Ludjapie's Lagniappe

Re-Post: Christmas Letter

2010-09-30T21:13:00.001-05:00

Plaquemine, LA
August 23, 1943

My dear J. E.,

It seems sort of strange to be writing my Christmas Greetings to you now in the hot summer time, but now is the time if I want you to get your Xmas Wishes from all of us – who love you and miss you very much.

Close your eyes and think hard – I’m sure you can picture the stars shining brightly, the church bells ringing out for midnight mass – after you enter the pew you gaze around – the altar beautifully decorated, the choir singing Silent Night, Father and the altar boys coming out for Mass, the beautiful sermon Father delivers, then Holy communion, remember I’ll be praying and thinking of you at the Blessed Virgins Altar the manger, the little Infant in the manger, Mother Mary, St. Joseph, the shepherds, sheep, oxen, the cedar trees, evergreens, can’t youjust see it all, I know you can my dear.
Remember the sermon about the New born Infant, he is watching over you for us – back home – the Christmas gifts, nothing very expensive, just a remembrance, we will have the usual Xmas excitement at Grandmas, I will be thinking of you my dear.

We were hoping you might be with us for the happy day – I suppose we will have to make our plans for next year. I hope you enjoy the Christmas box from home – there were so few things we could put in, besides our love. We will be able to send a package every sixty days. Next time, will put in a football, and bedroom slippers, we had only two days to get the Christmas box off in – you should have seen us madly rushing around – Freda was on nite duty at the hospital – but regardless she took me to Baton Rouge early the next morning – it was hard to get the things they specified we managed pretty well – Auntie sent most of the drug store items, Grandma sent some, Mr. Frank Danna sent the cards and dice, Daddy and I the rest.

We are still waiting for a few lines from you – remember this was written in August – maybe we will have had news from you when you get this – I often wonder if you received the cable – only a few words but from home – after such a long time, last Christmas I was so worried and upset, this year we feel much better and have hopes of seeing you sometime soon.

Peter G. was in an accident he has a leg injury he may limp a little nothing serious. He is away from home – last time I saw him we talked of the good old days and Gizzard, - Lester Carville was in an accident also he was hurt about the face, nothing serious he will be home with his folks for a month, he is fat looks grand, still has plenty of freckles, Tootie has been away from home almost a year, Elizabeth sure misses him we all do.

We all wish you a Happy, happy Christmas, and New Year, be sure you make a few New Year’s resolutions, and wishes. We all send you a big, big hug and kiss, and remember, we are praying hard for you, hope you and your friends have a nice Christmas, until we meet again, my dear.

Love,

Mama

Re-Post of Letter to Parents Letting Them Know He Was Free

2009-10-13T11:06:00.000-05:00

This was the first thing that Grandma got after daddy was liberated. They didn't know whether to believe it or not. Grandma's father, Dr. Landry, wrote to someone he knew who was in the military to find out if it was legitimate or not.

This is the reason that daddy gave for sending his parents this note. They were told they could write a telegram home and to get a piece of paper to write on - daddy only had a piece with a Japanese censor stamp on the back (he didn't know it was there).

I needed a piece of paper to write twenty-five words telegram to my mother. So I wrote, “Am free and safe. Will be home soon.” And I printed it all out and gave it to the guy and he took it. And what happened, my mother tells me when I got home, that they knew that the Philippines had been re invaded but they didn’t know whether we were released or not. And she got this letter in the mail from some colonel that she never saw, never heard about written to her and she opened it up and my little slip of paper was in there, not a telegram. So she looks at it. It says, “Am free. Will be home soon.” It was all printed. She looked on the back and there is a Japanese censor thing on the back and they didn’t know what that was. So she didn’t know whether to believe that it was authentic from me or whether it was a cruel trick that someone was playing on her. So she took it up – she had someone take it up to LSU to someone who knew Japanese up there and they couldn’t tell what it was. It was what they call a chop block or something that - - it’s a stamp but they call it a chop block, I think. Anyway, that Japanese character on it, the people at LSU didn’t know what it was. So she went around the air strip and the people around town and they didn’t know anything. And word hadn’t come out yet that we had been freed so it was maybe a week following that she got a telegram from the Marine Corp that I was free. But I still had that paper. And then, of course, it was all authentic. But evidently they couldn’t get it telegrammed being censored. This guy who was in charge, he just brought out an envelope and stuck it in the envelope, no explanation or anything. It’s strange but that’s what happened. That was the only communication we made while I was in prison camp.

J. E. Dupont, Jr. Scholarship

2009-05-26T09:38:00.002-05:00

Today we are presenting the J. E. Dupont, Jr. scholarship to an 8th grade student at St. John School. The scholarship is for free tuition for their Freshman year at St. John. We look for a student who is active in their church, school and community and has a good GPA. If anyone is interested in donating to this scholarship, please visit www.stjohnschool.org.
Thanks!

Iberville Parish Veterans Memorial

2009-02-21T11:00:00.003-06:00

Iberville Parish has a new Veterans Memorial. There are some letters from veterans engraved in brass and are part of the memorial. One of them is from daddy to his mom on or about 4/26/1944. It reads:

Dearest Mother, Received package and letters and can't find the words to express my sincere thanks for all. Thank all for writing. Made me very happy. Thinking of you and all constantly and looking forward to day of happy reunion. Love and best regards to family and friends, Lovingly, Joseph E. Dupont, Jr.

About J. E. Dupont, Jr. Part X (Last of the Interview)

2008-02-17T13:14:00.001-06:00

Asked how the Depression affected Plaquemine. The Depression affected Plaquemine greatly but we didn’t feel it. We didn’t feel it. My daddy had a job at Texaco, bulk plant manager. That’s what he was. And Grandpa was a doctor and we didn’t feel the Depression or feel . . . I remember I felt guilty, but I remember the clothes that I had and at school, I would see some of the clothes that the others had and they would bring their lunch. There were no cafeterias then. And I’d walk the two blocks from school to my grandmother’s house to eat. And some of the people from the plantations. . . their fathers worked on the plantations. A lot of those would come to school. They would have cocoa and sugar sandwiches. They had two pieces of bread and they had cocoa and sugar mixed. They would kind of mush it a little bit and put on there and that was their dinner. And a couple of times, I’d get back to school early and I’d see them eating it.

Then again, I remember there was a movie downtown my Grandma let us see. Her house is just where that traffic light is, the second traffic light . . . that’s where she lived. So uptown where the bank is, where the Citizens Bank is as you come by, there was a big theater, beautiful. They called it an opera house. It was built for people to perform stage plays and operas and things. They called it the Opera House. Well, they converted it to a movie theater. Well, when I was five years old, I’d be at my grandma’s house and on Saturdays, there were cowboy pictures so I would, with their permission, walk up and go to the movie because if you were under seven, you didn’t have to pay. So, I’d walk up on Saturday afternoon. I’d get ten cents from my daddy to buy candy and then I’d go in the movie and watch it until it got dark. I’d see it over and over again. And then I’d walk home and go to Grandma’s. That was the way it was. So, I’m trying to get to what point I was working on. What was it? Oh yes, the neighborhood. I remember going to the show on Saturday. I had to dress. You went away from home, you had to put on different clothes. You had play clothes, then you had dress clothes. So I walk in and they had these Eaton collars . . . the Eaton School in England. It’s kind of a flare out but it was up. Anyway, I was walking one day, going up to the movies and some kids were passing by and some of the kids went “Yea, yea . . . “ You know what you say. And I thought right then, “Look, I’m all dressed up. I wonder what they think.” Because I wasn’t at school that way. So I was aware that there were people poorer than we were. Of course, there was nothing I could do about it.

Asked if he remembered how people dealt with the lack or shortage of food. Not really, because at that time, I was six and seven years old so I really didn’t pay much attention to it. I knew that there were people who . . . because these people would come to the house. They would come to Grandma’s house. And people riding the trains . . . the train would stop and some hobos would get off and they’d come around and I remember them coming to the door. And I remember my Grandmother . . . they’d knock on the front door. My Grandmother would open the door. “Ma’am, could you . . . “ I could hear something he said. “Well, go around to the back door.” They’d have to do that. They’d go around to the back door and they’d get the cook to give them something that they would eat. I saw that. I saw a lot of that. And of course, with Grandpa being a doctor, sometimes people would come and pay the bill and I’d be the one to answer the door all the time because it was too much trouble for Grandma to get up and all that so I’d run and see what they wanted. And to show you how it was in those days, I mean it’s not like that now. And I tell this only because she had a heart as good as gold. But I’d go to the door sometimes and, “Can I see the madam?” is what they’d say, a black person. So I’d come back. I’d say, “Grandma, there’s a black lady out there to see you.” There were white ladies and there were black women. But this was the way she grew up. And she was as good as gold as anybody. She wouldn’t hurt a fly. But this was the way she . . . it was a sort of thing that it was, the way it was down here. I was caught up into the thing too. I felt as they felt. It was natural, I imagine, if I’m around it all the time. I wouldn’t purposely injure anyone or anything like that. But yes, I was in that group. And when the thing came, when the big integration came, Angela was teaching out at school and we were thrown into that. And after a while, you began to see and it’s no problem now. But back then, it was a sort of problem.

