Ch 27 - Suwa in the Mountains

CHAPTER 27

SUWA IN THE MOUNTAINS

The caravan of old, wheezing trucks moved so slowly it was impossible to estimate how far we had traveled. Possibly an hour passed before several small houses appeared. Curious people stared as we moved slowly by, and shortly we neared what apparently was to be our new home. In a large clearing a tall fence made of new boards, all unpainted, stretched away, almost filling the clearing. This, obviously, was a new prison camp. When the unloading process began, the two of us stuck closely together hoping to catch the same barracks and grab adjacent bunks.

All went according to plan and we soon found ourselves arranging our few belongings in one of the barracks. Doors were located at each end of the barracks, and a wide aisle ran the length of the wooden building. On each side of the aisle, low platforms approximately 18” to 20” high were constructed of rough lumber. The beds were laid on top of the platform, each about 30” wide and 2” thick, made of some type of woven material that was stuffed with straw or hay. There were no upper bunks as in some prison camp barracks. Enough windows existed so the interior of the building was light, not so dark as at the flour mill and many other camps.

Talking to some of the other men, we found many were held in various camps in the Tokyo/Yokohama/Kawasaki area, and one of the camps in Kawasaki had suffered hits from the bombing raids, mostly of the incendiary type, and there had occurred some injuries and deaths from the fires. It appeared the Japanese were disbanding many of the smaller camps because of the raids.

These wooden barracks seemed to have been constructed hurriedly, and the lumber was definitely new. The first new input we received after the dust settled was rather discouraging. The highest ranking POW officer was British. During my sojourn at Omori, I was not impressed with the British officers. I was impressed by the British solders though, I found them to be the greatest, and most effective of all the great thieves in history. I am convinced these blokes could steal the hat from your head while carrying on a conversation with you! I always wondered if stealing was an art form in the British Isles, since most of its representatives I had encountered were indeed masters in the practice of thievery. The British officers were generally snobbish, quite unapproachable, and steeped in their traditional past. It was as though none of this was happening! Many of them carried on their daily routines, wore their sometimes spotless uniforms, replete with insignia’s, epaulette’s and other regalia.

As I watched this senior officer of the POW’s, Wing Commander L. J. Birchall (Canadian) parade about, I found it almost laughable to see this nattily clad man strolling about the compound, crop under his arm, inspecting the camp so to speak, as though he could command anyone in sight to do his bidding. I wondered if he could possibly comprehend how ludicrous his appearance would seem to an observer from mid-America who might be watching from afar as this man in all his finery strolled amid these ragged, hungry prisoners of the cruel Japanese, each pondering his unknown future, wondering if he would be alive tomorrow, would be there to greet the Yanks when they came roaring in!

I was unable to relate to the British in many ways, and a vast gulf existed between their officers, and those of us who lived in the real world. We would find later, when the chips were down, this aloof and arrogant officer would be of little aid to us when we challenged the Japanese!

The Japanese Camp Commander was Lt. Hyashi. This man was about 5’-5”, 140 lbs. and wore a Hitler-type mustache. Hyashi had a round face, and smoked incessantly. He was not a pleasant looking man.

The following day, orders were passed to each barrack leader that we would be expected to work for the excellent food we would be receiving. We were ordered to line up outside, and the guards formed us into groups of twenty. After much counting and jabbering among the guards, we marched out of the camp and out to the road where we had unloaded from the trucks and buses. The column turned left and proceeded up the narrow road which ascended at a slight grade.

The camp seemed to be surrounded by small “farms”, hardly more than large gardens. Many trees abounded, small growths sprinkled among the gardens. Somehow the war seemed far away, and my steps seemed lighter as we walked along this country lane. Eventually I returned to reality when the column entered a fenced in area. The gate had been opened by Japanese workmen and before us were a number of round, metal structures, all in a row. They were conical in shape, perhaps ten feet high. An opening ran around the metal cones, approximately one and a half to two feet high. Brackets spaced around the periphery of the structures supported the upper half of the cones. The diameter of the structures was perhaps ten or twelve feet.

