The John F. Northcott story, “Guest of the Japanese”
Sandra Northcott Pratt
I believe that having a positive attitude is the key to survival and to living a productive and happy life. I grew up always viewing my father as a hero, and as a great example of a man with a positive attitude. From the time I was tiny, my mom told me stories about his bravery during his time as a POW in World War Two. A few years before he passed away, I was able to spend several days with him, recording his version of these experiences. I am so grateful that I did, because there are not very many soldiers left who went through the things that he did, and the details are often forgotten over time. His experience is a little different than the typical story of a man in the United States Navy because he was actually born and raised in the Philippines before joining the United States Navy. The attitude that he used to survive the the events he experienced as a young man, carried on throughout his life and had a tremendous impact on his children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren.
John Florence Northcott was born on September 12th, 1918, the second of three brothers and one sister. He was born at the Saint Joseph Hospital in the capital city of Manila. This was located on the Philippine Island of Luzon. His father had been born in Devonshire, England, and then immigrated to the United States where he became naturalized citizen. He eventually made his way over to the Philippine Islands where he opened the West Coast Life Insurance Company of which he was President. He remembers his father being involved in many social and business interests around the Island. His father enjoyed skeet shooting, bridge, and billiards at the Elks Club there and was an avid car collector. My father remembers his Dad at one time having a garage that held six cars that included: a Buick, a Hudson, a Duisenberg, and a Stutz-Bearcat.
His mother, Petra Ruiz, was also of European descent. She was born in 1901 in Basque, Spain where her father was an important part of the Basque Separatist movement. The goal of the Basque Separatist group was to separate the Basque Region of Spain from the rest of the country. Her father was worried about her safety in Spain, so sent her to the Philippine Islands to be educated in a Catholic convent. We have never been able to get the exact details of how she became married to my Grandfather, but at the time of their marriage she was 16 and he was a wealthy businessman of 68.
My father remembers the first six years of his life as being very happy and carefree. They were one of the wealthiest families on the island, and were often written about in the local newspapers. They owned several businesses and properties in the Philippines. Then at the age of six, tragedy struck. His father had decided to move the whole family, four children by now, to the United States. They had all received their American Citizenship by this time and their father had arranged for them to move to the state of Michigan. While on his way home from a very long journey by ship, he died of a cerebral brain hemorrhage. When the ship arrived in port, instead of welcoming him home, they sadly had to arrange transport for his body. He was a thirty second degree Mason, so a Masonic Memorial Service was held.
After the death of his father, he described their family’s life as a, “steep descent into hell”. His mother, in spite of her education and intelligence, was very young, and not equipped to handle all of the businesses that his father owned. As a result of this and her struggle with the English language, the Island court appointed an administrator to run their family’s finances. According to the individual that the court had appointed to control their finances, his father had not made any provisions for the family in the event of his death. In actuality, he had, but the administrator was crooked and did not inform them of this. He remembered going from being wealthy with chauffeurs and servants, to being paupers with not enough food to eat. He remembered having to walk five miles to school in the stifling hot climate with shoes so thin that they burnt the bottoms of his feet. He recalls many times not having lunch, and when he did, it being nothing more than a jelly sandwich and water. This went on for about six more years. His Mother was under constant strain, being often approached by creditors. They lost their house, had to move to a very impoverished area, and often had nothing to eat at dinners but fish and rice.
In 1930, things suddenly took a change for the better. A local lawyer discovered and approached his mother with the information that the court appointed administrator had been stealing and living off of what should have been their inheritance. He had been stealing and selling their businesses, estates, property, and everything else of value, including a pension of 400.00 U.S. dollars a month that had been left for his father since 1924. According to the new attorney, his father had left them a hotel in the northern part of Manila and thousands of acres of land in different barrios. One of them was found to have top grade asbestos, manganese, and iron ore.
By 1932 the family’s situation was greatly improved. Considering the fact that at this time one American dollar was worth two pesos and that bread and milk were about two and a half cents each. They were able to live like human beings again. During this period of his life, my father attended a school for children of American citizens and military personnel. He completed his studies there and began attending the Jose Rizal College in Manila, where he studied commercial law. From the age of twelve, my Dad worked many different odd jobs, ranging from a job at a baseball stadium in Manila, cleaning bleachers, selling cushions, and food, to working in a local Department store. He was able to save enough money to buy his first car at the age of seventeen. He also became involved with some local gangs at this time; although he said they were nothing like the gangs today. To be “initiated” you had to punch a Chinaman and grab a carton of cigarettes from him. During that time in the Philippines, he said that almost all of the little stores were owned by Chinese citizens. His initiation did not go as easy as planned and they were almost caught by the police.
After his brief experience with his “gang” friends, his life took a more spiritual route, and he began going to mass on a regular basis. He would ride his bike there every Sunday that he could, and said,” Looking back I had no idea how the relationship with God I developed during this time, would get me through the coming years”. Also during this time his family won a million dollar law suit against the Acupan Mining Company. Formerly known as the Balatoc Mining Company in which his Dad had owned ninety five percent of the stock. The three Americans they filed suit against appealed it and it went all the way to the Supreme Court in 1940.
