CANDIDLY SPEAKING —
How high’s a ceiling?
By Maxine Garrison
…
Williams: Angott-Jack scrap merits big laugh from service Joes
Non-title contest seen as aiding promotional schemes of Jacobs
By Joe Williams
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Willkie to be guest quizmaster of air show
Fadiman to join ‘experts’ for evening
Wendell Willkie will fire questions at the Information Please experts on Monday night and Clifton Fadiman, whose seat will be occupied by Mr. Willkie, will suit with the boys who don’t hold the cards but seem to know what’s on the cards the quizmaster holds just the same. Thus, Fadiman gets his chance to learn “how the other half lives.” Messrs. Kieran, Levant and Adams will probably make sure that he gets a couple of toughies to answer.
Tonight’s Town Meeting will discuss “On What Basis Can Russia and Poland Agree?”
Edward Everett Horton will be Joan Davis’ guest tonight. Bill Bendix will mix with Bing Crosby; Janet Blair sings for Abbott and Costello.
Wheeling’s Singing Millmen have a new wrinkle in songs to premiere on their Sunday broadcast. It is titled “Singing Ochi Chernye (Dark Eyes) on the Rhine.” It won’t be long before the Russians will be doing that.
Charlie Bickerton, veteran engineer at KDKA, is celebrating 21 years of twirling dials for the pioneer station this week.
Eddie Dowling will star in a new show on the Mutual Network starting Feb. 27.
Things were reversed when Mrs. “Crime Doctor” Everett Sloane was giving birth to a son and her husband was racing by taxi from the studio to the hospital. The stork beat pappy and the taxi.
Bing Crosby has recorded a supply of Treasury Song Parade tunes for the week of Feb. 13.
Frank Sinatra and Errol Flynn have signed for gratis performances on the Screen Guild Show, proceeds going to a home for indigent actors.
Don Rodney, singer with Cugat’s orchestra who liked to be called “the Latin-American Sinatra,” will soon be Pvt. Rodney.
Because this is America, one can poke his nose in Washington’s affairs without getting said nose poked. So, Jimmy Durante will follow his beak to Washington on tomorrow night’s broadcast.
Correction, Please has been revised on a test basis. Instead of five contestants, there are only four and they get two questions in each round.
Val Irving, Hollywood comedian, is being auditioned for radio.
You’ll see mike man Don Wilson in the picture Cinderella Jones.
Brad Barker, radio’s ace and oldest “animal man” who can imitate the sound of anything that walks, flies or swims, was once leading man to Clara Kimball Young and Mary Pickford in the silent days.
Donald Briggs left Mr. District Attorney to become a lieutenant in the Air Forces. Now he is a lieutenant-announcer of Capt. Glenn Miller’s We Sustain the Wings.
Marjorie Davis, young actress of the Basin Street gang, has been signed for a feature role in the new play, Highland Fling.
It’s a good story if it isn’t true. Bert Gordon, radio’s “Mad Russian,” had just a couple of minutes to get to a studio when a bunch of young autograph fans cornered him. Bert thought fast, looked ahead and shouted “Hello, Frankie!” The kids, thinking he was calling to Frank Sinatra, turned to look and Bert fled.
John Loder (Mr. Hedy Lamarr), director of the Silver Theater, carries a matchbook cover from the Munich beer hall, where Hitler blows off and foams at the mouth.
Millard Mitchell, heard on Duffy’s Tavern as “Crackpot O’Toole,” and other funny roles, is featured in Maxwell Anderson’s latest drama, Storm Operation.
Following her debut in opera at the New York City Center, Pittsburgh’s gifted Mary Martha Briney will be Alfred Drake’s guest on Broadway Matinee, a Columbia Network feature, Friday, Feb. 4, at 4:00 p.m. ET.
U.S. State Department (January 27, 1944)
711.94114A/277a: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Minister in Switzerland
Washington, January 27, 1944
274
American Interests – JAPAN
Please request Swiss Legation Tokyo to deliver the following textually to the Japanese Government:
The Government of the United States refers to its communication delivered to the Japanese Government on December 23, 1942 by the Swiss Legation in Tokyo in charge of American interests in Japan and Japanese-occupied territory concerning reports that the Government of the United States had received of the mistreatment of American nationals in Japanese hands. The Swiss Legation in Tokyo on May 28, 1943 forwarded to the Government of the United States a preliminary reply from the Japanese Government to this communication in which that Government stated that it would communicate in due course the results of investigations concerning each instance referred to in the note of the Government of the United States. No reports of investigations regarding these instances have yet been received.
The Government of the United States has taken due note of the statements of the Japanese Government “concerning the special circumstances prevailing in areas which have until recently been fields of battle” and concerning “the manifold difficulties which exist in areas occupied by the Japanese forces or where military operations are still being carried on.” The Government of the United States points out, however, that the regions in which Americans have been taken prisoner or interned have long ceased to be scenes of active military operations and that the Japanese holding authorities have therefore had ample opportunity to establish an orderly and humane internment program in accordance with their Government’s undertakings. Despite this fact the Government of the United States continues to receive reports that the great proportion of American nationals are the victims either of inhuman cruelty or of callous failure to provide the necessities of life on the part of the Japanese holding authorities, in violation of the common laws of civilization and of the Japanese Government’s undertaking to apply to American nationals the humane provisions of the Geneva Prisoners of War Convention.
There follows a statement of the principal categories of the deprivation of rights, cruelties, wanton neglect, mistreatment and hardships to which, according to information received by the Government of the United States, from many sources, Americans in Japanese custody have been subjected.
I. Representatives of the Swiss Government entrusted with the protection of American interests in Japan and Japanese-occupied territory have not been permitted to go to every place without exception where prisoners of war and civilian internees are interned, have not been permitted to interview without witnesses the persons held, and have not had access to all places occupied by the prisoners (Article 86 of the Geneva Prisoners of War Convention).
II. Representatives of the International Red Cross Committee have been refused permission to visit most of the places where American nationals are held by the Japanese authorities (Articles 79 and 86).
III. American nationals have not been permitted to forward complaints to the Japanese holding authorities or to representatives of the protecting Power (Article 42).
IV. The Japanese authorities have punished and have threatened to punish American nationals for complaining concerning the conditions of captivity (Article 42).
V. The Japanese Government has failed to furnish needed clothing to American nationals (Article 12).
VI. The Japanese authorities have confiscated personal effects from American civilian internees and prisoners of war (Article 6).
VII. American prisoners of war and civilian internees have been subjected to insults and public curiosity (Article 2).
VIII. Civilians and prisoners of war interned by Japan are suffering from malnutrition and deficiency diseases because of the failure and refusal of the detaining authorities to provide health sustaining food for their charges, or to permit the United States to make regular shipments on a continuing basis under appropriate neutral guarantees of supplemental food and medical supplies (Article 11 and the specific reciprocal undertaking of Japan to take into account national differences in diet).
IX. The Japanese authorities have devoted to improper and forbidden uses the profits of the sale of goods in camp canteens instead of devoting them to the welfare of the persons held in the camps (Article 12).
X. Contrary to the specific undertaking of the Japanese Government, the detaining authorities have compelled civilians to perform labor other than that connected with the administration, maintenance and management of internment camps. Officer prisoners of war have been forced to labor and noncommissioned officers to do other than supervisory labor (Article 27).
XI. Prisoners of war have been required to perform labor that has a direct relation with war operations (Article 31).
XII. Medical care has in many instances been denied to prisoners of war and civilian internees and when given has been generally so poor as to cause unnecessary suffering and unnecessary deaths (Article 14).
XIII. The Japanese Government has reported the names of only a part of the American prisoners of war and civilian internees in its hands (Article 77) and of American combatants found dead by Japanese forces (Article 4 of the Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Sick and Wounded of Armies in the Field, to which Japan is a contracting party).
XIV. The Japanese Government has not permitted internees and prisoners of war freely to exercise their religion (Article 16).
XV. The Japanese Government has not posted the Convention in camps in English translation, thus depriving American prisoners of war and civilian internees of knowledge of their rights thereunder (Article 84).
XVI. The Japanese Government has failed to provide adequate equipment and accommodations in prisoner of war and civilian internment camps and transports, but on the contrary forced them to subsist in inhumane conditions (Article 10).
