The Death March -- Bataan Survivors Remember Ordeal Of A Half- Century Ago - Surrender, Starvation, Slavery - As If It Were Yesterday

Only a few still living were on the march from Bataan to the abyss.

But those who were marched to the hellish concentration camps of the Japanese Imperial Army remember as if it were yesterday, not 50 years ago.

Their noses wrinkle at the memory of the stinking dead that lay where they fell on the road. Their voices rise in horror when they tell of the ditches that ran red with their blood. Their shoulders sag when they speak of the bone-weary work they did in the slave labor camps.

On April 9, 1942, on the Bataan Peninsula of the Philippines island of Luzon, Maj. Gen. Edward P. King surrendered about 76,000 U.S. and Filipino troops to the Japanese. It was the largest unconditional surrender of American troops to a foreign power in history, and one of the lowest moments for Allied forces during World War II.

King had little choice. Only 27,000 of his troops were listed as "combat effective," and 60 percent of those were weak with malaria, dengue, scurvy, beriberi and dysentery.

The Japanese gathered their prisoners of war on Bataan, a 15-square-mile teardrop of land across the bay from Manila, to begin the grueling march about 60 miles to freight trains that would take them to the camps.

The soldiers who made the Bataan Death March were already starving and diseased; the Japanese had cut off food and medical supplies weeks before. Prodded by bayonets, they stumbled over their own dead and waded through knee-deep dust. More than 600 Americans and many thousand Filipinos died along the way.

Thousands more troops, captured on the small, scrubby stronghold island of Corregidor the next month, were marched or transported to Bilibid Prison or to camps in the towns of Cabanatuan and Tarlac.

About 40 percent of the 27,465 U.S. troops captured by the Japanese in the Pacific Theater died during the marches and the three years of imprisonment that followed.

The march north "was a harrowing experience," said Henry Chamberlain of Lynnwood, one of those first captured. "We had no water with us, no food with us. I couldn't tell you how many days we were on that march. I had malaria and had had an attack. They pushed us along, and we just took care of each other. We held each other up. I felt like if I could just take one more step, one more step, I'd make it. That was the way we did it, one step at a time."

U.S. and British civilians were sent to camps to wait out the war in misery. Soldiers were eventually sent to Japan to slave in mines and shipyards.

Most survivors of Bataan and the camps are in their 70s now. They tell of different experiences at the hands of the Japanese army, but all speak of hunger, fear and pain. None has recovered fully from the experience.

DEFENDERS OF BATAAN, THEN SLAVES OF IMPERIAL ARMY

Henry Chamberlain was a 19-year-old army corporal in charge of an hospital orthopedic ward at the town of Cabcaben when the surrender was ordered.

The Japanese had bombed Manila within hours of the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor Dec. 7, 1941. Within days the Japanese army landed at Lingayen Gulf 100 miles north of Manila, and U.S. and Filipino forces were ordered to retreat to the Bataan Peninsula.

After the surrender, a Japanese unit came to Chamberlain's hospital, ordering Americans to stay and Filipino patients to move out. "They were wounded, ill, emaciated, debilitated. Some were on crutches and some were in casts. . . . They wound up on the march because the Japanese fooled them into thinking they'd all be able to walk home."

The Japanese set up gun emplacements on the hospital grounds. The Americans on Corregidor, a tadpole-shaped island a mile across Manila Bay, thought the evacuation was complete and bombed the area, killing an American worker and wounding others.

Chamberlain and others had been forced to dig those gun emplacements. When they finished, they were taken to the road and pushed into the midst of a march north.

If a captive broke ranks for any reason - to rest, help a fallen soldier or run out into a field to pull a stalk of sugar cane - he'd be shot or bayoneted on the spot.

So they didn't rest. They held each other up as they staggered along. And they passed up the fields and the ditches - the water was full of mud and blood anyway.

