No Return Address: An American POW's Experience in the Philippines and Japan, 1941-1945

Soine Torma, like many soldiers, had his photograph taken while in Basic Training. This photo most likely dates from Fall 1941, and was sent to family members and his fiancee.

Personal accounts by and about American prisoners of war during the Second World War have been multiplying in recent years, spurred in part by the gradual passing of the "Greatest Generation." They embrace many common themes of fear, hardship, sacrifice, violence, and frequently heroism. The account that follows tells the story of Soine Armas Torma of Republic, Michigan, a Finnish-American who shipped out to the Philippines in October 1941 and returned home four years later in the fall of 1945.[1] He spent most of the intervening period—some forty months in all—in Japanese captivity, first on Corregidor, then on Luzon, and finally on Honshu. When placed in the wider historical context of the Pacific War and of American prisoners of war of the Japanese, Soine's unique experience provides insight into the larger issues of why he and his comrades endured what they did, and how he managed to survive a captivity that claimed the lives of over ten thousand of his fellow Americans.

In his classic study of combat, John Keegan wrote that the individual soldier experiences battle "in a wildly unstable physical and emotional environment."[2] The same, of course, could be said of the aftermath of battle, in this case a particularly brutal captivity. Human beings are complicated creatures, with emotional, physical, and mental strengths and weaknesses that defy easy generalization. As E. Bartlett Kerr notes:

Just as one individual's experience of war can never speak for all, there cannot ever be a typical POW experience. Each account adds its splash of pigment to the picture. Such stories thus hold increasing value as the events themselves fade further into the past, and as the individuals who experienced them pass away.

In January 1941, Soine Torma turned twenty-nine years old. With the scarcity of jobs in his rural hometown during the Great Depression, he had come to Detroit in 1934 and taken a job as a postal worker. There, he became engaged to Sylvia Wargelin, whose family also had ties to Michigan's Upper Peninsula. The couple's plans for a life together were rudely interrupted when Soine received his "Greetings" from the President. He reported to Detroit's Fort Street Induction Center on April 28, 1941, and his odyssey began that same evening as he boarded a train for Camp Grant in Illinois. Like so many others of their generation, Soine and Sylvia saw the course of their lives transformed by events in distant Europe and Asia.

The first peacetime draft in American history came in direct response to the violent events unfolding in other parts of the world. Nazi Germany had thrown off the restrictions of the Versailles Treaty and embarked upon a campaign of conquest unprecedented in its scope and brutality. Japan's military leaders had launched an equally rapacious war of conquest in China in 1937 and by 1940 were drawing up plans to bring all of East Asia under Japanese hegemony. By 1941, these designs assumed greater urgency in the face of a tightening American embargo of oil, steel, and other vital exports to resource-poor Japan in response to continuing Japanese aggression in China and French Indochina. The Japanese military began finalizing plans for an attack on Pearl Harbor and a swift conquest of American, British, and Dutch possessions in the western Pacific.[4]

An ocean away at Camp Grant, Soine found basic training tedious and demeaning. On May 14 he wrote his fiancée: "All this routine seems to me to be designed to forget all the things one does in civilian life."[5] Army bureaucracy touched Soine painfully when, having received the required battery of immunization shots at Camp Grant, he and his company had to repeat the whole process when transferred in June to Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri, because the records had not arrived with the draftees. Training in heavy winter uniforms under the sweltering Missouri sun rapidly worked the men into shape. In the last week of June 1941, Soine's fiancée drove out to visit him at Fort Leonard Wood. They would not see each other again until October 1945. In July, Soine was transferred to Westover Field in Chicopee Falls, Massachusetts, to be assigned to Company A of the 803rd Army Air Force Engineer Battalion. Apparently, Soine had listed sketching as one of his hobbies on a questionnaire and had been classified as an interior decorator. His frustration with military bureaucracy did not end there. In September, after his unit had been transferred to Angel Island in San Francisco in preparation for deployment overseas, he complained in a letter to Sylvia: "The NCO school I told you about is out. It's useless anyway because ratings and stripes are handed out like political pork pie. Of the fifteen men who came with me from Fort Leonard Wood all have been given ratings but me and two others. I am thoroughly humiliated because I am the only one with anything better than a high school education. . . . It is all so demoralizing and confusing."[6]

A more serious frustration involved the rumored imminent discharge of all men older than twenty-eight who had been conscripted into the army. This was a matter of some urgency for Soine, since his unit was scheduled to ship out momentarily. On September 17, he wrote Sylvia: "It seems we are being sent to the Philippines. . . . I hated to begin this letter for it is so dampening, but that is all there is to say and it was necessary to tell you of the move."[7] The confusion over the possible release of older men exasperated Soine, who confided his disillusionment on the eve of his departure from San Francisco in a letter to his brother Eddie, a Detroit policeman:

Rumors of discharge did not prevent Soine from sailing with the rest of his unit. After brief stopovers in Oahu and Guam, with shore leave on Guam, the recruits arrived at Manila late in October 1941.

Soine demonstrated a detached interest in his new, rather exotic surroundings. He described the sea journey from San Francisco as largely "uneventful," although clearly on a war footing. "From Honolulu we traveled in convoy and the nights were total blackouts. This necessitated closing the portholes and the resulting heat was terrific." At Fort Stotsenburg, adjacent to Clark Field on Luzon, his unit lived in tents while native labor completed permanent barracks. Soine noted the extensive use of English-speaking Filipino labor at the base and also the presence of locals selling souvenirs and produce. He discovered coconuts, whose white "meat" he described as "about as firm as a turnip." The facilities as Fort Stotsenburg included "a store, bank, two churches, a club house, bowling alleys, golf course, riding club, several theaters plus the native bazaars and tailor shops."[9] Soine would have scant opportunity to enjoy these in the months ahead.

Unbeknownst to Soine and to all but a handful of top commanders in East Asia, the American position in the Philippines was exceedingly vulnerable to Japanese attack. Japan had signed the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy in September 1940, and a neutrality pact with the Soviet Union had followed in April 1941, which secured the Japanese northern flank in preparation for expansion to the south. Having already occupied the northern part of French Indochina in autumn 1940, the Japanese in July 1941 established naval and air bases in southern Indochina as well, further isolating the Philippines from the British naval and air bases in Malaysia. The United States responded to these moves by tightening the existing embargo on war materials to Japan and by making a belated effort to reinforce the Philippines and other likely targets of Japanese expansion in the Pacific. On July 26, 1941, Lieutenant General Douglas MacArthur, the former Military Advisor to the Philippine Commonwealth, was recalled to active duty as the commander of all American army forces in the Far East. Advocating a strong defense of the Philippines, MacArthur petitioned Washington repeatedly for substantial reinforcements of men and material, as well as the authority to organize Filipino soldiers into more effective combat units. As a result, the total American troops in the Philippines increased from 9,161 on July 31 to 16,643 on November 30, with the number of Army Air Force personnel more than doubling. Soine's unit formed a part of this last-minute reinforcement effort.[10]

