FP-AGOL-EJMD

            The illustrations were originally drawn by Dr. Jacobs while he was a prisoner in Cabanatuan.  Iin 1944, he rolled up the sketches, put them in Mason jars, and buried them. When liberated in1945, the jars were dug up & Dr. Jacobs recovered the sketches at the Pentagon. Dr Eugene C. Jacobs is Staff Physician, Health Service, University of Maryland, College Park, and a Colonel, MC, USA, retired

 

For many months at Camp John Hay, we had anticipated war with Japan but had no idea how, when, or where it might begin.  The camp was pleasantly located in Baguio, the summer capital of the Philippine Islands.  Its mile-high elevation offered a delightful climate for military personnel and their dependents who desired temporary escape from the intense heat of the lowlands, yet, it was only some twenty miles from the sand beaches of the Lingayen Gulf.

Camp Hay had no real military value, so we felt quite secure, never dreaming that, within five hours of Pearl Harbor, Camp Hay would be the first target in the Philippines to be struck by Japanese bombs.  The Japanese didn't surprise many unsuspecting military and naval personnel on week-end leave, because all personnel had been restricted to their duty stations by a general alert.

However, United States fighter planes were successfully diverted to Camp Hay, while the Japanese bombers blasted Clark and Nichol's fields and the Cavite Naval Base.

Areas on Northern Luzon control by the guerrilla forces just before the fall of Bataan in April, 1942.

In the days that followed, while we buried our dead and patched up our wounded, about a hundred enemy ships quietly assembled in the Lingayen Gulf.  On the morning of December 22, some 100,000 seasoned Japanese troops swarmed ashore between Vigan and Lingayen.  Two recently recruited divisions of the Philippine Army (PA) made a defense on the beaches, but when the big guns of the destroyers opened up, the recruits soon broke and, badly disorganized, ran for the mountains.

As the Japanese Imperial Army advanced toward Baguio, we received orders from General MacArthur: "Evacuate Camp John Hay and proceed to join American Forces in Bataan."  We quickly transferred our wounded to a civilian hospital and prepared to move out.  Our battalion of the 43rd Infantry literally ran over rugged mountain trails for five days trying to outflank the enemy.  Instead, we ran head on into Japanese troops just North of San Jose'.  Several soldiers got through to Bataan, but most of us were entirely cut off from the main forces.  The enemy had occupied the entire valley and were making the civilians in the cities quite uncomfortable.

Major Everett Warner, former Provost Marshall at Camp John Hay, rounded up hundreds of the tired and hungry and bewildered troops and formed a battalion of infantry.  One company under Lieutenant Enriquez, PA, was left to occupy and guard Balete Pass; the other companies marched north to Bagabag to establish a bivouac.  Our guerrilla forces harassed the Japanese infantry and cavalry trying to push through the pass, but we lacked the strength for a direct encounter.  As the Japanese forces advanced, Major Warner moved the battalion headquarters farther back in the valley to Jones.  New members continued to join until our numbers reached 1,500, and United States Armed Forces in the Far East (USAFFE) designated us MacArthur's First Guerrilla Regiment.  We had two battalions of infantry under Major Guillermo Nakar, PA, and Captain Enriquez (the former Lieutenant), and one squadron of cavalry under Captain Warren Minton of the 26th Cavalry, Philippine Scouts (PS).

Making Contact

            Cooperative farmers, politicians, and rice-mill owners supplied food, clothing, equipment, and even a hundred horses-all on receipt enabling us to set up a supply system.  Captain Arnold of the Air Warning Service located a two-way radio and had it carried over 100 miles of mountain trails to Jones.  He soon made contact with the USAFFE Headquarters at Corregidor, and set up a regular hour for communication.  In addition, we used the radio to gather news and print a paper, the Bataan News, which was distributed to the civilians who were watchfully waiting for some sign that Uncle Sam had not abandoned the Philippines.

All permanent regimental outposts were connected by a relay telephone system.  And our troops plus volunteer civilians constructed two airstrips that were adequate for light planes.  We concealed their purpose by keeping small portable buildings on them.

