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I was interrogated quite often the first three months .
I was questioned about the B29. I had quite a few beatings by
sticking with name, rank and serial number until I saw, by
accident, our own tech orders on the B29. They knew the
airplane pretty well. Where they got the tech orders, I never
knew.
We got to be great liars in our interrogations
but being caught in a lie would result in a beating. The
guards would beat on us quite often and had many ways to make
life completely miserable. Twice, I was taken to an airfield
where they had a captured B17. I was supposed to show them how
to fly it. I gave them everything backwards, low rpm, fuel
mixtures in auto lean, booster pumps off, cowl flaps closed,
every- thing backwards to the proper procedure. They had some
good airplanes of their own, so I couldn't
imagine them
buying my instructions, but they wrote everything down, drew
diagrams, and we all went away happy.
On April 3, 1945, I,
with Col. King and Sgt. Schroeder, was taken to Omori prison
camp, which was located on a fill in Tokyo Bay and halfway
between Tokyo and Yokahama. Treatment was a little better and
we got a little more food. There were 36 of us in the
barracks. We were, mainly, B29 people but we had a navy pilot,
a marine pilot and a B24 pilot, who was shot down on his last
mission over China.
As we were B29 personnel, who had
bombed the homeland, were held as special prisoners. We were
held under guard day and night and were never allowed out in
the main camp to mingle with the other prisoners. Our food
ration was only half of the ration of the other
prisoners.
Later in the spring, we were taken out to
work. We cleared the ground of bombed out buildings and
planted gardens. The work was hard and some of the guards were
difficult. Being special prisoners, we knew we had not been
reported as POWs. Our families were never told anything other
than we were MIA. One Japanese officer told me that they had
heard, through the Red Cross, that my wife had been killed in
an auto accident. I didn't believe it but it was a worrisome
bit of news, false as it turned out.
Air raids were
increasing and we could see the daily results of the bombings
and the fire raids. The country side was being completely
devastated. Our knowledge of the outside world was practically
zero. The regular prisoners would try to talk through the wall
that separated us and give us a little information. We knew
when President Roosevelt died and about the invasion of
Okinawa. We, also, heard a lot of rumors. We hung onto every
piece of news, rumor or not.
We did not know of the
atomic bomb but, after it was dropped, we we noticed that some
of our guards were more vicious while others were more kindly.
The day the war was ended, we were lined up to be taken out to
work. We were stopped by the headquarters building by the camp
gate. Inside, we could see the Japanese girls, who worked
there, crying. Some of the regular prisoners came by and gave
us the thumbs up sign that it was all over.
We were
still not allowed to get out into the camp even though the war
was over. It was another week before we were released from our
special confinement, but we knew it was over and that we had
survived.
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