Milt’s Military

Finally an officer came in and said, in almost perfect English "Get your things ready and you will be taken out of here soon". I said "What things, all we have is what’s on our backs. What’s going on?" He answered "Soon there will be peace, you will be relieved [not released] soon.", and he started running out of the cell. Then I did something that might have been fatal earlier, I grabbed him and asked "What are you telling us?" But he shook loose and ran out and re-locked the door. We found out later that the voice we had heard was that of the Emperor advising that Japan had surrendered.

The next day the same officer came back and told us to go with him. He took us outside and had us get into the back of a truck. There was one armed soldier there with us. Sort of as a test as to what was going on, I asked the soldier for a cigarette, and after several requests he did finally give me one. We couldn’t find out from him exactly what was going on, but we definitely had the feeling that the war was over. What that meant for us, we weren’t sure, but we didn’t get the feeling we would be executed because they would have done that already rather than trucking us around.

They delivered us to the Japanese army camp where we had been before and put us in a cell. Since we felt we were on relative safe ground now that the war was over, I started yelling to the guard that I wanted food and a doctor. I repeated my demand over and over and just got a blank stare from the guard. Suddenly, from the next cell came and English speaking voice that said "Shut up, guys! We’re in trouble enough!" I asked them who they were and they told us there were two of them, a pilot from a plane off a carrier and the other one of his crew. They begged us not to stir things up, they were bad enough. When I asked what he meant, he said they’d been told they were to be executed the next morning. We told them that as far as we knew the war was over. We spent all that night trying to convince them, but they still believed the next day would be their last.

They soon took the five of us to a room in the army camp. Then they brought in the two English speaking guys who had been in the Japanese military jail, then a third British man who had been in solitary for over three years. The next day they added to our group two sailors in handcuffs who had been captured on Wake Island. But the Japanese couldn’t unlock the cuffs because they had forgotten the keys miles away. I pulled a piece of wire off a window covering, bent it and unlocked one side of the cuffs for one of them, but I couldn’t manage to release the other locks so they had to wait for the next day. At the entrance to the room there was a soldier with a rifle, but we weren’t sure if he was there to keep us in or to keep others out. There were Japanese soldiers going in and out of the camp constantly, apparently coming there to be discharged. Their feelings toward the Allies were not warm. Somewhere around this time someone got a hold of a straight razor and gave us all a shave. My beard was very long, and my mustache was so long I could put it behind my ears. It felt wonderful to get rid of it.

 now, of course, I had lost all concept of time, but at some point during this solitary confinement I heard familiar English speaking voices from down the cellblock. I recognized them as my tail gunner, Bailey, and my engineer, Trant. What a charge and relief to hear their voices again. The cells were made of wood, with three sides solid and the front open with wooden bars of about 3" diameter spaced about 8" to 10" apart, and the corridor was constantly patrolled by a guard, so there was no way of communicating with them. But just knowing they were there helped diminish my feeling of isolation.

Eventually they brought the three of us together and transferred us to cell in a military police jail, where we were put together in the same cell. This cell was about 7’-8’ wide by 10’-12’ long, with the usual hole in the corner and no furniture. It differed from the cell in the army camp in that it had four solid wood walls, rather than three, and the front wall had a small waist high window in it plus the wooden door. The only metal I could find in the whole cell were the hinges on the door. No nails or anything else made of metal. This military police jail was run by the Kempi Tai, which I found out later was the equivalent of the German SS troops. We weren’t treated any worse, though, we still got our two balls of rice a day, if we were lucky.

Of course we started out talking and talking and talking. All of us had been questioned by the Japanese, and I remember Bailey telling us a story of one of his sessions when they asked him how many airfields there were in the US and where they were. He asked them to bring a map of the US, and when they did he pointed out every decent sized city on it and told them there was an airfield there. During one of my questioning sessions I had been told that our ammunition cans had been only half full, so I asked Bailey about it. He said that they were filled only half full to reduce weight for takeoff. We wouldn’t be able to take off with full containers. I never knew that and don’t know if it’s true or not.

We finally ran out of things to talk about, or maybe in was more that we ran out of the energy to talk. But just having companions there was a relief. We had to sit up all day, and couldn’t sleep because if we closed our eyes the guard would pound on the walls and scream at us. We were told that we would be awake when they were, sleep when they did and eat when they did. I know we didn’t eat what they did, though. We would beg for water to drink and, depending on the guard we might get a little. Another big problem was the lack of toilet paper. I never knew how important this was until I didn’t have any, especially since all three of us were suffering from dysentery. This is worse than diarrhea, because the food passes through your system undigested, and quite rapidly. We could occasionally get a sheet of newspaper from a guard.

