Chapter 1
Pat Patton
Abandoned at Bataan
The story that follows comes from personal interviews with Henry Robert “Pat” Patton, a survivor of the infamous Bataan Death March and prisoner of war in Japan during World War II. I took detailed notes during our interviews and then wrote the story in first person, doing my best to capture Pat’s voice and manner of expression. Pat reviewed the text to make sure it captured his thoughts and memories accurately and, before his death in March 2007, gave permission to have this account published.1
Pat escaped the entirety of the Bataan Death March by fleeing into the jungle with a friend. He then helped organize a guerrilla campaign against the Japanese until his ultimate capture and imprisonment. Eventually, Pat was transferred to Japan as a slave laborer to work in the coal mines, where he suffered terrible physical privation and inhumane mental and emotional abuse. He witnessed the deployment of and destruction caused by the first atomic bomb, dropped on Hiroshima. As a prisoner of war, he was an invisible soldier. And, like the other soldiers captured in the Philippines who lived through the greatest defeat in American history, Pat returned to a country that was largely indifferent to his suffering.
Still, the survivor instinct that kept him alive when more than 30 percent of the Americans taken prisoner by the Japanese in the Philippines died, saw him through the rest of his life. His is one more witness of the indomitable human spirit that allows a person to survive and triumph over great horrors and persecution. Like the other American and Filipino soldiers who fought valiantly for freedom in the face of insurmountable odds, Pat is a hero.
A Memoir of Bataan
“I grew up in Nebraska during the bleak years of the Great Depression, famous in history for the dust bowl that devastated our crops and filled the dusty skies with centuries of precious topsoil. Like many others, our family felt the effects of the creeping poverty afflicting American farmers and their families. Perhaps it was the anxiety and insecurity of those times that encouraged my mother and me to fight so much, but the truth is I was anxious to get away from my home just as soon as I could (my father died when I was just twenty months old). When war broke out in Europe, I figured that a draft couldn’t be too far away, and I much preferred to choose my own way of serving, so I enlisted in the Army Air Force in 1940. The Army was my ticket to freedom; to get as far away from Nebraska as possible, I signed up for overseas duty. After basic and specialist training, I was assigned to the Philippines in March 1941. That was about as far away as I could get. My specialty was as a radio operator aboard military aircraft.
“In 1940, the Army really didn’t understand the military potential of an air force. Most of the generals in Washington thought it was nothing more than a battlefield gimmick that had some value in providing intelligence to ground troops but little practical application in battle. Their experience in World War I was that most air combat had been between the aircraft themselves, and that the occasional bomb dropped over the side by a pilot had little effect on the ground battle. But by 1941, the range, speed, and power of aircraft had expanded considerably, and the war in Europe was showing just how important this new technology was to the total war effort. Still, the staunch isolationist movement at home made it difficult for the Army or Navy to get funds to invest in airplanes. The effect was that the Army had very little functional equipment at the outbreak of the war. That was certainly true in the Philippines, where we had a handful of obsolete observation aircraft and a few small bombers and fighters. At most, we had about ten to eighteen operational bombers at Nichols Field. I was assigned to the Second Observation Squadron, where we trained on a Curtiss O-52 observation aircraft and Douglas B-18 bomber.2
“Most of us really enjoyed our service in the Philippines. It was oppressively hot in the winter months, but the lush vegetation and tropical setting was a perfect contrast to the drab Nebraska plains I’d wanted to get away from so badly. Plus, I enjoyed having lots of friends around all the time, and, with no battles raging, we had plenty of time for rest and relaxation when not on duty. The threat of war was ever present, and all the experts figured that if we did engage the Japanese, the Philippines would be the first place attacked. Military planners assured us that they had laid in a six-month stockpile of food and ammunition, and that a Japanese attack on Manila would inevitably fail because of the big guns located on the island of Corregidor in the mouth of Manila Harbor. And even though we were thousands of miles from America, the Pacific fleet stationed in Honolulu, Hawaii, could easily reach us before the Japanese could mount a full invasion. So even though we were in a dangerous place, we weren’t really too concerned. Plus, being young and naïve, we were actually kind of excited to get into battle and to experience the thrill of combat. It’s hard to imagine now that we could have been so stupid.
“Monday, December 8, 1941, dawned like any other. We’d had a lazy Sunday the day before, listening to American music on the shortwave radio, spending time at the enlisted club, and playing cards. Rumblings between Japan and the mainland had put us all on an increased alert for the past several weeks, but as each day passed with nothing happening, we had let our guard down and figured it was just more political maneuvering.
“This calm serenity was shattered shortly after I rolled out of bed when someone came in shouting that the Japanese had attacked Hawaii just five hours earlier. Everyone at Nichols Field ran to the radio hut to listen in, and we were stunned to hear that the Japanese had somehow mounted an all-out attack on the Pacific fleet and that they had destroyed or disabled nearly all the battleships and destroyers that sat moored in their berths in Pearl Harbor. Suddenly we were sick to our stomachs. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to happen! The fleet was our only connection to America, and if it was out of action, we were all alone in the middle of the vast South Pacific.