Shortly after this, relations between the United States and Japan began to sour. In the Philippines, they were hearing on the radio and reading in the newspapers about the Japanese belligerence and the threats of aggression they were making. As time passed that year, the threats from Japan became worse and he and his two brothers decided to enlist in the U.S. Navy just in case the United States went to war with Japan. Getting in, according to him, was the hardest part. There was a minimum weight that a man was required to meet in order to enlist and my father was a couple pounds short of it! He gorged himself on bananas and lots of other foods the week before his weigh in to try to hit the weight requirement. On weigh in day – it was with great excitement that he made his weight and was cleared to enlist in the U.S. Navy.
On January 31st, 1941, my father and his two brothers enlisted in the Navy at the U.S. Naval Base in the Philippine Islands. Due to the fact that there was no official Navy training base on the Islands, they had to do their boot camp training with the Marines. He said it was an incredibly tough sixteen weeks of training, and that they learned: self-defense, ammunition, rifle handling, survival skills, and bayonet training. They also learned about things like loyalty, dedication, determination, and obedience. All of which would soon be tested beyond anything they could have believed.
After they completed boot camp, they were assigned duty on their first ship, the USS Vega, YT-116. The USS Vega was a coal-burning, ocean going tug. She was one hundred thirty six feet long, and had a steel hull and wooden deck. On most of the larger Battleships and Aircraft Carriers, sailors would stay on one station their entire tour and rarely got to know any of their shipmates. On the USS Vega, the sailors had to become competent in every area of seamanship. There were only fifteen crew on the ship so cleanliness was a priority along with learning things like, towing four or five heavy barges, making specialized knots to attach to heavy lines, handling five-inch hawsers and coaling the ship. This built heavy muscles quickly and the men were in top shape. They only made a couple trips a week so there was a lot of liberty time. This was about the extent of their duties for the first year. During this time my father had applied for a transfer to the USS Houston, which was the fleet’s flagship, and a heavy battlecruiser. Word went out to him that his transfer was approved and he would be moving over to the Houston in the next couple of days.
Then, during the early hours of December 8th, 1941 (which due to International time was still December 7th in the Philippines) as my father was on the morning shift, the Admiral’s barge pulled alongside the ship. An officer boarded and told them to wake up the Skipper. When their Captain came topside, he was handed a written message and the barge and messenger quickly departed. The skipper gathered all crew on deck and we were told of the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese. The message indicated that all U.S. Naval ships in the Philippines should take war conditions and begin preparations for possible attacks. They immediately painted the ship a dark grey, which took two to three hours. Then they removed all of the uprights and awnings that would obscure their vision, and headed toward the Cavite Naval Base in Manila Harbor to await further assignment. As they made further preparations, the USS Houston, minus my father, took off full speed into the ocean. He was disappointed at the time, but providence was looking out for him because the Japanese ended up sinking the Houston a little later on.
As they came within about fifty yards of Manila Harbor the Japanese began attacking the Cavite Naval base. There was a formation of Japanese fighters and bombers making runs dropping bombs and strafing both military and civilian personnel on the base. Things were exploding all around them. They watched helplessly as the base was completely destroyed. Especially upsetting to him was seeing the hospital flattened. They then remembered that they had one small gun on the ship. Just as they were about to fire, they realized they were aiming at one of their own planes! Realizing they were not trained or equipped for anything like that, they returned to Corregidor. They sailed to Cavite Naval Base two days later to help them recover bodies from the debris. It was horrible according to my Father, and the pictures of destruction I found in a photo gallery on the Internet confirm this. They were forced to cover the bodies not yet removed with lime to keep the flies off until they could return.
Their command headquarters had been destroyed so they had no orders to follow. They decided to go to Pier 7 in Manila, which at that time was the longest pier in the world. The Army was using it to transfer all the supplies they could off the Island so that the Japanese could not get them. They had made landings all around the city and were marching in that direction so time was of the essence. They were able to capitalize on this and load their ship up with all kinds of heavy artillery and weapons. Armed and ready for whatever would come next, they headed back out to sea, and felt invincible with all their new weaponry. After a couple weeks though, they began running out of food and supplies. They were considering heading back to Corregidor when they found an abandoned minesweeper with no one aboard floating adrift. They pulled alongside the aimlessly drifting ship, the USS Finch, and boarded her. Much to their surprise, she was loaded down with fresh food, meat, vegetables, water, and coal, all of which they desperately needed.
A few days after this, they were contacted via radio by the base at Corregidor and told to return to the Island under the command of General Douglas McArthur. They returned to the Island, and had only been there a few days when a frightening incident took place. He was on deck with a friend when all of the sudden three Japanese airplanes appeared overhead and dropped what they thought were leaflets. He and his friend looked up at the same time and realized they were not leaflets at all, they were bombs. All in all, 8 bombs were dropped that day in a circle around their small wooden decked ship. Although their boat was covered in mud and water, the clean-up work did not bother them as they were grateful just to be alive.
