(Charles Amos enlisted in the Army Air Corps in 1939 at the age of 18 and was sent to the Philippines.)
On Dec. 8, 1941, I was at Clark Field. It was just noon time, and we were listening to a news report from Manila, telling us about Pearl Harbor being bombed.
Shortly after that, we heard the heavy droning of aircraft engines ‹ a bunch of them. So we all ran outside and looked up. The planes came in at quite a high altitude. They were painted gray on the bottom. We all thought they were Navy planes because we'd been told the Navy was coming over to bring in some aircraft to the naval base there.
When I heard the whistle of bombs ‹ I was a bombardier at the time ‹ I knew what was going on. We all ran into our foxholes.
The Japanese wiped out just about every aircraft that we had. We were under orders not to fire until we were fired upon. Our aircraft ‹ this I know ‹ took off from Clark Field, found the enemy at sea, knew exactly where they were, couldn't fire upon them. They were running out of gas, turned around to come back to Clark, and guess who was following them? The Japanese. And that's how we got hit. High altitude first, then small dive bombers and things of that nature ‹ strafing ‹ and just completely wiped out Clark Field. Things were all blown apart. Guys were decapitated from shrapnel.
After hiding out a couple of days in the jungle, I got a bunch of the boys together. I was a buck sergeant. I got a sheet metal man, two engine people, myself as an instrument specialist, and a propellor man. We'd go around the field looking for aircraft. The idea was to find a P-40 that was fairly intact, might need an elevator chain because of shrapnel, or had flat tires, stuff like that, because we could get that back in condition. We'd get a vehicle and tow it into the jungle where we would work on it. I think we recovered about six aircraft that way. They'd fly them down to the southern island of Mindanao.
We had no transportation after the first attack. A buddy of mine, a guy named Prukop, was a mechanic. He and I, we went around the perimeter of the field and out the main roads, looking for cars that had been shot up but could still move. He'd jimmy the ignition somehow and got quite a few cars back in commission.
There was a huge piece of military equipment that was the primary mover for a 105-mm. rifle. It had been shot up. There were holes in the radiator. It was near what used to be the NCO Club. We walk into the club. He gets a carton of cigarettes and a dozen eggs.
"Prukop, what in the Sam Hill you going to do?"
"I'm going to plug up the radiator."
So he gets the thing running, pouring water in it all along, and it gets real hot. He starts breaking eggs into. And he puts cigarettes into it, taking the paper off. Stink like the devil! But he plugged it up. I saw that thing later on Bataan moving heavy equipment.
One thing, I believe, that saved my squadron from being a target in continuing strafing attacks was that at the end of the field there was what looked like a big oil dump, a gasoline dump. At that time, gasoline came to the Philippines in 55-gallon drums. They'd pour the gas out, but there was always a little left. The Japanese came over, spotted this huge mound of 55-gallon drums, and must've thought they were hitting a bonanza. They did a lot of strafing —; and it developed a lot of smoke. Fortunately the smoke came over our barracks area, and I think that's what saved us.
We stayed at Clark Field till about a week before Christmas. Then we received orders to evacuate. We got on a train, went north, and ended up on Bataan. Corregidor (island fortress off the tip of Bataan) was sitting out there with the largest rifles in the world — 155's ‹ all pointed at Manila Bay. A cockroach couldn't have gotten into Manila Bay. But there was nothing whatsoever pointing toward Bataan. The troops on Bataan were to keep the enemy from getting to where his artillery could take potshots at the rear end of Corregidor.
We became provisional infantry ‹ all the Air Corps that was left. Ever hear of an Enfield rifle? That's what they gave us ‹ from World War I. The Philippine Army was there. There were the Philippine Scouts — excellent soldiers — all commanded by West Point graduates.
We were there for a little over three months. The surrender came in early April.
We still had ammunition, but we didn't have any food. I don't think you could find any animal living in that whole darned area that we hadn't eaten. The carabao went first — the water buffalo. Soldiers would rather go out on a scavenger detail, looking for food, than go out and find the enemy.
We had no medicine. Mosquitoes, malaria was prevalent. We had nothing. We had a Russian. He was a civilian, but he was a pilot. He had a civilian plane. He'd fly down to Mindanao to get medicine. I talked to him. "How do you get down there through the Japanese?" He said, "I fly just over the treetops going down. I fly under the treetops coming back."