“A friend and I rushed to the runway and climbed aboard an old observation aircraft to get up in the air to see just what we were up against. What we saw was enough to shake even a battle-hardened soldier, let alone two new recruits who had never seen hostile action. Japanese warplanes filled the skies, heading straight for us. Our goal was to feed information to our ground-based troops to help them respond to the air attack and to find shelter, when necessary. Unfortunately, our flight was short-lived, as we were shot down just a few minutes after takeoff. Our puny little plane was nothing compared to the Japanese Zeroes, which could fly higher, faster, and with greater maneuverability. We managed to parachute to safety without serious personal injury and went up a second time. Sure enough, another fighter found us and shot us down. By the end of the next day I might have set a record in aviation warfare: I’d been shot down three times in two days! That pretty much put an end to my flying career, as all of our aircraft had been destroyed. After losing our aircraft, we were designated as the Provisional Air Corps Infantry.
“When the Japanese landed ground-based troops, they began a systematic advance through the island. Facing air superiority of 200 to 1, there was little the Allies could do to prevent the fall of Manila. Our contingency plan called for retreating American and Filipino troops to hold the defensive lines as long as possible and then to retreat toward the Bataan Peninsula west of Manila. By doing so, our forces would become ever more concentrated and more difficult to dominate. On Christmas Day, 1941, just eighteen days after the initial assault, we received orders to withdraw to the peninsula. Once all troops were there, we formed up defensive lines, with a large mountain in the center. Being so hopelessly outnumbered was quite depressing, but the Marines I was with fought with distinction, inflicting serious damage on the Japanese units that came against them. We made the Japanese earn every inch of ground and did our best to harass and delay their advance. Little did we know that in doing so we were setting ourselves up for even more brutal treatment after their ultimate victory. The truth is that the Japanese thought they could conquer the Philippines with little effort, and our stubborn resistance infuriated them.
“As the battle lines shortened and we backed further down the peninsula, the lack of planning by the general staff became apparent. We’d always been told that there was a six-month supply of food and ammunition; but it was either a lie, or all the supplies were stored safely on the island of Corregidor, where constant harassment by enemy aircraft made it difficult to get supplies over to the peninsula. At any rate, we were first put on half rations, then third rations. We lived in constant hunger from a diet of fewer than 800 calories per day while expending all our physical effort to fight back the Japanese. This malnutrition made us far more susceptible to tropical diseases, and soon most of the troops were both hungry and sick. All the local snakes and other wildlife were consumed for food. Still, we fought with everything in our power to beat back the Japanese.
“Perhaps one incident describes what had become of us. One night, as we settled in for darkness, we heard the Japanese shouting ‘Tonight you die!’ which may have been the only English words they knew. Sure enough, a huge battle broke out later in the night as they charged our position with their famous banzai cry. We had done a good job of digging in, and when the morning broke we climbed out of our foxholes to find more than 300 Japanese dead. It was an appalling sight, but we hardly had the energy to care or even notice. Someone mounted a large bulldozer and carved out a huge trench. Just as we were ready to start throwing the bodies in, one small American soldier cried out, ‘Isn’t somebody going to say something!’ That’s when it hit us just how battle-hardened we’d become. Everybody went quiet, and one of the officers moved to the edge of the trench and said a few words about this being the last resting place for these men and calling on God to receive their souls. At that, the little guy broke out in sobs. I saw seven or eight guys go over and put their hands on his shoulder to comfort him, and for at least a few moments we remembered our humanity. It hadn’t been destroyed yet—just buried under months of hunger, fear, and vicious fighting.
“The original purpose of a withdrawal to Bataan was to allow for the systematic evacuation of troops if a general retreat was ordered. But with no navy to provide ships, the only people to evacuate were General MacArthur and his family and staff. In March 1942, this small group boarded four small PT (patrol torpedo) boats, overloaded with gasoline, and managed an escape to Australia.3 By this time, we had come to hate the Japanese because of the viciousness they displayed when capturing Allied troops. We all knew that it would be better to die in combat than to be taken prisoner. Plus, we all felt an obligation to fight to the last man, if necessary, to defend our country’s honor.
“The group of Marines I was with was committed to staying in the battle to the end, which is why it was so galling when we were ordered to surrender in April 1942. Many Marines simply refused to obey the order, but it didn’t matter in the long run because there was no place to escape from the now-victorious Japanese. The night before the surrender, orders were given to torch all the gasoline and equipment in the southern end of the Bataan Peninsula so it couldn’t be used by the enemy. Fires illuminated the night sky in a scene that looked like everything I’d been told about hell. The Japanese continued to fire on us even though our surrender was imminent, so there we were—sick, hungry, and under fire while watching our only means of resistance go up in flames. I could not imagine a more depressing sight.
“It was probably a noble gesture to burn the equipment, but in the end, it only hurt us. If the trucks had been left, the Japanese would have used them to transport us to our prison camp. However, since the equipment was gone, they ordered us to march. Just imagine nearly 70,000 men filing onto a dusty, rocky road with no food, water, or other provisions, under guard by an enemy that despised them. The Bataan Death March would cost thousands of human lives in just five days.4
“When the Japanese saw how many prisoners they had to care for, they were quickly overwhelmed. If they had any plan or organization, it wasn’t apparent. They’d shout at us in Japanese to do something, and when we didn’t understand they’d clobber us with the butts of their rifles. In more than one case, I saw them simply shoot an offending prisoner. It didn’t matter to them that we couldn’t speak Japanese. In their minds (and in ours too), the ultimate humiliation was to surrender, and in doing so we gave up whatever rights we might have otherwise been entitled to. As I learned more about the Japanese in the next three years, I came to understand that they believed that theirs is a divine race, brought down from heaven by the Sun God, and that the rest of the world was inferior to them. Because their island was so isolated, none of the soldiers who became our guards had any experience with other cultures, and so they regarded us as completely worthless.
