American POWs of Japan is a research project of Asia Policy Point, a Washington, DC-based nonprofit that studies the US policy relationship with Japan and Northeast Asia. The project aims to educate Americans on the history of the POW experience both during and after World War II and its effect on the U.S.-Japan Alliance.
“We were picking dandelions on the lawn there and we would boil them up,” Henry T. Chamberlain remembered. During the Great Depression, Chamberlain’s mother lost her job and couldn’t pay rent. The family moved to the grounds of the Nebraska Territory capitol building (now Omaha Central High School). “There were a million people living on that lawn,” Chamberlain said. “They all were in the same boat.”
An illustration from Bibliothèque de poche du naturaliste, published in 1894. Courtesy of Biodiversity Heritage Library/Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (MBLWHOI Library).
With little money, he learned from his new neighbors about survival. After watching others rooting around in the lawn, the young man learned that dandelion flowers were free food. In addition to boiling them, “sometimes we went over to a park where the dandelions were prolific and we would pick the dandelions and wash them off and eat them green,” Chamberlain said.
Under President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, the nation’s economy slowly began to rebuild and Chamberlain’s dandelion-eating days seemed to be over. On his 18th birthday, in 1940, he enlisted in the army. Though he was a crack shot and his first sergeant wanted him on the rifle team, Chamberlain said he wanted to help people—not shoot them—and trained first as a medic, then later as a surgical technician.
U.S. Army medic Henry T. Chamberlain, around the 1940s. Photo courtesy of Rebecca Chamberlain.
After completing his training, Chamberlain was transferred to the Philippines. By December 1941, Japanese planes bombed points in Manila and Chamberlain found himself on the front lines of Bataan serving as a combat medic.
In late January 1942, as Chamberlain transported a group of wounded men south to a hospital behind the front lines, he ran into a colonel who knew him. “He asked me where’d I been so I told him, and he said ‘well, I’ll tell you what. I badly need surgical technicians here, so you aren’t going back,’" Chamberlain said, with great thanks.
Chamberlain stayed at the hospital after American and Filipino forces surrendered on Bataan on April 9, bearing witness to horrors that took a grisly toll on the Filipino and American troops. The movement of American and Filipino prisoners of war from the Bataan peninsula, which became legendary for its brutality, was forever known thereafter as the Bataan Death March.
Under Japanese control, Chamberlain found himself at Cabanatuan Prison Number 1 assigned as a medic in a hut adjacent to the camp hospital known as the Z, or “Zero” Ward. Here prisoners too weak to stand were sent to die. Without any medicines to treat the ill, often sheer kindness and willpower became the deciding factor between life and death.
Beginning in mid-June, cases of diphtheria appeared daily in the camp hospital. As a child, Chamberlain had contracted diphtheria and survived the illness. He volunteered to be a medic in the diphtheria ward because, as he explained, “first of all, I had had it and I thought I was immune from it, and secondly it was a way to get away from the Japanese and the labors they were putting us through.”
In the prisons there was no medicine to treat the sick, and the ill prisoners were missing key nutrients. Recalling the situation over 75 years later, Chamberlain observed how “there was a whole profusion of dandelions, so I told the guys ‘let the things blossom and we’ll pick the seeds, and don’t pull them up, just pull the leaves off them and eat them that way.’ And that’s what they did, they ate them green and I think that saved a lot of lives there because we were not getting any green stuff at all and we were not getting any protein.”
After considerable deaths from malaria, dysentery, and diphtheria, the Japanese guards at last began providing medicines to the prisoners at Cabanatuan in August 1942, albeit too little too late. From June through December 1942, 2,556 American prisoners of war had died at Cabanatuan.
Chamberlain’s humble dandelion garden adjacent to his diphtheria ward went unnoticed by the Japanese guards, who feared nearing the darkened building that housed the sick and dying. He continued to work in the diphtheria wards in the Cabanatuan prison camp throughout the remainder of 1942 and into 1944.
As for the dandelions, “What few dandelions there were we fed to the sick guys in the sick bay,” he said. “I think it may have kept them going, I’m not sure, but that’s the only vitamins they got. Whatever protein was in them, that’s what they got.”