XVII. The Japanese Government has completely failed to apply the provisions of the Geneva Prisoners of War Convention (Title III, Section V, Chapter 3) with regard to trial and punishment of prisoners of war despite the fact that violations of its undertaking in this respect have repeatedly been called to its attention, but on the contrary has imposed cruel and inhuman punishments without trial.
XVIII. The Japanese authorities have inflicted corporal punishment and torture upon American nationals (Article 46).
The Government of the United States emphasizes that it has based the foregoing charges only on information obtained from reliable sources. Many well-authenticated cases can be cited in support of each of the charges.
The Government of the United States also desires to state most emphatically that, as the Japanese Government can assure itself from an objective examination of the reports submitted to it by the Spanish, Swedish, and International Red Cross representatives who have repeatedly visited all places where Japanese are held by the United States, the United States has consistently and fully applied the provisions of the Geneva Prisoners of War Convention in the treatment of all Japanese nationals held by it as prisoners of war or (so far as they are adaptable) as civilian internees, detainees or evacuees in relocation centers. Japanese nationals have enjoyed high standards of housing, food, clothing, and medical care. The American authorities have furthermore freely and willingly accepted from the representatives of the protecting Powers and the International Red Cross Committee suggestions for the improvement of conditions under which Japanese nationals live in American camps and centers and have given effect to many of these suggestions most of which, in view of the high standards normally maintained, are directed toward the obtaining of extraordinary benefits and privileges of a recreational, educational or spiritual nature.
The Government of the United States demands that the Japanese Government immediately take note of the charges made above and take immediate steps to raise the treatment accorded American nationals held by Japan to the standard provided by the Geneva Prisoners of War Convention, which the United States and the Japanese Governments have mutually undertaken to apply. The Government of the United States also expects the Japanese Government to take proper disciplinary or penal action with regard to those of its officials, employees, and agents who have violated its undertakings with respect to the Geneva Convention and the international Common Laws of decency.
The Government of the United States again directs the attention of the Japanese Government to the system of neutral supervision provided in Article 86 of the Geneva Convention. The Government of the United States again reminds the Japanese Government of the complete fulfillment of the provisions of this Article as respects the activities of the Government of Spain acting as protecting Power for Japanese interests in the continental United States and of the Government of Sweden as protecting Power for Japanese interests in Hawaii.
The Government of the United States therefore expects the Japanese Government, in accordance with recognized practice of civilized states, fully to implement the provisions of the Geneva Prisoners of War Convention. The United States Government demands that the Japanese Government will, among other things, promptly implement the provisions of Article 86 in respect to the activities of the Government of Switzerland as protecting Power for American interests in Japan and Japanese-controlled territory and will make it possible for the Government of Switzerland to give to the Government of the United States assurances to the effect that Swiss representatives have been able to convince themselves by the full exercise of the rights granted under Article 86 that the abuses set forth in the foregoing statement have been completely rectified or that steps have been taken in that direction that are considered by Switzerland to be adequate.
The United States Government until the present has refrained from publishing in this country the facts known to it regarding outrages perpetrated upon its nationals, both prisoners of war and civilian internees, by the Japanese. The United States Government hopes that as these facts are now again officially called to the Japanese Government’s attention that Government will adopt a policy of according to United States nationals in its hands the treatment to which they are entitled, and will permit representatives of the protecting Power to make such investigations and inspections as are necessary in order to give assurances to this Government that improved treatment is in fact being accorded to American nationals. In such case this Government would be in a position to assure the American people that the treatment of American nationals by the Japanese authorities had been brought into conformity with the standards recognized by civilized nations.
HULL
711.94114A/277b: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Minister in Switzerland
Washington, January 27, 1944
275
American Interests – JAPAN
There are recited in the following numbered sections, the numbers of which correspond to the numbered charges in the Department’s urgent telegram of even date, examples of some of the specific incidents upon which this Government bases the charges made by it against the Japanese Government in the telegram under reference. The specific incidents have been selected from the numerous ones that have been reported from many reliable sources to this Government. Ask the Swiss Government to forward this statement textually to its Minister in Tokyo with the request that he present it to the Japanese Government simultaneously with the telegram under reference and that he call upon the Japanese Government promptly to rectify all existing derelictions and take such further steps as will preclude their recurrence.
The Minister should further seek for himself or his representatives permission, in accordance with Article 86 of the Convention, to visit each place without exception where American nationals are detained and request of the Japanese Government the amelioration of any improper conditions that he may find to exist.
The Swiss Minister in Tokyo should be particularly asked to report promptly and fully all steps taken by the Japanese Government in conformity with the foregoing.
Charges I and II. Prisoner of war and civilian internment camps in the Philippines, French Indochina, Thailand, Manchuria, Burma, Malaya, and the Dutch East Indies, and prisoner of war camp no. 1 in Formosa have never been visited by Swiss representatives although they have repeatedly requested permission to make such visits. None of these camps except the one at Mukden are known to have been visited by International Red Cross representatives. In recent months visits have not been allowed to the prisoner of war camps near Tokyo and Yokohama, and the prisoner of war camps in and near Hong Kong, although the Swiss representatives have requested permission to make such visits.
The value of such few visits as have been permitted to some camps has been minimized by restrictions. Swiss representatives at Shanghai have been closely escorted by several representatives of the Japanese Consulate General at Shanghai during their visits to camps and have not been allowed to see all parts of camps or to have free discussion with the internees. Similar situations prevail with respect to the civilian internment camps and prisoner of war camps in metropolitan Japan and Formosa.
By contrast, all of the camps, stations, and centers where Japanese nationals are held by the United States have been repeatedly visited and fully inspected by representatives of Spain and Sweden who have spoken at length without witnesses with the inmates, and International Red Cross representatives have been and are being allowed freely to visit the camps in the United States and Hawaii where Japanese nationals are held.
Charge III. Communications addressed by the persons held to the protecting Power concerning conditions of captivity in several of the civilian camps near Shanghai, among them Ash Camp and Chapei, remain undelivered. The same situation exists with respect to the civilian internment camp in Baguio, and in most if not all of the camps where American prisoners of war are held. Persons held at Baguio, Chefoo, Saigon, and at times in the Philippine prisoner of war camps were denied permission to address the camp commander.
Charge IV. On one occasion during the summer of 1943 all of the persons held at the Columbia Country Club, Shanghai, were punished by cancellation of dental appointments because complaints were made to representatives of the Swiss Consulate General. During the same period, at Camp B, Yangchow, the entire camp was deprived of a meal by the Camp Commandant because complaints had been made concerning the delivery of spoiled food.
There are cited under Section XVIII below, cases of prisoners of war being struck because they asked for food or water.
Charge V. Civilian internees at Hong Kong have gone without footwear and civilian internees at Kobe have suffered from lack of warm clothing. In 1942 and 1943, American and Filipino prisoners of war in the Philippines and civilian internees at Baguio were forced to labor without shoes and clad only in loin cloths.
Charge VI. This is reported to have been the case at the following camps: prisoner of war camps in the Philippine Islands, prisoner of war enclosures at Mariveles Bay, Philippine Islands, civilian internment camps at Baguio, Canton, Chefoo, Peking, Manila, Tsingtao, Weihsien, and Yangchow, and at the Ash Camp, Chapei Camp, Lunghwa Camp, and Pootung Camp, in or near Shanghai. The articles most needed by the prisoners and internees have been taken. For example, Japanese soldiers took the shoes from an American officer prisoner of war who was forced to walk unshod from Bataan to San Fernando during the march which began about April 10, 1942. Although the prisoners constantly suffered from lack of drinking water canteens were taken from prisoners during this march; one of these victims was Lieutenant Colonel William B. Dyess.
At Corregidor a Japanese soldier was seen by Lieutenant Commander Melvyn H. McCoy with one arm covered from elbow to wrist and the other arm half covered with wrist watches taken from American and Filipino prisoners of war.
Charge VII. American prisoners of war in Manila were forced by Japanese soldiers to allow themselves to be photographed operating captured American military equipment in connection with the production of the Japanese propaganda film “Kip down the Stars and Stripes”.
Prisoners of war from Corregidor being taken to Manila were not landed at the port of Manila but were unloaded outside the city and were forced to march through the entire city to Bilibid Prison about May 23, 1942.
