In Memory Of Those Who Did Not Come Home

Transcription

1 In Memory Of Those Who Did Not Come Home The Bataan force went out as it would have wished, fighting to the end of its flickering forlorn hope. No army has ever done so much with so little and nothing became it more than its lasting hour of trial and agony. The weeping mothers of its dead, I can only say that the sacrifice and halo of Jesus of Nazareth has descended upon their sons, and that God will take them unto himself, General Douglas MacArthur Lorenzo Y. Banegas I was born on May 22, 1919 in San Ysidro, New Mexico and that's where I was also raised. My father, Feblonio Banegas was born on June 17, 1880 and passed away on February 19, My mother is Louisa Ybarra Banegas who turned 107 this past June (1999) and currently lives in California. Her picture celebrating her 107th birthday is included in this booklet. My great-grandfather was Manuel Banegas who lived to be 100 years old and was one of the first settlers in the area. He was the original homesteader of over 300 acres located between Dona Ana, New Mexico, and north of Las Cruces, New Mexico. My brothers and sisters starting with the oldest are Willie, Charlie, Esther, Susie, Caldelario, Cecelia, and Adelina. Esther passed away on January 2, 1996, Adelina passed away on September 9, 1997 and Caldelario passed away on October 3, I was raised by my Tio (Uncle) Jose Maria Rodriguez who was also my padrino (Godfather). We lived about a mile and half from my tio s farm. I liked the farm so much, my mother tells me that when I was three years old I ran away from home three times to go to my uncle's house. I knew my way out there, there were real long rows of cotton so I walked between the rows of cotton then I crossed the railroad tracks and then walked along the side of the ditch and followed the ditch to the farm. The third time that I ran away my mother told me she was going to let me stay with my uncle because she was afraid the train would run over me or I would fall and drown in the ditch because we had just lost a cousin who had drowned in that same ditch. I liked staying with my uncle because he had all kinds of animals on the farm. He had sheep, goats, dogs, chickens, turkeys, guinea pigs, and hens. He just had all kinds of animals. That's the reason I liked being on the farm. My padrino Jose was not married and he never married. He and my Tia Carolina Banegas who was also my madrina lived with my oldest aunt, Tia Lina Rodriguez who was married to Tio Lucas Rodriguez. I was the only one of my family who went to live with my padrino. My mother tells me that I would put a diaper on my head and just take off to his farm and when they were looking for me and couldn't find me, they knew wheere I had gone! Tio Jose was brother to Lucas and Tla CarolIna was my father's sister. Banegas oral history RETA Battle for Bataan 1

2 My padrino Jose Maria died on April 18, 1967 and my madrina Carolina Banegas died on December 1, They were my baptismal padrinos. I went to East Picacho school and my padrino told me he would put me through school as far as 1 wanted to go, but I quit in the 6 or 7th grade. I just didn't like school. I stayed home and helped my Tio Jose in the farm. I worked so much in the farm I really got tired of it and that's why I wanted to join the service. I knew that I was going to be drafted sooner or later. I was about 19 or 20 years old then. But I really didn't have to go because I could have gotten a deferment. My uncle went with me to the local board and he told Mr. Snow, the man in charge, that he didn't want me to go to the service because he needed me on the farm because he was too old to run the farm himself. So Mr. Snow asked me if I wanted to go into the service or stay and run the farm. "No," I said, "I want to go to the service because I'm tired of farming." So I went to take my physical and three times I failed and I kept begging them to take me. I was told that I was under weight and had flat feet, and I don't remember what else. They kept telling me that I should get up early in the morning and run two or three miles so I could eat more. After the third time Dr. Allison asked me if I really wanted to go he could fix up the papers. I told him I did want to go, so he sent me to Santa Fe to swear in. It was February 22, 1941 when I swore into the 200th Coast Artillery. What they did was consolidate all the New Mexico National Guard to form the 200th Coast Artillery and on January 6, 1941 it was federalized. From Santa Fe I was sent to Ft. Bliss, Texas, where we trained for six to seven months before they shipped us overseas. The reason they sent us overseas is because we were so good at spotting the planes at night that we got first place and they threw a big party for us. But after that we were told we were going to be moved but they didn't tell us where. I did not know where we were going until we got to the Philippines. On the way we stopped in Hawaii and I really liked it and wished we could have stayed there, better than the Philippines. We were transported to the Philippines in a crew ship that had been converted from a passenger ship. President Pierce was the name of the ship. We arrived at the Philippines on September 16, 1941 and the Filipinos thought we were from Mexico. When we got off the ship they started playing "South of the Border," which was a very popular song at that time. They thought we were all Mexicans from Mexico. Franklin D. Roosevelt was President of the United States at this time. He died in office in 1945 right before the end of the war and Vice President Harry S. Truman took over as President. We were assigned to Clark Field in the Philippines and we started training at night. My job was to run the search lights at night to spot the enemy planes so they could be shot down. We trained there until December the 8, 1942 when the war started. It was a Sunday. I remember I had a really bad hangover and we were all lined up that morning to go to the chow hall to eat. From there we spotted this big cloud of planes and we Banegas oral history RETA Battle for Bataan 2

