`FROM WAKE ISLAND TO BERLIN': BOOK EXCERPTS

Sgt. Charles Branum, U.S. Army

Prisoner of War

April 9, 1942-Sept. 15, 1945

Bataan Death March

April 9, 1942-April 17, 1942

"I was walking by myself and there were no guards around. I could have escaped into the jungle, but there was no place to go. We continued to walk and they began to group us in groups. Then we had to stay together. I was on the march for nine days. I had to walk about 90 miles. I helped two men that were in my unit. I was healthy and they weren't in good shape because of the wounds they had received while we were fighting the Japs. The march itself is hard describe. I don't know the words to use, but it was horrible. They were killing men every few minutes. You would hear a gun go off and a short time later we would walk by a dead soldier."

Camp O'Donald

"After we got to Camp O'Donald the men were dying so fast from dysentery, starvation and malaria that we had a hard time keeping up with burial," Charles explained. "We had a place called Boot Hill where we buried the men in mass graves. A few days after we buried them, it came a hard rain and washed away much of the dirt. You could see arms and legs sticking up out of the ground."

(From April 10, 1942, to May 5, 1942, nearly 1,600 American prisoners and 27,768 Filipinos died at Camp O'Donald.)

Bilibid Prison Camp

This prisoner of war camp was located in the heart of Manila. The camp was designed by the Americans during their occupation of the islands as a place of detention for Filipino criminals before World War II.

... The Japanese used the camp as a prisoner of war camp. Prisoners were strip searched as they arrived at the camp and were allowed to keep one uniform, a shelter half, and a blanket.

The food was a problem for the prisoners. A poor quality rice diet with an occasional rotten vegetable was all the prisoners were allowed. Outbreaks of dysentery, beri beri and malaria were common.

... Charles was transported to Bilibid Prison along with 50 other prisoners by truck. Nine of the prisoners died on the way.

Hell Ship to Japan

In the latter part of 1943 Charles was selected along with a hundred other prisoners to go to Japan. They walked to the docks and boarded a hell ship for Japan. Charles never did know the name of the ship because it was an old rusty freighter and there was no name on it. He simply called it a Hell Ship and rightfully so. "They put 1,000 of us on this old rusty freighter. We didn't have any place at all to lie down. It was so hot in there you couldn't get your breath. Several guys suffocated on the trip. They wrapped them in canvas and they were dumped overboard. I got lucky again because they needed 20 cooks. I never dreamed that my name would be called, but mine was the 19th name called. I stepped out of that hole and got some fresh air. It was wonderful."

Coby, Japan

September 1944

"We made it to Coby, Japan, several days later on my birthday, Sept. 4, 1944," Charles said. "I was 24 years old. It was a good birthday present to get off that hell ship."

Camp Mukaishima

September 1944-September 15, 1945

This camp was located on the island of Honshu, a small island in the Inland Sea about 30 miles due east of Hiroshima.

... This prison camp was by far the best that Charles had been in. The food consisted of rice and steamed barley and although there was never enough it was much better than he had had in the past. Luckily so because Charles had dropped from a muscular build of 165 pounds down to a frail 85 pounds.

"...B-29s started bombing Japan daily. They would take us to a mountainside and make us get in sandy caves. They were dangerous to be in, especially if the bombs hit nearby, but we never had to worry about it because they never came close.

"What did worry us were the Japs because we knew the war was getting close to the end. The Japs thought we were going to make an invasion on land. They had signs up all over the place with orders to kill every POW when the first American set foot on Japan. Kill them by any means. No one is to escape. We were all afraid we were going to be killed because there was no place to escape."

The A-Bomb

August 6, 1945

"We went to work at the dockyard as usual on the morning of August 6th. I was on the mast of a ship that was in dry dock. I saw the plane go over. It had been doing this for several days. This day it flew over us and all of a sudden there was a big flash. At first I though I had struck an arc with the welder. Then there was a huge mushroom cloud forming in the sky. There was a mountain range between us and Hiroshima. We watched the cloud until we could feel some of the shock waves. It blew some windows out in a few buildings. We didn't' know what it was, we though a bomb had hit an oil well. The mushroom cloud got higher. It was scary. An uneasy feeling, but we still didn't know what it was.

"... Then when the bomb was dropped three days later on Nagasaki we saw a big change in the Japanese. They were always bragging about what they had done to us, but this day they wouldn't even look at us. They just walked around with their heads bowed. We knew the war was over, but the Japs wouldn't tell us anything. Finally we were told to go over to the British side. They had stolen a radio and we heard that we were supposed to listen for a message from MacArthur. He told us that the Japanese had surrendered on August 14, 1945. He told us to stay in the compounds, but he might as well have said to get out of them, go where you want to because that's what we did."

The First American Flag Over Japan

August 18, 1945

The POWs had a month before they were liberated. While they were waiting the Americans dropped food. The prisoners had lowered the Japanese flag of the rising sun and realized that they didn't have a flag to raise. The planes were dropping food by parachute. The parachutes were red, white and blue. The prisoners took the material to a local Japanese tailor shop to sew the flag. The Japanese worked constantly to finish the flag as soon as possible. On the morning of August 18, 1945, at 11 a.m., 99 of the surviving prisoners fell out for a formal flag-raising ceremony. "I was selected to raise the flag," Charles recalls. "One of the men took a bugle off of an abandoned Jap cruiser and played "To the Colors" while I raised the flag with tear-filled eyes."