Asked about his teenage years. Okay, well, that’s when I was in Plaquemine High School. And that’s where . . . the athletics were there. We were involved in that, of course. And we had girlfriends of course. And we had dances. It was groups around here who would have dances for teens. And we’d go to the dances and in the summertime especially, it was nice. We were growing up. Everybody had a girlfriend and people were just starting to learn to drive. Of course, the girls learned to drive before we did and the girls would come by and we’d be . . . and they’d honk the horn and we’d go running out, and shout “Want to go take a little ride?” Yes, we’d go out and take a ride. That was the deal. And then when they put traffic lights in town, that was funny thing because the girls would come by and ask if we want to go for a ride. So we’d go around and purposely try to get the red light to stop. That was a big deal, going to the traffic lights and going through them. But we’d do things like that and then we’d have parties. One of the girls would have a birthday party and they’d invite the boys and it was that kind of thing. And it went along like that and evidently, we got older and grew up and became seniors and . . .

Asked what were some of his high school memories as far as socially or academically that made a difference in his life. It wasn’t academically . . . socially, probably. Yes, I got to know how to act around the girls. When you first start out, you don’t know anything. I remember they were having these dances and guys who were . . . I tended to be around guys who were a little older than I was for some reason. And they would come by and you had to be a certain age to go to the dance. And I think you had to be fourteen or maybe thirteen. I forget. And I didn’t know how to dance, of course. My sisters were little babies so they couldn’t help me. So anyway, they said, “Man, you ought to come to the dance. It’s a lot of fun.” I said. “Yes, but I don’t know how to dance.” “It’s not hard. That’s not hard.” So there were a coupld of girls. There was a place here in town called the Alamo, not because it’s from Texas or anything, but there were two men who originally had a family from there that came over and they opened up this . . . it was sort of a soda fountain place. Ice cream, hamburgers stuff like that. And it was a hang out and this was where we’d be a lot of times. But you got to be around a lot of girls and they got to know you and even though you weren’t going with them or anything. And so, we were talking one day with them and they were saying, “Why don’t you come to the dance?” And I said, “Well, I don’t know how.” So one of them said, “I tell you what. After school, why don’t you and so-and-so come by the house and we’ll teach you how.” So, this is what we started doing. It was ballroom dancing. How to move your feet and what to do and how you’re supposed to slide them and not pick them up and don’t step on the girl’s toes and finally, you began to realize what rhythm is and tempo and so I eventually . . . I never was a great dancer, really, but I managed. And so then, I said, “Okay.” I told my mother. She said, “That’s fine. I’m glad you . . . “ Because she wanted to promote me socially also. So I started going to the dances and that was fine and then you get attached to a girl and that point on after a while, she leaves you and you’re heartbroken and we all went through that. I think I lost maybe three (laughs). But it all turned out for the best. And then we graduated and everybody kind of went different ways and I knew I wasn’t ready for college because I barely. . . well, not barely, but I was strictly a “C” student. I didn’t study. I didn’t really care. Athletics was more important to me. So I said, “Okay, I’ll just hang around and see if I can get a job maybe around for a little while.” And I graduated in June and in July, there were no jobs. I thought I could get a job at a filling station pumping gas or something. The town was still . . . no industry around here at all. This was in 1940. Now they had a foundry across the river, across the bayou. They had a big foundry area and they hired some people but that’s about all.

I had always wanted to get into the Marines so I went up to the post office to see if the height . . . because I thought I had to be six feet to get in. I said. “Well, that’s not for me. I’m not going to be six feet.” Then some guy told me, “Yes, look, they got five feet six up there.” I said, “Oh?” “Yes.” I went up and it was. So I talked to this other fellow in line I said, “Hey, what about it? We can get in the Marines because we don’t have to be six feet tall now. And we might got to China.” “Boy,” he said, “that sounds good.” I said, “Yes, tell you what.” I said, “Why don’t we go down Tuesday, get the train here, and go down to New Orleans and see about it.” Because they didn’t have a recruiter coming around. “Okay.” So Monday night he called. He said, “I’m sorry. I’m not going to be able to go down to New Orleans with you.” I said “Why?” He said, “Because my Mama don’t want me to go getting involved with submarines she said. She don’t want me under the water and she said I can’t go.” I said, “No, man.” Oh so that was it. So I had to go by myself. But he thought he was going to be in a submarine. His mom did. Anyway, he later went into the Army.

I went down and it happened that they needed a couple more that day to be shipped out. They got us that day, put us on the train. I had to send a telegram home saying that I wasn’t coming back home on the ten o’clock train. Yes, I wouldn’t be back. I was going out to San Diego. I didn’t know how we were going to get there. So I sent the telegram. Well, we got on the train and it was a train that passed through Plaquemine going to Dallas, Texas. Well, they figured I’d be on the train. Somebody had told them that’s how they get you out there, on a train. People weren’t knowledgeable in those days at all like it is today. And they were out there at the depot waiting. But I was so tired I had gotten into my Pullman bed and I was asleep. And the next morning, we were leaving Shreveport or going into Texas, the porter came by waking us up. “Man,” he said, “They had some people at the depot at your place.” I said, “What do you mean?” “All kinds of people out there,” he said. “There’s your parents and . . . “ I said, “No, why didn’t you wake me up?” “They said don’t wake you up. I told them you were sleeping. They say don’t wake you up.” And he had a bag of something and mama had given me a change of clothes and stuff like that because I didn’t bring anything with me.

Asked if he got to see them before being shipped out from San Diego. No, I didn’t see them again for five years. Well, it was really almost six years. I thought . . . everybody said you go down and get accepted and you come back home and they tell when you were to go to San Diego. And at San Diego, they said, “Okay, when you finish your boot camp training, you get a week, a ten day furlough home.” Okay, that was fine. I was expecting that. But as soon as we finished, they came in and said, “Well, you guys are lucky. You’re all going to China. All going to the Pacific area.” I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “Got to go out there.” He said, “People have been trying to do this for years and can’t get the opportunity you have and all of you guys are going.” He was really upset because he was one of the old times, figured people had to earn their way to get out to that kind of duty. So that’s why I had to call and tell them I had to go. I was going, leaving.

It was exciting. It was adventurous. I never thought I’d get there. I’d heard them say, “Well yes, man, you ain’t getting to China.” You might wind up on Guam or Wake Island or some place like that but no, to get to China, you got to . . .

Well, we get on the ship. And of course on the ship, we’re a bunch of recruits and you have to have a chain of command, so there was a lieutenant in charge and he had what they call a clerk that worked in the office with him. Well, one of the guys who was the clerk, he came from my platoon and I knew him and everything. So we had gone to Hawaii and we spent a couple of days in Honolulu. We were going from Midway to the Philippines. Someone said they were making a list down there of who was going to which place. And he came by. He said, “Tell you what, Dupont.” He said, “You talk about China aren’t you?” I said, “Yes.” He said, “Well, tell you what. For a carton of Lucky Strikes, I’ll put you on the list.” He said, “I’m typing the list up.” I said, “You got to be kidding, right?” He said, “For a carton of cigarettes, you go to China.” “Man, you got it.” So, I went down to the ship store and bought the carton and gave it to him and went on to the Philippines. Then we went up to Chinwangtao, which is up in North China and they had . . . called the guys names off and we had to get off. Some of them said, “Oh, man.” I’m sitting back there, “Man, I got it made.” It was at Yangtze River, get into Shanghai. Get off, got it. His name was Albert. “That a boy, Albert. You did a good job.” Then, later I come to find out the list had been made up already. He saw who was on the list. Then he went to them and he ripped them off. Oh yes. Albert was an opportunist. But I wasn’t mad at him. The fact that I was there, you know. I was so happy to be there.

Asked again about life during the depression. They had a poor house here as I remember. Yes, there was a poorhouse. I guess the state must have had something for really indigent people. And I remember I’d tell my mama about some of the . . . they’re going to send us to the poorhouse. I said, “Where is the poorhouse?” She said, “Well, tell you what, when your daddy comes to pick you up, let him take you by there.” And he came and he drove me down some street where they had a big double, duplex house and he said, “That’s the poorhouse. That’s where people stay that don’t have anything.”

Asked what his family thought of Huey Long. My grandfather was against him. Because he was for the poor people and my grandpa thought he was a charlatan and, of course, I don’t think my . . . I don’t know. I guess my daddy voted for him because of the tie in with the Dupont’s. And I guess mama did whatever he told her to do. But my grandfather, I remember he didn’t particularly care for him. I remember that.

Asked about the tie in with the Dupont’s. Well, I remember that there was a Dupont judge and they were the ones who asked him to come down and speak. And he was . . . they were allied with him. So I guess my daddy was assumed that he was in there. I don’t think he would . . . Well, people didn’t know how you voted. I just assumed that he voted for him. Because his daddy voted for him and all of his stepbrothers voted for him. So I assume he was in that group. Now, whether mama did or not, I don’t know. She never said. But I know my grandfather didn’t because he kind of put down on him. He would make remarks.

