MF: He said "Go ahead and get 4 or 5 of your buddies and bring them down here." I said "OK." Said "I wonder what he wants to do?" They got down there and he said "Get on his arms and hold him." He pulled it out, and it didn't really hurt that bad, really. Let me go back a little bit. After there at Tanagua, after they had found out that that dry dock was short, they ceased operating with POWs. They took us out of there and put us on a train and took us to a place somewhere near Kobe. I'm not exactly sure. And we started working in a big graphite factory. We stayed there 3 months and it was so miserable that believe it or not, this graphite powder would get in our skin and you couldn't, we looked like black people. When we'd use the bathroom our stool was black. When we urinate the water that we urinate was almost black. Thats from that powder. And you could imagine what our lungs looks like.
AK: Was this a mine? A graphite mine?
MF: No it was a factory.
AK: Making graphite. Is that what you're making?
MF: It was grinding it up and making it into flashlight batteries, it was a factory where they made it into things. We'd go into these big bins where it was just powder. We'd take this big old shovel and shovel it out and put it in a car and push it somewhere. It was dust. We wore a facemask but that didn't help none. We'd get a bath about 1 time a week.
AK: When'd you go to this thing? This was in 45, early 45?
MF: It was last part of...
AK: 44?
MF: Yeah, about October, November, December of 44. Somewhere in that time.
AK: Just about everything happened to you happened in October, November didn't it?
MF: We just stayed there 3 months because we had several guys committed suicide in that place.
AK: You did?
MF: Yeah. I mean it was rough, it was really bad in that place.
AK: What was so bad about it?
MF: It was the old dust. The food was black, the water you drank was black. It was terrible! We would try to cross a field...
AK: How many committed suicide?
MF: About 6.
AK: Out of 200?
MF: 500. It was 500 of us. Anyway, we had about 5 or 6 people commit suicide. That was too many. You know the war was, I guess Germany was going under. They were a little concerned about it. So they moved us out of that place and took us to this place called Suruga.
AK: When was this now, was this May? or April of 45?
MF: About February...
AK: 45?
MF: Let me think here... well, it was somewhere around the 1st part of 45 that they took us...
AK: Where you going to go now?
MF: We're going to this place called Suruga. Its on the east...
AK: Now are you moving or just working in a different place?
MF: No, we're moving.
AK: Each time you move? You move to the graphite factory, then you move again.
MF: The whole camp. Everybody moved. The whole lock, stock, and barrel. It was quite a ways, you know, from there to Suruga.
AK: You said there were 500 people at that graphite thing, but you said you lost 200, did they replace some of them or something?
MF: Yeah, as they'd get POWs from the Philippines and various other places they'd bring us back up to 500.
AK: Did you run into any of your other old buddies from that? Anyone else you knew from D company?
MF: Yeah. I run into... not from D company, no I never did. It was me and Lawson (sp?) and Sparrow (sp?) and Annis (sp?), that was about it.
AK: When did Annis (sp?) die and where'd he die?
MF: In 1943.
AK: Early eh?
MF: Yeah. He died in Tanagua. A story about him, to get back, I skipped over a lot. Anyway he died. And me and Arnold Lawson (sp?), we took him to cremate him. We took him to the place where they cremate them. We didn't have nothing to do with the actual cremation. We took him there and the Japanese cremated him, and then after it was over they gave us a little old pine box about 6 by 6 or something like that. All the guys that died there at Tanagua, they was cremated. We had a lot of boxes. I don't recall how many. When we moved from Tanagua to the place near Kobe we took all those boxes with us there. Then after the three months we stayed at Kobe we moved to Suruga and we took all them little pine boxes with us there. At that place we was...
AK: You're talking about little pine boxes about 8 inches by 8 inches.
MF: Yeah. At that place we did Stevedore work. At Suruga. Unloaded ships that come across from Korea and places like that.
AK: What's Suruga close too? a town? Its in the neighborhood of Hiroshima?
MF: The troops that used to come from Korea during the Korean war, what was... Saseval (sp?). You know Saseval (sp?)?
AK: Yeah. I been to Saseval (sp?).
MF: It was close to that. Yeah. It's up the coast...
AK: So you're on the east side of the big island now.
MF: Yeah, the east or west side whichever you want to call it.
AK: Well I guess its kind of down in the lower part idn't it?
MF: Well, is this side the west side?
AK: This is the east side.
MF: And that side is the west side.
AK: Right.