Japanese school children, soldiers, and civilians have been admitted to internment camps and encouraged to satisfy curiosity regarding the persons held. Such tours were conducted at Baguio, Hong Kong and Tsingtao.
Charge VIII. Deficiency diseases such as beriberi, pellagra, scurvy, sprue, et cetera, are common throughout Japanese internment camps. These diseases are least common in the civilian internment camps (called assembly centers) at Shanghai and in some other camps where the persons held have but recently been taken into custody or where trade by the internees themselves with outside private suppliers is allowed. It appears therefore that the great prevalence of deficiency diseases in prisoner of war camps where internees have been solely dependent upon the Japanese authorities for their food supply over an extended period is directly due to the callous failure of these authorities to utilize the possibilities for a health sustaining diet afforded by available local products. The responsibility for much of the suffering and many of the deaths from these diseases of American and Filipino prisoners of war rests directly upon the Japanese authorities. As a specific example, prisoners of war at Davao Penal Colony suffering from grave vitamin deficiencies could see from their camp trees bearing citrus fruit that they were not allowed to pluck. They were not even allowed to retrieve lemons seen floating by on a stream that runs through the camp.
Charge IX. For example, in the prisoner of war camps at Hong Kong, the profits of the canteens have not been used by the holding authorities for the benefit of the prisoners.
Charge X. At Baguio civilian internees have been forced to repair sawmill machinery without remuneration.
Officer prisoners of war have been compelled by Major Mida, the Camp Commandant at Davao Penal Colony, to perform all kinds of labor including menial tasks such as scrubbing floors, cleaning latrines used by Japanese troops and working in the kitchens of Japanese officers.
Charge XI. Ten American engineers were required to go to Corregidor in July 1942 to assist in rebuilding the military installations on that island, and prisoners of war have been worked in a machine tool shop in the arsenal at Mukden.
Charge XII. The condition of health of prisoners of war in the Philippine Islands is deplorable. At San Fernando in April 1942, American and Filipino prisoners were held in a barbed-wire enclosure so overcrowded that sleep and rest were impossible. So many of them were sick and so little care was given to the sick that human excrement covered the whole area. The enclosure at San Fernando was more than 100 kilometers from Bataan and the abominable treatment given to the prisoners there cannot be explained by battle conditions. The prisoners were forced to walk this distance in 7 days under merciless driving. Many who were unable to keep up with the march were shot or bayoneted by the guards. During this journey, as well as at other times when prisoners of war were moved in the Philippine Islands, they were assembled in the open sun even when the detaining authorities could have allowed them to assemble in the shade. American and Filipino prisoners are known to have been buried alive along the roadside and persistent reports have been received of men who tried to rise from their graves but were beaten down with shovels and buried alive.
At Camp O’Donnell conditions were so bad that 2,200 Americans and more than 20,000 Filipinos are reliably reported to have died in the first few months of their detention. There is no doubt that a large number of these deaths could have been prevented had the Japanese authorities provided minimum medical care for the prisoners. The so-called hospital there was absolutely inadequate to meet the situation. Prisoners of war lay sick and naked on the floor, receiving no attention and too sick to move from their own excrement. The hospital was so overcrowded that Americans were laid on the ground outside in the heat of the blazing sun. The American doctors in the camp were given no medicine, and even had no water to wash the human waste from the bodies of the patients. Eventually, when quinine was issued, there was only enough properly to take care of ten cases of malaria, while thousands of prisoners were suffering from the disease. Over 200 out of 300 prisoners from Camp O’Donnell died while they were on a work detail in Batangas.
At Cabanatuan there was no medicine for the treatment of malaria until after the prisoners had been in the camp for 5 months. The first shipment of medicines from the Philippine Bed Cross was held up by the camp authorities on the pretext that they must make an inventory of the shipment. This they were so dilatory in doing that many deaths occurred before the medicine was released. Because of lack of medicines and food, scurvy broke out in the camp in the Fall of 1942. Since the prisoners had been at the camp for some months before this disease became prevalent, the responsibility for it rests upon the detaining authorities.
It is reported that in the autumn of 1943 fifty percent of the American prisoners of war at Davao had a poor chance to live and that the detaining authorities had again cut the prisoner’s food ration and had withdrawn all medical attention.
Though the medical care provided for civilian internees by the Japanese camp authorities appears to have been better than that provided for prisoners of war, it still does not meet the obligations placed on the holding authorities by their Government’s own free undertaking and by the laws of humanity. At the civilian internment camp Camp John Hay, childbirth took place on the floor of a small storeroom. At the same camp a female internee who was insane and whose presence was a danger to the other internees was not removed from the camp. A dentist who was interned at the camp was not permitted to bring in his own equipment. The Los Banos Camp was established at a recognized endemic center of malaria, yet quinine was not provided, and the internees were not allowed to go outside of the fence to take anti-malarial measures.
The Japanese authorities have not provided sufficient medical care for the American civilians held in camps in and near Shanghai and the internees have themselves had to pay for hospitalization and medical treatment. Deaths directly traceable to inadequate care have occurred.
Even in metropolitan Japan, the Japanese authorities have failed to provide medical treatment for civilian internees, and it has been necessary for Americans held at Myoshi, Yamakita, and Sumire to pay for their own medical and dental care.
Charge XIV. For example the internees at Camp John Hay were not allowed to hold religious services during the first several months of the camp’s operation, and priests have not been allowed to minister to prisoners held by the Japanese in French Indochina.
Charge XV. No copy of an English translation of the text of the Geneva Prisoners of War Convention has been available to civilian internees or prisoners of war nor have the Japanese authorities taken other steps to inform the persons held of their rights under the terms of the Convention. Reports have been received of the Japanese authorities informing prisoners of war that they were captives, having no rights under international law or treaty.
Charge XVI. At Camp O’Donnell many of the men had to live without shelter during 1942. In one case 23 officers were assigned to a shack, 14 by 20 feet in size. Drinking water was extremely scarce, it being necessary to stand in line 6 to 10 hours to get a drink. Officers had no bath for the first 35 days in the camp and had but one gallon of water each in which to have their first baths after that delay. The kitchen equipment consisted of cauldrons and a 55-gallon drum. Camotes were cooked in the cauldrons, mashed with a piece of timber, and each man was served one spoonful as his ration.
In late October 1942, approximately 970 prisoners of war were transferred from the Manila area to the Davao Penal Colony on a transport vessel providing only 20 inches per man of sleeping space. Conditions on the vessel were so bad that two deaths occurred, and subsequently because of weakness some 50 percent of the prisoners fell by the roadside on the march from the water front at Lasang, Davao to the Penal Colony.
The places used by the Japanese authorities for the internment of American civilians in the Philippine Islands were inadequate for the number of persons interned. At the Brent School at Baguio, 20 to 30 civilians were assigned sleeping accommodations in a room which had been intended for the use of one person.
At the Columbia Country Club at Shanghai the internees were obliged to spend CRB15 $10,000 of their own funds to have a building deloused so that they might use it for a needed dormitory. At Weihsien no refrigeration equipment was furnished by the Japanese authorities and some of the few household refrigerators of the internees were taken from them and were used by the Japanese guards, with the result that food spoiled during the summer of 1943. The lack of sanitary facilities is reported from all of these camps.
Charge XVII. American personnel have suffered death and imprisonment for participation in military operations. Death and long-term imprisonment have been imposed for attempts to escape for which the maximum penalty under the Geneva Convention is 30 days arrest. Neither the American Government nor its protecting Power has been informed in the manner provided by the Convention of these cases or of many other instances when Americans were subjected to illegal punishment. Specific instances are cited under the next charge.
Charge XVIII. Prisoners of war who were marched from Bataan to San Fernando in April 1942 were brutally treated by Japanese guards. The guards clubbed prisoners who tried to get water, and one prisoner was hit on the head with a club for helping a fellow prisoner who had been knocked down by a Japanese army truck. A colonel who pointed to a can of salmon by the side of the road and asked for food for the prisoners was struck on the side of his head with the call by a Japanese officer. The colonel’s face was cut open. Another colonel who had found a sympathetic Filipino with a cart was horsewhipped in the face for trying to give transportation to persons unable to walk. At Lubao a Filipino who had been run through and gutted by the Japanese was hung over a barbed-wire fence. An American Lieutenant Colonel was killed by a Japanese as he broke ranks to get a drink at a stream.