3 thought they were our Navy planes that were coming to help us with our mission. We didn't know yet that we were at war. When we saw the big cloud of planes we started waving at them thinking they were our planes. After they approached they started dropping little black things that I thought were leaflets from the pilots to let us know that they were there to help us. We started running toward where they were dropping the little black things and then we saw that they were bombs exploding allover the place. This was the first day of war for us. From Clark Field we started retreating towards the Bataan peninsula. Bataan is the peninsula in Luzon Island. The reason we had to retreat is because we didn't have enough troops to stop the Japanese who were coming at us at a ratio of five to one. The peninsula of Bataan is like a tongue that goes into the bay and they had more troops to stop the Japanese. The peninsula was narrow and that's where we had four months of intense fighting until we ran out of food, out of ammunition, out of medicine, out of everything. Earlier they had cut down our food to one or two meals a day up to the day that we were surrendered. We were eating water buffalos and mules. The horses that were left from the cavalry were also killed for food for us and whatever else they could find to feed us. (It was later reported that "the courage of the men on Bataan and Corrigidor postponed Japanese plans for invading Australia and thus controlling the South Pacific. The delay permitted General MacArthur a base of operations in Australia to stage his triumphant return to the Philippines and the subsequent conquest of Japan.") General King, surrendered in defiance of General Wainwright's instructions not to surrender. General King said he didn't want any more slaughtering because we didn't have any way of beating them. We were all so sick and hungry. General King then went to the front lines with a white sheet in a jeep to surrender the troops. That night before we surrendered, our commanding officer got us all together and he gave us each a white pill and told us to take the pill and then he would tell us the bad news. I didn't have any idea that we were surrendering, and I thought maybe he wanted to kill us with the pill before we surrendered, so I tasted the pill and it was kind of salty so I threw it away. After a while he asked if we had all taken our pills and we said yes, so he told us that as of right now we had been surrendered by our General and that we were on our own. "You can take off to the mountains, or you can surrender to the Japanese," he said, "but, I advise you if you surrender do it in groups." We were all so sick, I really thought that once we surrendered we would be taken to some hospital with beds and sheets and nurses to look after us. Golly was I wrong! So we started walking through the jungle, and this was at night and we were lost. I got separated from my group in the dark. Then I heard some Japs talking, real close, so I backed out the other way. About sunrise I found some other Americans so we started out. Before we left camp we got either handkerchiefs, t-shirts, or whatever we could find that was white to carry with us. We formed a long, long, line and walked until we ran into the Japanese. They were ready to attacks us, but when they saw the white cloths they didn't kill us. It was a whole bunch of Japanese that jumped on us with bayonets. They lined us up in rows and searched us to be sure we didn't have any weapons. I had a knife in my pocket that I forgot to get rid of. I eased it out and let it slide down my pant's leg and covered it with dirt with my foot. They didn't find nothing. The poor fellows with Jap souvenirs or money, the Japs killed them right there. Banegas oral history RETA Battle for Bataan 3

4 Earlier that night before we left camp our commanding officer told us to destroy all the guns, and the machine guns and throwaway all the ammunition and whatever else we could get rid of. We used a sledge hammer to destroy the search lights so the Japanese couldn't use them. Later I also found out that the pill our Commanding Officer, Captain Dorris, had given us was a tranquilizer. After we were captured by the Japanese, they put all of us in this very large clearing in the jungle. Their intentions were to kill all of us because once we were all together they lined up their tanks with the machine guns aimed at us and their idea was to get rid of us I'm sure. Right at that moment a large earthquake hit causing the tanks to turn away from us and the Japanese were so scared they jumped out of the tanks and started running away from them. I saw this earthquake as an act of God to save our lives. I remember seeing the tan pine trees swaying and bending down almost touching the ground and then going up again as the earthquake moved across the ground, it was a really bad earthquake. From that point we started the death march leading to the three and one-half years of prisoners of the Japanese. -Bataan March - We were told by the Japanese to form columns of four to start the march. Seventy thousand American and Filipino prisoners of war started the death march and almost 10,000 died along the way. From the 200th, or the "Old Two Hon'erd" as we called ourselves, we were about 1,800 and after three and one-half years of captivity, less than 900 of us returned home. We marched from Mariveles in the southern tip of Bataan to San Fernando, which was 65 miles. I don't remember how long it took, we were so sick and hungry. (For the record: The march was 65 miles and it took five days to complete it because of the extremely poor condition of the prisoners.) I wasn't in too bad a shape yet, but I was weak, run down and very skinny after the four months of fighting without any food or medicine. But many of our troops already had malaria when we surrendered because the area we were in was very warm and swampy and a natural breeding ground for malaria. The temperature was about 110 to 115 degrees and we had to keep on marching and marching without any water. On the way there were some stands where they were boiling rice and if you were lucky you got a spoonful of rice right in our hands. The rice was very hot so we tossed it from one hand to the other to cool it down so we could eat it, but not everybody got to eat. We kept on going and going, some of the prisoners were falling down and those of us who could help, we'd pick them up and put their arms around our shoulders and dragged them the best way we could. Otherwise the Japs would kill them. One Filipino went completely out of his head and he started yelling and screaming and you know one of the Japanese guards got him and stuck his bayonet through one side of his face. He used so much force the blade went right through to the other side. It was awful, they were so mean to all of us. Along the way there were some artesian wells on the side of the road but the Japanese wouldn't let us drink water from those wells. Some of the fellows in desperation broke away and took off towards the wells to drink water, but the Japanese shot them and killed them for doing that. They told us to keep going and going and further down there was a small creek of water with decayed bodies of dead soldiers and rotten dead water buffalo and the water was green, Banegas oral history RETA Battle for Bataan 4

