1220 Days: The Story of U.S. Marine Edmond Babler and His Experiences in Japanese Prisoner of War Camps During World War Ii. Second Edition

Second edition © Copyright 2011, Robert C. Daniels

Original © Copyright 2004, Robert C. Daniels

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 10/31/2011

ISBN: 978-1-4670-5427-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4670-5428-7 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4670-5429-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011918361

Printed in the United States of America

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Contents

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Preface to the Second Edition

Forward

Prologue

1 From Wisconsin to the Philippines

2 The War Begins

3 Into Captivity – Cabanatuan - Philippines

4 Palawan and McKinley Field – Philippines

5 Nielsen Field – Philippines

6 Zeblon Field – Philippines

7 Hell Ship - From the Philippines to Japan

8 Mining Coal in Japan

9 Surviving in Japan

10 Senso Wari – Our Captivity Ends

Epilogue

About the Author

Selected Bibliography

Notes

Dedication

This book is dedicated to all the men who served our country so faithfully in the Philippine battlefields on Bataan and Corregidor, and suffered and endured the tortures of a living hell in the prison camps.

Acknowledgments

In writing this account I owe a personal debt of gratitude to several people. First there is my wife Rebecca who not only stuck by me throughout the long days and nights of research, writing, and rewriting, but who also gave me constant encouragement.

In addition, the completion of this book would not have been possible without the help of Jeanette Babler. I am deeply indebted to her for her efforts in answering my seemingly unending string of questions and providing me with not only a copy Ed’s original memoirs, but countless family pictures, newspaper clippings, and corroborating information from Ed’s friends and fellow former POWs. I am also greatly indebted to Jeannette for her superb editing qualities.

I am also indebted to both Andrew Baggs, PhD. and my very good friend Jesse Tate, who read my drafts and gave me valuable insight into my writing techniques. I also wish to thank Robert V. Aquilina, the Assistant Head, Reference Section, History and Museums Division of the Marine Corps Historical Society in Washington, D.C. who graciously supplied me with the materials at his disposal. And John Patrick Zimba, a former member of the Second Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment who also went into captivity on Corregidor and who graciously allowed me to interview him, gaining valuable insight into both the Battle of Corregidor and the interment in Japanese prisoner of war camps.

Preface to the Second Edition

After the first printing, Jeanette Babler, Ed’s widow, pointed out to me that the actual writing of his memoirs seemed to help relieve Ed’s sometimes nearly overwhelming tensions that would build up upon remembering his ordeal, even decades after it ended. She conveyed to me that he would sometimes write portions of these memoirs after recalling upsetting memories; at other times he would just sit and write, recalling the memories as he did so. Usually, as she stated, he did so in a very upset manner, but his writing would always seem to calm him down.

Although very therapeutic in nature for Ed, this also resulted in many of his sentences being of nearly bullet type in format with various subjects sometimes intermingling. Some of these were in order, some were scattered over several pages: a sentence here, another there, and yet another several paragraphs or even pages later. This made it somewhat difficult to properly put the items into correct context and order, especially since Ed had passed away several years before my writing of this book and was not available for consultation.

As I alluded to at the end of the Forward in the original printing (which remains intact in this second edition), in formatting this edition I fully attempted to maintain Ed’s story, whenever possible, using Ed’s own words when I could adequately place them in proper sentence structure with little or no grammatical change. When I could not, I took the liberty to reword them, but took great strides to insure that the context remained in tact. In addition, since it was and remains Ed’s story, I chose to write in the first person format.

In this second edition, in an attempt to do a better service to Ed and his fellow POWs, I have incorporated several minor typographical, punctuation, and grammatical error changes that were discovered after the initial printing. I have also chosen to change from using content footnotes for the insertion of clarification and corroborating information to incorporating these into the text in the form of encapsulated brackets where deemed necessary to give the reader a better understanding of the overall picture of the war in relation to what Ed was experiencing. In some instances I have also expanded upon some of this clarification and corroborating information. The remaining footnotes have been changed to endnotes and contain, for the most part, only reference material. I feel this will make for a smother flow for the reader.

