It was on the 28th of January, 1945, that we landed at Moji on the Japanese island of Kyushu. Each day on the Brazil Maru we had lost a few people. Our captors were never in a hurry to remove the bodies, this day no different. We had a sizeable number of bodies piled up in the hold, directly under the hatch where they were in full view from above. Imagine now, those were the dead bodies of men who had been emaciated with skin stretched over bulging bones, faces like skeletons with heavy long hair and whiskers. It was a gruesome sight, I believe to compare with the photographs from Buchenwald. The Japanese guards had built a fire in their area below to keep warm and the smoke was rising to the upper level. The sun was shining directly down from the hatch so that anyone looking into the hold would behold an eerie sight. There was that pile of emaciated bodies with the sun shining on them through the smoke. I thought that I should have had a camera but then I really don't believe that I would have wanted a photograph as a reminder of that day. I can still see it all in my mind, anyway, as clearly as though I had seen it yesterday.

The Japanese Commander with other officers boarded our ship after we docked at Moji. When they looked down into the hold, viewing the sight that I have just described, the Commander chewed out the officer in charge of us for at least fifteen minutes. He was as furious as a man could be. He ordered the bodies removed, provided a casket for each one and gave them decent burials. Then they sent over new uniforms for each of us. I remember how great it felt to be warm again. Some men had next to nothing to wear and some had a few odd pieces. I had an old Filipino jacket and a pair of shorts that had been issued to me on the tennis court at Olongapo. When we were dressed we were taken to a warehouse on the dock where we were separated into groups. The men who were seriously ill were transferred to a hospital where most of them eventually died.

The final count of those surviving the trip to Japan was four hundred and ninety some, as far as I can determine, out of the sixteen hundred and twenty men who began the trip on the Oryoku Maru on December 13, 1944. This fact did not look good for the Japanese. After the war trials a number of Japanese officers who had been responsible for us were executed.

After we had been uniformed and fed at Moji, we were marched (or staggered) through Moji for several blocks, at a busy time of the day, to the railroad station. There were local citizens crowding the streets. As I glanced at them I could see sympathy as well as curiosity in their expressions. They appeared to feel no animosity, only sympathetic interest in us. I realized how horrible an appearance we must have made.

We were loaded on a train that took us to Casi [Kashii] where we were each issued a heavy army overcoat. When we attempted to put the coats on we were shocked at how weak we were. It took two men to help each man into his coat, one holding each arm of the coat.

From Casi we were transported by truck to Fukuoka where we were housed in a barracks on a military installation. They issued each of us another uniform, a pillow and a stack of six or seven blankets which, unfortunately, were synthetic rather than wool. Wool is much warmer but we weren't going to complain about a little thing like that. This generosity was greatly appreciated, the best that we had received in about two years. We were almost immediately served a fair-sized bowl of rice, each, and a cup of hot tea. Then we were assigned to an area a lot like the accommodations we had had at Cabanatuan No. 1. The building was a long, low one with a peaked roof and a long corridor running down the center. On each side was a shelf, about one and a half feet above the floor, where we slept and ate our meals. We would roll up our bedding and keep it at the back of the shelf during the daytime. We dropped off our shoes on the corridor floor to keep the living quarters reasonably clean. Each section had another shelf along the back wall where we sat and ate our meals and kept our few worldly possessions.

At that time the Japanese were aware that they were losing the war, therefore they were fortifying their country with small military installations scattered around the countryside. They appeared to be expecting an American invasion.

Unknown to me at that particular time, my older brother Bill had decided to go out to the Pacific war area to rescue me. He, my Mother and my younger sister, Donna, had been at home in Sherwood, North Dakota, operating the family dairy business. Bill sold the cows, enlisted in the Army and found himself in the 96th Division, Engineers. He was among the men who invaded the island of Leyte. I recall that when I was in Bilibid Prison, in Manila, we saw the American planes flying over in air attacks on Leyte. The Americans needed the air base there to make it possible to attack the enemy in our part of the Pacific. I heard that the 96th invaded Luzon on the 10th of January and several months later Bill was a part of the invasion of Okinawa. He never did know exactly where I was until we met when the war was over.

Life was quite uneventful there at Fukuoka for several months, arriving at the end of January and leaving in June of 1945. The Japanese took us out for a little mild exercise almost every day. We were still very run down but gradually were regaining our strength. The exercise was undoubtedly good for us.

