(1) . (2) . (3) . (4) . (5) . (6)

I can't remember his name, so we will call him "Denny" for convenience. Denny sat there for a week. He would sit there calling, "This is Denny calling the Moon. Come in, Moon." One day a high-ranking Navy man decided to play a joke. When Denny called "This is Denny calling the Moon", the Navy man called back, "This is the Moon calling Denny." Denny called back, "It is about time; I have been calling you for weeks!" He sat in the cage for months. He got a little better. I was returned to Chicago with him at Great Lakes. He had mellowed down to be a nice, simple person.

When I went back to Tennoji, I wanted to find out about Hashimoto and the cargoes. They told me about a B-29 raid in which Osaka was completely destroyed.

They told me about airplanes flying very high. Bombs were coming down. They told me this with sign language, mostly. They were telling me that when the bombs fell all over the freightyards they got too close to the alcohol, and the alcohol would explode. They got a kick out of that. (A-roo-kra-hoor!)

Stinky Davis was a good friend and an atrocious liar. He told me at Cabanatuan that even if he died, that he had lived a full life. He told me some of the things that he had, like a brand new Studebaker car, and I don't remember his other lies. He said that he was divorced. He had bought some kimonos in China. They were awful looking things.

He asked me, if he didn't make it, to take the kimonos back to his home. Every place I went, during the prison camp, I had those kimonos. Everywhere I went I had to find a place to hide them. Usually, I would loosen a board and place the kimonos under it.

Sometimes the board would be up in the ceiling. I would put the kimonos far out of reach.

One time the Japanese, 1944, seemed to be not in a good nature. They started hazing us. We had to go through the military commands. When I got to Osaka, I hid the kimonos. The Japanese would look for things like that. A Jap got up there and reached in and missed them by about on inch, or two inches. I was able to take those kimonos back to Davis' family. Then I found out that he was not divorced at all. He simply ran away and joined the Marines. He had lived in southern Indiana. I found his father and his sister-in-law, wife of his younger brother, living on a farm. The father and sister-in-law were really nice people. Her husband had done the same thing. I gave the kimonos to them.

Sometimes late at night the Japanese would come in a start hazing us. Everyone could do it except one guy from the South, and his name was Morgan. He was a real racist. We used to tease him by saying, "Morgan, when you get back to the States, some black nigger is going to tell you to clean up that mess." He used to tell us that no black nigger is going to tell him anything. He was a real redneck. After all these years, Morgan got by, doing what the other people did, maybe a little late, but he managed.

Everyone else learned the commands, but he didn't. The Japanese could not believe that anyone could be that dumb. They would give Morgan a command and he couldn't do it and we would laugh, and then the Japanese would smack us. This was very late in the war.

Once I got hold of a book. When I was at Tennoji, I could save up enough rice rations. There was a pill detail. They would make a package of pills. They would place them in a box. If you were too weak for loading, you could do this job. We would switch off and on. I got the book Quo Vadis. Our back stairway was closed off because of Red Cross packages. I found a nice shaft of sunlight and I was sitting there reading Quo Vadis and I heard a sound and I knew I was sunk. I didn't even look up. I just kept on reading.

There was a sergeant whom we called "Sgt. Crumb" because his uniform was always wrinkled and dirty. He was the meanest, and now, he was angry. He yelled, and I said, "What?" He told me to go to him. He started hitting me. He really gave it to me. He took me to the guardhouse where there were more soldiers and I could tell that he was telling them about me sitting down and reading a book. So they all started hitting on me. They passed me around and I kept getting hit. One soldier told me to kneel down in front of the guardhouse, where the men pass to get back to the barracks from work. About 5:30, they started coming "home." They saw me kneeling in front of the guardhouse and someone said that Rodenburg was going to get shot. A little later a regular soldier told me to get out of there, it was about chow time. And that was the end of it.

I first mentioned Dr. Nel when I talked about staying topside on the ship. That worked out all right. Later on, he was the American doctor in Osaka. There were four hundred prisoners with only three stairways, and that meant a lot of walking up and down during the night, especially on a rice diet and the water we drank. Dr. Nel decided that no one would use the back stairway. My bunk happened to be on top of the back staircase. I didn't want anyone telling me I couldn't use the back staircase. So I used it, but I was not quiet enough. I clacked down the staircase one night, and I heard Dr. Nel calling me. I went to him and he let me have it. He knocked me off my feet. I came up with my "go-aheads" in my hands, and I got him right in the head. He did not say anything about it at that time. But sometime later, I caught pneumonia.

I caught pneumonia and went to the sick bay, and I was really sick. They sent me back, but the next day I had a high fever and some thought I wouldn't live to the next day. I was in sick bay. The corpsman that talked me out of dying before (Meyers) told the doctor that I had swallowed my tongue. Dr. Nel said, "Let the son-of-a-bitch die." The corpsman rolled me to my side and pulled my tongued out, and I survived. There was one other occasion that I had to do with Dr. Nel. When I was working at Tennoji, I got an ailment, blindness, which he diagnosed as a lack of vitamin A or B. What he did was to take a large syringe, bigger than my thumb, and inserted it in my spine. He took out that much ( ) spinal fluid. He left it in and inserted something else in it and inserted something in my spine, some fluid. This was on a Sunday. The next morning, I went to work with a terrible headache. I worked throughout it and this was a series of shots. Dr. Nel called me to the sick bay for another shot and I sent word back that I would rather die than get another shot. That was the end of that.