Asked about his grandfather (Dr. Adrian Landry) going to medical school in New Orleans. He went to Tulane University. Oh, he went to Jefferson College which was down the river here at Convent, Louisiana. And I think that was a glorified high school at the time is what it was. It was a boarding school. And then from there, he went to Tulane. That’s where he got his medical degree and he worked at Charity Hospital with the ambulance crew. I got the pictures of him with the horse drawn ambulance and all the guys. And I have pictures of his classmates. But that’s where he went to school. And then when he . . . he was from Nottoway and Nottoway was his home. His dad was the owner of Nottoway. Of course, how that happened, he married. His dad Desiree Pierre Landry married Cordelia Dugas who they named my mother after. Okay, they were sugar planters and so Desiree Pierre was a sugar planter too but he didn’t own anything. He was just an overseer and everything. But when he married his daughter, he felt that they should be lifted up socially so they negotiated and bought Nottoway Plantation. And so they bought Nottoway at the time from the Randolph’s. and that was in 1896 or 1890 . . . I forget. No, before that. Grandpa said he was a little boy there. He grew up at Nottoway. That’s how it was. And then of course, Grandpa remembers that while he was in college, his daddy died. So, he stayed in school and then his wife. . . no, wait. First of all, let me back up. His real mother died. Grandpa’s real mother died when he was twelve years old, I think. So then Desiree Pierre looked around and finally he met a socialite from White Castle called Folse and Molly Folse was the name. So he married Molly Folse. She was the one who he grew up under, but that was his stepmother. Let’s see how it works. So he was in school. He was in college. And then Desiree Pierre dies. So this is his stepmother there. Molly Folse was there then. Well then Moly Folse, she tried to run the plantation and she wasn’t capable of doing it and so it went in debt to the bank. And the bank called all the boys together. Grandpa was still in school then. They called all the boys together and said, “If you can come up with . . . “ I think it was fifty thousand dollars. At that time, that was a lot of money. “If you can come up with fifty thousand dollars, that’s what’s owed now. You got to pay that now or else.” So they couldn’t come up with fifty thousand dollars. The bank was going to take the plantation, Nottoway and all the land with it. This guy’s name was . . . can’ think of his name. So she couldn’t do it. The boys couldn’t do it. She had married a guy named Keith. I didn’t tell you that. Did I tell you that? She had remarried a guy named Keith. And grandpa was in school then. So when he came back, I guess it wasn’t like it was before. When he was talking to us about his situation, he said, “And Ma’am Keith.” He called her Madame Keith. He didn’t call her “Mom” or anything. He was a little perturbed about it all, and that she . . . Anyway, so she had to give it to the bank. Now what the banker did now . . . this is what the banker did. I can’t think of his name but the lady’s still down there, his wife. He put the money up himself to pay the bank off and he took possession of Nottoway. I can’t think of his name. So this is what he did. He told her, “Okay. This is what I’m going to do for you, mrs. Keith. I’m going to build you a home wherever you want and then you sign over the thing to him.” And they did. I can’t think of the woman’s name. She lives there by herself. Her husband died. I can’t think of their names. It’s bothering me. The house is getting run down and rambling and years came by and her husband died and she was by herself. But she evidently must have had some income because he was a banker. The a guy from California came. Dees I think is his name. He was the one who remodeled it all like it is today. And he bought the home from her with understanding that she could live in it as long as she still lived. So this was the deal. And then he got a pile of money, a couple of million dollars, to refurbish the whole place – got original furniture that was there before and redid it all and really built it up nice.

So then, after he got it to that point, that’s all he wanted to do. So he then sold it and went off to some other place to do the same think. Well now, it’s changed hands about three or four times. The hospital people in Australia bought it. I don’t know who owns it now. But the woman is still living there. She makes dolls. What’s her name? (her name was Mrs. Owens).

Abraham: Well, the tape is flashing, so I’m just going to go ahead and tell you thank you so much for this. It’s been invaluable. . .

Dupont: Well, I don’t see how it’s so valuable.

Abraham: Of course you don’t. You’re a very modest person.

Dupont: No, no, no, I don’t, but I mean nobody would care about this.

Abraham: They do. They really do. I promise you.

Dupont: Well, I have to take your word for it because you’re a pro but I can’t see how that would benefit.

Abraham: Well, they do. It’s interesting at least to me. But there’s lots of researchers who come in and they want personal narratives about things that went on that, yes, you can read in the history books but it’s so much more interesting when . . .

Dupont: Well, when it’s someone else, yes, but we didn’t have any continuity at all here. We’d stray off and. . .

Abraham: You’re supposed to. I promise.

About J. E. Dupont, Jr. Part IX

2008-02-12T14:38:00.001-06:00

Asked about going to LSU – That was for me to get a job. They figured if I went to college that would be . . . and after that, they would find me a job. Even if I got a degree, they would . . . They wanted to get me settled in some type of employment. I went there from forty-six. Pat was born in ’47. I started the summer of ’46. I went first semester of ’47 . . . went to that summer school. Then I went to the last semester of ’47. And then I started in January and that’s when I had . . . problems started. I loved biological science. The graduate assistant, he wasn’t the instructor, I think. Dr. Gates was the professor. It was hard for me to take notes. Because I didn’t have my reader. . . But I was able to follow his lecture and then go with the text, also. So when it came time for the exams, I’d have to go outside and the graduate assistant would come out and we sat on the steps and he’d read the questions and he’d give me the full possible answer. Couldn’t help himself but stressing. . .

I took history. I took biological science both courses. I took Spanish. I tool physical ed in the classroom. I took government. What else did I take? I took philosophy. Philosophy I took with Dr. Carmichael. Oh, he was something else.

My favorite book in high school was Northwest Passage. I mean I read that. It’s about New England when Roger’s Rangers were there under British rule. But they were a group of rangers who fought the Indians in that thing and it was a very good book. I mean it really got me. That may have triggered me into it. I just love to read that kind of material.

LSU had maybe twenty-four thousand students then. It was big. I thought it was very big. And of course, the stadium was . . . they had dormitories in the stadium. Of course, they had the barracks, the Pentagon Barracks. And they had Pleasant hall and I think they may have had one other hall for the ladies, for the girls, Amphitheater was there. And the rest of the men were in the stadium. And I was in the stadium one time. Most of the time I was in the barracks, Pentagon Barracks. There were three of us to a room. You could have four. We only had three in my room. And then when I went to the stadium, it was just too big and you had to go upstairs and rooms were larger but it was all concrete. Didn’t have any . . . to go anywhere you had to walk a long distance. But the . . . where the swimming pool is, the Field House and there and the cafeteria was there. And that’s where everybody would hang out in between classes. We’d go there. Now the big difference was another place, but they had little snacks that you could get in the Field House. But the big cafeteria, we would eat there out big meals. But for snacking and sitting around and going swimming, the pool was there. That was a nice area. You could stand up on the balcony that was around the pool and watch the people and it was . . . and, of course, they had the handball courts in there. We’d play handball a lot. It was nice. It was a nice college town. But I just kept trying to learn. I didn’t really get involved in the college life.

I was busy and then Angela was down in New Orleans and I’d go down there one weekend and she’d come up here. And I’d just go down on a Friday night and come back and stay a night because she had a place where she rented a room somewhere.

Asked about his kids – Oh, there’s Pat. Well, his name is not Pat. It’s Joseph E. Dupont, III. And then there’s David. And then there’s Kathy. And then there’s Teal . . . her name’s not really Teal. It’s Caecelia. We call her Teal. And then there are my twins, Angela and Andrea.

Asked about how he feels about the Japanese today as compared to some of your colleagues and some of your veteran friends as well. – Hatred is not good for you because it tears you up inside when you do that. As I mentioned before, the people that did all these awful things are no longer living. They’re all dead. However, we don’t know about the culture. Whether the children in Japan today, the young people today, if they were put in the same position as their forefathers, would they have done the same thing? I don’t know. But culture runs deep and as I mentioned earlier, the Premier of Japan just recently – the first Premier since the war – to go and pay his homage to the deceased Japanese soldiers of World War II. The rest of them didn’t do it. He did. He also is the one who recommended that the Diat change their constitution to allow them to have a military army instead of just a police force, possibly an army and a navy. I don’t know if he mentioned a navy. But he wanted one so that their country could be on the same level as other countries in the world to be able to participate in peacekeeping activities throughout the world. So this is leading me to believe that the militaristic underlying part of their culture may be resurfacing again. I don’t know. But I’ll have to wait and see if he has any more such suggestions or if they do go to a full army, I would become a little suspicious of their intent.

Asked about what he would want as far as an acknowledgement about the POW camps and the way the Americans were treated and the way Koreans were treated and the way Filipinos were treated, - All I want is an apology. I don’t want any money. A lot of guys want the money. All I want them to do is to acknowledge that their soldiers were this cruel and that they were this savage. That they had no compassion at all. There were some who did. They weren’t all like that. In fact, we were only around the guards probably from Formosa or maybe Korea, but there were Japanese there also. And they were awfully cruel. Most of them were. Some were not. Some were fairly decent people. But you can’t say they were all that way.

Asked if he thought the ones who were fairly decent made a difference in his survival – Oh, I’m sure they did. Because the interpreter down at Palawan before he got hurt in an automobile accident down there, he and I were quite friendly because he loved American songs. And he was the one who got me into driving trucks where otherwise, I would have been maybe totally blind working out in the field with the picks and the shovels and everything. So he was a decent Jap and we had a couple of other ones. They didn’t do favors for you but they weren’t cruel. And maybe they would offer you a cigarette every now and then. But the whole hierarchy knew this was going on and didn’t seem to try to correct it any. So you have to bring the whole group but there were exceptions. There were decent guards. In fact, I read somewhere – I forget where it was – that a diary that someone found on a dead Japanese soldier about the . . . in Manila, when the Americans were . . . in the Battle of Manila when the Americans were retaking it, there was a section called Kaizon City . . . a walled section. The old wall section, that’s Kaizon City. The old wall section, it was built by the Spanish and Filipinos lived in it. It was almost like a ghetto. Well, when the fighting got bad, the Japanese had to drop back into this area for the protection it had because of its walls. But it was . . . the civilians were still living there. And they went on a killing frenzy. They slaughtered those Filipinos. They killed the mothers and the babies and the children. It was a total frenzy. When the Americans got there, they saw all of these people just slaughtered. So I guess they got caught up into this. But anyway, this guy’s diary said . . . he told about it. He said how he hated to see this happen. And I forget whether he said he had to do it or he was provoked into doing it but it was nothing that he would want to be involved in. So there were some. This was in his diary.

