H-POW-ClOlson

Colonel Olson served on Bataan as the adjutant of the 57th Infantry (PS). He made the Death March and arrived at Camp O’Donnell with the first large group of prisoners on April 14, 1942. While at O’Donnell, he acted as the personnel adjutant and later adjutant of the camp. This article was received from Monty Montgomery, 7th Materiel, 19th BG, POW. DL

During April and May of this year, veterans groups held services and reunions to commemorate the last bitter days of Bataan and Corregidor. Numerous Americans crossed the broad Pacific Ocean to join Filipinos in honoring the dead of both countries who fell resisting the Japanese invasion 40 years ago.

They laid wraiths on monuments and in cemeteries throughout the Philippines. Many speech's were made paying tribute to the valor and determination of those who gave their lives fighting side by side against the invaders.

But while these activities took place in Manila, at the national shrine on Mount Samat an Bataan, on the formerly fortified island of Corregidor and other well-known landmarks, no flower was placed and not one word was uttered over a long forgotten and neglected symbol of the suffering that was endured in the first prison camp occupied by American and Filipino captives after the fall of Bataan in April 1942. It is located in what before the war had been the Philippine Army camp named O'Donnell. Here. in the space of three months in 1942, more than 1,500 American officers and enlisted men who had survived the fighting on the Bataan Peninsula perished from exhaustion, malnutrition and disease.

GRIM REMEMBRANCE

On a barren, sunbaked hillside of sand and clay, surrounded by a small tuft of arid, without desert grass some 20 miles north of Clark AB, this monument stands in grim remembrance. Unlike impressive memorials that have been erected at the other historic spots, this one is only' a plain, crudely made cement cross. Black fissures mar the gray symmetry of its somber shape. The lower portion of one arm has dropped or been knocked away. At the base or the six-foot cross, inscribed in black letters an a white background are these simple words:

IN THE MEMORY OF THE

AMERICAN DEAD

O'DONNELL WAR PERSONNEL

ENCLOSURE

1942

Alone, untended and seldom, if ever viewed by Americans, this drab slab of cement has stood for 40 years watching over the spot where once the buddies of hundreds of American soldiers, air men, sailors and marines were buried. Today, the bones that were interred there lie in well-cared-for graves in cemeteries from Maine to Hawaii. But the austere, unpretentious memorial to those who died in this tropic hellhole remains a mute reminder of the fate of one out of every 10 Americans who fought the bloody battle of Bataan.

I saw the cross for the first time 20 years after it was erected. With the sight came a flood of memories long relegated to the recesses of my mind. Though I was seeing it for the first time, I had been intimately concerned with its creation.

I recalled the day in June 1942 when the idea of the cross was born. At that time I was the Adjutant of the American Prisoner of War Enclosure, Camp O'Donnell, Luzon, Philippine Islands around me were some 700 American military personnel. The majority of whom were dying of disease and starvation. These were the men that even the Japanese captors recognized were, in three months time, far along the trail to emaciation, inertia and finally, death.

Since the establishment of the camp on April 12, 1942, more than 1,300 skeletons had been lowered into the water soaked, clay-lined holes that served as graves. The numbers grew daily of those who were carried in blanket litters suspended from bamboo poles by ragged, hollow-cheeked comrades to the cemetery. When the prisoners first occupied the camp, the death toll had been only one or two a day. But as exhaustion, disease and a meager diet overcame the men. the burial details were laying to rest 40 to 50 a day. How had the cross come to be constructed? Who did the work? What is the story behind its existence?

JAPANESE ‘PRESENTO'

On a particularly' blistering day in late June 1942, the Japanese supply sergeant for the Camp O'Donnell Prisoner of War Enclosure, derisively known behind his back as “Banjo Eyes," told Captain Wilson, the supply officer for the American portion of the camp, that he had a “presento” for him. When the latter asked what it was, he was shown a sack of cement.

“Now courtesy of Imperial Japanese Army, you make shrine for men who die.”

Captain Wilson, who had hoped that the “presento” would be an extra sack of rice or some other supplement to the prisoners’ pitifully inadequate diet, gulped and tried hard to cover his disappointment. At this moment the preservation of the living was of far more concern to him than the honoring of the dead. They had been released mercifully from further suffering. But, in the long, bare, unpainted wooden rooms of the rambling building that served as the hospital for the American prisoners, hundreds of men were fighting what was probably to be their last battle, with bodies so wasted from starvation they possessed no strength to over come the ravages of malaria, dysentery, beri-beri, pellegra and a host of other maladies. It would not rally their fagging spirits, now inspire them with hope for the future, to know that their last resting place would be graced with a monument erected by an enemy whose ruthless treatment was responsible for their plight.

