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

class="calibre1">As late as 1877, the ancient custom of making trophies of the heads of the enemy soldiers was still in effect in Japan.

Japan violated the Geneva Convention in 1931 when she invaded Manchuria, and again in 1937 when she invaded China both without a declaration of war. The world shouldn’t have been surprised when the Japanese bombers made their sudden attack on Pearl Harbor without a declaration of War, further violating the Articles of Code 1929. Actually, the Japanese had never approved the Geneva Convention, either in theory or in practice, especially concerning P.O. W. s.

To the Japanese, surrender was a violation of military morality. In any defeat, a loyal Japanese soldier would commit hari kiri.

Discipline in the Imperial Army was enforced by frequent slapping, beating and kicking of junior officers and enlisted men for rather minor offenses. For serious crimes, discipline was more complex. The victim could be turned over to a Judo expert for suitable punishment. He could be given the water treatment. He could be tied to a fence post, and slapped beaten or kicked by each passing soldier. He could be used for bayonet practice by recruits. Severe crimes called for an officer to unsheathe his samurai sword and behead the criminal. The head was displayed to others, tied to a bamboo pole, so the observer would learn that crime does not pay. Enlisted men with little or no rank, had no one to slap, beat or kick, so a captured enemy filled an important gap in their system. In the minds of the Japanese, they were. Not barbarians or savages, but merely loyal and patriotic personnel administering a just punishment to those who dared to defy authority, the Emperor or the Gods.

Atrocities were committed on many work details, including the farm. Some were for the punishment of rather minor rules and others were for the amusement of the guards, who enjoyed watching the Americans performing super Herculean tasks.

Once a month, I had to carry hundred pound sacks of rice from the gate to mess halls. This could have been easily accomplished by carts, but the Japanese thought that the Americans should “pay the price!” As a result I developed three hernias, which became a considerable handicap in completing my tour with “the Sons of Heaven.”

The Japanese seemed very little concerned that more Americans and Filipinos died as their prisoners, on the “Death March,” in prison camps, on labor details, hell ships, and working in coal mines and munitions factories, than died at the hands of the Japanese on the battlefields. Those of us, who were guests of the Nipponese Emperor, have little doubt that some of the treachery was learned from the German Kulture.

We, who were captives and prisoners of the Japanese, will never be able to forgive them, but knowing their background did help to explain some of their vicious actions. However, it did not make their barbarous, brutal, cruel savagery any easier to endure.

Very few ex-P.O.W.s will ever drive Toyotas, Datsuns or Mazdas.

 

Chapter VII AMERICANS!

 

We kept getting reports on our little radio that MacArthur was winning battles in many places, some of which we’d never heard of:

March, 1944 - Palau;

April - Hollandia;

June - Saipan.

In July, we heard that MacArthur met Roosevelt in Hawaii, and that he was finally able to convince the President that it was necessary to take the Philippines in order to have a base from which to attack Japan.

In August it was reported that 30,000 Japs had been killed don’t know where. .

September 15, 1944: Two-hundred aircraft had bombed Cebu, Negros and Panay.

U.S. Navy Dive-Bombers! On Sept. 21-suddenly-out of a clear blue sky-some thousand planes flew over camp from the east-they had to be carrier planes. They continued west to an hour. Then the planes returned coming down low over camp.

We could make out U.S. Navy markings on them. The Jap guards were all crouching down in foxholes.

“Don’t lose your head now! Don’t show any emotion! The Nips are all trigger-happy, just waiting for an incident to happen

before shooting up the camp.”

A big Jap bomber tried to sneak off the local airfield that we had built with prisoner labor. It was flying low-barely over the treetops. A Navy dive bomber saw it, dropped down right over it and strafed it with incendiaries. In seconds there was a big explosion and tremendous orange flames as the bomber plowed into the ground. This was followed by billows of black smoke lasting several hours.

It was a great show! It was tough trying to repress our elation. There was no food served that day - a typical Japanese reaction.

We all believed that freedom must be close that the Americans would be making landings soon. That night morale was high; the camp literally buzzed with rumors. A few Navy planes appeared almost daily.

October, 1944: MacArthur invaded Leyte producing 100,000 Japanese casualties. The attitude of the Nip guards changed very markedly; they lost the arrogance they had when they were winning the battles; some became sadistic; some became friendly.

A big Jap “shakedown.” Every prisoner had to display all his possessions. Japs picked up all mosquito netting and tropical helmets, saying, “You vill not need these in Japan! You vill be sent to Japan!”

The camp began to buzz with rumors again. U.S. Medical officers were ordered to examine all prisoners to determine the ones well enough to make a trip to Japan and the ones too disabled to travel. The Japanese did not want any amoebic dysentery cases in Japan. Suddenly, there was a new commodity “warm stools.” Prisoners, who feared a “hell ship” cruise to Japan, bartered for a “hot specimen” from a known amoebic to present to the laboratory for examination hoping against hope, that it would be “positive.”

Japan Detail: Before our Japan Detail departed for Manila, I asked Major Stephen Sitter, the camp psychiatrist, “Why is it that very few of the 12,000 prisoners spending time in the Cabanatuan camp ever made any attempt to take their own lives when they were starving, suffering from many diseases and were frequently in unpleasant and uncomfortable situations?”

He answered, “They were all too busy figuring out ways to survive; they didn’t have time to think about suicide.”

Between October 21 and 27, about 1600 prisoners, the Japan

Detail, were loaded on trucks to be delivered to the old Spanish prison in Manila-Bilibid. Before leaving, several of us prisoners buried diaries, notes, sketches, etc., near the buildings in which we lived, hoping to retrieve them after the war. My 110 sketches were placed in a Mason jar and buried near Bldg. #12. On our way to Manila, our truck had to stop frequently under big trees-to hide from the numerous U.S. planes passing overhead.

Cabanatuan Rescue: After the exodus of the Japan Detail (the so-called healthy prisoners) in late October, there were only 511 unhealthy prisoners remaining in camp.

Things were rather quiet until about 2000 hours on January 30, 1945, when sudden gunfire from outside the camp wiped out all of the Japanese guards in the towers. It was MacArthur’s 6th Ranger Battalion under the command of Lt. Col. Henry Mucci - aided by guerrillas - walking into camp. They quickly obtained carabao carts and sleds for the bedridden prisoners.

That evening 511 internees were moved many miles down the road to the west in the moonlight with hardly a shot fired. Early the next morning they arrived at a transportation center, where prisoners were placed aboard trucks and ambulances and taken to Lingayen Gulf; then they were transferred to planes and flown to Manila. After suffering from more than three years of intentional neglect by the Japanese Imperial Army, they were finally “free men.”

No prisoners were lost in the operation; there were two casualties among the Rangers: Capt. James Fischer, the doctor, was killed by mortar fire near the main gate of camp. Cpl. Sweezy died from wounds.