Another time they survived a near miss with a bomb was when they were headed out to sea on the USS Vega and a Japanese plane tried to dive bomb them, They were going full speed when their ship suddenly came to a complete stop. They all looked at each other trying to understand what had happened, and their Captain came up to see what had happened because he had engines on the ship in full thrust. Since it was a coal burning ship, they could not just stop like a normal ship, it could only coast to a slow stop, so this was unusual to say the least. A few seconds later, the bomb the Japanese had dropped, landed and exploded about twenty yards in front of them. Had the ship not unexplainably stopped, it would have destroyed them.
While they were assigned to Corregidor, an incident took place that showed how much affect the stress of war can have on an individual. One day, my father and a Quartermaster third class, had the four to eight watch and saw two Japanese photo planes far to the rear of the ship, but heading in their direction. His partner told him to notify the Captain, He went down twice to get the Captain but ten minutes later, the planes were very close and skimming in their direction, level with their eyes. His partner said to uncover the guns and fire at the same level as the hub of the plane’s propeller and rake through the center of the fuselage. The Captain still had not appeared and the planes were on their side, so they let loose with two – fifty caliber guns. The Japanese planes were so close we could see the tracer rounds go through the pilot’s heads. The planes did not drop immediately but continued on for another hundred yards or so before they dropped into the swamp. He said that they felt so elated because of all the atrocities the Japanese had committed that he excitedly turned to his partner and yelled, “Good shooting”! He then noticed his partner standing there very white in the face and not answering. He turned and the Captain was standing there with a forty five pointed at his head. He said at that moment he was so mad and hated him so much that he just looked him in the eyes and smiled. He asked who gave the orders to shoot and he said he did and pointed at his commander. When the Captain turned to look at his partner, he had a gun also pointed at the Captain. The Captain turned pale as a sheet and ordered them both to their quarters, which by this time they were happy to do. They later reported the incident to their Chief in charge and he told them he would take care of it.
On Corregidor, they were bombed on an almost daily basis by the Japanese. The vast majority of the bombs landed in the ocean or elsewhere and did not hit anything important. It got to the point where many soldiers would not even bother going to the bomb shelters when the air raid warnings were given. At the beginning of the Japanese invasion of the Philippines, General Jonathan M. Wainwright, issued the following proclamation, “I call upon every person on this fortress, officer, enlisted man, or civilian, to consider himself from this time onward as a member of a team of men which is resolves to meet the enemy’s challenge each and every hour of every day and night”. General Wainwright’s call was heeded and those who followed him fought with a resolve and inspiration rarely seen before this impassioned call to arms. After originally being assured that relief was on the way, and that they would only have to hold on for three to five weeks, the valiant defenders of Bataan managed to hold out against a force boasting not only superior numbers, but superior equipment as well. Finally, however, five months of malaria, dysentery, a starvation diet consisting of dogs, monkeys, and snakes, and a lack of medical supplies took its toll.
On April 8th, 1941, it became evident that the fall of Bataan was close and the remaining defenders began destroying any item that could have been of use to the Japanese. Around 2 A.M. on April the 9th, 1941, my father and the rest of the Vega’s crew were ordered to evacuate U.S. soldiers from Mariveles back to their stronghold of Corregidor. It was an impossible task they had been given as thousands of soldiers attempted to flee the nearing Japanese army. He does not remember how many men they picked up, but they were close to sinking from the weight and forced to return to Corregidor. In desperation, many tried to swim the three miles of shark infested water between Mariveles and Corregidor. Several made it, but countless others lost their lives to sharks. This was the start of many dark days for him as they heard men shouting out their names and addresses to them to contact their loved ones as they were left behind. They tried to return after dropping off the first load of men but were told it was too late. Until the day my father died, he never forgot the pain and helplessness he felt at that moment.
After returning to Corregidor, they were ordered to anchor on the south side of the island, and his naval adventure ended abruptly as the Vega was shelled and destroyed by Japanese Artillery. He was then assigned to the fourth Marines because he was a qualified .50 machine gunner. He was stationed at the highest point facing seawards as part of a force to repel any incoming Japanese ships. He enjoyed being assigned to the Marines even though he was in the Navy. He was given his own foxhole and a Filipino assistant to act as an ammunition loader. After the fall of Bataan, the Japanese were able to focus all of their efforts on the remaining Filipino and US forces on Corregidor. All of the Japanese guns were lined up on Corregidor and kept up a steady barrage twenty four hours a day. The range was close enough that Japanese spotters were able to see individuals walking with their canteen cups to get food, and fire at them. After several days of shelling, there was not a single tree left standing and all the ammunition stored in a concrete fortress had been destroyed. One evening, he was told by a Marine Officer to get a helper and set up a .50 machine gun nest facing Bataan in anticipation of a Japanese invasion. They began digging a hole and shortly after, a searchlight above them came on shining towards the Japanese on Bataan. They took off running and seconds later the whole area was bombarded by shelling. When they went to look at the area where they had been the next morning, it was little more than a pile of rubble.
