POWs AND HELL SHIPS

[OLDNAVYMCPO]

In 1959-60, I was a junior in high school and had a Korean War combat vet for a biology teacher. He took his job seriously and yet was always disappointed that his students were so lackadaisical in their responsibilities and performance. Frequently, after the class's poor performance on a test or assignment, he would try to impress us with how hard life could be if we didn't strive to live up to our potential. He often cited examples from history and not the glossed over histories of our required history courses.

One day our teacher introduced a much older man as a guest speaker. The man was a WWII vet who had survived the Bataan Death March, years in a Jap POW camp in PI, an almost two month ordeal on a Jap Hell Ship and years as a POW slave in a coal mine.

His story was too far beyond the comprehension of our young minds that had only lived a sheltered existence.

I can't speak to how his story affected the other students but as for me , it provoked an interest in history and particularly in how humans react to catastrophic events, as individuals and as a society.

To this day I can recall his talk and the atrocities of which he spoke. Years later as a young sailor, my mentor was AQ-1 Cecil B. Stewart. Petty Officer Stewart had been a gunner on a TBF (IIRC) that was shot down over Japan in the last months of the war. He suffered through the waning months of the war as a POW in Japan.

When his POW camp was finally liberated, the military brought in a film crew and filmed and still-photographed a documentary. Upon their return stateside, each POW was presented with a photo album to document their captivity.

One duty weekend I was on duty with Petty Officer Stewart. He brought in his photo album with 100's of photos of his captivity. What an education.

This was all brought to mind because lately I have been doing some reading on the Hell Ships and the survivors.

 

[Erich]

I don't want to "like" this, but I sure appreciate your post.

 

[hsguy]

Very interesting post in light of the new evidence of the possible internment and death of Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan in a Japanese prisoner camp.

Amelia Earhart May Have Survived Crash-Landing, Newly Discovered Photo Suggests - NBC News

 

[OLDNAVYMCPO]

Very interesting post in light of the new evidence of the possible internment and death of Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan in a Japanese prisoner camp.

Amelia Earhart May Have Survived Crash-Landing, Newly Discovered Photo Suggests - NBC News

The Amelia Earhart story of possible imprisonment by the Japanese was rumored more than twenty years ago. Supposedly the US gov wanted her to spy on Japanese Naval activity since she won't be suspect because of her celebrity status.

 

[cmort666]

I met two Death March survivors while serving at the USAARENBD at Ft. Knox in the '80s.

One of the colonels (Engineer Board President?) had been on the Death March.

My last day on active duty, I ran into a tourist who was a National Guard tanker in the Philippines in '42. He was also a Death March survivor.

The fastest way to convince me that you're an idiot (or subhuman filth) is to try to portray the Japanese as "victims" of anything besides their own arrogance and stupidity. The odds are you'll never try to peddle that swill to me again.

 

[Straightshooter2]

One day our teacher introduced a much older man as a guest speaker. The man was a WWII vet who had survived the Bataan Death March, years in a Jap POW camp in PI, an almost two month ordeal on a Jap Hell Ship and years as a POW slave in a coal mine.

My uncle (mom's brother) went through the exact same thing. He was in the #6 Hiroshima coal mine Aug 6, 1945. They were used as slave labor for the Sanyo Corporation in a mine that had been declared unsafe before the war.

 

[30-30remchester]

My uncle as well lived through this hell. While serving with the New Mexico National Guard, the unit was militarized and end up in the Philippines. From horse soldier to a member of the 200th costal artillery. The 200th was left behind to hold to oncoming Japs at bay till McAuther could evacuate the rest of the army. Without firing a single shot of target practice and with having defective shell, with only in in 25 actually working as intended, the 200th shot down 63 Jap planes and held the Jap army at bay till they had fired every round of their ammo. Then nothing left to do but flee and try to find the army that had left them behind. After captivity my uncle took a cruise on a hell ship and ended up in a steel mill near Tokyo. I have 11 post cards he was able to send through the Red Cross, the last letter to his folks before capture, the Western Union telegram tell his folks that he had been found in a pow camp, this came over a year after he was captured, and the best telegram stating he was free and in the hands of the Red Cross.

 

[Ivan the Butcher]

During the American Revolution the British kept United States prisoners on prison ships. The survival rate is very low! That was a Hell of a way to die!

Ivan

 

[Club Gun Fan]

As a young boy, I read "Give us this day". Written by a prisoner of the Japs. It made me cry several times. I found the book years later. I read it again. It made me cry. I can't thank all the veterans of our armed services enough.

 

[ameridaddy]

There's a guy I know, still alive, who survived five Nazi concentration camps, last one Auschwitz. Just thinking about that tattooed number on his forearm makes me shudder after hearing his story.

Another guy I worked with was missing a finger. For years I assumed he lost it in an industrial accident working on machinery. One night, after a few beers, I found out he lost it at age 16, when the Germans rounded up hundreds of males in Bologna, Italy, looking for members or information on the Resistance. They shoved his finger into one of those table mounted hand cranked meat grinders.