In addition, since the original printing it has come to my attention that two POW camps in the Japanese home islands were both referred to as the or an Omine camp, which has led to some confusion, even for those who actually lived at the camps. Ed repeatedly used the name Omine Machi in his memoirs when referring to the camp that he was incarcerated in while in Japan. Therefore, in the initial printing I indicated that he was at the Omine-machi camp, which I related to as the Hiroshima #6 camp on the Island of Honshu. However, in gaining access to some of the various camp rosters, it was discovered that Ed was actually in the Fukuoka Camp 05B-Omine on the Island of Kyushu. For this mistake, I humbly apologize and have made the appropriate corrections properly referencing the Fukuoka Camp in the applicable map that I include within these pages. All other content in this second edition remains the same as the original printing, with the exception of the already noted minor editing corrections.

In writing this book, I hope that I have done an adequate job that does justice to not only Ed, but to all of those who suffered throughout such an ordeal. I believe that the result is, at the very least, close to what Ed had endured and the timeline that he endured it, and that he would be pleased with what’s written in these pages. With this said, any incorrect statements, miss-quotes, or misspellings of personal or place names remains solely my responsibility, and I sincerely apologize in advance for any errors.

Robert C. Daniels

Forward

The surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on 7 December 1941 suddenly thrust the United States into the Second World War, a war that would last for nearly four years and cost the lives of 407,316 Americans while wounding another 671,846. Each year on the anniversary of the surprise attack Pearl Harbor is reverently recalled, and rightly so—it was a bitter surprise attack on American soil, against Americans. Subsequently, much has been published about this attack in both book and film format.

However, few Americans are aware that had it not been for bad weather over the Island of Formosa, Japanese Admiral Chichi Nagumo’s Pearl Harbor naval strike force may not have been the first to attack Americans on 7 December 1941. Remember Pearl Harbor may not have been the rallying call for many Americans flocking to recruiting stations soon afterward. The attack on Pearl Harbor was just a part of the Japanese offensive planned for 7 December. The overall plan called for simultaneous attacks not only on Pearl Harbor, but on several other American and Allied locations in the Pacific as well.

One of these additional locations was the American Protectorate of the Philippine Islands where only a weather front over Formosa kept the Japanese from launching their planned massive air strike against the Philippines as scheduled—at the exact time Nagumo’s forces were to attack Pearl Harbor. Although the weather front only delayed the air strike a few hours, it was enough to keep the Philippines from being the first major objective to be attacked on 7 December 1941, and, in the annuals of history, help ensure that its attack was overshadowed by the attack at Pearl Harbor.

While much has been published about Pearl Harbor and World War II in general, little of what has been published relates to the desperate fight for survival the American and Filipino forces endured during the hours, days, and months following the Pearl Harbor attack. Nonetheless, the attack on the Philippines was just as overwhelming to its defenders as to those who defended Pearl Harbor; possibly even more so.

On 7 December 1941 the American-Filipino forces in the Philippines, led by General Douglas MacArthur, consisted of 16,000 American troops, 150 aircraft, 16 surface ships, and 29 submarines. Added to this was the 60,000 fledgling and under trained Philippine Army, of which, in reality, only the 12,000 man American-trained Philippine Scouts Division was actually combat-ready. The other ten Philippine divisions were still effectively in training and not yet fit to fight.¹

Of the American forces in the Philippines very few were actual combat troops; most being aircrew, mechanics, artillery, and support staff. Although at the outbreak of the war MacArthur had at his disposal the largest concentration of B-17 bombers in the United States arsenal, like at Hawaii, nearly all of the combat aircraft stationed in the Philippines were destroyed in the first wave of Japanese air strikes. This air strike, occurring at approximately 12 noon on 8 December, roughly eight and a half hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor, left the Japanese in nearly unopposed command of the air.