As former Surgeon of Camp John Hay, I became responsible for establishing a medical service.  With four medical officers of the Philippine Army serving as assistants, we organized a dispensary at Regimental Headquarters and two hospitals – out of bombing range – in abandoned schoolhouses in neighboring barrios.  We rode horses to visit the hospitals.  As I rode along the trails, little Filipino boys, noting my King George V beard, frequently amused me by doffing their straw hats, bowing, and saying, "Buenos Dias, Padre."  Often, for security reasons and to keep rumors to a minimum, our hospital rounds were made at night.

 

Left: December 29,1941.  To obtain a view, a medic and I climbed a mountain. In the valley below, San Jose' and many villages were in flames.  As far as we could see, smoke was pouring into the sky-over Cabanatuan, Manila, and Cavite.  Dense black smoke from oil fires rose over Clark Field.

Right: April, 1942.  Radio shack of the 14th Infantry, PA, Jones, Isahella.

In the absence of a regular source of medical supplies, the service we offered our guerrilla regiment was many times quite primitive.  We were able to get some medicines and surgical instruments from local hospitals, but only after the Japanese had rather thoroughly raided them.  Local physicians and Filipinos gave freely of their medicines and time.

Since malaria was prevalent in our men, we quickly consumed our antimalarial drugs, but, under the guidance of our medical officers, we learned how to strip the bark from tall cinchona trees and boil it in water.  The resulting concoction alleviated active malarial symptoms for a few days to several weeks, and then would have to be repeated.  We made a similar potion from the bark of the guava bush; it was supposed to ease diarrhea.  Fortunately, the Filipinos seemed to have considerable immunity against tropical diseases, and our mortality rates remained low.

Collaboration

            Medical aides, carrying small amounts of medicine and bandaging, went along with patrols going out on the "prowl," but our forces used local physicians whenever possible.  The civilians were very good to our sick or wounded; in spite of severe threats from the Japanese, they took the casualties into their homes and cared for them until they could travel again.  We, in turn, made every effort to care for all sick or wounded civilians in our areas of operation.  Our medical officers traveled many miles to care for the sick in the evacuation camps that had been established for the refugees.  We found that this effort paid dividends in many ways-it certainly eased food, clothing, transportation, gasoline, and medical supply problems.

Our diet was good, we got food from the fertile farms and haciendas in the valley.  When possible, we obtained water from the deep wells of the towns; otherwise we boiled river water from crude sand filters, made by digging shallow wells a few feet back on the river banks.  Pit latrines were dug whenever a patrol remained in an area for more than a few hours.  We had no venereal problem.

Our outposts harassed the enemy in the valley until they withdrew late in March.  On one occasion, Captain Warren Minton selected some twenty outstanding soldiers for a patrol to be made with similarly selected groups from several other guerrilla organizations.  Under the cover of darkness, Minton and his men surrounded a Japanese barracks at Tuguegarao and killed about one hundred of the enemy as they emerged; they also destroyed two planes on the ground at the airport.  Our patrols also made raids on enemy-held barrios; they cut telephone lines and attacked the enemy detachment.  We procured rifles, ammunition, equipment, and some food from each raid.

Japanese Prisoner of War Camp Number 1, Cabanatuan.

            During our brief existence as a guerrilla army, we met frequently with Filipino governors, mayors and government engineers to discuss our activities.  We helped them police their areas; they helped us get supplies.  When a politician became jittery, worrying about what the Japanese might do to him if he were captured, we had to replace him with a new officer.  We received permission from President Quezon, who was on Corregidor, to print emergency money to pay the troops and purchase supplies.

Ready and Waiting

            On April 1, our guerrilla regiment received a new designation the 14th Infantry Regiment, PA.  USAFFE had learned that guerrilla type fighting was not in accord with the rules of land warfare.  We now controlled the Cagayan Valley from Tuguegarao to Balete Pass and from Kiangan to Palanan on the east coast.  Since Palanan would make an excellent beachhead for any Allied landing, Colonel Warner took a hundred men across the rugged Sierra Madre Mountains to the harbor of Palanan.  There, with the assistance of local labor, they built a pier suitable for landing a small supply ship or a submarine.  After the completion of our pier, we quickly requested equipment, ammunition, clothing, and medical supplies from USAFFE.  But none came.  None were available.

