POW Imprisonment

The Japanese commandant of Camp O’Donnell, who spoke in English and wore a pressed white uniform and a long Samurai saber, offered a chilling greeting for the survivors of the death march and the other arriving prisoners of war: “We are enemies. We shall always be enemies. You people think you are lucky to have escaped with your lives. I tell you the lucky ones are already dead. I am interested in only one thing: how many people die every day.”[i] Cipriano Ramirez of Silver City recalled the conditions at Camp O’Donnell as “beyond description. There was no water, and the dead and dying were everywhere. We dug straddle trenches for latrines, which soon turned foul. The rice we were given was watery and worm-infested. All night long, dying soldiers screamed as their temperatures rose from dysentery and malaria.”[ii] Several weeks after Corregidor fell on May 6, and after they were marched through the streets of Manila, the new American and Filipino prisoners of war were trucked to Camp O’Donnell and entered to find the shocking conditions within. Those who made the march stood a worse chance of survival than those who did not, as comparatively fewer of the POWs from Corregidor would die at Camp O’Donnell.

The day following his arrival after finishing the Death March, Pedro Espinosa, then a 19-year-old teenager from Gallup, fought malnutrition and exhaustion to help organize burial details for the hundreds of men dying from malaria, dysentery, and malnutrition. “They were dropping like flies,” Espinosa said in 2000. “Starvation, dehydration, and malaria were prevalent there.” Espinosa said his detail buried seventy-six men in one day, doing their best to dig shallow graves in the hard volcanic ground. His brother Damien had reunited with Espinosa in O’Donnell, but he eventually succumbed to the effects of dysentery and malnutrition. “He died on July 6, 1942,” Espinosa said. “That’s when I buried him.”[iii] Tony Reyna thought himself fortunate to be on the work details, as it got him out of O’Donnell, though he was beaten by guards more than once on a work detail. The first man from Taos Pueblo died at O’Donnell, Fernando Cocha, and Reyna said “we buried him in the ground. It was hard as a rock, and when you’re so weak it was pretty tough.”[iv] 

Between April and June, more than 1,500 Americans, including 200 New Mexicans, and an estimated 22,000 Filipinos died in Camp O’Donnell.[v] Disease, exhaustion, starvation, executions and torture, combined with the cramped conditions and the complete lack of even the most basic provisions at O’Donnell and in other Japanese prisoner of war camps, led to one of the highest rates of POW death in World War II.[vi] After the war, researchers calculated the American death rate in Japanese prison camps at 27 percent on average; the rate for most German and Italian POW camps was four percent (of the 160 New Mexicans who were prisoners of Germany, only six died, compared to half of New Mexicans held by Japan).[vii] By June, even the Japanese knew O’Donnell could no longer stay in operation, and they began moving prisoners to new camps in Luzon, the Philippines, Formosa, Manchuria, and Japan.

After O’Donnell, New Mexican POWs were sent to different camps in the Philippines, or China, Formosa, and Japan. But most went a few miles east to Cabanatuan, where conditions were only relatively better than at O’Donnell. The camp was divided into three parts, with the Japanese in the middle camp. Men continued to die, or further deteriorate into illness or starvation. All of the POWs at one time had at least one serious disease, including dysentery, malaria, pellagra, or one of two forms of beriberi. Dysentery alone killed more than 1,500 American and Filipino POWs between June and July.[viii] Men were beaten for the smallest infraction, and those attempting escape were tortured before their executions. The meager rice ration was supplemented with any edible item that could be found, often mixed together in what they called a quan, which was basically a small cooking pot.[ix]

Medicine was scarce, and men sickened with disease and without hope ended up in Zero Ward, a makeshift hospital where most went to die, though remarkable stories of surviving Zero Ward exist among New Mexican POWs. Tom Foy almost died in Zero Ward but recovered largely due to the help of other New Mexicans.[x]  Dow Bond saved the life of Don Harris, a 200^th sergeant from Central. Bond found Harris in Zero Ward, and Harris recalled Bond “gave me what-for to get up and out. I was dying and didn’t care, and I said, ‘Dow if I get out of here, I’ll kill you.’ Years later I went to see him in Taos, and he said ‘I’ll be damned, you’re back to keep that promise!’”[xi] Louis Mendoza, dying from malaria, remembered wanting to give up, so he crawled into a muddy, infested ditch to die. “My buddies covered me with burlap sacks. A Jap soldier yanked me out and beat the living hell out of me. I prayed ‘Lord, give him all the power you can, so I can just die.”[xii]