On the evening of May 10th, a Marine Officer called them all to order and told them to destroy all weapons as Corregidor had surrendered to the Japanese. They destroyed all of the weapons, and many men were even destroying their C-rations. Not knowing what would be in store for them, my father picked up all the rations he could find and put them in his knapsack. He then began the march to the surrender point at the lower base of the Island. On their way down, they encountered their first taste of the brutal treatment they would be receiving from the point of capture until the war was over. Despite being U.S. Prisoners of War, as they made their way down the trail, Japanese soldiers in trucks would swipe at them with their bayonets. They soon found out that the Japanese did not consider them official Prisoners of War and therefore would not be treated according to the Geneva Convention, which mandated that POW’s be treated humanely. Eventually, they made their way to the surrender point and were told to stay in an old vehicle maintenance depot. The entire area was made of concrete and there was no shade whatsoever. To make matters even worse, there was only one water spigot for the 30,000 men that were being held there. When my father arrived at the depot, he mentioned to his Marine Officer in charge that he would like to go back and rejoin his Navy companions now. Although he really did want to find his original group, he had also heard that the Japanese were searching for members of the 4th Marines, because of an earlier incident that had happened in China. He did not want to be caught with them.
After a little searching, he found his original Navy unit and also his two brothers, Tom and Bob. The three of them and one other buddy found an old mosquito net and formed a makeshift shelter from the flies and mosquitoes. They stayed together to keep from being harassed by the Japanese to go on work parties. With the C-rations he had saved, they were able to keep sufficient nourishment for the time, as long as they rationed them carefully. This ended up being another one of those critical choices my father had made, as the Japanese informed them that they would not be fed until the United States acknowledged them as prisoners of war. The water ended up being the most important resource and men stood in line twenty four hours a day to get their rations. The four of them took turns standing in line in four hour shifts so that they could get their canteens filled all the way. For the first three weeks the Japanese showed no interest in feeding them anything at all. One day, they did find some of their tunnels stocked with food and allowed them one hour to scavenge whatever they could find. There was just enough to keep them all from starving.
The second week of their captivity my father’s younger brother Tom suddenly became sick with chills and a fever. After he became incoherent, they realized that he had contracted malaria. There was a medical aid camp with a Doctor set up on a hill, not too far away from them, so they took him there. The people at the tent said that they would take care of him and to leave him there. They were relieved that he would be receiving proper medical attention so they left him there. A week later, on the day they were to leave for Manila, he happened to look up at the medical station where they had left Tom. There was really nothing there except for a body lying on a stretcher. He got this sudden strange feeling that it might be his brother, and asked the officer in charge if he could go check? He agreed and accompanied him to go check. Sure, enough, it was his brother and he was still alive. The officer was very angry and promised to investigate the matter and punish whoever had been responsible for the incident. Several of them picked Tom up and carried him to the ship. He was able to wake him up with some coffee from his canteen.
When they arrived in Manila, a few yards from the Boulevard where they had once lived, they had to jump into the ocean and swim ashore. The guards making them jump were angry and pushing in anyone who hesitated. When they saw my father holding his brother, they motioned to him to let go. He told the guard in Japanese, “Tocson Bioki” which meant very sick and motioned to his brother. To his surprise, the guard nodded his head that it was ok. When they jumped in the water, his brother was still very weak from the malaria, but he was able to hold on to him and keep his head above water. Eventually they touched bottom and were able to wade onto the shore where the guards were waiting for them. The place where they anchored was right in front of their house and a crowd had assembled as they came ashore under guard by the Japanese. As the Japanese lined them up to take to Bilibid prison, my father and his two brothers looked through the crowd and saw their mother standing there watching them. This was the first time they had seen her in over six months. Unfortunately, the Japanese would beat or shoot anyone who showed that they recognized any of the prisoners, so they could not gesture or say anything to her, or her to them.
At this point in time, Tom just lay flat on his back and refused to go any further. They shock of seeing their mother and his weakened condition were just too much, and he would not move. By that time, they were beginning their marching towards the prison in Bilibid and the Japanese guards were using their rifle butts on anyone who was falling behind. He was worried about Tom until a Marine Officer told him that a truck was picking up those who could not continue and taking them on to the prison. He had thoughts of making a break into the crowd, as he knew the Japanese could never have caught him. Manila was where he had be born and raised, and he knew places to hide, as well as people who would help him. He figured that he would eventually be able to join the guerillas that were hiding in the mountains if he made it. However, he decided against making a run for it because he was afraid of what might happen to his brothers, and also afraid that the guards might start shooting into the crowds.
Their march to Bilibid prison was nothing compared to the Bataan Death March, which the Americans and Filipino prisoners on Bataan had been forced to endure. Basically, the Bataan Death March was a sixty five mile march during which seven to ten thousand American and Filipino soldiers were brutally killed by Japanese soldiers. Anyone who was sick from malaria, dysentery, or lack of food, were shot, bayoneted, or beaten to death as they fell out of line during the march. They were given first-hand accounts of the senseless killings when they met up with the POW’s from Bataan in Bilibid. He counted his blessings as he realized once again that fate had been on his side. Had he not been stationed on a boat and ended up being captured on Corregidor, he and his brothers would have been part of that horror. The march from Manila to Bilibid did not last that long and they arrived at the prison that evening. They spent the night inside without any food or water, and with no knowledge of what lay in store for them the next day. Bilibid prison had been built by the Spanish in the eighteen hundreds and later condemned by the Philippine Government.