“The acts of cruelty on the march were just too much for me. I couldn’t stand how they treated people, yet I knew that if I showed any resistance, or even tried to help an American, they’d turn on me in an instant. The only thing I could think of was to slip off the road and try to hide in the jungle. At just the right moment, when no guards were looking, my friend Donald Stratton and I quietly disappeared into the Philippine jungle. If the Japanese had found us, it would have meant instant death. Fortunately, we lost ourselves in the thick undergrowth and hid out long enough for the column to move out of sight. We then found refuge with several Filipino families in nearby villages.
“At first, we were in no condition to do anything except cling to life. From May to September, both of us were overcome by malaria and spent our days and nights suffering from the high fevers and chills that characterize this disease. The Filipino families that cared for us used local remedies to help fight off the fevers. I’m convinced that without their help I would have died. There were many days when I was so sick that I didn’t know why I wanted to live. But somehow I did and therefore clung on to life as best I could.
“Eventually, we had to move because the Japanese had begun harassing Filipino families suspected of harboring the enemy. Oh, the things we saw the Japanese do to the Filipino women—raping and torturing and then killing them with no thought or remorse! Japanese soldiers found horribly creative ways to make the Filipinos suffer and found perverse pleasure in their total and unchallenged authority. I could never have imagined that any human being would do what they did to another person, particularly because I knew the Filipinos to be such kind and loving people. When they were done with the women and children, they always killed the men, and whole villages were burned to the ground. The suffering was unimaginable, and I could never knowingly put a family at risk for our benefit, so we moved out into the jungle.
“The Japanese were more experienced soldiers than we were, but they didn’t have anywhere near the background in stealth and stalking of a couple of guys who grew up hunting for game in the Midwest. More than once I hid just a few feet from a Japanese patrol, and they never had any idea. As we regained our strength, we decided to move up into the mountains to try to find any other refugees to join up with. Prior to the war, two German brothers had owned a large plantation which they had since converted into a guerrilla base station. It was nicknamed Fawcett’s Camp, and it became my home for the next year. It was so great to be around other Americans. Together we managed to find enough game and produce to start rebuilding our shattered health. One of the things that really helped is that we created a makeshift hospital.
“Dr. Pineda, a Filipino, volunteered at the hospital and saved many American lives. If the Japanese had found him out, they would have tortured and killed him with no remorse, which means he literally put his life on the line to save us.
“Unfortunately, there were few medical supplies to help fight off the local diseases, so a few of us decided to venture out into the country to see what we could find. Our plan was for some of us to conduct a guerrilla campaign to disrupt Japanese control, while the others found food and whatever supplies they could. I organized a group of forty to forty-five Filipinos to go out on these raiding parties—eventually my group included sixty-two guerrillas! Our first guerrilla action was rather gruesome but certainly had the desired result of upsetting the Japanese. One of the local scouts had spotted a place on the main road where the Japanese moved troops on a fairly regular basis. He suggested that we stretch a wire across the road at the level where the Japanese troops stood in the back of the truck. A few of the locals, who could move in and out of town without being discovered, cut a guy wire off a hotel. Meanwhile, another group scouted out a narrow spot in the road where the jungle closed in. At the narrowest point, it was eighty-two feet from tree to tree. On a day of low Japanese traffic, the Filipinos strung the wire, placing it a few inches above the top of the cab of a typical troop transport vehicle. Two men stayed to watch while the rest of us went back to the hills. In the late afternoon, a truckload of Japanese soldiers barreled down the road at full speed. Sure enough, most of them were standing in the back of the truck when it passed under the taut wire. Eight of the troops were decapitated and killed instantly, with even more wounded. The truck drivers had no idea what had happened, so they drove nearly a mile down the road before the survivors in the back were able to get them to stop. The medical need was so urgent that they didn’t retrace their path to find where our wire was hidden. The next day, another truck went through the spot, and twenty-two Japanese were killed. A third truck figured out what was happening, found the wire, and destroyed it. Needless to say, the Japanese were furious and carried out reprisals against the local people, but to our knowledge none of them were killed. It may not seem like much, but after everything the Japanese had done to both the Americans and Filipinos, it was a symbolic victory that made us feel like we were doing something to help the war effort. To the degree that the Japanese had to keep more troops occupying the Philippines, they would have a smaller force they could bring to bear elsewhere.
“On another occasion we managed to salvage some hand grenades. We spent the next two or three weeks using them to booby-trap an area that contained aviation fuel bunkers. It was heavily guarded, so we had to be clandestine in our activities. When everything was in order, we fired .30 caliber tracer bullets to blow the tanks. Tracer bullets are so incendiary that they were glowing hot blue when they ignited the fuel tanks. The explosion was unbelievable! Then, as the Japanese ran for cover, they would trip the hand grenades. It was a scene of total mayhem.