The basic American prewar plan for the defense of the Philippines, called War Plan Orange—prewar plans invariably received such color coding—had undergone repeated revision since its formulation in 1938. By 1941, War Plan Orange-3 included amazingly prescient predictions of Japanese moves, including a surprise attack coinciding with or even preceding a declaration of war. This would most likely take place in December or January, with Luzon the primary objective of powerful Japanese ground invasion forces supported by air and naval units. In response, the plan called for American units to focus on the defense of the installations and fortifications ringing Manila Bay, first through active efforts to repulse Japanese landings and, failing this, in a last-ditch defense of the rugged Bataan Peninsula, considered the key to control of the bay. Meanwhile, the American Pacific Fleet would fight its way across the central Pacific to the relief of the beleaguered garrison, presumably within six months of the commencement of hostilities. In October, General MacArthur received a new plan developed with the global nature of the crisis in mind, called Rainbow-5. Even more than the previous plan, this one emphasized the primacy of the European theater and accepted the likely loss of the Philippines, Guam, and Wake Island to initial Japanese aggressive thrusts. The Philippines garrison could expect no reinforcements once war had broken out.

Although General MacArthur successfully lobbied Washington for immediate reinforcements and even wrung approval of a more ambitious long-term plan to strengthen defenses in the Philippines and defeat the Japanese on the beaches, this came too late to alter the basic realities reflected in existing plans. In fact, the supposed relief of the Philippines garrison by an island-hopping American counteroffensive was only so much fiction in 1941, with no existing plans to concentrate reinforcements on Oahu or the West Coast for such a move. Naval experts estimated that it would take more than two years for such a counteroffensive to reach the islands. The most optimistic predictions suggested that, without re-supply and reinforcement, American defenses in the Manila Bay area would crumble within six months of a major assault. Soine's 803rd Engineer Battalion worked to expand the Clark Field facilities for the new squadrons of aircraft arriving throughout the fall, but those could not hope to match the more modern and much more numerous Japanese aircraft based on Formosa. The American and Filipino defenders were outnum bered and outgunned.

Japanese plans focused on a lightning conquest of British colonies in southeast Asia and the Dutch in the Dutch East Indies, with the neutralization of the American Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor as the necessary prequel. The American bases on Guam, Wake, and the Philippines would also be taken to prevent any effective intervention by remaining American forces in the Pacific. Japanese forces would incorporate conquered territory into the "Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere," forming a fortified belt rich in war material within which Japan could securely pursue the war in China to victory and, presumably, defend against any American counterstrokes. Specific plans for the seizure of the Philippines, finalized in the fall of 1941, called for massive air attacks to eliminate American air forces in the islands, followed by amphibious landings at several sites on Luzon by elements of the 14th Army well supported by naval and air units. The invasion forces would secure Manila and the fortifications around the bay within fifty days of the initial assault. Against such a carefully planned and powerful invasion force, the American defenders—even with the recently arrived reinforcements—stood little chance of ultimate success. Soine and the other Americans in the Philippines were on their own.

In the final weeks of peace, Soine focused more on his possible discharge than any questions of grand strategy. He had written to his brother from Guam while en route to the Philippines: "No other outfit (aboard) except ours has men over 28 years. . . . It seems the higher-ups didn't know of the older selectees aboard. . . . Someone working in the wireless room told us that our captain has been put on the carpet by wire because he assumed the entire responsibility and had us shipped out!"[11] Soine wrote to his father at the same time: "I don't know how true it is but we may (those of us over 28) be sent back from Manila. I won't believe that until they put us back on the boat though. . . . I will do what I can when we reach Manila but it would help to have someone agitating back home. They pay more attention to such letters."[12] On October 26, he wrote Sylvia: "We have heard nothing official about discharges though by the time you get this something 'may have turned up.' What a multitude of human errors this statement covers! At any rate we will be here for Thanksgiving."[13] It seemed the prayers of the young couple had been answered when Soine wrote his fiancée again on November 1: "We are moving so this is short. We got our order to be discharged yesterday so again we move back. This is the only chance to write and get it off on the clipper. Hope to be on the boat in a few days. No return address."[14] A few Christmas postcards sent before Thanksgiving and received in January 1942 showed that Soine was still on Luzon later in November.

On December 8, 1941, Soine watched with hundreds of other stunned Americans as Japanese bombers from Formosa wrecked the airfield that he and his company of the 803rd had been improving since their arrival. That same day—December 7 in the United States—a worried Sylvia Wargelin called Soine's brother in Detroit to learn something of Soine's whereabouts. Eddie knew only that his brother still remained in the Philippines. A relentless series of circumstances had conspired to keep Soine in East Asia. With the Japanese attack, the "few days" he expected to wait for his return to his loved ones turned overnight into a nearly four-year-long ordeal of battle, defeat, and captivity.

The Japanese air attacks involved some five hundred aircraft, and those quickly established complete control of the sky above Luzon. The first Japanese troops soon followed, with advance forces landing as early as December 10, and the main invasion forces ashore on December 22-24, at Lingayen Gulf and Lamon Bay. The Japanese shattered MacArthur's hopes of defeating the invaders on the beaches as American and Filipino troops retreated at every point of contact. On December 23, MacArthur reverted to the original Orange and Rainbow plans, thus frustrating Japanese efforts to trap the defenders outside Manila, and withdrew the bulk of his troops into the rugged, jungle-covered Bataan Peninsula by early January. Soine's unit joined in this retreat, and the Japanese entered the burning Filipino capital on January 2, 1942.

On Bataan, Soine's unit repaired bridges and roads from recurring bomb damage. Working mostly at night, the men were nevertheless harassed by enemy fire. They took turns shooting randomly into the treetops to stem this sniping. Sometime in March, Soine's company was transferred from Bataan to the island of Corregidor, where it labored to repair the network of roads connecting the "Rock's" numerous batteries with tunnel storehouses as well as to repair and extend the airfield in anticipation of American aircraft reinforcements. As Japanese air raids on the harbor defenses increased, such "topside" work became more hazardous. Whenever the bombs started falling, the repair crews would dive into the nearest ditch, and on one such occasion Soine cut open his leg on a rock. In the humid climate of the Philippines, the wound developed jungle rot and sent Soine to the orthopedic clinic of the hospital in Malinta Tunnel.[15]