Japanese sentries used rifle butts and bayonets indiscriminately in forcing exhausted prisoners of war to keep moving on the march from the Cabanatuan railroad station to Camp No. 2 in late May 1942.
At Cabanatuan Lieutenant Colonels Lloyd Biggs and Howard Breitung and Lieutenant E. D. Gilbert, attempting to escape during September 1942 were severely beaten about the legs and feet and then taken out of the camp and tied to posts, were stripped and were kept tied up for 2 days. Their hands were tied behind their backs to the posts so that they could not sit down. Passing Filipinos were forced to beat them in the face with clubs. No food or water was given to them. After 2 days of torture they were taken away and, according to the statements of Japanese guards, they were killed, one of them by decapitation. Other Americans were similarly tortured and shot without trial at Cabanatuan in June or July 1942 because they endeavored to bring food into the camp. After being tied to a fence post inside the camp for 2 days they were shot.
At Cabanatuan during the summer of 1942 the following incidents occurred: A Japanese sentry beat a private so brutally with a shovel across the back and the thigh that it was necessary to send him to the hospital. Another American was crippled for months after his ankle was struck by a stone thrown by a Japanese. One Japanese sentry used the shaft of a golf club to beat American prisoners, and two Americans, caught while obtaining food from Filipinos, were beaten unmercifully on the face and body. An officer was struck behind the ear with a riding crop by a Japanese interpreter. The same officer was again beaten at Davao Penal Colony and is now suffering from partial paralysis of the left side as the result of these beatings. Enlisted men who attempted to escape were beaten and put to hard labor in chains.
At the Davao Penal Colony, about April 1, 1943, Sergeant McFee was shot and killed by a Japanese guard after catching a canteen full of water which had been thrown to him by another prisoner on the opposite side of a fence. The Japanese authorities attempted to explain this shooting as an effort to prevent escape. However, the guard shot the sergeant several times and, in addition, shot into the barrack on the opposite side of the fence toward the prisoner who had thrown the canteen. At about the same time and place an officer returning from a work detail tried to bring back some sugarcane for the men in the hospital. For this he was tied to a stake for 24 hours and severely beaten.
In the internment camp at Baguio a boy of 16 was knocked down by a Japanese guard for talking to an internee girl, and an elderly internee was struck with a whip when he failed to rise rapidly from his chair at the approach of a Japanese officer. Mr. R. Gray died at Baguio on March 15, 1942 after being beaten and given the water cure by police authorities.
At Santo Tomas, Mr. Krogstadt died in a military prison after being corporally punished for his attempted escape.
HULL
U.S. War Department (January 27, 1944)
Joint Army-Navy Report Concerning Japanese Atrocities in Bataan and Corregidor
For Immediate Release
January 27, 1944
The factual and official story of how the Japanese tortured, starved to death and sometimes wantonly murdered American and Filipino soldiers who had been taken prisoner on Bataan and Corregidor was jointly released today by the Army and Navy.
The facts were taken from reports made by Cdr. Melvyn H. McCoy (USN) of Indianapolis; Lt. Col. S. M. Mellnik (Coast Artillery Corps) of Dunmore, Pennsylvania, and Lt. Col. (then Capt.) William E. Dyess (USAAC) of Albany, Texas, all of whom escaped from the Philippines after almost a year as Japanese prisoners.
Their sworn statements included no hearsay whatever, but only facts which the officers related from their own personal experience and observations. The statements have been verified from other sources. After he made his statement to the War Department, Col. Dyess was killed in a crash of his fighter plane at Burbank, California, while he was preparing to go back and fight the Japanese who had tortured him. Col. Mellnik is now on duty with Gen. Douglas MacArthur and Cdr. McCoy is on duty in this country.
The three officers stated that several times as many American prisoners of war have died, mostly of starvation, forced hard labor and general brutality, as the Japanese have ever reported.
At one prison camp, Camp O’Donnell, about 2,200 American prisoners died in April and May 1942. In the camp at Cabanatuan, about 3,000 Americans had died up to the end of October 1942. Still heavier mortality occurred among the Filipino prisoners of war at Camp O’Donnell.
While this report deals exclusively with the records of Cdr. McCoy, Col. Mellnik and Col. Dyess, other Americans known to have escaped from Japanese prison camps in the Philippines include Maj. Michael Dobervich of Ironton, Minnesota; Maj. Austin C. Shofner of Shelbyville, Tennessee; Maj. Jack Hawkins of Roxton, Texas, and Cpl. Reid Carlos Chamberlain of El Cajon, California, all of them U.S. Marine Corps.
The calculated Japanese campaign of brutality against the battle-spent, hungry American and Filipino soldiers on Bataan began as soon as they surrendered, with what was always thereafter known among its survivors as “the March of Death.” Cdr. McCoy and Col. Mellnik, who were taken at Corregidor, did not take part in this, but Col. Dyess, who did so, said:
Though beaten, hungry and tired from the terrible last days of combat on Bataan, though further resistance was hopeless, our American soldiers and their Filipino comrades in arms would not have surrendered had they known the fate in store for them.
“The March of Death” began when thousands of prisoners were herded together at Mariveles Airfield on Bataan at daylight on April 10, 1942, after their surrender. Though some had food, neither Americans nor Filipinos were permitted to eat any of it by their guards. They were searched and their personal belongings taken from them. Those who had Japanese tokens or money in their possession were beheaded.
In groups of 500 to 1,000 men, the prisoners were marched along the National Road of Bataan toward San Fernando, in Pampanga Province. Those marchers who still had personal belongings were stripped of them. The Japanese slapped and beat them with sticks as the marched along without food or water on a scorching hot day.
Col. Dyess, in a middle group, gave thus description of “the March of Death:”
A Japanese soldier took my canteen, gave the water to a horse, and threw the canteen away. We passed a Filipino prisoner of war who had been bayoneted. Men recently killed were lying along the roadside, many had been run over and flattened by Japanese trucks. Many American prisoners were forced to act as porters for military equipment. Such treatment caused the death of a sergeant in my squadron, the 21st Pursuit. Patients bombed out of a nearby hospital, half-dazed and wandering about in pajamas and slippers, were thrown into our marching column of prisoners. What their fate was I do not know. At 10 o’clock that night, we were forced to retrace our march of two hours, for no apparent reason.
At midnight we were crowded into an enclosure too narrow to lie down. An officer asked permission to get water and a Japanese guard beat him with a rifle butt. Finally, a Japanese officer permitted us to drink water from a nearby carabao wallow.
Before daylight the next morning, the 11th, we were awakened and marched down the road. Japanese trucks speeded by. A Japanese soldier swung his rifle from one of them in passing, and knocked an American soldier unconscious beside the road.
Through the dust clouds and blistering heat, we marched that entire day without food. We were allowed to drink dirty water from a roadside stream at noon. Some time later three officers were taken from our marching column, thrown into an auto and driven off. I never learned what became of them. They never arrived at any of the prison camps.
Our guards repeatedly promised us food, but never produced it. The night of the 11th, we again were searched and then the march resumed. Totally done in, American and Filipino prisoners fell out frequently and threw themselves beside the roadside. The stronger were not permitted to help the weaker. We then would hear shots behind us.
At 3 o’clock on the morning of April 12, they shoved us into a barbed-wire bullpen big enough to accommodate 200, we were 1,200 inside the pen – no room to lie down, human filth and maggots were everywhere.
Throughout the 12th, we were introduced to a form of torture which came to be known as the sun treatment. We were made to sit in the broiling sun all day long without cover. We had very little water; our thirst was intense. Many of us went crazy and several died. The Japanese dragged out the sick and delirious. Three Filipino and three American soldiers were buried while still alive.
On the 13th, each of those who survived was given a mess kit of rice. We were given another full day of the sun treatment. At nightfall, we were forced to resume our march. We marched without water until dawn of April 14, with one two-hour interval when we were permitted to sit beside the roadside.
The very pace of our march itself was a torture. Sometimes we had to go very fast, with the Japanese pacing us on bicycles. At other times, we were forced to shuffle along very slowly. The muscles of my legs began to draw and each step was an agony.