MF: Well we's on the west side of, we's still on Honshu, but we was on the side near, toward Korea.
AK: Yeah and it's actually almost down on the point there, idn't it?
MF: Yeah. They had big, they had a natural inlet harbor there. Well, I'll go ahead and tell about Annis (sp?). On July 12, 1945 at midnight they come in there with B-29s. And they dropped a string of incendiaries on the mountains there close to that town. Lit up that whole...
AK: Saseval (sp?) or the other town?
MF: No, at Suruga. Where we was at.
AK: Suruga. Do you know how to spell it?
MF: Thats 'T' 'S' 'U' 'R' 'U' 'G' 'A'. Something similar to that. Some of the maps has got it on it.
AK: It started with a 'T'.
MF: Yeah. It was something similar to that.
AK: Say it again.
MF: Suruga.
AK: Suruga? Probably 'R' 'U' 'G' 'A' 'U' ? something like that?
MF: Yeah, similar to that. Yeah. Saruga. Saruga.
AK: Ok, Go ahead.
MF: Anyway, On July 12 of 1945 they come in there with the bombers, B-29s we called them. It may have been B-17s but everything that come over as far as we was concerned was a B-29.
AK: This is 29 of 45.
MF: 12th of July 1945.
AK: OK.
MF: They come in there at midnight and dropped a string of incendiaries on the mountain to light up that town. But prior to this in 45 in May, April, May, May 22, well it was about the middle of there somewhere, I got pneumonia in the left lung. I had been in pretty bad condition. In fact I just survived it. We didn't have any medication. They took me out of the barracks where I lived in this old big hotel like, and they put me in down in a little first aid place that they had. Captain Campbell and this Navy chief. They give me cold baths every day. I guess thats what broke my fever and pulled me through it. The evening that they come on the 12th of July 45 to bomb that place, me and this Lawson boy, his feet was bothering him or something, I don't know, he was down there in sick bay where I was at. They dropped them bombs, them incendiaries, they was dropping all the way around that town. Everything was burning. Old Lawson run back up and down through the floor. He was really anxious, and everybody else was too! I didn't feel good. In fact, like I said, I was just getting over pneumonia. I didn't run or walk or do nothing, I just laid there praying for the best.
AK: How close were they hitting to you?
MF: All around us.
AK: I mean how far from the center?
MF: Where we was at they was hitting over here and around here and over here and all of a sudden one hit a corner of the building we was in, the fire come through that thing...
AK: You mean it hit the building you were in!
MF: Yeah! The hotel building we were in there were over 200 cannisters hit it. But the guys got out of that thing. We got one guy burnt, and we got one guy got his...
AK: You mean got out of there before it caught on fire?
MF: Yeah, real good.
AK: Then the hotel caught on fire?
MF: Yeah!
AK: Were you in that hotel?
MF: No, I was in another building right close to it.
AK: Beside of it. So you were, you were catching...
MF: In sick bay...
AK: You'all were getting the fire then right on your barracks.
MF: Absolutely! They just...
AK: They burned it down.
MF: They didn't know there was POWs there because there wadn't no markings.
AK: Got everybody out though.
MF: Yeah, we didn't lose nobody. They got of there and we got out in a big open spot out there and the only thing that saved us, it was raining like crazy. Everybody got out with a blanket. We got out there and got across this canal into open space and we laid down. When them things dropped close to us, these cannisters, I don't know if you ever seen them, they's about that long. First they come down in great big clusters. They hit the ground then they go like that, then they hit again and that napalm would explode and it would just wipe out everything, I mean it'd stick on everything and then just start burning like crazy. I don't know if you've ever seen them or not.
AK: Yeah. I've seen them.
MF: Anyhow, it was raining and we had these blankets and when they'd hit us we'd just roll them up, we smothered it. It was raining so hard we could get rid of that Napalm. It wadn't too much really, where we was at it wadn't a whole lot of it hit us but what did we'd roll up our blankets and them being wringing wet it'd smother that stuff out. Thats the only thing that kept us from roasting like a duck.
AK: They came almost to roasting you but the rain saved the day.
MF: Thats right.
AK: And your good sense, using your blanket.
MF: But the Japanese people, they said, somebody said, it was a town of about 80,000 population. And they completely destroyed that town that night. It was an Army post there and a Naval headquarters there. They had a lot of little factories that run all over the place.
AK: Did the Japanese mistreat you all more after that, that change their attitude?
