to me.  We were immediately ordered below deck with bayonets again.  We were being torpedoed by American subs.  Don�t think we didn�t have scared guards.  We did not get hit. 

 The following night I got on deck in time to see that we were being escorted by several other ships.  On a deal like this, a person sort of gets your days and night mixed up because you don�t sleep until you get so tired you have to.  If you look around you, you don�t know who is alive and who is dead.  Furthermore your mind is so dull you really don�t give a damn.  Early on this trip I woke up and found a man dead next to me.  Later on this trip when I woke up a dead man had his arms around me, mostly in the neck area.  I could tell he was dead, didn�t know what to do, didn�t want to cause any disturbance.  I finally got that by apply pressure enough I could move one arm.  Finally I got loose from him.

 We seemed to have enough rice to go around on this trip.  About 20% were eating and the rest were not hungry.

 

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Machine gun training  - The Ruhlen Collection

 

As I calculate, on November 24, 1942, we landed in Osaka, Japan.  There were about 390 left of the 500.  About 110 buried at sea.  We unloaded at night, walked to a large empty building where we slept.  COLD!  This was a sudden change from the tropics and the �Hell Ship.�

The next morning we were loaded on a train; road the big part of a day to the town of Tanagawa.  I don�t know what happened to the other 1000 men.  There was no communication.  I am sure they got off the boat when we did in Osaka.

 The Japanese Army owned us so they leased us to the Japanese Industrialists.  We were unloaded about dark, then hiked about two and a half or three miles to this newly built camp.  COLD!  COLD!  COLD!  Temperature was probably 45 degrees but we had no sleeves in our shirts and no legs in our pants.  No other clothes and no blankets.  While we were hiking out there it wasn�t quite so bad, also while we were walking, but when we got there it seemed like we had to wait in line for the interpreter, about two hours.  I got so cold I couldn�t even shiver. I got so cold I couldn�t even shiver any more.  I was going to lay down but the guards were watching us closely.  I thought I would die in my tracks.

 This interpreter, later we called him �Grease Ball,� screeched at us for about half an hour, kept telling us if we would work hard we would be fed well, which never worked out.  Well, anyway, I suppose at 11:00 PM, they issued us some rice straw blankets and we went in our barracks.  No heat of any kind except body heat.  I had lost all of mine.  I froze all night even under blankets.  The next morning I couldn�t even get up at all.  I gave away my rice.  A couple of men next to me their blankets when they went to work.  I had 15 or 20 blankets on me, still I shivered continually. 

 This kept on for at least 10 days.  The guards would get me up days and try to force me to work and all I could do was shiver and fall down.  I lost a lot of weight on this deal again.  I think they call this hypothermia now.

 In about two weeks they started a sick room in another barracks.  I was moved there.  It was a lot of relief not looking at a bayonet once or twice a day and being threatened with it.

 I believe they did have a small stove there.  I finally got to eating again, a little at a time, but it took at least two months before I could walk around outside.  By this time I had malnutrition and beriberi so bad that my legs felt like a couple of fence posts most of the time.  While this was all going on, my jungle rot and galling had healed up.  My tongue and mouth cracking got worse.  My mouth would heal and then would crack again a little higher.  The old crack seemed to move a little lower each time. 

 Some after we arrived in Tanagawa, the Japs issued us each an old worn out winter uniform.  They had a lining and plenty of louse eggs.  After wearing them a couple of days, they would start hatching.  This was our first bout with lice.  When spring came finally they issued us summer uniforms.  No lining and very few louse eggs.  So from then on we had a uniform change, fall and spring, winter with lice and summer without.  However, in summer we had a lot of sand fleas that were impossible to get rid of.

 After getting outside a few days and standing in the sun each day, I got to eating better.  My strength slowly returned, to a degree.  That is why the Japs worshipped the sun, I soon learned.