The workmen formed us into groups of six to eight men and arranged each group around one of the ‘cones’ and each man was issued a long, metal rod with the metal bent into a circle on one end, and with a right angle bend at the other. The Japanese workman next to me took my metal rod and stuck the end with the right angle bend through the opening and pulled me closer to the cone. As I approached the opening I could feel heat radiating from below, and now could see white-hot coals down inside the cone. The man showed me how to poke the metal rod into the large clumps of hot coals and break them apart! Now I realized what I was seeing! It was a crude, manual smelter! So our job was to work in these smelters! Another thought shot through my mind! Smelters! Where there were smelters there were surely mines! I had no desire to go down into any mine! Perhaps I would be fortunate and work here at this smelter.

As the days passed, we came to realize the smelter crew would not work at the mine. I think all were relieved to know we would escape that terror at least! Also we discovered that everyone did not work every day. Probably because the smelters were fewer in number than prisoners to man them. We also learned the mine was an open pit mine, not a deep mine.

Several days later, Elliot Parent, Dix, and myself were eating our skimpy rations one morning. Part way thru my mess kit of rice I chomped down on a small stone hidden in my rice! A loud crunch could be heard by all, and additionally felt by me! I had broken a tooth! The pain was excruciating! Parent led me to one of our officers who told him to get me to the dentist. This was when I learned that our dentist (of which I was unaware that we had) was a Dr. Richardson, a tall, pleasant man who examined my pain wracked mouth and explained that one of my lowers had consisted of nothing but a shell. When I crunched down on the rock, I had broken the shell and left a jagged mess. He said he would attempt to pull each of the fragments and relieve the pain. It didn’t work! Each time the Doc attempted to pull one of the fragments, it broke off. He looked at me.

“I will have to dig those roots out with a bone chisel he said,” shaking his head.

He pointed at one corner, and requested I sit on the floor in that corner. When I was in place, Dr. Richardson pulled a stool over next to me, spread a small white towel on the stool, then spread his tools out on the towel. Gently pressing my head into the corner, he asked that I look up at the ceiling. Holding my head in the corner he began digging the roots from my gums. Without a doubt, it developed into one of the worse experiences of my life! It was a slow, agonizing process, and it was obvious that Dr. Richardson was also suffering thru the operation, aware of the pain that I was experiencing. When he was finished, he meted out some of his precious pain killers. He apologized again and again for his lack of any type of deadening, but I assured him the pain was hardly more intense than when I broke the tooth eating the rice.

I paced the floor most of the night, and suffered though the next day and night, but with the help of more pain pills I managed to get some sleep. I did not return to the smelters for several days, and still could not manage to eat rice. The cooks were kind enough to make up some watery stuff I could drink, and hopefully receive a vestige of nourishment. I appreciated their kindness.

Occasionally we saw planes flying very high, and we wondered how the war was going. It was very quiet and peaceful here and there were times when I forgot the war. Remembering the heavy bombing raids I somehow felt the end was near. How could the Japanese possibly continue after such devastating fires. It had to end soon!

We were laying on our bunks, gabbing about home, food and other topics when a friend of Dickie’s sat down on the edge of the bed platform. He leaned over and whispered something to Dix, then winked and walked away. Dickie gestured at Elliot and I to come closer.

“Your not gonna believe what he told me,” he said in a low voice, “it seems that there is a loose board in the fence behind the benjo and that guy and a friend slipped out last night and copped a sack of vegetables!

He told Dickie the whole area was loaded with small farms and gardens and they had found potatoes! Dix said it wasn’t safe for more than two or three to go out at one time, and his friend told him that he would show us the ropes one time, then we were on our own. The rule was anyone going out must coordinate with Dickie’s friend, and that would insure we did not exceed the limit and endanger the whole camp.

Dix and Parent went out the next night together with Dix’s friend. They were gone until almost midnight. The rest of us could not sleep for fear something would happen, and our relief was apparent when the two entered the barracks’ each carrying a sack. What a loot! Potatoes, carrots, and leeks in abundance!

“Real potatoes!” Dickie gasped when he showed us the contents of the bag. Needless to say, we enjoyed a batch of the spuds cooked under the rice pots the following day! Three nights later I had my baptism of temporarily escaping a Japanese prison camp, wandering about, then returning to the camp!

Dickie gave me the info for making a scouting and hunting mission. He gave me the lowdown on the guard positions, when to move the board, and which way to head once through the fence. I hardly considered myself jubilant about sneaking out of the camp. It would be a helluva note to get shot while leaving, or entering the camp, I said to myself, but I wasn’t about to miss this! After tenko (head count) the three of us, Dix, Elliot Parent and myself headed for the benjo. Dickie motioned for us to wait while he checked for the guard. Shortly he appeared and motioned for us to follow him. Again he listened, ear close to the fence, then waved for us to follow him and he was gone! We were right on his heels as he moved through a shallow ditch that surrounded the camp. A lone light bulb illuminated the outside of the fence, but the weak light reached only a few feet from the ditch, and then the darkness took over!