Filipino civilians tried to help both Filipino and American soldiers by tossing food and cigarettes from windows or from behind houses. Those who were caught were beaten. The Japanese had food stores along the roadside. A U.S. Army colonel pointed to some of the cans of salmon and asked for food for his men. A Japanese officer picked up a can and hit the colonel in the face with it, cutting his cheek wide open. Another colonel and a brave Filipino picked up three American soldiers who had collapsed before the Japs could get to them. They placed them on a cart and startled down the road toward San Fernando. The Japanese seized them, as well as the soldiers, who were in a coma, and horse-whipped them fiercely.
Along the road in the province of Pampanga, there are many wells. Half-crazed with thirst, six Filipino soldiers made a dash for one of the wells. All six were killed. As we passed Lubao we marched by a Filipino soldier gutted and hanging over a barbed-wire fence. Late that night of the 14th we were jammed into another bullpen at San Fernando with again no room to lie down. During the night Japanese soldiers with fixed bayonets charged into the compound to terrorize the prisoners.
Before daylight on April 15, we were marched out and 15 of us were packed into a small narrow-gauge boxcar. The doors were closed and locked. Movement was impossible. Many of the prisoners were suffering from diarrhea and dysentery, the heat and stench were unbearable. We all wondered if we would get out of the boxcar alive. At Capiz Tarlac we were taken out and given the sun treatment for three hours. Then we were marched to Camp O’Donnell, a prison camp under construction, surrounded with barbed wire and high towers, with separate inner compounds of wire. On this last leg of the journey, the Japanese permitted the stronger to carry the weaker.
I made that march of about 85 miles in six days on one mess kit of rice. Other Americans made “the March of Death” in 12 days, without any food whatever. Much of the time, of course, they were given the sun treatment along the way.
The prisoners taken at Corregidor, among whom were Cdr. McCoy and Col. Mellnik, had no experience quite like the March of Death. But after the surrender, the 7,000 Americans and 5,000 Filipinos were concentrated in a former balloon station known as the Kindley Field garage area – by that time only a square of concrete about 100 yards to the side, with one side extending into the waters of the bay. The 12,000 prisoners, including all the wounded who were able to walk, were kept on this concrete floor without food for a week. There was only one water spigot for the 12,000 men and a 12-hour wait to fill a canteen was the usual rule. After seven days the men received their first rations – one mess kit of rice and a can of sardines.
The Corregidor prisoners were forced to march through Manila on May 23, 1942, having previously been forced to jump out of the barges, which brought them over from the island, while they were still a hundred yards from the beach.
Col. Mellnik said:
Thus, we were marched through Manila presenting the worst appearance possible – wet, bedraggled, hungry, thirsty, and many so weak from illness they could hardly stand.
Cdr. McCoy added, however, that the Japanese purpose of making this triumphal victory parade was frustrated by the friendliness of Filipino civilians.
Cdr. McCoy said:
All during the march through Manila, the heat was traffic. The weaker ones in our ranks began to stumbled during the first mile. These were cuffed back into the line and made to march until they dropped. If no guards were in the immediate vicinity, the Filipinos along the route tried to revive the prisoners with ices, water and fruit. These Filipinos were severely beaten if caught by the guards.
Col. Dyess’ sworn statement declared that the Japanese officer commanding Camp O’Donnell, where the survivors of the Bataan death march were imprisoned delivered a speech to the American and Filipino soldiers telling them that they were not prisoners of war and would not be treated as such, but were captives without rights or privileges.
There were virtually no water facilities at Camp O’Donnell. Prisoners stood in line for six to 10 hours to get a drink. They wore the same clothing without change for a month and a half. Col. Dyess waited 35 days for his first bath, and then had one gallon of water for it.
The principal food at Camp O’Donnell was rice. The prisoners received meat twice in two months, and then not enough to give as many as a quarter of them a piece an inch square. A few times the prisoners had camotes, an inferior type of sweet potato. Many were rotten and had to be thrown away. prisoners themselves had to post guards to prevent the starving from eating the rotten potatoes. The intermittent ration of potato was one spoonful per man. once or twice the prisoners received a few mango beans, a type of cow pea, a little flour to make a paste gravy for the rice, and spoonful each of coconut lard.
Col. Dyess’ diet for the entire 361 days he was a prisoner of the Japanese, with the exception of some American and British Red Cross food he received, was a sort of watery juice with a little paste and rice.
Some Japanese operated a black market and sold those prisoners who had money a small can of fish for five dollars.
After the prisoners had been at Camp O’Donnell for the week, the death rate among American soldiers was 20 a day, and among Filipino soldiers 150 a day. After two weeks the death rate had increased to 50 a day among Americans and 500 a day among Filipinos. To find men strong enough to dig graves was a problem. Shallow trenches were dug to hold 10 bodies each.
Col. Dyess’ statement reads:
The actual conditions I find impossible to describe. It is impossible from a description to visualize how horrible they really were.
One dilapidated building was set aside and called a hospital. Hundreds of men lay naked on the bare floor without covering of any kind. There was no medicine of any kind. The doctors had not even water to wash human waste from their patients. Some afflicted with dysentery remained out in the weather near the latrines until they died.
Men shrank from 200 pounds to 90. They had no buttocks. They were human skeletons.
Col. Dyess’ statement reads:
It was plain and simple starvation. It was difficult to look at a man lying still and determine whether he was dead or alive.
The Japanese promised medicines, but never produced them. Once the Japanese allowed the Red Cross at Manila to bring in quinine. How much, the prisoners never found out. The Japanese did not issue enough to cure 10 cases of malaria and there were thousands.
The sick as well as those merely starving were forced into labor details by the Japanese. Many times, men did not return from work. By May 1, 1942, only about 20 out of every company of 200 were able to go to work details. Many died in the barracks overnight. Frequently, for no apparent reason, the prisoners were forced to line up and stand in the sun for hours.
Around June 1, the American prisoners at Camp O’Donnell were separated from their Filipino comrades in arms and moved to Cabanatuan concentration camp in Luzon. There Col. Dyess joined Col. Mellnik and Cdr. McCoy.
Conditions at Cabanatuan were slightly improved – there was adequate drinking water and muddy seepage wells provided water for bathing. Japanese brutality continued, however.
Col. Dyess’ statement reads:
I had been at Cabanatuan one day when a Jap came through the barracks looting. He found a watch hidden in some equipment of a man not present. As I was sitting nearby, he punched me severely to show his feeling at the idea of a prisoner still have a watch.
Rice remained the principal diet at Cabanatuan. On one occasion the Japanese gave the American prisoners three chickens for 500 men, and on another occasion 50 eggs for 500 men. As a result, their propaganda later told the world that American prisoners in the Philippines were being fed on chickens and eggs.
Officers were not forced to work at Cabanatuan, but could volunteer to take out work details. Col. Dyess so volunteered.
His statement reads:
The Japs frequently mistreated Americans working for them. Once when a frail American private was not digging a ditch to suit his guard, the guard grabbed the shovel from him and beat him across the back with it. The boy had to be sent to the hospital. One Jap carried a golf club and beat the men working for him the way one wouldn’t beat a horse. When two Americans were caught getting food from a Filipino, they were beaten unmercifully on the face and body. After a doctor dressed their wounds, the Japs took sticks and beat them again.
Men were literally worked to death. I was not unusual for 20 percent of a work detail to be worked to death. In one instance, 75 percent were killed that way.
Cdr. McCoy reported that two American Army officers and a Navy officer attempted to escape from Cabanatuan, which was thickly ringed with barbed wire, and had machine-gun emplacements and towers outside the wire. The officers were caught moving down a drain ditch to get under the wire.
Their Japanese captors beat them about the feet and legs till they could no longer stand, then kicked the officers and jumped on them. The next morning the three Americans stripped to their shorts, were taken out on the road in full view of the camp, their hands were tied behind them, and they were pulled up by ropes from an overhead purchase, so that they had to remain standing, but bent forward to ease the pressure on their arms.
They were kept in this position in the blazing sun for two full days. Periodically the Japanese beat them with a two-by-four, and any Filipino unlucky enough to pass that way was compelled to beat them too. If he failed to beat them hard enough, the Japanese beat them. After two days of this, one of the officers was beheaded and the other two were shot.