MF: Yeah, they got kind of rough on us.
AK: Where they out there in the field with you, the guards?
MF: No, they took off.
AK: You all out there by yourself.
MF: Yeah, we didn't see a guard for about 3 days after that. We didn't have nowhere to go, so when you building burned down we went back there and cleaned it up real good and put everything aside and the ashes of all the people that died in the other places we had with us and they burned up again. All them ashes. In 1947 that boys Elsie Annis (sp?) they was supposed to have brought his body back to Harrodsburgh and had a funeral there in Harrodsburgh, well me and this Lawson (sp?) boy was pall bearers. We was two of the pall bearers. Then old Lawson (sp?), I guess we ought to had our hind end kicked, but we was having more fun that anybody. We knew damn well that Elsie's body wadn't in that casket. We _knew_ it wadn't in there see.
AK: Cause he was one that had been cremated.
MF: Yeah. And then burnt up again. And we didn't save nothing. We didn't get nothing of all those bodies that'd been cremated and was in them little...
AK: You'all'd nurtured then all that time and taken them back over there and lost them right toward the very end didn't you?
MF: Yeah. It wadn't too long after that, that was about July 12, and
we was actually liberated on September 10th. That was July, August,
September, see, it was just about another month and a half, two
months there. Like I said, the guards left us and they didn't come
back for about three days. We cleaned out everywhere we had lived and
we's living there, and we salvaged anything we could to setup
something where we could have food and sleep. We was out under the
stars but we went back to work where we was supposed to go to working
on these docks. We stole everything that we could in the way of food
stuff like vegatable oil, and fish, salmon, sugar, anything. We
brought all that stuff, rice, we brought it all and turned it in too
our mess facilities. Because everything we had got burn up. We
didn't have nothing. So we went to these
AK: Empire?
MF: Over there. After about three days or four days the guards come
back and they found us another place to live out, it was about two and
a half miles out in the country where people had been making brick.
There was an old brickyard. They had a building, I don't know how
many thousand square feet, but it was great big where they had a roof
on it and a floor in it. We got in there and moved everything around
where we could lay down and then make a mess hall like, a galley, and
a first aid place. We'd stole enough food to stock our supplies back.
You know where we would have something to eat.
AK: Its a wonder they hadn't gotten after you about that.
MF: No, they was...
AK: They know you stole it?
MF: They done lost faith in themselves I think because we had stayed
there and worked and continued on when they run off and took to the, I
don't know where they went to. The guards, I mean our permanent
guards. I don't know where they went to. Them guys, same ones that'd
been with us ever since we'd got to Japan. That was about two and a
half, three years later. Same guards just about it, every one of them
had a disability see.
AK: They disappeared, eh?
MF: Yeah.
AK: And you guys went back to work and...
MF: Yeah! And they didn't say nothing to us about it. They would give
us a rough time every time. By that time there was air raids about
continuously all the time.
AK: Around the clock.
MF: Yeah. I want to back up here a little bit. When we was at
Tanagua, that was the first camp we was in. You know, when we got to
Japan. We seen the, I guess, was the first atomic bomb dropped on
Hiroshima. The reason for being that we seen that big mushroom in the
sky. The bombers had been bombing so many places that we didn't think
nothing about it. Because there was fires here and there was fires
there, there was fires everywhere. You know, years later on, after I
come home and everything, talk about dropping the atomic bomb and you
seen a mushroom deal. And I'm positive, and a whole lot of other guys
are too, that we did see the mushroom from the atomic bomb.
AK: From Hiroshima. The Hiroshima bomb went off in August, the first
one went off on August 6, 1945. The second one went off about two
weeks later, a week later, about August 15, somewhere.
MF: Yeah. Well, the first one... I don't recall the second one.
AK: You'd probably be too far away for that one see.
MF: The only one I remember was that first one.
AK: See, Nagasaki there would be a pretty good piece from you. That
was over on the other island, this other island. But anyway, tell me
what you saw when that thing went off.
MF: We didn't think nothing, to be honest.
AK: Did you hear anything? You just happened to look around and saw
the big cloud.
MF: Thats all.
AK: Then you went on about your work.
MF: Yeah, see we heard bombs exploding, airplanes, they was them B-29s
was high, high, high. You could hear them droning, all you could see
was the vapor trail, but you couldn't see the plane really. Then when
you hear the explosions and we see fire, smoke, we didn't see fire we
just seen smoke. We never give it a thought. We just figured that
they'd hit a big POL dump or ammo plant or something like that see.
