Guards took their positions on top of the boxcars and beat the roofs with rifles while yelling, “Shut up, you assholes!”
Finally, the train jerked and rocked and began moving. As the boxcars swayed and rolled many of the men were seized with nausea and began vomiting. The food they had so eagerly devoured an hour earlier reappeared in a putrid mess, and the floor was soon covered with waste and vomit. The smell was beyond description. The air was so hot and thick with vile odors that breathing was painful.
A man fell at Pete’s feet and closed his eyes. Pete’s first reaction was to kick him away, but he realized he wasn’t breathing. Other men were dying too, and some had no room to fall.
As the train picked up speed, the guards opened the doors to three of the boxcars and allowed ventilation. Men fought to get near the doors. One managed to jump and landed on a pile of rocks. He never moved again.
Along the three-hour ride, the train passed through several small towns. The residents lined the track and tossed food and cans of water to the open cars. The engineers were Filipino, and they slowed the train to allow the men to collect anything possible. Almost all of the food was shared.
When the train finally stopped, the men spilled out onto the platform. Those still alive were ordered to drag out the dead. The bodies were stacked like firewood near the tracks. Dozens of Filipino citizens were waiting with food and water, but they were threatened away by the guards. The men were marched a hundred yards and herded into an open field for another hour of sun treatment. The ground was almost too hot to touch.
By then the men knew they were headed to the prison camp at O’Donnell, where, surely, conditions would improve. As they began the seven-mile trek, it was obvious that many of them would not make it. Pete expected mass murder of the weaker ones, but the guards had changed strategies and now allowed the stronger prisoners to assist. But, there were few strong enough to render aid, and men began falling in the first mile. By then the locals had seen plenty of prisoners, and they hid cans of water and mangoes along the dirt trail. The guards smashed and kicked away as much as possible, but miracles happened. Pete found a can of clear water and drained it without getting caught. He would believe that he owed his life to the kindness of some unknown Filipino. When the man in front of him collapsed, Pete grabbed his skeletal remains, threw an arm over his shoulder, told him that he’d made it this far and he was not about to die, and shuffled along with him for the remaining six miles.
Their first view of O’Donnell was from the top of a hill. Spread before them was a forbidding sprawl of old buildings encircled by miles of shiny barbed wire. Guard towers stood ominously, all proudly adorned with the Japanese flag.
Pete would remember that moment well. He would soon realize that had he known the horrors that awaited him at O’Donnell, he would have bolted from the trail and run like a madman until a bullet stopped him.
Chapter 27
Before the war, O’Donnell had been used as a temporary base for a Philippine Army division, about twenty thousand men. With little upgrade, the Japanese had converted it into their largest POW camp. It covered six hundred acres of rice paddies and scrubland and was divided into several large, square compounds. These were sectioned off into rows of barracks and buildings, some dilapidated, some unfinished. After the fall of Bataan, some sixty thousand prisoners, including ten thousand Americans, were crammed into the dilapidated old fort. Water was scarce, as were latrines, medicines, hospital beds, stoves, and food supplies.
Pete and the other survivors limped through the eastern portal, along with hundreds of others as they were pouring into O’Donnell from all over the islands. They were greeted by guards in crisp white shirts swinging clubs that appeared to be designed solely for beating unarmed and defeated men. Eager to impress their new arrivals with their toughness, the guards began pummeling men at random while yelling orders in pidgin English no one understood. It was all so unnecessary. By then the prisoners had seen enough violence and were not impressed, and they had no fight left, no will to resist. They were pushed and shoved to a large parade ground and ordered to stand at attention in perfect rows. They baked in the sun as others arrived. They were searched again, as if they’d had the opportunity to pick up anything valuable along the way.
After an hour, there was a flurry of activity in front of a building that served as the commandant’s headquarters. The great man strutted out to greet them in a goofy uniform that included baggy shorts and riding boots up to his knees. He was a runt-like, funny-looking creature with an air of great importance.
He began to roar and bellow, with a hapless Filipino interpreter trying to keep up. The commandant began by telling them that they were not honorable prisoners of war but cowardly captives. They had surrendered, an unpardonable sin. And since they were cowards they would not be treated like real soldiers. He said that he would like to kill them all but he lived by the code of a true warrior, and true warriors showed mercy. However, if they disobeyed any of his camp rules, he would gladly execute them. Then he launched into a loud, windy tirade on race and politics, with the Japanese people, of course, being the superiors because they had won the war, they had defeated America, their eternal enemy, and so on. At times the interpreter lagged far behind and was clearly making up stuff as the commandant waited for his brilliant words to be rendered in English.
In their dismal state, most of the prisoners paid little attention. As to his threats, they wondered what else the Japanese could possibly do to them, other than perhaps a quick beheading.
He roared and rambled until fatigue set in, then abruptly turned and marched away, with his bootlickers close behind. The prisoners were dismissed and divided by country. There was a camp for the Filipinos and one for the Americans.
General Ned King had been appointed by the commandant as the prisoner commander, and he met his men at a second gate. He shook their hands, welcomed them, and when they grouped around him he said, “You men remember this — you did not give up. I did. I did the surrendering. I surrendered you. You didn’t surrender. I’m the one who has the responsibility for that. You let me carry it. All I ask is that you obey the orders of the Japanese so that we don’t provoke the enemy any more than he already is.”
The new arrivals were then turned over to their officers for orientation and a discussion of the rules. The Twenty-Sixth Cavalry had scattered and there was some confusion about who last commanded it. Pete was assigned to a group of the Thirty-First Infantry and taken to his new home. It was a ramshackle building fourteen feet wide and twenty feet long, with a partial bamboo roof that looked as though it had been torn off in a storm. The men were exposed to the sun and rain. There were no cots or mats, just two long shelves of split-bamboo poles lashed together with rattan. The men, thirty of them, slept on bamboo. Most had no blankets. When Pete asked a sergeant what happened when it rained, he was informed that the men took cover under the bamboo poles.
O’Donnell had only one artesian well with a working pump and it dispensed water through a half-inch pipe to both camps, Filipino and American. The pump worked occasionally but its gasoline engine often sputtered and died. And since there was always a shortage of gasoline, the Japanese routinely let the tank run dry to conserve.