 Anyway it wasn�t too, probably March 1, 1943, and I was back in my first barracks and on the labor detail.  I think I had a ribbon of some kind that meant light duty.  After about three or four days a Jap guard jerked that off.  Don�t think I weighed 110 lbs at this time.  I was very weak, got kicked and slapped almost daily.  These Jap guards always took it out on the weak ones.  They wanted more production.  The Jap Honsoes were not supposed to hit us.  They were the Jap work bosses.  However, they could make a lot of noise until a guard showed up when someone shirked or sat down.  The Jap army owned us.  They had no mercy.

 This camp was on a job project building docks for submarine dry docking.  We were moving a mountain into a bay.  We had dump cars running on narrow gauge tracks.  I think they were probably the U.S. and were worn out in coal mines.  Here they were pulled by a mine mule.  I have been around coal mines in southern Illinois and they looked the same to me.  These tracks were technically laid.  These cars would take about the same power down grade loaded and up hill empty.  Two men to a car, for a healthy man is was hard work but it could be done.  The average haul was maybe one mile.  The mountain was about half rock and half dirt or clay.  The Japs didn�t know what Sunday meant.  We were supposed to have the first and the 16th off work.  These were what they called their Electric Holidays.  Also on these Yosima (rest) Days, we were supposed to get a cigarette issue of ten cigarettes.  As time went on they forgot the cigarettes and later on forgot the Yosima days, at least half of them.

 I struggled on from April through July, then somehow I got a bruise on my right hip.  Don�t know what from.  I kept working and it kept getting worse.  They, the Japs and two American doctors, did get a sick call established occasionally.  They even got a few supplies far old fashioned for our doctors.  This bruise swelled badly, finally got as soft spot in it.  It was like a lump jaw cow.  I went on sick call that night after work.  A Dr. Campbell from Oregon asked me what I was waiting for.  I told him �that soft spot.�  It had been hard before.  When we went into sick bay he had three men hold me in a corner standing up.  I said, �Cut it low, Doc, I want it to drain.�  He looked at me and said nothing.  They had sort of a half moon funnel which a corps man held against my leg.  The doctor did a good job.  Later they told me they got at least one and a half pints of puss out of my leg.  They bandaged it up the best they could.  I asked the doctor about a day off.  He said, �No, we have too many men working that need a day off worse than you do.�  I worked two more days, but could not keep a makeshift bandage on it.  By that time there were little blisters all around the incision.  I went to work one day and that night I again went to sick call.  It looked like raw beef steak.  The doctor agreed I should have had a couple of days off; so he got me in the sick room immediately, gave me what treatment he could and about three days rest.  I was OK again.        

 
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Training Shoot at Battery Hearn - The Ruhlen Collection

 

 

 

Well, I struggled away, nothing good or bad ever happened that I can remember until about November, 1943, then I got pneumonia.  I lay for days in a coma.  I didn�t know what was wrong and didn�t care and the doctor didn�t tell me until I showed signs of improvement.  Then he told me he wasn�t expecting me to live anyway.  During my period of pneumonia, our one doctor died sudden like.  Can�t remember his name.  Our remaining Doctor Campbell said it was a stroke.  This Doc Campbell had a Captain rating.  Always said he didn�t like to be called Doc as that was something they tied boats to.  He was a young doctor, not over 30.

 When I was about over pneumonia, don�t remember if I had gone back to work or not, but I developed my first Yellow Jaundice.  Seemed like the weaker you are the more subject to these diseases you get.  After being sick this much in Japan, I didn�t feel any worse much, but my urine was like syrup for a long time.  My eyeballs were yellow.  Must have been January, 1944, when I got back on the job.  Again it was COLD!  COLD!  COLD! to me.  We were right on the bay, it froze very little there, but it was my condition.  No heat and not enough clothes.  The wind seemed to be damp, coming off the ocean.  Of course, I was not the only one sick, there were plenty and a lot of them died.  In Japan they were all cremated, to my knowledge.

 On April 20, 1944, the Japs had a big shakeup.  There were too many sick, according to the Japs, so they sorted off the weaker ones.  I was among them.  They sorted off 100 weaklings, although some of the sickest stayed.  I think it was one Industrialist trading horses with another Industrialist.  Anyhow, the Japs did the sorting, told us we were going to a Yosimay Camp.  Of course, we were used to their jokes by this time.

