World War ll / Prisoner of War Experience of
Lynn B. Preslar of the U.S.M.C.
On December 8, 1941, the day after World War ll began for the United States, we, the U.S. 4th Marines, arrived on Bataan in the Philippines at noon from Shanghai, China. I had just completed 2 years duty in China. The next 5 months we were pounded by superior Japanese forces. Since the U.S. Battle Fleet was destroyed at Pearl Harbor, we never received any help or supplies of any kind from the United States.
Finally on May 6th, 1942, in the face of overwhelming numbers of Japanese landing forces, starvation, shortage of water, and 5 months of constant air and artillery siege, all U.S. forces were ordered to surrender by General Wainwright. From December 7th, 1941 to May 6th, 1942 we lost 62% of our men including our Company Commander, Captain Lang.
We were starving for water and food for 5 months, almost ½ a year and we had already became almost walking skeletons even before we were finally forced to surrender or all would die for sure! During the following 40 months, I was a prisoner of war of the Japanese Military Forces. Since the Japanese had never lost a war, they were extremely aggressive and brutal. As soon as we faced our first Japs after our surrender, we were each searched and asked if we were a machine gunner. If you answered yes – your hands were tied behind your back and bayoneted to death! Soon word spread somehow to deny you were a machine gunner. Watches and rings were immediately confiscated of course. If you had any Jap invasion money, you had better not get caught with it or you would be executed. The reason being that if you had Jap money, you had killed a Jap to get it!
During the first 10 days of our captivity we were not furnished any food what so ever! The Japs knew we had a little food here and there and that if we formed groups of 8 and divided our food as a family we could barely survive until it was all gone. For about 12,000 men on Corregidor where we were captured, there was one water well, with one rope and one bucket about 8 inches in diameter for all 12,000 captives that were herded onto about 3 acres of concrete. In order to survive, we had 2 men of our group in the water line constantly. The line was so long that at first you may not get to the well in time that day because the Japs closed the well at dark until daylight the next day. Our group of men came back the first day with no water.
The Japs would not allow us to stay in line all night for our spot because the well was too far from the main group of 12,000 captives. Only at daylight would they, on a signal, allow a new line for the new day to form. Hundreds of captives received beatings for not forming the line in an orderly manner! Many bones were broken, especially arms and upper extremities with the beatings. The second day our water men got one gallon of water but we barely made it and cooked a pot of rice and beans. Soon into the future we would never see a luxury like beans again!
The day after our surrender, 12,000 American prisoners were addressed by the Jap Commander of the landing forces, who told us that, “If I had my way, you would all be executed today. I am a military officer and I must obey orders from my superior, the Emperor of Japan, who has decreed that your lives are to be spared as long as you obey all orders. Japan did not sign the Geneva Accords concerning prisoners of war; therefore you are not considered prisoners of war, but merely, battlefield captives. You have no rights at all.”
Three and one-half years of starvation, slave labor, beatings, and other forms of torture followed. We were fed only the tiniest amounts of rice daily. When clothes wore out, they were not replaced. Most of us were in rags and without shoes. My normal weight was 205 lbs. and I was 6 ft. tall. I spent my entire 3 ½ years of captivity weighing 75 to 85 lbs.
I was used for slave labor to build an airfield carved out of the jungle, giant trees and coral rock on Palawan Island in the Philippines from September 1942 to September 1944. The work was extremely hard, with “Hurry” and “Speedo” constantly from the Jap guards. Beatings and torture were administered with extreme aggression and satisfaction 24 hours a day! Cement ships docked regularly for unloading and I was always on the cement detail for two years. The hold of the ship is where I was always assigned, loading basket-weave sacks of dry cement onto cargo nets to be lifted onto the dock. The bags leaked cement dust profusely and it became almost impossible to see or to breathe. Since only a small detail of men was assigned to this duty, unloading a ship would require a week to ten days. After the first year of breathing, eating, smelling and stumbling through cement dust, I contracted acute bronchitis and kept it until 1980, when the bronchitis turned into acute asthma.
The following diseases and inhumane treatment occurred during my 40 months of captivity;
1. Malnutrition / 2. Beri Beri3. Bronchitis / 4. Pneumonia
5. Vitamin Deficiency / 6. Chronic Dysentery
7. Pellagra / 8. Helminthiasis
9. Neuritis / 10. Neurosis
11. Pyorrhea (Lost all teeth) / 12. Tropical Ulcers
13. Hearing Loss (Almost Deaf) / 14. Malaria Fevers
15. Dengue Fevers / 16. Extreme Dehydration
17. Body Lice / 18. Body Fleas
19. No Medicine / 20. No Medical Supplies
21. No Anesthesia for surgery / 22. No soap or water for bathing
23. No clothes / 24. No mail from home
25. Beatings – Average 2 each month – 40 months = 80 beatings
26. Shell fragment right leg muscle- still embedded
27. 100 % blackout of war and world news or information for 40 months.
Some of my current symptoms are; Asthma with unpredictable attacks, Pain to lower extremities, Surprise falls, Deafness, Indigestion, Heartburn, Irritability, Night mares, Impaired memory, Insomnia, Anxiety neurosis, Depression, Social isolation, Restlessness and dislike of crowds.
