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Veteran lives with memory of the Bataan death marchMARLENE WOMACKNews-Herald Special CorrespondentJoseph Crea still thinks about the Bataan death march.Bataan is a peninsula of wild, primitive jungles and rocky mountain slopes on the island of Luzon in the Phillipines It was to this desolate wilderness, where few white men ever been, and Corregidor Island, just off the Bataan Peninsula, that 13,000 American and 30,000 Filipino troops retreated when Manila, the capital of the Philippines, fell to the Japanese on Jan 3, 1942These 43,000 soldiers, outnumbered four to one by the Japanese and cut off from food and supplies, held off 200,000 invading Japanese for five months in a hopeless struggle.The five months of fighting on Bataan was Crea’s introduction to 34 years as a Japanese prisoner of war, between 1942 and 1945.When World War II broke out, Crea was an instructor in chemical warfare at Fort McKinley, Division Headquarters in the PhilipinesFor him time has not diminished or softened the memories of years that seemed like a lifetime, while he fought in the jungles and while he was a prisoner.“Someone would catch a python and we’d cut it up and eat it. We ate all our mules, horses and water buffalo. We lived off the land, eating anything we could to survive,” he said of the five months he and thousands of others spent in the jungles of Bataan Losing almost 10,000 Americans and Filipino troops to starvation, disease and Japanese attacks, U.S. Gen Edward P King disobeyed orders by commanding his troops to surrender to Japanese forces in April, 1942Recalling Bataan and his imprisonment, Crea says his worst feelings came at the beginning when the men surrendered and the Japanese started methodically slaughtering them.Even now, Crea’s eyes fill with tears when he relives those times. He believes King made the wrong decision and he chokes up when he tries to talk about those events “I was paid to be a soldier First was God. country and duty,” he said during a recent interview at his Callaway home. He tapped a nearby table three times for emphasis after each of those three words.“I sacrificed it all and it still hurts after all these years,” he said. “It was a disgrace Something that shouldn’t have happened No one knows except those who were there I dream about it every night To understand you have to feel it and see it, to know what itwas like.We should have fought till the last man died,” he says, pausing to bend and shake his head while the words stick in his throat After the surrender, the Japanese were anxious to protect themselves and maneuver into advantageous positions on Bataan against American troops, which still were firing at them with mortars and l2-mch guns on Corregidor The emperor’s soldiers soon started the captured men on the infamous Death March. This was April 9, 1942 Using captured troops as cover from at tack, Japanese streamed southward into Ba taan as the captured troops trekked northward to O’Donnell Prison Camp On this merciless trip, the men walked 85 miles in six days eating only “a handful of rice” and bits of food tossed to them by the Filipinos Prisoners who fell from thirst, hunger, disease or heat during this march, perform ed purposely during the 120 degree heat of midday, were bayoneted or bludgeoned to death with the butt of a rifle If Japanese troops didn’t kill fallen troops immediately, the “Buzzard Squad,” which followed close ly behind, finished the fallen prisoners offwith rifles.Because dropping behind or on the ground meant certain death, the Americans carried as many sick and exhausted fellow troops as possible The Japanese guards forced their prisoners to go hatless to further torture their thirsty, hungry captives beneath the seanng Topical sun Crea remembers seeing frenzied, stumbl mg men break from the line to go for water They were immediately bayoneted to death by the guards, who cleaned the blood from their blades in the water the dead men hoped to drtak.At night, guards herded the prisoners into pens filled with human waste and maggots. The pens, intended to hold 500 men, held 2,000, making it impossible for the prisoners to lie downIn San Fernando, a city of 39,000 at the end of the march, the American troops, who originally numbered in the thousands and now were reduced to hundreds, were packed into airless, locked railroad boxcars for the trip to O Donnell. Hundreds more died on this sweltering ride Arriving at camp, Crea assembled with the other prisoners and distinctly remembers hearing the commander tell them that if he had his way, he'd kill all of them right there But by the good grace of the emperor they were permitted to live Thus began Crea’s life in prisoner-of war camps Shifted around as the Japanese became better organized, he stayed at Camp O’Donnel from April 14 to June 16, at Bihbid Prison from June 16 to Sept 3, and at Cabanatuan from Sept 3 to Oct 5 He spent the remaining three years in Manchuria (Manchoukuo).In the first year it was common to see gaunt, human skeletons of men who were delirious with pain, being carried to the Zero Ward, the end of the line before burial Captured in body but not in spirit, Crea dropped from 140 to 88 pounds during the first few months on Bataan He remained at that same weight for the duration of his imprisonment.With no medicine or decent food available