Malnutrition was dangerous at Cabanatuan.“One of my friends died in my arms,” Chamberlain said, "He would not eat the rice. They were so full of maggots, rice maggots. I think for every grain of rice there was a rice maggot. One of our doctors said ‘you just as well eat them fellas because that’s all the protein you’re gonna get.’ That’s the way that was, but my friend would not eat those things. He said ‘people were not meant to eat worms,’ so he died in my arms, mostly from starvation.” Chamberlain’s friend remains interred at Cabanatuan, having asked that he be buried there, to “let these people know what we did for him,” with his grave marked “known but to god.”
In October 1944, the Imperial Japanese Army shipped Chamberlain and approximately 1,100 prisoners out of the Philippines to work as forced laborers. Before leaving Cabanatuan, Chamberlain made sure his dandelions came with him. Throughout his time at Cabanatuan, he “let the seeds grow and when I left there I had picked a whole bunch of seeds and put them in various places in what was left of my uniform, in pockets and things. The Japanese guards never suspected them.” After laboring in Formosa (present-day Taiwan), Chamberlain arrived in Moji, Japan, in January 1945 and was moved to Hosokura to a lead and zinc mine owned by the Mitsubishi Mining Corporation.
At Hosokura, Chamberlain served as a medic for his fellow prisoners in Sendai #3-B Prisoner of War Camp. Chamberlain worked with one doctor to take care of all the 284 American and British prisoners. “Taking care of them didn’t mean much because we were not given any medicine, we were given very little food. If you were sick they put you on half rations because you wouldn’t work, and so that’s the way it was,” he said.
“We never saw any dandelions up there so I planted the seeds and boy, I’m sure they got lots of dandelions up there now,” Chamberlain said with a chuckle. The dandelions again provided critical nourishment to the sick and dying, a humble weed turned heavenly manna.
As the war closed in on the Japanese home island, Chamberlain too found himself working in the zinc and lead mines. The grueling work of loading ore into carts and pushing them out of the mine strained all the prisoners, with food and water barely available on any occasion. At least 15 prisoners died at the camp, mostly from malnutrition. Relief for the Hosokura prisoners arrived on September 12, 1945, when American forces reached the camp and accepted the surrender of the Japanese guards.
In 2017 Chamberlain returned to Japan to visit the former Hosokura lead and zinc mine where he was held for almost a year as a forced laborer. Photo courtesy of Rebecca Chamberlain.
Thereafter, Chamberlain would not need to tend any dandelions. He chose to remain in the military, transferred to the new United States Air Force, and retired after 28 years as a Senior Master Sergeant and a trained paramedic. At 96, he continues to enjoy carving, and as he reminded me, “I get to sleep in every day.” As I stated in reply, “you’ve earned it.”
Frank Blazich Jr. is a curator in the Division of Political and Military History. He has previously written about the life and legacy of Corporal William T. Perkins Jr., a 20-year-old Marine deployed to Vietnam as a combat photographer, and Captain James K. Redding’s experience in the Battle of Hue. He was honored to meet Chamberlain at the annual meeting of the American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor Memorial Society and appreciative of the opportunity to learn about Chamberlain’s experiences.
Mr. STEIL. Madam Speaker, today I rise in honor of National Former POW Recognition Day and the 77th anniversary of capture of U.S. soldiers on the Bataan Peninsula in the Philippines to the Imperial Japanese Army and the beginning of the Bataan Death March.
In November 1941, 99 soldiers from my hometown of Janesville, Wisconsin arrived on the Bataan Peninsula. These soldiers were known as the "Janesville 99" and composed Company A of the U.S. Army 192nd GHQ Light Tank Battalion. Less than three weeks after arriving to the Philippines, on December 8, 1941, Imperial Japan attacked.
For the next four months, out-gunned and under-supplied, sick and starving, these brave Wisconsinites fought the Battle of Bataan against a substantial Japanese invasion force. On April 9th, they were captured, tortured, and subjected to the Bataan Death March.
Only 35 of the original Janesville 99 returned after the War. This is a solemn reminder of the bravery and selfless sacrifices our service members make for our freedom. In Downtown Janesville, there is memorial to honor the Janesville 99. We must never forget our local heroes.