He was still confined there on May 6, 1942, when General Jonathan Wainwright surrendered Corregidor and the remaining defenses in the Philippines to the Japanese. After blunting the first wave of attacks by General Masaharu Homma's 14th Army in January and February, Bataan's defenders could only wait passively as the Japanese reinforced and re-supplied their forces for the final push. The Japanese offensive resumed late in March and quickly routed the starving American and Filipino troops, who had been on half rations since January 5. On April 9, 1942, General Edward King surrendered the 78,000 surviving troops on Bataan. Continued resistance was left in the hands of Wainwright—MacArthur had been recalled to Australia on March 10—and the 14,000 or so Americans and Filipinos on Corregidor and the smaller fortress islands in Manila Bay. A month of determined but futile resistance followed, but Japanese landings on Corregidor on the night of May 5 forced Wainwright's hand. Knowing that no succor was coming and reluctant to subject his battered command to the horrors of continued resistance among the hundreds of wounded men clogging Malinta Tunnel, he submitted to the inevitable.[16]

When news of the surrender broke, the Japanese ordered everyone who could walk to come out of Malinta Tunnel. Soine, on crutches, hobbled out and joined those lined up before their captors. Soine later testified in his official postwar "Statement . . . with respect to his claim arising out of his mistreatment while a prisoner of war of the Imperial Japanese Government" that for three days after the surrender he labored for the Japanese carrying food into Malinta Tunnel, although the prisoners received none until May 9. Five days later, his captors moved Soine and the other patients to a barbed wire compound at South Mine Dock to await transport to Manila. The one small building on the site could provide shelter only for the litter patients, and the Japanese continued to bring prisoners into the already overcrowded compound until it contained about five thousand men. Soine wrote: "No shelter was provided against the overnight rains. There was no drinking water. We were forced to dig latrine pits and soon the whole area was covered with them. . . . One water spigot was provided eventually for the entire group and in order to get a drink we had to stand in line until 11 o'clock at night."[17] Soine remained in this improvised camp until June 10, at which time the prisoners were presumably distributed among smaller camps. On July 1, 1942, Soine and approximately 150 others were chosen to remain on Corregidor, and they moved into a bombed-out garage near Middleside Barracks.[18]

Bad as Soine's first taste of life as a prisoner of war was, several more or less chance occurrences had combined to make his situation better than that of most prisoners in the Philippines. First, the transfer of Soine's repair detail to Corregidor in March prevented his being shifted along with the rest of the 803rd Engineers to a combat role in the last desperate defense of Bataan. It probably also saved him from the brutal experience of the "Bataan Death March," in which the thousands of sick and starving Americans and Filipinos taken prisoner on the peninsula were herded north on foot—with Japanese "cleanup squads" bayoneting any laggards—to a temporary POW pen at Camp O'Donnell.[19] Soine's leg wound likewise kept him out of the heavy fighting around Corregidor's airfield that engulfed other members of his company shortly after the Japanese landings. It also put seventy feet of rock between him and the crescendo of Japanese bombing and shelling wreaking havoc topside. General Wainwright's prompt decision to surrender after the successful landing of Japanese troops on the island forestalled a pitched battle in Malinta Tunnel that might have enveloped the underground hospital where Soine lay. Finally, Soine's selection to remain on Corregidor spared him transfer to one of the prison camps north of Manila, where men were dying by the thousands from disease, malnutrition, and mistreatment.[20] The bad luck that had kept Soine on Luzon in the last months of 1941 had finally turned in his favor.

Life as a prisoner of war on Corregidor proved very difficult, but the few hundred men selected to remain there enjoyed certain advantages over their comrades at the overcrowded, disease-ridden mainland camps of Cabanatuan or O'Donnell. The overriding demands of the Japanese military timetable that contributed to the brutality of the Death March did not apply on conquered Corregidor. A better diet and overall treatment resulted. With no more enemies to speak of in the Philippines after the fall of the ," the Japanese seemed mostly concerned with cleaning up Corregidor for visiting dignitaries. One English-speaking officer even informed the prisoners that the fortress island would be converted into a park for Japanese tourists.[21]

Soine's work detail ate salmon and rice three times daily while removing and transporting to Malinta Tunnel 240-millimeter artillery duds weighing five hundred pounds each, seven days a week, ten hours a day.[22] The Japanese also organized fishing expeditions in the bay, during which the selected prisoners would dive for fish stunned by the explosion of homemade depth charges fashioned from tomato cans. Sharks often made this duty hazardous, and dives off Cavalry and Infantry Points—site of the Japanese landings in May—revealed another horror. Soine recalled: "It was on this beach the first Jap assaults had been mowed down by our defensive fire. The bottom was white with the skeletons of those 'human bullets'of the Emperor's troops. The Jap in charge had no qualms about taking fish from this watery burial ground. It was gruesome but we fished where and when we were told." On Sundays, these expeditions went after a Japanese delicacy, baby octopus. Wading among the rocks, the prisoners would pull the creatures up by their tentacles, although misjudging the size of one of the creatures could result in drowning if the octopus were big enough to hold the diver underwater. Soine recounted how one diver had to bite a large octopus on its nerve center when it pinned his arms to his side and held him under the surface.[23]

Other aspects of imprisonment held less entertainment value. Soine described how the prisoners had only a fly-covered latrine pit for a toilet, and how they had to fashion eating utensils from pieces of tin. As the prisoners' uniforms rotted away, the Japanese did not issue replacement clothing, reducing the Americans to wearing g-strings. Soine recounted after the war:

In such circumstances, Soine's leg wound slowly healed and he applied himself to his new life as a prisoner.

A few amenities relieved the laborious tedium of the work routine. While clearing debris after the surrender, some prisoners had discovered several working radios in the rubble. Burying one of these—a Hallicrafter—in a corner of the tunnel where the men lived, they ran a wire lead to the electrical outlet in the kitchen. Every evening a man would plug in the lead, and listeners would gather around the tunnel hiding place to catch the latest news from the outside world. As Soine recalled after the war, followed the war as it developed in the Aleutians, the Solomons, North Africa, and Sicily." Apparently the Japanese never learned of this; while in Bilibid Prison in Manila en route to Japan in August 1944, Soine heard from other prisoners that the Corregidor radio was still functioning well.[25]

Another interesting incident involved a prisoner named Morrison Wood, who wrote a novel that arrived in the United States aboard a transport from Corregidor, and which was published posthumously—Wood died in captivity—as The Devil is a Lonely Man. After the war, Soine wrote a letter published in the New York Times that described how "he and another man named Cox found a manuscript entitled 'Lean, Bitter, and Narrow' by Wood, read it surreptitiously along with seventeen other men under the eyes of their Jap guards, and buried it [in September 1942] before they were transported to the mainland."[26] Wood's parents visited Soine and Sylvia after the war and a search was conducted, but the manuscript was never recovered. The prisoners also obtained access to the remains of the library, and Soine read several encyclopedias.[27]

When Soine developed a painful fungus growth in his ear, he was taken off fishing detail and put on kitchen duty. That vital task required absolute even-handedness under the watchful eyes of the hungry prisoners. He must have divided up the staple rice fairly—especially the crusted rice on the kettle bottom savored by the men—since he was elected cook when he was transferred to Clark Field in 1943. From Corregidor, Soine was permitted to mail three form cards. Two—to his father and sister—arrived only after the war ended. His father received the third on August 23, 1943. Soine's health was checked as "good," and in one of the abbreviated spaces for personal messages he enjoined his father to "notify all friends."[28] This was the first that anyone back home had heard from Soine in the nineteen months since Christmas cards mailed in November had arrived on January 7, 1942. The War Department had initially replied to inquiries by Soine's family that all persons known to be serving in the Philippines as of May 7, 1942, would be considered "missing in action" until definite information could be obtained.[29] Only in June 1943 had the International Red Cross learned that Soine was a prisoner of war.[30] Soine's card to his father confirmed that fact. At least his family and fiancée now knew that he had survived the battles for the Philippines.

