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TI: So there's this gradual attrition happening, that they're, they're pulling now people who can't walk and killing them. So how large was the group when it started, and how did it dwindle over that week?

BB: We ended up with the, well, there were groups of a hundred, they would count off a hundred men, that would be a group. And gosh, I never, I didn't ever count, 'cause we were always in the first rank. I think, I think there was practically a hundred of us that went into Balanga, into the field. We, Balanga was the first field that they had barb wired, and we were behind barbed wire fence.

TI: So a hundred made it there, how many started off?

BB: Oh, we were, there were a good thousand or so there at least. They had whole groups there. It was, it was a stopping point.

TI: So one out of ten made it that far? Is that, you started off with a thousand and ended up with a hundred?

BB: Oh, I don't know. I have no idea, but I know that there were about five to ten thousand killed on that march. We still to this day have no idea how many, how many were killed on the march. They would think nothing of taking a whole line out and just shooting 'em, which they did. I was lucky I got to Balanga, and then to San Fernando and there we were put on cattle cars and the Filipino cattle cars were about half the size of ours. Lot lower, about six foot high. Imagine having a hundred men in one cattle car.

TI: Were, were there times during the march and the cattle car that you didn't think you would survive?

BB: I thought that I would survive. There's a story about finding my helmet from Stotsenberg. I'll give you a story, I'll give it to you. And when my hat showed up in a bamboo clump it was my own hat that I left on a shelf at Stotsenberg. I had a think, I had a thought that I would survive this thing... and I did.

TI: How about the men around you? Was that a, did they think they would survive? I'm trying to get a sense of who was able to survive and who didn't, if there was a difference in outlook, or what was the difference?

BB: I don't know. I had one of 'em help me when I was really down in the dumps. I had malaria very bad, and malaria and dysentery are an awful thing to have together. Fellow by the name of Ray Peoples, who later owned a print shop in San Jose, Ray gave me water when I needed it the most, in, on our work detail, and I was sent back, we ended together on a truck, there were thirty of us sent back to prison camp from this work detail. We were rebuilding bridges. So we ended up going to Cabanatuan, the main prison camp, and both of us survived. At the time, we didn't think so. I didn't think I'd last the war, 'cause I was really sick. In Cabanatuan, when this truckload of GIs, we were all from the same company, we were from this group from Salinas, all thirty of us on this truck. And I ended up in what they called the zero ward, I didn't know it at the time, but the zero ward, the Cabanatuan prison camp was divided into a duty section where they could work fellows, and a hospital section. And the hospital section was, had one barracks which was called zero ward. Anybody that went into this ward was expected to die within a few, a few days. I was in there. I woke up on the second or third morning I was there, everybody in the barracks -- this is two floors, two stories -- everybody was dead except me. I'm the only live guy in the barrack. That's a true statement.

TI: That's incredible. I'm sorry, I'm speechless.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2005 Densho. All Rights Reserved.