<Begin Segment 8>

TI: So describe to me, it must have been somewhat chaotic. What was it like in the Philippines after being bombed?

BB: I'm a supply sergeant, so I'm left alone in the supply room, and I'm supposed to take care of the barracks and so forth and so on, to see that nobody disturbs them. We were being looted at that time. See, we had a lot of things that the normal Filipinos didn't have that they wanted. We had clothing which they didn't have, we had watches, we had radios, we had all kinds of nice things. Even though we're a combat unit, we still had pictures and our own radios and things like that, you know, some of 'em had phonographs, whatnot. So no sooner war started that we had intruders into our barracks, going through all the footlockers. See, we had to abandon everything; in combat, you can't take any of your personal possessions, they're all left alone in the barracks. And so all the watches and clocks and whatnot were still there, clothing, civilian clothing and all that. So...

TI: So what was your reaction with, sort of the Filipino natives are now looting the barracks, which are under your control, under your...?

BB: Well, they left with me two little kids, the youngest two. See, we had, we had inductees, we had about half a dozen of 'em, and I had two young kids, they were about seventeen or eighteen, or not even that old. And of course, they were excited and scared to death, and I put 'em to work holding a machine gun, holding the ammunition belt on a .50-calibre, I started to fire the .50-calibre. I don't know whether I hit anything or not, but they were, they were in direct line with my gun. They made a loop to go back to the Clark Field. See, Clark Field was the, was the name of the field there, the name of the facility was Fort Stotsenberg. And Fort Stotsenberg had all the barracks and everything, had an old field artillery unit in it and whatnot, but they didn't have any anti-aircraft, and the 200th was the anti-aircraft. The problem we had in the beginning of the war was the lack of training with the arms that we had, and we didn't have the ammo; the ammo was left back in Oakland, California. So we ended up with thirty-seven anti-tank shells, and anti-tank shells didn't do much good against infantry. There's no explosion, it's just a direct, just like a bullet, a single shot.

TI: Like armor-piercing type of...

BB: So that's what we ended up with and our ammo was still in Oakland. And in those days, the commanding officers ruled everything, so if you had a full colonel or a general in charge of supply, he was the one that had to have the signed document to release anything. He wouldn't release anything without a, without a signature. That's what happened in the Philippines. We went to quartermaster, quartermaster wouldn't give anything; no food, no nothing, because you weren't allowed, you didn't have an authorized signature.

TI: So... I'm trying to get a sense of, of the, sort of the...

BB: Armament?

TI: Yeah, or more the advancement of the Japanese and how quick that was or how unprepared you were for that. I mean, what...

BB: Now, the tank units were divided in half. The unit I was with, one battalion, one platoon, which is five tanks, was assigned to southern Luzon, so we were in the Batangas Province, which is around the, you know how Luzon is bent, sort of? And the lower part is called the southern part, and it's Batangas, and there's a big bay there. Well, that's where the Japanese entered, in the southern part, to invade the Batangas Province. And our five tanks met 'em but they ran into an anti-tank block with a .57 mm German artillery piece, anti-tank gun. Bigger than the guns we had.

TI: And this was on the ship that they...

BB: No, it was on land. They'd already invaded.

TI: Okay.

BB: And...

TI: So they kind of knew that you had these tanks and they, but they had...

BB: Now, I'm the supply sergeant, and I'm always with the supplies. I have two trucks of my own that I had to take care of. And so the first sergeant and myself, and the headquarters' officers, were behind in a, sort of a rear echelon, or actually, two or three miles from where this happened. And the, the Japanese, this anti-tank gun got all five tanks.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2005 Densho. All Rights Reserved.