Re: History, This is Important... Keep

Date: May 19, 2004

"'Genuine Brutality'

Despite his experiences, former POW Ken Olson is shocked by abuse at Abu Ghraib

By Barbara Lyon, News Editor

Taped to the cover of Ken Olson's copy of "The Japanese Story" is a note that reads, "History. This is important -- Keep."

The 83-page book was published by American Ex-POW Inc.'s National Medical Research Committee. It tells the tale of the brutal hardships experienced by American soldiers captured by the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II. Olson can attest that every word is true. He was there.

The last surviving Japanese Prisoner of War in Dunn County, Olson has witnessed horrors every bit as cruel and inhumane as those perpetrated by American soldiers at Abu Ghraib and the Al Qaeda terrorists who recently beheaded Philadelphia-native Nick Berg.

There was a difference, Olson noted, between being a POW in the European camps and the conditions endured by those in the Pacific theater.

"The Japanese soldiers were very cruel people," he said. "They didn't care whether we lived or died. And they would commit suicide rather than being taken prisoner."

Olson, who hails from "Clear Lake and Clayton country," enlisted in the Navy in 1940. Two years later, he was part of a group defending the beaches of Corregidor. In early May, 1942, the 24-year-old gunner's mate suddenly found himself -- along with more than 1,000 other American soldiers and Phillippine nationals -- held hostage by the Japanese Army.The next day, Olson and several others were taken outside by Japanese guards where they were stripped naked and beaten.

"They were ready to bayonet us but a Japanese officer stopped them -- we never did find out why," he said. "They wouldn't let us go until [General Jonathan M. Wainwright surrendered troops on Mindanao three days later."

In the meantime, permitted neither food nor water, many of the wounded died. Olson and several others were tapped to dig out American land and tank mines along the beach before being shipped out to Cabantuan.

For the crime of trying to get food for their men, three American officers were hung from posts outside the camp and beaten by all who passed. Olson was among those who witnessed with horror as a Japanese officer drew his samurai sword and, with a single swipe, beheaded one officer while others shot the remaining two.

He admits that recent news stories about the Berg beheading caused him to flashback to that day.

"That's what you call genuine brutality," Olson observed.

"One fellow escaped and was caught," he continued. "He was brought back to camp and made to dig his own grave before they killed him and threw him in. I saw that happen, too."

Put to work in the rice paddies under the hot sun of Davoa Penal Colony on Mindanao, the POWs barely subsisted on a diet of rice, lugao (a thin rice gruel), tea and water they boiled themselves. Many, though, died slow, agonizing deaths as dysentery, malaria and beriberi ravaged their bodies.

"They made us dig a big ditch and just dump them all in," Olson said, still wincing at the mental picture. "They wouldn't even let us have a chaplain."

The worst experience of his three years as a POW was the 18 days he spent on the prison ship that transported hundreds to Japan. It wasn't long before the buckets the Japanese lowered into the jam-packed hold were overflowing with human waste.

Dysentery took its toll and the living shared space with the dead for days before their captors allowed them to take the corpses topside.

"We were lucky we didn't get torpedoed," Olson said, noting that the ships weren't marked as carrying prisoners. "When we finally docked and they unloaded us, the Japanese held their noses. We were so filthy, they ran us into a horse barn and hosed us down before they shipped us off to Yokkaichi, way north in Japan."

Clad in thin cotton clothes and worn out sandals, the POWs assembled steam locomotives by day. At night, they were housed in old barns.

"We shared blankets to keep warm," Olson remembered. "That winter it was so cold. I don't think my feet were ever warm."

Pneumonia now joined the ranks of the diseases that brought death to the prisoners. Although it brought him close to a face-to-face meeting with the Grim Reaper, Olson escaped his clutches when a friend found him some precious sulfonamide, an early antibiotic drug more commonly known as "sulfa."

"He said, 'Hey, Swede' -- that's what they called me -- 'take this' and he gave me a pill and some tea. The next day my fever broke and they put me back to work," Olson recounted.

Not long before their release in September of 1945, the POWs began to notice American bombers flying overhead. On Aug. 18, the Japanese crew bosses told them to put down their tools.

"They put their hands together and told us there was no more war, that Japanese and Americans are now friends," Olson explained.

A month later, the former prisoners found themselves on a hospital ship, eating bread-and-butter, milk and canned peaches.

"Nothing has ever tasted so good," Olson declared.

While he is deeply distressed by what he sees on television concerning the Iraqi prisoner abuse, he noted, "In war, there's no decency hardly at all. I've seen people shot, beheaded, beaten and starved to death."

But he finds the stories, especially of the sexual abuse suffered by the Iraqi prisoners, to be shocking.

"Back in my days, we would never think of doing something like that," Olson said. "What in the world is happening? Why is the high command allowing that? That's what I can't figure out. If the officers knew it was going on, they should have stopped it. If Rumsfeld knew about it and, by goodness, kept it quiet ... why, he shouldn't have allowed it.""