I came back to San Francisco in 1945 and within a short time I came home to Illinois. I was not yet discharged. I went back up to, or was promoted to, Technical Sergeant. I was paid all during the war as a corporal. I was paid by the Japanese company for my work there. I was paid by the State of Illinois and some disability from the Federal Government. I was discharged in 1946 on the same calendar day as I had enlisted, six years before. After I was discharged, I went back home to Hazel Crest. I was not adjusted to civilian life. I drank a lot and couldn't stand people or myself. My sister, (Jo or Nel) was interested in my welfare. She called the Veteran's Administration and made me go down. I took psychiatric treatment. (She also advised me to talk to a minister for help, which leads to chapter two).

I suppose I was suffering from a letdown of some sort. The doctor told me to go back to school. I was rather astonished. I returned to high school and they told me that there was a test that I could take. I took the test, at Bloom Township, and I got a diploma. I then enrolled at Thornton Community College in pre-law. I did two years of pre-law in one and a half years. I went to University of Chicago, first. I decided that was a little too much, so then I went to DePaul University. I went for two and a half years in a three-year course. After two and a half years, I quit. After a couple of weeks, I started thinking, "What am I going to do now?" I couldn't do nothing, so I returned to DePaul. I told the dean that I wanted to come back. My books, as I had laid them, were still on his desk. He seemed to know that I would be back, and he handed my books to me.

There are tales of horror and tragedy; there are scenes of blood and gore; but the sights we’ve seen have turned many men green on Bataan and Corregidor.

On the eight day of December, nineteen-forty-one,
A bloody crew of Japanese swept down with the sword and gun;
The Fil-Americans were outnumbered man for man.
So they chose a jungle refuge deep down in Bataan.

You’ll forget that native girl, your siestas and your rum;
For you’re going down in Bataan, and you’re going to man a gun.
Your back will be against the wall, there will be no retreating.
You are going to Bataan to fight, and maybe take a beating.

There will be no lavanderas, no house-cooks and no boys;
There will be no touted help to come, but there’ll be a lot of noise.
For you’re journeying to Bataan’s jungle fever heat;
You’re going to make a last stand, there’ll be no retreat.

So you better fight your heart out in the battle yet to come;
Give them hell, shell for shell, and pray it may be won.
So twenty-thousand Americans were caught across the sea to fight for life, mid blood and strife, against the Jap army.

They formed a line across North Bataan, a line too weak to hold;
and fought that savage, yellow horde as was done in days of old.
The horde had come to annihilate, and did their level best;
The American-Filipino foe proved to be a hornet’s nest.

Men who go to battle usually get a few days leave to shake the dirt, drink and flirt, and spend a short reprieve;
There’ll be nothing such for you, my lad, no place to have a time;
You’ll carry on and on, or die, mid sweat and dirt and grime.

Four long months that sparse line held, through hunger, fever, shells;
Four long months that line survived, through sickness, death and hell.
Our men are dying, can’t get food -- our line is bound to snap!
Of all the spots on God’s green earth, we’re in this devil’s trap.

They upheld through bomb and shells the virtue of a nation,
and now must share the dues unfair of death and desolation;
The Japs are throwing everything -- they’re breaking through our line;
you may live to see their treachery, for the end has come this time.

There is no relief, no food for life; my God, what deprivation;
Such heat, such pain, it can’t go on, untold emancipation.
And there, eight-thousand miles from home, across the ocean seas,
a fighting crew who’d lived in hell were battered to their knees.

And now must lie in prison for how long, God only knows;
tragic rains, morbid heat, dead bodies piled in rows.
Flies, filth, dirt and dust, malaria, dysentery;
the strong may live, the weak will die of starvation and beriberi.

Those who lived to realize the horror of it all wished many a time that they had died before that fatal fall;
And so ‘tis months and years to come before they hope to see the land they fought for, and bled for -- The Land of Liberty.

W.B. Denine
Lyle E Smith
Box 1375 Lincoln Neb.
J.H. Still
844 ½ W. 65th St.
Los Angeles
(Last diary entry).

CHAPTER TWO

Harry graduated DePaul law school, passed the bar exam on his first attempt, became the city attorney for Hazel Crest (his home town), married the beautiful and artistic daughter of a prominent Christian Reformed minister, and then put up his shingle in Lansing, Illinois, where he became a well-respected home town attorney.

He was elected judge for the Markham district of Cook County, Illinois, had eight children (his first when he was already 37 years old and the last when he was 58), and has always done everything his own way. He still does.

Harry turns 87 years old on December 8, 2004. Harry and Pat (nee Monsma) celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary on September 25, 2003. Their eight children came home to Chicago from as far away as Florida, California, Wyoming, and even Germany to celebrate the event. Extended family from as far away as Washington State and Oklahoma attended. It was, as Harry is inclined to say, “Quite nice; really rather nice.”