General Masaharu Homma, the commander of the Japanese invasion force attacking the Philippine Islands, began landing his troops on the main Philippine Island of Luzon on 10 December 1941 and launched his advance towards Manila, the Philippine capital. Soon afterwards, Homma landed additional troops on the southeastern portion of Luzon and, after bringing his main landing force ashore north of the capital on 21 December and still another force ashore west of the capital on 24 December, forced MacArthur’s American and Filipino troops to fall back onto the Bataan Peninsula and the offshore island fortress of Corregidor. Nearly overnight the Bataan Peninsula, roughly thirty miles long by fifteen miles wide at its widest, swelled with an estimated 83,000 American and Filipino troops and 26,000 Filipino civilian refugees.²

In actuality, the American strategic plan for the defense of the Philippines in the case of a Japanese invasion called for such a move. Known as the Orange Plan, this strategic plan had been devised and studied by students at the United States War College ever since 1926. The plan called for the abandonment of the Philippine capital and the withdrawal of all American and Filipino forces to the Bataan Peninsula, which, with its thick jungle and rocky volcanic terrain and with the proper amount of supplies and pre-invasion preparations, made for an ideal defensive position. The plan called for supplies to be strategically located throughout the peninsula and defensive positions to be pre-built. If properly supplied and fortified as such, it was thought that the American and Filipino forces could defend this peninsula, protected from the sea by the offshore fortresses of Corregidor, Frank, Drum, and Hughes, for up to six months until the United States Navy could fight its way to the relief of the Philippine defenders.

The Orange Plan itself was a sound plan, and never during the invasion were General Homma’s troops superior in number to MacArthur’s. But, from the beginning, things went wrong for the American and Filipino forces. MacArthur steadfastly believed that the Japanese would not attack any sooner than April 1942, and it was to this timeframe that MacArthur geared his troop training and war preparation program. As a result, when Homma’s troops landed on Luzon in December 1941, the 60,000 strong Filipino Army was made up of, for the most part, raw, untrained troops—many having never even fired a weapon. To compound matters, MacArthur, refusing to abandon Manila, abandoned the Orange Plan instead, ordered his supplies scattered around the capital and other strategic defensive points on Luzon, and sent his ill-trained Filipino Army to stall the Japanese advance. To this end, the hastily organized and ill-trained Filipino defenders, although many fighting bravely, were quickly overwhelmed by Homma’s well trained and battle seasoned troops.

By the time MacArthur finally decided to revert back to the Orange Plan, his supply corps, although desperately attempting to move tons of food, ammunition, fuel, and medical supplies to the Bataan Peninsula, were hampered by air raids, lack of vehicles, lack of personnel, and, most importantly, lack of time. As a result, they were only able to relocate a portion of the much needed supplies to the peninsula. In addition, the pre-invasion construction of the planned Bataan fortified defensive positions had also been neglected. The effects of MacArthur’s failure to quickly implement the Orange Plan soon became evident when, with the arrival of approximately 100,000 additional people on the Bataan Peninsula, rations soon ran short and few, if any, defensible positions were available.

Help, promised from Washington, was not only hoped for, but expected by both the American and Filipino forces. However, senior military and government personnel knew otherwise. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had, as recently as June 1941, signed the secret European first strategy pact with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. This pact, which was turned into War Plan 5, committed the United States forces to defeating the Axis Powers in Europe first, while fighting a defensive war in the Pacific. Unbeknownst to the American and Filipino forces on Bataan and the offshore coastal garrisons of Corregidor and her sister fortress islands, War Plan 5 doomed the defenders to either annihilation, starvation, or surrender. A lucky few, including General Douglas MacArthur, would be evacuated. The others would be sacrificed.