The most encouraging development in that first year of captivity was the arrival around Christmas of the POWs' first Red Cross parcels. These precious eleven-pound packages—compliments of the American, British, Canadian, and South African Red Cross societies—had traveled a roundabout route to the Philippines. Loaded aboard the U.S.-chartered Swedish liner Gripsholm along with several hundred Japanese civilians and diplomatic personnel, they were transferred to a Japanese ship in July 1942, at the neutral port of Lourenco Marques in Portuguese Mozambique. The Gripsholm in turn took on some thirteen hundred American civilian and diplomatic internees from the Japanese ship. Thus, the exchange of interned diplomatic personnel between Japan and the United States resulted in the first successful dispatch of Red Cross relief to the POWs. Shortly thereafter, a second exchange of British and Japanese civilians and diplomats in the same port sent off more British, Australian, and Indian Red Cross parcels into the Japanese Empire. In marked contrast to American and British prisoners held in Germany, who could count on a Red Cross package nearly every week, those held by the Japanese received an average total of three during the entire duration of their captivity. For many, these represented the difference between life and death.[31]

The treatment Soine and other American and Allied prisoners of war received at the hands of the Japanese depended on a variety of circumstances—the attitude of the commanders and troops into whose hands the prisoners fell, the relative military situation at the time of their surrender, and the availability and relative state of preparation of prison camp facilities in the area. Soon after Pearl Harbor, the Swiss government assumed responsibility as the "protective power" for United States interests and prisoners of war in areas under Japanese occupation. Through this intermediary, the United States government asked the Japanese government whether it intended to abide by the Geneva Convention of 1929 regarding treatment of prisoners of war. After due deliberation, the Japanese informed the Swiss in early February 1942 that Japan would observe the Geneva Convention, although it had not ratified the treaty. However, the Japanese would apply the provisions of the Convention mutatis mutandis—"with changes applied"—so as to conform to the existing Japanese regulations for treatment of prisoners of war set down in 1904 during the Russo-Japanese War. These provided for generally humane treatment approximating those set forth by the Geneva Convention, giving at least some hope that the Americans would be fairly treated. Later in February, these assurances were modified to the effect that Japan would "apply on condition of reciprocity the Geneva Convention for treatment of prisoners of war and civilian internees insofar as the Convention's regulations shall be applicable." Given the prevalent racist attitudes on both sides—news of the interning of Japanese-Americans on the West Coast greatly angered Japanese officials—and the general Japanese cultural disdain for prisoners of war, this meant that the Japanese would apply Geneva Convention standards when and where it suited them.[32]

In practice, the peculiarities of individual situations, as well as the exceptionally large numbers of prisoners taken in places like the Philippines, prevented any standardization of treatment according to these or any other regulations. After the Bataan surrender, for example, the Japanese suddenly found themselves with over seventy-five thousand American and Filipino prisoners. At the same time, they were attempting to maintain the tightest possible pressure on the enemy forces still holding out on Corregidor and the other fortress islets in Manila Bay. The shortages of motorized transport resulting from the precedence assigned to the 14th Army's own transportation requirements in the continuing offensive, coupled with the pressing need to clear out what was to the Japanese still a battle zone, guided General Homma in his infamous decision to march the prisoners—immediately and on foot—to camps in the north. Indeed, the 1904 regulations assigned the major share of initial responsibility for captives to the commanders on the scene. The Japanese War Ministry, however, dawdled in making arrangements for locating prisoners in permanent camps. Thus, over sixty thousand prisoners were herded into the temporary camp at O'Donnell, which had been set up for a maximum of half that number. Eventually, this camp proved so unsanitary that the Japanese closed it down and sent its remaining prisoners to the other permanent camps slowly being established throughout the Philippines and the rest of the Japanese Empire. Nevertheless, by the end of 1942 nearly five thousand of the twenty-five thousand Americans taken prisoner since the outbreak of hostilities had died in captivity. Malaria, dysentery, and later beriberi, pellagra, and scurvy—vitamin deficiency diseases—were the major killers.[33]

As Soine's experience demonstrated, the Japanese were determined to employ the prisoners in aiding the Japanese war effort. This became official policy later in 1942, when the Japanese extended the doctrine of work for food that applied to their own population to prisoners of war as well.[34] The degree to which the mutatis mutandis provision separated Japanese POW policy from that of the Geneva Convention was clearly reflected in this decree. Usually poorly fed and housed, beaten or even summarily executed for the slightest infraction of rules they often did not clearly understand, the American captives were perceived and treated as little more than slaves serving their Imperial Japanese masters. Shortages of provisions, operational confusion, and wartime frugality all contributed to the harsh treatment of Allied prisoners, but these justifications should not obscure the fact that the Japanese simply did not consider the captives worthy of even basic attention. That over 40 percent of American POWs in the hands of the Japanese ultimately died in captivity indicates more than incidental wastage. It reflects a calculated brutality quite on a par with the Nazi regime's relegation to slave labor of those it considered racial inferiors.[35]

On July 1, 1943, after a year of imprisonment on Corregidor, Soine was transferred to Clark Field on the Luzon mainland.[36] The relatively decent treatment he had received on the fortress island contrasted sharply with the forced labor conditions on the mainland. Soine was one of nearly three thousand POWs assigned to work at Japanese airfields in 1943 in accordance with the War Ministry's directive for total support of the Japanese war effort.[37] Conditions at Clark Field, now the main Japanese air base in the Philippines, were not as bad as at some other labor camps, but the work was difficult and brutality more common. Mainland prisoners who had been stationed at Clark Field for some time told the new arrivals that at first they thought the Corregidor men were newly captured, since they looked so much better fed.[38]

Indeed, compared to Corregidor, food was scarce and of poor quality. Occasional fish—often already decomposing from the hot cart ride back to camp from Manila Bay—or captured snakes added some variety to the staple diet of weevil-infested rice. Once, even an old buffalo was butchered. In an unsuccessful effort to make its blood palatable, the prisoners tried cooking it with part of their Red Cross chocolate. Throughout the Philippines, the authorized daily ration of staples and any available supplements for POWs performing hard labor was approximately 790 grams, or less than half the peacetime ration of the American soldier.[39] In practice, as often happened at Clark, the amount of food actually issued fell far short of even this meager allowance. Reminiscences about home cooking and favorite restaurants dominated the prisoners' conversations throughout their captivity, and Soine lost his job as cook amid the endless bickering over distribution of the available food.