The Japanese made every effort to humiliate their prisoners of war. They would force them to stand and call them vile names. When one older American colonel turned away from a Japanese reviling him, he was knocked unconscious with a blackjack. American flags were habitually and designedly used as rags in the Japanese kitchens.
The death rate at Cabanatuan for June and July 1942 was 30 American a day, according to the sworn statements of the three officers. The rate for August 1942 was more than 20 a day. The rate for September, 15 a day – because by that time most of the weaker men were already dead. During October 1942, the rate ranged upward from 16 a day to 19 a day and was increasing when Col. Dyess, Col. Mellnik and Cdr. McCoy left on October 26, 1942.
By that date 3,000 of the 12,200 Army, Navy and Marine Corps prisoners at Cabanatuan had died. There were 2,00 in the hospitals and the American doctors doubted that any of them would live.
The chief cause of death was starvation. This was definitely established by autopsies performed by both American and Japanese doctors. After it was determined that the men were starving to death, the Japanese answer was that there was no food available. There was a great abundance of food available in the Philippines at the time.
Other diseases caused indirectly by starvation were wet beriberi (in which the feet, ankles and head swell to twice their size), dry beriberi, dysentery, diarrhea, malaria, scurvy, blindness, diphtheria, yellow jaundice and dengue fever. Several men went completely blind.
The Japanese eventually permitted the Red Cross in Manila to send medical supplies, but after they arrived, they were not unpacked for many days and during this period many died. Col. Dyess had dengue fever, yellow jaundice and later scurvy sores.
His weight shrank from 175 to 130 pounds and he was given no medicine. At 130 pounds, he was considered a fat man in the camp.
High Japanese officers regularly inspected the camp and knew of conditions. During inspections prisoners were forced to wear their best clothes, which were rags – some men had no shirts, only trousers, and many had no shoes.
One inspection, said Col. Mellnik, was conducted by a Japanese general. An American lieutenant colonel was called out to accompany the general’s group. He pointed out that many officers and enlisted men were too weak to stand in the ranks.
“We have many sick here,” he said courageously. The Japanese general, who spoke excellent English, asked: “Why?”
The mess barracks was nearby. The American lieutenant colonel pointed to a meal of white rice and thin carrot-top soup.
He said:
Here is why. We are all starving.
The Japanese general snapped:
That will be enough. Your men are not starving. They need more exercise.
The lieutenant colonel tried to say more, but Japanese guards quickly stepped in and restrained him. The Japanese general curtly turned on his hell and continued his inspection with an air of boredom and indifference.
The Japanese took 400 prisoners who were technical men, gave them a physical examination, issued clothes to them, and sent them to Japan to work in factories, another shipment of 1,000 technical men for Japan was being arranged when Col. Dyess, Col. Mellnik and Cdr. McCoy left Cabanatuan on October 26, 1942. These three officers and 966 other American officers and enlisted men had been crowded into the hold of a 7,000-ton British-built freighter at Manila for shipment to Davao on the island of Mindanao, with stops at Cebu and Iloilo.
The voyage took 11 days. The hold was filthy and vermin-infested. Some prisoners were lucky enough to get a place on the junk-filled, rain-swept deck. Two men died on the trip.
On November 7, 1942, the Americans were unloaded at Lansang Lumber Company, near the Davao penal colony.
The sun treatment for two hours followed to march more than 15 miles to the penal colony. Many were so weakened they fell by the roadside. In this instance, Japanese picked them up, and threw them into trucks and carried them along.
It developed that the Japanese commanding officer at the penal colony, which in peacetimes had been operated for criminals by the Philippine Bureau of Prisons, was disturbed when he saw the condition of the Americans. He had requested able-bodied laborers. Instead, he shouted, he had been sent walking corpses.
In spite of the condition of the prisoners, they were without exception put to hard labor – chaplains, officers and enlisted men alike, Col. Dyess, barefooted for a month and a half, was forced to clear jungle and plow every day.
During Col. Dyess’ 361 days as a prisoner of war, he received $10 in pay from the Japanese. To get the $10, he was forced to sign a statement saying that he had received more than $250, with clothes, food and lodging. No clothes were issued until American and British Red Cross supplies began to arrive at Davao, an event Col. Dyess’ statement describes as “the salvation of the American prisoners of war.”
Food was slightly better at Davao. In addition to rice, the prisoners received once a day a small portion of mango beans and some camotes, green papayas, cassavas, or cooking bananas.
However, most of the prisoners were already suffering from beriberi and the food was not sufficient to prevent the disease from progressing. Although oranges and lemons were abundant in the vicinity, the Japanese would not allow the prisoners to have them. The brutality of Japanese officers continued.
One lieutenant habitually beat prisoners. According to the statement of Col. Mellnik, this lieutenant had done most of his fighting at the rear when in action and had been assigned to prison duty as a punishment. He avenged himself on the prisoners.
The camp commandant made a speech to the prisoners shortly after their arrival.
He said:
You have been used to a soft, easy life since your capture. All that will be different here. You will learn about hard labor. Every prisoner will continue to work until he is actually hospitalized. Punishment for malingering will be severe.
These orders were rigidly enforced. When Col. Dyess, Col. Mellnik and Cdr. McCoy escaped from Davao in April 1943, only 1,100 of the 2,000 prisoners there were able to work.
The arrival of two Red Cross boxes for each prisoner early in 1943 caused joy beyond description among the prisoners, according to the statements of the three officers. The boxes contained chocolate bars, cheese, tinned meats and sardines, cigarettes, a portion each of tea, coca, salt, pepper and sugar. Most important of all, quinine and sulfa drugs were included.
The Red Cross supplies had been received aboard a diplomatic ship in Japan in June 1942. The prisoners never learned why it took them seven months to reach Davao.
A few days before Cdr. McCoy, Col. Mellnik and Col. Dyess escaped from Davao on April 4, 1943, one of the American prisoners, a hospital orderly, was wantonly murdered by a Japanese sentry.
The orderly was digging camotes, Col. Mellnik reported, outside the hospital stockade and directly beneath a watchtower. It was an extremely hot day. He called to a fellow prisoner to toss him a canteen from the stockade. As the orderly was about t drink from the canteen, the Japanese sentry in the tower shouted at him angrily.
To show that the canteen contained only water, the orderly took it from his mouth and poured a little on the ground. Apparently because he did this, the sentry trained his rifle on him and fired. The bullet entered at the neck and shoulder and came out at the hip.
The orderly cried out: “Don’t shoot me again.”
The sentry fired two more bullets into the man’s body. He then emptied his clip at the man inside the hospital stockade, who ran for his life and was not hit.
Völkischer Beobachter (January 28, 1944)
Polen-Theater mit verteilten Rollen –
Hull bekam sein bestelltes Feigenblatt
…
U.S. Navy Department (January 28, 1944)
CINCPAC Press Release No. 241
For Immediate Release
January 28, 1944
A force of nine medium bombers of the 7th Army Air Force attacked Taroa Island in the Maloelap Atoll in the afternoon of January 26 (West Longitude Date). Storage buildings and airdrome facilities were bombed. Eleven of the 20 enemy fighters which attempted to intercept our planes were destroyed, a twelfth was probably shot down.
On retirement our forces were pursued by enemy planes which engaged in a running fight for fifty miles or more. During that period our bombers and fighters shot down five additional planes, including one torpedo plane, and probably destroyed five others of the enemy force. All our planes returned.
Medium bombers of the 7th Army Air Force made a bombing and strafing attack on Imieji Island in the Jaluit Atoll in the afternoon of January 26. We suffered no losses.
CINCPAC Press Release No. 243
For Immediate Release
January 28, 1944
Aircraft of the 7th Army Air Force attacked Nauru Island, west of the Gilbert group, and Wotje, Mille, and Maloelap Atolls in the Marshall islands on January 27 (West Longitude Date).
Medium bombers attacked Nauru in a daylight morning raid, bombing ground installations. We suffered no loss.
Wotje was attacked in the afternoon by medium bombers. Fires were started among ground facilities. Our losses were light.
Dive bombers and fighters made a late afternoon attack on Mille, bombing and strafing airdrome installations and gun emplacements. One of our bombers was shot down.