Because in the distance we'd see smoke, night, day, and ...
AK: Something's always burning.
MF: Yeah. Where we's at on Tanagua.
AK: When that B-26 bombing started, it started what, middle, late 44?
MF: Yeah, B-29s.
AK: After they'd captured Saipan (sp?) and maybe Tarawa (sp?). All of
a sudden are you going to feel like the war is about to come along
pretty well for you?
MF: We knew something was coming because where we was at there at
Tanagua that was a coming in place, area, right there, and a
rendezvous point for the B-29s that come in there, then they'd split
up and go in different directions. Where we's working we had a big
rest shack and when they got coming in there so hot and heavy like,
they'd bring us off the work and put us inside this building and
wouldn't let us watch. Somebody got the bright idea of cutting a hole
in the roof. The guards never would come in that rest area. They
wouldn't come in there, they'd stay on the outside. We'd watch and
watch and watch. One day we watched a zero, a fight plane, I don't
know if it was a zero or whatever. We watched that daggone plane go
up and up and up and up and up, in fact we lost sight of it. The
Japanese, the guards, they was going on, that plane was going to
shoot that B B Jacoo (sp?) down. You know, B-29. We said "nein
nein nein nein" (sp?), "Yeah yeah yeah yeah!" I don't know how high
that B-29 was. That little ole zero, he got up there alright, but he
come back down just about as fast as he got up there. That B-29 let
out a few bursts and that was all she wrote. That bird come down
there.
AK: Were you going to get bombed pretty often? Or was that one close
incendiary bombing...
MF: That was our worst one right there.
AK: Did you ever have anybody else get close to you?
MF: No. Well we got, there at that same place at Saruga we got, after
July 12, after all that bombing that burned up that whole town, the
next day there was fighter planes that come in there off of aircraft
carriers, I don't know who, which ones, but anyhow, there was a
fighter bomber come in there and there was one great big building left
and they come in there and blowed that one building the next day.
Dropped a bomb right in the middle of that thing. And you talk about
POWs hollering and cheering.
AK: You're kidding.
MF: We got cuffed around for that. We didn't care though. Anyway,
they moved us on out there in that place where we fixed up that brick
factory. Then we'd walk back and forth in the morning and they'd bring
our food to us while we was working, and that night we'd walk back.
Well one day they sounded an alarm, air raid. We didn't think too
much about it. Then we was leary about them docks, they burned up the
city but they didn't hit the docks. One of these days they'll wipe
these thing out and I'll tell you we was sitting on a hot seat. One
day the air raid went off and heard that old B-29, and in a little bit
we heard something go "whewew" you know, heard that old bomb falling,
and I was running a hundred miles an hour, I know I had to be, I run
straight out like that away from them docks and believe it or not, I
could see that bomb falling. And I said to myself "Oh god, I've had
it." It looked like it was coming right to me. I run out there and I
hit the ground and it was a mile away where that thing hit.
AK: When you looked up it looked like it was coming right at you.
MF: It was right on the route where we went home in the evening. It
was a great big factory out there that worked all winter. When that
thing hit you could see bodies, and timber, and everything, just
flying. They dropped one bomb in that thing and it completely
demolished that whole factory.
AK: With women in it, the factory.
MF: Yeah. Yeah. I don't have no idea how many people it killed.
AK: What were you'all's feelings about that? I know generally you were
glad to see them bomb.
MF: Well, I'll tell you what, right at that time we's sorry about it
killing all those women. But really we didn't care, we didnt' have
much feelings for the Japanese or anybody else as far as it goes. I
mean, I was sorry, I was sorry that they killed all those people, but
then again, if thats what it took to get rid of that war and end it, I
was ready for to kill all of them.
AK: Dropping the atomic bomb didn't cause any conscience problems for
any of you all did it? From what I've heard...
MF: Not really. If we'd have landed any troops on Japan on Mawa (sp?)
we'd have been dead. Because after the armistice was signed the
Japanese camp commander went from us and took a room at the Yokohama.
He could speak english better than I could, that guy could. And he
told us, our camp commander "I got orders in the safe, if..." said "I
had orders, no, I have orders in the safe, if the American troops land
on Honshu I was supposed to kill all of you all."
AK: It seemed like all of them were told that. At least I've had
three different people from three different camps tell me that same
thing.