A few developments made this new life tolerable for Soine. First, the Japanese issued the prisoners their first new clothes in a year and a half, and even provided a bamboo toothbrush every other month. Another shipment of Red Cross packages was distributed in December 1943. In accordance with new directives from Tokyo, they also began paying the prisoners for their labor. Soine saved up his ten cents a month so that he could occasionally purchase Japanese tobacco. He was allowed to send two more form cards from Clark to follow the three sent from Corregidor, and those arrived a year and a half after they were written. He also received a number of letters, including one containing a photograph of his family taken in Republic, Michigan, in the summer of 1943. On the back of this, Soine later wrote: "Sent by brother Eddie and received by me at Clark Field P.I., May 1944—Japs allowed me to keep this till the end."[40]

As part of their total mobilization effort, the Japanese had begun shipping prisoners of war from various parts of their empire to Japan to work in factories and mines as early as 1942. By 1944, with the Allied counteroffensive leapfrogging to within striking distance of the Philippines, these transfers assumed new urgency. Besides the POWs' value as forced labor, the Japanese feared the blow to their prestige that would accompany any recapture of Allied prisoners. Thus, in the summer and fall of 1944, thousands of American POWs found themselves loaded into the holds of Japanese freighters for the trip north to the Japanese home islands.

Soine began the move to his third home in two years in August 1944. After a brief stay in Bilibid Prison in Manila, he and 1,034 other Americans were loaded into the forward hold of the freighter Noto Maru on August 30. This hold, Soine later recounted, measured approximately ninety by seventy-two square feet. Ordered to sit after entering the hold in files, each prisoner had to sit in the crotch of the man behind for lack of space, and they remained in this uncomfortable position for seven days until arriving at Moji, Japan, on September 5. One bucket was passed up and down the lines of men to serve as a toilet, and one cup of water was allotted each man per day. The first night at sea, Soine passed out from the heat in the hold, and when the prisoners yelled out in hysteria they were quieted with the threat of machine guns. When they arrived at Moji, they were so weak that disembarking had to be done in stages. Their swollen legs made them stagger like drunken men for days thereafter, much to the amusement of the Japanese women working on the docks.[41]

Bad as this experience was, for those who sailed on later "hellships" the situation proved even more dangerous. Preparatory to MacArthur's long-awaited return to the Philippines, packs of American submarines, augmented later by aircraft from American carriers, concentrated on blocking the flow of Japanese men and supplies to and from the islands. Tragically, their victims included several shiploads of POWs. In all, some 3,800 prisoners died en route to Japan, either of mistreatment like that experienced by Soine or when American bombs or torpedoes sank their prison ships. Soine's good friend, Bill Kenel, a fellow Michigander who had shared imprisonment with Soine on Corregidor and at Clark Field, went down with the Arisan Maru when it was torpedoed by the USS Snook on October 24, 1944.[42]

From Moji, Soine was transferred by ferry and rail to a camp outside Toyama, a factory town on Honshu—the largest Japanese home island—beside the Sea of Japan. Soine's group arrived on September 8, 1944. There the Americans, together with "Limeys" and "Aussies" transported from Singapore, worked the blast furnaces of the Toyama steel mill. The strange accents and stiff upper lip humor of the British and Australian prisoners intrigued Soine. Unfortunately, he had caught a chill during the train ride, probably from sleeping uncovered on cold concrete station platforms dressed in his remaining rags of clothing. In October 1944, after working ten-hour shifts in the intense heat of the steel mill, he collapsed and had to be carried back to camp, where he lay unconscious for three days.[43]

At this point, fate again intervened to save Soine. His chill had developed into pneumonia, a potentially deadly malady given the lack of proper medical facilities and supplies. However, Captain Max M. Bernstein, a doctor from Chicago, gave Soine the last two sulfa tablets that he had hidden in his belt. All of the prisoners who later contracted pneumonia at the camp died for lack of effective treatment. Another prisoner, a young man who Soine only remembered as "Porchy," spoon-fed Soine in his bunk until his desire to eat and to live—Soine's spirits were at their lowest ebb by this point—had returned. The Japanese, convinced that the congestion in Soine's lungs indicated tuberculosis, isolated him in a separate room where his only contact with others for ten weeks came when a fellow POW pushed his meals through a window.[44]

In a rare display of humaneness, the Japanese commandant did not send the weakened prisoner back to the steel mill after he recovered from his illness. Instead, Soine was assigned to care for a sow and her piglets, feeding them scraps of garbage from the Japanese officers' mess. The female Japanese cooks at this mess gradually became friendly to Soine. The hair on his arms fascinated them, and they giggled as he tried to explain that he had a fiancée back in the United States. Such rapprochement paid off when the women took to secreting a small ball of rice—the only rice made available to prisoners at Toyama—among the garbage for him to eat. This helped augment his increasingly meager camp rations, which consisted of weak barley soup with a little kelp and a rare fish.[45] The pigs received minimal rations as well, since even scraps such as potato peelings from the mess hall went into the prisoners' soup. Despite the cold winter, with snow sometimes three feet deep, the prisoners had only cotton uniforms and one cotton blanket apiece, with sandals for footgear. In the prisoners' barracks, heat came from a box stove lit only in the evening and then allowed to burn out. Miraculously, no one contracted frostbite. Apparently, the Japanese suffered from similar if not quite so pressing shortages, as it was from their captors that the prisoners learned to wrap any available scraps of cloth around their middles to protect their kidneys from the cold.[46]

The harsh winter of 1944-45 did claim at least one victim in camp, the sow and piglets. After a lengthy but apparently inconclusive investigation, in the course of which Soine was accused of appropriating for his own use the garbage intended for the pigs, he was reassigned to bathtub duty. Here, Soine had to fill the communal tub with water and tend the fire that heated it. Bathing followed a strict hierarchy, with the Japanese officers bathing first, followed by the enlisted men, until finally even the POWs got their turn. Still considered a potential TB carrier, Soine had to go last of all, but he remembered his dips in the dirty, lukewarm water as a blissful experience in that cold winter. Through barter, he also managed to acquire a handful of beans. However, a keen-nosed Japanese guard discovered him as he cooked his prize secretly at night. Soine was interrogated by an officer demanding his source, and slapped hard on both cheeks and made to stand at attention for the rest of the night when he refused to divulge this information.[47]

