POW CAMP REVISITED IN 1945.
Segment 2 of 3
Came across two items on the internet that document the POW Camp O’Donnell in Jan.1945.
-One is a lengthy written description by Clark Lee, INS Staff Correspondent - January 1945.
Clark Lee was an AP reporter who was on Bataan, before being evacuated to Australia. Lee was one of the few reporters who visited the front lines.
Lee wrote a book titled, "They Call It the Pacific."
Credit: Billy Baker and the BBB.
-The other is/are images of Camp O’Donnell by Time-Life Pictures/Getty Images and the photographer was Carl Mydans.
I think the pictures are really unique and are very rare and are of great historical value they show this place of horror in 1945, less than 3 years after what has occurred here. I wonder whether any remaining veteran can remember or recognize any of the objects in these pictures?
Because the article above is lengthy and the pictures are many I decided to present this find in three segments.
HERE IS THE SECOND PART OF THREE FROM THE ARTICLE “O’DONNELL RE-VISTED 1945“:
Camp O'Donnell, formerly an American army installation and afterward the barracks for a Philippines division, stands on the grass-covered, uncultivated western Tarlac plains, a few miles from the Purple Zambales mountain range.
It was here that the Death March from Bataan ended in April of 1942. Prisoners were marched from Bataan to San Fernando with only scraps of food and those who fell by the wayside were bayoneted or shot. The sick, starved, thirsty, wounded men were forced to march northward to this camp. In O'Donnell, the real torment began.
Today the only buildings standing are those formerly occupied by the Japanese commandant and prison guards.
Most of the Filipinos were released, by September, 1942. Later, in a gesture of friendship, the Japanese puppet Republic of the Philippines was inaugurated.
The other buildings on the treeless slope were burned down, most of them apparently some time ago, but one was still smoldering when we arrived. All that remains is ashes and triple strands of barbed wire that surrounded each small weather-beaten gray-black shack where the prisoners were crowded together and slept on the floor.
The camp area was surrounded by double fences of barbed wire while around the Japanese quarters were circular dugouts with fire-ports pointing in all directions and barbed wire with tin cans tied to the strands to give warning if the prisoners attempted to attack. From the Filipinos who were released, we already have the story of a deliberate program of starving prisoners to death. Crosses marking the graves show that some, already terribly weakened in the battle of Bataan, gave up the fight early while others, already human skeletons with each bone showing through near transparent skin, clung grimly to life for over two years The prisoners had no medicine. Emaciated and suffering from malnutrition, they fell easy victims to disease.
Much of their working time must have been taken up with digging graves, fifteen feet long, sixteen feet wide and only eighteen inches deep in which five bodies were laid crosswise.
Too weakened to do any unnecessary digging – or perhaps feeling that even in death each man's body should not touch his neighbor – the prisoners left foot-long piles of earth projecting toward the center of the grave from the head and from the foot of each scooped out hole that now shelters an American or Filipino.
The Japanese obviously attempted to conceal evidence of their crimes. In addition to burning buildings which had housed the prisoners, and thus destroying any torture instruments that may have existed, they set fire to grass in the Filipino graveyard and most of the crosses were burned destroying records. They apparently hoped the American graveyard which is across a dirt road from the main camp would go unnoticed and accordingly allowed grass, weeds and tall reeds to grow to heights up to ten feet.
We sighted the American burial ground only when the wind blew back the reeds giving us a glimpse of a white monument. A path leads there from the ashes of the huts. The site is so overgrown that it is impossible even to tell the size of the cemetery but is appears to be about 100 by 150 yards with the grass covered grave mounds separated from each other by about a foot. It is a mass of tangled graves completely untended and some graves are still unfilled.
The monument is a seven foot cross made of white cement and on the base of it in barely readable letters is inscribed:
“In Memory of the American dead - O'Donnell War Personnel Enclosure."
Here is the second batch of 15 images:
Y326- This is the second search page.
Y327- Wow! Is that what the huts looked like inside?
Y328- This monument has a story to tell but I don’t know it. I am convinced this is the same monument, although renovated and changed, that graces the Memorial Monument of the Filipino Defenders in the Philippine Capas National Shrine next the BBB Monument!!!! I hope a Filipino Veteran or historian can enlighten us!!! Who built it? When was it built? Was it moved to the present site and where was it moved from?
Y329- If this is not a historical picture, what is? I believe it has a meaning of “National Cemetery”. So this must have been the main entrance to the Filipino Soldiers Cemetery!
Y330- Wow, a Camp O’Donnell combat picture, the correspondents and photographers were right behind them!
Y331- I wonder what this sign and the writing in the previous image said?
Y332- I guess that is why many of the fallen soldiers remain unknown soldiers!
Y333- Camp ‘Donnell is liberated, I wonder whether any of the few remaining veterans are able to tell us about the structures still standing in 1945?
Y334- If only the canteen could talk!
Y335- We have seen this picture a few times before, indeed it is from Carl Mydans.
Y336- Is this trash from the Philippine Soldiers, the Americans or the Japanese?
Y337- One of many lives that ended here in Camp O’Donnell thanks the Japanese Imperial Army.
Y338- It seems, right after liberation in Jan 1945, many visitors came to look for answers and witness what has occurred here. But I only have the two documental sources presented here.
Y339- Was this a guard shack?
Y340- More trash, I wished it could talk!
One more segment will follow, the third!
Note to robersabel; I will forward your inquire.