Heavy bombers dropped more than 20 tons of bombs on Taroa, in the Maloelap Atoll, at dusk, causing damage in the cantonment area. All of our planes returned. No fighter opposition was encountered by our forces in these attacks.
Press Release
For Immediate Release
January 28, 1944
German U-boat sunk in Atlantic after 27-hour carrier plane destroyer battle
A German U-boat has been sunk in the Atlantic Ocean, after a 27 hour battle, in which planes from an escort carrier and destroyers of its Task Force played vital roles.
The undersea craft was sighted by two of the carrier’s planes, and the submarine fought back vigorously during the course of the lengthy battle which ensued. More than 200 depth charges were dropped during the fight.
The Pittsburgh Press (January 28, 1944)
JAPS TORTURE, KILL YANKS
Escaped officers tell of Philippine horrors
Ex-OWI official says most of 50,000 captured on Bataan murdered
Washington (UP) –
An outraged and furious capital demanded today that vengeance be exacted from the Japs – if not now, at the war’s end – in the name of 7,700 American fighting men and many Filipino soldiers destroyed by the brutal victors of Bataan and Corregidor through deliberate starvation, torture and murder.
Palmer Hoyt, former OWI Domestic Branch manager, declared today in a signed magazine article that the Japs have murdered “most of the 50,000 prisoners taken at Bataan.”
The documented story of Japan’s bestial treatment of war prisoners in the Philippines, jointly published by the Army and Navy, aroused in Congressmen and government officials alike a deep anger which, many of them declared, will be quenched only when retributive justice has been visited upon responsible Jap officials from the Emperor down.
For the present, however, there appeared to be little that this country would do – except to go on killing as many Japs as possible on the fighting fronts. Inquiry in official quarters developed no reason to believe that this government would stoop to Japan’s level by retaliating against Jap war prisoners in American hands. In any event, as of Jan. 7, American fighting men had taken only 377 Jap prisoners – a figure in nowise proportionate to the number of Japs killed in battle.
White House Secretary Stephen T. Early said the reason for releasing the story of Jap atrocities was that the United States can no longer expect to get medicine, clothing, and other supplies to American prisoners of war in the hands of Japs.
Secretary of State Cordell Hull said today it would be necessary to assemble:
…all the demons available from anywhere and combine their fiendishness to describe the conduct of those who inflicted these unthinkable tortures.
Mr. Hull indicated that this government had already protested to the Japs against the atrocities.
But at the same time, he admitted frankly that protests heretofore filed with the Japs in instances of cruelty imposed against war prisoners or interned civilians had proved of little avail.
The Army-Navy story, packed with verified instances of Jap brutality and barbarity, was based on sworn statements by two Army officers and a Navy officer who managed to escape from a prison camp on Davao after 361 days of hell.
What these men had to tell aroused Congress to an unprecedented pitch of rage. Chairman Sol Bloom (D-NY) of the House Foreign Affairs Committee said:
Let these Japanese know in plain and no uncertain terms that we’re going to hold them responsible for this nasty, damnable, despicable business.
We’ll hold the rats – from the Emperor down to the lowest ditch digger – responsible for one million years if necessary.
Jap brutality toward war prisoners – so horrible that the three officers who reported it said the heroes of Bataan and Corregidor would never have surrendered “had they known the fate in store for them” – was not confined to Americans and Filipinos.
In London, British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden reported similar atrocities against British and Indian war captives. He said the British government was making the story public only because all efforts to obtain satisfaction from Japan had failed.
The American report proved conclusively that the Japs have scrapped all civilized rules of treatment of war prisoners.
The report added a new and ugly chapter to the story of Jap atrocities made so clear when the Tokyo government, again in complete violation of accepted rules of war, executed some of the captured American fliers who took part in the historic April 1942 raids on Japan’s principal cities.
In connection with those executions, President Roosevelt sent a stern warning to Japan. He said that if “such acts of barbarity and manifestations of depravity” were continued:
…the American government will hold personally and officially responsible for these diabolical crimes all of those officers of the Japanese government who have participated therein and will in due course bring those officers to justice.
The report disclosed these facts:
At Camp O’Donnell, about 2,200 American prisoners from Bataan died during April and May 1942. The death rate among Filipino prisoners was higher. By October, another 3,000 Americans had died at Camp Cabanatuan and 2,500 others were in such condition that American doctors were certain all would die.
Thus, of the approximately 20,000 American fighting men in the Philippines when the end came, at least 7,700 were dead or dying by October 1942. How many more have died since then is a problem almost too grisly to consider, for the death toll on some occasions reached 50 a day.
For a full week after the American defenders of Corregidor had surrendered, they were denied food. Then they received meager portions of rice and sardines.
Many technical men – at least 400 and possibly 1,400 – were shipped off to Japan for slave labor in war factories in complete defiance of the Geneva Convention on prisoner treatment to which Japan claims she is abiding.
At least three Americans and three Filipinos were buried alive. Others were beheaded.
Many were given the sun treatment, a form of torture in which they were forced to remain under the blistering sun with no covering.
A nightmarish memory to the men who escaped was what the prisoners called the “March of Death.” With no food, water or shelter from the sun, they were forced to make a 12-day march for 85 miles to work in labor battalions.
Those who fell screaming in agony of approaching death were beaten with sticks, whipped or shot if they dared ask for food or water. Some were run over by Jap trucks – deliberately.
Men who once weighed 200 pounds shrank to 90, became human skeletons, and died by the hundreds. Diarrhea and dysentery were almost universal, as was beriberi.
Because they asked for water, six Filipinos were shot, one was disemboweled and others were bayonetted.
Those who survived the bestiality were herded like cattle into small enclosures which reeked with the stench from the decaying bodies of men whom they once knew.
In contrast to the staggering death toll described by the three officers, the Japs have reported only 1,555 Americans as having died from disease in the camps in the Philippines.
The Army and Navy made it clear that nothing in the reports was hearsay – that it contained “only facts which the officers related from their own personal experience and observations.”
The three officers were Cdr. Melvyn H. McCoy (USN) of Indianapolis, now on duty in this country; Lt. Col. S. M. Mellnik (Coast Artillery) of Dunmore, Pennsylvania, now on duty in the Southwest Pacific, and the late Lt. Col. (then Capt.) William E. Dyess (USAAF) of Albany, Texas, who was killed recently in the crash of a fighter plane at Burbank, California.
The Army and Navy disclosed that other Americans are known to have escaped from Jap camps in the Philippines, including Maj. Michael Dobervich of Ironton, Minnesota; Maj. Austin C. Shofner of Shelbyville, Tennessee; Maj. Jack Hawkins of Roxton, Texas, and Cpl. Reid Carlos Chamberlain of El Cajon, California, all U.S. Marines.
Asked specifically whether this government was compiling a list of Jap officers in the Philippines with a view to holding them accountable after the war for the atrocities, Mr. Hull said this government is investigating all phases of the situation in the Philippines, seeking as much information as it possibly can get for use in handling the war guilt problem after the war.
Mr. Hull said that this government had been unable to get information on the disposition of American food, medicine, clothing and supplies bound for American war prisoners and civilian internees in Japan, after they had been transferred from the exchange ship Gripsholm to a Jap vessel some two months ago.
Asked whether the government’s announcement of the Jap atrocity story indicated that hope had been abandoned of repatriating additional American civilians from Japan, Mr. Hull said that no person could foretell with any semblance of accuracy what the chances, nominal or more substantial, would be.
He emphasized, however, that whether these chances be nominal or substantial, this government will continue to pursue what he described as this righteous undertaking of attempting to arrange a third exchange.
It was pointed out that in the past, supplies of medicine, clothing, and food for war prisoners were twice sent to Japan aboard the exchange ship Gripsholm. This avenue of relief, in view of Early’s statement, has apparently been closed.
Mr. Early’s statement made it appear that 1,500 tons of relief supplies sent from West Coast ports on Russian ships to Vladivostok, in the hope that they might be transshipped to prisoners of the Japs, may never reach their destination. The necessary arrangements with the Japs for transshipment of these supplies have not thus far been satisfactorily completed.
