Densho Digital Archive - Bill Braye Interview

<Begin Segment 1>

TI: Today is May 24th, Tuesday, we are in the home of Daryl Keck in Hammett, Idaho. This afternoon I'm interviewing Bill Braye. My name is Tom Ikeda with the Densho project, and then on camera we have John Pai. And in the room, just sort of listening in, we have Darrell Heider and Daryl Keck. So, so thank you, Bill, for coming here. But why don't we start by just, can you tell me when and where you were born?

BB: I was born in Santa Monica Community Hospital, Santa Monica, California, on March 31, 1917.

TI: And what was your given name when you were born?

BB: My given name was William Earl, after my dad, and last name was Bray, B-R-A-Y.

TI: And I notice in your form that you actually spell it differently, B-R-A-Y-E. How did that happen?

BB: That's because of an error in spelling. When I was about age six, why, we went to live with my grandmother, my mother's mother, and she didn't speak English; she spoke Spanish and Chinese, and she was asked to enter me in school. And she went with my mother and they entered me in the, it was, they added an "E" to my name because my grandmother insisted that's the way you spell "Braye," because in Europe, it's spelled that way in France and Spain, both.

TI: So your grandmother on your mother's side was from Spain originally?

BB: No, California.

TI: California?

BB: She's about fifth or sixth generation Californian.

TI: So let's, so on your mother's side, you are, like, seven or eight generations Californian? Is that...

BB: Somewhere around there.

TI: Wow, so when would, how, what year did the first...

BB: Well, the first women that came to California came over with the Spaniards when they settled in California. And my, way back when...

TI: And do you know about what year that might be?

BB: Oh, around 15-, probably '70 or 1580, somewhere along in there.

TI: Well, that's great, because earlier I interviewed Daryl Keck --

BB: It was before Plymouth Rock.

TI: -- Daryl Keck and his family, he could trace all the way back to about the 1600s, but you just beat him by, by being in the 1500s.

BB: Oh, well, and the women apparently came over as slaves, believe it or not.

TI: So your ancestors were slaves?

BB: Well, not exactly, but you know, you don't know. The only stories I ever heard were what my grandmother told, and whether they were true or not, I don't know. But she claimed that they came over and she was forced to marry one of the Spaniards on board, that was on the ship that she came with, and that started the family.

TI: And so they were, and so you were generations California. That's interesting.

BB: Uh-huh. The first, when they first arrived, why, they were given the amount of land in California that a horse could ride in one day. That's how they parceled land out.

TI: And how did they choose which parcel they would go? Did they just, they'd just go to a place and they, and they'd measure it out?

BB: I don't know, but they, where they finally settled was in the area of Stanislaus County in Oakdale and Modesto, around there.

TI: I would have chosen Santa Monica if I... [laughs] that'd have been great. Now, on your father's side, tell me about that.

BB: Know very little about him. I guess he married my -- he was in the navy at the time, and he married my mother. And my mother was a chorus girl originally, in L.A. And he owned a garage at the time, a small garage.

TI: Now, when you say "chorus girl," so what kind of shows would be in L.A., this is back in the '20s?

BB: '20s.

TI: So these were with clubs...

BB: Before that, around 1915 or so.

TI: Wow, what an interesting history.

<Begin Segment 2>

TI: Did you have brothers or sisters?

BB: I have one sister and I'm a twin. My brother got killed, my twin brother got killed in an accident in the schoolyard right across the street from where we lived, on a swing.

TI: And how old, how old were you when this happened?

BB: Five years old, four or five. And that caused a split in the family.

TI: So how, when you say a split in the family, what happened?

BB: My father left with my oldest brother and took off, we don't know where. And my mother took, went to her mother, mother's place in Oakdale, California.

TI: So it was sort of the tragedy of losing your twin brother, it split apart.

BB: Yeah, family... disturbance, you've had family problems, they split up.

TI: Now, do you recall the incident or the accident, when it happened to your, to your brother?

BB: We were both on the swing, and one of the kids -- I don't remember who -- was pushing on the chain, the swings had chains, they were held by chains. So when you went so high the chains would jerk, and they jerked and he fell out and he got, he hit the border around the swing area, which was a wooden border, I think, and broke his neck. Didn't know it, I didn't know he had... all I knew is that he had been in an accident and was hurt. And ran and got Mrs. Grisby, who was the landlady, and that was, that was that.

TI: Wow, that's so tragic.

BB: It was a tragedy, a family tragedy.

TI: How about just in general, just growing up in -- so where did, where did you go with your mother? Where did you live?

BB: I went, I lived in Oakdale, California, with my grandmother.

TI: Now, where's Oakdale, California? I'm trying...

BB: In Stanislaus County, right, oh, it's between Modesto, the valley, and I guess the Sierra Mountains, I think.

TI: Okay, okay. And so what was it like growing up with your mother in Oakdale?

BB: My mother didn't have very much say about what happened in the house; my grandmother really ran the house. And that was... well, I was raised with a lot of discipline in the family. My grandmother believed in discipline. "Spare the rod and spoil the child."

TI: So what, what did your grandmother and mother do to support the family?

BB: My grandmother lived -- well, she had a husband, and he worked in, was a farm laborer, did pruning and he ran the, he ran the irrigation system for the local cannery, he had charge of all their, they had a lot of areas that grew apricots, peaches, walnuts, whatnot.

TI: I'm curious, in that community, were there very many Japanese or Japanese Americans?

BB: None whatsoever in that community.

TI: How about like Chinese or other Asians?

BB: One Chinese laundry with about three Chinese people in it; that was it.

TI: Okay.

<Begin Segment 3>

TI: And then going on in your childhood, how long did you stay in Oakdale?

BB: Up until my grandmother and I had a discussion, a dispute, and, let's see. That was 1932, up 'til '32.

TI: And so how old were you...

BB: And I transferred to a high school in Salinas, California.

TI: And so you were... '32, so you were about twenty-...

BB: No, not twenty.

TI: No, fifteen, about fifteen.

BB: Fifteen. I was a sophomore in high school.

TI: And so you went on your own, or did you go with your mother?

BB: My mother. My mother lived with her brother. Now, my grandmother was married four times, so she had, except for the last husband who was a Frenchman from New Mexico, from Mexico, and he changed his name to Molina when he came to California. Had a French name, spoke French. And he supported my grandmother and whoever lived in the house. They owned the house... I guess in those days you didn't make very much money. But he always managed to have a new car. [Laughs]

TI: That's interesting. So, so your mother and you leave, or go someplace else. How, what, so what kind of work did your mother do at that point?

BB: Nothing. She, I guess just took care of the house for my grandmother, that was about it.

TI: Okay. And so how was it for you in this new community? What was it like?

BB: Well, I didn't particularly like it, to tell you the truth. But I worked, about two years later, I was working, and I actually supported myself from the age of eight on.

TI: How did you do that? What kind of work did you do?

BB: I worked on anyplace that the cannery had an orchard, I was, I picked peaches and apricots and walnuts, almonds, all that, pears. And I made a little money. The going wage, I think, at the time was thirty-five or forty cents an hour. I usually made five dollars a day picking fruit.