The following is an interview done on January 29, 2002 by Jennifer Abraham with the T. Harry Williams Center for Oral History at L.S.U.

Asked about growing up in rural Plaquemine during the twenties and the thirties.

Okay, my paternal grandparents were Auguste Dupont, like August with an “E” on the end and a little accent above that, and his wife was Ida Marionneaux. She was a Marionneaux. But that was not my father’s mother. My father’s mother was Alice Barbay but she died shortly after he was born, so my grandfather married again. I never knew really, my paternal grandmother. But Mrs. Ada – we called her Mrs. Ada – she more than took the place of my grandmother and she raised my dad and all the rest of them. Then on my maternal side, there was Adrian A. Landry. He was a medical doctor and he married Celeste Barker who was one of the belles of the town at that time and they had seven children. My mother was the second child. They named her Vera . . . we never could figure out why and finally my grandmother said, well, her husband Dr. Landry had met some gentleman when he was in New Orleans going to school. He liked him very much. He and his wife were very cordial and they were Spanish and her name was Vera. So that’s where that Spanish name crept into the French group. So my mother married. Her name was Vera. Her middle name was Cordelia – that was my grandfather’s mother’s name – and, of course, she hated that name. She said, “Don’t put that on my tombstone.” And Vera Cordelia was where her name was. Everybody just called her Vera. So she married my dad, who was Joseph Emile Dupont. Of course, I was born afterwards and I was named after him. I’m that junior. Everybody calls me J.E. because at the time there were about three Joseph Duponts in town and they didn’t want to get them confused with me. So I was called J. E. all the time. Still am. So of course, I was born in 1922. That’s a long time. Saturday, I’ll be eighty. Wow.

So growing up, my earliest memories was I can remember a bulb. I was laying on my back. I was an infant I’m sure and I was laying on my back in a bed and looking up at the ceiling. And in those days, they had the wire that would come down and it would just be a bulb there that you would turn the bulb on and off. I can remember seeing that bulb and evidently my mother must have been changing my diaper or something but that’s my earliest memory. And we were living in a home in a little house on Meriam Street that my grandfather owned. She came from the Barker side of the family and they were wealthy peope and they owned quite a bit of property. And of course, she had homes and when my mother was married, they lived in one of her homes. So I was born there but later when I got to be about four or five, my dad build our home on Fort Street which is still standing today. And it was a small home with two bedrooms at the time – a little living room, a dining room, a kitchen, and two bedrooms. And there was a driveway. Of course, all of the roads were gravel. There were no paved roads at that time. There were no sidewalks, no concrete sidewalks. There were plank walks as we called them. They were boards with spaces between the boards and that’s what people walked on. And when you were a child, if you ran through that barefooted, you would get your toe caught in there and it would stub you toe and that would be a terrible thing to have a stubbed toe. And most of the young kids had that happen to them.

I had a brother who died. When I was five, he was three. Yes, he was three and I was five. And earlier that year they used to have state fairs and the state fair – South Louisiana State Fair was held in Donaldsonville. And they had a beautiful baby contest down there. And of course my mother being proud of her little boy – he was a fine looking little boy – and I was too old. I don’t think they would have put me in anyway. So they brought him down, entered him in the baby contest and he won the thing as the healthiest baby in the South Louisiana State Fair. And then they had a little trophy and I think my mother had it but I don’t know where it is now. But they came back and that summer he got sick. And they put him in the hospital and they didn’t know what the problem was. My grandfather was a doctor and at that time, I was just five. I just knew he was sick. And on one afternoon, they said, “Okay, we have to go to the hospital.” I said, well . . . “Come on, got to go see your little brother.” I said “Okay, let’s go.” So I went. He was lying in the bed and he’d say, “I see you.” You know, little kid. Anyway, they said, “Okay, why don’t you go on outside now.” I remember this well. I went outside and I began walking around and I didn’t know why. I just walked around. Finally they came and said, “Okay, come on in now.” I came in. When I went in, he was dead. I can see him just lying in the bed with the covers and I couldn’t understand. I said, “What happened?” “Well, he was sick,” they told me. That’s all they could say. And of course, later on, I found out that he had, in those days, locked bowels. That was what killed him. And I don’t know what they did but I remember my grandfather saying that . . . he was really depressed. Said, “Well, here I am a doctor and I can’t save my own grandchild.” You know? It really shook him. So, that was a big tragedy. Then my mother was in a state of depression, of course. And I remember everybody was, “Don’t say this and don’t mention that and don’t mention his name.” And all of this. But eventually she got over it and that was the sad part of it.

But then I was by myself again and didn’t have anybody to play with. And so I would always go up to my grandmother’s house. They lived up in the old section of town in a big house next to the hospital. The hospital was a big hold home that was converted into a hospital. That’s the way it was. They didn’t have any big ones like they have today. I lived near there and I went up there most of the time and the boys who lived in that area I became friendly with them and they were my playmates. I very rarely stayed at home because my dad was a Texaco Oil Company . . . the guy that . . . I forget what they call them. Anyway, he was in charge of the company here and sold gas to the farmers and to the filling stations. And he’d always go to work and he’d bring me up to Grandma when he went to work. And Mama was, at that time, didn’t have anything to do and she’d got into a bridge club and ladies and that kind of stuff and she was involved in that. So I was up at Grandma’s most of the time. She almost raised me. And then, my mother then had my sisters. I was nine years old when my first sister was born, Barbara. And then, I think a year and a half later my other sister, they called her Celeste. We call her Willie because she looked like my uncle Willie when she was growing up. (laughs)

So Barbara and Willie were born and Mama had to kind of curtail her activities so she stayed home, but I had already gotten used to going up there so I went up there all the time. And that was the place where I grew up. My friends were there. We started school. Daddy would drop me off at school and I’d go to my grandmother’s at noon to eat because there were no cafeterias then. We went to St. John’s school which was right above the big church there and that’s where I grew up most of the time. Daddy would come pick me up around seven o’clock at night and I’d go home, but I ate my meals at my grandmother’s.

Grandma’s house was moved. It was a big home built by her dad, James L. Barker, who was one of the mayors of Plaquemine. They were well known people. Anyway, so it was a big two-story home. They tore it down now. It was next to the old hospital that was built there. After they all died, they sold the home to the hospital. They wanted it for a parking lot and they tore it down. But it was huge. As you walked in, there was a front door in the middle of the house. It was kind of a big bay window on one side. As you walked in, there was an open room to the right side. This was his library. It was a big room. And then on the other side was the parlor and it had all the old antique furniture and the fireplaces with all the tile and all that and big lights coming down. It wasn’t chandeliers though. They may have had them before but they weren’t there when I was there. And then you walked straight beyond that. There was a little small hall about six feet and then there was a sitting room where everybody sat after supper. The table was about as big as mine. We’d seat thirteen sometimes.

And then on the side of that was the pantry and on the side of that was a big kitchen. Now this is the downstairs. Then there was a bathroom off the sitting room and that covered a lot of area. It was a big room. Then there was an upstairs, and you would go upstairs and there was Grandma and Grandpa’s room and the big bathroom and then there was their daughter Eva’s room. Then there was her grandson that she took . . . not her grandson. . . her mother . . . her sister’s child. The mother . . . her sister died at childbirth with this child so my grandma took this child and raised it as her own. And that was his room. She had four boys so they were all . . . and they were all grown. Then they had a playroom which was like a big fence around it and in all of this big area where the stairs came up where you could go in and close the door like a gate and a wooden fence like, and that was a playroom for children. Then, in the back, there was a big shed. It used to be a carriage house but they had the carriage thing but they didn’t use that. It was closed up. But then there was a big wash area and a big ironing area there and a garage off to the side. Now, they had lots of servants in those days. She had a cook. She had a house cleaner. She had someone who ironed the clothes. She had one who washed the clothes. This was the way it was. Okay, so I knew all of them. They knew me. So I grew up there. That was the atmosphere. They had a big yard that had fig trees and all kinds of things like that so it was a nice place to play. In addition to that, we were one block away from the levy. The levy had been moved. This one was moved before because they had to move the levy because of flooding. So they moved this home. This old home was moved, and they kind of remodeled it when they resettled because it got cracked and one thing and another. It was sitting high up off the ground. And under the ground must have been four feet. The pillars were that high and in those days they would get the air under there so the cool air would come up through the house. So old home were built on pillars. Well, this one was built higher than most of them and they used to store wine down there and things like that. So we’d go under there to play. All nice and cool in the summer time. And then we got a little older like ten and eleven and twelve, I’d go there on Saturdays and spend the whole day and I’d go with my friends who lived within the block and we would go behind the levy. Behind the levy was adventurous because they had moved the old levy and the drag lines they had used to take the dirt from the old levy to make the new levy, they couldn’t take it all and there were hills back there. . . .