Meanwhile, the American Red Cross disclosed that it has never received any official information from prison camps in the Philippines. Thus far, it was said, the Japanese have refused to permit the International Red Cross to send a delegate to the Philippines.
Chairman Andrew J. May (D-KY) of the House Military Affairs Committee, commenting on the atrocity disclosures, said:
We ought to quit fooling around with islands and outposts and steam right into Tokyo and blow it into hades. This shows the kind of barbarian enemy we are fighting.
Andalusia, Pennsylvania (UP) –
Russian-born Lt. Col. Stephen Mellnik, 36, suffered severely from malaria during his imprisonment in Jap internment camps, but appeared in “fairly good health” by the time he returned home, his wife said today.
Col. Mellnik came to this country as a young child. He lived in Dunmore, Pennsylvania. His appointment to West Point followed a three-year term with the Army as a private in the 12th Coast Artillery. He is now on Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s staff in the Southwest Pacific.
U.S. officer intends to square accounts
Seattle, Washington (UP) –
Cdr. Melvyn H. McCoy, one of the three officers who made the report on atrocities in Jap prison camps in the Philippines, said today he has “work to do yet back in the Philippines” and wants to return “to square accounts” with the Japs.
Cdr. McCoy, who celebrated Christmas Day 1941 by escaping from the Japs to Corregidor and eating a ham sandwich for “Christmas dinner,” is now in command of radio activities at the naval station on Bainbridge Island, across Elliott Bay from Seattle.
The 37-year-old commander came here last November, a few months after his arrival in the United States following his escape from the Jap prison camp.
Cdr. McCoy graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1927, went to the Philippines in July 1940, and served as communications officer during the siege of Corregidor and was forced to send the final message marking the fall of that island May 6, 1942. The message said:
Going off the air now, goodbye and good luck, McCoy.
He said:
Then, the Japs got hold of me.
Japs complaining about internees
By the United Press
A few hours before the Army and Navy released the report on Jap atrocities in the Philippines last night, the Tokyo radio broadcast two reports concerning the treatment interned Japs are receiving.
One quoted Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu as telling the Diet that the interned Japs were “faced with all kinds of persecution in enemy countries” and that the Jap government has demanded that their condition be improved.
He said the condition of the internees was “beyond mere words of sympathy” and added that Japan was investigating through the Red Cross and neutral nations.
In the other broadcast, Tadakatsu Suzuki, head of the Jap wartime internee affairs management, was quoted as telling the Diet that the treatment of interned Japs had “improved little by little.”
Col. Dyess was silent on fate of Yanks
Los Angeles, California (UP) –
Mrs. Marajen Stevick Dyess, widow of Lt. Col. William E. Dyess, whose story of Jap brutality to American war prisoners shocked the nation, today said she knew her husband had suffered the first time she saw him after his escape from an enemy internment camp.
Col. Dyess was killed Dec. 22, 1943, when his P-38 plane crashed at Burbank, California.
His widow said Col. Dyess had been besieged by relatives and friends of men on the ill-fated Bataan Peninsula, but “he couldn’t tell them a single thing – it hurt him so.”
Allied HQ, Southwest Pacific (UP) –
Gen. Douglas MacArthur, commander of U.S. forces on Bataan until he was ordered to Australia, declined to comment today on the Army-Navy report of Jap atrocities.
Fort Worth, Texas (UP) –
The sole comment of Maj. Jack Hawkins, listed as one of the four Marines who escaped from Jap prisoners, to the Army-Navy revelation of Jap atrocities against American and Filipino prisoners of war was:
There is some more of the story which will be out later.
Jap prisoners get good U.S. rations
Washington (UP) –
Japs captured by U.S. forces receive virtually the same liberal rations as do our own troops, in comparison with the starvation diet of Americans held prisoners by the Japs.
Army officers said Japs captured by U.S. troops undoubtedly fare better, as far as food is concerned, in captivity than they did when they were fighting under the Rising Sun.
And civilian Jap internees held in War Relocation Authority camps in the West, officials said today, are fed on a “scale only slightly lower than that of the average American civilian” although “considerably lower than the War Department’s feeding of prisoners.”
Japs claim attacks on hospital ships
San Francisco, California (UP) –
Tokyo radio reported a “new” hospital ship incident today and again threatened Jap retaliation, presumably against American prisoners.
It quoted a Dōmei dispatch from the South Pacific which said that it was “learned” that “enemy aircraft attacked the Yoshino Maru, while it was en route to a Japanese base.”
In a statement broadcast by Tokyo radio, Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu said the Jap government was prepared to take “appropriate steps” in the event it does not receive a “satisfactory reply” regarding the asserted U.S. attack on the Jap hospital ship Buenos Aires Maru.
Allies smash Nazi thrusts below Rome
Counterattack by tanks halted; 50 enemy planes downed
By C. R. Cunningham, United Press staff writer
…
WLB to speed pay primer as aid to ‘white collars’
Simple method of obtaining salary increases promised after Senate holds hearing
By Fred W. Perkins, United Press staff writer
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Dry party candidate’s kin called drunken driver
Los Angeles, California (UP) –
C. Arthur Watson, brother of the candidate for President on the Prohibition Party ticket, awaited a hearing today on a drunk driving charge.
Watson, a radiographer, did not say whether he would vote for his brother in the next election.
Watson’s attorney said he hadn’t realized what the effects of a cocktail taken after cough drops would be. The effects included an auto accident.
Daughters of slain woman cleared by ‘lie detector’
‘Clean bill of health’ given to them; each one asked: ‘Did you murder your mother?’
…
Axis activity hit –
U.S. shipment of oil to Spain hinted halted
Berne: Franco’s country may cut ties to Hitler
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It’s U.S. 8th Air Force –
Cronkite: ‘Kid,’ two years old today, gives old man Hitler ‘ell
By Walter Cronkite, United Press staff writer
…
Hoyt: Japs murdered bulk of 50,000
Former OWI official hits censorship practices of government
New York (UP) –
Palmer Hoyt, former OWI Domestic Branch director, said in a signed magazine article criticizing the U.S. government’s censorship practices today that the Japs have “brutally murdered most of the 50,000 prisoners taken at Bataan.”
Asserting that the Japs still hold 25,000 American nationals in prison camps, Mr. Hoyt said he did not agree with “some of our leaders” who withheld publication of the fate of Bataan prisoners for fear of retaliation against the “unfortunate hostages” still remaining in Jap hands.
Cleared by censors
The article, to be published next week in The American Magazine, censures military authorities for holding up the release of much vital war news usually on the contention that secrecy is necessary for “reasons of security.” The account was cleared by the Office of Censorship, headed by Byron Price, which he said has taken a “common-sense” attitude.
Mr. Hoyt’s account was released only a few hours after the joint War and Navy Department announced that 7,700 Americans had been tortured and murdered in Jap atrocities.
Crushed by trucks
Mr. Hoyt wrote:
We haven’t known for two years that the Japanese brutally murdered most of the 50,000 prisoners taken at Bataan. They marched them through deadly heat without water, although they had thousands of available vehicles. And they crushed the thousands of men who did not die from exhaustion and thirst by running trucks though their columns.
Mr. Hoyt revealed that military authorities last December withheld for two weeks the story of the attack of German bombers on the Italian port of Bari, in which 17 allied ships were sunk and 1,000 men were killed or wounded.
Danger withheld
Mr. Hoyt continued:
When the Aleutians were seized by the Japanese, there was no hint of the awful danger of our position. Much of our military and naval activities in those regions had to remain military secrets but there could have been no justification for completely drawing the curtain.
That kind of censorship lulls us into indifference and may, if we put up with it, destroy our freedom.
Mr. Hoyt also criticized government officials who warned repatriates arriving recently on the exchange liner Gripsholm against talking of Jap atrocities foe fear of reprisals among prisoners still held by the Japs.
Sees reaction
He said:
I don’t agree with this. If we tell the story of Japanese bestiality, frankly and boldly, and as a part of each day’s news, I think the Japanese will treat their captives better. With the war going against them, they will fear to do otherwise.
Mr. Hoyt said he did not charge there was:
…malicious obstructionism or a sinister conspiracy to withhold the truth from the people of this nation.
It is simply that there are too many men in the Army and Navy, sustained by too many like men in civil life, who do not think it necessary to keep the people informed.