5 slimy, and not fit to drink. This is where the guards told us "Hey, you can go drink water there." The water was terrible, we couldn't drink it, so I dropped my handkerchief over the water and let the water seep into my handkerchief, but still there was a lot bacteria and those who did drink came down with dysentery. When we arrived at our first prison camp, those fellows who drank the water were dying left and right from the dysentery. After the march from Mariveles to San Fernando they put us in a train. We were crammed into small metal cattle box cars about seven and a-half or eight feet wide and 28 or 30 feet long and hotter than blazes. They put as many as they could even pushing us in with bayonets and after each box car was packed full they closed the doors. Some of the fellows were dying from suffocation. I guess our Commander told the Japanese that we were losing a lot of prisoners in those box cars so they decided to leave the doors open to let some air in. That helped us a lot. It also helped because when we went through the train depot the civilian Filipinos saw us through the open doors and some of them threw food at us, like rice or eggs or whatever they had. I was lucky enough to get a little basket from a Filipino with four raw eggs in it and I was so hungry I ate them all but I got so sick from eating them. -Camp O'Donnell - We ended up in Capas and from there we marched to Camp O'Donnell which was about eight miles and Camp O'Donnell was the first prison camp that we were in and that was the worst prison camp of all. It was six months after I was captured that my family was finally notified that I was a prisoner of war. My poor mother was going crazy not knowing where I was or if I was even alive. I've been asked if I thought at any time that I was going to die and no I had a feeling that I was going to make it because of a dream I had before the war broke out. In my dream I saw the face of my brother Willie and I was talking to him and then I saw a black cloud coming across and he got lost in the cloud and after the cloud passed I saw his face again. I wrote him a letter and told him "Brother, I think something is going to happen, because I had a dream and in the dream I could see you clearly and then I saw this black cloud coming across and I couldn't see you anymore but then I got to see you again meaning 1 guess that I won't see you for a long time, but that I will be seeing you again. So because of that dream I had a feeling that I was going to make it back. When we got to Camp O'Donnell there was nothing there, no facilities of any kind, no buildings, no beds just nothing there. The fellows that got there before we did cut down grass to built beds and as soon as I walked through the gate, the first prisoner I saw was Cruz Garcia. He recognized me and called out "Banegas, Banegas, come here!" So I went to him and he told me he had about three or four boiled eggs and that he would share them with me and that he had enough cut grass to make beds for both of us. So we built our beds from the cut grass. Cruz Garcia was from Las Cruces and I think he was from Battery C. All us from the "Old Two Hon'erd" were very close and we tried to take care of each other. Guys from other outfits talked about how we stuck together calling us "dammed New Banegas oral history RETA Battle for Bataan 5

6 Mexicans"! We were Anglos, Mexicans, and Indians. The tougher it got, the closer we stuck together. (For the Record: Because the 20ath had gone in total, and the state was thereby represented so heavily in the Philippines, New Mexico suffered more casualties per capita than any other state in World War II.) Water there at the camp was very, very scarce. There was one faucet with a stream of water the size of my little finger and very low and this was for the thousands of prisoners that were in that camp. We formed lines with our canteens to get water for the very sick who couldn't get up. The lines were very long and the Japanese were so mean they would turn off the water as we were standing in line waiting our turn. But I stayed in line sometimes till midnight or even the next day until they turned the water back on. At that time I was so weak, I had my canteen trying to help my buddies that were even weaker, my knees would give way and I'd fall and get up again and walk a few more steps to get closer to the faucet to get the water. Now for food, the Japanese gave us sacks of rice that we put in a big pot but there was no way of washing it before we cooked it. We, the Americans didn't know how to steam the rice. We boiled it and it was so watery. To get water for cooking the rice we went to a little river close to the camp, but the water was so dirty we had to walk toward the middle of the river to try and get cleaner water. As we stepped on the edge trying to get closer to clean water, big clouds of black dirty water came up, so we had to wait until that settled to fill our bucket of water to cook the rice. That gives you an idea of how much bacteria there was and why so many of the prisoners died from dysentery. In the prison camp we had several details, one was a wood detail and there were so many dead prisoners every morning that they had several details to take care of them. One detail was to gather the dead bodies that died that night, another detail was to carry them to the gate and the next detail would then carry them to the grave sites which were large holes. There was a detail to dig the holes as well. This detail had to dig three or four holes every day and they were filled every day. The holes were about 10 by 12 and 4 four feet deep. We had to pick up the dead bodies and put as many as we could into the hole, but before we covered the hole with dirt we had to jump into the holes with our bare feet to pack their bodies in because their legs or arms would be sticking out and if we didn't cover them completely the dogs would come and eat from the bodies. These details were rotated among the prisoners. Nobody wanted to be on the burial detail, so the guards offered us a biscuit if we served on that detail. You know, some of those bodies that we had to bury had already been dead for two or three days. When we went to pick them up they were so swollen and their skin would also come off their hands or legs when we tried to pick them up. Nobody wanted to be on that burial detail. I remember one day that I was on the burial detail I came across on the ground what looked like a log covered with mud, but it wasn't, it was a prisoner. It had rained the night before and he must have gotten cold, so he rolled in the mud. The next day the sun dried the mud on him making him look like a log. I thought he was dead and when I tried to pick him up he moved so I knew that he was still alive. I bent down to check on him closer, he was on his side, and I noticed that he had a real red spot on his tail bone and when I rolled him over on his stomach I saw that Banegas oral history RETA Battle for Bataan 6