“In November 1942, I led a group of fifteen Filipinos back into the Bataan Peninsula, where we found an abandoned ammunition dump that contained Lewis guns, .45 caliber handguns, and lots of ammunition. That find really helped us keep up our guerrilla activities.
“We always looked for hospitals when out on patrol, and this occasion we found a partly buried footlocker while rummaging near the ammunition dump. Inside we found four large bottles of sulfathiazole, an antibiotic, with 500 tablets in each. This was a spectacular find that would help Dr. Pineda save many a human life. The trunk also contained five metric quarts of medical alcohol. Someone had written on the bottles, ‘To be consumed only by prescription of a doctor who is sober at the time.’ We all thought that was pretty funny.
“Because there was such an abundance of supplies, we sent some of the men to get a pony to help us transport it back to camp. They also found some sweetened condensed milk, which was a real treat after the diet we’d been living on.
“By this time, the Japanese were apoplectic over our activities, and were trying to do anything possible to find and destroy us. They sent out companies of eighty or ninety men to hunt us down. Fortunately, it’s almost impossible for even a large army to eradicate guerrillas in the jungle. We had the advantage of knowing the jungle, which provided deep, thick cover. What we couldn’t control, however, was a lack of supplies. Eventually we ran out of ammunition, which put an end to our guerrilla warfare. With that, we found our way back to Fawcett’s Camp.
“In May 1943, we’d been hiding out for more than a year. Call it good luck or a blessing, but so far, we’d been safe at Fawcett. Then one day, some of the local Filipinos approached us and said that they’d heard the Japanese were planning an attack on Fawcett. That gave us enough of a warning that we were able to slip out into the jungle. When the Japanese came, there were no foreigners there. The Japanese didn’t believe the locals’ excuses and threatened them with their lives if they found out they were lying.
“A few days later we returned back to camp to get some rice. They invited us to spend the night. I can still remember it today. There was a beautiful, star-filled sky. It felt good to be out of the jungle and back in the shelter of a small hut. After falling asleep, I thought I heard something out in the darkness. Suddenly, the Japanese started howling ‘banzai!’ We almost jumped out of our skin, but their warning gave us just enough time to slip out of the hut and run to the jungle. As we ran through the cook’s shack, I grabbed a bolo, which I was able to wrap around a Japanese soldier’s neck as he was bearing down on us. I don’t know how, but I managed to escape with my good friend Lou Barella, who was an Italian American from New Jersey.
“I don’t know what reprisals the Japanese took against our hosts, but it was probably terrible. The Filipinos were the most freedom-loving people I have ever known. They knew what freedom was worth, and they were willing to risk everything for it. All of us held the Filipino people in the highest possible esteem. Quite simply, they saved our lives. In spite of all the threats by the Japanese and the various atrocities committed against the civilian population, the Filipinos could always be trusted not to squeal on us. I came to love them with all my heart.
“I still don’t know how they managed such effective communication in a time when they had no telephones, but the so-called ‘bamboo telegraph’ was very real and very effective. The Filipino people always seemed to know where the Japanese patrols were, and they passed the information through word of mouth, always managing to provide at least a half-hour notice before a patrol arrived at a particular location. That’s how we managed to evade the Japanese as long as we did.
“After being ousted from Fawcett’s Camp, we managed to live another two or three months in hiding. Finally, the Japanese found a way to drive us into a box canyon from which there was no escape. Their superior numbers, along with our lack of anything to use to fight back, gave them an overwhelming advantage. We had no choice but to surrender. My friends who had been with me from the beginning included Jack Finley, Lou Barella, and Colonel Magnuson. Our new guards took us to the San Fernando Provincial Prison.
“Life in prison was brutal and unforgiving. Because we had been living in the jungles for so long, it was automatically assumed that we were part of the guerrilla campaign, and that we had escaped from the death march. Either of those crimes was punishable by death. Of course, I was guilty on both counts, but I was wise enough to play dumb when the Japanese interrogators went after me. Despite the torture and beatings inflicted on me, I always maintained that I was just an ignorant soldier trying to find food and that I had no idea about Allied battle plans or an enforced march. No matter what they threw at me, I always held to that line. It was later that we learned that any prisoner who changed his story was summarily executed for having lied to them.
“As best as I can recollect, there were sixty-three Americans incarcerated in the San Fernando prison. All of us were soldiers who had previously escaped or who had never surrendered to the Japanese. Naturally, that made us prime victims of the Japanese, who hated us for our intransigence. Oh, the things they did to our men! One of the most horrifying was when they administered water torture to an American prisoner who was captured a few days after us. After strapping him to a board upside down, they forced a hose into his mouth and started pouring water in. Just when the prisoner was about to drown, they’d pull the hose out and start firing questions at him. When the prisoner didn’t give the hoped-for responses, back in went the hose and they did it again. Unfortunately, in this one instance they went too far and the prisoner drowned right out on the parade field in front of us all. They simply cut his body loose and threw his corpse to the side for later burial. As outrageous as the water torture was, I have to admit that the first time this horrible form of brutality was used in the Philippines was by the Americans in the Spanish-American war in 1900–1902. By 1943, the Japanese had perfected it.