MF: That guy, we called him the pig, that Japanese. He wadn't too fat
but he had a face like a pig. And we called him the pig. He
understood english perfect. Nobody ever called him pig to his face.
but that guy, he was good to us. He got us extra clothes and extra
food and medical supplies.
AK: Everybody was hungry then weren't they?
MF: Yeah.
AK: Did you'all learn to eat grasshoppers like some of the others did
there?
MF: Yeah, Oh yeah. They issued us grasshoppers. Some way or another
they take soy sauce and they'd boil these grasshoppers in it and they
was crispy like, I don't know, like popcorn, something like that.
AK: How'd they fix those grasshoppers?
MF: We didn't... I tell you I don't know how they done it. But I know
they was supposed to be full of protein. We had those quite a bit.
AK: Did you eat the legs too?
MF: The whole thing.
AK: The legs too.
MF: Yeah. Yeah, the whole thing.
AK: And they were crisp, they were in oil.
MF: Yeah, crispy and crunchy.
AK: In oil. And they were marinated in some kind of soybean oil.
MF: Yeah.
AK: Were they pretty good? Were they pretty good tasting?
MF: Well at that time they tasted real good but, you know, at that
time just about anything tasted good.
AK: You wouldn't necessarily want one now's what you're saying.
MF: No, I don't think I would. Let me go back to Saruga there. Lets
see if there's anything.
AK: Let me get another tape...
MF: What I was fixing to tell you, after they burned up that town,
after they burnt up the town on July 12, the next day they come in and
blowed that one building. Then after that there'd be a bunch of
fighter planes come in there. I don't know what we thought, but we
didn't think they could hit us. They didn't know who we were. But
here they come in strafing and doing everything.
AK: American?
MF: Yeah. They was fighter planes off one of the aircraft carriers,
and I don't recall which one it was. Anyway, one day we seen a
formation of them that come in there and there was a train going up
the track. Boy they was really getting it. They peeled over and come
down, this fighter plane looked like it had a torpedo under the
bottom, it was probably a big bomb. He leveled off and released that
thing and it hit the front end of that engine and just blowed that
engine, I mean just sky high. That was the only time I ever seen
anything like that happen myself. But in another day or two they come
in there and them guys was getting down low. They wadn't nobody
shooting at them or nothing else. Because when the B-29s come over
there bombing the things, they had fighter escorts, when they turned
on those searchlights at night at something, the fighters would come
right down them searchlight beams and shoot out them searchlights.
You know, thats when they had them anti-aircraft guns? Then within a
week or two you couldn't get a searchlight turned on. I don't know
whether they didn't have any or they got them all shot up.
AK: Anyway it was effective.
MF: Yeah. So where them fighters come in there, about two or three
days, they was getting down pretty low on the ground. Them guys, we
got up where we could see them, and waving towels at them. And they
got so low that they recognized who we were. They recognized, I
guess, that we was POWs. They never did come in there and put on a
strafing run anymore. But every morning at 10 o'clock and about 3
o'clock in the afternoon they'd come in and us an airshow on.
AK: Thats at Saruga.
MF: Yeah.
AK: Now Saruga, is that the one thats closest to Sasebo (sp?)?
MF: Yeah, right across from Korea too.
AK: How far was it from Sasebo (sp?)? 5 miles, 10 miles...
MF: I don't know, it was probably 50 miles. I tell you honestly I
didn't know there was a place called Sasebo (sp?).
AK: Just generally in that area.
MF: Yeah.
AK: Alright. They discovered who you were then started putting on an
airshow for you twice a day. This was in what, early July or late July?
MF: Last part of, well its about the 20th or 24th, something like
that, of July.
AK: Yeah, right at the very end.
MF: They didn't have no competition from the Japanese. They come in
there every day and put on airshows and carry on and away they'd go,
see. We kept on working just like we'd always worked. Then about the
middle of august they kept us in camp. They said due to the Japanese
holiday, the Japanese had holiday and there wouldn't be no work
today. So we said "Okay, they sounds alright." But very seldom ever
take off a Japanese holiday.
AK: An unusual thing, eh?
MF: Yeah.
AK: You know, they did that at some of the other camps too. This's
the third time I've been told that.
