In a time of rememberance, a story from the Orient

Posted Jul 29, 2010 by Tom McEwen

Updated Jul 29, 2010 at 01:56 AM

Those of us with any military background at all cannot let these days go by without a salute of one kind or another to our soldiers, sailors and Marines. This is a salute prompted by the anniversaries they represent, and by the continuing world at war and the special attention of those subjects emphasized by the Military Channel and national television’s homage to the patriotic.

It certainly works for me and thus it is indeed a time to think of all of our personal involvements in the uniforms of our country.

For me, this is the 64th anniversary of the Second World War. This is my personal anniversary of being a second lieutenant with responsibilities thrust on me that I had to, and did, face. This is the anniversary of my year-long responsibility as a prison officer at age 22 of the Armed Forces Western Pacific Base X, POW Camp #1, just ashore, near the city dump of Manila (named Tondo) in the Philippines.

For whatever reason, the 785th tank battalion, in which I was the Officer in Charge of the Third Platoon (five Sherman tanks) as part of Company C commanded by Captain Ed Hodowaine, who had been in charge upon landing in the Port in Manila, had been detached and ordered by General Ed Plank to build a POW Camp on that spot.

We never saw our tanks again and found out why when General Plank told Captain Hodowaine and me to build a prison camp, barbwired in and all, guard towers and all, squad tents and all, telling us we would get our prisoners the next day. We wound up with as many as 2,000, which we would work 12 hours a day, housing them and feeding them, finding our own supplies by trading the labors of the prisoners for transportation, food, clothing and whatever else it took to run a prison camp. He told us to build this fenced-in camp and maintain the camp on whatever we could obtain by swapping prison labor.

Captain Hodowaine turned to me and said, “McEwen, you got a little college education, you are the prison officer, so build this camp and run it. Lt. Phil Anderson, you can trade these prison laborers for all it takes to house and feed this camp. Lt. Andy Anderson, you are the maintenance officer. Lt. Coughlin, you are officer in charge overall, but McEwen it is your place to run. Go to it.”

We began getting prisoners the very next day, even before we had fencing and tentage up. One of us gave one of the Japanese a kick in the backside, but was embarrassed and none of our troops kicked or mistreated a prisoner again. In time, we had our prisoners in their squad tents and working every day, and we had turned our guard tower weapons out and not in.

We wound up protecting the Japanese from the Filipinos on the outside instead of the Japanese on the inside. Not one ever tried to escape. Indeed, hooligans early on would ride by and simply shoot into our compound at the Japanese. In fact, they were fed well, and we established an infirmary of Japanese doctors and nurses to tend to the prisoner’s wounds and illnesses. Indeed, a main problem was treating the prisoners for jungle rot.

In time, we had a tented camp that could house almost 2,000 Japanese prisoners. I had found the biggest, meanest Japanese sergeant to oversee the camp. I took care of major rule breaking, he took care of minor rule breaking. I had a bread and water facility for rule breakers over my office. Sgt. Steele, and that is what I named him, handled his own discipline his own way such as a slap or two or standing a culprit at attention in the Philippine sun with a sign around his neck proclaiming his guilt.

By the way, on my staff, I had several baseball celebrities — Joe Garagiola, Early Wynn, Kirby Higby Max Macon - because our battalion commander was a baseball fan and had promised them back in the States that they would not be going overseas anytime soon. Garagiola became my jeep driver, the captain of our baseball team, and a good friend who once went with me on a trip with a prisoner to the WaWa Dam to dig up perfume essence.

He said we could sell it. We could not. The corks in the bottles had deteriorated and much of the aroma had dissipated. Garagiola wound up pouring the perfume in the prisoner latrine to provide us with the best smelling outhouses in the Orient.

I was the officer in charge of that camp for almost a year when General Plank came back by and told us to close it down and move the prisoners to a bigger one on the other side of Manila. During the camp’s life, we were assigned to house-leading Japanese officers who would be put on trial, and most of them were convicted, such as General Homma and General Yamashita.

During that opportunity of a rare command, I don’t think I did anything particularly wrong. We never shot any of the prisoners. The only ones killed were in the bed of an open-aired big truck that turned over outside of the prison camp. No, we never had any women prisoners. No, no one tried to escape, and until we closed that camp, whenever I walked by any of the prisoners, they all bowed. Couldn’t get them to stop it.