TI: So working, what, twelve, fourteen hours a day?

BB: Oh, yeah. Ten hours, about ten hours a day.

TI: So at a very young age, you were very independent, able to sort of take care of yourself.

BB: I made enough money to pay for my schooling the next year, buy clothes and all that.

TI: Now, in this, in this new community, is this where you came across Japanese Americans, in this community?

BB: Salinas.

TI: Salinas. So that was after, this was next?

BB: 1932 on, I went to high school and I was in mechanics. And we had two or three Nisei kids. One was Inouye, I remember, still remember his name. He's quite wealthy today. [Laughs]

TI: Is that from landholdings there?

BB: Oh, yes. He came back to the original landholdings.

TI: Now, did you have much connection or interaction with the Niseis?

BB: No. Well, I don't know. I don't remember too much about my childhood and boyhood. I'm... actually, I was always looking for something to do when I was in Salinas. So I had a couple paper routes, I had a morning paper route, got up at four o'clock in the morning to roll papers, and then went to high school after my paper route and then had a paper route in the evening. So... and then I worked for Postal Telegraph when I was going to high school. Postal Telegraph I don't exist, I don't think it exists anymore. But it was in competition with Western Union. See, Salinas at that time was a big lettuce and vegetable town. Did a lot of exporting all over the United States, shipping. And so we had a lot of brokers in town, so they were always sending messages on the market, vegetable market, lettuce market, it was a big thing.

<Begin Segment 4>

TI: So after you graduated from high school, what did you do?

BB: I didn't graduate from high school.

TI: Oh, so what happened?

BB: I got expelled from high school.

TI: Oh, tell me this story. This, this is... [laughs]

BB: No. No, no. I got blamed for getting a girl pregnant that I had one date with and never kissed. I wasn't the guy that got her pregnant. She happened to be the mayor's daughter.

TI: Boy, that's a story.

BB: So every one of us that had a date with this girl had to come to the principal's office, and three or four of us that wouldn't admit to anything and didn't know what had happened, and got kicked out. So I was kicked out my senior year.

TI: Were you the only one who was then kicked out?

BB: No, there were three or four of us that got expelled from this deal. Two of us ended up in the tank company. Joe Errington and I, we both ended up in the national guard.

TI: What a story. This was the mayor of Salinas?

BB: At that time, yeah, it was his daughter.

TI: That's amazing.

BB: I had nothing to do with it. That's, that's the funny part of it.

TI: Well, it seems so unfair that that happened. So after that incident, then what did you do?

BB: I found out that I couldn't return to high school for a couple years because of the state laws, so I went to junior college instead. I enrolled in junior college, and I was in junior college when the, we got inducted into service. But in the meantime, I had to go to night school. See, I worked for an ice plant, and they were always trying to make, get new operators to run the ice plant. So I was one of the fellows selected to go to school, so I went three years to night school to study refrigeration. Didn't get a degree for any of that, just got, finally got a license to be an engineer, that's it.

<Begin Segment 5>

TI: So then you were inducted, so you joined the...

BB: I was inducted 1941.

TI: Oh, 1941. So right before the war started.

BB: Yeah, we were inducted, we were the 40th Tank Company in Salinas, California, we were a National Guard outfit. And we were inducted into service February 10, 1941.

TI: And so where did you do your basic training?

BB: Fort Lewis. I was already a sergeant, and I was the one that taught munitions and gunnery and whatnot in the tank company. Taught machine guns and pistols and all that.

TI: So how was it that you were already a sergeant? How did you make that, that jump?

BB: Well, I joined in 1936 and I guess got promoted eventually and first fall I was... you're going to know a lot about my life's history if I keep on talking. [Laughs]

TI: No, this is, this is good. So when you say you, so you, in 1936 you joined the California National Guard.

BB: Uh-huh.

TI: And that was the 40th Tank Company. And so when you say you were inducted in 1941...

BB: We were federalized.

TI: Okay, so you went from a...

BB: National Guard outfit.

TI: National Guard...

BB: To a federal.

TI: To a U.S...

BB: Same thing happened to the 116th here in Idaho. They got federalized and go to Iraq. Same kind of situation.

TI: I see. And so was this happening all across the country? They were federalizing these national guards?

BB: Uh-huh. They federalized almost all the guard outfits in every state, but they all had different missions. Ours was tanks and so there was an outfit from, a tank company from St. Joseph, Missouri, and one from Brainerd, Minnesota, and ours from Salinas, California, we were the three tank units, federalized. And at that time, we only had two tanks. One, one truck, a command car, and two tanks. That was what the National Guard had. So when we got federalized, why, we ended up at Fort Lewis, and basically, they finally delivered a one-half track per unit, per company and some jeeps and motorcycles.

<Begin Segment 6>

TI: So, so we're back at Fort Lewis now...

BB: Fort Lewis, uh-huh.

TI: And now you are federalized. So now you're having equipment to actually train on, at this point you're a sergeant, and this is about February, 1941. I'm curious, so they federalized you. Is it because they thought, the government thought that we were going to go to war, or was there a sense of going to war?

BB: I think it was the beginning of an emergency situation. I wasn't in politics so I don't really know, but what I've learned is that President Roosevelt and the Department of Defense decided that they better have larger army. Because Germany was at war with the United States, they weren't at war with us, but they were invading the coastline and shipping wasn't very safe. So you recall the Roosevelt administration gave fifty destroyers to the, to Great Britain at that time? And so we were one small unit that became a, a battalion, and then we were, in July, I think, we were scheduled to go to the Philippines. We were supposed to protect the airfields there against paratroopers.

TI: And so was there a sense that the war was possibly going to be against Japan at that point?

BB: We knew at any time that we would be in combat, because we were escorted under lights-out, no smoking, and we had a cruiser escort and a, we knew of one submarine. We could see the cruiser and once in a while we'd see the submarine.

TI: So this was July 1941, so this is months...

BB: July and August.

TI: Months before, still, the bombing of Pearl Harbor. And yet these precautions were being taken because, as if you were, you were at war.

BB: We went over on the Coolidge, which was a luxury ship. And what they did, they emptied all the inside of the Coolidge, all the decks, and they put, oh... hampers, like, like the navy has, and I guess everybody, you could, you could look down from the top to the bottom of the, to the bottom of the ship. And actually, I was one of the sergeants and there were ten of us, and we found ourselves a room on the deck, on the main deck, and we occupied the room. So we sailed over to the Philippines in a room, ten of us in the same room.

TI: How many men were on the ship?

BB: The whole battalion and, let's see, there were about a hundred, 120 or so in each company, so that'd be about, oh, 350 in our group, then we had the 200th Coast Artillery with us, from New Mexico, Texas and Arizona. And they were about the same size.

TI: So about 700...

BB: So it was about 700, 750, somewhere along in there.

TI: And so you're going to the Philippines.

BB: Going to the Philippines.

TI: And so when you arrived in the Philippines, what was that like?

BB: A lot of work. [Laughs] The Filipinos had never seen a tank, and we inherited onboard, when we boarded the Coolidge, we inherited all the tanks from the 3rd, 3rd, I guess, Tank Brigade in Fort Knox. We had all their tanks. That's all the tanks the United States had at that time. And so we ended up having, each battalion having fifty-six or fifty-seven tanks. And there was another battalion that came over in November.