And there’s no hills around here. So we had ideal places to play cowboys and climb the hills and dig tunnels which was dangerous but we did that. And it was an ideal place to play. It was nothing but grass growing there and dirt. There was no trash or anything. There was a garbage dump further down where the river took the garbage in those days. The truck would go to the garbage dump which was at the end of town and dump it and when the water rose, it just took all the garbage with it. But that’s what was done in those days. So we played back of the levy and then eventually as you get older, we would swim in the river. We’d go skinny dipping. Now, this was what we did and of course didn’t tell the parents. No. We started first with little boats that were little skiffs that people who had shrimp barrels out there . . . they would tie up their little boats and they’d have to go out to get the shrimp from their shrimp barrels. And when nobody was around, we would untie the boats and we would just paddle out and this was this kind of time. Nobody seemed to care. Nobody did anything badly. So then, we got to the point where we would go swimming and we wouldn’t do it at night because you had to be home at six o’clock for supper and that was it. In the summertime, you could go out but you couldn’t leave the area. But the daytime, you could wander and we could take our wagons and go all over town and it was a safe and a happy place to grow up in. So then we got to be a little older and then we said, “Well, we need a little extra money.” So we would go to the garbage dump with our wagons and we would get ketchup bottles and whiskey bottled flasks and we would clean those and we would put them in our wagons and we would take them to a place called . . . an old guy who ran the grocery store, his name was George Viguet. He was a character that grew up here. He had a little store and he had dirt floors with the linoleum over it. They were all uneven, and he did everything himself. He made his own ketchup but he didn’t have the ketchup bottles. And he made some kind of wine and you had wine bottles. So he would give us a nickel a piece for ketchup bottles that were cleaned. So we’d have to clean them. They used to have the baby brushes, the baby bottle brushes, but we would clean them and we’d take them over in or wagons and we’d have maybe eight or ten of them. Well, that’d be about fifty cents for three of us. That was a big deal.

So we did that. Then of course, we proceeded in age and got up to seventh grade and we began noticing girls at that time, of course. But yet we weren’t dating or going out because we didn’t have any money but everybody had a girlfriend. I like her. She likes me, sure. But then when we got to the seventh grade or the eighth grade that was as high as they went at St. John school. No, that had started going higher two years earlier making us graduate, but there was no athletics. And of course at that time, we had to be machos. That was it. You weren’t macho – you were nothing. So my parents and my grandparents said, “No, we don’t . . . with public schools. We think that St. John would be much better for you.” They’d be thinking of my morals and all. So I begged, I pleaded. So finally they agreed that I could try out when I went to Plaquemine High School when I went into the eighth grade. At that time, there was only eleven grades. Okay, so there was about five or six of us who were athletically inclined and we all went over. And then, that’s when we began a different change in life of course. So we still were together and we’d play different games. We’d play football, pick-up football, in an empty lot in the afternoon and things like that because we weren’t big enough yet to play on a football field. So then we grew and we . . . down at the river and that’s when we . . . there were three of us who decided we were going to swim in the river.

Asked who his friends were – There was John Barbay, called him Johnny Boy. There was Lionel Delacroix, he’s dead – he was killed in the war. There was me. There was Sterling Percle, he’s down in Thibodaux. A guy named Percy Beauvier(?). He moved away. Those were my friends that I kind of grew up with. Then I made different friends after I got into high school. We were a different bunch.

Asked who he was going to go swimming with – Oh the friends I was swimming with . . . that’s Sterling LeBlanc. He’s still living, he’s not too good. And his brother Ralph, he was a little older than we were. So I was there with them. We were walking around. We’d been swimming and stuff and said, “Well, how about let’s go into the river?” So we had heard people say that if you swim the river, you don’t dare do it by yourself. You have someone with a boat go with you because at that time, there were boats coming up and down the river, ships and everything. And of course, the current was kind of treacherous out in the middle. So we got another guy with us. I forget who he was who sat in the boat. We borrowed one of the guy’s boats who did the shrimp stuff. You could just unhook them and take them. So we started swimming and we swam and swam and swam and swam. Of course, being fifteen years old, sixteen years old, you don’t wear out. At least you didn’t think you did. Finally, we got to the other side. It was quite tedious even for a sixteen year old. We got to the other side. My feet . . . I cold touch the bottom then. Of course, it was mud down there. And I tried to stand up but my legs would not hold me. I went back down. So I had to swim some more until I got to firmer ground where I could step up and they still wouldn’t hold me and I had to crawl out of the river onto shore and lay there for maybe half an hour. I had never had extended that much exercise before. So after maybe an hour or so. . . and besides that, we had landed maybe half a mile down the river from where our clothes were. See, the current took us down river. Well, a guy in the boat was there. We had to come back, of course. So Ralph LeBlanc – he was the one older than we were – “Come on J.E. we’re going to swim back.” I said, “Oh, no.” I said, “No” I said, “I had trouble getting out of the water.” They knew that. So we got in the boat with the guy and Ralph swam back. But we had to row, of course. When we got to the other side, we had to walk to bring the boat up to where it was moored. And of course, we had to put our clothes on. By that time, some people had known we were there. Our clothes were tied in knots. They had been in the water. So our parents didn’t know that we were swimming in the river, of course. So, and they had sand and we had to shake them out and put them out to dry them off. Couldn’t get all the sand out of them – didn’t have a comb to comb my hair so I did the best I could and when I went in Grandma said, “You’ve been swimming in the river!” “No, Grandma.” “Don’t lie to me. You’ve been swimming in the river. Look at the sand. Look at your hair. I’m going to tell your mother.” So when I told mama . . .when they told Mama, she kind of came on my side. “Well, you know he’s fifteen years old, sixteen years old. You know how boys are.” And she said, “I’m just proud that he was able to do it.” So anyway, I remember that.

Asked about the shrimp in the river – that you don’t hear about river shrimp anymore. Not today because of the plants. The stuff that is thrown into the river now . . . the shrimp are . . . someone said they’re starting to come back now . . . that you can do some now but at that time, they would get any old entrails and stuff from chickens and stuff and throw in there and they had a barrel and it had a cone shaped entrance into the barrel midway up. Of course, the shrimp would scoop themselves in there and down at the bottom, they couldn’t get out. They couldn’t get out because the hole was only about that big where they could get out. Then on the side of the barrel, there was a little door they made with leather hinges, a little door about that big where they could take the barrel out, take it out, drain the water out, and then open that up and scoop out the shrimp and . . the shrimp were little, small shrimp but they were tasty. Oh they were good. River shrimp were excellent. They had a better taste than the shrimp you get today from the Gulf. The Gulf shrimp are bigger. The little ones had so much flavor to them.

And they would use it to make gumbos with and all kinds of stuff. And the boys, the colored boys whose people . . . they were shrimpers. They went in the morning. I was an altar boy so I had to go to Mass regularly in the morning. So, when I’d be going up to mass on my bicycle, these boys would have a container. I forget what kind of container but they had a pint measuring cup and they were walking around yelling, “Shrimp, Shrimp!” early in the morning and the housewives would come out and buy a pint of shrimp to cook for that day. And they were all over town. They had them in . . . oh, they had them in baskets, big, old grocery store baskets that you put on your arms. And the lady would say, “Let me see you shrimp.” And they’d see if they were fresh or not and then they’d take a pint of them and bring them in. I think they were fifteen cents for a pint . . . something like that. So these people made a living that way. Very plentiful. We never got any big shrimp from the Gulf. That all went other places. The only trouble is they were hard to peel.

Asked about other food from the river. Oh yes, some catfish but the catfish were river catfish. They had river cats then. I forgot about catfish but they’d get better ones in the bayous. It had some much stuff coming from up north and the river was dirty. It was very dirty. When you were swimming, you’d get dirt around your mouth – there would be dirt from where you were swimming in the water and blowing the water out.

Asked if he fished in bayous and places. No, I wasn’t a fisherman too much. The other boys did. I never was too much fishing or hunting. I don’t know why. It was the kind of town . . . Many guys lived out on farms or lived out away from town and they would be involved in all of that. I was considered a city boy but Plaquemine wasn’t a city.

Asked about the flood of 1927 and if he remembered any of that. I remember. I remember a lot about the 1927 flood. The levy was where it had been moved. It was moved in ’29 so in ’27, it was the old levy. My grandmother’s house was two blocks from the levy and when the flood came, I remember the National Guard unit was brought here and they camped. They put tents in the courthouse lawn is where they put their tents. And they were there to patrol the levy. Now as a kid, I couldn’t understand why they had to have soldiers walking up and down the levy and they told me, “Well, they’re afraid somebody’s going to blow a hole in the levy.” I said, “Why would they do that? They’d flood all themselves out.” I couldn’t understand it. But what would happen is the people down river . . . they would come up river and plant an explosion to blow up the levy to reduce the pressure of the water on them. That was the deal. As a result of that, I remember before the National Guard came, the men had to go. I remember by daddy had to go up there. The men took turns and they had to bring a pistol with them. Of course, Daddy didn’t know much about pistols but I remember he had his pistol and he’d go up there on the levy and they would do two hours at a time or something to prevent people from coming up. They didn’t know where they would do it.

