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So I did. I went down into this hole which had been festering for weeks. Everybody had staked out their claim for space, where they would live, and where they would put their belongings. They had developed a routine, and here I come, after three weeks, coming down to live. I ran into a lot of resistance. I did find a place way up by the prowl of the ship that was stuffed with ditty bags. These are officer's packs -- little bags and bundles of clothing.

There was a place about ten feet long and about eight inches high, I think. It was all full of these disposables – disposables as far as I was concerned. I went in there, pulled them out, and threw them away. Wherever they landed, they landed; I didn't care. I was ready to fight for my life.

Later, I did get into a fight about it, but no one fought me at that time. I crawled into that spot that had been stuffed with ditty bags and I stayed there from that time until we got to Japan.

The trip took a long time. Part of the time we were zigzagging because there were torpedo runs and submarine alarms . We were in a convoy. There were destroyers accompanying us. Part of the time it was that we pulled in Okinawa and we layed over there for several days. I don’t know for what purpose, perhaps to pick up additional escorts or to wait for others in the convoy.

TANAGAWA

Kobe was our destination. We arrived at Kobe about November or December 1942 . Upon our arrival, we were disembarked from the ship. We congregated in a square, an open area that was paved. We were told that that is where we would stay. We got off at night and stayed overnight there. In the morning, we were organized into groups and marched off to other destinations. My destination was an inter-urban railroad station, and we got on an electric train. We went to a place called Tonagawa. Tonagawa was in a pretty nice area, a beautiful section, actually. It was near the coast and fairly warm; I know there were tangerine trees there, at least. But it did not feel warm to us because we were not dressed warmly enough and we were underfed.

-- For Record --
On or about December 19, 1942 about 150 Red Cross parcels were received at this camp. We were required to fill our cards to acknowledge the receipt of these packages unopened and in good condition. The boxes were opened by the Japanese and some of the food was taken out. Following is Christmas Day dinner menu, a small amount of Red Cross food was issued on various occasions, taste at a time.

Breakfast -- Vegetable soup and rice
Dinner -- Soup (potato, cabbage, onion, turnip, corned beef) and rice;
two tablespoons salmon (heaped);
two tablespoons sardines (level)
two tablespoons raisins (level)
6 ½ dried prunes
Choice, 1 only: chocolate - 1" x 3/4" x 1/4"
cheese (american) - 1" x 1" x 1/8"
Supper – rice soup (potato, onion, diakon, soybean,
soy bread salt)
3 hardtack biscuits
1 slice luncheon meat - 2" diameter x 1" thick
1 slice butter - 2" diameter x ½" thick, hot tea
January 13, 1943 received issue Prince Albert tobacco - 1 can to 6 men!!

This was a new camp built for us. I don't think it was previously occupied. It had a high fence around it and was built out of pinewood, and there were no real bunks, just planks of pine raised up off the floor. The bunks were on each side of the room with an aisle down the middle about six or eight feet wide. The bunk ran the whole length of the room about eighteen inches off the floor and was covered with tatami. This is a rice straw pad and looked quite nice. We went in and our job was to work in a shipyard project. We were going to build submarine pens. When we got out to the job, it was quite unpleasant. They were dynamiting rocks and had railroad trains (narrow gauge), and we would push these cars to where the rocks were loose and throw the rocks into the car. When they were full, we would push the cars to the engine, and the engine would place them out into the bay. Each time they would lay more track and push them further and further. They were making long piers out of this rock.

It was tough living there. The only thing you got to eat was what they gave you. That had been true up to this point, but it had not seemed to make any difference before. But now we were working on only two-hundred and forty grams of rice a day -- about a cup of rice a day. That kind of labor on that supply of food was very difficult. There were some Koreans working the same job. One of them caught a snake. He took the snake and slit it with a knife right behind the head and peeled the skin off of it all the way down. While the snake was still wriggling, he put it in his mouth, shoved it down his throat, and swallowed it. "Ha ebia!" he said, patting his belly. "Strong stomach!" I certainly had to agree!

Nothing that happened out there was too pleasant, that I recall. One of the things I do remember was standing by the railroad by a Japanese who gave us lots of trouble. He was very hard on us. He was standing almost on the track while the train was coming, and several of us started to warn him, but it came along and hit him. The driving rod, the rod that goes up and down, and the drive wheels caught him and he was picked up and slammed down a number of times, and I think it killed him. We were not unhappy, because he was a mean man.

He was replaced by one equally as mean. Working out there was not at all pleasant, at least for me. I had an emotional problem out there because I was forced to work when I was not able to work. I had an emotional breakdown and would start to cry. They took me away from the work and told me not to work for the day. I was put into the barracks and was told that I was too sick to work. I was put into the sick bay.