TI: So when you say "all the tanks," so the tanks in the, on the continental U.S.A., this is all new, and I don't really understand this, they were sent to the Philippines rather than, perhaps to Europe where the war was going on with Germany? Is that, so they were actually making a strategic decision...

BB: Remember this is before the war started.

TI: Yeah, before the war started, but someone was making the strategic decision that resources should be devoted to the Philippines versus the --

BB: I think we were starting to build them then, and I think General Motors and Chrysler and whatnot were developing and rebuilding, modernizing tanks. Now, the old tank that we had was a Stuart Tank, single turret, a .37 mm. The inside of it was, had asbestos for soundproofing, and the asbestos was stapled, riveted, to the armor through an aluminum sheet. We had aluminum sheet on the inside, it was about, I don't know, sixty-fourth or a thirty-second of an inch think, just, just aluminum covering, to keep the asbestos intact, I suppose. And when the shell, first Japanese shells hit the tank, it caused the rivets to break, and so you had this explosion of rivets all inside the tanks. So the rivets did more damage than the shell did. We had one fellow that, Debennedetti got one right in the throat here, and eventually it killed him. But he lived through it for a while, he lived through it, I guess, about six months or a little more than that, a couple years.

<Begin Segment 7>

TI: So I'm trying to get a sense, so on December 7, 1941, when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, what was going on in the Philippines at this point?

BB: Well, at that time, we were all asleep when it happened. And I had a, I was in a supply room which is, oh, our supply building was about half as big as this living room, and I slept in one end of it.

TI: You called that the "spy room"?

BB: Supplies.

TI: Oh, supply room, okay.

BB: Supply room.

TI: Right, okay.

BB: And I was the supply sergeant, and I had a radio, I had all the radios, extra radios from tanks sitting on shelves, and so I had a radio on, and I had my own radio on, and I heard when he said that this is the... this, we're being bombed and this is real, it's not a, it's not any practice, it's not a drill, this is the real thing. I heard that on the radio, we picked it up on shortwave. And I immediately realized something had happened, I went over and talked, talked to the first sergeant, woke up the first sergeant, he says, "Oh, you're crazy. We have nothing to do with, that's too far from the United States. It's either gonna be here or in our, or on the Pacific Coast." I said, "Well, that's what's on the radio, though, you could listen to it." "Oh, go back to bed, Bill." So I went back to bed. About four hours later, the news reached every place that we were at war.

TI: And so what happened in the Philippines once you realized --

BB: We got bombed.

TI: So almost that same day, that...

BB: We got bombed the next, the very, the same day, actually. Oh, about seven or eight hours later, and at that time, remember this was the Army Air Corps, it was under the army, and we had the generals in charge of army, were in charge of the air force, the air corps. They had lined up all the planes, wing tip to wing tip, because of, they were afraid that spies would count the vehicles... well, they would tell Japan exactly who was there, so this was close defense, keep 'em together. So when we got bombed, all it took was a couple bombs, and the air force was gone.

TI: The same thing happened, I think, in Hawaii, too. They, they had the planes...

BB: All close together, wing tip to wing tip. So we...

TI: I'm surprised a little bit that given the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and you still had several hours, that the Philippines, you weren't on a heightened sort of, sort of level in terms of having the, the planes ready to scramble at a moment's notice.

BB: We were on emergency status, actually. Well, what was it? Second alert or third alert is when the real thing happens, we were on second alert. And all the tanks were dispersed in different areas to protect the airfield at the time. So the closest tank was in between two barracks there, right close to me, and that was it. All the rest of them were scattered all over.

TI: So the, the bombs came from airplanes off a carrier, a Japanese carrier, is that...?

BB: Apparently from Formosa.

TI: Okay, so they... because the Japanese fleet was, was in Pearl Harbor, so, so they were able to do it from Formosa.

BB: I guess, the Japanese had Taiwan, Formosa at the time. That's how we got bombed, they were all from Formosa.

<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.

<Begin Segment 9>

TI: And then what happened? So after they took out your tanks, then...

BB: We, well... have you ever been to the Philippines?

TI: No.

BB: Philippines is mountainous, very mountainous, so we're underneath a ridge, and we're in coconut groves. Right behind us, about a mile away, this ridge was being held by the Philippine army, and they were, and they had a field artillery unit there. Well, the day of combat they disappeared, they were gone. So here we are, and our first sergeant and the headquarters' outfit, they had a couple of half-tracks, they took off to go to Manila. So I'm left there with two trucks and the company clerk, the cooks and myself were alone, and so we had to strike a tent and load it up in our trucks, and we took off to Manila to follow, to go wherever they were going, to follow. And, of course, we ran into roadblocks, the Filipinos, but they, we got through those all right. And we got to Manila and then we were told to go forward, and they were going into Bataan at the time. But we weren't allowed to go to Bataan yet, so we went, we were parked in the river delta down there, below the bridge. They had a bridge called the Calumpet Bridge, that was away from the mainland in the Bataan, Bataan peninsula. And I ended up with my two trucks with the headquarters from the battalion, Colonel Miller. And we both saw all the trucks cross on the bridge. There were about twenty or thirty trucks, they were all empty, not a single thing on 'em. Kind of a lack of command authority somewhere.

TI: Because what should have, what should have been in the trucks going across the bridge?

BB: They should have had men, should have had supplies, should have had food and ammunition on 'em and gasoline. My truck had clothing in one truck, and the other truck had ammo, it had jerry cans full of gas and water.

TI: So why would those empty trucks be going across the bridge without supplies? Just to get out of there?

BB: They were going to Bataan, they were ordered to go. They didn't load up with any supplies, empty.

TI: Was that an indication of how...

BB: How stupid some people are. [Laughs]

TI: [Laughs] Or how quickly they wanted to just leave. Okay. So you're with the colonel, Colonel Miller, you said.

BB: Well, eventually, he joined his own unit, the rest of the unit, and here we have a unit where two platoons of our tank company and the rest of the battalion going to Lingayen Gulf, where the Japanese really landed, the big, the big landing. That's where the main war was. And they ended up fighting and finally moved into Bataan. And our tank company was the last outfit to go into Bataan. I think A Company was the last one the enter -- no, C Company was the last to enter.

TI: And then what happened after you were in there?

BB: Well, they had, well, they had combat all the time. I don't think originally the Japanese army didn't think too much would happen in the Philippines. They thought it would be a minor conflict and it'd be over in a couple, maybe a couple weeks or so. And it ended up at, the first force was practically annihilated.

TI: The first Japanese force?

BB: First Japanese force.

TI: 'Cause they weren't anticipating --

BB: Not very many survivors out of that.

TI: So they were anticipating the, the --

BB: They backed it up --

TI: -- the buildup of U.S. troops.

BB: -- with an entire army, Japanese army. See, by that time, they had all the, all the Japanese army from China was, was breaking out of there, and they were invading different islands and whatnot, so they had quite an army that attacked the Philippines after that.

<Begin Segment 10>

TI: And so they, the main army comes, and then --

BB: The main army came.