So Wilson conferred with me on what was to be done with the sack of cement. We found a small patch of shade next to the unfinished clapboard building used as the headquarters for the American portion of the camp. As we lowered ourselves slowly to the ground, our tailbones, protected only by taut skin that covered no flesh, protested painfully as they encountered the scorched, rock-strewn earth. The supply officer fumbled in the sweat-soaked pocket of his ragged, dirty shirt -- his only shirt -- and produced a damp, crushed cigarette package. From it he extracted a single bent cigarette of local manufacture known colloquially as a “doobie.” Wadding the now-empty pack in his left hand, he threw it away as he gazed yearningly at the stem in his right. With a slight sigh, he abruptly broke it in half and extended one portion to me. Only a confirmed smoker who has been deprived for a long time can appreciate the generosity and sacrifice of this gesture. Though my mouth contorted in anticipation, I controlled my desire with an effort and refused. He acknowledged the declination with a grateful nod.

“What kind of monument are we going to build?” he asked.

I thought a minute and then replied, “I would say a cross, if we can make one.”

“A cross? This Nips aren’t Christians. They would never stand still for that!” he exclaimed.

“They surely don’t expect us to construct a Shinto shrine. Did they give you any directions on what to do?”

“No, Banjo Eyes just said, ‘Imperial Japanese Army want you make monument to dead comrades’. I guess he wanted something that would show their concern over those they are killing so conscientiously.”

He pulled a crude bamboo cigarette holder from his pocket and carefully inserted the fast-disappearing butte. We sat silently regarding a seemingly endless procession that crawled down the sweltering , dusty road that led to the Filipino cemetery, a mile or so away at the far side of their camp.

“We think that our people are dying fast, but it is nothing compared to the way they are going, “ Wilson mused, after a pause.

“I saw the Philippine adjutant’s report the other day. At that time they had more than 17,000 dead. God knows how many more are dying. As you can see, they are adding to that figure about 300 a day.”

“Geez! That’s the equivalent of almost two whole divisions!” I said.

“Right. I am sure that our casualties in combat never came close to that.”

The sun relentlessly reduced our shade to a mere sliver. Sweat poured from our wasted frames. Behind us came the hollow metallic clicking of empty canteens held by human skeletons, standing or squatting on skinny haunches in line in the scorching sun, waiting to get their ration of water before the single faucet was shut off for the day. If one failed to fill his canteen or water bottle in the brief two hours a day that the Japanese allowed the water to run, he went without until the next day. With the toll that the blazing sun took of the body’s water content, one canteen a day was little enough; without it, a man’s resistance collapsed even more rapidly.

Wilson blew the last ashes from his holder. Not a shred of tobacco remained. He stuffed it back in his pocket and stared morosely at the ground.

“What will we put on the cross?” he asked.

“I am not sure. How about ‘To the memory of the American dead, Camp O’Donnell Prisoner of War Camp’?” I responded.

“Hell, I hate those words ‘Prisoner of War’. Can’t we use something else? How about just ‘Camp O’Donnell’?”

Before I could answer one of the headquarters clerks came around the corner of the building with word that I was wanted at the Japanese headquarters. Commenting that I would continue the discussion later, I left Wilson and trudged up the hill to the Japanese office.

At the headquarters I leaned that the Japanese planned to transfer 500 of the most able-bodied American prisoners to another recently established camp at Cbanatuan. The move was to be made two days later and it was my job to have the rosters of those to go for the following day. This so occupied my time until I departed with the group that I never had a chance to ask Wilson what he had done about the bag of cement.

INSCRIBED CROSS ERECTED

I didn’t get an answer until months later when a handful of the survivors from O’Donnell were unloaded, more dead than alive, from trucks in the Cabanatuan Camp. A cross had been built. And, although the Japanese had obviously not been happy with the design nor with the inscription that gave no recognition of the Imperial Japanese Army, they let it remain as I saw it 20 years later.

I never learned whether Wilson was the one responsible for the wording of the inscription. Our paths did not cross again. He remained at O’Donnell. When the last Americans were removed he was sent with a small group to work at Clark Field. He later lost his life on an unmarked prison ship to Japan.

I like to think that he was the one who chose the words. The fact that the inscription did not contain the word “prisoner” reflected his fighting spirit and his refusal to concede anything to the enemy, even though he was in it’s power. It was this spirit that sustained hundreds of our fellow captives through the miserable days of incarceration.

Somehow, as it keeps its lonely, silent watch, the cement cross seems to typify this spirit. Though much has changed around it, the cross stands proudly erect. Battered and scarred, it continues to defy the blazing rays of the sun. Today, only it remains of the camp that 40 years ago held more than 50,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war.

FATE OF THE CROSS UNCERTAIN

The cement cross commemorated the dead. But more important, it symbolizes the determination and faith in their country of the American men who refused to give up, no matter how grim the outlook. It pays a tribute to those who died while sending forth a message of defiance from those that remained. They had surrendered their bodies on the command of higher authority, but their spirits would never capitulate.

May this crude and simple cross be an inspiration to future generations of Americans to keep their country strong and prepared. More than 1,500 voices cry though the veil of death, urging their countryman to always remember the message of the cement cross.

What will be the ultimate fate of the cement cross? Will it in time succumb to the ravages of the weather and neglect? Will it’s grains of sand and cement someday be indistinguishable mixed with the dust and ashes of the hundreds of men it memorializes? Or will it, like the other victims of the O’Donnell Death Camp, be “returned home?’