7 the red spot was actually a hole on his tail bone and it was full of maggots. It's an awful feeling to see a live human being full of maggots. It was bad enough to see a dead prisoner full of worms, so you can imagine how awful it was to see a live human full of maggots. The maggots were swarming in that hole in his tail bone. A lot of our prisoners were killed by the Japanese themselves, then they made our Commanding Officer sign a paper saying that they died from natural causes. At one point towards the end of the war, the Japanese built a big cross and wrote whatever names on it. They wanted to make the Americans believe that those whose names were on the cross were buried there. But that was not true. I don't know how big the camp size was, but we were thousands in that one camp and we were very crowded. Green flies bred by the millions in the open latrines and maggots swarmed everywhere. In my camp I counted anywhere from 20 to 80 prisoners that died every day. The Filipino camp was separate from ours and those fellows carried their dead out day and night. It was a continuous line. That camp was much bigger because they were so many more of them. Trying to escape from the camp was very hard. There was one case where three or four tried to escape through the sewer line by the fence when it was raining really hard. The Japanese captured them and brought them in and just beat the hell of out them that night. The next morning they tied their hands behind their backs and took them to the back of the fence where they had dug the graves and shot them. It was almost impossible to escape because the fence was at least 12 to 15 feet high, and barb wire about every four inches on top of that and more wires in all directions. It was very, very hard to get out. Also to keep us from escaping they put us in groups of 10, and if one from that group escaped and they couldn't find him, the other nine were executed. -Cabanatuan - From Camp O'Donnell we were moved to Cabanatuan and I don't remember if we marched there or how we got there. Camp O'Donnell was actually closed down. For me that camp was like being in hell. I tell my wife Nina you know being a prisoner of war and going through what I went through I felt like I had died and was now paying for all I had done in my life. I really felt like I was going through hell. Camp O'Donnell was really bad. The camp at Cabanatuan was better, the camp was cleaner and the death rate started decreasing and decreasing. On the first day that nobody died we really celebrated. At this camp we had a farm of two or three hundred acres that we had to till with pick and shovel, actually with pick axe because there was no plow, no nothing. Here the Japanese planted green beans, corn, and other vegetables for the Japanese troops, not for us. In Cabanatuan is where Ruben Flores from Las Cruces was held prisoner also. This is where I came down with diphtheria and thank God I had good friends like Ruben Flores, Able Escalante, Julio Barela, David Telles, and two or three more who helped me so much. Before I came down with diphtheria, I had dry beri-beri and that gave me so much pain, I used to cry and yell all day and night because of the stabbing pain on my legs and feet. It was so bad that I couldn't stand it. The dry beri-beri was caused by the lack of food and vitamins and that dried the Banegas oral history RETA Battle for Bataan 7

8 fluid in my joints and that's why it was so painful. Some had the wet beri-beri, but I was lucky not to get that one. The wet beri-beri caused swelling, so their faces and their arms from the elbows down to their hands and the legs from the knees down their feet swelled up so much, they looked so bad. Sometimes the skin would break from the swelling and a yellow fluid would leak out. There was no medicine for anything. When the doctor had to do any kind of surgery he had to do it with a pocket knife and he couldn't put them to sleep because there was no anesthetic either. Several appendectomies were performed without anesthesia, and so those poor fellows would yell from the pain. I remember helping the doctor by holding the men down while the doctor scraped pus from the sores with a stick. Those poor fellows screamed, but it took the rotten stuff out. When I came down with beri-beri my friend Ruben and all the rest would come over after work and massage my legs and feet to ease the pain. Ruben and I have always been very close, we started talking and joking and sometimes we sang together, but we couldn't sing very loud especially when we were working in the fields because the Japanese would punish us. They would hit us with the butt of their rifles. Here is where I composed my corrido (ballad) and Ruben Flores and I still sing that corrido together. We used a guitar that somebody made using carabao guts for strings. We also sang "El Rancho Grande, and even the Japs liked that one! A copy of my corrido in Spanish is attached, so is a copy in English that was translated for me by Abel Escalente. Another form of punishment that the Japanese used was to force the prisoners to stand at attention on a red ant hill and the ants would climb up their legs and bite them. We could see the ants on them, and if the prisoners moved the Japanese would hit them with their rifle butts. One time at this camp we were carrying dead bodies to the holes to be buried when one of the prisoners that we thought was dead suddenly sat up on the stretcher. We got so scared that we dropped the rest of the bodies on the ground and started running. Sometimes I wonder how many bodies we buried that were still alive. When I came down with diphtheria my throat and my tongue started swelling up so bad 1 couldn t talk. When I got my ration of rice I couldn't eat it, I'd put a spoonful of rice in my mouth and I couldn't swallow, my throat was so swollen. I let Ruben have my ration of rice in my mess kit and spoon and he ate it and diphtheria is so contagious, but he didn't catch it. I was so sick with diphtheria I had to be dragged over the fenced camp with prisoners that had diphtheria, there was another camp for those with dysentery and one for those with malaria. The diphtheria and dysentery is so contagious they didn't want to put us all together with the rest. But I don't see what good that did because there were billions of flies all over the camps including those in the camps with dysentery and diphtheria so the flies just carried the germs from all the fences that we were in. In the diphtheria fence that I was in was called the "Zero Ward," because once you got into that ward, you didn't come out alive. Banegas oral history RETA Battle for Bataan 8