TI: -- and then what, what happened then?

BB: Well, see, we lost our air force, we didn't have any airplanes, and so the Japanese air force bombed us every single day. And we always had a recon plane up there, we used to call him Photo Joe, he was always flying around looking things over. So they knew exactly where everything was, except that Bataan is a, at the time was a jungle. There weren't very many farms or anything there, it was all forest and bamboos and whatnot, a real heavy jungle. So we were parked under bamboos most of the time, or mango trees.

TI: And then what happened? So the Japanese had superior air force, they bombed, they had the army...

BB: Well, most of the Americans, I guess, and the Filipinos were... they just all of a sudden fell, they were all, mass killing and whatnot, because they were the forward lines. And the survivors retreated, and we ended up in Cabcaben with the headquarters tanks. I ended up there accidentally with my two trucks. [Laughs] I finally lost one truck, he came, he went ahead of me and got there first, and I went there the next day.

TI: So you're retreating and you're regrouping at this camp.

BB: We're regrouping at Cabcaben, which was right next to Mariveles, which is the tip of Bataan.

TI: And you still have a couple tanks there?

BB: Had about, oh, had the headquarters group of tanks, probably about half-a-dozen tanks, and two or three half-tracks and a lot of trucks, jeeps and whatnot, motorcycles. We ended up setting everything on fire.

TI: Because you knew that you were going to be overrun and you wanted to destroy the...

BB: We were told to destroy 'em. And about that time was, the surrender happened that very same day.

TI: So at that point, the high command had decided you were going to surrender, they didn't want the Japanese to get the equipment, so you destroyed the equipment.

BB: Destroyed everything, yeah.

TI: What was the, the mood of the group? I mean, this was, as this was going on?

BB: Well, you realize we'd never been in combat before until the war started, so we didn't have any experience. We didn't know what to expect. Now, we were captured by artillery unit, and then the, most of the Japanese officers spoke good English.

TI: Interesting. Why... I would not have expected that.

BB: I was in a prison camp, Captain Saito was the commander, he was educated, guess where? A graduate of Yale University. Spoke better English than the Englishmen, fluent English. Didn't speak one word of English 'til after the war. When Japan surrendered, next day he spoke actually, fluent English to everybody.

TI: So I, so he was the commander of this prisoner of war camp --

BB: The prison camp.

TI: -- he never spoke English?

BB: Never spoke English.

TI: Until after the war. Why was that? I don't understand.

BB: I don't know, but a lot of our guards had learned English. We had one we called the Old Sailor who was pretty nice. He was the only one that was really decent to us. He had been around the world, and of course, he was a, had been on merchant ships all his life, spoke fluent English, fluent French, fluent German.

<Begin Segment 11>

TI: Let's go back, so after the surrender, and so the artillery unit comes and takes, and the officers speak English, how were you treated? I mean, what happened next?

BB: He told us to stay there, and somebody would... I don't remember what he said, but he told our commander to go to the, to the road, and we had a main, one solitary road going down, up and down Bataan. It was the only paved truck road there was, and so we were to gather there. We had, we were about quarter of a mile or at least that far from this road, where we went off the road into Cabcaben, and we were supposed to go to Mariveles, which is, oh, about five or six miles away. So when we were walking -- this is the group that was in this Cabcaben, we're about, oh, I guess there was about thirty or so -- and we walked past another infantry outfit, and they had horses with miniature artillery. They used to have these small artillery pieces, .20 mm.

TI: These are Japanese?

BB: Japanese. And they were infantry, but, and they had a few horses, and one of these Japanese was hanging onto a horse's tail, he was exhausted. In fact, they were all pretty well worn and weary. And he was barely able to walk, hanging onto this horse tail. He finally fell on the road, right, right, here we were right alongside, about from here to the road over there. And he's on a different level, we're down here in sort of a little gully, and he's up there on the hill about twenty feet or so higher from us. And that's the path they were on, we're not on the path. And what we later learned was an officer, probably a second lieutenant or something, came over and shouted to this fellow, kicked him and whatnot. He finally ordered him to get up and he wouldn't get up. He poked him with his -- they all wore sabers, and he poked him with a scabbard, nothing happened, he pulled out a pistol and shot him, right in front of us.

TI: So he shot his own soldier?

BB: Shot his own soldier. That was not uncommon. In the Japanese army, it was not uncommon at all.

TI: And when you saw that, what were you thinking when you saw that?

BB: We didn't know what to expect. We thought, "Oh boy, look what's going to happen to us. We're all going to be killed as soon as we get out here." We thought we were going to be killed. So anyhow, I ended up on the march. There were four of us that were friends, we went to school together. A fellow by the name of Lang, Sid Lang, who was tech sergeant, and a fellow by the name of Cunningham, Russ Cunningham, and then Bernard, Manny Bernard. We were the four leading sergeants in this group headquarters company, and we decided that we should, if we were gonna survive, each one of us had to do a task, so we drew straws as to what everybody would do. One guy would get water, that ended up me, one guy would scrounge food, one guy would be a lookout, and the other guy would be a lookout to the rear in order to keep track of the guards. We had that much forethought, I don't know whether it was because of our training or whatnot. Anyhow, why, as we went along, why, as the march began, this is in the middle of the hottest year in the Philippines. We're in the dry season, temperatures were 95 to 110 or so. So the first thing you discarded was anything that wasn't useful; blankets, extra uniforms, anything. So the roadside was just littered, all the way. Blankets, jackets, helmets, anything. Well, I had, when we passed through a constabulary depot, supply depot, I had grabbed a towel, a constabulary towel and wrapped it around my head as a turban, threw the helmet away. That's the way I walked in the march, with this towel around my head. And I grabbed water anytime I could. So what I would do, different than most guys, I would get three canteen (cups). You could hold canteens in your hand, they had canteen cups. Four would be a, be a no-no, but three or two, and I would run to anyplace I saw water and scoop it. They had all these cisterns along the road; scoop water and then go back into line, so I was never bothered by any of the guards. Anybody else that they caught there, they'd stab 'em, beat 'em, or kill 'em.

TI: And you weren't, you weren't hurt by the guards because you did it so quickly? You would just do it and then leave...

BB: We managed to get to the front line always, in these groups of a hundred. We managed to come, the four of us decided the only way we were gonna survive this thing is to be in the head column, head of the column. So we would eventually walk faster and get to the head of each column, we could see what was happening from the column ahead of us. And so we knew what to expect most of the time.

TI: And the others were kind of watching out for you as you, as you did it, also?

BB: Well, we watched the guards, where they were, and they weren't, each group of a hundred had, probably had two or three guards at most, one on each side of us, and then maybe an extra at the tail end or so.

<Begin Segment 12>

TI: So Bill, let me just sort of summarize a little bit. So now, you've been on the Death March...

BB: We're on the march, about halfway.

TI: Yeah, and I wanted to ask, I guess the question to ask was, the brutality of the Japanese guards, and you were just going to start talking about that.