Then I still have a letter postmarked 13 Nov 1918, Somewhere in France, from my grandfather to my great-grandmother. After a year of saying very little about the war all around him, now that it was over, he said "...after the horrors I've seen and the hell I've been through steadily since last February, I hold you and Pop much dearer to me now than ever before. It sure does make a fellow think…."
Reality sure does make a fellow think.

 

[rwsmith]

We have it so good.....

We have it so good, right now. That's not saying that it couldn't happen again in time. This SHOULD make us appreciate the freedom that we enjoy that much more.

 

[richardw]

I wish there were more teachers like the one who enriched your life. Today's children could use a good dose of reality of life when it is hard. They could also use a good dose of history lessons. I went to Memorial Day commemoration. I had my small USMC pin on my shirt. A teenagaer asked if I was in any wars. I replied that I had fought in Vietnam. To that he asked if that was the war when we fought the Japanese. Too sad.

 

[ameridaddy]

The Amelia Earhart story of possible imprisonment by the Japanese was rumored more than twenty years ago. Supposedly the US gov wanted her to spy on Japanese Naval activity since she won't be suspect because of her celebrity status.

At brunch this morning, one of the regulars showed me a document he came across in his archival research for his WW2 history books. I think he's written 8-10 books, has traveled the world for years digging in archives and interviewing people involved.

It was a 1949 memo, with attachments, to the CNO from a G-2 officer that said a search of Japanese Naval Archives found no mention or evidence of Earhart, her plane, or radio traffic in her flight path. It contained the names of all the IJN ships in the area, their logs in Japanese, and all radio traffic logs among these ships.
The mystery deepens.

 

[Ozark Marine]

My 7th and 8th grade teacher Mr Duffy was a Naval Aviator in WW2 and in the reserves after the war. Once a month he wore his Navy LTC uniform in school on Fridays for the weekend of training at Great Lakes Naval Air Station.
I always was very impressed learning from this good man. Me and the boys in the class asked him thousands of questions of the war and the Jap planes he shot down.
He always ended by saying he is living on borrowed time.

At the Legion we have a death march survivor who went on to fight in Korea. After the hell he went thru in WW2 he still was willing to give his all for the country he loves.
A true Patriot.

 

[kraynky]

At the Legion we have a death march survivor who went on to fight in Korea. After the hell he went thru in WW2 he still was willing to give his all for the country he loves.
A true Patriot.

Please buy that man a beer for me, and thank him sincerely.

 

[Cyrano]

I served with a Death March survivor, a Cpt Robert Boggs. He had been a Sgt in the 200th, I think in the machine gun battery. He was very quiet and gentle. He never talked about his experience, and I'm sure he's gone now as that was in the late '50s.

 

[jimmyj]

My American Legion Post is named after two local men who died on the Bataan Death March

 

[BB57]

The Amelia Earhart story of possible imprisonment by the Japanese was rumored more than twenty years ago. Supposedly the US gov wanted her to spy on Japanese Naval activity since she won't be suspect because of her celebrity status.

About 25 years ago I saw a picture of a Lockheed Model 10 Electra in a hangar on Saipan that was taken during WWII, prior to the US invasion of Saipan.

That brought to mind Fred Goerner's mid 1960's contention that Earhart had been held captive on Saipan, citing his research and claims that a caucasian female had been sighted there as a captive of the Japanese in 1937. The photo of the Electra in the hangar once again raised the issue of whether Earhart had in fact landed somewhere in the Marshall islands.

However, given that there were three Model 10s in use by the Army Air Corps at the start of the war, and one that had been sold to Japanese Navy Air Service for evaluation prior to the war, a Model 10 in a hangar on Saipan wasn't definitive. The picture was not clear enough or detailed enough to distinguish whether it was a USAAC 10-A, the Japanese purchased KXL1 or Earhart's 10-E.

But, this latest picture does bring back that memory and it's intriguing possibilities.

Some points in Goerner's favor are that he did extensive research in the early 1960's less than 20 years after the fact, he interviewed witnesses, again less than 20 years after the fact, and he interviewed those witnesses in a setting where Earhart was not a household name.

The whole spy rumor complicates things a bit as, if true, it gave the government a reason to suppress or alter some of the relevant information. Even without the spy rumor, by the mid 1960s, there would have been some negative diplomatic effects to raising the issue of the Japanese executing Earhart - at a time when the US was reliant on Japanese good will for basing requirements to support the conflict in south east asia. The Japanese were already very touchy about allowing operations of bomber aircraft.

Even in the 1980's pacific veterans were often at something just slightly less than a low boil when it came to Japan. I recall accompanying my girlfriend and her dad on a car buying expedition, and after about the third salesman tried to sell him a Japanese car, the quiet, mild mannered owner of a dry cleaning business I knew, erupted and made it clear to the salesman that he had spent three years as a Marine in the pacific during WWII, and there was no way he was ever going to buy a Japanese car. He didn't talk about his experience in WWII, but it still clearly bothered him.