Asked if they ever caught anyone. No, no, they didn’t. But it happened further down and people were afraid they were going to come do it up here because the water was so high. I can tell you about the water. The levies weren’t as big as they are now. But the water was up to the top of the levy. And there were predictions that there was more water coming. So what they did, they got boards, big boards . . . cypress was everywhere around here. We had sawmills here and wood was plentiful. So they got the boards and they went up there and over the crest of the levy toward the river about maybe three feet down. They would drive these boards lengthwise into the ground side by side all the way down. Now, then they would come with sandbags and put the sandbags behind those things and build it up. And there were times when the river went above the levy and of course, the sandbags and the boards held it. It trickled through but it wasn’t any pile of water that came in. I remember that. I remember going up and I remember those gunny sacks that had a certain smell. And whenever I’m around anybody loading dirt in sacks, that same smell today. I don’t know what it is but it’s the smell of gunny sacks that we had here. And that’s about the only think I remember about the bar.

Asked if he remembered who the workers were. Everybody kind of pitched in with that but not the ones who had regular jobs. It was just the people . . . there were a lot of unemployed people around and they would be the ones that . . . a lot of them worked for the mills and I think the mills must have gotten a contract from the parish and whatever so I think it was tied in that way. I mean at five you don’t . . . I wasn’t paying much attention.

Asked if he remembered any panic about houses being flooded. No. I don’t remember anybody . . . I think they they all felt that . . . they had had floods before but it wasn’t as big as the ’27 flood. We didn’t get any water here at all. Now the locks was in operation and the locks couldn’t open because the water was so high and the bayou was so low. And so they couldn’t . . . they had to close the locks but they had to build up on the outer gate. But everybody was worried and, in fact, I had some pictures. I have some pictures of that.

Asked about seeing any alligators in the water. No, there are no alligators in the river. The bayous, there’s no bayous that run off the river now, except locks . . . now, there were some alligators that would get into the locks sometimes. Coming up from the bayous from the swamp area. And I remember some boys caught one. He must have been about five feet long. And he was swimming. They lay on top of the water. . . just lay there. And so they had a grappling hook. Little things with the three . . . a grappling hook and they had a chain on it. And they went down slowly and he wasn’t maybe that far from where the concrete is. And he went down slow, slow, slow, and then they eased it up under him. Under his neck and . . . It got him and hooked him under the neck. And they pulled him up and boy he was fighting and kicking and doing all kinds of . . . but they got him up. And then, of course, they killed him. But they didn’t eat them then. They didn’t know that you could eat the tail. So they just killed them for the hides.

Asked about his grandfather being a doctor and how different it was than it is today. Yes, he made house calls in the middle of the night. His office was upstairs and his primary concern was healing people. He charged enough to get by with. I remember when I was a child, as I said, I grew up in my grandmother’s house most of the time and when I’d be there, he’d be going to work. He would take three dollars out of his wallet and put on the mantelpiece and tell my grandmother, “Well, here’s the grocery money for today.” And he would go off and this is how they ran the house, on three dollars a day. So, I think his fee was something like, at that time, may have been a dollar and a half or whatever anybody could pay. A lot of times he would go to poor people’s homes and whenever they called him, he would go. And they’d come by sometimes with a chicken with its legs tied and put it on the back porch and knock and say, “This is for the doctor.” And they’d tell them who he was and a lot of them would bring stuff from their garden and just went on. His office . . he had his daughter, his youngest daughter Eva was a receptionist. And it was a little small office on top of a grocery store. And he had a waiting room. He had his desk in there and then he had an examination room and that was it. That was all he had. There was no putting you somewhere and he’s going around with a bunch of people in different rooms. And he didn’t have any . . . I’m sure he had files on people but they weren’t like they are today. And it was just for general things. Somebody would break an arm. They’d go to the doctor. Or they had a cut somewhere, like in your case, and had to get stitched up and things like that. When he would leave his office in the afternoon around two, he would go on house calls. He had rounds that he knew he had been to people’s houses. He’d come back the next day and he’d do that. And I think in the morning, he’d go to the hospital to see about his patients there. But, by six o’clock, he was home and we ate. When I was there, we ate at six in the morning was breakfast, noon, and six at night and that was it. And everybody adjusted to that. And on Sunday, all of the people, his children who lived in town would go up to eat Sunday dinner with him and their children. Of course, my Mama and Daddy were the only ones in town who had children except her brother George. He had a few. Anyway, that’s the way it was. So, let’s see what I wanted to say. At night when they’d call, he’d answer the phone and I could hear him. “This is Dr. Landry. Okay. Okay. Okay. Yes ma’am. All right.” And “I’ve got to go to such and such’s.” Get his satchel and go on out. I remember one night Grandma told me to that he stayed overnight at some poor woman’s, some poor black person who he couldn’t leave for some reason. He spent the whole night there with her and came back the next morning. Said how sad it was that she died. He just couldn’t leave her. But they were very compassionate people. And my grandmother, now, she was on the heavy side. And she liked her cream, her whipped cream and in those days, that was the thing. And he would tell her, he’d say, “You’re not supposed to eat all of that, you know.” Because they didn’t know about . . . they knew about strokes but they didn’t know about the fat and all of that being a factor. And he would tell her, “You shouldn’t eat all of that rich food Mama. You shouldn’t eat that.” And I’d be there for supper and I’d hear them talking and it was a nice life. I enjoyed it. Then I can jump to where he was fussing at her one time. After we were first married, we didn’t have any place to stay so we stayed upstairs. Grandma had a vacant room. We stayed up there. So we were up there one night. It must have been around nine o’clock, we went up and I could hear him down there fussing, “I told you so! I told you so!” And I said, “Let me go down and see what’s happening.” So I went down and poor Grandma was sitting in the chair. Earlier on, she must have had a digestive problem and he was fussing at her and she would go, “Burp.” And her little burp would come out. “I told you so!” And he was fussing at her and she was miserable and I had never forgotten that. That she just loved her sweets. That’s something else. The cook would cook the dinner, cook whatever had to be cooked but Grandma would make the salads and the desert. That was her deal and that’s the way it went.

Asked if she had a garden. She had a rose garden, flowers. That was her thing, flowers. And she took pride in her flowers and she and her . . . Her father married twice. The first wife, he had a family and the men, a couple of men, boys. And then his wife died and he married again and then my Grandma and her sister were born. Well, we call . . . Aunt Olive was her name but they called her Leigh with the French. So she was from the first marriage and she lived in another place with her sons which was about a block away and she had flowers too. So, she and Grandma had a competition. I mean a fierce competition. It was who could grow the prettiest Easter lilies for the church and all of this and then they had flower shows. And Aunt Olive would come with something that would beat out Grandma and that would kill her, crush her. So, anyway, it was a battle but they’d always . . . she had pansies. She had a yardman too. I forgot about the yardman. Isaac was the yardman. And I’d be out there and help him a little bit. So flowers were her, really her glory. Well, I remember we were tearing down the building. I was about fourteen years old. We were tearing down a brick building downtown and it was in the summertime and they got the high school kids to do the manual labor. So our job was to take the bricks. The bricks would come down in clumps and we would . . . mortar in those times was not as hard as mortar is today. So we had hatchets and we would take this group of bricks and we’d chop through the mortar and get the bricks out and clean the bricks, clear all the mortar off and stack them. Well, we got ten cents a hundred.

Okay, so we did that in the summertime and my mother bought me some work clothes that I think she tells everybody, “Yes, I remember when he went to work.” She paid three dollars and fifty cents for my work clothes and I only made a dollar and a quarter work. Well, anyway, we did that and it was something to do and we thought we were some big workers. So when it was all over with when they were tearing this building down, they found this sword up beneath the floor up on one of the upper decks. It was in there but it was a ceremonial sword. It had to be some type of Knights of Columbus or some group that required swords and formalities and that. And somebody had evidently left this one there. So the guy in charge of us had the sword and, boy I wanted that sword so bad. And I said, “Boy, would you sell me that sword?” He said, “I don’t know.” He said, “You might not have enough money to buy that sword.” I said, “Well, how much you want for it?” He said, “Forty cents.” Forty cents was pretty good. That was four hundred bricks that I’d pay. I said, “Well, let me see.” He said, “Well, I tell you I’m going to have it at my house. If you’ve got the forty cents, bring it by and I’ll give you the sword.” So I got the forty cents and went by and got the sword. It was just a ceremonial thing. And it had the guy’s name on it, whoever it belonged to. His name was Lazarro(?) or something like that. It had a nice hilt and it was about that long. But it wasn’t sharp. So I got the sword and I went to Grandma’s with it. Oh boy, I was so proud. Showed her my sword. And I’d go outside and I’d fight crime . . . and she had these lilies and they were about three feet tall. Beautiful, beautiful. And I worked myself into pretending that there was a bunch coming for me. Oh yes, and I went in and wham and I cut them all down. And she came out and all she could say was, “No, no.” That’s all Grandma could do. She wasn’t a mean person. She couldn’t . . . she never could . . . she’d do my cheeks and things like that but she never hit us or fussed at us or anything. But then I realized what I had done and I felt awful about it. But that was the tale.

Asked what Grandma did while Grandpa was at work. Sit and she crocheted and she knitted . . . what ladies did at that time. That’s what they did. They wouldn’t go anywhere. I don’t think she went to a movie three times because that kind of came afterwards.