BB: There were different personalities in all guards, all army people. Same way with American army or any other army. And there were some of these guys that would let you get away with murder; you could do anything. Like me running to get water, they wouldn't pay any attention to me. The next guard to come along would shoot the next couple of guys that ran to get water, or bayonet 'em. Their fancy was to behead somebody, and I've seen quite a few fellows beheaded.

TI: And they would, would it be sort of because they were going for water, or would it just be indiscriminate, they would just randomly do that?

BB: If somebody was weak and was hesitating walking, and he was falling behind, one of the guards would walk up and prod him a bit, and if he kept on doing it they'd prod him, they'd give him two or three chances to get in line. Then they'd get tired of the whole thing and the guy would pull a saber out and wham, that's the end of that and you don't have to worry about him anymore.

TI: And so when you saw things like this, what were you thinking?

BB: Who's next? [Laughs]

TI: And while you're in line, are you talking with the others?

BB: Yeah.

TI: And what are you talking about?

BB: Oh, mostly wondering where we're going to end up, and what was going to happen to us. Now, we only had, on the whole march, we only had about three stops 'til we got to San Fernando.

TI: And how long is this march? When you say three stops, how far did you have to go?

BB: We were in about a week 'til we got to Balanga.

TI: So it was only three stops in a week? So you're just, are you marching during the night also?

BB: Yeah, all night long. In fact, that was the best time to march because it was cool. And, see, they changed guards all the time, they were, some of them were riding bicycles, some of them were walking, once in a while some of 'em would be on a truck, all depended on which unit was marching us, I suppose. And most of these, the Japanese soldier hated to march POWs. You know, we're the bottom of the barrel, really, because first place, the Japanese army hated anybody that surrendered. You're not supposed to surrender, you're supposed to die fighting. That's their theory, that's their belief at the time. So we were just more or less gun fodder, they could do anything they wanted with us, and they did. One of the fellows, Sid Lang and I, we had, our units had a lot of brothers in 'em. We had brothers and twins and whatnot, had father and son. So we had two brothers, the older brother was a tech, well, he was a naster sergeant, Alan Lang , and then Sid Lang was his brother, younger brother. Well, Sid and I had gone to school together, we were good friends. And as his older brother couldn't walk, we ended up carrying him. Put his arms around each one of our shoulders, and in between us, and we were helping him walk in the March. Well, finally a truck pulls up and says, "Oh, we want the ailing to get on the truck and we're going to take 'em to a hospital." So we put Allen Lang on this truck along with other POWs. They went up the road and off to the side, and they beheaded all of 'em.

TI: And they went ahead so that you would march by and see that?

BB: No, we never saw it, but later on we found, the Filipinos after the war showed us the graves and whatnot. We knew that they'd been, we'd always wondered what had happened to them, 'cause they didn't end up in prison camp, so we really didn't know. But that whole group was beheaded; there were about, probably about ten or fifteen fellows in that truck.

<Begin Segment 13>

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.

<Begin Segment 14>

BB: Well, in -- I'll tell you a funny story. In this, in this hospital area, I became... I was appointed the sergeant of the guard. We had a detail in this, in the inside of a prison camp to prevent guys from escaping because the Japanese had what they called "ten squads." If anyone escaped, the other nine would be killed, and they did it. They didn't hesitate, they did it. They proved it two or three times at Cabanatuan. And so I was on the guard detail, it was, and I had a whole bunch of guys assigned to me, about ten, and we patrolled the inner fence. Now, there were, prison camp had two fences. It had one with barbed wire and another one that had just plain wire, and the barbed wire was further apart, you could actually get out thorough it, once you got through the smaller fence area, you could get out. And fellows did escape, and they got caught and they would be either beheaded or shot or whatever.

TI: And when they got caught, did they kill the other nine, too?

BB: I was, I was on two ten squads, and both times, they, the fellow, they captured him and beheaded him, and the last time I thought I was going to get it. I was, we were put in, we had a prison within a prison, and I was in the jail and so I had my last meal and so one of the officers, Captain Terry, officer of the guard, asked me what I wanted my last meal. I said, "You know, I love banana cream pie. Do you suppose I could get bananas and some cream or something?" The officers figured out and they got, they made me a little tiny pie about that big around on a rice cake, put bananas in it, and then they had canned, they had condensed cream, condensed milk, and they put this condensed milk on the top. They brought it to me about ten o'clock or so, and I thought, "Well, this is my last meal," and I ate it. At about ten minutes to twelve, a guard came round and said, "Let him out. He's sergeant of the guard again, let him out." The first question the officer asked me, "What did you do with that banana cream pie?" I said, "I ate it." "Why did you eat it? You were forgiven." I said, "Well, I ate it before then."

TI: Wow. In terms of treatment in the camps versus the march, how would you characterize the, the difference?

BB: A lot depended on where you were and what you did. Now, the, in Cabanatuan, they established a farm, and they had a group that went out on the farm detail every day. Now, they were supposed to weed, they were supposed to plant, we planted, whatever they told us to plant, we planted 'em, and most of the time it was, they were planting sugar, sugar beets. Yeah, sugar beets. The sugar, there were sugar potatoes, sweet potatoes. I was trying to think of the, the translation. Any rate, I ended up working on a farm several times, and one time, I and another fellow, we decided we're gonna scoff some of this stuff and bring it in a cabin and have it for dinner. So each one of us took a few leaves of these sweet potato vines and put 'em in our pockets. One of the guards saw us put it in our pocket, so when we were lined up ready to go into the prison camp from the farm, he had this fellow and I slap each other. And the fellow that, was Joe Errington, the biggest guy in the tank company, the most muscular, and he and I had a slapping contest. Each time the guard, whose nickname was... his name was Ohara, but we called him "Air Raid," and he insisted we hit each other harder. So finally Joe knocked me out, well, then he was satisfied. Knocked me out, and they carried it back into camp. But they all carried bamboo poles, and if you were not working fast enough or doing, or taking too much time eating or something, you got this bamboo... most of the time they hit you over the head.

TI: So how long did this continue? I mean, what, how long were you in this camp?

BB: I was in Cabanatuan, I guess about a year and a half, in that prison camp, and then I went on a detail to Las Pinas to level off an area that they built, an airfield, to teach young Japanese how to fly, which turned out to be a mud bog, and every time they would land, why, the wheels would stick in the mud and they'd lose the plane. So they'd make all these recruits carry the plane back and repair it, and each one of the, they got the same treatment we did, they, they got beat up, usually. That was the custom of the old Japanese army, that corporal could beat the private or the recruit up, and the sergeant could beat the corporal up and the officer would beat the sergeant up, and then a captain would beat the lieutenant up. That was, that was the way they ran their army.

TI: Food; what, what did you eat while you were in these camps?

BB: Food? Rice or... in Japan, in Japan we ate a lot of wheat. Remember they had Manchuria, which is wheat-growing area, and so what the prisoners ate was wheat instead of rice, or we had rice that had been discarded. Wasn't the right kind of rice, because it wasn't white. Japanese people love white rice in Japan proper. And if it wasn't the right kind of rice, we got it. And then the soup was usually, in the Philippines, it was mostly greens off of the, when they harvest the sweet potatoes, their greens were given to the POWs, they made soup out of it. Or we had cariboa soup. They had, they would actually allow the butcher a cariboa or two a day. Now, imagine, a prison camp has three to five thousand prisoners in it, so one cariboa is not very much meat. You get about the size of a spoonful of meat, if that much, in your, in your rations, that was it. And that only happened about once a week, if that.

