Magnor Peterson

RECOLLECTIONS of MAGNOR PETERSON 2004

My name is Magnor Peterson; I will try to tell you about my experiences during World War II. I enlisted at Fort McArther in San Pedro, California. The date was September 18, 1940. I stayed at Fort McArther to receive my citizenship papers from my family in Havre Montana. My family emigrated from Norway when I was very young and most of my childhood was spent in Havre Montana. I worked on farms that was near Havre in the summers and played football for Havre High School.

I went to boot camp at March Field in California and after two months of boot camp was assigned to the 19th Bomb Group of the 93rd Squadron. The 19th Bomb Group was comprised of B-17D Heavy Bombers. We had seven planes in our group. We moved to Albuquerque New Mexico and opened a new airbase there in July 1941. We trained her until we shipped out on October 4, 1941 with orders to go to Clark Field in the Philippines. We arrived in San Francisco and boarded the USS Coolidge for the trip across the Pacific to meet up with our airplanes, which flew over to Clark Field via Australia. Our trip on the Coolidge took thirty days. We arrived at Clark Field the Air Corp was building new runway, barracks and mess hall for the squadron. The buildings were made out of split bamboo poles.

We immediately started working on our airplanes by painting them olive gray. It was noon to soon, the war broke out on December 8th, we were one day ahead of Hawaii because being west side of the dateline. The Japanese came over bombed and strafed Clark Field. Most of our planes were destroyed while they were on the field. Since we had no more planes, we were issued World War I Springfield Rifles and Since I was a Corporal I was issued a .45 Cal Pistol. We were ordered to clean our rifles and then shoot three rounds out of them to make sure they worked.

Our assignment now was to patrol the Ammunition Dump and I was Corporal of the Guard for that duty. On Christmas Day 1941, my detachment was ordered to Bataan. We fought the Japanese’s until April 9th, 1942. We had to surrender because we had no food and most of the men had malaria, dysentery and other tropical diseases.

On order to surrender we marched from our positions to Mariveles on Bataan where we were to gather. We destroyed all of our rifles and other arms and waited for the Japanese to show. We knew were going to be in for rough time as POW’s when the Japanese searched us and took our rings and watches. One of our officers would not give up his West Point ring. The Japanese soldiers held him down and cut off his finger and took the ring.

The Bataan Death March started at Mariveles and ended at Camp O’Donnell. There was a lot of death on the march. We started our march on April 9th. We had about 100 men in our group. The march from Cabcaben to Sahaba (Samal), we had many of our group killed either by the bayonet, clubbed to death or shot. No food or water was given on this portion of the march. From Orani to San Fernando we received a rice ball and a small amount of water. I stood all night to fill my canteen with water. My canteen was my most important piece of equipment that I had. The water it held was very precious and I tried to keep it filled during my captivity. The march so far had covered 55 miles.

At San Fernando they placed us in very small boxcars for transportation. They packed us so tight that those who died could not fall down. Two Americans in my boxcar died in this way. We finally arrived in Capas and got out of the boxcar. We walked another six miles more to Camp O’Donnell. Our health was so bad that fifty men were dying a day in the prison camp. Water conditions were bad, there was only one faucet for water for all of us and you had to wait all day just to get water. The camp had low grass huts for barracks and when you got up in the morning you had men all around you in the barracks that had died in the night. I was on burial detail for on day and we buried 25 men to each grave mound. That evening I saw a truck with other GI’s in the back and asked them where they were going. They said on a work detail. I asked them to give me a hand and they helped me up in the truck. I went with them on the detail; anywhere was better than Camp O’Donnell.

The truck had a Japanese driver and I was very sick with malaria and dysentery. During the evening we drove into the mountains to Baguio. I was still sick but felt better with the cold mountain air. We drove to Camp John Hays, which had been an American Officer retreat area, which was now a small Japanese hospital. This is where we would work as slaves. We arrived at Camp John Hays on June 13th 1942. There were four POW’s and I started our work. A kind Japanese soldier from the hospital gave me a small capsule of Vitamin B1. I put the capsule in my mouth and spit out the large glass and swallowed the rest. I felt pretty healthy in a few days. Our main food was the crust of rice that we scrapped from the large open vats that we cooked rice in for the Japanese. This was one of our main jobs as the Japanese slaves. We also had to was clothes and we drove trucks to their outpost thru out the mountains. When we drove truck, we were on the buddy system. They kept one POW in camp for each driver and if the driver tried to escape, the Japanese would shot the remaining POW’s in camp. The reason the Japanese wanted to drive trucks was because the guerilla forces were becoming active. They ere ambushing the convey trucks usually the lead or the rear truck. The Japanese had us drive those trucks in case of ambushes; we would get it not them.

We left Camp John Hays for Bontog. This camp is further in the mountains and we drove trucks from this mountain outpost to the lowland. We drove back with ammunition. One day they built a bamboo cage for us 5 POW’s. They put us in the cage and treated us very badly. The way they were treating us, we thought our days were numbered. They took us down to Bilibid Prison on April 4, 1944. I was in Bilibid Prison until July 3, 1944, when we were ordered to march down Dewey Blvd to the docks. We were put into a hold of a small inter-island boat. We were packed in so tight that you could not fall down. Some men were wo sick that they fell and were trampled to death. We were transferred to a larger ship, the Haro Maru (Canadian Inventor) and sent out to sea. We arrived in Formosa in early October 1944. We lost 39 men on the trip to Formosa who died in the hold of the ship. We finally left Formosa and arrived in Moji Japan in November 1944. We left Moji by train and went to Osaka and from there we had to get on a narrow-gauge railroad train to Funatsu.

We arrived at Funatsu, we marched from the railhead to our prison compound where the Japanese took pictures of us. We were housed in two story barracks. The barracks housed about 110 POW’s. There was also a small kitchen and a small two-room hospital. Our job was to work in a small iron smelter. We had to push small dump cars on a narrow rail track to the smelter. The work was hard and we worked long hours. We lost about 18 (11) men while I was at this camp, they died from being worked to death. The war was finally over around August 25th. We were taken to a hospital ship and the ones who weren’t hospitalized went by ship to Tokyo. We were screened and sent home by sending me to the Philippines and then by hospital ship home.