“We hafta stay away from any houses, and keep fairly close to camp. When you dig any vegetables up, be sure to pull the dirt back into the hole and smooth it out.” Dickie whispered.

“This is total insanity!” I whispered.

“Aw, it’s just temporary insanity,” Elliot Parent giggled behind his knuckles.

“It’ll be worth it when your eating those potatoes!” Our friend Dix said as he dug around for spuds.

There was very little moonlight, and it was difficult to find potatoes, and that was what I was looking for. Here I was, crawling on my knees thru the dirt looking for potatoes, dragging an old burlap sack along behind me!

“We must be crazy!” I thought, expecting any moment to hear shouts and to see lights coming on all around us, but, it didn’t happen, and for the next two hours we scurried around on the ground digging vegetables. Some of the items that I dug up I didn’t recognize by feel, so I put some of them back into the ground and covered them up, others I took a chance on and stuffed into the bag.

“I think I got enough!” Dickie whispered, “we have to carry this stuff, and we have to get it thru the fence!”

We all agreed we had enough and we’d better terminate this little party, and with the light bulb still in view, we scuttled along the ground like three crabs until we had to stop and wait for the guard to come around before we could locate the swinging board and slip inside. It seemed forever before the guard appeared. He slowly strolled around the corner and made his way along the fence, walking just inside the ditch that ran parallel to the fence. When he disappeared around the corner to our left we waited two or three minutes, then hurried to fence, and while Dix held the board to one side, Parent and I scurried thru. As soon as Dix joined us, we spaced our entry into the barracks by a couple of minutes and joined up at our bunks. We had prepared for our return with our treasures the past few days. Moving Dickie’s bedding, we had loosened some of the boards and now merely had to remove three of the boards, drop the sacks into the cavity and put the boards back! We were finished very quickly and clambered into our bunks.

Dickie’s friend stopped by the next morning to see if things went well, and he beamed as Dickie reported our success. It was not the last time that I ventured out on a foray for vegetables! I was to go thru that swinging board on several sweeps through the farms looking for food, but my last trip was one that I wouldn’t forget! Our rations were slowly shrinking, probably the effect of the bombing had reduced the food output to the cities, together with the destruction of the enemy’s ability to distribute food and supplies. If the bombing had continued with the same intensity as before we left the city, conditions in the cities were increasingly impossible for the civilian populace remaining. The food distribution had been a critical problem even while we were still at the flour mill.

We learned the next day the Camp Commander, Lt. Hyashi had left the camp and a new Jap Officer would take his place. There was no information on the new officer, and no name. Dickie later told us he had talked to one of the British officers and was told nothing was known about the change.

One afternoon Elliot Parent and I were flopped on our bunks. We had been talking of home and family when he turned to me and dropped a bombshell on me.

“You know Al,” he said, “I’ve got a family to feed now!”

“You have what?” I asked, staring at him.

“Well, I think I have dysentery! I mean the real thing!” I could see that he was serious. I asked him if he’d seen the doctor.

He shook his head. “I don’t think there’s anything he can do.”

I told him to get his butt over to the doctor and describe the symptoms and see if the doc has some medicine. As it turned out, Parent did not have dysentery, but something that required medication, and fast! The doctor had him back on his feet a few days later, weak in the poop, but feeling much better.

Although our everyday life at this camp was not the rigorous existence that we suffered at Omori, the continual hunger touched all of us. More than a week had passed since any of the four of us had ventured forth from the camp for vegetables to supplement our daily rations. Elliot, Dickie, and I discussed the possibility for another search and confiscate sweep for vegetables. Dix told us he would check with the others, and if no other group was going forth tonight, the three of us would grab our sacks and head out tonight after bedcheck.

That evening Dickie gave us the word we would go. It was decided that he, Parent and I would go and his friend would stay behind and arrange our blankets with pillows to disguise our absence in case a guard passed through the barracks. We had become proficient in building up the covers in such a manner, and it was almost impossible to recognize these fake bodies!