However, on two occasions, a single P-40 from Bataan dipped down over our airstrip and dropped a box of ammunition, a few pairs of shoes, and a box of medical supplies.  These air drops did more for our morale than for our warehouses.

By April 9, starvation, disease, heat, and the ubiquitous enemy had brought about the collapse of Bataan, thus ending any possibility of further supplies.  Our patrols now averaged three rounds of ammunition per man.  Shortly, we received orders from USAFFE to cut our regimental strength to 600.  Three thousand Japanese troops were massed at San Jose'.  Our patrols kept us posted as they moved north into the valley.

On May 6, the big guns and the radio on Corregidor were silenced, and we found ourselves unable to contact any ally.  Within a few hours, however, we picked up the voice of General Wainwright on a Japanese radio in Manila: "We are 7,000 miles from Home.  There is no hope of reinforcement.  Further resistance and bloodshed are useless.  I hereby order all Fil-American Forces in the Philippines to lay down your arms and to surrender."

Colonel Nakar called a staff meeting and announced: "We will surrender two companies at Bagabag.  The remaining soldiers will go home, grease and hide their rifles, and become farmers until the invasion of the American Forces.  I, myself, will not surrender.  I have a mission to accomplish; I must contact General MacArthur in Australia and maintain communication with him until the American invasion of the Philippines."

Within several days, Colonel Warner returned from Palanan and told us that the Japanese had a bounty on each of our heads.  The rainy season was starting and food was scarce.  Any Filipino who helped an American was to be executed.

The same day, General Wainwright's emissary, Lieutenant Colonel Theodore Kalakuka, arrived by plane from Manila; he informed us that the Japanese intended to annihilate all the prisoners they had captured on Bataan and Corregidor unless the Fil-American Forces surrendered.  He said: "There are thousands of American prisoners in the camps; they are extremely sick and in urgent need of medical care.  Any Americans who don't surrender will be considered deserters by the United States Army."

On June 20, Colonel Warner officially surrendered the 14th Infantry Regiment to the Japanese.  Shortly, six of us Americans found ourselves sleeping on the concrete floor of the guardhouse of a Japanese cavalry squadron that was occupying the old Constabulary Barracks west of Echague – the town where Colonel Nakar and I used to have our conferences with the Filipino government officials.  We were just ten miles from the regimental radio shack where Colonel Nakar was still trying to get a message to General MacArthur.

For one month we were assigned to all the unpleasant chores of the squadron – pumping water by hand, preparing vegetables, burying garbage, and the like.  We were pleased when we heard through the "bamboo telegraph" that the Japanese had accepted the Filipino government officials we had appointed.  We knew they were and would remain loyal to the United States.

Signal Message

            On July 5, Nakar finally succeeded in contacting Australia.  I quote from General MacArthur's book, Reminiscences:

"After the fall of Corregidor and the southern islands, organized resistance to the Japanese in the Philippines had supposedly come to an end.  In reality, it never ended.. . . Unfortunately, for some time I could learn nothing of these activities.  A deep black pall of silence settled over the whole archipelago.

"Two months after the fall of the Manila Bay defenses, a brief and pathetic message from a weak sending station on Luzon was brought to me.  Short as it was, it lifted the curtain of silence and uncertainty and disclosed the start of a human drama with few parallels in military history.... The words of that message warmed my heart.  'Your victorious return is the nightly subject of prayer in every Filipino home!"

 

October, 1945, Main Street, Cabanatuan.

Spring, 1945.  Food caravan of carabao-drawn carts.

We were to learn later that Colonel Nakar had been betrayed by a disloyal Filipino.  The Japanese captured Nakar and the regimental radio in a mountain cave near Jones.  He was taken to the old Spanish fort (Santiago) in Manila, where he was thrown into a dark dungeon to face starvation, thirst, water rats, and ingenious systems of torture.  He was cruelly questioned and eventually beheaded.  Yet, he adhered to his "belief in God" and to his concept that "the many rights of a free people are a very precious commodity." His short war was not fruitless; his "brief and pathetic" message gave General MacArthur the reassurance he needed to plan his campaign in fulfillment of his pledge to the Filipino people: "I shall return!"