When President Ronald Reagan created the permanent National Former Prisoners of War Recognition Day on April 9, he said: ``. . . It is truly fitting that America observe April 9 in recognition of our former prisoners of war; that date is the 46th anniversary of the day in 1942 when U.S. forces holding out on the Bataan Peninsula in the Philippines were captured. Later, as prisoners of war, these gallant Americans were subjected to the infamous Bataan Death March and to other inhumane treatment that killed thousands of them before they could be liberated. In every conflict, brutality has invariably been meted out to American prisoners of war; on April 9 and every day, we must remember with solemn pride and gratitude that valor and tenacity have ever been our prisoners' response.''
Today, we recognize those who the fought the impossible and endured the unimaginable for freedom from tyranny and oppression. I thank all our POWs for their sacrifice. May the Janesville 99 rest in peace.
There were two starting points for the Bataan Death March:
the west coast beach town of Bagac and the port town of Mariveles at the tip of Bataan.
The above picture is of the park at Mariveles.
Since 1988, with Public Law 100-269, Congress designated April 9th as "National Former Prisoners of War Recognition Day" and authorized and requested the President to issue a proclamation in observance of this event.
April 9, 2019 is also the 77th Anniversary of the fall of Bataan in the Philippines and the surrender of 78,000 American and Filipino troops to invading Japanese forces. It is the start of the infamous Bataan Death March on which as many as 12,000 died.
On the first permanent National Former Prisoners of War Recognition Day, April 9, 1988, President Ronald Reagan said:
“…It is truly fitting that America observe April 9 in recognition of our former prisoners of war; that date is the 46th anniversary of the day in 1942 when U.S. forces holding out on the Bataan Peninsula in the Philippines were captured. Later, as prisoners of war, these gallant Americans were subjected to the infamous Bataan Death March and to other inhumane treatment that killed thousands of them before they could be liberated. In every conflict, brutality has invariably been meted out to American prisoners of war; on April 9 and every day, we must remember with solemn pride and gratitude that valor and tenacity have ever been our prisoners’ response.”
To
Receive Legislative Presentations of Veterans Service Organizations
By
Jan Thompson
President
American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor Memorial
Society
12 March 2019
AMERICAN PRISONERS OF WAR OF
JAPAN
CEMENTING A LEGACY
[excerpts]
Today, I want to speak to you
about what it means to “Never Forget” our veterans. The men and women who became POWs of Japan
over 70 years ago fought the early desperate battles of WWII in the Pacific and
suffered some of its worst consequences. Nearly 40 percent did not return home.
Those who survived had the highest rate of post-conflict hospitalizations,
deaths, and psychiatric disorders of any generation of veterans. Their families
endured and inherited their trauma.
If this history is forgotten, so
too will the sacrifices of today’s veterans. It is an obligation to honor our
veterans and to remember appropriately their contribution to our country’s
history.
Before the last American POW of
Japan dies, we believe that the appropriate civic remembrance for them is a
Congressional Gold Medal that recognizes their unique history of perseverance,
valor, and patriotism.
Most important, we ask Congress to approve an accurate and
inclusive Congressional gold medal for the American POWs of Japan. It is a long
overdue symbol of our commitment to veterans of past generations that we will
“never forget.”
⌘⌘⌘
What we ask Congress
We ask Congress to encourage the
Government of Japan to hold to its promises and responsibilities by preserving,
expanding, and enhancing its reconciliation program toward its former American
prisoners. We want to see the trips to Japan continued. We want Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs
to publicize the program, its participants, and its achievements. We want to see a commitment to remembrance.
We believe that both countries will be stronger the more we examine our shared
history.
We ask Congress to encourage Japan
to turn its POW visitation program into a permanent Fund supported by Japanese
government and industry. This “Future Fund,” not subject to Ministry of Finance
yearly review, would support research, documentation, reconciliation programs,
and people-to-people exchanges regarding Japan’s history of forced and slave
labor during WWII. Part of the Fund’s educational programming would be the
creation of visual remembrances of this history through museums, memorials,
exhibitions, film, and installations. Most important, the Fund would support
projects among all the arts from poetry, literature, music, dance, and drama to
painting, drawing, film, and sculpture to tell the story to the next
generation.