9 All my friends were hugging me and shaking my hand before I was dragged to the Zero Ward. The fellows who were already inside the Zero Ward dragged me to a bed of bamboo sticks and laid me between two other prisoners with diphtheria. One night my partner's arm was over me and I tried to move it from me and it was stiff and cold. He had died, so I turned over to my other side and that prisoner had his eyes and mouth open and he was dead too. I started banging the ground with my feet to attract somebody's attention so they could get me out of there. What really saved me from the diphtheria was that I came down with it around December because that's when we received some Red Cross boxes that had medicine for diphtheria. But I was so far gone even the doctor told me I was a "goner" and that he was supposed to give me three shots, one every twelve hours, but he told me I was so far gone was it okay if he gave me all three shots at one time. I nodded for him to go ahead because I knew I was a goner. He gave me the three shots, then about 12 hours later pieces of flesh started coming out of my throat and I started to breathe better, I still couldn't swallow, but at least I could breathe better. I remember having those pieces of flesh in my throat that I had to pull and cut them off because when I tried to swallow the pieces of flesh would go down my throat and choke me. (The dictionary definition of diphtheria is an acute contagious disease which causes high fever, weakness, and the formation of false membranes in the throat and other air passages causing difficulty in breathing, swallowing, and eating.) I guessed that the Red Cross boxes came in December, and we really didn't know what day of week it was, and didn't know nor did we celebrate Thanksgiving or Christmas or any of the holidays. We didn't have any church services. In Cabanatuan we had a prisoner from Santa Fe by the name of Vicente Ojinaga. He was Catholic and a very religious person and he used to lead us in praying the rosary every evening and everybody joined in. I always say there are no atheist in time of war, because at one time or another you have to pray to God to save you! Here in Cabanatuan we all made little crosses out of wood or tin. While in Cabanatuan, the only time I didn't work was when I had diphtheria, and when I got better our American doctor, who was also a prisoner, didn't want me to leave the Zero Ward because I tried to built up the morale of the other prisoners who were so sick. I told jokes and tried anything to get them not to think about their families and homes. Someone carved a chess set, so I played chess with them and other games to keep their minds occupied. And it was working because they were not dying as fast. The doctor told me that in doing this I was doing more good than the pills, few as they were, that he was getting from the Japanese. Before I went into the Zero Ward I had developed hard calluses on the palms of my hands from all the hard work and on the bottom of my feet from walking bare footed all the time, but the calluses protected my hands and feet. After the three months in the Zero Ward, the diphtheria caused all the calluses to peal off so when I got out of the Ward and went back to work it was really hard on my hands when I used the sickle to cut the bamboo. Then to walk bare footed from the camp to work, which was about one and a half miles, over the lava rocks was really painful. Here we worked 15 days and they gave us two days off a month, on the 1st and the 15th, but it wasn't even rest because we had to cut the weeds inside the camp. We also had to steam our clothes because we were full of body lice and bed bugs. Banegas oral history RETA Battle for Bataan 9