The activities of the guerrillas in the Cagayan Valley had produced a much needed diversion for General MacArthur, during his dire days on Bataan and Corregidor.  These same guerrillas, who had been organized, trained and guided by Colonels Warner and Nakar before being sent home to be "farmers," later served under the brilliant leadership of Colonel Russel Volkmann, and gave tremendous assistance to General MacArthur during the invasion of Lingayen Gulf on January 9, 1945.  They also played an important part in the ultimate defeat of Japan's distinguished General Tomoyuki Yamashita, "The Tiger of Malaya." In September, 1945, the Tiger was amazed and chagrined to find his veteran troops surrounded and beaten in the Cagayan Valley and in the Northern Mountain Province by these forces.  Although the Filipinos had not faced up to the big guns on the destroyers in Lingayen Gulf, they thoroughly enjoyed twisting the tail of the Tiger.

On July 20, 1942, the six of us from Echague plus another American prisoner were trucked to Japanese P0W Camp No. 1 at Cabanatuan, on the central plains of Luzon.  About one mile before reaching the camp, we suddenly became very aware of a horrible stench – dysentery and death.

Condemned

            Surrender, to the Japanese, was a violation of military morality.  Moreover, the Japanese never approved, either in theory or in practice, the Geneva Convention, concerning prisoners of war.  They also were not prepared for the large number of sick, starving, and diseased troops that they would capture on Bataan and Corregidor.  The Japanese Imperial Army did not recognize the Americans as prisoners of war, but designated them captives with the status of criminals awaiting trial.

The Japanese system of discipline, enforced by frequent beatings, plus the language barrier, led to much brutality toward the captives.

As we drove up to the gate, made of slender poles and barbed wire, I immediately recognized the camp as one built a few months prior to the war for a Philippine Army division.  It was located on several hundred acres of treeless wasteland (formerly rice paddles) near the foot of the Sierra Madre Mountains.  It contained some one hundred cantonment-type bamboo barracks with roofs of cogan grass and walls of sawaii or nipa.  Within the barbed-wire enclosure, many of the 6,000 half-naked prisoners slowly milled about the camp.  In the several guard towers along the fence, the sentries closely scrutinized the movements of the prisoners.

Up for Grabs

            The arrival of our old truck and its handful of new prisoners was scarcely noted in camp.  Our few earthly possessions were quickly placed on blankets spread out on the ground.  Guards, gesturing and grunting, carefully computed the value of the various articles.  They were quick to snatch up watches and fountain pens suitable for ownership.  They took my little black medical bag – my most valuable possession.

Soon, I was in a dark shack, the office of the Camp Medical Officer, Colonel James 0. Gillespie, an old friend and my former Chief of Medical Service at the Sternberg Army Hospital in Manila.  We had a short chat.  He told me a few of his experiences as a hospital commander on Bataan, and I related some of my adventures as Surgeon for MacArthur's First Guerrilla Regiment in the mountains of northern Luzon.  I spotted my bag on his table.

"Is this yours?" he asked.  As I nodded, he handed it to me and said, "Our soldiers are starved and exhausted.  They are dirty, unshaven, pale, bloated, and nearly lifeless.  They stagger and stumble, uncertain of their balance.  Some of their limbs are grotesquely swollen to double their normal size.  It is the saddest sight I have ever seen.

"Most of them have malaria.  Many of them have beriberi and dysentery.  Some are wounded; their wounds will not heal.  The soldiers from Bataan have just completed a terrible Death March – a forced march of one hundred miles from Bataan to Camp O'Donnell at Tarlac, with very little food or water.  The soldiers who couldn't keep up were bayoneted or clubbed to death – in full view of the others.  It was a horrible ordeal.

            "Our camp is divided into three group areas and the hospital.  Each group has a commanding officer, a staff, and a dispensary.  You will be Medical Officer in charge of the Group 2 Dispensary.  Later on, I want you to be Chief of Medicine at the Camp Hospital.  There is very little medicine.  Stretch it as far as you can.

"Gene, we are happy to have you aboard."

The Group 2 Dispensary proved to be a two-by-six-foot area on bamboo slats in a small shack.  This was to be my home for the next two months.  Although my weight was down to 125 pounds (from 165) because of amebic dysentery, I was stiII very active and in relatively good health.  How lucky I was to have been spared the starvation, the disease, and the battles on Bataan, and especially to have escaped the Death March.