One day my hand started to hurt and the first joint on my thumb swelled up to about twice its normal size. This spread down to the palm pad under the thumb, apparently an abscess from something. The pain was excruciating and I kept asking the guard for a doctor. All they did was laugh. Some nights the pain was so bad when I tried to go to sleep that I cried, being sure to hide this from the other two. One night during this torture I had a dream that my mother came to me and said "Don’t cry my son. I will take the pain from you." I finally got desperate and somehow managed to pry a sliver of wood off the wooden wall. I gnawed on the wood until I got a point on it, and after repeated tries finally punctured the skin of the thumb. Pus came pouring out of it. I repeated the procedure on the palm of my hand, and this finally relieved the pressure and alleviated the pain. By some miracle in those conditions the wounds healed without further infection.

Bailey developed a sore on his wrist that he kept pulling and tearing at, and I begged him to leave it alone so he wouldn’t make it worse, but he kept at it. It eventually became an open wound about the size of a silver dollar. He also started having severe stomach cramps which would double him up on the floor. Again I begged for a doctor for him, and again just got laughed at. There was nothing we could do.

One day the Japanese asked us if we would help them dig an air raid shelter, that they would give us an extra ball of rice a day if we did. I don’t understand why they asked rather than just ordering us out and making us do it. We said yes, more just to get out of the cell and into the fresh air than to get more rice, which sort of went right through us anyway. So here we went, three guys who could hardly walk, out to dig an air raid shelter. One day while we were out digging, a soldier, I believe he was a sergeant, came up to us on horseback and started screaming at us. I mumbled what I thought was under my breath "Go fuck yourself" but I guess he heard me, and either understood the words or by the tone of voice knew it was derogatory. He jumped off his horse, pulled out his Samurai sword and rushed toward us. Fortunately the guards grabbed him before he got within sword distance and held him back. There was a lot of screaming and yelling back and forth and he finally got back on his horse and rode away. We were later told the reason for the attack. He had just heard that his brother had been killed by Americans on one of the islands in the Pacific. After about three days of digging they realized it was a wasted effort, we weren’t making much of a hole.

In the same cellblock as us but down farther was another Caucasian. Every morning he was taken out and beaten. We could hear him screaming and crying. They wouldn’t bring him back until later in the day. One day two more Caucasian men were brought in and put into cells down farther. These two men were also taken out every day and brought back later. Whether or not they were beaten, too, I don’t know. We made sure they all saw us through our little cell window as they walked past so they would know we were there.

Then they brought two Japanese civilians in and put them into our cell. They were made to sit in front of us. One was fairly young and the other was elderly. For 24 hours or more they sat on the floor, sitting up straight, not moving a muscle. One night while they were there the air raid sirens went of and I thought, "Oh, shit. We’re going to be bombed here by our own planes." The guards came running into the cell and took the two civilians out and started to handcuff us, but for some reason decided to leave us there. They took out all Japanese prisoners from the cells, and we could hear everyone running in and out, not really knowing what to do, while all the time the sirens are going off like crazy. We knew they didn’t have much of an air raid shelter to go to. Finally everyone was out of the building, and we took advantage of no guards around to yell down the hall to the other white guys. We asked who they were, and one man answered that he was a soldier captured in Burma, and the other had been a ship’s navigator. We told them that Germany had surrendered, which they didn’t know, and told them who we were.

Some time after the sirens stopped they brought the two civilians back into our cell. With the few Japanese words I had learned, combined with sign language, it was amazing what I found out from the older of the two men. My vocabulary consisted of counting to ten and the words for water, airplane, toilet paper and toilet, and a few other odds and ends. So after the air raid I asked him they had been B29 planes, and he shook his head no. Then I wanted to ask him what kind of planes they were, thinking they were from an aircraft carrier. Knowing the word for water, I spread my hands out broadly indicating a large expanse and said "water, water" in Japanese. Then I made a gesture with my hand like a plane taking off, and he nodded yes. My guess was right. We later found out that they had not bombed the city we were in but the one next to it. Shortly after this the guys down the hall were taken out and not brought back.

For some time we had heard hammers banging outside, but hadn’t really given it much thought, having other things to worry about. But one day they took the three of us out of the cell and took us to a brand new jail they had just built near where we had been. Again, it was all wood and solid as a rock. We had heard no electric tools going, so we assumed it had all been done with hand tools. By this time we were so weak that in order to get to the hole in the floor we had to hold onto the walls or crawl on the floor to get there. And we had lost all track of time. We were in rough shape, all three of us.

 Milt's War - Index