The day after the attack at Pearl Harbor, the Japs attacked U.S. forces in the Philippines. The aviation assets of both the Army Air Force and the U.S. Navy were virtually wiped out in the first day. The Jap amphibious invasion soon followed. Corregidor, Malinta Tunnel and the Bataan Death March are all familiar to us.

After the capitulation of American and Filipino forces, POWs were held in overcrowded filthy camps near Manila. POWs were eventually dispersed to various camps in the P.I. and even shipped throughout the Japanese Empire on hellships to serve as slave laborers. In August 1942, 346 men were shipped 350 miles to Camp 10-A on the island of Palawan. There, they were forced to work as slave laborers building an airstrip for the Japs.

Starvation rations, primitive to non-existent medical care, brutality and torture victimized many.A rare few escaped to the Filipino guerrillas and eventually to Australia and freedom.

After essential completion of the airstrip, 159 prisoners were returned to Manila in September 1944. The remaining 150 POWs were utilized in repairing and maintaining the airstrip after each American bombing raid.

U.S. forces made a successful amphibious assault at Leyte on 19 October. Constant air raids on Palawan, led the Jap occupiers to believe the end was near. On December 14,1944, Jap recon planes reported a substantial American convoy headed for an invasion of Palawan, or so they thought.

On a pre-planned annihilation of POWs at Camp 10-A, prisoners were forced into covered trench-like "bomb" shelters. The structures were then drenched in gasoline and ignited. Anyone trying to escape was shot, clubbed or bayoneted. 30-50 POWs actually escaped the initial onslaught, fleeing into the jungle or leaping over a 60 foot cliff. The escapees were systematically hunted down and killed except for ELEVEN men who survived. Those eleven , in small groups or individually, under the most extreme circumstances, bearing debilitating injuries, reached the Filipino guerrillas and eventual freedom through various means. After reaching U.S. forces, the escaped POWs were extensively debriefed. It was information from these debriefings that was the motivating factor in the subsequent raids on the other POW camps in the P.I. before the Japs could execute the POWs held in them.

On Jan 30, U.S. Army Rangers, Alamo Scouts and Filipino guerrillas liberated 513 POWs at Cabanatuan. Feb 3, 6th Army's 1st Cav freed 200 hostages at Santa Tomas Prison. The next day 1st Cav freed 800 more prisoners at Bilibid Prison. Feb 23, in a joint operation by U.S. Army Airborne and Filipino guerrillas called the Great Raid, liberated 2,147 Allied and civilian internees at Los Banos.

The story of those eleven survivors is unreal. There are many books on the Camp and associated events. They make for interesting but sometimes difficult reading.

My uncle was in the Bataan Death march and later on a Hell ship to Japan for forced labor. The Jap guards told all prisioners that they would all be shot if any allied soldier ever stepped a foot on the main island. Knowing this our prisioners devised a plan to take out the machine gun nests that guarded the capitives. Each machine gun was to be attacked by 5, 5men teams coming from every direction. Their thinking was, the Japs could not get all of them coming from different directions. Seeings how they were all do to be shot anyway, there was nothing to lose. Teams were picked by the short straw method. My uncle was lucky and was not picked to be on one of the suicide teams. Fortunately there was no need for their bravery.

My aunt's fiancé was an Army ROTC member at their university and graduated in the spring of 1941. He was in an artillery unit that was activated and sent to the Philippines that summer. Captured when Bataan fell, he survived the death march and the first couple of POW/labor camps. He was then loaded aboard one of the hellships with about 500 other American soldiers and sailors. Ships transporting prisoners were supposed to be marked but the Japanese never bothered. His hellship was torpedoed and sunk by an American submarine and the Japanese only picked up a couple of their prisoners. Several hundred others drowned, including him.

But that just can't be! I keep hearing that the Japanese were the "victims", and we "tricked" them into bombing Pearl Harbor!

Why if you'd believe that the Japanese would murder POWs, you'd believe that they practiced human vivisection!

Unit 731

Many years ago I knew a sober alcoholic (we had that in common) who survived the Death March and was shipped to Japan to work in coal mines. He had a deep, terrible hatred of all things Japanese. Hearing Japanese tourists speaking thier language would enrage him, though he never assaulted them verbally or physically. It was eating him out from the inside.

Finally he decided that if he wanted to have any hope of staying sober and sane he would have to forgive and let go of the bitterness and hatred. And he did.

It was an amazing thing to see, and something I doubt I could have done. It was true heroism, in my opinion.

He died sober and at peace, after teaching me much by his example.

Thanks, Joe. I owe you.

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Oh well, what the hell.

I could never forgive (or want to) the people who actually did those things. They all should have been hung.

I wouldn't hold any animosity toward today's Japanese (except for the deniers). They're too busy working themselves to death and reading "Rapeman" manga to do anybody else much harm.

I understand that after the war the Japanese captain commanding Palawan was identified and tried. He got his neck stretched for him. Many of the POWs were from the 200th Coast Artillery Regiment (AAA), a New Mexico naational guard outfit. Almost half of them died in captivity.

I hadn't read about this one you just posted, OLDNAVYMCPO, but have read other stories on the treatment of prisoners by the Japanese in WWII. And things such as this are why I don't feel the slightest bit of sorrow for the Japanese people of WWII time frame for the firebombing raids and the A-bombs we dropped on them in the war. IMO they brought on the destruction they deserved by their heinous treatment of their adversaries.

Thank you for posting this up!

I'd read about it some years ago in, I think, "Military History" magazine.

A lot of this stuff is covered in Toland's "The Rising Sun".