Asked if she was active in the church. Oh yes, she was active in church. They had nuns here and Grandma would make cakes for the nuns and, of course, Grandpa would take care of the nuns at no charge and things like that. This is what she did. Grandma didn’t do much of anything except make salads and make cakes and things like that. She’d make éclairs. And she did supper. Now supper wasn’t leftovers. Whatever was left, the house workers took that. They had just one thing. If they had turkey, okay, they ate the turkey and then whatever was left went to the other people. So naturally, the other people would cook more than they were supposed to. Well, that’s okay. That’s understandable. What am I leading up to? Well, Grandma would make . . . at suppertime, they had a sort of a standard supper. She would either make an omelet or maybe about an eight egg omelet with green onions in it and stuff or she would make a waffle. She had a waffle iron she would put in front of her and she’d make her waffles and pass them to people as they wanted. And there would be the omelet or egg some other kind of way. And they fried eggs. We had fried eggs with the grits. And sometimes she would make pimento cheese sandwiches. She would make those sometimes, things like that. She would make the supper. And of course, the cook would come early in the morning and she would have breakfast but that’s what Grandma did. And the dinner talbe would stay like it was. Nobody moved the dishes. Grandma didn’t move the dishes and nobody else did either. We just left it and in the morning, someone would come and take care of it. That’s the way it was. I mean it’s not like that today.

Asked if he had any chores to do. Oh, I did. I chopped the kindling for my grandparents. In the morning, when I’d have to go serve Mass, I’d be out at six thirty and Grandpa wouldn’t be up yet and they’d want the fires made. So I’d make the fire in the dining room and in the afternoon, I would chop kindling when it ran low. And I would go get the coal because we had coal. We’d burn the coal and I’d fill the coal bucket(?) and I’d bring it in and I did those things but I didn’t have any particular other job to do. But at night when we were sitting around the sitting room like six-thirty, seven o’clock, “J.E. you got to go out and get some coal.” “Yes Ma’am.” So I’d get the thing and go outside and get the shovel. It was under the house. The house was so high. Coal people would come in and they’d have to shovel it off the thing and put it under the house so the rain and stuff wouldn’t get to it.

Asked if he was an altar boy every day? No, not everyday. You had a week. There’d be two masses; one at six o’clock in the morning and one at six-thirty. But you either had one or the other. But you’d have a week off. They had sets. But when I was an altar boy is when I would go up there early in the morning and I wanted to go because she always fixed biscuits. The cook would fix biscuits and all kinds of goodies that I wouldn’t have at home. Mama wouldn’t do those things.

Asked about his favorite subject in school. My favorite subject? History, of course. I don’t know why. I just enjoyed history and what else? Not math, no. Not math. Science. I remember when we started the last year in seventh grade elementary science about water tension. . . surface tension. Little things like that you learned and about oxygen and a few simple things. I enjoyed that. That’s about the only two I really liked.

Excerpt from About J.E. Dupont, Part VIII - VJ Day

2008-01-30T15:19:00.000-06:00

Asked about VJ Day and if people were surprised when the emperor surrendered -
No, no, because in the news people said that the surrender was eminent. That unconditional surrender . . . that the Japanese Diat and the emperor were talking and meeting and . . . but they knew that they were whipped after we took Iwo Jima and we were bombing them around the clock and the atomic bomb. Then they dropped the second atomic bomb at Nagasaki and . . . But when that second one dropped, that was it. Then they made their mind up. But they were just hanging in there hoping, I think, maybe hoping for some other concession besides unconditional surrender. But people were aware.

Well, I was down at the hospital in New Orleans. I had been home on leave and I had gone back. When we got to the hospital in New Orleans, the examiner took us early and found out what I could wear. A lot of people had worms and the doctor told me I had companions. I didn’t know what he was talking about. So anyway, cleared that all up and then they let us come home. They let us come home for thirty days. They called it a convalescent leave. And when the thirty days were up, you’d go back to the hospital, spend two or three days and come back on another thirty days. So that went on for ninety days. So I got to New Orleans in April but didn’t get transferred to Philadelphia until September because of all the leave that was going on in between times. Okay, it was in August, must have been August the thirteenth or fourteenth is whenever it was. And I was down on Canal Street and the news people on the radio had said – there’s no television at that point – the news people on the radio said that when the Japanese sign the surrender, all the liquor stores and the bars in the city, no one could sell any liquor, any whiskey, alcoholic beverages of any kind once the Japanese surrender until the city said it was okay. The city did this themselves. Okay, so I knew then . . . I was down walking on Canal Street passing (?) theater and over the loud speaker it says, “Japan has surrendered. Japan has surrendered.” They had loud speakers around, yes. It must have been some on Canal Street because all the people were there. And a lot of people closed their businesses and everything. It wasn’t mandatory but a lot of them did because they were so happy because having a war for four years and people getting killed, your neighbors and your own family, and then it’s over with and everybody who’s overseas is coming home. Everybody was just beside themselves running up and down the streets yelling, grabbing people and kissing them like they did in New York.

And so, I saw the guy coming toward the liquor store door and I stepped in real fast before he closed and I said, “I need a bottle of scotch.” Well, he did it. By that time the streets were full of people that were just walking around like they were in a daze, everybody happy as they could be. I got mixed in with a crowd of people and I had to go where they went. I couldn’t go where I wanted to go. So I wound up going into a restaurant with them and everybody came and sat around and I put my bottle on the table and everybody had drinks and we ordered and it was a great evening, VJ day. I’ll never forget it because everyone could relax. There’s no threat anymore. The threat is gone with family being killed and things like that happening. And so many people were affected. We had over six million people in uniform. There were lots in New Orleans. So that was my experience there on VJ day.

Asked if he knew anything about the atomic bomb – I had no idea what the atomic bomb was. When the atomic bomb . . . it was in the early part of August when they dropped the first atomic bomb. I was in bed at home. I was at home on leave and I heard the news on and they said we dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. So I said to myself, “What the hell is an atomic bomb?” I said, “We’ve got five hundred pounders. What’s atoms got to do with a bomb?” We knew nothing about that or the size of it until maybe a week later when we went to a movie and it had . . . the news reels were always on and they had a picture of that thing. Then we realized the size of it. When they dropped the second one on Nagasaki, that’s when the Japanese surrendered completely. They were hanging in there while trying to decide what to do.

8/23/1943 Christmas Letter to Joseph E. Dupont, Jr. From His Mother - While he was a Japanese POW

2007-12-10T09:32:00.000-06:00

An Excerpt From J. E. "Frenchy" Dupont - Christmas before he was captured.

2007-12-10T09:22:00.000-06:00

It was Christmas Eve morning and everybody broke camp and packed their gear and got in the trucks and went back to the naval base. And it was in the afternoon, I think, around two or two-thirty when Japanese bombers came over the naval base. There were three of them. I think they had been on a bombing run some other place and had a few bombs left. So, they came over and we were walking in an open area and we look up and there were Japanese planes. Of course, we had some anti-aircraft weapons and machine guns that were firing at these planes. And, of course, everyone took cover. And I happened to be in a concrete culvert, sort of a ditch like thing. And I jumped into that. I had never been exposed to any bombing raid or any type of hostility before. It was a game for us. It was like a football game. We were here, Japs. We were going to kick their butts. You know, the little scrawny rascals couldn’t see twenty-five feet. All of them had big magnification on all of their glasses. Well, the bombs started falling and they made a noise. It wasn’t a screaming noise. It was a swishing noise and it reminded you, if you can imagine a boxcar, a train boxcar dropping from a high, high place coming down wit the swish that it would make. And then when it would hit the ground, the ground would shake as if you were inside some type of box and someone was shaking it around. Your face would bang against the ground. It was terrible experience. When the bombs went off, the bombs create a vacuum and then the air rushes back in and your pants legs flop and all kinds of feeling that you never had before. And then, you become aware of your mortality. Then it dawns on you that some people who hate you are trying to kill you. At first, you don’t think of these things. It’s a big game. But this dawns, “Hey this is for real. They’re trying to kill us.” It’s a strange thing that happens. And after that, you say, “Hey man, this is a hell of a situation.” Buildings were being blown up. Fires were started everywhere. Men were screaming who were wounded from the shell fragments. And then inside of maybe ten minutes, they were gone and the debris was there. Everything on fire. When it was over, everyone of course, was in a state of shock because it was the first time we had been under fire of any kind. But as the time went on of course you condition yourself to this and then you become where it’s not as scary as it was before. You’re able to cope with the situation and you know you have a duty to do and you kind of just get used to it, if at all possible. You never get used to it. So this is the way we felt. In the meantime, to compound the problem, our galley – the place where the food is prepared was hit with a bomb. All the turkeys were blown up. There was no food. There would not be any Christmas dinner. Anyway, we gathered ourselves together and the wounded were treated with the medical people and then everyone had to be on alert. And everyone was assigned a go out position because they feared that there would be an invasion into Subic Naval Base because Subic Bay is a perfect little harbor and possibly there may be an invasion. So we had to prepare defense positions in case that might occur. Well, in my case, I was put on top of a water tower. Why? I don’t know. There were no lights, but I was up on the water tower from twelve to four. That’s midnight to four in the morning. We had four hour watches and I was up there with my rifle. Why? I couldn’t see anything. I don’t know what . . . but when war first starts, people are all confused. Nobody really knows what’s going on. So I was up there. And of course, my mind would run and I would think of home. I said “Well, right now I can picture Christmas Eve night. I can picture everybody around the tree and all this.” And I became really melancholy. And then I began to think I heard things. There was a big ladder going up there and my mind raced a little and I said, “It might be a secret invasion and some Japanese soldier may be coming up here with a knife in his mouth. And he’s going to sneak up behind me and slit my throat.” And, all these thoughts were going through my mind… I’m just an eighteen year old kid you know? Anyway, nothing happened like that, but I can recall that well and it’s always been on my mind.