The work details kept prisoners working twelve hours a day. Tony Reyna was sent to Cabanatuan, and “was assigned to burial detail. It was hot and stinky, messy. You’d pick up a man and his skin would peel off in your hands. There were flies everywhere. But being out on a detail helped me a lot. I was lucky to be away from the camp.”[xiii] The brutal treatment, including beatings, torture, and firing squads, of POWs also continued at Cabanatuan. But sometimes the bravery of these men provided invaluable inspiration toward the survival of others. Manuel Armijo witnessed the execution August 28, 1942 of Tommy Long, a 27-year old private from Portales, who just before he was shot spat in the face of his Japanese executor.[xiv] Lorenzo Banegas was lined up in a firing squad, after a man in his group escaped. “They lined us up and said it was the last chance to tell them where he was. I wouldn’t stand next to the others because I was shaking. I didn’t want them to know I was chicken. But they found him. His fever was so high he didn’t know what he was doing. They dragged him to a faucet, opened his mouth and filled him with water, then started to jump on his belly. The water poured out. They kept on till they killed him.”[xv]

Over the next two and a half years, more than 300 New Mexicans were among the 2,656 Americans, and as many as 10,000 Filipinos, who died as prisoners of war in Cabanatuan.[xvi] At one time, there were 8,000 American POWs there, making it one of the largest in Asia.[xvii] By the beginning of 1943, the Japanese were moving prisoners out of Cabanatuan to camps in Japan and Manchuria for hard labor in the coal or copper mines, or in naval yards and factories owned by Japanese companies (some, like Mitsubishi, are still in existence). About five hundred American POWs, including New Mexican 200^th CA members Ralph Rodriguez, a future commander of the American Ex-Prisoners of War from Albuquerque, and 29-year old Clovis native Orville Drummond, remained in Cabanatuan until U.S. Army Rangers successfully rescued them in a daring midnight raid January 28, 1945. As the Japanese had already executed hundreds of POWs prior to their retreat from areas of the Philippines, the Rangers spared these particular POWs from a certain death.[xviii]

Some New Mexican POWs ended up in Davao Penal Colony, in the second largest of the Philippines’ more than 7,000 islands, Mindanao. In November 1942, 1,000 POWs arrived there from Cabanatuan, joining American prisoners of war from the Mindanao-Visayan forces, which had surrendered in late May and therefore had missed the death march and O’Donnell. The new arrivals were shocked to see the relative good health of the Davao group, which then included New Mexican Lt. Albert Fall Chase.[xix] Rice was fairly plentiful, and deaths were initially few at Davao, though that changed after a few months and deaths from starvation and disease resumed. Among the new group from Bataan and Cabanatuan was Father Albert Braun, the regimental chaplain from the 92^nd Coast Artillery. Braun, who had survived near death from diphtheria at Cabanatuan, became the senior chaplain at Davao, administering services for all faiths at the camp; to many he was a key spiritual leader of all the POWs. At 53, Braun was the only veteran of World War I among the New Mexico men, and had volunteered for service, putting on hold the stone, European-style mission he was building for his parish on a high hill overlooking Mescalero, which he would finish building after surviving the war.[xx] 

The New Mexicans continued to group together as they had on the march and in the camps. Numerous accounts depict the New Mexico POWs as particularly close-knit. Tom Foy and other Bataan veterans say those from New Mexico shared a particular camaraderie that traced back to the days of Camp Luna and Fort Bliss. According to Luther Ragsdale, “there was something between us the other regiments didn’t have, maybe because we were from the same state. And it carried through the war. We always stuck together.”[xxi] As Dorothy Cave described, other prisoners noted how the New Mexicans cared for each other. “When Dow Bond contracted pneumonia (in Cabanatuan), boys from his battery shared their rations and pulled him through. When (Vincent) Ojinaga sickened, a friend got on a work detail, hoping to bring back some medicine. ‘But the guerillas attacked his convoy, and they killed my best buddy.’ When (Demitri) Doolis, a 25-year old from Albuquerque, nearly died, his friend joined a detail ‘to steal me some food. They brought him back with cerebral malaria. ‘My buddy’s dying’ I told Captain Long. ‘Can’t you find some medicine?’ He did find a little, but it was too late.’”[xxii]