to the prisoners, burial details operated 24 hours a day.Prisoners who suffered with beriberi, caused by a deficiency of vitamin Bl. couldn’t fit into a size 15 shoe after previous ly wearing size 74 “If someone suffered with beriberi and pressed down on a swollen area of his skin, the indentation remained with the fingermark impressed in it,” Crea recalls He says that men with testacies swollen like balloons from vitamin deficiency andJoseph Crea...was stationed at Fort McKinley in the Philippines when World War II broke out.torture was an everyday sight.During his imprisonment Crea ate a daily ration of five to six ounces of rice, which was just barely enough to survive. The rice sometimes came with a sweet potato and whistlewood or pigweed mixed in it In Manchuria. Crea, who was given the number 278 upon his arrival there, ate corn meal gruel at times served with a potato or soybeans. Frequently this gruel contained worms and mouse droppings, sometimes a whole dead mouse Prisoners never received meat, and meat became the fantasy they dreamed about For a meat substitute prisoners learned to eat night crawling worms The men skewered the worms on sticks and smoked them over a fire. Then thev mixed the cookVed worms with rice.Some prisoners grew so desperate for the taste of meat that they made cracklings from pigskin drippings they collected while making leather in the tannery where they worked.From his POW camp Crea watched camels carrv coal across the Gobi Desert while hewand fellow prisoners heated their barracks with one bucket of coal dust per day.Temperatures were extreme in Manchuria. ranging from arctic conditions in winter to blazing heat in summer The top six inches of soil thawed out in summer but below that level the earth remained frozen year round, necessitating above groundburials.Crea was forced there to walk three miles daily to work. The work lasted from 7 a m to 4:30 p.m., seven days a week The men got one dav off every two weeks As a sergeant, he earned 2 cents a day for his labor and, as an extra bonus for a good job, he received one pack of cigarettes a week One day’s pay bought small items, such as rice candy or moustache wax It took two to three weeks wages to buy one pack ofcigarettesCrea learned the basic rule of POWs earlvwin captivity — never make friends with fellow prisoners “You didn’t know who to trust.” he recalls. “It was every man for himself Survival of the fittest You learned you could never tell about anvone or what they might do, even the man right next toyou/’In one camp the Japanese divided the prisoners into groups of 10 If the group allowed one man to escape, the Japanese executed the other nine.Because of their obsession with food, the men’s main amusement while in captivity was designing elaborate menus In the evenings after work if the prisoners could find a pencil they wrote out a menu and repeated it to others participating in the game. Otherwise, they just discussed favorite restaurants at home After a few years of imprisonment, the men received books, cards, and a few musical instruments from the American Red CrossEven amid the horror and deprivation,humor emerged in the camps Crea recalled the time it was his turn to distract the Japanese colonel while prisoners slipped in a few articles of food During the argument with Crea. the colonel drew his sabre, but in the process severed his pet dog’s leash The dog immediately disappeared. When the colonel finished flog ging ( rea he looked all over camp tor his dog but never found him The prisoners had a meal of dog meat that night Crea laughs now at the fact that he never got a piece of the dog In the camps the agony of punishment never ended The slightest infraction, such as standing more than three feet from an ashtry while smoking, brought immediate torture even in the last months of the war Prisoners were beaten to death with bam boo clubs or were forced to kneel on a thin bamboo stick while holding two bricks A slip off the stick resulted in an immediate beating in the head with the butt of a rifle The son of immigrant parents, Crea credits his survival to his belief in God and the United States, and the fact that he had something to come home to Early in captivity he made a promise to himself that he would survive. He set that as this goal during those 34 long years Having a “sense of humor” helped, too, he says, along with “the hard knocks of a rough childhood.When asked what happened after the Japanese surrendered, Crea answered: “It was nothing to hear cans popping all hours of the night while the men gorged themselves with the food dropped continuously from planes It was two weeks until we gained enough weight so they could move us outtin May 3, 1982 Crea was one of three men in Panama Citv to receive a letter from U.S. Sen Paula Hawkins, advising him his name was included in the Congressional Record as a salute to the men of Bataan.Today Joseph Crea, a deeply religious man. spends his retirement years active in church work and other community activities. Although rememberances of 40 years ago prey on his mind, he believes memory is one of man’s greatest gifts -something that traascends time and even death
Newspaper Details
Panama City News Herald
Panama City, Florida, US
Thu, Nov 11, 1982
Page 6
Full Page
Clipped by
Grace D.
USA 24 May 2022
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