"You'd pass by many bodies," Chamberlain said. "Some of them had been run over by trucks. You weren't allowed to touch them to move them over to the side of the road. I really don't remember a lot of it, I was so sick at the time."

Filipino civilians risked their lives to give the troops pop bottles filled with water, or packets of food. They'd press rice into lumps the size of baseballs, wrap them in banana leaves, toss them to the captives and run for their lives.

In Chamberlain's 3 1/2 years of captivity, he worked much of the time in a sugar mill on Formosa Island. When he was freed, he approached a Japanese officer and demanded his uniform and saber. The officer stripped and handed over the sword.

Someone stole it all while he was being checked out at Madigan Army Hospital in Tacoma after repatriation.

SCOUTS STRIPPED, STARVED AND MARCHED

Rosendo Luna was a member of the Philippine Scouts, an elite fighting unit formed in 1901, trained by the U.S. Army and sworn to defend U.S. interests.

When word of the surrender came to Luna's unit on Bataan, the troops destroyed guns, ammunition and gas masks before sitting down to wait for the Japanese.

While they were marched, they held hands to keep the weak from falling. At each stop, they picked up more captives.

"We could not escape," Luna said. "I could not run out of the death march because I didn't have the guts to get away from my friends who were marching."

The heat and the stench from dead men and animals along the road were unbearable, Luna said. Flies bit the captives. They waded through dust and thanked God it wasn't the rainy season.

At San Fernando, they were loaded into boxcars, 200 men in a space so small they couldn't fall if they collapsed.

When they reached Camp O'Donnell, the Japanese stripped them of watches, rings, coins, religious medals. All they had left were their ragged, dusty clothes.

They sat for hours in the sun, waiting for whatever. Finally they were given an indoctrination into camp life. There was only one punishment, no matter what the infraction: "You will be shot."

They ate a few spoonfuls of rice a day. Sometimes it was boiled in a thin broth made from one unfortunate water buffalo. They ate rats, mice, tadpoles, leaves.

"The death toll there was 300 to 500 a day," said Luna, now 76. "What kept me alive was maybe my prayers."

DETERMINED TO RESIST, A SOLDIER MAKES HIS STAND

Joe Taton was a front-line infantryman with the Filipino Scouts. The Japanese overran his country like ants, he said, and he joined a suicide platoon to go out and meet them as they came. "I heard them first, a language that wasn't English. I was one of the first to see them face to face."

The foxholes were full of dead, and Japanese soldiers were swimming in the bay to get away from the fighting. The Filipinos shot them as they swam. "I was wondering where they were swimming to."

When the surrender came, the Filipinos were told they could disguise themselves and join the civilian population. They declined. Then they were told, "Well, men, from now on, you're on your own."

Taton and three others decided to go to Corregidor and join the troops there in one last stand. They got as far as Mariveles before they were captured.

The Japanese posted them in front of the big cannons pointed toward Corregidor. If the Americans shelled the artillery, they would hit the captive Scouts.

Finally, Taton, too, joined the long march north. He was sick with malaria and dysentery and, thinking he was dead or dying, the Japanese threw him into a ditch.

Civilians picked him up, stripped him of what was left of his uniform and dressed him in a rice sack, tied at the crotch. They nursed him and three others back to health.

As soon as he felt better, Taton told them, "I am living. I have an obligation that is unfinished. I am a soldier." They took him to a town where he caught a ride to Manila. He joined the underground resistance for the rest of the war.

"I don't like to reopen this," he said, wiping away a tear. "Maybe tonight I'll have a nightmare again. Killing is on my hand."

KINDNESS FROM A JAPANESE COOK

Cecil Parrott, 71, of Bellevue, was an Army radio operator in Manila. Before the surrender, the duty was fantastic. Parrott took dance classes - the rhumba, conga and samba - and learned to speak Tagalog.

But by Christmas Day, the Army was evacuating the city. A truck was supposed to pick up Parrott at his office. When it didn't come, he joined a medic outfit headed for Corregidor.