In about the sixth week at Fukuoka the Japanese must have believed that we prisoners needed a good cleaning plus a medical check-up, of sorts. We walked to the bath house where we were ordered to strip down, wash ourselves off with a bucket of soapy water first and then get in a big tub filled with nice, warm water. It was there where we realized how tough we looked. We saw one another standing there naked which led to much joking and laughter, so hearty that we jokers had to sit down on the floor to rest. We were allowed to weigh ourselves and I was astounded to see that after six weeks off the boat with a small ration of food every day since, water to drink and a place to sleep I weighed in at all of ninety-seven pounds. I would like to know what I had weighed when we got off the boat six weeks earlier. My average weight before imprisonment had been one hundred and eight-three pounds on my five foot eleven and a half-inch frame. What a unique way to lose weight!

We had some emergencies there at Fukuoka, such as the night a young medic, Pfc. Noyes, went out to use the open ditch latrine, which was full to the top with a very thick liquid that you find in all outdoor toilets of that type. Noyes fell in, probably because he was physically weak. After pulling him out they dragged him in where the medics pulled off his filthy, wet clothing, cleaned him up and dressed him. Just overnight Noyes developed pneumonia which left him ill for a long time. One of the medics who helped him was John McCormack Brown from Chicago. He claimed to be a member of the well known, wealthy McCormack family of International Harvester fame, also related to the equally famous Bordens.

I have often wondered why we didn't have many common colds during our period of imprisonment. I had caught cold at the drop of a hat previous to that time of my life. I have always believed that it is healthier for a man to be cold than it is to be warm. Except for the time when we were in the holds of the first. two ships on the trip to Japan, we had been cold most of the time.

We were receiving very small rations of rice each day with adequate drinking water. Occasionally there was soup made from weeds. There was a bakery there that the Japanese had set up for us. If we were ill we were allowed a piece of bread each day, otherwise we could have only a serving of rice. Some of us still had beri-beri, pellagra and skin diseases which were all caused by poor diet.

There was an incident of men trading cigarettes for extra food from the kitchen. The only time I ever refused a request from an officer of higher rank than mine was there at Fukuoka. A Colonel whom I knew and admired asked me for cigarettes because he wanted to trade them for extra rations. I had quit smoking in April of 1942. I told the Colonel that I thought what he wanted to do was very wrong because the extra food that we would take would deprive some other man of his fair share. There was just a set amount rationed. He was pleasant about it and then we discussed the possibility of watching the kitchen to insure that no more of that type of trading could continue. He explained that the only reason he had suggested trading cigarettes for food was that other men were doing it.

Three or four man died while we were in Fukuoka, always sad, but a definite improvement over our past record in other camps or on board ship.

I recall that once, in camp, I made the remark, "Hell, this isn't bad. I spent the first nineteen years of my life in Sherwood, North Dakota, before I came here. I have always said that I would work in hell if the wages were right and it sure is hell here, the wages aren't too bad and I'm not complaining." A few of my friends became curious about my hometown after hearing my remarks and I was forced to tell them some stories about my youth. They didn't believe me when I told them that I had pulled a sled around town, delivering milk (probably frozen) when it was 48 below zero, even 54 below on rare days. Then they heard all about the fistfights in the pool hall, pitching hay in 110-degree weather and even more unbelievable stories than those.

Occasionally we were sent out on work details, piling up sacks of rice or supplies in the storage area, but most of the time we weren't very busy. One of the work details was a trip out to the camp garden. We had weeds to hoe but we didn't work furiously at that. On one of those work details to the farm there was a Japanese woman working in a field nearby. She sent a child over to us with a handful of parched corn for two or three of us.

We always enjoyed watching when a Japanese work detail would come in to our camp. There was always a man in charge with several little girls working. The man would supervise while the girls bailed out pailsful of waste from our holding pits from the latrines. The pits were concrete with open tops made for the express purpose of holding the waste until it could be used for fertilizer. Those little teenagers had the most beautiful complexions I had ever seen, but then all Japanese women have beautiful complexions, probably a result of clean living along with bland diets. The Japanese civilians were always pleasant to us, would look our way with pleasant expressions or smiles.

In June of 1945 we were told that we would be moving on to Korea.  We were marched through the city of Fukuoka, which was an interesting experience. We sat in a warehouse where we watched the Japanese load the ship that we were waiting to board. Leaving Fukuoka, we boarded ship where we spent the night sleeping on the floor, crossing the Sea of Japan.