Estimates vary, but due to dwindling supplies on Bataan, on 8 April 1942 General Edward King was forced to surrender nearly 70,000 men, including 12,000 Americans, to General Homma’s forces. Many of these were sick or wounded; all were near the starvation level due to the severe shortage of rations. These prisoners were marched into captivity on what became known as the infamous Bataan Death March. Again, estimates vary, however, between 16,000 and 25,000 Americans and Filipinos died on this march due to the Japanese open brutality towards their captives. Many of the prisoners, who were already nearly emaciated by the time they surrendered, died of sickness and fatigue along the way; others succumbed from wounds received during the battle of Bataan. Still others were beaten to death or outright executed by bayoneting, shooting, or beheading by the Japanese. Approximately 2,300 of those that died or were killed during this march were Americans.

On 6 May 1942, after sustaining shelling for twenty-seven straight days and feverishly attempting to fend off an invasion, the forces on Corregidor, under General Jonathan Wainwright, surrendered, leaving the Philippine Islands entirely in Japanese hands and adding roughly another 14,000 American and Filipino troops to the rolls of Japanese held POWs. United States Marine Corporal Edmond Babler and his fellow 4th Marine Regiment, the Chinese Marines, were among these additional American and Filipino forces forced to surrender on Corregidor.

What follows is a compilation of Ed’s memoirs of the period that he appropriately entitled 1220 Days In Hell, and is Ed’s story from the time he joined the Marine Corps on 20 December 1938 until his return from 1,220 days of captivity in Japanese prisoner of war camps. It is intended, in Ed’s own words, as A true history of my struggle for survival in Japanese Prison Camps in the jungles of the Philippine Islands, on air-fields and a coal mine in Japan.

Written in the first person and, wherever possible, using Ed’s own words, I have taken great strides to maintain the contents of Ed’s memoirs in its original context. With this in mind, I have chosen to record, with only a few exceptions, the Japanese words and phrases contained herein in the phonetic form in which Ed originally wrote them; the way he remembered them.

A corporal when captured, Ed writes of what he saw, knew, experienced, and remembered as a Marine of that rank during his tour in Shanghai, China, the battle for the Philippines, and his 1,220 days in brutal Japanese captivity. It is his views and memories, with no apologies made nor intended to conform to the modern concept of political correctness. I have sparingly inserted clarifications and corroborating information in encapsulated brackets where deemed necessary to give the reader a better understanding of the ‘overall picture’ of the war in relation to what Ed was experiencing. For the most part, facts, figures, and dates are only referenced when obtained from single source material.

Robert C. Daniels

Prologue

One of Ferdinand and Katherine (Goetz) Babler’s seven children, Edmond Joseph Babler was born at the Babler family home on 14 December 1913 in the small rural Wisconsin town of Maplewood, located in Door County in the east-central part of the state. After graduating from Brussels High School, Ed spent several years working in his father’s blacksmith shop, which specialized in horse shoeing and wagon and buggy building, and on the two family farms. Ed also spent six months working in the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camp at Star Lake, Wisconsin, and another six months at the CCC camp at Blue Lake, Wisconsin.

Ed had always been an enthusiastic wrestler and boxer, and competed in approximately thirty fights at state fairs and Golden Glove tournaments throughout Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. He also accompanied two of his cousins on a trip riding the rails from Wisconsin to California and back. While on this trip he won several boxing matches in San Diego, California.

It was in late 1938, at age twenty-five, when Ed decided to join the Marine Corps. This is his story, from his entry and training in the Marine Corps, his garrison duty in Shanghai, China, his participation in the battle of the Philippine Islands, and his daily fight for survival as a prisoner of war at the hands of his Japanese captors.

Map 1: Western Pacific Ocean

1 From Wisconsin to the Philippines

December of 1938 saw the depression at its peak. I wasn’t going anywhere as a boxer, having just lost my last two fights, and, in reality, the $30 worth of boxing purses I made every month or so just wasn’t enough. So, although I hated to leave home just before Christmas, I enlisted in the United States Marine Corps in Chicago, Illinois, on 20 December 1938. I recall the recruiting sergeant telling me that anything could happen during my tour of duty, including a war. Nonetheless, I told him