We
ask Congress to ask and to instruct the U.S. State Department to continue to represent
rigorously the interests of American veterans with Japan. It is only the U.S.
government that can persuade Japan to continue the visitation program, to
create a Future Fund, and to ensure that the Sites of Japan’s Meiji Industrial
Revolution include the dark history of POW slave labor.
We ask Congress to press the
Japanese government to create a memorial at the Port of Moji, where most
of the “Hell ships” docked and unloaded their sick and dying human cargo. The dock already features memorials to the Japanese
soldiers and horses that departed for war from this port. Nowhere in Moji’s
historic district is there mention of the captive men and looted riches
off-loaded onto its docks. This must change.
⌘⌘⌘
Over the past few years, there have been Congressional gold
medals given to groups that included American POWs of Japan. Eight members of
the Doolittle Raiders were POWs, at least one Nisei member of the Military
Intelligence Service was a POW, and nearly all the officers of the Filipino
troops who were awarded Congressional Gold Medals were American.
Unlike previous WWII Congressional Gold Medal award groups
that honor specific service units or ethnicities, the American POWs of Japan
are both men and women from many ethnic groups, religions, services, and
regions. For example:
The 200th Coast
Artillery (AA) on Bataan, the first to fire on the invading Japanese
forces, was composed mainly of Hispanic Americans from New Mexico.
The first tanker to die in
WWII was Private Robert Brooks, a black man with the 192nd Tank
Battalion from Harrodsburg, Kentucky, who was killed on Nichols Field,
Philippines.
Chinese-American, Eddie
Fung, and Japanese-American, Frank Fujita, both fought on Java and were
surrendered with the U.S. Army 2nd
Battalion, 131st Field Artillery, 36th Division
(Texas National Guard).
A statue before the St.
Landry Catholic Church in Opelousas, Louisiana memorializes Army Air Corps
Chaplain Father LaFleur who sacrificed his life while saving fellow POWs
in the sinking of the hellship Shinyo
Maru.
The military nurses
captured in the Philippines were the first large group of American women
in combat and, counted with the Army and Navy nurses surrendered on Guam,
comprised the first group of American military women taken captive and
imprisoned by an enemy.
Over 600 United States
Merchant Marines, including one woman Mariner, became prisoners of
Imperial Japan. Fifteen percent were killed by Japanese Imperial Navy officers
during captureor died in Japanese POW
camps.
The first American POWs of
Japan were Marines stationed in China and the last were Navy and Army
aviators shot down over Japan.
An Army Corps of Engineers
Master Sergeant, Aaron Kliatchko, who died aboard a hellship is remembered
as the “Rabbi of Cabanatuan” POW camp in the Philippines where he consoled
Jew and gentile alike.
Seventy-eight years after the start of the War in the
Pacific, it is time to recognize all
those who fought the impossible and endured the unimaginable in the war against
tyranny in the Pacific. Moreover, as I have described
above, the Gold Medal would also recognize that we are the only American
wartime group to have negotiated our own reconciliation with the enemy.
On January 29th, please take a moment to give a prayer of thanks to Boonpong.
It is the 37th anniversary (1982, at the age of 76) of the passing of Boonpong Sirivejjabhandu, or simply Boon Pong – a Thai merchant and member of the underground resistance known as V Organization during the Japanese occupation of Thailand.
He owned a Thai traditional medicine business and a general store in Kanchanaburi province, which had been passed to him by his father Mor Khein, a Thai traditional doctor. He was also a mayor of Kanchanaburi from 1942-45 during World War II. His public responsibilities brought him into contact with the Japanese troops in charge of building the Thai-Burma Death Railway. Boonpong got a contract from the Japanese to manage the canteen for POWs in the camp nearby, which allowed him to enter the camp with few restrictions.
His regular visits allowed him to see the appalling conditions experienced by the sick and wounded, as well as dead prisoners of war of many nationalities including American, Australian, British, Dutch, Australian and others. The horror of the inhumane treatment he witnessed gave rise to compassion and drove Boonpong to create a personal mission to help these unfortunate soldiers. He managed to smuggle in critical medicines, food, money, and messages. The camp POW doctors and POW commanders credit him with saving hundreds of lives.