 

October, 1944.  Cabanatuan Hospital, Ward 7.

November, 1942.  Patients with beriberi.

The first shortage of which I became aware was water.  The camp's deep well required a diesel engine to pump the water to a central tank, from which it went to several outlets in the hospital and in each group.  Since there was always a shortage of diesel fuel, there was always a shortage of water.  By standing in line for thirty minutes, one could obtain a canteen of water – strictly for drinking purposes only.

Baths were available only on rainy days.  Fortunately, when I arrived in camp, it was the beginning of the rainy season.  It rained almost every afternon, and we got a "bath" by standing under the eaves of the barracks roof.  There was no soap.

The evening meal was my introduction to the diet, if one could be so generous as to call it a diet.  I had been forewarned that I would need only my canteen cup for dinner.  After waiting in line for some time, I received a half cup of lugao (a watery rice soup) and some bad tasting greens – a very skimpy meal compared to those I had had with the guerrillas: chicken, eggs, vegetables, pork, and the like.  As the days went by, I discovered that the meals did not improve, just lugao and greens day after day.  On rare occasions, a small helping of mongo beans or corn might be added.  About once each month, a carabao (water buffalo) was killed and added to the soup for 10,000 prisoners.  We were lucky to find a few threads of meat in the soup.

Our captors reasoned that slow starvation would make the prisoners too weak to attempt to escape or resist authority.  To further insure our subservience, the Japanese divided us into groups often, called blood brothers.  If one prisoner escaped, the remaining nine were severely punished.  Recaptured escapees were paraded around the camp for some twenty-four hours and then used for bayonet practice.

During my first night in camp, I spent several hours walking under the stars, just thinking.  Was I right to surrender?  I had certainly eaten much better when I was with the guerrillas, and I had been free to go to many places not occupied by the Japanese.  What was done, was done.  There wasn't much I could do then to change my situation.  There was no question that the prisoners in Cabanatuan urgently needed medical care.  From that point of view, I was in the right place.

Apparitions

            The next morning some three hundred pathetic, skeletonized human beings lined up in front of my dispensary, hoping for miracles.  Some of the patients recognized me from Manila, where I had treated them in the 57th Infantry or the 14th Engineer regiments of the Philippine Scouts.  But, with their shaven heads and great loss of weight, they were not easy to place.

One by one, we tried to help them solve their problems.  Since there was very little medicine to give out, most of the therapy had to be improvised.  My little black bag was now quite exhausted.

Those with dysentery were told to get some charcoal from the kitchens and to eat a spoonful several times a day.  They were advised to sleep on the right side so as not to irritate the sigmoid colon.  In spite of the water shortage, they were told to wash their hands after each visit to the latrine.  Malaria patients were given quinine, but only enough to keep their symptoms under control.  Insufficient supply prevented any attempts at cures.

Both "wet" and "dry" beriberi were prevalent.  There was no therapy.  We tried to make some medicine by growing yeast cultures, but the process was too slow, and we could not see that it did any good.  On one occasion, we received a 1,000cc bottle of ticki-ticki.  It served one purpose – the injection was so painful that it quickly separated out the goldbricks.  We could not see any other beneficial action.  Hundreds of beriberi cases went on to die each month.  The arrival of Red Cross food packages just before Christmas of 1942 allowed an adequate diet for several weeks.  We had three packages each.

Scurvy came on suddenly in large numbers of prisoners several times each year.  An issue of one or two limes brought remarkable results; it stopped the hemorrhaging temporarily.

Nightly Toll

            All seriously ill men were transferred to the camp hospital daily, in the hope that they could get some of the extra food available there in small quantities.  In spite of the daily transfers, each night would bring the death of several prisoners in the barracks.

Sanitation was a serious problem from the beginning.  Flies were ubiquitous, including blue and green bottles.  Maggots thrived in the latrines, weakened the walls, and caused cave-ins, which sometimes engulfed a prisoner.  Daily rains further weakened the walls.

Most patients had diarrhea or dysentery.  Many were too weak to reach the latrines and soiled the ground near the barracks.  The lice were eventually brought under control through the steam sterilization of clothing.

