News-Info-Alerts

Re: WW II POWs Reflect

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: May 29, 2003

"WWII POWs reflect on their struggles and those of new POWs
Eugene Sutherland / Staff Reporter

Tia Owens
James L. Haynes, a POW survivor of the Bataan Death March, stands outside his Alexandria residence.They share a common bond forged through years of uncertainty and mental and physical pain.

They are central Louisiana's ex-prisoners of war, and they know all too well what might have flashed through the minds of U.S. soldiers who were captured, and eventually released, by Iraqi forces.

News of the Iraqi release of seven American prisoners of war came as a pleasant surprise to ex-POWS James Haynes of Alexandria and Lloyd Ponder of Natchitoches, both of whom were not sure what to expect from the Iraqis.

"I felt sorry for them when they were captured," Haynes said. "The way they were acting on camera, you thought maybe they might be killed. I just thank the Lord. Nine days might not seem like very long, but to those POWs, it must have felt like a year."

Nine days into his ordeal as a Japanese prisoner of war during World War II, a young Haynes had no idea his stay would last more than three and a half years. His unit, the U.S. Air Force 27th Bomb Group of the 48th Material Squadron, was on work detail when attacked by guerillas. The Americans soon were part of the Bataan Death March.

"They brought everything they had to us," Haynes said. "We had about 150,000 people when you include the Phillipine soldiers. They had 500,000. It was frustrating, because you did all you could do, but there was just too many of them."

Haynes and his comrades were then imprisoned in a mine in northern Japan. Living in frightening uncertainty, the soldiers wondered daily if their next meal would be their last. Haynes recalled his feelings the moment it sunk in he was captured.

"We were scared to death," he said. "Looking back, I figure the good Lord was truly with me," he said.

Perhaps the worst part of being a POW, Haynes said, was the uncertainty. Sometimes, the treatment received depended on which camp he was held captive.

"I was in a fair camp," Haynes said. "I don't really remember too much abuse. Our honchos, the Jap overseers, were not as bad. Again, I know the Lord was with us."

Haynes and the other POWs subsisted on rice meals three times a day, usually oatmeal for breakfast and "mushy rice" for dinner. An unappetizing soup was served twice daily.

The POW experience is bonding for prisoners involved and likely will be for the recently released prisoners, Haynes said.

"You become very close to people you're in with," he said. "You can't explain it to someone who hasn't been there. You're there for each other in the worst of times, and you kind of keep each other from going crazy."

Insanity of a more positive variety broke out on a September day in 1945, the day Haynes and his comrades were released from captivity. It came a day after he had dropped a rail on his foot, which led to him not having to work on the memorable day. Soybeans never tasted so good, Haynes said.

"I just remember everybody coming back toward the camp and all the guards disappearing," he said. "The camp had been turned over to us, but we couldn't believe it. The next thing you know, B-29s are dropping us food in 50-gallon drums. We ate ourselves sick."

Some sicker than others. In the two months it took him to return to America, Haynes' weight jumped from 112 pounds to 180 pounds.

Haynes was not the only one celebrating. When word first got out he'd be released, his family might have been more excited than him, he said.

"My father ran all the way down the street to the post office to get the telegram," Haynes said. "I'd imagine these Iraqi POWs' families felt the same."

As for the POWs themselves, Haynes said their experience is something they probably won't soon forget. He mentioned POW Jessica Lynch in particular.

"I sure was surprised they were all released," he said. "Especially the young girl who had all the blood on her. It seemed like they wanted to kill her. That girl and the others will be thinking about this for years to come. You try to put it out of your mind, but it's hard."

Ponder was also a POW of the Japanese, captured in Corregidor, Phillipines. His recollections of daily life as a POW mirror those of Haynes. The steady diet of rice and soup meals, the sound of foreign voices, and the rising sun on Japanese flags stick out in Ponder's mind.

Like Haynes, it didn't take long for Ponder to identify the worst aspect of bondage.

"Not knowing is the worst part," he said. "It's one experience a human being can do without. You never know how you're going to be treated. Jail is one thing, this is another. The only crime we committed was defending our country."

Haynes is proud and is relieved that Lynch and the other soldiers were released in a relatively short period of time. As he kept up with the unfolding televised Iraqi POW situation, he revisited his own experience.

"The longer you are held, I think, the more it works on your mind," he said. "It's the psychology of domination by others. Not taking anything away from the nine days these (POWs) served, but we were there from 1942 to 1945. That's three years and four months."

Ponder said his experience tells him part of what brought these latest American POWs home was hope and family. Those are two things he said were pivotal to his own survival.

"Prayer and faith keep you going," he said. "You have to have kind of a built-in will to live. It's wanting to survive and not to be destroyed, despite what's happening and wanting to get back to your family. If you lose hope, you will lose your life in a very few days."

That hope, Ponder said, is strengthened by fellow POWs who feel the same. A strong bond inevitably forms, he said.

"Struggling together is the highest form of fellowship," he said. "It explains why, when you struggle like that with each other, it does make a bond that you can't understand if you're not a part of it. ... It's what these young solders might have experienced."

Ponder believes the recently released POWs might have experienced similar treatment to what he and his peers received - at least in one way.

"Everything they did was psychological torture, because you didn't know what would happen next," Ponder said. "If there were 10 (prisoners) in a group and one of them tried to escape, the other nine might have been shot. We had a saying amongst ourselves that if you wanted to go, let the rest of us know, so we can all go.

"You've got to have some humor and levity, or you go stir-crazy."

Ponder, 81, chuckles when asked about the feelings of the recently released POWs' families upon news their family members were being released.

"When a family finds out, it's more exhilarating to the family than to the POW himself," Ponder said. "When my (release) telegram came in, my dad picked it up at the Pleasant Hill post office. He exceeded the speed limit all the way home in that old Chevy."

Eugene Sutherland: 487-6380; esutherland@thetowntalk.com

© 2003, The Town Talk, a division of Gannett Company Inc."