MF: The next day they give us some excuse. The next day they said due
to the shipping out in the harbor. We said "Uh oh. Uh oh!" We knew
it was something wrong. About, I don't know, somewhere around the
last of august it was a big old plane flew over us a dropped
pamphlets. Fluttered down. It said the Japanese government had
surrendered. Oh my god! You talk about some happy people buddy! The
Japanese guards, they'd already flew the coop. Last two or three days
prior to that they'd been changing guards seemed like about every two
hours. Time they dropped those pamphlets, they wadn't, the guards
that we had we never seen before. They had enough sense to get rid of
the guards but we caught most of the guards that been with us ever
since we had got to Japan. We give them a, what you call it, a
kangaroo court and took care of them people. Some we couldn't find we
wrote them up and turned them over to the american, I forget now what
it was.
AK: Are you saying you tried them and executed them.
MF: We took care of them, yeah. We took care of them.
AK: How many are you talking about, 4 or 5?
MF: About 6 all together.
AK: Was that all of them, or just 6 of the baddest, the mean ones?
MF: 6 that we could catch. That we caught. Then there was about 8 or
9 more that we never could catch. We knew their names and
descriptions and everything else. We give it to the, what do you call
it? I forget. We give to somebody, I don't know who it was. Anybody
had a grievance...
AK: Who organized the kangaroo court? You know?
MF: These captains.
AK: They did?
MF: Yeah. We had Sargeant Majors, Captains...
AK: They had a trial and executed them.
MF: We took care of them.
AK: What were the charges against them?
MF: God I don't know. We'd catch them, they'd try them, and somebody
else would execute them.
AK: Is that right?
MF: Yeah. I had one guy, name of, we called him the emperor. He was
a ornery cuss. One night I caught him in a train station. That bird
hit me in the head with a rifle butt and boy he really hurt me one
time. For nothing! I hadn't done a durn thing. I caught him in this
train station, and by that time we had armed ourselves see, we knew
the war was over and the MPs and the army was turning in their weapons
and we had organized and armed ourselves. I caught this bird, well I
wadn't by myself, there was two or three other guys with me, we caught
him in a train station, and I was telling him about that time him
hitting me in the heard, and various other instance, and that knuckle
head got away from me. But I would have killed him if I'd got a
chance.
AK: He was that mean to you.
MF: Yeah. Nobody else...
AK: You didn't carry a grudge against the rest of them?
MF: No. I got a Japan Saber downstairs. I got it off of a lieutenant
on a train. He didn't put up no fuss, he just give it to me. Other
than that we didn't have no trouble with nobody else. When we'd go
somewhere we went 7, 8, 10, 15 in a group.
AK: How'd you arm yourself? You talk about you armed yourself after
the guards left. How'd you get the arms? They left the arms room open?
MF: No, they had a place, the Japanese army, all the armed forces in
that area stacked their arms there. We went there and got whatever we
wanted. If we wanted a pistol we got a pistol, if we wanted a rifle
we got a rifle.
AK: Well, the prisoners, you know, had a pretty hard feelings toward
the Japanese from the maltreatment that they'd received and some of
the things that they'd done, made them do without water and all the
suffering. Did any of them just go on a wild shooting spree, that you
know of?
MF: Not that I ever knowed of. Not in a place where I was at,
because...
AK: Did you hear any of the rest of them talk about that?
MF: No. Never did.
AK: So the only thing you know about was that there was a court there
that tried about 6.
MF: Yeah, the ones we caught. They took care of them. As far as I
know there's nothing, I didn't have no hand in shooting none of them.
I don't know if it was ever made public. I imagine it was, I imagine
there was a record kept of it. At least I would think there would be.
AK: They did have, in the war trials afterward, they did try some of
those guards and some of those camp commanders and did execute some of
them. I'm pretty sure that thats a correct statement.
MF: This Japanese captain, our camp commander, he knew about this.
AK: The Japanese who?
MF: Our Japanese camp commander. He knew about this, but nobody had
anything on or against him, because he had treated us fair and square,
no brutality, no nothing. The people I'm talking about was guards
that'd been with us from the time we got off the ship in November of
'42. They had the same people with the exceptions of a few of them, I
don't know, died or got killed in bombing raids or something. But the
rest of them had stayed with us all this time and they was Japanese
that had disabilities. They wadn't any good for the armed forces.
AK: Talking about beatings and brutality. Was a beating of an
American prisoner a pretty common thing in that group you were with?
MF: Yeah.
AK: Daily?
MF: Daily. Somebody got a rifle butt, or got beat up, for something
every day. I mean, somebody.
AK: Did you ever see them get beat so bad that they were killed? or
dies as a result of it?