February 6th, 1943 -- I catch diarrhea and
turn in hospital.

Then I went down in weight. I don't know what weight I went in at, but I went down very, very far. I had diarrhea, pellagra, elephantitis, beriberi, the sniffles and I don't know what else. I had just about everything you could imagine and not die. I certainly had enough to die with. This experience I would like to relate to you.

I think I did almost die. I decided, "What's the use?" I had been laying for three months and I thought I would never get well. I was getting skinnier and weaker, and had not even been on my knees in maybe weeks, or even months. So I decided that I would give up. I had a ten thousand-dollar life insurance policy. The "old man" (meaning my father) would have more money than he had ever had in his whole life. That was one night. Those were my thoughts on that one night.

The next morning I was so close to death that it seemed to me that when people talked to me their voices came down a long corridor, like echoes in a corridor. It seemed like I could see them from all directions. It seemed like I could see what they were thinking.

They served breakfast, but I didn't eat. A Navy corpsman named Adolph Meyers noticed I hadn't eaten and got down next to me and said, "What's the matter with you, Rodenburg?" He told me I had lost my guts and said that they didn't need people like me because I had lost my guts. He did exactly what he wanted to do. He made me angry. I thought, "You S.O.B., I'll show you."

It was coming on Spring, and I started by trying to get up on my knees, I would do that until I would faint. When I came to, I got back up on my knees. And I kept doing that. Once I was able to get up on my knees without fainting, I would try to get on my haunches, and then I would get dizzy and fall over. I kept doing that until eventually I could stand up. My head would get dizzy and I would fall down, sometimes hitting the tatami pads, and sometimes I would just hit the floor. Then, once I could stand, I started taking steps -- one, two, five, fifty, one hundred. I counted them. Then I went and walked around the building. At this time, the men were boiling their clothes because their clothes were alive with lice. That was one of the things that was sapping our energy. I went and had my clothes boiled, and when I was able to, I walked over to a scale, and weighed myself.

At that point, after working my way out of bed, I weighed eighty-nine pounds. I was a bag of bones. I was able to take the skin from the calves of my legs and pull it almost completely around the front of my leg. This was between November, when I went in there, and March, and we had lost about a third of the prisoners that were there.

March 20th, 1943 -- Still in hospital, recovering but cannot regain strength. Chow very meager. No meat, fish soup about once a month on an average. Weight: 123, up 15 pounds. A hundred men or so with swollen limbs from beriberi and edema. My feet are swollen and sore so that walking is very difficult.

There were originally four hundred prisoners. One third simply died. I was in a little cell, and I laid with seven Army officers and one Marine corporal. All the Army officers died. Adolph Myers talked me into not doing that. This was not the only time Myers saved my life. He did it one more time.

March 27th, 1943 -- Nothing improved here in camp. They (nips) promised us a chance to write an 80 word letter to home, but they won’t let us say hardly anything except that we are in Super-health whether we are or not. This morning we had a canteen cup-ful of veri-thin carrot-onion-cabbage soup. The noon meal was 3 buns the size of a nickel hamberger, half a cup of veri-thin vegetable soup, a canteen cup of tea. Tonite we will have a cup not more than 2/3 full of steamed rice and half a cup of vegetable or bean soup – sample day, never varies more than one day a month when we might get a fish soup.

There are plenty of rumors as always when there is no source of news. All the rumors are good, however, and they say that the nips are really expecting bomb raids in this vicinity, and that the nips are talking to themselves about the number of planes the States are building. Japanese order yesterday forbids whistling, or putting hands in pockets, under threat of severe punishment.

30th March, 1943 -- Made a sporting wager today with Patterson (Corps, USMC) - - If we are still prisoners this date in ‘44, he gives me his entire noon ration; if we leave for home any time before then, I forfeit my 1st noon ration aboard our delivery ship.

31st March, 1943 -- We were allowed to write a letter home today. Not allowed to say much of anything. Here is one I sent:

“Dearest Mother, I am in good health. Have been working regularly out in open. Send package of concentrates, bullion cubes and Vitamin tablets. We are plentifully supplied with toilet articles and clothing. We have received from Red Cross of food and tobacco. Tell everyone to write, include snapshots of family homestead and car. Don’t worry about me, everything okay. Hope to see you soon. May God bless you and keep you. My love to all. Harry.”

April 2nd, 1943 -- Read Jap newspaper today. From between the lines we deduct that things not so good for Axis. Men nearly all very optimistic. Most “all over date” speculation running from 3 to 6 months. Chow here getting worse (if possible). We had whale blubber cooked in rice once. We find it rather okay -- anything would be.