TI: So I imagine your weight just dropped and dropped and dropped.

BB: Oh, yeah. I went down, I weighed 175 when I went in, went to Bataan, and I ended up weighing about 105, 110. When the war ended, our camp was fed for a month by the military. They dropped food to us, and we stayed in the, nobody came to rescue us, we never saw an American soldier, so the Japanese captain finally got tired of us and put us on a train, went to Nagasaki. Nagasaki, why, there were a lot of ships in the port there in Nagasaki, and I went on the aircraft carrier, the Chenango.

<Begin Segment 15>

TI: Did you see, when you went to Nagasaki, the damage from the atomic bomb?

BB: Some of it, the edges. Believe it or not, it was all covered up. They had put a sort of a canvas or cloth fence all around so you couldn't see anything. So you walked in a corridor down and nothing, you see nothing but cloth on one side.

TI: So who, who put the cloth up, the Japanese, or...

BB: I think our own navy did.

TI: How about sort of remnants of people who had burns and things, like from the, from the bomb?

BB: Didn't see any. Now, when I, we came in on the train, I, I was so excited about being free again that I forgot my canteen and mess kit and everything on the train. In fact, I, I walked out of that train with Barracks Bag that had a couple things in it; I had a deck of cards in it and a lot of yen. See, when the, when the war ended, our, Captain Saito decided we should be paid for all the labor we had done, so they paid us with Japanese yen, and we had about, we had earned in Japanese monetary system, a thousand yen apiece. So here was all this yen going around, nobody wanted it. So I decided, "Gee whiz, that'll make good souvenirs," so I gathered a whole bunch of it. And I had in the back of a musette bag, I had it lined with these yen. So when I came into Nagasaki, all these guys want souvenirs, so I handed 'em all these bundles of yen; I kept one bundle. When I went back to war crimes, I, we had a monetary exchange. I took this bundle of yen, and it was gold yen. I still have one hundred-yen piece at home. I got five thousand some-odd dollars for this little bundle that I had.

TI: Wow. So, the yen was, was metal, not paper.

BB: No, no, it was paper.

TI: It was paper?

BB: Gold yen.

TI: And you got that, that kind of exchange?

BB: It's like our, like our money. You have American money that has silver reserve on it?

TI: Right.

BB: Well, you don't see it anymore. This is the old-time gold yen that the Japanese had.

TI: So that could be reimbursed for actual gold?

BB: Actual gold. The full value of the yen. If you had a hundred-yen note, an ordinary --

TI: Too bad you didn't, too bad you didn't keep all those packages. [Laughs]

BB: If you had a wartime yen note, it was worthless.

TI: Right.

BB: Probably worth, a hundred-yen note might be worth a, ten cents at most. But if you had gold yen, full value. I didn't know that.

<Begin Segment 16>

TI: So when you... I'm just trying to get a sense of the feeling, because you were in a prisoner of war camp from 19-, early 1942?

BB: I got captured April the 8th, April 9, 1942.

TI: So '42, '43...

BB: Up until...

TI: ...'44, '45.

BB: I was there 'til October of, no, September of '45.

TI: Yeah, so almost, almost three-and-a-half years you were...

BB: Three years and eight months.

BB: Yeah. So when you finally found out that you were to be released, I mean, what was that like?

BB: Captain put us on this train, we went to Nagasaki, I got aboard the, the Chenango was a aircraft carrier. It had been standard oil tanker, a 29,000 ton, they converted it to a, to a medium-sized aircraft carrier. It was big. Well, when the kamikazes, it got hit three or four times by kamikazes, so the flight deck, the elevator from the holding deck for the hangar was bombed, was, a plane went right through the elevator. And one of 'em had hit the, the bridge, part of the bridge, and one of 'em had hit the tail of the darn thing. So when we got on board, they were still repairing it in Nagasaki, they were still welding, and they were just, they had finally refitted the hangar elevator, it worked finally. And so when I got on board, we were supposed to have cots and sleep on the hangar deck. Well, I got right next to the, to the bridge, to the island there, and I was laying on my cot and some fellow fall back, went by me and he says, "Hey, let me look at you." He looked at me and he says, "You're Braye, you're Earl Braye." I said, "Yes, I am." "You remember me?" I said, looked at him, "Vaguely." He says, "You and I worked at the bank together." We did; I ran the elevator in the Salinas Bank. So he was the chief. We went into the chief's quarters and I was fed like a king. I could have anything I wanted.

And this lasted a couple days because we went from, we boarded the Chenango in Nagasaki, went to Okinawa, and at Okinawa, why, the bay was too shallow for an aircraft carrier, so we had to disembark down a rope ladder -- I'd never been on a rope ladder in my life -- down that and then jumped onto an LCM below, and the navy guy told you when to jump. If you missed, we had twenty-foot waves and you'd be crushed against the ship. So anyway, I jumped and landed in the thing with a bunch of other fellows, and the LCM would only go so far and we had to wade the rest of the way, so you ended up wading about fifty yards onto the shore. And then they picked us up in trucks and took us to a center, an airfield center in Okinawa. There we were assigned to a plane...

TI: Before we go there, I'm trying to think. So in these days that you're free, what was the thing that stood out the most in terms of the thing that was just most pleasurable or satisfying about being free, and can you remember any thing, incident, person, food item that you just really think, "Wow, I'm free," and it hits you?

BB: "Finally we're going to get to do what we want, and to get a full meal."

TI: So it was around just getting a full...

BB: I think that's the first thing everybody thought, we'll finally get a regular meal instead of the stuff that they dropped to us.

TI: And when you were, especially in the chief's quarter where you could have anything you want, what did you want, what did you eat?

BB: I had a steak and some potatoes, and then they made any pudding I wanted. So I said, I said, "Oh, gonna have anything I want, I'd like to have some Jell-O." So I had a Jell-O pudding.

TI: That's good. Okay, so continue, I was just, I was curious. So you went... what was that? So you're now at another camp, or where are you now? Another base?

BB: I slept in the chief's quarters.

TI: Okay.

<Begin Segment 17>

TI: No, but now that you went off, you went on that landing, you landed...

BB: We landed in Okinawa and they had a, there was an airfield and they had a shack built on the airfield, which was a couple tents. And while we were there, we were assigned, I was assigned a two-engine bomber, what was the name of that bomber? At any rate, they were using bombers, B-29s and two-engine bombers to take us to the Philippines, and we were going to Manila. So I ended up on this, being assigned to this bomber. Any rate, in the meantime, we saw that there was a Red Cross doughnut wagon on one end of the field. So a bunch of us, here we are, the remnants of the C Company have gathered together, about half a dozen of us, we decided to visit the doughnut dolly and have doughnuts and coffee, a special treat. So we went over there and I'm, I'm standing there and chewing on a doughnut, having coffee, when they called my name. And, of course, I'm a mile away from this, from where you get onto the plane, field, so my plane takes off without me and my unit's a bomber. They, what they did on the bombers, they put a four-by-eight, two sheets of plywood across the bomb bay lengthwise, so they had two sheets, eight-foot this way and four feet wide, and there were two sheets on each bomb bay. So they allowed any POWs to ride anyplace they wanted. So they would ride in the bombardier's compartment, the engineer compartment, anything. When this thing was in the air, this guy who was riding in the bomb compartment pulled the bomb lever. Eleven guys fell to their death, and we watched 'em fall. I think it was about three miles in the air, just probably about a thousand feet up, had eleven guys fell to their death.