MF: One boy. A boy from Pennsylvania. Well they didn't beat him to
death, but they beat him up pretty bad and stood him outside one night
and he took pneumonia and died from it. But actually beating anybody
bad enough to kill them, I never did see nothing like that.
AK: That, coupled with some of the other ailments, would cause the to
perish sometimes.
MF: Yeah. Standing him out in that rain, he got pneumonia and died
from it.
AK: When you get this pamphlet, you say you all celebrate, how'd you
celebrate? Jumped and screamed and yelled?
MF: Oh yeah! They come over with the B-17, I don't know, there was a
big plane dropping these pamphlets. They said if we needed food,
medical supplies, clothing, to insert panels on the ground, you know.
They even dropped the panels. We put them all out there. We needed
food, medical supplies, clothing, everything else. The next day they
come in there with I don't know how many big transports, and they
dropped clothing, food, medical supplies, they dropped everything that
you can imagine. Shoestrings, shoes, socks, cigarettes, chewing
tobacco, neckties, kakhi uniforms, everything in the world of medical
supplies.
AK: Did y'all get in class A's as a result of that?
MF: No, we got, they dropped kakhi's.
AK: You got into Kakhi's?
MF: Yeah, we got into Kakhi's.
AK: Everybody had something that fit them?
MF: Yeah. Switch it around...
AK: Did you get stripes? Did you get your stripes on?
MF: No, we didn't have no stripes. Everybody knew who every was. As
soon as we got back to the Philippines the Phillipine people there we
went in the repo-depot (sp?) and the Red Cross or somebody, I don't
know who it was, but they sewed stripes on all our shirts and stuff
like that see. Done it for nothing.
AK: As soon as you got to the Philippines.
MF: Yeah. We didnt get nothing... But they dropped food and... the
funny thing was they dropped Hershey bars and I ate I don't know how
many and I got sick, I thought I was going to kick the bucket. That
was a stupid deal, I thought to myself "If I die it'll be a good one!"
And it was a whole lot of guys saying that. We got Hershey bars and
eat and eat and eat and eat. Some of these big drums of peach, they
had these big old gallon cans in 55 gallon drums. They'd drop them
and the chute would break and one hit in a rice patty. It look like a
bomb had hit and splattered. And down there was all these big peach
halves. Man I dived in there and slurp! It was like a bunch of pigs
down in there eating them peaches. It didn't take us, believe it or
not, we gained, they weighed us, I don't know, after we went to
Yokohama, out of that place, we got to Yokohama the morning of
September 10th, and that was the official liberation of us. They give
us a physical and weighed us and from the time we got there to the
Philippines we had gained approximately a pound a day.
AK: Did you'all mingle with the civilians at all after that, your camp
and the city?
MF: No, they wouldn't let us. They kept us quarantined.
AK: Who wouldn't?
MF: You mean in Japan?
AK: Yeah. No, I mean, you were on your own there, your guards had
left you...
MF: Oh yeah, no we didn't...
AK: Because there was one prison camp they did, you know. In one case
some of them got killed in the process.
MF: Thats what I say, our officers and our noncoms, they had us
organized into company, platoons, and squads.
AK: You'all had good leadership didn't you?
MF: Oh yeah. We was organized, we had heard a rumor somewhere along
the line, I don't know where, or who got it, that we would have been
killed, like they told us. And we was organized. If some of us had
been killed then all of us got killed.
AK: You were going to form a company and fight.
MF: Thats right. We planned on overpowering and getting their weapons
and we may all died but it'd be some of them go along with us.
AK: You all already had emergency plans in case American's land and
they come at you, you'all were going to storm the...
MF: Oh yeah, we had a well organized unit and our intelligence, they
was... I mean we had people that could do anything. They could pick
any lock, steal anything that they wanted, we had some of the
shrewdest knuckleheads you ever... You'd be suprised, in a situation
like that, how shrewd you can get in stealing things. And how easy
it'd get sometimes. It teaches you how to survive. I don't believe
there would be a time here, I don't know of anything that could
prevent me from surviving as long as I got my health. Me and my wife,
I'm sure I could manage, one way or the other...
AK: While we're on that subject, we'll go to this other thing in a few
minutes, how did this experience change you? How do you figure, for
the better, for the worse, or to the good, or some of each?
MF: Like you say, I wouldn't go through that again. But the
experience I got and the endurance that I know my body can take and
the...
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End of Audio Tape 3 Side 2