At Christmas, Soine was permitted to send two more form cards to his fiancée, both of which reached their destination in 1946. The first of these read: "I am constantly thinking of you and my friends and hoping I can see all of you soon. I have many plans for the future of course and only await the occasion when we can talk them over. Be of good cheer."[48] In addition, Soine was one of those chosen to send a Christmas message via the "Mailman" at Radio Tokyo. Three listeners, located in San Diego, Hollywood, and the Philippines—MacArthur had landed on Leyte in October—relayed variations of this message to Soine's brother in Detroit. While each was different, they undoubtedly referred to the same message, sent on December 16, which thanked Sylvia for her letters and for her new address and conveyed Soine's Christmas wishes to his family.[49]

As winter passed into spring, hopeful signs of impending Japanese collapse began to appear. American B-29s, flying from bases in China and in the Marianas Islands, bombed the Toyama steel mill, while others passed overhead toward Tokyo. Although the POW camp, located some distance from the steel mill, bore no distinguishing markings, it remained untouched by the bombs. Soine thus escaped the fate of hundreds of his fellow prisoners, killed by American bombs in the Japanese cities in which they worked.[50]

 
On August 20, 1945, for the first time in over three years, Soine and his fellow prisoners awoke to find themselves unguarded.[51] As the prisoners wandered around the camp, amazed at their unexpected freedom, the camp commandant arrived and informed them that Japan had capitulated. He instructed them to paint a large Red Cross marking on the roof of the barracks. A few days later, some American planes buzzed the camp and parachuted 55-gallon steel drums packed with foodstuffs and other supplies into the camp. The supplies of coffee, which most of the prisoners had not tasted in years, were especially welcome. The half-starved men brewed up huge tubs of java, which quickly sent their emaciated systems into caffeine highs. Despite widespread—and understandable—overindulgence, no one apparently suffered more than gratifying stomach-aches from this drastic change in diet. Often the prisoners found notes attached to the packages with the names and addresses of the relief pilots. As they read one such calling card from a Texas pilot who buzzed the cheering camp several times after his drop, the men watched in horror as their benefactor collided with electrical wires and crashed in flames.[52] His was one of eight planes lost, with seventy-seven casualties, in the massive relief effort, which ultimately employed over nine hundred planes and their crews.[53]

On September 11, 1945, a plane dropped instructions for the men to board a train at the Toyama depot bound for Atsugi Airport in Nagoya, near Tokyo. Arriving the next day, Soine and the others were transferred to the hospital ship USS Rescue in the harbor, then to the USS Oconto, which docked at Manila on September 18. While waiting for transport home, Soine managed to hitch a boat ride to Corregidor, where his odyssey had begun forty months earlier. He searched for the hidden radio and for the Morrison Wood manuscript he had found and reburied in 1942, but bombing had made landmarks on the "Rock" unrecognizable.

His family received their first notification of his pending return on September 14. A telegram sent by Soine to his brother Eddie read: "All well and safe. Hope to see you soon."[54] On September 22, Sylvia received a letter from Manila. Soine wrote:

The letter concluded with a hope long denied: "Well, I expect to be out of this place in a few days and aboard ship on the way home. That trip will be about 20 days. With luck should see you before Thanksgiving."[55] Four years late, Soine would at last be home for the holidays. Like many of the returning POWs, his overriding emotion was one of relief, with relatively little inclination to dwell on the horrors that they had all endured. Soine wrote to his brother from the Philippines: "Well, don't worry, Jim, I have come through this in pretty good shape compared to so many of my friends. We were all skinny, but that is to be expected on Japanese chow. Except for a short haircut I guess I am the same as in '41."[56]

By early October, Soine was homeward bound aboard the USS Rescue. The former POWs aboard were catered to in every possible way as they rejoiced in their newfound freedom and exorcised painful memories of suffering and death. Soine satisfied his cravings for food and camaraderie by befriending the ship's cooks and joining the bakery detail. He made enormous pies the size of tabletops to serve to his comrades on deck. After docking at San Francisco, the former POWs traveled homeward by train in soundproof hospital cars. Despite the weeks of plentiful food and care already afforded Soine, he required additional time to recover at Vaughn Hospital in Hines, Illinois, after his arrival there in late October. While recuperating, he wrote to one of the officers of the Rescue thanking the crew for their kindness. The officer's reply read in part:

Sylvia took a train out to visit her fiancée at the end of October. To her, Soine looked like a man recovering from a lengthy and desperate illness. In many ways, he was.

Soine and Sylvia married in June 1946, and raised two children together until Soine's untimely death in 1974. For Soine and other returning POWs, however, the adjustment to freedom and civilian life often proved difficult. The genuine care and consideration shown these men "would do little to compensate for the physical and mental residuals of Japanese imprisonment from which so many would suffer over the years. Among the ravages of the prison camp, beriberi and malnutrition left many Pacific ex-POWs with heart and liver problems, visual impairment, and an assortment of neurological complications."[58]

Soine suffered from numerous maladies at the time of his liberation, including active dysentery, a sore right lung from his pneumonia, skin rashes on his left palm and leg, and tropical ulcers on both legs so painful that he was unable to walk without the support of comrades. He also lost one tooth and seven fillings while a prisoner. Months in the hospital in Illinois could only partially alleviate this kind of physical and emotional trauma. More than a year after his liberation, he recorded his health as follows: "Suffer from arthritis in left shoulder, nervous exhaustion of left arm and persistent skin rash on left palm. Both legs swell occasionally from tropical ulcers. Irregular bowel movements sometimes uncontrolled. Am forced to wear spectacles."[59] Soine's impaired walking ability prohibited a return to his former job as a mail carrier. That, plus a desire to assist fellow veterans suffering from the psychological residue of their war experience, sent Soine first to the seminary and then into a career of social work. He eventually directed clinics in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, the Detroit area, and Milwaukee. An obituary stated, "Mr. Torma was widely admired for having had an important role in bringing help to the emotionally ill people of the area."[60] His career no doubt also helped him with his own healing process. Sadly, he noted in 1946 that the "physical impairments" that he had sustained as a POW "beyond a doubt shortened the life span."[61] He died of heart failure in 1974 at the age of 62.

Nevertheless, Sylvia maintained that except for one letter written from San Francisco upon his return, Soine never even name-called his former captors. Instead, according to Sylvia, the entire experience that Soine had "endured never embittered him, but rather refined and molded his sensitive nature."[62] In an article for a Lutheran church publication in 1946, Soine wrote: "Those years taught us prisoners tolerance too, proof that faith once attained never dies in a man."[63] After such an odyssey, this is perhaps the finest tribute to Soine Torma and to all who lived through those years of war and captivity.