“One day, two of us managed to strike a small blow against our wardens. Some of our Filipino friends on the outside tossed a rope over the wall at a prearranged time, and we quickly pulled ourselves up and over the wall, where a one-horse cart was waiting for us on the other side. The local Filipinos who were helping us quickly covered us with kalabasa squash and whisked us out of town. We managed to avoid detection for nearly six weeks before being recaptured and returned to camp. We paid an awful price for those six weeks of freedom, but we accomplished the goal of harassing the Japanese.
“It was easy to lose track of time, with one day stretching forever into the next, but eventually we were transferred to Bilibid Prison in downtown Manila. Bilibid was an old colonial Spanish fort with three- to four-foot-thick walls, eighteen to twenty feet high. In the center of the compound, the Japanese prominently displayed an electric chair. During the hottest part of the day they made us stand out in the sun within eyesight of the chair just to intimidate us. We had to stand as close as possible to each other for hours on end, with no water, no food, and no shelter from the sun. On any given day, about a third of the prisoners fainted and dropped to the ground. Then the guards would kick and punch them to rouse them back into a standing position. When a prisoner could no longer get up, he was left to lie in the sun while the rest of us tried to avoid the beatings by remaining standing. I doubt any prisoner ever made it without falling at least a few times, but those of us in better physical condition were able to stand longer than most.
“At first, I was infuriated by this treatment, but after the guards broke down our physical reserves from lack of food and water, I didn’t have the energy to hate them. I just prayed for nightfall so our ordeal could come to an end for another day. When it did, the guards would muster us out of formation and allow us to hobble over to the small huts where we were crowded in like sardines.
“By this time, most of us hated General MacArthur and all his officers. After all, they were the ones who had abandoned us to live in this misery. It just didn’t make sense that with all the warnings about an impending invasion by the Japanese, they hadn’t had an escape plan in place for all of the soldiers. The Philippines were our main naval base in the South Pacific, so we should have been better prepared. But we were the ones who had to pay the price for their lack of preparation. Believe me, the price was very high indeed. At first, I think everyone nurtured the hope that one day the Americans would return to help us, just like MacArthur had promised, but as the days and weeks wore on, we gave up the useless task of hoping and concentrated on simply surviving.
“For the next two and a half months, my companions and I endured the most creative torture imaginable. The guards were always trying to get secrets out of us that we simply didn’t have. They seemed to delight in finding new ways to make our lives miserable. The interesting thing is, that as awful as torture was to endure personally, it was almost worse to hear the screams of other prisoners. The sounds of their agony grated against our ears and filled us with rage at our tormentors, leaving us with nothing but despair at our own impotence. It’s amazing how the mind and spirit can hurt even more than the body.
“It’s difficult, even now, to bring some of the things I witnessed to mind. The worst torture of all happened one day when I watched the guards pour battery acid into a man’s eyes. They made all of us watch. The horror of the spectacle goes beyond words. As the man lay there writhing in pain, the guards did nothing to ease his pain. They wouldn’t let any of us pour water in his eyes or do anything to comfort him. After enduring twenty minutes of unspeakable agony, he died of a heart attack. Other favored forms of torture were to insert bamboo shoots under a prisoner’s fingernails or to beat a person’s genitals with a bamboo cane on a table. The guards killed more than one female nurse with a broomstick. In short, they imposed any cruelty that their minds could conceive. Absolutely nothing was out of bounds. It goes without saying that ordinary beatings were part of virtually every interaction we had with these guards.
“I suppose a relevant question is: What rules helped some of us stay alive? First, stick to your story and never change it. Second, don’t act weak, since it seemed like the guards homed in on the most vulnerable and attacked them with the greatest ferocity. On the other hand, you didn’t want to act too cocky, or you’d be beaten down. Third, no matter what the guards said to you, you needed to do something, even if you didn’t understand. They hated it when a prisoner seemed to ignore them. Fourth, use your ingenuity to get more food. Cigarettes were the universal medium of exchange, and by being a little innovative you could secure a small advantage. Finally, stick together. I think it really helped that I had friends that I could talk to and encourage when they were down. Likewise, my friends helped me out when I got in trouble or depressed. It really came down to attitude. I decided that I was going to be a survivor, no matter what was thrown at me. I saw many men struggle and fight only to give up in the end. Whether from anger or stubbornness, I don’t know, I was determined that I would make it. I think that’s why I’m alive today to tell this story.
“Just how bad was it at Bilibid? I think the numbers speak for themselves. Of the sixty-three Americans I knew who had initially escaped the Death March and fought as guerrillas and who were subsequently captured, only seventeen lived to be transferred out. That’s an astonishing mortality rate that speaks to the inhumanity that cost so many of my comrades their lives.
“When we shipped out to Cabanatuan in a narrow-gauge cattle car, we had to wear special red tags on our belts that indicated we were particularly dangerous. It was also a signal for guards up and down the line to slap us around a lot. After everything that had gone wrong up to this time, I was surprised, then, to find that our red tags actually gave us a break once we reached the new camp. Because we were considered dangerous and likely to escape, the camp commander gave orders forbidding us to go out on work detail, so we spent our time there working in the kitchen, cleaning toilets, and doing other odd jobs around the camp. That was a lot better than going out into the jungle with the other prisoners.