10 The Japs gave us 55 gallon drums that we used to steam our clothes. First we put about six to eight inches of water in the bottom of the drums, then we placed a little platform that fit above the water line. Next we put our lousy clothes inside the drum and start the fire and that would heat the water and steam our clothes. I was very lucky because somehow in one of the prison camps I got a box from home that contained a sewing kit, khaki pants, and shirt and I looked like a president with those clothes! There were so many lice when I took off my pants to wash them, the waist seam was covered with lice eggs, so I'd take my thumb and run it across the seam with my nail to kill the eggs. I want to tell you about my friend Lorenzo Herrera. We were practically raised together. We went to school together in East Picacho, and he was drafted about the same time I got in, so we were together on the 200th Coast Artillery. In the prison camp in Cabanatuan we were working on a detail in the airfield and he had real bad attacks of malaria. Each time that he had an attack I tried my darndest to help him through it, but towards the end he didn't want to eat. I would force him to eat by putting spoonfuls of rice in his mouth followed with water, but he would spit it out and kept shaking his head not to feed him. He got over that attack and was sent out to work again. Then he told me "Tocayo," (this means name sake), I would appreciate it very much if you didn't bother me again when I have another attack of malaria. I want to rest and you don't let me, so I would appreciate it very much if you let me rest." So the next time that he had an attack I left him alone. We were sitting together and he just rolled over and died. That's what he wanted to do, and I was keeping him from dying by helping him and he didn't want to live anymore. A lot of our prisoners gave up, they would say that it was harder to stay alive than to die, so they would quit eating. In another case, this was in Cabanatuan also, the Japanese brought in this work detail from the jungle where they were building bridges, and they accused the prisoners of trying to escape. So they lined up the prisoners. Then the firing squad stood in front of them, and they lined us up inside the camp and made us watch as they killed the prisoners one by one. This was to show us what would happen to us if we tried to escape. Another time they beheaded an American prisoner and put his head on a bamboo stick and put the stick by the gate as a reminder to us not to try to escape. Those Japanese were very cruel, even to each other they were very mean. Another severe beating I received and I don't remember why or what camp was from a guard with a bamboo stick. He was beating me with a stick and it broke and that made him even madder at me because the stick broke in half as he was beating me. He was so mad that he started cussing and jumping up and down while the other Jap guards were laughing at him. The guard went to a shack close by and brought back a pick axe handle and started beating me again. This time he hit me so hard across my back that I passed out. Another guard asked some of the prisoners to pick me up and take me to a nearby tree shade. They did and left me there by myself. About 30 to 40 minutes later I came to and my prisoner friends knew I was okay when I started groaning, but they were not allowed to come help me until quitting time. Two of my fellow prisoners then helped me get up and I could hardly walk. Although I was hurt bad I still had to go to the farm do my share of the work. -Las Pin_as - Banegas oral history RETA Battle for Bataan 10

11 From Cabanutuan we were taken in trucks to Las Piñas to built Japanese airfields using pick and shovels and wheelbarrows. They fed us fish heads and the fish heads were so rotten we could see the worms floating to the top of the water when they were being washed in a big container. And they stunk so bad we could smell them from where we were working. We had to plug our nose to be able to eat the rotten fish. We were all so skinny and weak and when we couldn't produce the work they expected from us. The guards would form a line and make us go by them and they would hit us about three or four times each with pick handles. They were so mean. Other times they forced us to face each other and then slap each other on the face as hard as we could. But when the guards moved away I would slap my hands together to make them think I was slapping my partner, then when the guards returned I'd tell my buddy "okay, here they come get ready," and I'd start slapping him again. If the guards didn't think we were hitting hard enough, they would hit us with their rifles. They did this because not only were they mean but they were mad because they were losing the war, of course we didn't know that. They would also get mad because we were too weak to do the work they wanted us to do on the airfields. They would charge us with disobeying their Emperor Hirohito because we couldn't work and to them Hirohito was their God. You know, in spite of my hunger, I still had my pride. The Japanese guards would throw food and cigarettes on the ground just to see the prisoners get on their hands and knees to pick it up. I refused to do that, so they asked me why and I told them that if they wanted me to have that food they would have to put it in my hand because I was not going to pick if off the ground! There were so many terrible incidence that happened to us as prisoners of war, there really is no end to this story. There are no words to describe the suffering we went through. The Japanese were brutal to all of us. In this camp, I remember Mr. Coca, also from New Mexico and one of ours, who was so sick with malaria that he just took off so when we had head count, and they counted us three and four times a day, he was missing. The Japanese guards found him under the bushes and dragged him to the water faucet and forced his mouth open and let the water run directly into his open mouth. His stomach got big and extended with all the water so then they jumped on his stomach causing the water to come out through his mouth. They forced water into him again and again they jumped on his extended stomach. The third time that they jumped on him the poor fellow died. -Japan - From there they moved us to Japan in Japanese coal tender ships. These ships had holds about 16 feet deep with no ladder, they just packed us into those holds with as many prisoners as they could with no air ventilation, food, or water. At first they built layers like shelves and they packed the prisoners into them, but the prisoners who got in first were suffocating, so they took the shelves off and we were told to stand up and still standing up we were crammed. Some of us were too sick to stand and had to sit, so we would sit between the legs of those standing. Then when we had to go to the latrine which were buckets, we had to swim over the others and they would hit you as you went by. That bucket filled up quickly because so many were still suffering from dysentery and it would overrun or tilt from the motion of the ship. So the contents of the can were allover on our backs. I don't remember how long it took to get us to get there, but when Banegas oral history RETA Battle for Bataan 11