 We were loaded on a train a few miles from there.  We were on this train about 20 hours.  Then we arrive in Aomi, Honshu.  I think this left 225 men at Tanagawa, so we lost about 65 men in this 17 month period.  When you leave a camp like this you never hear from it again.

 This camp was a lot further north.  When we got there we could see lots of evidence of snow.  It had just melted.  We were hiked about the usual three miles to camp.  When we got there we were �WELCOMED� by about 450 Englishmen.  They had been captured at Singapore.  They were there about one year.  There were 550 to start, but they had lost 100 men.  �Limeys� we always called them; they even liked that name.  There were a few Australians, a couple from New Zealand, the rest from Ireland, Scotland and England.  At first we had problems understanding them; but if they talked slower we could understand them a lot easier than the Japs.  They had three officers, one was a minister and two were line officers.  They also had one older American Navy doctor.  Never did hear where they got him.  He was probably 65 years old and too feeble to take care of the sick ones.  This minister was also in bad shape, with legs swollen with beriberi, but between them they tried to run the M.I. room, as it was called from here on out.

 Hair cuts and shaves were hard to come by.  The Japs made no provisions.  Hair clippers, scissors, razors, even pocket knives were taboo.  Even pencils and paper were out.  Every so often they had a shake-down inspection.  That meant you carried all your possessions out in the yard and displayed it.  One bunch of guards through it while another bunch went through the barracks looking for anything left.  If they saw anything they wanted or illegal, they just took it.  You probably got hit over the head on top of it.  However, there were still a few scissors and a few sharp mess kit knives around, so on Yosima Days, if we weren�t too sick, we�d cut each other�s hair, quite often shaved our heads at the same time.  Soap was also a very scarce item.  We probably got sheared once every three months at either camp.

 This Limey Camp worked rock quarry and smeltering furnace, made iron ore.  They told us it was low grade.  They sorted out the largest and strongest men for the furnaces, �dento� that was.  I was too weak so I wound up in the rock quarry, again on these �toros� or dump cars on the narrow tracks.

 Well, it was spring and things went along quite well for awhile.  My beriberi was bad, swelling mostly.  Seemed as though my kidneys didn�t work when I was up walking around, then at night when I lay down I had to get up to urinate every 45 minutes.  Either my bladder was inflamed or it would not stretch.  I didn�t think it held a cup full of urine.  In the daytime I just didn�t urinate.

 
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Training Shoot at Battery Hearn - The Ruhlen Collection

 

 

Well, about July of 1944, we heard we were getting in more men.  Americans.  We got four � one doctor, Captain Marvin I. Pizer, and three could be Corpsman.  However, they seemed to have enough Limey Corpsman �preferred job if you liked it.�  These Americans were in very good shape, at least they sure looked good to us.  But they had never been in a real work camp before.  They even talked of having an occasional Red Cross box in the Philippines, which was unheard of to us at this time.

 It wasn�t long after we got the new Dr. Pizer, I got pneumonia again.  I was sick for quite some time.  My legs were swollen so bad they didn�t even look like they belonged to me.  Doc got to giving me some brown powder.  It seemed to get me to urinating and gradually my swollen legs started down.  He told me later it was Jap opium.  It seemed to stimulate my kidneys.  I gradually got better.  Soon I was back on the job, probably in August.  The fleas got pretty bad there too in extremely hot weather.  Wasn�t long until my lower leg got carbuncles on it.  I might have been wrong, but I blamed it on the flea bites.  Well, I would go on sick call and Doc would pull me in the M.I. room and lance one or two boil like deals each time.  I would get one day off work.  He had no anesthetic so I didn�t do it just for the day off.  This kept on until, I think, my leg from the knee to just below the ankle was lanced twenty-six times.  About half of the scars are still there.  Also about this time my beriberi or edema had gone down and it switched to dry beriberi which was painful.  Edema is not painful, just clumsy and awkward.  By this time my weight without swelling was below 100 lbs.