“Eventually we were transferred to Manila on a large troop transport ship. The conditions onboard were appalling, with more than 700 prisoners from all over the Philippines crowded down in the dark, dank hold of the ship. To accommodate the prisoners, the Japanese had built two tiers of bamboo platforms that we could sit on. It was so crowded, however, that only one-third could sit at a time, while the others had to stand. My good friend Jack Finley was claustrophobic, and after just a few minutes in this metal cellar, he started hyperventilating. I carried him back on top, with Paul Vacher helping the last few feet. Fortunately, the Japanese let him stay there long enough to catch his breath.
“Jack’s experience was not unique; dozens of men fainted from the heat and overcrowding down in the hold. Finally, the Japanese were kind enough to open two more holds, which at least gave us enough room to sit down with our backs against each other. That made it a lot easier to sleep and to give our scrawny legs some relief.
“Probably the worst thing about being a prisoner is the overpowering boredom you have to deal with. There was just nothing to do except to sit around and talk and complain about conditions. The one thing we could do to relieve the tedium was to run a poker game. My connections with the Filipino underground made it so that I had a source for American money, which we used in the game. It also allowed us to buy off some of the guards, but that was a dangerous game to play. Paying cash was risky because the guards’ officers might spot them using it to buy favors from other prisoners. Using cigarettes to do it was no problem, though, because everybody loved the popular form of currency, including the Japanese.
“Once the ship got under way, four of us who had formed a mutual support network while in Bilibid Prison got together again to help each other. These friends were Bill Main, Paul Vacher, and Millard Hileman. One was assigned to the laundry, which allowed him to keep us supplied with good soap, while another was assigned to the kitchen, allowing him to give us an extra ration of rice. I ran the poker game to bring in revenue. Of course, the only thing we could do with the money was to gamble or trade for food or other small items, which taught us a firsthand lesson in inflation. For example, I often paid $100 for a single pack of cigarettes—in 1940 dollars. On one occasion a sick man offered to pay another prisoner $20,000 for a bowl of rice, but the fellow just laughed at him. When I left the Philippines, I carried a bag with $76,000 in it. That’s how much currency was in circulation with no place to go.
“I don’t know how many Americans out of the 700 who were loaded onto the ship managed to survive the voyage. No records were kept. I do know that whenever a man died, his body was unceremoniously thrown overboard.
“A few weeks after setting sail, our captors allowed us to go on deck where they hosed everyone down. Water was a refreshing relief after spending weeks in the stinking hold of the ship. It felt wonderful to finally be clean. While I was savoring the experience of being hosed down, I noticed that the guard who was operating the hose turned suddenly to look out to sea. He let out a frantic shout and started gesturing wildly toward the side of the ship. He’d seen the trail of an American torpedo heading straight for the ship! We were under attack from an enemy submarine—at least it was an enemy to the Japanese. Of course, the submariners had no way of knowing that they were firing at American prisoners of war. Unfortunately, their aim was perfect, and a torpedo hit our ship full broadside. The effect of the explosion knocked me off my feet and left everyone on board dazed. The ship went down in what seemed a matter of minutes, and suddenly we found ourselves fighting our way frantically to the surface. Amazingly, a significant number of prisoners lived through the attack and managed to bob to the surface of the water, where we waited nervously until Japanese torpedo boats came and rescued us. There was no rest for the wicked, however, and in no time they simply transferred us to another ship, which proceeded without further incident to Formosa, on our way to Japan.
“It took us a month to complete the voyage from the Philippines to the island of Formosa (modern-day Taiwan). The caravan that our ship traveled in was very slow. Fortunately, I didn’t suffer too much from seasickness, but it was still really miserable down in the hold if the waves were rough. The men who did have trouble with the motion made the decks slippery with their vomit, and a constant stench filled the air during the entire voyage.
“When we finally arrived in Formosa, the guards allowed the men to disembark from the ship for a few minutes on land, which felt great. After being at sea, my legs were unsteady and I swayed even though the ground was stable. Still, it was wonderful to breathe the air on land. Unfortunately, we counted only 500 prisoners who came off the ship, which meant that approximately 200 had died on the voyage up to that point.
“The ship pressed on to Japan. Once on land, my group was assigned to Fukuoka Camp No. 3, on the southern island of Kyushu, where we were transformed into slave laborers. There was no concern about us escaping here, because the entire population was Japanese and would happily turn us in if we got away from camp.
“The area supported a huge complex of steel mills, a large harbor, and a naval base that was located in this area to be close to the coal mines. The authorities divided the surviving American prisoners into three groups to work in each of these areas: steel work, coal mining, and harbor support for the navy. The work was very difficult, particularly since we were weak from malnourishment, lack of exercise, and the beatings we’d endured at the hands of the guards in the Philippines. The attitude we first encountered in Bataan was just as noticeable here, even though we were imprisoned by civilian guards. The Japanese simply could not believe that healthy men would ever surrender, and so they treated us with contempt. It did no good to explain that our officers had ordered us to surrender, or that we had actually fought a guerrilla campaign until we ran out of ammunition, so we just had to submit to their constant harassment and belittling. It was humiliating, and we were ashamed that we had been put into this position.