NOTES

1. The author wishes to acknowledge the vital assistance of Carolyn Torma, Carol Wargelin, and Dr. Jim Klotter in the preparation of this essay, which is dedicated to the memory of Soine and Sylvia Torma.

1. Soine Torma was my great-uncle. He married Sylvia Wargelin, my great aunt, in 1946.

2. John Keegan, The Face of Battle (New York: The Viking Press, 1976), 47.

3. E. Bartlett Kerr, Surrender and Survival: The Experience of American POWs in the Pacific, 1941-1945 (New York: William Morrow & Co., 1985), 297.

4. Probably the best account of prewar Japanese plans is still Louis Morton, The Fall of the Philippines, United States Army in World War II, The War in the Pacific (Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 1953), Chapter IV.

5. Letter to Sylvia Wargelin, May 14, 1941, Soine Armas Torma papers, 1941-1955, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, henceforth abbreviated BHL. After Soine's death in 1974, Sylvia deposited material relevant to his POW experience in the Bentley Historical Library. In 1981, she also blended letters and other information with her personal insights regarding Soine's wartime experience in an unpublished compilation she entitled "To Be A Prisoner," also at the Bentley Historical Library. Her stated purpose in putting this compendium together was to present Soine's experience to their children "so that his story will not be lost to you."

6. Letter to Sylvia Wargelin, September 27, 1941, BHL.

7. Letter to Sylvia Wargelin, September 17, 1941, BHL.

8. Letter to Eddie Torma, October 3, 194l, BHL.

9. Letter to Sylvia Wargelin, October 26, 1941, BHL.

10. See Morton, The Fall of the Philippines, Chapters II-III.

11. Letter to Eddie Torma, October 12, 1941, BHL.

12. Letter to Adolph Torma, October 12, 1941, BHL. Soine's father had been recently widowed and had developed health problems, and was also financially dependent on Soine. Since his age seemed insufficient to obtain a discharge, Soine therefore applied for from active duty by reason of a dependency existing at home," an application that required four notarized affidavits from "four disinterested people." Letter from 803rd Army Air Force Engineer Battalion to Adolph Torma, November 17, 1941, BHL. Soine's father sent the affidavits on December 1, 1941, but the Japanese attack halted this process.

13. Letter to Sylvia Wargelin, October 26, 1941, BHL.

14. Letter to Sylvia Wargelin, November 1, 1941, BHL.

15. "To Be A Prisoner," 9-10, BHL. Sylvia's account of this period is based on her interviews with Soine after the war. See also James H. and William M. Belote, Corregidor: The Saga of a Fortress (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), 109. The rest of the battalion remained on Bataan. In April, it was taken off construction work and placed in reserve as a combat unit. See Morton, The Fall of the Philippines, 406.

16. Jonathan M. Wainwright, General Wainwright's Story: The Account of Four Years of Humiliating Defeat, Surrender, and Captivity (New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1946), 185-86.

17. "Statement of Soine Torma with respect to his claim arising out of his mistreatment while a prisoner of war of the Imperial Japanese Government," September 9, 1946, notarized by Louis A. Kearey, Houghton County, Michigan, Annex 2, BHL. In a marginal note in pencil on this "Statement," Soine wrote: "Not sent because these private lawyers want 10% commission. Do not send this but keep it for informational record as a curiosity memento. Reviewed Jan. 6, 1958."

18. In the autobiographical account by Major John M. Wright, Jr., who was the second-ranking American officer among the Corregidor POWs, he asserts that his own group of seventy-six officers and men had been detailed to return to Corregidor while already en route to the prison camps north of Manila. Back on the island, on July 2, they were "consolidated with a work detail of 240 men who had been kept on Corregidor when the large group had left in May." Presumably, this was Soine's group. John M. Wright, Jr., Captured on Corregidor: Diary of an American POW in World War II (Jefferson, NC, and London: McFarland & Company, 1988), 16.

19. Accounts of this horrific episode are legion. See Kerr, Surrender and Survival, 49-60. For collected accounts by Death March survivors, see Donald Knox, Death March: The Survivors of Bataan (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981).

20. Approximately 30 percent of American POWs in the Philippines died in the first year of captivity. Kerr, Surrender and Survival, 124.

21. Belote, Corregidor, 188-89. For a good account, albeit from a ranking officer's perspective, of the relatively decent conditions on Corregidor, see Wright, Captured on Corregidor.

22. "Statement," Annex 3, BHL.

23. This information is drawn from an unpublished account written by Soine shortly after the war describing these fishing expeditions, entitled "I Fished for Japs on Corregidor," BHL.

24. "Statement," Annex 3, BHL. The harsh living conditions apparently eased as the men moved to more permanent quarters. Wright mentions that the work group moved into Malinta Tunnel in early July and to the old Station Hospital between Middleside and Topside on July 25. "In the large rooms that had been wards, the enlisted men had double-deck bunks, with aisles about two feet wide. However, we had beds, mattresses, mosquito bars, concrete floors, running water, and electric lights—that was paradise." Wright, Captured on Corregidor, 17.

25. Interview for the Marquette Mining Journal, date unknown, BHL. The hidden radio is also mentioned by Wright, Captured on Corregidor, 43. Shortly after his return to the United States, while Soine was recovering in Vaughn Hospital near Chicago, he wrote the Hallicrafter Company in Chicago about the hidden radio. He received a personal visit from the president of the company, William J. Halligan, and other officials, and after his discharge Soine received a new Hallicrafter radio as a wedding gift from Mr. Halligan. "To Be A Prisoner," 15, BHL.

26. New York Times, date unknown (1946), BHL.

27. "To Be A Prisoner," 16-17, BHL.

28. Card sent from "Philippine Military Prison Camp No. 7," no date indicated, BHL.

29. Letter from War Department to Adolph Torma, May 22, 1942, BHL.

30. Telegram from War Department to Adolph Torma, June 29, 1943, BHL.

31. See Kerr, Surrender and Survival, 90-91, 125-33. Wright mentions that the Red Cross parcels received on Corregidor arrived on December 21, 1942, and were all distributed by January 9, 1943. They represented shipments from Britain, Canada, and the United States. Wright, Captured on Corregidor, 29-30.

32. Van Waterford, Prisoners of the Japanese in World War II: Statistical History, Personal Narratives and Memorials Concerning POWs in Camps and on Hellships, Civilian Internees, Asian Slave Laborers and Others Captured in the Pacific Theater (Jefferson, NC, and London: McFarland & Co., 1994), 34-35. See also Kerr, Surrender and Survival, 38-39, 43, and Gavan Daws, Prisoners of the Japanese: POWs of World War II in the Pacific (New York: William Morrow, 1994), 96-99.