The morning after their arrival at Bilibid was confusing as no one seemed to be in charge. They had not eaten since they had left Corregidor, and no one seemed interested in organizing them as prisoners or into any kind of units. They were finally fed their first meal at noon. It was what they called, “Onion Soup”, basically boiled water with a few slices of onions. That afternoon, they were assigned barracks and placed in groups. For dinner that night they were given watery rice with small worms floating in it. Some prisoners tried picking the worms off, but they either ate them or went hungry. Some officers even decided that they were like vitamins and encouraged the men to eat them.
In the beginning, there was no running water at Bilibid. That combined with the lack of a sufficient diet and the general physical condition of the men meant that they were burying almost one hundred to one hundred and fifty men a day. This was due mainly to malaria and dysentery. My father recalls one prisoner who was almost buried three different times. He would be in the makeshift morgue and not responding to the Doctors at all, then every time they went put him in the ground he would come to. He almost did not make it the third time as they had him halfway buried before he suddenly raised his arm!
While in Bilibid, the Japanese soldiers used the POW’s for work details. This included everything from working on the docks loading and unloading supplies, to carpentry, welding, or cleaning the Japanese quarters. Whenever they asked for men in a work party, my father’s group would volunteer, no matter what the job was. By taking on these jobs, it gave them the opportunity to steal food, and to trade with some of the Japanese guards. Several of the guards would trade food for American cigarettes, with Lucky Strike and Camel being their favorites. The POW’s would get their choice of foods for these. Most of the time they would trade for sugar, beans, basic food stuffs. Then they would take these goods to the Doctors in the hospitals to give to the men who were sick or wounded. It required quite a bit of stealth to get these items into the prison, as it was against the rules to have anything not rationed out to them. If they were caught with these items, the penalty was a severe beating with a rifle stock which usually resulted in a visit to the hospital or severe crippling. They often hid food in their socks, canteens, etc. My father had several close calls and did not know how he was never caught. He witnesses one man who was caught trading with a civilian who was killed by water torture. The Japanese held him on the ground spread eagle and forced a hose down his throat and turned it on full blast. He died a horrible death by forced drowning.
The best work detail he remembers was working at the Japanese gas depot. They took only the strongest prisoners and this work began in November of 1942. It was in a new area at the Manila docks called the Yammamoto Butai, named after the Japanese Commander (Yammamoto), and the labor battalion prisoners, Butai. This area was also known as Prison Camp number eleven. The job there consisted of loading fifty five gallon drums of high octane gas all day onto the Japanese ships and trains. Most of the drums looked like they had been salvaged from sunken ships and were full of rust. The Japanese warned them not to fill them to the top as they would be sitting all day in the hot sun. They proceeded to not only fill them to the top, but to also add in sugar and sand to ruin the gas before capping it. One night a guard blew up a ship by lighting a cigarette next to a leaking drum. The Japanese were furious, but the U.S. prisoners delighted.
Three weeks after arriving in Bilibid, my father said he became worried because he had not seen his brother Tom after the march from Manila. He discovered him in his barracks covered in tropical blisters and half out of his head from the malaria. It ended up that the army medics had been selling the malaria pills instead of giving them to the patients. Once the Navy hospital group from Cavite Naval Yard was moved in, conditions got much better and within two weeks his brother was much improved. The death rate also dropped dramatically, and sanitary conditions were improved. The Navy hospital unit made sure trench –type toilets were rigged with water for flushing and sprayed for flies and mosquitoes, which made living conditions slightly more tolerable. They also took over kitchen detail and the food improved greatly because they refused to take rotten meat from the Japanese any longer. The Japanese in charge did not like this, but with their high command inspecting things, they promised to improve conditions. It was about that time that the prisoners received their one and only Red Cross aid box during their time in Bilibid. The boxes were a godsend to them as they had items like: corned beef, luncheon meats, raisins, sugar cubes, chocolate, coffee, cigarettes, jam, powdered mail, and many more items. These items saved the lives of many men.
After slightly more than a month in Bilibid, the commanding officer of the hospital asked for volunteers to work in the hospital as there was a shortage of medical corpsmen. Despite improved conditions, there were still hundreds of sick and dying men. They promised training and a promotion in rank to anyone who would do it. My father and his two brothers all volunteered because they felt like at least they would be helping their fellow prisoners instead of doing work detail for the Japanese. My father learned a tremendous amount about medicine during that year with the help of a Dr. Lambert who took him under his wing and taught him almost everything he knew about medicine and minor surgery. He really enjoyed the work and became very good at it. He spent many hours talking to men who were dying, trying to comfort them in their last moments. He said it was very difficult talking to men who were dying but he knew it was the right thing for him to do.