We exited from the camp successfully, and moved away from the camp a short distance before our first incursion into one of the “farms”. Potatoes were becoming hard to locate, and it was some time before we struck pay dirt. The larger spuds were scarce, and we kept moving, digging, moving again. We had been scrounging around on our knees for almost two hours and our ‘take’ was hardly worth the effort. Finally Elliot Parent hit pay dirt! Several rows of the precious potatoes easily gave up enough for the three of us to fill our sacks to the maximum quantity that we permitted ourselves to take. We had long ago decided that one-quarter to one-third of a sack was sufficient. Carrying the sack for short distances was one thing, and squeezing the sack through the opening in the fence was another to be considered for a successful mission. If the sack was too full, forcing it through the fence quietly was sure to be a problem!

On this occasion, we were very tired. The three of us had worked all day, and we hadn’t had any sleep. We gathered our burlap sacks of potatoes and readied ourselves to return to the camp. The three of were stumbling along in the dark.

“I don’t remember coming this way, do you Alf?” Dickie said.

I had to admit that I really didn’t know which way we came. We stopped to get our bearings and as we stood there, all of us admitted that we were lost! From our position, we could not see a single light in any direction!

I mentioned that “surely a couple of old country boys could easily retrace our path to where we started. This brought no reply from the “two old country boys.” It did bring forth a loud snort from Dix.

“Hell, with no flashlight, no landmarks, no nothin’ I’m just as lost as you are, city boy.”

The three of us, together with our sacks, wandered for almost two hours looking for the camp.

“I never thought I would want to get back into a prison camp,” Elliot Parent mumbled, as he plodded along.

“Me too,” I groaned. The sack now seemed to weigh a hundred pounds, and I could hardly drag my feet. We became aware that we were now faced with a very big problem. It was starting to get light in the east! We had to find the camp quickly or the morning was going to catch us outside!

I am sure that we all uttered silent prayers as we continued to move along, perhaps in the wrong direction!

“Look over there!” Dix said, and in the distance a bare light bulb could be seen!

We could only hope that it was the beacon we were seeking. It was! We hurried as fast as we could drag our feet and were soon near the lumber fence of the compound! Now we had to wait, and hope the guard rotation around the fence was the same! We wouldn’t know for sure until we were safely back in our bunks! After the guard made his pass, we scurried thru the fence.

“If we make it this time,” Elliot whispered, “it’ll be the last time!”

Dickie and I concurred with that statement 100% and that was for sure! We did make it to our bunks, quickly depositing the three sacks under Dix’s bunk, and climbing into our beds just in time to get up for a new day! The three of us were very happy to be safely back even though we did lose a nights sleep! That was my last trip out of the camp for food! We certainly enjoyed baking the potatoes under the rice pots for the next few days. Not only were these spuds especially tasty, but they also filled the emptyness in our stomachs!

Little did I dream that fifty years later I would again walk on this same ground together with my wife and daughter, and some of the Japanese people that shared this experience with me, and would meet one of the Japanese farmers I had stolen the potatoes from!

My wife and I were invited to visit the old campsite and share in the 50th Anniversary Celebration, and the Japanese offered to pay our expenses. Although health problems were plaguing me at the time I decided to make the trip. My daughter agreed to aid my wife in getting me over there.

The highlight of our visit to Suwa was meeting Mr. Ozawa, the 92 year old gentleman I'd stolen the potatoes from! I asked him through my translator if he told the Camp Commander that the POW’s were stealing his potatoes and he shook his head and told my translator he would not tell the Japanese Lieutenant for fear the guards would harm the POW’s! I was astounded. I enjoyed talking again with the old man during our lengthy meeting with the villagers at a later time.

The days at this camp near Suwa were monotonous, and they seem to drag by, but at least no one was getting beat to death, or tortured. We worked at the smelter part of the time, that is when they had ore from the mines. Some days we just laid around the camp. It seemed, after all of the hell that most of us had suffered, almost a vacation! Lying around, I could not help but wonder how my friend Spence was making out. Was he still in the Philippines, or somewhere in Japan? I thought of James Mac K Sloan, and of Freddie Harris. Were they ok? Had the bombing struck Omori?

Then on a bright day in August, a plane flew over our camp so low, that our barracks shook from the vibration. We all ran out into the open area between the barracks just as another plane roared over, then another and another. The pilots of the beautiful blue airplanes waggled their wings, then all of them circled about and flew over again! A large star was painted on the sides, and under the wings of these planes, and there was no doubt that they were Americans!

CHAPTER 28

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