33. Kerr, Surrender and Survival, 123-24. After the war, General Homma denied reports that the Death March and wretched camp conditions were part of a deliberate policy of liquidating unwanted prisoners. However, the head of the Tokyo War Camps, Kunji Suzuki, aptly summarized Japanese attitudes: "Although prisoners of war in Europe are regarded as honorable war prisoners, in Japanese eyes they are considered as pitiful war prisoners. Pitiful because they are, according to Japanese opinion, under the greatest disgrace possible." Waterford, Prisoners of the Japanese, 36-37.

34. Kerr, Surrender and Survival, 83-84, gives May 30, 1942, as the date for adoption of this policy. Waterford, Prisoners of the Japanese, 37, gives September 1942 as the date. As Soine's experience indicates, the official timing is of only technical interest.

35. Roughly 10,650 of 25,600 American POWs of the Japanese died in captivity, a total of 41.6 percent. Kerr, Surrender and Survival, 339. Estimated composite figures indicate that 31.4 percent of all Allied POWs of the Japanese died in captivity (60,600 of 193,000), along with 48.3 percent of native prisoners (290,000 of 600,000) and 11.2 percent of civilian internees (14,650 of 130, 895). Waterford, Prisoners of the Japanese, 146.

36. According to Wright, each month the Japanese sent to the mainland any sick or weak prisoners, as well as surplus men not needed for the work remaining. He himself was transferred off the island on June 8, 1943, along with most of the remaining men, eighty-five all told. Wright described spending the balance of June in Bilibid Prison in Manila before the group was divided into two. Half were sent to Clark Field as a work detail and half went to the POW camp at Cabanatuan. Wright, Captured on Corregidor, 35, 42-43, 51. While Wright refers to this camp as Cabanatuan Camp Number One, by this time Cabanatuan Camps One and Two as well as O'Donnell had been closed and their survivors transferred to Cabanatuan Number Three, which became the primary POW camp in the Philippines. See Waterford, Prisoners of the Japanese, 252.

37. According to Kerr, the prisoners assigned to these airfield projects were not treated as well as those at Cabanatuan. There, the POWs labored primarily on farms to grow food for themselves and for the Japanese, whereas the work at the airfields was more urgent and thus brutality more common and food less plentiful. Kerr, Surrender and Survival, 155.

38. "To Be A Prisoner," 18, BHL.

39. Kerr, Surrender and Survival, 120. This amount was comparable with the Japanese soldier's ration of 840 grams, although this was cut to 450 grams in October 1944. Kerr points out that Americans were on average bigger than Japanese and also unaccustomed to the diet.

40. Soine sent the first form card from Clark Field to Sylvia in September 1943, and a later one to his father. The former included the notation: "Your first ten letters overjoyed. . . . Tell them I am still healthy," BHL. Letters from the United States to Soine were really postcards, limited to 25 words in block print, among other restrictions. See the mailing instructions from the Japanese government sent to Soine's family by the Prisoner of War Information Bureau, October 15, 1943, BHL.

41. "Statement," Question 26, BHL. The essentials of Soine's account are supported by documentation compiled by Waterford, who notes that Prison Ship 37 sailed from Manila in September 1944 with 985-1,035 POWs aboard. Waterford, Prisoners of the Japanese, 163. Soine noted in another section of the Statement that he "was stabbed with bayonet of Japanese guard while en route to Toyama Japan. Wound occurred in right hip. No medical attendance other than self-administered." "Statement," Question 13, BHL.

42. "To Be A Prisoner," 17, BHL.

43. Toyama Camp (POW 69) was one of sixty-three total camps and sub-camps in the Tokyo Group. Waterford, Prisoners of the Japanese, 195.

44. "To Be A Prisoner," 21, BHL.

45. Soine indicated that the prisoners received 650 grams of food per day. "Statement," Question 61, BHL. Asked his opinion of Japanese women after the war, Soine replied: "They are like women everywhere—kind and sensitive." "To Be A Prisoner," 22, BHL.

46. Kerr notes that the winter of 1944-45 was the coldest in over half a century in Japan. For the more than five thousand POWs transferred from the tropical Philippines, the contrast must have been all the more shocking. Kerr, Surrender and Survival, 257.

47. Sylvia notes that shortly before the arrival of the American liberation team at the end of the war, the Japanese officer who had slapped Soine asked if he wanted to sign a complaint. Soine refused. "To Be A Prisoner," 22-23, BHL.

48. Card to Sylvia Wargelin, December 16, 1944, BHL.

49. The listeners—T. S. Hare, Lieutenant Commander, US Navy, based in San Diego; Gloria Rosen of Hollywood; and PFC Cleo D. Wood, 49th Fighter Squadron, in the Philippines—sent letters containing their version of the radio message to Soine's brother Eddie, BHL.

50. The Japanese transferred some prisoners out of bombing target areas while leaving others, despite repeated American protests through Swiss intermediaries that this was a violation of the Geneva Convention. The Japanese also segregated downed aircrews, when they were not simply executed, from prisoners captured earlier, in part to conceal from the latter information about how badly the war was going for Japan. See Kerr, Surrender and Survival, 263-69.

51. This delay between the actual armistice ending the war on August 15 and its announcement to the POWs was typical. In some locations, prisoners knew of the end of the war through secret radios but were powerless to alter their situation until the Japanese were ready. At a few sites, the Japanese executed smaller groups of prisoners, usually airmen, even after the armistice was signed. See Daws, Prisoners of the Japanese, 335-38, and Kerr, Surrender and Survival, 272-80.

52. "To Be a Prisoner," 27-28, BHL.

53. Kerr, Surrender and Survival, 285.

54. Canadian Marconi Company telegram to Eddie Torma, September 12, 1945, sans origine, BHL.

55. Letter to Sylvia Wargelin, received September 22, 1945. Sylvia notes regarding this letter: "Actually the first time I saw Soine at Hines Hospital a month later, he could not have weighed more than 140 lbs." "To Be A Prisoner," 29, BHL. According to his own postwar documentation, Soine weighed 198 pounds at the time of the surrender on Corregidor and 132 pounds at the time of his liberation. "Statement," Questions 12 and 28, BHL.

56. Letter to Eddie Torma, September 25, 1945, BHL.

57. Letter from Robert (Spud) Spaulding, Pharmacist's Mate 2nd Class, USS Rescue, January 29, 1946, BHL.

58. Kerr, Surrender and Survival, 297.

59. "Statement," Questions 28, 31, 34, BHL.

60. Unlabeled newspaper clipping, November 1974, BHL.

61. "Statement," Question 40, BHL.

62. Referring to a Japanese cavalry sword that he had obtained as a souvenir, Soine wrote that he "got a souvenir from the bastards." Letter to Sylvia Wargelin, October 23, 1945, BHL. Sylvia noted that the parachute nylon—from the Toyama relief drops—in which Soine wrapped this sword, was used to line the train of her wedding dress. "To Be A Prisoner," 32-33, BHL.

63. Clipping from The Lutheran Counselor