TI: Boy, they, they go all the way through a war, and then something like this happens.

BB: Uh-huh. So any rate, why, I ended up waiting for the next plane, which was C-46, and I rode in the, right next to the pilot. Co-pilot's seat, I sat in it all the way.

TI: So the prisoners of war were given special status?

BB: We were, we were treated really well. Our plane caught fire, one engine, so the pilot said, "Don't worry, we'll give it CO2," so they did, and he would go up, I don't know, as high as this thing would go, and they'd shut the engine, by that time, the engine was on fire again. They would give it the CO2 and glide. That's, we glided four or five times that way. We got to the highest point in the Philippines, which is Aparri where there was a small airfield, this thing landed, a bulldozer came and pushed it off to the side, they let it burn, we were all of us get off the darn thing, and about a few hours later, they flew on a C-47. We flew on a C-47 same pilot and co-pilot and navigator with us, flew us over Manila, he couldn't land, so we ended up visiting all the POW camps, Cabanatuan, go down as far south as Palawan, come back, and finally...

TI: He was giving you an aerial tour of all the --

BB: He gave us an aerial tour of the whole thing. So we finally, about three or four hours later, landed in Manila, and once we landed, we were in another, we were 29th Replacement Depot, which was a fenced-up area with high fences, just like a prison. And one side was, the Japanese on one side, you could see 'em through the fence, and we were given orders, "When you walk past, you don't say anything, you don't touch anybody, you don't even look. Anybody that breaks the rule, you'll end up in jail. We'll put you in prison." So Lang and I went, we were together again, so Sid and I, we stole a jeep. Right outside of the 29th Replacement Center they had barracks, and they had WACs at that time. And they had a WAC, the WAC first sergeant had her own jeep. We went over and decided, "Well, it's got a full tank of gas, let's borrow it and go visit, we'll go back to Batangas and see what's going on." So here's the tire changing iron, the jack and everything, we got that tire changing iron, put it on the lock and pull it, broke the lock, and took off. [Laughs] We actually stole a jeep.

TI: So was your sense that as a, like, again, POW status, that you were kind of golden? That no matter what you did, you were going to be okay?

BB: Well, we knew that they'd have a tough time finding us. So anyway, we went down to Batangas, and met the mayor and had lunch or something with him, a meal. They thought it was great, we got back in the jeep, took it back, and parked it where we found it.

<Begin Segment 18>

TI: Now, I'm wondering, the, the group that went through this experience, your company and that, when you were together, what was the mood? Were you guys exuberant because you were free, or was there, were you guys at times melancholy because you had seen so much --

BB: A whole bunch of us ended up coming back to the States on the same ship. We were on a PA, personnel attack carrier, and we were mixed in with regular army, regular navy and all that. And three or four of us were from the tank company, from Salinas, we were on the same ship. Another fellow and I ended up, I never played poker or anything in my life, so they were shooting dice, and this other guy named Frank Cabral, he says, "You don't know how to play the game? Just do what I do. Cover anything I do the same. We'll come out winning money." So we threw the dice and I ended up covering everything he did, I won 800 bucks. We got into San Francisco Bay, we get under the bridge and we watch ahead, and San Francisco had signs all over Fort Mason, "Welcome Home," and had something underneath it, they were taking down the sign.

TI: They were taking down --

BB: Fact, it was being taken down when our ship was landing.

TI: Now, why was that? Because they, because most people had already returned?

BB: Had already returned, yeah. It was two months later. So, I ended up at Letterman General Hospital, and they put us in a compound that had been the prison section for Italian prisoners. And we were behind barbed wire, they were, had these twelve-foot fences around. Well, of all things, my old girlfriend comes to the fence and says, "What would you guys like to have?" I says, "Get us a pair of wire cutters." She worked for the navy and a few hours later comes back, wire cutters. So we cut a hole the size of a man in the fence. Chain link fence, cut a hole, we took off. Whole bunch of us took off to San Francisco, and we had a ball. [Laughs]

TI: So I'm curious; looking back, the Salinas group, do you as a group still get together, or did you guys get together after that and just...

BB: We still do to this day.

TI: And what do you guys talk about when you guys get together?

BB: Oh, sometimes little things that happened in prison camp, where we were, we talk about why we ended up this way. And then, most of us have problems, so we end up talking about each other's problems.

TI: I mean, as a group, do you guys feel fortunate that you survived all this, or do you guys talk about that?

BB: Well, the ones that survived, most of us, had good jobs before the war. I ended up getting back into the army. I ended up, I reenlisted as a master sergeant, finally ended up as a warrant officer. We get together, there are a half-a-dozen of us that are very close. We went to school together, and the first sergeant and I were real good buddies. We, we have known each other and our wives for years, and I'm the one that has always kept track of everything, that's why I'm editor of the Sea Lion, I have all the records and one thing or another, all the rosters. I keep track of what everybody is doing, and the ones that want to contact me. And there are about half a dozen that are very close.

<Begin Segment 19>

TI: I want to ask a question, this is kind of switching gears now. I'm thinking that before the war and after the war, you had some contact with Japanese Americans in the United States, and I was wondering if what happened in, during the war, and being a prisoner of Japanese soldiers, if that changed or influenced how you, you perceive Japanese Americans?

BB: Well, we had a definite dislike for the guards because of the way they treated us. The guards could get away with murder, and in our strictest discipline in the army, we ever, we weren't accustomed to treating people that way. And so we, it was the first time we ran across anybody that was really taking advantage of the fact that they had the gun and you didn't. And we had a particular dislike for some of the guards. Now, some of 'em became very good friends, others didn't. 'Course, when the war ended, they all wanted to be buddy-buddy with us, of course, and because, you know, at the end of the war, close to the end, the Japanese themselves were starving. Maybe you didn't know that; they didn't have any food. And they had... theirs is a step society anyhow, was at the time. If you were a samurai, you were king of the hill. If you were a soldier, you were next to a samurai. If you were a farmer, you were at the bottom of the heap. And they had no... in the old Japan, no like for women. Even the wealthy women didn't get along with, unless you had something they wanted. If you were wealthy enough to where you had food or had something the Japanese soldier wanted, you were his hero. And in, being a prisoner in Japan, I suddenly found that out, that if you were a woman and were married to a samurai, you couldn't do anything wrong.