As the Japanese began moving POWs out of Cabanatuan, the New Mexican POWs found themselves increasingly separated from each other. Some had found some relief through the camaraderie, which helped them survive. Toward the end of 1943 and 1944, as American forces closed in on the Philippines, the Japanese forced thousands of men into the hulls of commercial trading ships for labor camps in Korea, China and Japan. Most trips lasted weeks, with little to no food or water. Men went mad under these conditions, drinking their own urine or slashing the throats of other POWs out of sheer thirst.[xxiii] The trips to Japan and China on what became known as the “hell ships” would only add to the story of misery, torture, inhumane treatment – and survival.

[i] Weldon Hamilton. Late Summer of 1941 and My War With Japan. (Las Cruces: Self-published. 2001). Hamilton was a Death March survivor who served with the Army Air Corps. He moved to Las Cruces in 1971, and was an active member of New Mexico’s Bataan Veterans Organization until his death in 2005. He often recalled the speech, saying he remembered it word for word. Other accounts of the speech by Dyess and Manny Lawton support Hamilton’s memory. His footprints are among two-dozen in the Bataan Heroes Memorial in Las Cruces.

[ii] Silver City Sun-News, April 7, 2001.

[iii] Gallup Independent, April 15, 2000. 1-3.

[iv] Tony Reyna, interview with author, February 2009.

[v] Matson, 438-440. Also, John E. Olson. O’Donnell: Andersonville of the Pacific (University of Michigan, 1985) 6, 39.

[vi] Gavan Daws. Prisoners of the Japanese: POWs of World War II in the Pacific. (New York: Harper Collins, 1996). 383-384.

[vii] Daws, 384. Also Hampton Sides. Ghost Soldiers: The Forgotten Epic Story of World War II’s Most Dramatic Mission. (New York: Random House, 2001). 23. Naturally, the figure regarding German POW camps is in stark contrast to the Nazi concentration camps.

[viii] Cave, 224.

[ix] Dyess, 123-124; Cave, 229. The Quan is the name of the newsletter published by the American Defenders of Bataan-Corregidor.

[x] Tom Foy, interview with author, September 15, 2008.

[xi] As told to Cave, 227. Forty years later, Harris would end up serving as a commander of Bataan Veterans Organization, and help dedicate Bataan Bridge in Carlsbad in 1982.

[xii] Cave, 226.

[xiii] Reyna, 2009.

[xiv] Cave, 221.

[xv] Cave, 222.

[xvi] Sides, 334; also Matson, 434-438. The Filipino prisoners were set free by the end of 1942, but not before more than 30,000 of them died as prisoners of war. Today numerous memorials exist throughout the Philippines to them and their American counterparts, at the former sites of the main prison camps, along the route of the march, and at Mt. Samat, atop which sits a ten-story cross and granite monument erected by former president Ferdinand Marcos, himself a Philippine Scout during the war. The Filipinos were singled out for the harshest punishments during the Death March, but many continued to fight against the Japanese in guerrilla forces after they were freed.       

[xvii] Hampton Sides. 20.

[xviii] Sides.

[xix] Shockley, 86-87.

[xx] Dorothy Cave, interview with author, October 17, 2008, in Roswell. In later years after the war, several Bataan veterans, like Mike Pulice, Jack Aldrich and the Baldonado brothers, would contribute money to Braun’s church construction The Mescalero Apache Mission, inside which Braun is buried, has become a spiritual memorial to the men of the 200^th, as well as veterans at large (see Chapter 3).

[xxi] Cave, 25

[xxii] Cave, 213.

[xxiii] Cave, 287-300.

Submitted by Christopher Schurtz, grandson of Paul Shurtz, who died at Bataan