12 we did arrive I was pale and had grown a long goatee and I was so skinny, I looked like a China man. On the way the American planes strafed the ships we were on. The Japanese were supposed to have a flag indicating that they were carrying POWs, but they didn't do it, so the Americans didn't know we were in the ships. I could see from the ship I was in where the other ship was getting hit and our prisoners tried to form a human pyramid to get out, but it was impossible because the wall was too high. I saw what was happening and I hugged on to a steel beam next to me and prayed "God, if it is your will for me to survive, I ll survive. If it s your will for me to die, I'll die, and I gave myself to God and nothing happened and we were not hit. The other fellows went completely berserk. The Chaplain was trying to calm them down by praying and quoting from the bible, and they even started calling him dirty names. They went crazy with fear. All through the war I felt that God was going to save me one way or another. The port that we arrived at in Japan was Moji and from there we went to Osaka. -Osaka - Here they had us working making the ship yards larger, so we leveled hills and dumped all that sand in the ocean. One of the reasons I suffer from my hands now is because in the winter time we had to dig out rocks out of the ice and snow. Now when it gets cold, or I wash them with cold water my hands get purple and itch real bad. I feel that the reason we were moved to Japan is because the Americans were getting closer and closer and also they needed our labor to work on the coal mines and steel mills, ship yards and wherever else they needed us. That's the reason I hate that name "Mitsubishi" because he's the one who made us work out there with no pay, which was against the Geneva Convention. Although they did say we were getting paid, but it was ten sen (Japanese money) a day and that equals to three yen a month and one cigarette costs more than three yen, so that wasn't even enough money to buy one cigarette. During the entire time that I was a prisoner I was allowed to send home about three or four pre-printed cards with no dates. The first line on the card was the camp number. On the second line was about our health, so we could check that we were in excellent, good, fair, or poor health. We checked the box that we were in either good or excellent health otherwise we knew the Japanese wouldn't mail it. We were allowed to write just a few lines and then send regards to whoever and we signed it. One of the times that we were told we could send a card I was so sick with diphtheria, I couldn't even sign my name, so one of the prisoners held my hand so I could sign the card. When the card reached my mother she knew immediately that something was wrong because my signature was different, so she suspected that the Japanese had signed my name and that I was dead. Instead of the card making her feel better, it made her feel even worse. While in Japan during the winter time we got buckets from the Japanese full of sawdust and we lit them and they smoked, and the hot smoke kept us warm, this was inside the barracks. They did not allow us any kind of live fire in this camp. (For the record: The Japanese were afraid of open fires because of a terrible earthquake in Japan that happened about 19 years earlier. As a result of the earthquake and fire a third of Tokyo was destroyed as well as most of Yokohan. About 150,000 people were killed.) Banegas oral history RETA Battle for Bataan 12

13 Another time when I was in Osaka we were cutting the weeds in the vegetable garden and [I was very hungry so] I took a piece of squash and put it in my mouth when a guard saw me. He asked to see what I had in my mouth and when he saw what it was he got very mad. He tied 3- sided boards behind my legs and made me kneel down for about three to four hours cutting off the circulation to my legs. Then he told me to get up and I couldn't get up, my legs were numb. Every morning we had" roll call" except instead of names we were assigned Japanese numbers that we yelled out real fast as we went down the line. On this particular morning when it was my turn to call out my number I couldn't remember how to say it in Japanese. The guard got so made at me. My punishment for not remembering was to hold a bucket of water in each hand and he kept me outside in the cold holding the two buckets until the water froze! Another punishment they used was to tie sticks between our fingers and then tie all the fingers together, that was very painful. I was not as sick as I had been in Camp O'Donnell and Cabanatuan, but we were still being starved and we were very weak. The Japanese guards used a bamboo stick on us that we nicknamed the "Vitamin Stick" because they got all the work out of us and when we couldn't produce anymore and they wanted more they would beat us with the Vitamin Stick. When we were working in the mines, which were very long, we had to shovel the coal into the conveyor and from there the coal went into little cars and they would pull the little cars out of the mines with a cable, so when the conveyors were not as full as they wanted them to be we'd call out "here comes the Vitamin Stick, and all of a sudden we got stronger and those conveyors would fill up real quick. We just didn't want to be beat up with the Vitamin Stick. We didn't know any of the guards by their given name, but we did have nick names for them. One we called Pistol Pete, another one was Donald Duck because of how he walked. Donald Duck wanted to know why he was called that and we told him that Donald Duck in Hollywood was a big star and he liked that until he found out who it really was, then we got the Vitamin Stick for calling him Donald Duck. Pistol Pete was very short and carried his gun real low, it looked like it was dragging the ground. From here, Osaka, we were taken by train to Camp Fuquoka and I don't remember how far it was from Osaka, or how long we traveled. -Camp Fuquoka- In Camp Fuquoka, Japan, we worked in the coal mines. We got a day off every 15 days that wwe worked. Camp Fukuoka was on the island of Kyushu on the east China Sea. One day when we were at camp on a day off work, we heard this tremendous explosion and felt the ground shake. I remember thinking to myself, "Oh my gosh, the Japanese must have invented some big gun or cannon to make such a big explosion, so this war will never end." Later we found out that the tremendous explosion we heard was not a gun but the atomic bomb that had been dropped in Nagasaki. I don't know how close Nagasaki was to our prison Camp Fuquoka, but we felt it! (For the record: At 11:00 a.m. on August 9 a plutonium bomb with a Banegas oral history RETA Battle for Bataan 13