In September of 1942, there was a change in hospital command and a group of them were taken to Cabanatuan prison camp in the southern part of the Philippines. The living conditions were the worst they had seen. They lived in bamboo huts with bare slit bamboo floors. The flies, mosquitoes, and other insects were so bad they could hardly keep their mouths open. The food was rice gruel with occasional meat and vegetables thrown in. That was only because they worked there on a farm and raised their own meat and vegetables. Work on the farm itself was as close to hell as he said he could imagine. Men were beaten by the guards when they could not keep up with the labor demands because of malnutrition and illness. If a man fell down, a guard would usually start beating him with the butt of his rifle. Many men were killed or severely injured by the cruelty of the guards.
Work days on the farm began early and they were woken up each day at 5am to eat rice for breakfast and then begin their march out to work for the day. Prisoners would be lined up in rows of a hundred men while the guards counted out a cadence. If they missed a count with their tool, or fell out of rhythm, they would be severely beaten. His brother Tom saved him from a beating one day when the curved pick he was using got stuck in the mud so often that he could no longer keep up. Right before he fell out, his brother saw what was happening, and traded the shovel he was using for the pick. That act probably saved his life that day. On Cabanatuan, there was an especially grisly area called Zero Ward. That was where they sent the men who were terminally ill with malaria, dysentery, and diarrhea. The men there were so weak they were forced to lie in their own excrement, and so many died there daily that they were buried in groups in large holes dug in the ground. It was only the two of the brothers there, the older brother, Bob, had stayed behind at Bilibid because he was too sick to make the journey, so they did not see him again until July of 1944 when they were all shipped to the Manila Port Area Docks to be taken to Japan.
At this time in the war, the situation on Japan was beginning to grow dire for the first time as U.S. bombs took their toll on the island. The Japanese military, in need of soldiers had conscripted old men and young boys into the armed forces. In order to replace the labor lost from factories and farms, the Japanese planned to use the POWs. By the time they were boarded on a ship for Japan, five or six of, “The Hell Ships” had already left carrying U.S. prisoners. The Japanese did not mark these ships in any manner. Meaning that U.S. planes and submarines would often attack the ships thinking they were freighters carrying Japanese war materials. One of the first ships was hit by U.S. planes shortly after it left Manila Bay. As the ship began sinking, the prisoners began climbing out of the holds in which they had been kept to avoid the fire from the bombs, and to keep from drowning. The Japanese guards on deck responded by throwing hand grenades and firing machine guns into the prisoners. Out of the fourteen hundred prisoners on that ship, only four survived. Many of them, including the survivors were medical men my father had known well.
Several days later, another Japanese prison ship was caught near Corregidor Bay by U.S. war planes and sunk. As prisoners jumped off the ship, Japanese soldiers in lifeboats shot at them as they swam for land. Although a good many made it to shore, about thirty of the men were really sick and could not make the march back to Manila. A Japanese officer mustered the thirty men and said he was taking them to a hospital for treatment. Instead the men were marched to a secluded area and shot.
In May of 1944, my father and thirteen other prisoners were boarded into a hold on a Japanese Freighter that smelled like it had been used to transport cattle. The ships name was Nissyu Maru. The hold was so paced with men that they were all forced to stand. If someone fainted from the crush of bodies and heat, they remained standing as there was no room to fall. The guards finally realized that they could not fit them all in the forward hold so they moved a number of prisoners into the after hold. My father, and his brother, remained in the front hold and stayed in the back so they could lean against the bulkhead. They decided it was better to stay in the back as both the sick and strong prisoners wanted to be at the front and there were all sorts of fights and general chaos breaking out up there. The Japanese eventually forced everyone into a half sitting, half rowing position, and they remained like that, stacked like Dominoes, the entire journey. This journey, which should have taken only a few days, ended up being forty two days of hell because of the route they had to take to avoid bombers. The Japanese used a series of buckets and ropes to take care of both sanitation and feeding. Two buckets a day would be lowered for toilet uses and one bucket of rice a day would be lowered for food. The amount of rice they lowered in buckets only amounted to two or three teaspoons a day per man. The waste buckets would be overflowing before they were even raised back up because so many of the men were suffering from dysentery and diarrhea. According to my father,” This turned the hold of the ship into a hot, stinking, pit of despair”. They were throwing many bodies overboard on a daily basis. To illustrate how desperate the situation had become, three enlisted men and one officer were caught cutting the veins of prisoners and drinking their blood. Their fellow prisoners hung them in the hold for that. My father estimated that he went the last thirty days with hardly any food because he gave his portions to those who were sick. He managed to trade some dental gold he had for a canteen of cocoa and tea mix about once a week.
There was one particular man that my father gave credit to for averting a widespread panic at one point on the journey. There was a chaplain named Father Reilly who was in the hold along with a medical corpsman ministering to the needs of four very sick men. While he was there, the ship was attacked by U.S. planes. The prisoners all started to panic and began stampeding for the stairs to get to the deck because they were sure the ship was going down. The guards were lining up on top with machine guns and grenades ready to repulse anyone trying to get on deck. My father said he looked over at Father Reilly and said, “Father, if you want us to survive this trip alive, you had better see if you can quiet that mob”, Father Reilly did not say anything to the mob, but just walked into the center of the men and began reciting the Lord’s prayer. Despite being a quiet man of small build, he repeated this simple prayer over and over. As he spoke, the men began to quiet down. When the Japanese saw this, they pulled back the guards. It had been another close call and the quiet courage and convictions of one man had probably saved them all.
