Posted on 07/30/2003 8:38:59 PM PDT by Mean Daddy
Perhaps the most difficult tour of duty is not done on the battlefield as we know it from films and documentaries.
Facing the enemy in combat, the American soldier has always had at least a fighting chance. But what about the soldiers captured or surrendered by their commanders on the battlefield?
Frank DeVivo doesn't like to talk about it, but he knows what it means to be a POW. DeVivo was serving in the U.S. Army on Corregidor when the Japanese attacked.
The tiny, fortified island guarding the entrance to Manila Bay was a key, strategic site and had been since time immemorial. Corregidor was turned to rubble on the surface while American soldiers survived for a month in the labyrinth of tunnels and caves below after the fall of Bataan.
Finally, 10,000 U.S. and Filipino troops under the command of Lt. Gen. Jonathan Wainwright surrendered after being cut off entirely from supplies and aid from the U.S. In May 1942, they were captured by the Japanese.
"The Japanese were brutal," DeVivo said. "Extremely cruel. We had four young fellows who escaped, and when they were recaptured, they were tied up for four days and nights by their thumbs. When the four days were up, the Japanese made us watch while they executed them. I still think about them quite often. You never get over that kind of stuff."
His military career started out as easy as pie. Before World War II, men enlisted for specific places. DeVivo chose to serve in the Philippines before the war.
"Back in that time, there was no jobs for us guys; and we had to do something," he said. "I worked at Wilcox Greenhouse and made 10 cents an hour. I figured I could make better than that in the Army. So I chose the Philippines," he said. "It was a serviceman's paradise during peacetime."
When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, all of that changed. The serviceman's paradise turned quickly into one of the most heavily-bombed territories of the entire war.
For five months, the Japanese bombed Bataan, just north of Corregidor, day and night. The soldiers were down to quarter rations and were willing to die rather than get captured, according to DeVivo, but they were surrendered by Gen. Wainwright instead.
It was a sad day, DeVivo said.
For those who were taken prisoner, it meant spending the rest of the war at the mercy of an enemy bent on torture. Their chance of surviving was not good.
DeVivo signed up with four other young men from Pottawattamie County who were also captured by the Japanese and died of malnutrition, dysentery and pneumonia in the prison camp.
"Five of us went in, and I was the only one to come out," he said. "We only got a cup of rice a day. They called the places we stayed at "prison camps," but they were slave labor camps. When they took us off of Corregidor, they stripped us down to our skivvies and made us carry our clothes through the streets of Manila barefoot on the concrete about 10 miles.
"It was hot, too, I can tell you. They would only take about 100 of us at a time because they was afraid we would rush them. Then we took a train to Cabanatuan and then we walked three miles on rocky roads to the camp."
Forced to build an airfield for the Japanese, the POWs were worked from sun up to sun down. DeVivo said he and the other soldiers tried to slow things down with sabotage and snail's pace whenever they could. The time-frame for completing the airfield was six months, but the soldiers made sure it took a year. All the while, they were beaten and humiliated.
"One day, they must have lost a naval battle because they really took it out on us," he said. "They made us work from 6 a.m. one day to 6 a.m. the next day. Then one wise guy up front started singing 'God Bless America' and got everybody's spirits up. Those Japanese rifle butts started flying a bit then and caused a few of us to get smacked, but that was OK. Sometimes they would line us up and make us slap each other."
Later, when the U.S. Navy bombed the airfield, the Japanese took the prisoners out of the Philippines by boats where the men were forced to stand in piles of coal with no room to sit down or sleep and with no food until they reached Japan. All of this was done to prevent recapture by the Americans.
In Japan, DeVivo worked in a steel mill until 1945. During that time, the beatings and mental torture continued.
"One of their favorite things to do to have fun with us was put a rifle behind our ear and pull the trigger and then they'd laugh like a bunch of monkeys," he said, adding that after all these years, he still feels anger toward the Japanese.
"I got no use for them, and I won't buy anything made in Japan either."
DeVivo said he rarely talked about his experiences until 1972 when his psychiatrist urged him to discuss what happened for the sake of his health.
"I never talked about it for years," DeVivo said. "Other guys would talk about the war, and I'd just clam up. I couldn't even watch movies about the war, because it would bring back too many bad memories."
There was one good memory though, said DeVivo, and that came on Sept. 11, 1945. In the months prior to the war's end, the Japanese had been under orders to execute all American prisoners of war. Unbeknownst to the American POWs, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki changed those plans. Arrangements had been made for the prisoners to be handed over to the U.S. Marines.
"We had no idea where we were going," DeVivo said. "We thought they were taking us to be executed. Then all of a sudden, a squad of Marines surrounded us. I was like a walking wounded. I was in pretty bad shape. The Japanese didn't like me, they were always picking on me. The Navy took me to Yokohama on the U.S.S. Gerard, and then I was put on a hospital ship for home."
Legally blind from malnutrition and weighing only 100 pounds when he was rescued, DeVivo said the road to recovery has been a long one. He had many medals to keep him company during the long road to recovery including Bronze and Silver Stars. "Fattening up" took the longest time, he said, but he is in pretty good shape for a World War II vet, especially one who survived the camps.
When he came home, it was without fanfare or welcome. DeVivo rode a Greyhound bus into Council Bluffs from the west coast. An almost surreal ending to what began more than five years earlier.
DeVivo shares the distinction of surviving his experience with no one he knows of. At a recent reunion, he was the only surviving POW from his camp who could be found. He was treated like royalty by the other veterans. It was a great honor that moved a stoic man to tears.
Today, when the storm clouds roll in over the hills and a special anniversary day coincide, he said he "just clams up" and his memories turn back to those days when his life depended on the cruel whims of his enemies and he lived through horrors none of us could know in order to tell the tale of Corregidor.
I will have to tuck that little nugget in my collection of reasons why I support Truman's decision to nuke the Japs.
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