A maze of tunnels had been bored into the rock on that 3 1/2-mile-long island, forming a bombproof haven for thousands of troops. Outside, a system of foxholes formed flimsy shelter for troops defending the beach.

The Japanese bombed Corregidor incessantly. For his own safety, Parrott asked to be sent back to the jungles of Bataan with his unit.

The morning after surrender, the 30 men in his unit divided up what food they had left, about four cans apiece. They put their weapons in a pile and went out on the road, waving handkerchiefs as a final signal of surrender.

After a seven-hour march to Mariveles, Parrott was separated from his buddies.

"I was thirsty from the march. It was dark. I asked someone for water, and they pointed over in the dark to a hydrant. I put down my bag and asked someone to watch it while I filled six canteens with water. When I got back my bag was gone. They said a Japanese came along and got it. I guess it could have happened. But that was the saddest thing, to lose all my food like that."

Parrott had only one way to carry the rice he was given on the march - in his socks, tied to his belt loops. "Some of it was moldy. We had maybe one or two cans of salmon for 60 people that they'd put in (the rice) sometimes. Sometimes we put a little chocolate in it. It gave it a kind of gray color. It wasn't palatable, but we ate it."

On the fifth or sixth day, the weakening Parrott dropped back behind the guards. He and five others rounded a turn, and there in a field was a Japanese soldier waving to them "like an American. He wanted us to come over."

He asked if they were hungry, so they went to him, even though they thought they'd probably be bayoneted.

"He was a cook. His men were out on maneuvers, and they'd be out until dark. He'd been to the States. That's how he knew English. He gave us a saucer of rice and one mackerel that he cut up in five pieces, a little soy sauce, tea. It was just like the Waldorf. Then he stood up and said, `Time to go now. I hope you get home soon to your loved ones.'

"Because of that, I could not hate the Japanese. That man was so kind. He saved my life."

LAST STAND ON CORREGIDOR, THEN SHIPYARD SABOTAGE

Odas Greer, 77, had been in the Philippines two years and was due to come home Dec. 15, 1941. His clothes were packed and on the pier, waiting to be loaded. His plans were canceled with the Japanese attack.

Greer, who lives in Mountlake Terrace, was an Army sergeant on Corregidor.

On May 6, 1942, just before the island fell, a hand grenade went off under his machine gun, spraying metal into his body. The man beside him had lost an ear, but he picked Greer up and carried him into a tunnel, where a Navy corpsman patched him up.

After the surrender, the captives were taken to Manila and marched up Dewey Boulevard to Bilibid Prison. From there they rode a boxcar to prison camp.

"I still had open wounds in my stomach, chest and leg. My buddy, LeRoy Osburn, carried my blanket and mosquito bar (netting). He kept me going. He practically carried me. Without him I would have been one of those that fell out."

Greer is one of the few survivors who kept a diary and managed to get it home. The 24 pages have yellowed, and some writing has faded. But one can still make out what was important then:

A list of hundreds of things Greer wanted to eat when he was free. Fruitcake, Jell-O, Campbell's soup, Maxwell House coffee, Ghirardelli chocolate, bacon.

Books he wanted to read, including "Notices of Judgment of the Food and Drug Administration" and "More Fun in Bed."

Bible verses and a long poem written by one of the prisoners.

Greer was transferred in 1943 to Japan to work at the Mitsubishi shipyard, cleaning the drydocks and installing blocks to keep the ships steady on the ways.

The prisoners sabotaged the ships every chance they got, sweeping steel filings into the ships' propeller bearings, leaving seacocks open so the ships sank, plugging boiler pipes so they would explode, driving nails into electrical wiring so it shorted out.

"They couldn't tell if the POWs had done it or if it was just a faulty wire. To my mind, it cost them more to have us working for them than we were worth."