14 force equivalent to 22,000 tons of TNT exploded over Nagasaki. Within one-millionth of a second, the temperature rose to several million degrees centigrade. A few days earlier, on August 6, 1945, the first bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, with a force estimated at the equivalent of 12.5 kilotons of TNT. There was no way that prisoners of the 200th could know that the atomic bomb was designed and built in Los Alamos, New Mexico. Further the atomic bomb was tested on July 16, 1945 at Trinity Site, close to Las Cruces, New Mexico. The atomic bomb dropped on Japan was the turning point of the war with Japan. The Japanese surrendered on August 14, 1945.) Senso owari the war is over! How we found out that the war was over, was when we lined up at the gate to go to the coal mines. This particular day was a work day and we were all lined up and the majority were at the front of the line. Nobody wanted to be at the end of the line because we would have to run to keep up with the rest of them. We waited and waited at the gate but the guards were gone. Then one of our American commanding officers came and told us! I think there is good news, I think the war is over, but take the news as quietly as you can because the Japanese are like a nest of hornets. They are so mad because they lost the war, and they can still wipe us out.! That afternoon the Japanese came over with an interpreter and told us that the war was over, that America and Japan had reached an agreement to end the war. Senso owari the war is over! Soon after that the American planes flew over our camp making all kinds of maneuvers in the sky to let us know that they knew we were there. Then a B29 flew real low over the prison camp with an American flag unfurled through the open bomb-bay door and oh! my gosh! that really made us happy, we started yelling, hugging and kissing each other. I compare it to the feeling of going from hell to heaven when we saw the American flag and knowing that soon we would be liberated. Before that we were told to paint a white cross on the side of the camp so they would know that it was a POW camp. Then the planes came back and dropped, by parachute, 55 gallon drums on 2 x 4 pallets, but some of those drums came loose and dropped like bombs. But we didn't care when we found what was in the drums. We got chocolate, sugar, food, candy, medicine, just a lot of good things. We were also warned to be careful with how much we ate because we hadn't eaten for so long it could make us very sick. Some ate so much that they did die. With the little that I ate I still got a stomach ache. I guess the Japanese were hungry too because they were on an embankment close to where the drums of food were being dropped and they tried to get some food too, but we didn't let them. We chased them away with sticks. I did feel very sorry though for a Japanese mother and her baby who were killed when one of the dropped drums exploded on them killing them both. We were told that we were free that we could leave the camp, but I didn't trust the Japanese. Most of the prisoners went out to the train depot. I stayed in the camp, I still didn't really believe that the war was over, and I kept thinking that the Japanese were playing a trick on us. I just didn't trust them after all the horrible things they did to us. I felt much safer in the camp and that's where I stayed until the Americans came in and took us out. Banegas oral history RETA Battle for Bataan 14

15 Do you remember our Commanding Officer, Captain Dorris? Here he is in this picture. He survived and at the end of the war was promoted to Major. After we were liberated a Japanese officer handed over a sword to him. Major Dorris as a prisoner had been tormented and ridiculed by the Japanese for surrendering instead of suicide which was the Japanese custom. When Major Dorris got the sword he gave it right back to the Japanese officer offering him the same opportunity to avoid a similar shame. The Japanese officer declined the offer! From the prison camp we were taken by train to the ships. On the way to the ships the train conductor was told to stop the train right there in the middle of Nagasaki so we could see the damage from the atomic bomb. I guess I was the only nosy one because I was the only one who got off the train and touched the ground. The ground was like melted glass and I touched it all over not knowing about the radiation, but thank God I'm still here. Nobody knew about the radiation at that time. The city was completely demolished. We could see from one end to the other because all the buildings were gone or what remained was twisted and melted steel on the ground. There were thousands of bodies that were still being removed. Some people tell me that they think it was very unjust for the United States to use the atomic bomb. I don't feel that way. It was justified because of all the hell we went through, and I'm sure that if the Japanese had had the atomic bomb first, they would have used it on us. I don't like demonstrations or to see someone burning our flag because of what it cost us to defend it. It really hurts me a lot when I see our flag being burned or abused, or to see somebody wearing our flag on the seat of their pants. That really hurts me a lot to see that. One of our prisoners was beaten for refusing to salute the Rising Sun. They beat him and beat him, knocking him to his knees, still he wouldn't salute. As one Jap started to swing, this guy spat on the Jap flag. They beat him unconscious. Then for days they tried to make one of us salute that flag and they never could. We took a lot of beatings for refusing and maybe we shouldn't have, but we were Americans and that's the way we felt then and that's the way we feel now! After we left the devastation of Nagasaki we were put in a hospital ship and taken to Formosa and each place we went through we were fumigated and given new clothes. They used some kind of powder on us because we were still full of lice. From there they flew us to the Philippines, to Manila. When we got there we were placed in rest camps and they treated us like kings! We could have anything we wanted free. We could get up in the middle of the night and go to the kitchen and eat whatever we wanted. They were trying to built us up. We got vitamins and I gained so much weight my face was so puffed up. When I shaved I'd touch my face and I couldn't even feel it I was so puffed up! Right before the war ended, the Japanese tried to built us up too by bringing in car loads of rice, this was so the Americans wouldn't know that they had starved us. But it didn't work, we were all so skinny when the war ended. Banegas oral history RETA Battle for Bataan 15