“In January of 1945, my friends and I were assigned to the Omine coal mines, where we worked 300 feet below the surface. The work was extremely difficult and hazardous, particularly since there was poor ventilation and inadequate lighting in the mines. We were all scared that something bad would happen and, sure enough, one day our fears were confirmed when a large cave-in trapped us for three days in the darkness. That’s as close as I ever came to thinking I would die, abandoned in a coal mine a million miles from home. Jumping ahead a bit in the story to emphasize just how bad the working conditions were: at the end of the war, only eleven of the more than four hundred prisoners in our group who made it to Japan still survived!
“We had no contact with the outside world while living in our little slave community. I’d learned to speak tolerable Japanese to communicate with the guards, but they couldn’t provide any kind of information about how the war was going. They were always told that their troops were achieving great victories, and that the Allies were on the run all across the Pacific. Then, one day, everything turned upside down for our captors when a group of American B-29 bombers attacked in early March of 1945. That meant we were at risk as well because bombs don’t distinguish between friend and foe. Still, it felt great to know that the Americans had established positions close enough to Japan that Allied bombers could strike the home islands. That had to mean that we were winning the war in the Pacific, and that meant there might actually be an end in sight. I doubt anything in the world could have bolstered our hopes more than the arrival of those bombers!
“One bomber stands out in memory because he earned the nickname ‘Lonesome Joe.’ Every day for several weeks, a lone B-29 bomber flew over the steel mill without dropping any bombs. It arrived at exactly the same time every day. He was probably just taking photographs, but his visit became a reason for us to silently celebrate. A few weeks later, a cloud of aircraft appeared in the skies and everyone hit the ground when American dive bombers screamed down to attack the steel factory powerhouse. One of the bombs blew up a ship filled with soybeans, and the explosion scattered soybeans for more than half a mile. The attack was very well planned, and it appeared that every bomber had a different target. Three or four minutes after the dive bombers’ attack, a wing of B-17 bombers came in high and rained bombs on all available military targets. During the last six weeks of the war, they bombed us every single day at 1:00 p.m. I can easily understand the terror of the Japanese civilians because we were scared as well. There was nowhere to run or to hide; the bombs were so powerful that they could destroy anything they fell on. And while the bombing was amazingly accurate, a difference of just a few feet here or a few feet there meant the difference between life and death.
“On the day that World War II ended, my friends and I were busy at work. The entire island had been wired for a public-address system. Suddenly, a very emotional voice came on the speaker. All the Japanese froze in their tracks and looked to the east. It was the voice of the emperor. He declared that there was no defense against the atomic bomb and that the Japanese should not resist when the Americans arrived; they should simply go home. What an electrifying moment! The effect would have been almost comical if it had not created so much havoc. Once the Japanese heard their emperor instruct them to go home, they simply dropped their tools where they stood and walked away from the job to go home. In order to maintain control over the civilian population, the government had not allowed any Japanese citizens working in the war industry to serve in their hometown. So now everyone was anxious to return to their homes.
“Even the engineers on a prisoner transport train just abandoned the locomotive right where it was when the announcement came. Eventually, some of the Americans climbed into the cab of the train and brought the prisoners back to camp. After the guards abandoned us, we spread out to get food and take whatever we could find. All transportation froze, and in the first week after the announcement, Japan was totally shut down. There was no power where we lived.
“We encountered an amazing incident on the third day after the war ended. Three B-17 bombers circled overhead. I was standing next to a chaplain that had been taken prisoner and who had become a good friend. When the bomb-bay doors opened, he let out a curse and said that the crew probably didn’t realize the war was over! Wouldn’t that be something, to be killed by American bombs three days after the war ended? But instead of bombs, food started raining down! What a miracle, and what a tribute to America! Just days after the war had ended, they were taking action to feed their former enemies. We were so grateful to get food and we were so proud of our country.
“None of us had tasted meat in well over a year. There were a number of Sikhs from India who had been imprisoned with us and when they saw the food packages land on the other side of a masonry wall, they broke down the wall to get to the food. Among the items of food available were cans of corned beef. Someone said to eat just one can, and most of the men did stop eating once they were full. But three of the Sikhs just kept eating and eating because they had been so starved. It was an unfortunate mistake, because they got so sick from putting rich food in their stomachs after the meager diet that we had been living on, that they doubled over in pain. Eventually, all three died.
“Sometime before the end of the war, seven of us had witnessed the huge mushroom cloud created by the explosion of the atomic bomb over Hiroshima. After the war ended we wanted to see what had happened, so we went to the shore and found a barge to take us over to what had been a submarine base near Hiroshima. What an incredible, awful sight! Only a few buildings that had been constructed of concrete were left partially standing. In some places, you could see where a shadow had fallen on the wall, leaving an impression that wasn’t as badly burned. Other than these few remnants, everything had been reduced to rubble. The citizens of Hiroshima had no idea what had hit them—they had simply been atomized the instant the bomb exploded. We later learned that people who lived further out of the city and that had been looking in the direction of the bomb when it exploded had their eyes melted in the sockets. As we stood in the powder of what had been a great city, the man next to me started weeping.
“As long as I live I’ll never forget the horrifying sights that greeted us in the aftermath of the atomic bomb. Anything within a mile of ground zero was completely destroyed—there were no human or animal remains to be seen. The ground under our feet was still hot, and there was no ash—just an incredibly fine powder. Beyond one mile we discovered parts of charred bodies. Further out the inhabitants survived, but they were in horrible physical condition.
