Charlie Amos survived the long, tortuous hike from the Bataan Peninsula to Camp O'Donnell known as the Bataan Death March)
I was lucky. I was a kid. I celebrated my 21st birthday on the line in Bataan. I was an athlete. I'd been trying to keep myself in good shape.
At O'Donnell, they divided us up into groups of 10. They told us that if anybody escaped, they would shoot the rest of the 10. We agreed among ourselves that none of us would try to escape.
One time we had a raid by the Huks (Filipino Hukbala-hap guerillas). The Huks came in and started to shoot the place up. The Japanese, of course, fought back. What those of us in the camp thought was that the Huks forced several American prisoners to go with them. They didn't think the men had gone with them willingly. Remember, we'd all agreed nobody would try to escape because we knew what would happen.
With these guys gone, the Japanese were going to shoot all of us, the whole shebang. The commanding officer of the Japanese went to his headquarters and pleaded. They decided they wouldn't shoot all of us, but they would shoot a 10-man squad. A good friend of mine was one of the ones they shot.
They had these details to go on for the benefit of the camp. We'd go to the railroad head to load rice or whatever they had onto trucks. We'd move things for the Japanese ‹ cement bags, you name it. And when you'd get out on detail and if you were lucky and you had good guards some of them were you'd come in contact with the Filipinos. They still liked the Americans, and if they could, they'd sneak you food. Filipinos used to have rice that they'd make cakes out of, and they'd roll them in a banana leaf. That was a delicacy. Maybe an egg that they had, or a package of cigarettes Adobe cigarettes, we'd call them.
Then we'd get back to camp. Guys would take the stuff. There was good money in it. Money's good no matter where you are. And tobacco! Tobacco was number one in prison camps. If you had tobacco, you didn't have to worry about a darn thing.
My idea was to help the sick guys. The well guys were taking a beating because if you were strong, you went out and worked your fanny off. You'd come back at night, go to bed pooped, and go out the next morning on another detail while the sick guys just hung around. My idea was to help the sick and they'd help you. So I'd come in with all this stuff: sugar, salt...
I got my company together and explained the situation. If we could work together, go out on these details, get the food, bring it in, give it to the sick guys, then they could go out, and life wouldn't be so hard. We all agreed on that. So I used my stuff, especially cigarettes I didn't want cigarettes anyway....
I have to tell you this, too. I got an egg. I got my allowance of rice. I cooked my egg and broke it in the rice. Guess what? An unhatched chicken. Tell you this, too: I ate it.
I came back one day. I was tired. I went over to this hut where my gear was located and my sleeping area. There were two guys there. I said, "Hey, you're in my place."
"Our place is wet."
"I'm tired," I said. "I've been working. I want to sleep."
These guys are big guys. "Tough luck." They threatened to kick the devil out of me.
I picked up a stick, and I said, "If you don't move, I'll kick the devil out of you."
They moved. I slept that night. And guess what? My milk of human kindness went out. I never was the same man from then on. It was known as survival of the fittest. I did more fighting in prison camp than I did in my whole life. I'm not bragging about it, but I'm here, aren't I?
The hardest detail I went on was at a place called Tayabus. They were going to put in a road from there to Manila. No buildings. No sheds. No nothing. The only good thing was it was the middle of the dry season and the riverbeds were all dry. There was no place to sleep except a blanket.
The Japanese told us if we got any shelter, we'd do it ourselves at night. Me being a carpenter, it comes in handy. This other fellow and I, we made a little shed out of the material that was around us leaves, big fronds like palm leaves that made beautiful shingles.
That was the worst detail I ever went on. We started there with about 400. There were just 100 when we eventually left.
I was a buck sergeant ‹ three stripes. I was in charge of a group of 20 men. Old Takami San, a Japanese military man I guess he was an engineer was in charge of all of us. In the morning, we had tinko roll call. Twenty men would always go out in a group. He would not let less than 20 men go. We had a sick tent there. He would go in the sick tent, and if a man could possibly work, he would kick him out and make him go.
We started in in the jungle, cutting down the trees and then digging to put the roadbed in by hand. Old Takami San, he was a mean buggar. If he could get an ounce of work out of you, he was going to get an ounce of work out of you and to hell with the rest of it.
When I got replacements in for my 20 men, I would take them aside. "Look, this guy is going to get the work out of you if you want to or not. My advice to you is if you're sick, work until you drop because if you don't, he's going to drop you anyhow." This was brutal language I know it was. But some time before in my company, there was a prisoner Takami San watched him like a hawk this guy was screwing off. He'd piddle around with his shovel. Takami San would go up to him. He'd give him a couple of boots in the rear end, yell something at him in Japanese. The guy said "He's not going to make me do this. I'm sick."
Takami San had his say, believe me. The guy wouldn't work. You know what he did? He had him face into the sun in the tropics, it's brutal. He had him take a shovel, hold it up over his head with both hands, and stare into the sun. The guy went blind.
Old Takami San, he was so mean that they gave him the nickname "the Killer." He didn't speak a word of English. We'd call him "the Killer," he was happy.