After the war, Greer spent 27 months in hospitals. He has had stomach trouble ever since. Doctors have removed his gall bladder and a kidney. His joints hurt so bad he can't sleep past 4 in the morning. He walks with a stoop.

FORAGING FOR FOOD, HE FOUND A CACHE OF CASH

Marcelino Serra, 77, of Seattle, was a member of the Filipino Scouts on Corregidor.

The Japanese soldiers hit the beach at 11 p.m., and the battle raged four hours. By dawn, the bay was full of dead Japanese soldiers and the water was red.

Serra thought the Filipinos and Americans had won the battle, so he was incredulous when the surrender order came the next day.

As they came down Malinta Hill, Serra saw Japanese soldiers lining up Americans along the cliff and shooting them. About 75 were killed before Japanese officers arrived and stopped the carnage.

Commanders of both sides were there - Gen. Masaharu Homma and Gen. Jonathan Wainwright.

Two Japanese soldiers tried to remove Wainwright's ring, but he told them it wouldn't come off. It worked for Wainwright, but not for another captive. When he couldn't remove his ring, a Japanese soldier braced the prisoner's finger against something and cut it off with one bayonet swipe.

Serra and others were sent up Malinta Hill to search for food. They found some flour and an Army money cache, with silver dollars spilling out on the trail and paper money blowing about.

Serra grabbed a can of flour and a mattress cover and stuffed it with money. Back in camp they ate pancakes. And Serra saw that he had maybe $50,000.

When they got to Camp O'Donnell, Serra used the money to organize a casino. They ate well, bribing their Japanese guards for fried chicken, beer, even ice. When Serra was freed in October 1942, he managed to bring out about $35,000. But it did him no good. U.S. money had been outlawed.

BATTLING `GIVE-UP-ITIS'

Harold Page, 72, of Buckley, was a Navy clerk in a communications unit on Corregidor. In May, he was one of about 150 troops hiding in a tunnel, waiting for the Japanese. Many were dead or injured, and the air was stifling. The commanding officer asked for volunteers to open some hatches in the side of the mountain.

"I took my skivvies off and tied them to a broom and stuck it out the top. Nothing happened, so two of us went out. Then we saw five or six Japanese soldiers aiming their guns at us. The only thing I knew how to say in Japanese was good morning, and they got a chuckle out of that."

Page said determination kept him alive in a series of prison camps. "We had a saying in camp - give-up-itis. The fellow who gave up was dead the next day. I remember visiting a friend in the hospital. I said I'd come back when I could. He said, `Don't bother. I'm not gonna make it.' The next day they carried him out. Give-up-itis."

In 1944, Page was put on a ship bound for Japan, where he was to work in coal mines. All the way to Japan, the convoy dodged American submarines that didn't know POWs were aboard. The trip, which should have taken a few days, took more than a month.

Captivity left Page's body weakened. He has intestinal problems and bouts of depression. He attends an ex-POW therapy group at the VA hospital once a week.

"Guys come in, and the first week they just look down at the floor. Maybe by the fourth week they'll start to open up," he said, his voice catching. "I didn't talk about it until after my children were grown. My son saw a TV show about it one time and called me. He said, `I didn't know you went through that.' "

After the war ended but before Page left the labor camp, a Japanese couple came to the fence and talked with him. The man had been an English professor in Tokyo. The families later visited each other's homes.

"I never hated the Japanese people. I hated the ones in charge of us who were so sadistic. If we could have caught the ones in charge of us after the war, we would have killed them."

SEEKING A SEMBLANCE OF CIVILITY IN CIVILIAN CAMPS

Frances Purinton grew up in Seattle. She went to Manila in 1934 on a lark and, three years later, married a British importer. Two sisters followed her to the Philippines.

When the attack came, Purinton was a civilian employee of the Navy Intelligence Office.