They made one stop in Formosa where they were taken off the ship, sprayed, cleaned off, and boarded on the ship again. Several days later, in August of 1944, they arrived in the Port of Mogi, on the Kyushu Island of Japan. They were then transported to the city of Nagoya aboard a train, a ride that took several days. Despite it being August, there was snow on the ground, a harsh change from the warm climate of the Philippines.
In Nagoya, they were issued long, Canadian overcoats, trousers, and tennis shoes. My father said that in spite of that fact that he wore a size nine shoe, he asked for a size eleven so that he could stuff it with rags to keep his feet warm from the extreme cold. They were put to work in the Mitsui locomotive factory in Nagoya, and had to walk a half mile each day just to reach the train to take them to the factory. On that walk, the Japanese children would line the street to thrown rocks at them, and spit on them as they walked by. The guards thought that was great entertainment and wouldn’t stop them. During those same walks, he would see fellow American prisoners break rank and fight each other for rotten tomatoes from garbage cans. He was fortunate in that he was able to steal discarded skins from sweet potatoes that the guards dropped while working his job in the factory, so did not have to resort to that level of desperation.
Despite working in Nagoya, they were kept seven miles away in a small town called Narumi in living conditions that were primitive at best. A sort of shotgun shack type wooden building. His quarters were very similar to a horse stall and three of them lived there with bamboo slats for bedding. He roomed with his brother Tom, and another buddy, and the three of them kept their room very neat and tidy. They were fed three rice bowls a day along with some seaweed soup at dinner that was salty and flavored with soy sauce. The camp food was all prepared by British soldiers who were shown much favoritism by the Japanese because they had been captured the earliest. One of the favorite pastimes of the prisoners was the creating of, “recipe books”. Basically, they imagined all of the foods that they wished they were eating and created recipes that they wrote down in small cardboard books. Most of the prisoners spent a great deal of time trading recipes with each other. My father managed to keep his hidden, and my family still has it today.
The prisoners worked every day except Sunday in the Nagoya factory. Sundays were clean up days at camp for quarters, but the men were only allowed to bathe every two weeks. My father told me that despite sharing a hot sulfur bath with five other men, it was fifteen minutes of pure luxury. The factory work itself was not that bad because they were under the control of civilians instead of the military guards. Every ten prisoners were assigned civilian foremen who, despite acting rough in front of the guards, were actually quite decent to them. Many of them were also there against their will. While working in the factory, he almost lost his life over a fifth of stolen Sake. Towards the end of one day, he was told to go empty a railroad car that was on the tracks. While cleaning, he noticed a cardboard box in the corner of a railroad car. When he opened the box he discovered twelve fifths of Sake. He decided to take a fifth back to camp with him and slipped it under his coat. On the train ride back though, the top came loose and spilled. One of his fellow prisoners started yelling that he smelled liquor and wanted some. My father told him to be quiet or the guards would hear and there would be a search as soon as they got off train. By then the smell on him was very strong, and he had no idea how to get it off of him. Just as the train stopped though, a huge blizzard came up. It was so bad that instead of their usual search, the guards took them straight back to their barracks at a full run. He was able to secure it in one of the officer’s room that was never searched and the men shared it for a while in their coffee at breakfast!
Had he been caught with it, it would have been a capital offense. The Japanese felt very strongly about the prisoners possessing any Japanese goods. There were at least two instances that happened in his camp where prisoners were beheaded on the spot for possessing Japanese cigarettes and money. They were also punished for things like not showing enough respect to the guards. A fellow prisoner, Sam Moody, once forgot to salute a guard and was forced to stand at attention for 54 hours before they would let him go. Another incident involved a prisoner who often professed loudly to everyone that he did not believe in God. He was the only one who seemed to be gaining weight as everyone else wasted away. Then one day after raiding the food stores in the attic, he fell asleep there. He did not show up for roll call and eventually gave himself up. For stealing food, he was beaten and put into a two foot by four foot structure with no windows. He was fed one teaspoon of tea a day and nothing else. After eleven days, he asked to see the Chaplain. When the Chaplain arrived, the prisoner had eaten his entire finger and toe nails as well as the end of his fingers. He asked the Chaplain to say a prayer and to administer the Last Rite. The Chaplain did as he was asked and then the prisoner died.
As camp life continued at the same pace of endless labor, there was no relief. However they had heard through the grapevine that Germany had surrendered so they figures that the United States would be coming for them soon. They began to see U.S. planes flying overhead. In early August they started seeing dog fights between U.S. planes and Japanese planes over their camp and knew rescue could not be far away. He was so confident that he bet a fellow prisoner a case of whiskey that they would be out before his birthday on September 12th. Over the next couple of days their factory was bombed so they could no longer work. Leaflets were dropped telling the Japanese that they had twenty four hours to surrender. The United States at this time had no idea that U.S. POWs were being held in this area.
