WEBVTT

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- I joined the Navy, I was 18

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^and I joined in November of 1939.

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After, I had no trouble with the training.

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In Great Lakes, Illinois is where I went for the training.

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Guam had about 300 servicemen,

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about 150 Marines, 150 Navy personnel

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and 5000 Japanese Marines stormed ashore.

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And he said this time tomorrow morning

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he said we'll either be dead or prisoners of war.

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Well, turned out, it was prisoners of war.

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January 1942, we were marched

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to this Navy yard to board this Japanese ship.

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But at this time, I got to see the people

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who worked, stayed at the hospital

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on the other side of the fence.

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All the POW's were put in the hole of the ship,

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just like you would cargo.

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And, in the morning there'd be watery rice,

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buckets of watery rice lowered to us,

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same way in the afternoon.

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If we had to use the bathroom,

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we'd go five or six at a time,

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use the bathroom upstairs.

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I set up, self survival you might say.

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Make myself as invisible as possible,

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by that I mean, don't draw attention to myself.

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So anything that happened to Japan that's bad,

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they'd take it out on some prisoner

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they knew the name of.

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And he said, I'll help you out all I can,

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this Japanese Sergeant, but he said getting food to you

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is gonna be a problem.

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He said, we're short on food and he said

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and you being American, they're not anxious to feed you.

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They gave us a radio that we got on a

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English speaking station,

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they'd said all the POW camps,

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paint PW signs, put on top of your building

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so they can locate you.

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Those of us

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who had been

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captured on Guam,

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we had been prisoners for 1,368 days.

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They had a hospital ship

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in Tokyo, and

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they put us aboard the hospital ship, we were sprayed

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and sort of examined to see if we was

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physically fit to go back home.

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January of '40,

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I didn't see or hold 'em again until late '45.

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I didn't see my father again.

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He died while I was in the POW camp.

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I always regretted the fact that I never hugged my father,

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never told him how much I loved him.

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We just shook hands,

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but that's the way we did things in those days.

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Well,

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don't give up for one thing.

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And,

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do the best you can, no matter what,

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how insignificant it might seem,

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do the very best you can.