And one of the jobs I had was going on a charcoal-making detail. We went into a wooded area, cut down bamboo, mostly bamboos, and piled 'em in mud huts, closed the hut over, and made charcoal. Japanese were pretty good at that, they knew how to make charcoal, and we used the charcoal to heat our barracks and to cook with. In this, right next where we made charcoal was a lady, a Japanese lady, who apparently was very wealthy, really had expensive kimonos and jewelry and whatnot. She came out, talked to the guard, and gave each one of us a treat of food. And we had, first time we had some kind of fish, had fruit, she brought a lot of fruit out. Japan had, China had mandarin oranges, she gave each one of us three or four of these oranges, but she made sure that the guard had anything he wanted. So, and there was one guard, which we, we called him "Peg-leg," he had only one leg. Peg-leg didn't like me. [Laughs]

<Begin Segment 20>

TI: So, so there were some guards that you really disliked, and again, the question I was trying to ask is, did that color or influence how you viewed Japanese Americans after the war?

BB: No, I did something that was against their thinking. First thing they knew, I was a first sergeant, so, and the first sergeant, you take all the punishment that's delegated to anybody that's done something wrong. So I, I got a lot of beatings. This particular guard, when we first went into -- I'll have to get at the beginning -- we got off the Japanese ship, they put us in a railroad yard, a holding area. And I didn't have anything. I'm standing there, and apparently, standing up, everybody else laying down or sitting or kneeling or whatnot, I looked pretty tall. So an interpreter and a Japanese soldier came over and they said, "You," and they pointed to me, and this interpreter spoke pretty good English, he says, "You will pick up that bag." It was a Gladstone bag. Do you know what a Gladstone bag is? It's a big bag about, it's a travel bag, and it's about this wide, so high. Gladstone is the travel bag for going on long trips, this is made out of elk hide, they wanted the bag. So they made me carry it up to the prison gallery. I didn't know how far it was, going uphill. About a mile, about a half a mile. Another fellow walking alongside by the name of Whitney says, "I'll help you carry it for halvers," so I said, "Okay, whatever's in it is half yours." We got out of prison camp and there's a big yard, bigger than this house, twice as, three or four times bigger than this house, yard. It's the gathering yard where they count the prisoners and the recreation area, where they can loaf and whatnot. Any rate, why, everybody has to open everything up and show what they've got.

So I open this bag up, well, there's a, this camp has English, Dutch, black Dutch, white Dutch, one Canadian, one Aussie, and then the fifty Americans who just came in. One of the Englishmen comes in, a sergeant by the name of Marshall. Marshall's occupation is in, in Britain, he was a professional thief. So he comes in and he says, "You're not getting away with this stuff, the guards are going to take everything. Let me go through your bag and take whatever you want and I want, and we'll split it." "Okay." So he gets a bunch of stuff, fills his pockets inside his shirt and goes back inside the barracks. The guards come over, and boy, they raided everything. It had white T-shirts, that's the first thing that went. Had white towels, they went. It had underwear, that went. And then they had all kinds of shaving gear, and so this belonged to a fellow that had been in China. I still have his address book. And it was a marine in at Tiensen, and he had his own, had a Harris tweed suit, but no, no coat, had the pants and vest, had lots of underwear. So I ended up with quite a bit, quite a few pieces of underwear, which I gave to different, other Americans, too.

And so we know the Japanese want this bag, well, I don't have, I've got a canteen but no carrier, and I didn't have a belt. So I took it, we had a carpenter in the camp, an Englishman, he says, "Well, what do you want me to do with the bag?" I said, "Cut it up, make me a belt and a canteen carrier, here's my canteen. Fix it so that I can use it, carry it." "Okay." He says, "If I cut it up, you're going to get an awful beating from the Japanese." I said, "I don't care. I want this. Cut it up." Well, the guards found out that I had it cut up, I got outside and got, oh, they beat the hell out of me for about two or three hours and they let me go. Well, Peg-leg was one of those. He wanted that bag in the worst way. So every excuse he had, on work detail when I come in, I got a beating. And in fact, some of 'em were so severe that it got registered by all the fellows when they were freed, and they made affidavits about this beating. And so I'm in the, in the English army, they made a deposition on it, the guys in the American army all made depositions on it, the guy from Canada made a deposition on it, and I have a record of it. I didn't know why I'd been selected to go to war crimes, and this was the reason, this one beating. They had proof of how bad I'd been treated. So any rate, see, they had something against me. I had, they wanted this bag in the worst way, I had it all cut up, it became patches for shoes, lot of guys didn't have, they had worn-out shoes, particularly the British army, and so that became insole or outside patch for the shoes, shoe leather.

TI: Okay.

<Begin Segment 21>

TI: Now, we're running late on this tape, so I want to ask, kind of just to finish up, with all your experiences, and now you live in this area, I'm curious. There's going to be a, they're talking about doing a memorial about Japanese Americans at the Minidoka camp. And I was just curious how you felt about, about spending money to do something like that, to memorialize the Japanese Americans who were, who were incarcerated at Minidoka.

BB: I have... I don't have mixed feelings. I say, let 'em build it. And I hope it shows what happened to them and how they got there. When you have a memorial, it explains the reason for the memorial. Now, we know that this used to be a garden area, and they grew a lot of vegetables, whatnot. So...

TI: How about the fact that they're using money to do that, and rather than perhaps doing a memorial for the men who died on the Bataan Death March or in the Bataan prisoner of war camps?

BB: We have memorials over there, and I've been to a couple of memorials, in fact, I was accused of having, trying to get a credit for helping a memorial be built, which I had no part of, I just smoothed some of the cement on it, because of, the History Channel, they wanted me to look and see what made this memorial. What do you think a memorial is? Is it redemption? Is it thanksgiving?

TI: I don't know. What do you think a memorial should be?

BB: I think a memorial should be a part of history, and tell us who was there and how they felt in general, and why they were there. Now, we know that we made a big mistake of imprisoning Japanese Americans. We should never have done it. Should have let 'em live their own way. And I felt that way about Salinas; here we knew a lot of the Japanese, why should you take these fellows and put 'em in an enclosure away from their homes when they were part of our community? Gosh, I went to school with these kids. Why punish them? They didn't do anything. And I've talked to several of the fellows in the 442nd, of course, naturally, you would. Curiosity, what they went through, they were darn good soldiers.

TI: Good. Anything else you want to talk about or end with? I mean, this was, again, an incredible story.

BB: No... I think that our part is a matter of history, even if it isn't in history books. We talk ourselves, among us, and we had little things that we did that we don't talk about very often, except among ourselves. I don't think we have any animosity. In fact, most of us have friends in Japan that we really love and like. And through the years, because of age, we've lost communication, they've died and whatnot. And I guess the young Japanese don't want to have any memories about us or anything, so we leave it stand that way. What's forgotten is forgotten.

TI: Now, do you think that's a good way of going, or do you think it's important that some of this is remembered so things like this don't happen again?

BB: I think it should be a reminder that we made a mistake, just like the Japanese made a mistake in our treatment. Maybe they understand why they did it. We think, or most of us think it's because of the samurai tradition. And I'm a pretty good reader of samurai, so I know quite a bit, I've got quite a library at home of the Japanese army and of course, the POWs, I must have about twenty or thirty books of that same thing. And I just hope and moan mine, that what some of the writers have written about never happens.

TI: That's good. Well, on that note, thank you very much for the interview and your time. This was excellent. Thank you.