By September, 1942, I was chief of the medical service in the camp hospital, and had some 2,000 patients on twenty wards that had originally been built to hold forty men each.  Each patient was allotted some two-by-six-feet of space on the bamboo slats of an upper or lower deck.  We attempted to keep the more seriously ill men on the lower decks.

I visited each patient daily.  There was actually very little that I could offer them except some hope for a better tomorrow.  The patients all suffered from multiple diseases. Many had lost from one-third to one-half their body weight.  Most of them had one or more vitamin deficiency disease.  Nearly everyone had beriberi.  The men with the "wet", type were bloated with edema, which began in the feet and progressed upward to the head.  A patient with edema of the legs during the day frequently awakened the following day with edema of the face.  Patients with extensive edema became nearly helpless and unable to move about.  Tropical ulcers, which continued to weep as long as the edema was present, developed on their legs.  At times, the edema could be controlled by removing all salt from the diet.

Those with dry beriberi were usually very thin.  Their chief complaint was severe lightninglike pain in their feet and legs.  The dry pitients found the best relief from pain by soaking their feet in cold water.  Many sat up all night with their feet in pans or buckets.  On rare occasions, a patient with dry beriberi would become edematous; as the edema developed, the pain in the feet would lessen.  Most of the men who survived the dry beriberi still have neuritis in their feet and legs, despite many years of vitamin administration.

We saw beriberi heart disease rather frequently.  The heart became enlarged with edema and its beat was often irregular.  Some of these patients were afraid to lie down; their heartbeats would stop when they did.  Sudden death was a frequent outcome.  Although beriberi heart disease is often considered reversible, many of the survivors still suffer the irregularity of heartbeat.

 

August, 1942, From Zero Ward to the Morgue.

September, 1942.  The naked dead, carried on window blinds to burial.

Pellagra was common and manifested itself in many symptoms – conjunctivitis, glossitis, amblyopia, angular stomatitis, and geographic tongue, and scrotal dermatitis of varying degrees.  These conditions improved only when the diet did.

Adventitious Aid

            Xerophthalmia and optic neuritis frequently did permanent damage to vision, and in a few cases resulted in complete blindness.  As in the camp at large, cyclical epidemics of scurvy-bleeding gums and minor subcutaneous hemorrhages -were quickly stopped with limes, and 300,000 three-grain tablets of quinine enabled us to keep most of the active cases of malaria under control.  Occasionally, cerebral malaria was seen.  In spite of intensive therapy, 50 percent of those infected died.  Some 425 cases of diphtheria developed.  Of these, 123 patients died before the Japanese got us a limited amount of antitoxin.  Patients with diabetes mellitus also caused me much concern.  There was no insulin, but starvation seemed to solve the problems of diabetes.

Several times during our forty months of incarceration and starvation, we received Red Cross food packages.  Each time we had this extra food, several hundred cases of re-feeding gynecomastia appeared.  As our diet returned to starvation levels, the gynecomastia slowly disappeared.  Again, after liberation, when food became and remained adequate, there were many instances of re-feeding gynecomastia that lasted for several weeks to several months.

In normal health, the liver inactivates any excess of androgen and estrogen.  In a state of starvation, the liver becomes impaired and cannot inactivate the excesses produced by a sudden increase in food intake.  The gynecomastia appears and lasts until the estrogen and androgen are reduced to their normal levels.

Some 1,000 patients with dysentery were cared for in the ten to twelve wards of the dysentery section under the supervision of a separate staff of medical officers and corpsmen.  This section had a tremendous sanitary problem.  Many of the patients were too weak to leave their wards, or they passed out on the way to the latrine.

Zero Ward – an empty building with wooden floors – was located in the dysentery section of the hospital.  It received its name when it was discovered that it had been missed when the wards were numbered.  Here, patients were sent to die.  The ward usually contained thirty to forty extremely debilitated patients lying naked on the floor, frequently in their own vomitus or dysenteric stool.  Flies walked casually over the leathery skin of the dying men.  Rarely did one arouse himself sufficiently to threaten a fly.  In fact, most did not desire to be disturbed and typically responded: "I have suffered enough. just go away.  Let me alone."

