Their story is more epic than just another war story; and one of their toughest is now gone.
A doctor once told Albert Brown he shouldn't expect to make it to 50, given the toll taken by his years in a Japanese labor camp during World War II and the infamous, often-deadly march that got him there. But the former dentist made it to 105, embodying the power of a positive spirit in the face of inordinate odds.Fair winds and following seas.
"Doc" Brown was nearly 40 in 1942 when he endured the Bataan Death March, a harrowing 65-mile trek in which 78,000 prisoners of war were forced to walk from Bataan province near Manila to a Japanese POW camp. As many as 11,000 died along the way. Many were denied food, water and medical care, and those who stumbled or fell during the scorching journey through Philippine jungles were stabbed, shot or beheaded.
But Brown survived and secretly documented it all, using a nub of a pencil to scrawl details into a tiny tablet he concealed in the lining of his canvas bag.
...
By the time the war ended in 1945, the 40-year-old Brown was nearly blind, had weathered a broken back and neck and suffered through more than a dozen diseases including malaria, dysentery and dengue fever.
Hat tip Jeff.
17 comments:
Rest in peace, sir. 105, he was oldest survivor of Bataan http://news.yahoo.com/oldest-survivor-bataan-death-march-dies-105-211535697.html
Great post, Salamander.
Men like that WERE the greatest generation. Whatever their political failings, or how much they spoiled their kids (us BBs), they did THAT.
His comrades await him, where they are forever young, and he is once again young.
At one time I had a small book in my posession (now missing) written by the surviving Medical Officer of the Ft. Knox-based armored Div (mainly units from Illinois, Ky and Ind, (iirc) who went thru it all: From the March, thru the camps, to the "hell ships" that shipped them to Japan and then the work camps in Japan. WHAT AN EYE-OPENING READ! The things he describes in detail are almost too much to bear just in the reading (e.g., forcing prisoners to dig slit trenches, then forcing them into them, covering them with barrbed wire, then pouring gasoline on them and setting them afire and machine-gunning those who tride to crawl out through the barbed wire.) And his description of the conditions (if you can call them that) those packed like sardines in the cargo-holds on the Hell-ships suffered are almost beyond belief. I wish I still had that work--I can't even remember the title, publisher, or his name anymore. I'm sure the Library of Congress does, however.
PS: I can't help but reflect on the effect the uniform worn by Brown has in terms of military bearing compared with that of today's Army Class "A" uniformws...SIGH..
Greetings:
I sure hope you're not posting this to take the wind out of the sails of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki "grannies" and their annual August "You A-Bombed Us" fest. As usual, the Nanking and Manila "grannies", you know how those people are, failed to make any conciliatory gesture or even attend.
All the miseries and worse that the Empire of Japan (RIPieces) caused and they're still going on about a couple of A-bombs and our beloved media sytill finds it both newsworthy and unexaminable.
As my father, who went for the Saipan and Peleliu option on his Pacific Grand Tour, used to say, "The only thing wrong with the A-bombing was we only had two."
What is it that causes some men to hold on through the horrors of Hell, while other men give up at the first sign of adversity. I look at his picture and I see a man who looks perfectly ordinary. The iron on the inside is completely concealed. I think of men who were held in Vietnamese prison camps for five years and more, whose will to survive carried them through unending torture and ill treatment. I can only marvel at the indomitable human spirit that animates men like Albert Brown.
God rest his soul. May his memory be a blessing forever.
a felow, i know not who, that wrote a book entitles <span>"Laughter in Hell".</span> it was a book about the march and some of the shenanigans that the prisoners pulled (this was the bunch that was forced into the freighter and taken to japan to work on ther piers in one of the ports. it was published in the late 40's early fifties (i got it from the local library in about 1952.)
very good reading especially around VJ day.
c
i remember my grandmother hugging and kissing me and shouting "the war is over" before this totally non demonstrative scandanavian woman went out to dance in the street.
all of this in a little "tank town" in central montana.
by the way as i remember our people would have sunk the japanese islands beneath the sea if they had had enough bombs to do it.
some of the roumors that had been floating around during the war were turning out to be true and they were not well recieved especially in the heartlands.
c
Were the rumors of ritual cannibalism by Japanese troops ever verified?
Greetings:
I don't know about the "ritual" aspect you mentioned, but John Costello in his "The Pacific War: 1941-1945" wrote about one incident where Japanese soldiers, who were cut off and surrounded and refused to surrender, cannibalized their own dead.
I once asked Father Kerby (a priest-historian of the first rank) what made some of the American Civil war units break at the first moment of enemy fire while others withstood punishing fire while take horrific casualties without breaking?
He admitted that the answer was unknown.
I suspect the reason has to do how people like this hero managed to survive unimaginable horrors and keep on living...
A loud and thunderous OOOHH-RAAHH !
God rest his soul.
In Haruko and Theodore Cook's Japan At War, an oral history, they interviewed a Japanese infantryman who mentions the practice of cannibalism in the jungles of New Guniea.
Well said Kristen.
Sam Brown Belt and Pinks and Greens... He was a professional Officer you can tell by his photo and military bearing.. I am sure that discpline carried him and I suspect a few of his buddies through the hell...
We stand on the shoulders of Giants....
How far we have fallen: Compare this man, this hero, to Major Nidal Hasan.
There's also the interview with an army doctor assigned to China, where for training, they used Chinese prisoners (or if none were in hand, the army would grab some likely peasant). They vivisected them. Or inflicted wounds on them, practiced treating them, then repeat until the victim was dead. Or practice amputations, one after another, working their way up limbs. Really gruesome stuff. He said he'd always thought the Devil must be a horrible, scaly, frightful-looking creature, but it was only after the first of his "training sessions", where he'd been greeted by the most beautiful, charming Japanese nurse, smiling as she handed him the scalpel, that he realized what true evil looked like. As I recall, he sounded haunted by what he had witnessed and participated in, and fully realized how guilty he was.
Post a Comment