We had two medics who would go out with us, supposedly to take care of cuts and stuff like that. These Japanese guards, young kids, wanted to learn English. The medics didn't think it was anything wrong to teach them. One Japanese guard asked them what "Killer" meant, and they told him.
The Japanese guard went back and told Takami San. He flipped his cookies. He took a crack at just about all of us, screaming and hollering. Then he sat down and said, "Takami San," and right from then on, that's what we called him.
The rainy season came. Monsoon season, they call it over there. It got so bad that to get a wheelbarrow from Point A to Point B, three men were required. One man on the handles. We had this vine, rattan, growing all over the jungle. You'd tie that to the front of the wheelbarrow. And just like horses, the two guys in the front would pull it. If it couldn't be done by hand in those days, the Japanese didn't do it.
I guess they finished the road. When we left, they brought in Taiwanese.
When we were leaving there, Takami San called me over to the Japanese camp they had over on the side. He was sitting on one of these grass mats that they have. I in effect had been his second in command. He let me understand in broken English that he was a military soldier, that he was not sick ‹ he had the piles. When I finally left, he gave me toilet paper. Now, do you realize how valuable toilet paper was in a prison camp? He gave me some dried, smoked fish that people in the Orient go crazy for. And he gave me a pair of the shoes that they had two toes. I had no shoes.
I backed off. He stood up in great pain. He threw me a highball (salute). I threw him a highball. I turned around and never saw the sunuvagun again.
My next stop was Bilibid Prison. It was a Filipino prison before the war. Now it was run by the American Navy. Navy doctors. The Japanese apparently sent all the sick prisoners who came off details to Bilibid Prison.
The favorite of the American prisoners was what we called lougou. Lougou was a bowl of rice that was made like a cereal very watery. You'd get maybe half a canteen cup of that. If you were very fortunate, and had made a contact or something, you might have a little sugar, brown sugar, to put on it. That was wonderful. If you didn't have that and you were really fortunate, you'd have salt ‹ rock salt.
Now we didn't get the best grade of rice. Sweepings off the floor ‹ more damn rocks in it than Carter had liver pills. This kid was eating his lougou, and I guess he chomped down on a piece of rock and broke his tooth. He goes in to the American Navy dentist. The dentist looked at his tooth and says, "How the devil did you do that?" "I'm eating my lougou, and there's a black spot in it," he says. "I thought it was the usual rat turd. I bit down on it. It was a rock."
We used to go on details from there. We'd go down to the docks in Manila. The Philip-pines, they're crazy for sewing machines ‹ Singer sewing machines the treadle type. Every Filipino worth their salt had a sewing machine. So I guess the Japanese found the Singer warehouse. We were loading them on a Japanese freighter. We were loading cases of Spam and cases of bully beef and I don't know what else. Cases of whisky ‹ good whisky.
Now I'd always had a yen for soap. I came across this case with soap in it. I took a couple of bars of soap and put them in the top of my pants. Back aboard the ship, I had to bend down. A bar of soap fell out on the deck. I could've gotten shot. A Japanese seaman picked it up. He walked over to me and told me in perfect English, "Hide this. If you get caught, you're going to get the hell beaten out of you!"
Now we had a guy named Moe. He gets a case of whisky. He's down in the hold of the ship. He opens a bottle of whisky and proceeds to get plastered. We're scared. We've got to march back to the prison camp. That's a mile and a half. He's drunk. He's singing to beat hell. We told the Japanese, "He's got malaria." We got away with it.
I went on one detail to build a training field for the Japanese right outside Nichols Field, an American airfield near Manila. They were going to convert rice paddies into a landing field. It was a rough detail. Some of the guys, rather than work, would hurt themselves. The standard deal was get a broken arm. Get a broken arm, you can't work. You take your buddy, take a pick handle, wrap a towel around your arm, and he'd whack your arm and break it. Crazy, huh? But they did it. Funny part of it was, they got caught. You know why? Most of the guys are righthanded. Guess which arm they were breaking. The left arm!
The worst thing I saw, this kid from the South... They had brought airplanes in at this time. They had revetments they used to make out of sod. We dig up the sod with picks. This kid, he's barefoot. He takes a pick and drives it through his foot! How much can you tolerate to get out of working? Right through his foot!
We had no idea how the war was going until a Navy task force hit Manila. We were out working on a detail getting stone for the airfield runway we looked up in the heavens and saw planes and heard machine guns. It was the time of day the Japanese normally sent a big plane out somewhere. All hell was breaking loose. There's fighters up there going crazy. This buddy of mine, Bourdean a brilliant man, but not much common sense he gets hold of a Japanese guard and says, "American skogie. Skogie tak-san." American planes, a lot of them. Then he says, "Joto." That was his mistake that meant "very good." The guard side-swiped him with his rifle butt.
The American planes came so close to us, the Navy fighters, that the American pilots waved to us.
The next thing we knew, we were headed for Japan.
Click here for Charlie Amos's slow boat to
Japan, and the hard times that followed