“One of the biggest problems associated with the bomb is that three rivers run through Hiroshima. When the bomb exploded, all the water in the rivers vaporized. This caused a tidal wave of water coming in from the ocean to fill the void. Some of the people who had survived the blast of the bomb were killed by the tidal wave.
“Many thousands of people were killed, not by the blast of the bomb, but by suffocation because the heat of the bomb consumed all available oxygen. Many miles away, the trees that remained standing all pointed to Hiroshima, having been bent inward by the huge vacuum created by the explosion.
“As the occupation army arrived in greater numbers, they came and liberated us. It felt so great to go into a big tent where they allowed us to shower and deloused us. They gave us new clothing, although none of it fit properly, but who cared about that! Later we were given uniforms in the correct size.
“On April 25, 1945, they took us out through Nagasaki Harbor. This great harbor sits between two mountain ranges, and we could see how the concussion of the bomb went up both sides of the mountain ranges. Before the war, Nagasaki had a large and prominent skyline, but now everything was destroyed. We could see where the railroad tracks had melted and the ties turned into white powder.
“The prisoners in the worst medical condition went to the hospital ship. I was transferred to an aircraft carrier, which went to Okinawa. I then went by cruiser to the Philippines. When we arrived back in the Philippines, we naturally wanted to find our Filipino friends but were told we would have no leave of absence. Four of us quickly solved that problem by hijacking a military police jeep. We spent the next six weeks out in the provinces visiting friends and revisiting the places where we had spent so much of the war in hiding.
“Finally, we went back to Manila. The provost arrested us and put us in jail. After the fifth day of confinement, I guess he felt guilty for incarcerating former prisoners of war, so he told us that we could go free, but had to find our own way home. We went down to Nichols Field, which had been completely rebuilt. We sat around a command post for two or three hours. Then I saw a lieutenant colonel that I thought I recognized, so I turned to him and said, ‘Do I know you?’ It turned out that his name was Colonel Forinash, and I had known him when he was a lieutenant. He was happy to see that I was still alive, even though I looked terrible. After catching up on what had happened to each other, he helped us gain passage on a C-52 cargo plane and then pulled strings to get us through to Guam. We took a plane to Hawaii. I spent several days there enjoying the sun, then found an aircraft with just one seat left and happily found that all the others were occupied by nurses. Not bad after four years in the jungle and as a prisoner of war!
“Arriving in San Francisco, I was assigned to the Presidio. Shortly thereafter, I was transferred to the Camp Carson hospital near Colorado Springs, Colorado, to recuperate from my war injuries and illnesses. After three months, I got to go home for a few days, and then back to Colorado for another three and a half months in the hospital. Finally, I went to Denver, where I was discharged from the service on March 1, 1946.
“After getting my health back a bit, I went to two years of college in Southern California to study journalism and then transferred to Columbia, Missouri. I was an honor student in both agriculture and journalism. Then I got a job at a newspaper in Muskogee, Oklahoma. From there, I went to work for a radio station in Freeport, Illinois. Eventually I went to work for the agricultural corporation Cargill, where I spent twenty years in the livestock feed division as a sales training manager and sales manager.
“In the years since World War II, every one of the former prisoners of war I stayed in contact with suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and at some point or another went totally out of control. I suffered just like the rest, but eventually managed to find peace. When my family joined a new church, I found a new perspective on the world, and a new way of dealing with the memories that remained. It also helped that through the years I was active in veterans’ associations and kept in touch with many of the other survivors of the Bataan campaign and Japanese imprisonment. Having friends who were there made it easier to keep my sanity.
“Now that it is far past, I can tell you that I am so proud to have served with the men and women who defended the Philippines. Had it not been for our efforts, Japan may have occupied Australia, which could have had a profound impact on the ultimate course of the war. Certainly, our efforts prevented immense suffering. That was just one of the benefits of our ordeal. The men I served with are among the best I have ever known, and I hope that this brief record will properly honor the sacrifices that they made so many years ago. Out of approximately 22,000 Americans captured in the Philippines, only 15,000 returned home—a death rate of more than 30 percent. By comparison, only 3 percent of Americans captured in Europe perished. Ours was a unique experience. To me, the men with whom I shared this ordeal are among the greatest heroes in our nation’s history.”
Afterword
Pat Patton passed away on March 16, 2007. He received the Bronze Star and was an honoree at the World War II Memorial dedication ceremony in Washington, DC, in 2004.
1. Henry Robert Patton, interview with author.
2. The letter in front of the number describes the purpose of the aircraft. For example, O stands for Observation, B for Bomber, and F for Fighter.
3. MacArthur and his staff traveled by boat to Mindanao, then by airplane to Australia.
4. There is no official record of how many men died during the Bataan Death March. An unknown number of men—both American and Filipino—refused to surrender and escaped to the jungle instead. Estimates for the number of men who were forced on the march vary widely, as do eyewitness accounts of the march. Differing sources estimate 5,000 to as many as 18,000 Filipino deaths and 500 to 650 American deaths. (See Michael and Elizabeth Norman, Tears in the Darkness.)