Exhausted and sick corpsmen slowly moved among the dying, trying to keep them clean and giving them food or medicine when it was available.

Dire Economy

            When the camp was but a few weeks old, the Japanese had issued several cartons of condensed milk for the benefit of the seriously ill.  In spite of this extra nourishment, most of the recipients died rather promptly – taking the milk with them.  We learned our lesson quickly: "Don't give extra food to dying patients." This, of course, was a far cry from the teachings of Hippocrates, and the practice of medicine in the States, but from then on, the extra food went only to patients who could possibly recover and to those who had a will to live.

During the first six months of camp, patients died at the rate of thirty to fifty each day.  They were promptly removed to the morgue.  Each afternoon, many gaunt prisoners formed lines at the morgue to carry the naked bodies to the cemetery.  Following brief religious ceremonies, the skeletons were laid in common graves.  On rainy days, the graves filled with water; it became necessary to hold the bodies down with poles while dirt was shoveled on top of them.  Sometimes, the rains uncovered the bodies, and animals ate away the flesh.

Deaths totaled some 2,400 during the first eight months of camp.  The Japanese issued documents certifying malaria, beriberi, or diphtheria as the cause of death, but it was starvation that reduced the prisoners' chances of recovery to zero.

July, 1942.  Cabanatuan Cemetery.

When Graves Registration researched the Cabanatuan cemeteries shortly after the War, they found and disinterred 2,637 bodies.  Many others had died on labor details and in other camps.

The camp had not been in operation many days before the Japanese requested labor details of various sizes for work within and outside the camp.  Although an occasional group would be commanded by a cruel guard and unbelievable brutality occurred, the men in the labor details often received extra food and remained relatively healthy.

On good days a group went to the forests to gather firewood for the camp kitchens.  A rice detail drove some ten carts pulled by carabao to Cabanatuan several times each week to get sacks of rice for the mess halls.  At times, the Filipinos hid notes, medicines, and money in rice sacks addressed to certain prisoners.  This underground system saved hundreds of lives, before the Japanese discovered it.

After many months, a sanitary detail consisting mainly of former Engineers – succeeded in building deep septic-tank latrines that were cave-in proof.  They made efforts to control maggots and flies by daily applications of lime.  Gradually, all buildings and walks were bordered by ditches to provide drainage and to prevent quagmires from forming during the rainy season.  Many details went to various parts of Luzon to repair roads, bridges, and airports, or to work as stevedores.

Sow and Reap

            Some of the prisoners suggested to the Japanese that a successful farm would supply extra food.  The farm was started and expanded rapidly; many groups of one hundred men each were marched – barefooted – to spend the day on the farm.  The farmers worked under severe conditions, they had to work bent over from the waist; they were never allowed to squat.  Despite a very hot sun, they got only one five minute rest break in the morning and one in the afternoon.

Nearly every day, the Japanese insisted that larger and larger numbers of patients be returned to duty, to work on the farm.  To my surprise, many very sick patients who were returned to duty status became rather husky farmers within a few weeks.  Also to my surprise, the Japanese soon found that they could make some extra money by selling the farm products to civilians in Cabanatuan.  Many prisoners started small gardens of their own to get extra food.  Any produce had to be carefully watched, as it was apt to be stolen.

The Beginning End

            In September, 1944, we saw the first evidence of American military activity-thousands of planes coming over from the East-and the Japanese ordered us to make a health survey of the camp.  The sickest patients were to remain in camp (they were repatriated by the Pangets of MacArthur's invading army following the landing on January 9, 1945).  In October, the healthiest prisoners were taken by trucks to the Old Bilibid Prison in Manila for shipping-out to Japan.  On December 13, 1944, 1,619 starved prisoners were marched five miles to the Port of Manila and transferred to the "Hell Ship" Oryoko Maru for the long and tragic trip to Japan, and on to Korea and Manchuria.  Less than 400 survived.

Before we left Cabanatuan for Manila, I asked the camp psychiatrist, Colonel Stephen Sitter, why very few of the prisoners passing through Cabanatuan ever made any effort to take their own lives, even though they were starving and, seemingly, suffering hopeless situations.  He answered, "They were all too busy concentrating on survival to think about suicide." END