We had a small airstrip. Planes and fuel were so limited that the only mission the P 40 fighters could go on was to try to sink Japanese ships coming in for landings.
We'd get a rumor here, a rumor there. The biggest tale bearers were the chaplains. "There's a great big flotilla leaving Australia and heading this way." Our spirits would be up for a little while. But there was no intention of sending anybody. Morale was pretty well shot. By the time the surrender actually came about, it was gone completely.
We received orders to retreat. They decided to blow up all the ammunition we still had. What an explosion that was! Before the Japanese soldiers came, our commanding officer told us he'd received orders to surrender. He said, "I don't know what to tell you. Can you go into the mountains? If you so desire. But my advice is don't do it." We had no medicine, no food. So how were we going to last out there? He advised us to surrender and surrender our arms, but he didn't tell us what to do. Most of the guys took the rifles we had, took the bolts out of them and threw them in the creek, and surrendered our piece.
The Japanese soldiers helped themselves to whatever you had. I should maybe temper that a little bit. When we first started on the march, the Japanese military ‹ the men who had actually seen combat ‹ they never took anything from us, at least not in my area. What they wanted to do was trade us. If you had a watch and they had Japanese emergency provisions ‹ they used to have little tiny cookies, almost like dog biscuits, in a bag — they'd trade you a handful of that for your watch. Shoes the same thing, if you had any spare shoes you were carrying. They weren't so bad. Later on, when we came up into the non combatant area, troops who had never seen any active combat ‹ the Cherry Brigade, or something, who were in charge of moving the prisoners ‹ they were on bicycles — they were sunuvaguns.
We got on the road and started marching with the other guys. We didn't know where we were going, how long we'd be on the road. All you did was follow the guy in front of you.
You've got to take into account the temperature. It's all dirt roads. The worst part about it was the closeness of the marchers. You could just about walk without stepping on the guy in front of you. I just assume the Japanese didn't want us spread out any more than necessary so they could control us.
I still remember this one guy — I think he was a major. I guess he decided he was going to stop. Well, this Japanese guard comes over and kicks him. "You can't do that to me. I'm a major in the United States Army." The guard kicked him again.
If you couldn't keep up, the usual pro cedure was your buddies would put you in the middle, put their arms around you, and you walked that way. If you couldn't walk, you were left.
We had nothing. We had no place to camp when the day's marching was over. All they did was put us in an open field or a rice paddy. No water. No food.
I really don't know how long we walked. The duration is just a blank wall. (The history books say it was six days, 60 miles — and that about 11,000 of an estimated 76,000 American and Filipino prisoners never made it to the prison camps.)
We went all the way from Mariveles to San Fernando ‹ a place I knew well because in peacetime I used to go to a big cockfighting arena there, like a football stadium. That's really where we had our first water. They had spigots, and they would allow so many men to bring as many canteens as they could to the spigot and fill them up and take them back to the men. And we got some food. That was the first place the Japanese military had really given us anything.
We were there, I think, for two days. Then they put us on freight cars, and we went to a place called Camp O'Donnell, a former U.S. Army post. We were told to put all our belongings on the ground. We had a blanket. All our worldly possessions were placed on the blanket for inspection. The guards came around and helped themselves to whatever they wanted.
Then we were treated to a lecture by the commanding general. He addressed us through the interpreter. He wanted us to understand we were not prisoners of war ‹ we did not come under the Geneva Convention. We were not prisoners of war and would not be treated as such. We were given the opportunity to surrender ‹ they had apparently expected the surrender of Corregidor along with Bataan ‹ and since we had not taken this opportunity, we were not prisoners of war but captives. We understood that as far as he was concerned, we all should've been killed — that only through the grace of his Imperial Highness had we been saved. We were guests of the emperor of Japan. We had no rights, no nothing.
Camp O'Donnell was pretty brutal. Men were dying off like flies. Every morning, the able men would go on a detail burying the dead. The only thing left on the fellow that died was his dog tag ‹ one dog tag around his neck, and the medics took the other one. Didn't even leave him his blanket. The blanket was valuable to the guy who was living. And the Filipinos went through a lot more suffering than we went through. The Japanese had no respect for the Filipinos whatsoever.
Click here for
what happened next to Charlie Amos
Copyright, Durham Caldwell and Ludlow (Mass.) Historical Commission