Back on the Palawan Island airfield construction detail, when Italy surrendered to allied forces in 1943, we were promoted from Battlefield Captives to P.O.W. s. The Japs were mad because Italy surrendered, so they gave beatings to every P.O.W. with an Italian surname. Some died from the beatings. We also lived under Jap rules of ten man shooting squads! All men were numbered in squads of ten. If any one escaped and were not recovered in 5 days, the remaining members of the 10 were executed by a Jap firing squad. If recovered within 5 days, only the escapees were executed by Samurai Sword beheading!
Three of our P.O.W.’s became almost completely blind from malnutrition and vitamin deficiency. Jap guards were placed everywhere within our living quarters especially on the trail to the latrine. Jap rules require you to salute the guard without fail every time you approach him. Our blind guys were getting beat up many times each day and night, so finally we made signs, front and rear in Japanese, which they wore at all times declaring “I am blind”. Believe it or not, it did not stop the beatings, but it helped a little. Some of the guards didn’t believe the signs, or didn’t give a damn!
The Japs favorite punishment for stealing food or water was to tie the victims hands around a tree and beat them with green clubs the size of a baseball bat until they were unconscious, pour a bucket of cold water over their head and repeat the procedure over and over until the victim was finally unable to move at all. The victim usually dies most likely from crushed kidneys, shock and broken bones.
Some victims were required to climb up a slick, metal flag pole and stay up the pole indefinitely. When their arms, hands and legs are numb and exhausted, they would finally slide down the pole just to be beaten repeatedly to force them back up the pole. The final result was beatings until there is no longer any movement. Some recovered, some did not.
As of December 14th, 1944, 150 P.O.W.’s remained of the original 300 construction P.O.W.’s who had built the air field from scratch. As the U.S. McArthur forces neared Palawan, the Japs put 150 P.O.W.’s in small air raid shelters with only one opening. The Japs then set fire to the shelters using aviation fuel. On fire and desperately in pain, some attempted to run out and Jap machine guns were ready to finish the job. Some were also bayoneted while on fire. Eleven P.O.W.’s miraculously escaped to live somehow in the jungle for 2 ½ more months until American Forces finally came to Palawan.
It was not over for me yet. Before the American troops reached Palawan, I was put with another group of 750 P.O.W.’s that were being shipped to Japan in unmarked non-military ships for more slave labor.
As bad as these experiences were, they dim in comparison to the horror of our voyage from the Philippine Islands to Japan aboard a Japanese Hell Ship. The hold of the ship was heavy timbers and canvas cable battened down. One 4 ft. X 4 ft. square hole is all the air available. 40 of the 50 days were in the tropics and we constantly passed out from lack of oxygen.
No P.O.W. was ever allowed topside. The trip lasted 50 days and we had standing room only, with daytime temperatures in the hold of 120 degrees. Of course no one can stand for 50 days and nights so it became an unbelievable mass of humans fighting each other and in the total black of night, I believe but cannot prove, killings for a little more space were committed. Absolutely no discipline whatsoever, every man for himself!
A toilet facility for 750 men in the hold of this Hell Ship was two buckets on a rope let down from the deck above. If you needed the bucket, your chances of actually getting it were about the same odds as winning the lottery! We were given very little water or food and we were under constant attack by U.S. Submarines as well as attacks by U.S. planes. Men went mad with brain fever. Others, in their desperation for liquids, made incisions in the man next to him and drank his blood at night. Others urinated in their canteens and drank it.
Every morning the Japs would open the square above our heads and tell us to shake the fellow next to us. If he were dead, a rope was sent down, we would tie the rope around him and the Japs would haul the body out and dump it over the side of the ship. Since nearly everyone suffered from dysentery, the stench was overpowering.
Upon our arrival in Japan in January, 1945, the temperature was 18 degrees and it was snowing. The Japs unloaded us on the docks, where many of us, including myself, had to crawl around for awhile, learning to walk again. I was wearing my only clothes, a pair of canvas shorts I made myself, no shirt, no hat and no shoes. While we waited half a day on the dock to be issued Jap army clothes, the Japs ordered us to strip and they burned our P.O.W. clothes. As we waited, completely naked in the 18 degree temperatures and snow, I thought it was surely my last day on this earth. I wanted to run and keep from freezing, but I could barely walk. Somehow I didn’t die and finally heard my name called. I was issued a Jap army coat and pants. The coat came just below my elbows and the pants just below my knees on my six foot, 75 pound skeleton frame. No shoes and no socks as usual, never had any shoes the entire time until the war was over and I got back with the Americans.
Several days or a week or so later (I really have trouble remembering how long because I was so near death). They said I had Pneumonia as did many other P.O.W.’s off the Hell Ship from the tropics. There was no heat in any buildings in wartime Japan!
One of the hardest things to bear during our captivity was not having any news of what was going on in the war. We had no idea how long we would be held or who was winning the war. This made day-to-day life even more difficult. As year after year unfolded, and absolutely no signs of American war planes in our area we were very depressed and dumbfounded because we knew America was very, very strong militarily by now.
On the 50th Anniversary of the end of World War ll, in September of 1995, a few columnists and other people who weren’t prisoners of war, questioned whether it was necessary to drop two atomic bombs on Japan. I can assure you, had the bombs not been dropped, I would not have been here to tell you this small part of my story!
Blanket orders had already been issued by the Emperor of Japan, that the moment a U.S. invasion of Japan began, ALL American and Allied prisoners would be executed!
I thank God that I survived World War ll, even though I can not claim any heroic action. All I can claim is a lot of suffering, physically and mentally, for my country. I also thank God that the U.S. and Allied forces rescued us at last.