News-Info-Alerts

Re: Bataan Death march Survivors Lived By Wits

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Date: April 08, 2002

"Bataan Death March survivors lived by wits
        
Memories undimmed on eve of 60th anniversary

By James W. Crawley UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

Sixty years ago Tuesday, Les Tenney and Bob Vogler made seemingly trivial decisions that saved their lives.

They were among thousands of American and Filipino troops who surrendered to Japanese forces April 9, 1942, on the Bataan Peninsula in the Philippines during the early days of World War II.

Tenney picked up his canteen and donned a hat. Vogler smeared filth on his leather flight jacket and secreted a gold-and-jade ring in his underwear.

Those acts saved them during the infamous 65-mile Bataan Death March and nearly 31/2 years as prisoners of war and slave laborers.

"We had no idea what they were saying and no idea when we would get finished with the march," said Tenney, a retired finance professor who lives in La Jolla. "It was scary."

As he walked, sickened by beriberi and the sight of bludgeoned comrades, Vogler recalled, "I tried to blank it out of my mind and just move ahead."

Tuesday marks the 60th anniversary of the march in which 10,000 U.S. and 60,000 Filipino prisoners endured oppressive heat, lack of water and food, and sadistic guards. It took some men 12 days to reach a prison camp, and the guards killed an estimated 600 American and 10,000 Filipino soldiers along the way.

But the death march was just the beginning of the torture, inhumanity and backbreaking labor the Americans would suffer.

Now some survivors are suing Japanese conglomerates that they claim profited from their prison work. Others are hoping for federal legislation to allow more lawsuits against the Japanese companies.

But time is running out for the "Battling Bastards of Bataan," as they are known. Most are over 80.

Not much training
Tenney, then a 21-year-old staff sergeant, commanded a tank in an Illinois National Guard unit. With little training, his unit arrived in the Philippines only 18 days before Pearl Harbor. He weighed 185 pounds.

Vogler, now a Rancho Bernardo resident, was a 21-year-old private in the Army Air Forces at Nichols Field near Manila. He weighed 210 pounds.

After the Japanese landed at Luzon's Lingayen Gulf in December 1941, U.S. and Filipino troops retreated to Bataan and the island stronghold of Corregidor.

Tenney's unit fought rear-guard battles to slow the enemy. By April, he and his crew were exhausted by the near-continuous fighting and shortages of spare parts, ammunition and food.

Vogler, a mechanic, escaped injury when the Japanese bombed his airfield, destroying most of the fighter planes. He was drafted into a makeshift infantry unit.

A typical day's food supply for Vogler's infantry unit was five or six cans of salmon, 6 pounds of rice, 1 pound of flour, a can of fruit cocktail and a quarter-pound of coffee – split 190 ways.

"If we'd been left alone for 30 days, we would have starved anyway," Tenney said.

The Japanese mounted an offensive April 3, 1942. For six days, U.S. forces fought and retreated until the last major units were clustered at the southern tip of Bataan.

On April 9, Gen. Edward King, who commanded the last troops on Bataan, surrendered.

The Japanese captured many more soldiers than they expected, and their prisoners' physical condition was already poor, said Hampton Sides, the author of "Ghost Soldiers," a book about the death march and an American raid to free survivors near the war's end.

Suddenly, the victors had more than 70,000 prisoners to move, feed and house. Making matters worse, the Japanese considered defeat and surrender a mortal sin. Prisoners were regarded as subhuman.

Harsh awakening
The tank crews awoke the morning after the surrender to enemy soldiers marching down the road.

"They asked for cigarettes in Japanese. Then they beat us with bamboo canes," said Tenney, who was struck in the face, losing several teeth.

Prodded with swords and bayonets, prisoners were pushed onto the narrow, potholed National Road and headed northward.

Worried about losing his supplies, Tenney had decided to carry his gear whenever he left his tent. So he was wearing a hat and a belt with his canteen and first-aid kit when the Japanese arrived.

Vogler spent the night at a small airfield surrounded by Japanese tanks. At sunrise, enemy troops started pushing the Americans onto the road.