 About November 1, my right hip started swelling up.  I worked a few days yet and it kept swelling, then it got very painful.  I showed it to Doc, so back in the M.I. room I went.  It was so bad that it was at least twice as large as my left buttock.  This is above the knee. 

I always thought Doc was a little knife happy, but there was no place to start cutting.  After about two weeks, he did start.  It was far enough behind I could not see it.  He and four or five Corpsmen held me down, and no anesthetic.  I think he cut two or three inches deep the first time and found nothing.  Well, he waited about two more weeks.  During this time I could not walk at all.  The bedpan was a battle itself.  Of course, I only needed it about once every 5 days.  Then he found another place to cut close to the first one, which was about half healed up.  He did put sort of a wick in these incisions also.  So we went through the same thing again and found nothing.  Two days later, a supposed to be Jap doctor came screaming through wanting to know why so many sick men and what the trouble was.  Dr. Pizer uncovered me and told the Jap doctor he didn�t know my trouble.  The Jap doctor screamed in Jap, �You don�t cut deep enough.  Let me show you.�  The Jap took the knife on the table, washed his hands, put on his coat, said nothing and went out the door.  If I owe my life to anyone in Prison Camp, it was Captain Marvin I. Pizer.

 Well, I lay for days on my belly.  I really had no pain, except if I tried to move.  The bed pan was the pain and I couldn�t maneuver myself; had to have help.  This went along until about January, 1945, then while in the M.I. room I got pneumonia the third time.  I ran a high fever for days but finally broke it again. Doc told me I could never live through it one more time. 

 After this last pneumonia deal my hip started going down, never did have any drainage or anything.  About the middle of February the doctor decided to get me up.  I sure didn�t realize how bad a shape I was in.  I could make my feet walk but they didn�t go where I wanted them to go. After they helped me a few days, I got so I could navigate on my own again.  I got back to work about April 1, 1945.

 That winter, �44 & �45, the snow got very deep.  We were at the foot of a mountain.  Never seemed to have any wind.  It seemed to snow every day and thaw every day.  Even the sun came out a little every day.  The snow got twelve to sixteen feet deep.  That was our main job in the winter, scooping snow.

 They had three large warehouses around this little town, all had tin roofs.  The snow would get heavy and cave them in, so that was our job � scooping them off.  Coal came into the furnaces by rail.  We unloaded these cars onto a conveyor belt by hand.  The belt took it up into large coal bins.  Then we scooped the cars full of snow.  When we got so many cars loaded with snow, they brought in a steam engine.  We all got aboard, they hauled it out over a bay about two miles away.  There we scooped the snow into the bay.

 In Japan we never drank cold water.  Every work job had its own iron pot.  They started a wood fire under it every morning, let it boil for awhile, then left a little fire under it all day.

 During these days Dr. Pizer gave me a ration of this opium every morning.  This seemed to keep my kidneys working every day.  If I didn�t take it I could not urinate in the daytime, then at night it was every 45 minutes.  Sometimes I would be so tired I could not wake up.  Bed wetting was the probably cause of my pneumonia.  Doc said we couldn�t take chances because I would never live through another case of pneumonia.  He also said he didn�t know what would happen when, if ever, we would get back to the States.  Somehow they did get a scale in the M. I. Room.  It registered in kilos but by translating it I weighed 91 lbs at this time.  That was about the lowest I ever weighed that I know of.

 This camp also had a community type bath which is quite common in Japan.  This was a wooden tank about 5 ft. wide and 10 ft. long and 4 ft. deep.  Some way I never got it all figured out.  They had a fire somewhere around it and it was steam heated.  The water seemed to circulate some.  They started it up once a month in winter and twice a month in summer.  They kept it hot for 24 hours.  By that time all 550 of us were supposed to have had time to go through it.  That was a chance to get thawed out.  It even made the beriberi feel better.

 
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