A few days after this, they felt a shock that knocked everything off of their shelves and shook the entire barracks. Several days later, the morning of August 17th. 1945, their camp interpreter came over the loud speaker and announced that the war was over and the Japanese had surrendered! They all started hollering and screaming with joy. They immediately disarmed all of the guards and officers and locked them in their quarters. With the exception of making them bow ten times anytime they wanted something, and punching the Japanese interrogator who had caused them so much pain from his lies to the guards, they treated their ex-captors much better than they had been treated.
Planes began swooping in and dropping food and supplies. The airmen even dropped in a case of whiskey, but because of their poor physical condition, the men had to go easy with that. At the time of their liberation, my father weighed sixty five pounds. Within a few days of the food drops, he had already gained back ten pounds. He and many of the prisoners suffered from Beriberi and other diseases from lack of nourishment. He also suffered from hearing loss in one ear as a result of beatings with a wooden shoe that burst an ear drum. He was told he would probably never have any children, but went on to prove them wrong by having six.
He and his brother Tom arrived in San Francisco, California on the morning of September 12, 1945 via PBY II. This was his best birthday he ever remembered and also meant that he won his case of whiskey. Upon arrival, they also received even more great news. Their older brother Bob had also survived. He had already been liberated from Bilibid prison, and had married a girl from Memphis, Tennessee. It was a joyous feeling to know that all three brothers had made it out alive. My father was sent to the Oakland Naval Hospital for about eighteen days after which he was asked where he wanted to be transferred for rehabilitation and duty. He and Tom both requested to be transferred to USNH New Orleans, Louisiana. The Commanding Officer there would be the same man that had assured them of rank increases while at Bilibid Prison. His former Commanding Officer stayed true to his word, and upon his arrival in New Orleans; he greeted him with the news that he had been promoted from Seaman to Chief Hospital Corpsman. His back pay, even as a Seaman amounted to over $8500.00 which in 1945 was worth a lot more than it would be now. He and Tom were also put on no duty status and open liberty. This meant that they were free to come and go as they pleased.
Their happiness was quickly tempered, however when shortly after arriving in New Orleans, they received a telegram from the Philippines. According to the message, while U.S. forces were attempting to retake the Philippines, their mother had been killed by U.S. Navy shelling. The Japanese had been using the main Boulevard of Manila as a runway for military aircraft, and the U.S. Navy was attempting to shut it down. Although he and his brothers had promised to return to the Philippines after the war to run the family business, with their mother being killed, and Bob getting married, they decided to stay in the U.S.
Several months later, in May of 1946, he was walking by the Survey Office on base and glanced in to see a young woman typing. He back stepped and walked in to the office, then was struck speechless. He ended up asking her out for a cup of coffee, and they were married two weeks later. Her name was Dorothy Cook, and she was a Navy Wave in the hospital corps. He did eventually return to the Philippines in 1947, because he was stationed there. He looked into his family’s lands and finances only to discover that everyone thought they had died during their captivity, or in the war and that their lawyers had sold most of their businesses and properties. He never was able to recover any of it.
My father ended up spending twenty years in the Navy and, even when stationed overseas, Dorothy followed soon after. They were rarely apart from each other. During that time they had six children, five girls and one boy. Because of his love of helping people most of his children and grandchildren have ended up in professions where they are helping others, and all of us grew up very involved in community and volunteer activities. After twenty years of military service, he retired with an honorable discharge and medals, and was ready for civilian life! From his decision to become a Medical Corpsman while in POW camp, he has produced a family that includes to date: 8 RN’s, 2 ARNP’s, 1 CRNA, plus other children and grand children in the Educational, Health and Fitness Fields, and several still in college.
He and Dorothy were married for over fifty years when she passed away. Despite suffering a major heart attack in 1972, and a triple bypass in 1980, he managed to remain physically fit and active, still weighed the hundred and twenty pounds he enlisted at when he passed away in 2005. Although he suffered some hearing loss from his beatings by the Japanese, he was still water skiing and hunting when he passed away at the age of 86. He passed away quietly in his favorite chair one night watching a baseball game, after spending the day working in his yard. He had a peaceful death for a man who went through so many hardships in life. My father always kept his wonderful, positive attitude no matter what trials he had to endure.
References
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Johnson, M. W. (1999). The WW2 letters of private Melvin W. Johnson. Retrieved August 01, 2014, from http://www.privateletters.net/photos.pto.html
Northcott, J. F. (2003). The John F. Northcott story [Personal interview].
Pleasants, J. (2013, August 23). Remembering Herbert Pepper, WWII-030. Retrieved July 29, 2014, from http://www.oralhistory.ufl.edu/2013/08/01/remembering-herbert-pepper/
Priolo, G. P. (1996). NavSource Online: Service Ship Photo Archive. Retrieved August 02, 2014, from http://www.navsource.org/archives/09/13/130017.htm
Sides, H. (2001). Ghost soldiers: The forgotten epic story of World War II’s most dramatic mission. New York: Doubleday.