He took his prized leather jacket and smeared feces on it, figuring his captors wouldn't steal a soiled jacket. He hid his Elgin watch in the canteen pouch and a gold-and-jade ring in his underwear.

Emaciated Americans and Filipinos who couldn't march or moved too slowly were clubbed, bayoneted or shot, survivors reported.

"If you fell down, you died," Tenney said.

Canteens held life-sustaining water for both men. Tenney's hat helped against the sun and 100-plus-degree heat.

Without cause or warning, a Japanese officer slit open Tenney's back with his sword. Two friends held him upright and carried him while a medic sewed up the wound with thread.

Then the guards told the prisoners they could stop and rest, but only for an hour.

"If I hadn't rested for an hour, I would have died," Tenney said.

After more than a week, the men arrived at Camp O'Donnell, an abandoned Philippine army camp.

Sanitary conditions were terrible, water was scarce and disease was rampant. The beatings continued. An estimated 1,600 Americans died in the 40 days they spent there.

For many, the greatest trauma was not physical but mental because of the stress and uncertainty.

"People just gave up when they got to O'Donnell and died," Vogler recalled.

Eventually, most prisoners were sent to Japan and China for slave labor in factories and mines. Thousands died when their unmarked prison ships were sunk by American submarines.

Tenney worked in a coal mine until he was injured. Vogler worked in a machine shop in Japanese-occupied Manchuria and, after he sabotaged the equipment, he was forced to dig ore in a lead mine in Japan.

The guards beat the prisoners whenever the United States won a battle, Tenney said. "If we didn't get beaten, we'd worry about if we were winning the war," he said.

With daily rations of a couple of rice balls, greens or soup, men kept losing weight.

Even 60 years later, Vogler still fears he will go hungry.

"I still have an obsession with food," he said. "I always have to have lots of it around the house."

Cigarettes, belongings and food created a prison economy. "You bartered for life," Vogler said.

Some smokers literally starved to death because they traded food for cigarettes, he said.

"People priced themselves out of life by getting cigarettes on credit," said Vogler, a nonsmoker who bartered his cigarettes for more food.

He survived by selling his soiled leather jacket for $50, which bought food and other items.

The ring, hidden until the final days of the war, was the last thing he traded for food.

"I was starving to death; I needed more food," Vogler said. "So I sold the ring for 10 days' worth of rice. It saved my life."

The war ended a week later. Vogler weighed 80 pounds when he was liberated. Tenney weighed 98.

Never forgotten
"There's not a day I don't think about it in one way or another," said Tenney, who returned to the United States and went to college and graduate school, earning a doctorate.

After liberation, Vogler remained in the Army Air Forces and its successor, the Air Force, retiring as a master sergeant. His canteen, which survived Bataan, Camp O'Donnell and the mines, is on display at an Air Force museum.

As this anniversary nears, each Bataan survivor knows time is getting shorter. Fewer than 1,000 American survivors are alive today; an exact number is unavailable.

"We're dying off at such a high rate," Tenney said.

Many survivors want Japan to apologize with words and money.

In 1999, both men separately sued Japanese conglomerates in state court, seeking back wages and an apology.

"I'm entitled to an apology and my back wages," Tenney said.

A state law in the late 1990s allows California POWs to sue the companies. But the lawsuits are being challenged in state appeals court, and the U.S. State Department has filed motions arguing that the 1952 peace treaty with Japan precludes reparations.

A bill in Congress would open the door for lawsuits in federal court, but the legislation has been stalled.

"I don't have an ax to grind with Japan because I was a soldier fighting in a war," Tenney said. "But I didn't have to be put in a coal mine and made a slave for a company that made a profit."

Tenney and Vogler said they have forgiven the Japanese people.

"I hate the people who beat me, who tortured me, but I don't hate Japan," Tenney said.

Vogler added, "You can forgive them to a degree, but you can never forget."

His prisoner ID number, 336, is his POW license-plate number.

James W. Crawley:
(619) 542-4559; jim.crawley@uniontrib.com

© 2002 Union-Tribune Publishing Co. "