Sunday, April 14th, 1943 -- Very gloomy here today, raining with high winds. We hit a new low in chow today. Canteen cupful lugow and some tea for breakfast. For dinner, a tea cupful of steamed rice and ½ canteen cup of “shadow soup.” What will supper be? Cigarettes nearly impossible to get. The men are smoking scorched 2nd-hand tea leaves and even straight paper-cigarettes. Haven’t received any from the Nips in 2 weeks.

Saturday, 10th (April, 1943) -- Wonder of Wonders. A truckload of Red Cross foods and some clothing came in camp today on an army supply truck. Some of the stuff (89 boxes) was individual food boxes, but most of it is bulk. It is from South African branch of the Red Cross. There is a phonograph and records included. That stuff has made it 15,000 miles or so to this camp. If it would only make it the last 150 yards. There is much speculation as to how much of the stuff will actually get to the prisoners. The nips seem to be clamping down on us more and more. Less and less chow. More regulations. More face-slappings. We think they’re having trouble on their warfronts.

Friday, 16 April (1943) -- We were issued British Red Cross food parcels today. There was one box for every 4 men. The boxes were varied slightly in content but each was about equal to the next. My box contained approximately: oleomargarine- 8 oz; lunchmeat - 16 oz.; cheese - 4 oz; chocolate - 4 oz.; 13 service biscuits; bacon - 8 oz.; sweetened condensed milk - 10 oz.; syrup – 4 oz.; tea ½ oz.; one bar face soap -- of each item there was just a taste, but oh how delicious it did taste. To think that someday we will have all of that kind of food we care for is about enough to make on renew one’s resolve to live to see the end of our confinement. The meats were prepared so good that

I really believe the British could teach us a few things about eating. I have an increased respect for them since last nite. It’s all gone now and we will wait and hope for the next one, how long?

-- Transferred from Hospital Barracks to convalescent Barracks on April 13, to work Barracks on April 24. Weight now -- 118 lbs.

(Smudged pencil text)

Monday, May 5th (1943) ------------ On the “rockpile”--------, each day it is all I can do to -------------- home to my ----------. Nips had every one haul out all their gear for inspections couple days ago, took all our -------- woolen clothing, blankets, etc. Also all books, pictures, notes of any kind had to be turned in for censorship. They promised to return all the books except “contraband” notebooks. Chow is definitely on the increase here now, not in quantity, but in quality. We’ve had fish two or three times in the past few weeks, gravy made with and without corned beef, and we’ve had “Mybella Lugao” several times. On the Emperor’s birthday, (May 1st) and on several other “yasumi” days we’ve had stewed dried pears and prunes. Fair helpings, too, almost two teacupfuls at one serving, of the pears at least, seven prunes for me so far. Of course these little extras we owe to the RC, but even the issue chow has improved.

While we were in Tonagawa, Red Cross packages started to arrive. I don't know how many were sent, but I do know that we were supposed to share a package between twenty people. This meant that out of the package, you would get a piece of cheese about as large as two dice. We just got a little dab of this and a little dab of that. But even that was better than what we were used to. I surely think it helped. I think that more of the Red Cross food was being eaten by the Japanese than was being given to the prisoners.

This country is poor -- a Korean out on the job refused to lite up a match for my cigarette; explained his match ration was being cut to seven per day, and this of matches as thin as toothpicks.

May 10th (1943) -- Heard bad news today. A sailor came back from Osaka Hospital and brought the news that Davis had died. I’ve been trying to find out the date, but it must have been in the last month and a half or so. I was expecting him back here almost daily. Yesterday we had a small bowl of corned beef hash -- wonderful! The chow is much better lately. We’ve had some fish. I’m off the job again. Swollen feet, diarrhea, and general weakness. I can’t stand up to the work. Rumors are that Navy and Marines are to be transferred to another camp. We got our letters to home back for our signatures; they are severely cut, and typed up on a post card. Hope I’m home by the time the answer gets back.

Another thing that I remember, a notable event, actually, was when they roused us and marched us into their parade area. It was cold and maybe we did some exercises. But they passed around a beautiful delicious apple. I have never tasted anything as good as that apple. I think that was the only fruit, certainly the only apple, that we had had up to that point. Later on I will tell you how I got fruit and other things that they didn't give us.

We stayed there until early March. Due to the Japanese desire to have everything well organized, they decided to get all Marines and Navy people together and all the Army people together. We had been all mixed up here. They sent all the Army people from Osaka to Tanagawa and the Navy people from Tanagawa to Osaka.