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Re: Ex-POW Recalls Brutal Captivity

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: May 05, 2003

"Ex-POW recalls brutal captivity
By Frank Perkins Special to the Star-Telegram

Returning POWs from the war with Iraq have been blanketed with media attention and welcomed home by bands and parades.

But that's not how Smith L. Green of Fort Worth , a retired Air Force chief warrant officer, remembers his return from 41 months as a Japanese POW.

"We took the train from our camp at Hirohata to Yokohama, where we were met by American troops," Green said. "We were immediately put on a ship and sent to Manila to the 29th Replacement Depot, where we were given physicals, shots from a few nurses and free beers."

The 86-year-old retired accountant enlisted in the Army in 1935 at 18 to escape his grandparents' farm near Broken Bow, Okla. "I couldn't see much future in farming rocks and stumps," he said.

By the time the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, Green was a five-stripe communications sergeant with the Philippine Division's 2nd Battalion, 31st Infantry in Manila.

They were sent to the Bataan Peninsula on Jan. 5, 1942, to stop the invading Japanese. "We established our command post about a hundred yards behind the line, and keeping our communications open was made quite exciting by Japanese shells and bombs," Green said.

On April 9, 1942, they were ordered to surrender to the Japanese. Records show that 25,580 American and Philippine soldiers were captured and interned. More than 10,000 died while POWs, many on the 65-mile-long Bataan Death March, a synonym for both military brutality and courage. Green is one of the 4,070 death march survivors.

"We were formed up in a column of fours for the march. As truckloads of Japanese troops heading to Corregidor passed us, some thought it was a lot of fun to bang us on our helmets with their rifles. Being at the front of the column, we were treated better, or at least not so badly, as the guys further to the rear," Green recalled. "I always kept to the middle of the column because the guys on the inside and outside got the rifle butts, slaps and punches."

He was interned at the infamous Camp O'Donnell and then at the equally infamous Camp Cabanatuan. "We buried 1,400 to 1,500 POWs at O'Donnell and 2,600 at Cabanatuan while I was at those camps. More died after I left," Green said.

He was sent to Japan to work in a steel mill. "I was in charge of about 20 POWs, and one of our jobs was to strip bricks from the inside of the furnaces when they needed replacing," Green said. "It was like working in a hot oven. We put down thick planks on the floor of the furnace to walk on, and they would get so hot they would smoke. The bricks we removed were red-hot."

In August 1945, the POWs realized that the war was over, Green said. "American planes began flying over us, dropping drums of food and medicines. One drum hit the camp shoe-repair hut. That drum was full of shoes!" Green said. "A lot of our guys got sick bolting down that rich American food after years living on a diet of rice, a rare piece of fish and vegetable scraps."

Green weighed about 130 pounds when the war ended, compared with his normal 180. He was shipped to San Francisco, where he received about 45 months' back pay. "It came to $9,300, and I bought a 1939 Fleetwood Cadillac with part of it," Green said.

He re-enlisted after 104 days of rest and recuperation leave and transferred to the Army Air Forces, which became the U.S. Air Force in 1947. He retired at Biggs Air Force Base in El Paso in 1957 after tours at Carswell Air Force Base in Fort Worth, in Korea and at 8th Air Force headquarters.

Green has an accounting degree from TCU and worked in private business, retiring in 1983 as a finance officer with the Texas Department of Public Health. He is assembling his reminisces for his family history.

Frank Perkins' Military Notes column appears Tuesdays. tanker16@earthlink.net"