After the war when rumors reached Britain in 1947 that Boonpong had fallen on hard times, three British POW camp commanders - Toosey, Knights and Lt. Col. Harold Lilly- launched an appeal among former Thailand prisoners of war. The appeal raised £35,000 and enabled Boonpong to start the Boonpong Bus Company, which flourished.
Boonpong's courage and compassion was later recognized by the British government, which honored him as a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE). The Netherlands also awarded him the Order of Orange-Nassau. Sir Edward 'Weary' Dunlop once praised Boonpong by quoting Shakespeare in Henry VI: "In thy face I see the map of honour, truth and loyalty." Initiated by Sir Edward, the Weary Dunlop-Boonpong Exchange Fellowship was was established in honor of two men in 1986, and continues through strong cooperation between the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons and the Royal College of Surgeons of Thailand.
Today, January 28th, is the 75th anniversary of when the American public first learned of the infamous Bataan Death March.
The Chicago Tribune and its affiliates' published an account of the horrors by W. Edwin Dyess, a heroic aviator who had survived the Death March and escaped from the Japanese POW camp, Davao Prison Colony in April 1943. Until then, the American public did not know about this war atrocity.
The original story on Japanese atrocities in the Philippines was written for the Tribune in July 1943. The military and the Roosevelt White House balked at releasing the explosive material--especially to a newspaper critical of the President--and even used wartime censorship powers to block publication of Dyess’ story in the Tribune.
The also didn’t want to shock the American public and were worried that the Japanese might respond with even more cruelty against POWs.
One important factor in the decision to delay release of Dyess' account was the fear that the Japanese, in retaliation, might refuse to accept or otherwise block delivery to the prisoners of a Red Cross relief shipment then on the way to Japan aboard the M.S.Gripsholm. Once it was learned that the Gripsholm had reached Japan and it was believed that the Red Cross supplies would reach POWs by late January 1944, the it was easier to decide to release the news by the end of that month.
Months of pressure and Dyess' death in a training flight crash in December 1943 also contributed to the government relenting. At midnight on January 27, 1944, the War Department distributed a long summary of the atrocities to the media.
The next day, the Tribune and its 100 affiliated newspapers ran the first of what would be 24 installments of Dyess’s dramatic story of combat, leadership, selflessness, survival, and escape.
Mr. [Brian] SCHATZ. Mr. President, today, we remember the 400 American and
Allied prisoners of war who died 74 years ago from friendly fire aboard
the Japanese hell ship Enoura Maru docked in Takeo Harbor, Formosa--
modern-day Taiwan.
Among the dead were men who left their homes in America, Australia,
Canada, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Norway, and Czechoslovakia to
fight an enemy they did not know, in places few of them had heard of,
all in pursuit of a common cause: freedom, justice, and equality. These
heroes were part of the infamous 45-day odyssey of the last transport
of prisoners of war from the Philippines to Japan--captive since the
American territory fell to Imperial Japan in the spring of 1942 after
fighting to defend the Philippines.
On the morning of January 9, 1945, dive bombers from the USS Hornet
attacked the unmarked freighter holding 1,300 prisoners of war docked
in the Japanese colony's harbor. Two hundred died instantly. Nearly
everyone else was wounded. For 2 days, the men were left in the
floating wreckage before the Japanese permitted the dead to be removed.
Their remains were buried ashore in mass graves.
After the war, the 400 victims of the bombing of the Enoura Maru were
exhumed and eventually brought to the National Memorial Cemetery of the
Pacific in Hawaii. They rest in 20 mass graves marked only as
``Unknowns January 9, 1945.'' Their families did not learn the final
fate of their loved ones until 2001.
This past August, we remembered these brave men with a memorial stone
on the Memorial Walk at the Cemetery honoring the prisoners of war
aboard the hell ship Enoura Maru. The American Defenders of Bataan and
Corregidor Memorial Society, an organization that represents the
American prisoners of war of Imperial Japan and their families,
organized the commemoration in Hawaii.
That memorial stone is a monument to their courage, suffering, and
sacrifice. It commemorates their tragic death 74 years ago and marks
their final return home. Let that stone and our remembrance of the
prisoners of war on the Enoura Maru remind us of our sacred commitment
to veterans of all eras to "never forget.''
Today, January 28th, is the 75th anniversary of when the American public first learned of the infamous Bataan Death March.