About 300 Americans, including Purinton, were given medical excuses that kept them out of the civilian camps. Purinton managed to stay in her own home for more than a year by telling the Japanese authorities that she was English and that her husband was wounded and couldn't survive in a camp. He'd had an abdominal operation, and every week when they had to report to the authorities, they'd douse the scar with mustard, vinegar and Tabasco to irritate it so it would look like a fresh wound.

The authorities gave Purinton an armband to wear in the city. It said "Japanese Enemy Alien."

One day while riding a bus, she sat next to a Japanese soldier. "Every time we'd go over a bump, his samurai sword would hit me in the ribs. I reached down and moved it, and . . . he started to yell at me. He spit at me and pulled out his sword. I thought he was going to run me through, but he let me go. Those swords were blessed by the Emperor, and no one was supposed to touch them."

Eventually it became too dangerous for Purinton and her husband to stay at home, so they moved into the internment camp at the University of Santo Tomas. She still has a copy of Internews, a collection of weekly newsletters published by the internees.

The Internews tells all the good news and none of the bad about the 3,500 people at Santo Tomas. They made a superhuman effort to be normal, organizing garden clubs and bridge tournaments, talent shows and square dances. The children attended school.

They lived in dorm rooms or shanties built of scraps. The food was little better than in the POW camps, but the black market was always open. Once Purinton traded her diamond ring to the Japanese for a can of milk for the baby.

Some babies were born in the camp, but the internees had little energy or desire for sex.

Purinton told of an old woman who berated a man for sitting outside the showers, watching women come out in thin housecoats. "Listen, lady," he told her. "They could come out of there wearing nothing at all and they wouldn't be interesting to me unless they had a ham sandwich in each hand."

When the camp was liberated, Purinton crawled on her belly across the no-man's land designated by the Japanese. There was fighting all around. She ran up to the first American soldier she saw, yelling, "Don't shoot! I'm an American!" She kissed him, and he handed her his helmet to protect her from the shooting.

A BRIGHT, SHINING RESCUE IN THE TROPIC DAWN

Tully Hammill's first memory is of the destruction of Clark Field in the Japanese attack Dec. 7, 1941. He was about 2 and was standing at the fence that separated his yard from the airfield. The air was filled with planes, bombs, smoke, yellow flames and the terrified screams of his mother as she ran to grab him.

Hammill, computer operations manager at the University of Washington's Suzzallo Library, tells his memories comic-book style, full of sound effects and color. The way a child would remember.

Hammill's parents were Seventh-day Adventist missionaries, his father a college professor.

The Japanese arrived about Christmas. The Adventist wives and children were separated from the men for five months. Later, the Hammills were reunited.

"There were hundreds of Catholic priests, missionaries of all flavors, professors and other Americans." The adults formed study groups and attended lectures. "Someone later said that it really had its benefits. There was no brutality."

But once an internee got drunk and escaped. The next day, he thought better of it, returned in broad daylight and tried to climb back in. The soldiers shot him. Hammill remembers seeing the body left hanging on the fence.

On the day the 3,000 internees were freed, the sky filled with planes. "As the Americans approached, one could hear the artillery and strafing nearby. Boom! Boom! Pow! The twin-bodied P-38s were dive-bombing so near it looked like they were going to bomb the camp. They'd do these great wheelies and spins in the air. You could almost see their leather jackets and their faces.

"We were all lined up in the tropic dawn. Suddenly the sky became filled with parachutes of every color. It didn't need to be about war or life or death. It was just a fantastic sight to this little kid who didn't even know about parachutes before that."

The internees were herded into amphibious vehicles and taken to cross a nearby lake. Hammill's parents held him down as they made their way through Japanese fire. As they slid into the water, huge planes came out of nowhere to bomb the Japanese some more.

Hammill thinks Gen. Douglas MacArthur greeted them on the other side, "although I may have reconstructed that. I seem to remember not being particularly moved by it, but the adults were dropping like flies. Everyone was crying and dropping to their knees."