So, the next day, they said “Okay, we’ve got to blow the camp. We’ve got to get out because the Japanese might, as I had mentioned earlier, pass us up and cut us off.” That’s when they decided the base is going to be blown that day and everybody was to move it out. Well, I was in headquarters company with Colonel Anderson. He was the battalion commander and I was in the intelligence section called battalion intelligence where you would get reports and if we would ever catch any prisoners, we would interview them and all such things as that. So we were the last to leave and the demolition team was really last. We were the last truck leaving out and then they were going to blow the base after we left. Well, there were about ten of us in the back of the truck, and the Colonel and the driver were in the cab, and we were going down the road, going to get on the main highway which would go down the length of Bataan down to a place called Mariveles which is at the tip of Bataan and there was a naval station there. So this is where we were headed. Well on the way with the bombing that had been going on, there was a cabaret there, a little night club, and it had been bombed. Part of the roof and part of the wall on one side had been knocked off. And it was exposed. This was the day after the bombing of course. It’s Christmas Day. And so the Colonel stopped the truck and you could see the bar in there and the piano and all of that in the cabaret and all the liquor was still up on the bar. So the Colonel said “Well, everybody, we’re going to go in and have a Christmas drink.” So, we all went in and the bar was there and stuff. So, one of the guys got back there and started fixing drinks. Everybody had a Christmas drink and had cheer, good cheer. And Lieutenant Jenkins could play the piano and the piano was there so he started playing the piano.”

The following is from From Shanghai to Corregidor: Marines in the Defense of the Philippines by J. Michael Miller:
…Anderson then called for the singing of Christmas carols, and the group gathered around First Lieutenant Sidney F. Jenkins as he played the cabaret piano. All joined in the singing as they sipped their drinks. The high point of the party was when Private First Class Joseph E. “Frenchy” Dupont sang “Adeste Fideles,” completely in Latin. For a brief moment, the war was forgotten.

An Excerpt From About J. E. Dupont, Jr. Part VIII - Daddy calling Cody's Miller's mom.

2007-12-05T08:04:00.000-06:00

Cody Miller was with us. I need to tell you this about Cody because it’s a part of everything. So Cody being deaf, he . . . I don’t know if I want to go into this. (pause) But I will. Anyway, Cody’s deaf and we pull into El Paso and so there’s a telephone there. His mother had joined the WAC’s hoping that she could get out to the Philippines where he was. So his sister told him that his mother was stationed at Fort . . Fort. . . what fort is in El Paso? I forget the name of the fort. But she was stationed there. She was in the medical corps. So he said, “Well, my momma’s there.” And we had an hour layover in El Paso. And in the depot, there were telephones. I said, “Why don’t we . . . why don’t you look up the number of the Fort Bliss?” For Bliss is the name of it. “Look up Fort Bliss and I’ll call them and then you can talk to your mom.” So I did. I called them. Sorry, this is very emotional. The phone rang. I said, “Mrs. . . . I asked for Mrs. Miller. Said, “Just a minute.” And she came to the phone and she said, “Hello.” I said, “Just a minute, ma’am.” And I gave him the phone. “Momma!” he said. He couldn’t hear what she was saying. “Momma, mother. Goddammit, Momma!” He was raising hell. I could see the tears coming down his eyes so I took the phone. I said, “Mrs. Miller.” I said, “I’m sorry to tell you but your son is deaf. He can’t hear.” Of course, she broke down and I told her we were at the depot and we’d be there for an hour. So she said, “Well, I’ll see if I can get down there.” I said, “Okay.” So we hung up the phone and I explained to him what was going to happen. So she called. I don’t know if she called back or not but she said she was going to get down there. Okay, so then they told us to wait about a half an hour before the train would leave and I didn’t think she’d be able to get down there that fast. So he says, “Well, godammit, I’m not going on that train till I see my mama.” I said, “I don’t blame you.” I said, “I’m going to stay with you.” He said, “Okay.” So we decided we would stay. We weren’t going to get on the train. We would tell them we missed the train because this was too big of a thing. Well, it so happened, she got there and the train was delayed longer than the hour and she got there and they had their reunion there. And it was really something. Of course, she was in the army. She had to stay her time and then he came on to the hospital in New Orleans. He would go to Lafayette and his sisters were there and he would visit them until his mother got out of the service. But that was a real experience to . . . There he was seeing his mother – first time, hasn’t seen him. She’s worried to death looking for him. And he gets on the phone and he can’t hear her. So where am I?

About J. E. Dupont, Jr. Part VIII

2007-12-04T09:16:00.000-06:00

So he was loaded down. They said, “You go out there and be his assistant. We’ll give you a secretary.” So they paid one. So I went out there and had my private office across the hall from his. In fact, it was overlooking the swimming pool. The swimming pool’s still there and my office was right there. So I began to work there and I got so where the girl, she would do the typing to make the letters neat. I mean I could type but it wouldn’t be too neat. And that went on for maybe a year.

And then, the main office called me and says, “Guess what?” I said, “What?” They said, “There’s an opening in your home town.” I said, “In Plaquemine?” “Yes.” (?) is resigning and going to work for an oil company and it’s open. Would you want to have it?” I said, “Sure! I’d love to have it.” Said, “Okay, you got it.” On July 1, I came down here, 1948, and I was in the office here. I had a secretary and went through and improved as I went along and retired after thirty-three years.

Asked what he did in his job – Oh! Well, guys would come in, anybody with any problem. If they were wounded or if they were hurt in the service, they’d come and file a claim for disability. Education claims. You have to go to the hospital, but you get a medical statement from a doctor. We took care of all of the . . . we had to appeal cases. We had to study. We had to know the law to see if the D.A. was making an error or not.

And we’d catch some and we’d appeal the case. We’d win some. We’d lose some. But it was this type of thing. It was all veteran’s law, involving veteran’s law and what they were eligible for and what they couldn’t get. And it was very rewarding work because we’d get some cases where guys didn’t think they had a chance and luckily, they’d come through. So I enjoyed it. In fact, I hated to give it up but it got to the point where the Vietnam War was on and some of these people were coming back and they were coming in and they were demanding benefits which they weren’t entitled to. I’d try and explain to them. “Well, that’s not the way they told me. Nah, nah, nah, nah . . .” and they kept on and they’d get a little upset about it. And so, I said, “Well, I’ve been here a good while.” My secretary was there. She’d been there a good while too. It got to a point where I figured up what my retirement would be and then my supervisor came by and I told him, “You know I’m thinking about retiring.” He said, “What’s the deal?” I said, “Well, I just kind of had enough. It’s not the same kind of veterans we used to have, you know? It’s a different breed all together.” I said, “I’m just not really too happy with it now because of the attitude and . . .” There were lots of changes being made and so I said, “I think I might retire. Now tell me this, if I retire, will I be able to keep my medical benefits that I have with the state?” He said, “Well sure.” And I didn’t think that I would. I said, “Well now, I don’t have to pay the full amount?” “No!” He said that the state would still pay fifty percent of it. I said, “Really? After I retire?” I said, Well, I’m going to think about it.” Well, this is in April and Edwards is the governor and Edwards said they wanted to downsize state government. He issued an order that anyone who retired before July 1 would get a ten percent increase, and increase of ten percent, not an additional ten percent like a year. In other words, if I got thirteen hundred dollars retirement, I would get a hundred and thirty dollars added to that.

So I said, “Hell, that would take me about three or four years to reach that percentage to bring that in.” So I said, “Hey, I’m going to have to take this.” So then I took it and I retired on July 1, 1980. That’s a long time ago. And then I volunteered a lot. I volunteered. I was a football coach out at St. John’s School, middle school football team. I did that for nineteen years. And what else did I do? I did lots of other things around town. Then, my most recent is working with the church thing and the programs involved in that. And I’m involved in that. And I was a Scoutmaster for a while so I’m still involved with activities.

And of course we travel a lot. Angela’s a schoolteacher, of course. She taught a good while and then when she retired, we’d go visit her people. Of course now and then, we go to Las Vegas. She likes to go out there. But she has some problems now with her heart and all of this so we’ve kind of slowed down. I’m still active but . . . I walk out to school everyday, not everyday but three days a week I go after school. Oh, I didn’t say I went to the lunch room. I’ve been at the lunch room for sixteen years. Yes, yes. I forgot about . . . I’m tell you my memory’s bad. So I go out there at ten o’clock and I stay out till one and I take care of the salad bar and I help serve on the line. Yes and it’s fun.

Of course, I get a free meal. I tell them that’s why I go to get the free meal. Oh yes, I had to call them today and tell them I couldn’t come today because this is one of my days. Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday I go out there. “Yes,” I said, “I have company coming – so they’ll want to know tomorrow.”

Asked about meeting his wife – was it love at first sight? How did that all work out? – No, it wasn’t love at first sight. She was a navy corpsman. The navy called them corpsman. They were dubbed, the men and the women they called them. But she was in the rehabilitation section for the blind. Her full name is Angela Hannon. She had a degree already in education but she was working, I think for the welfare department in Maryland. And when the war came in she felt she wanted to . . . her family was all girls. There were seven girls in the family. So she said she wanted to. . . she was working in Washington somewhere and then she joined the navy and got in the medical corps. She would teach the blind typing, Braille reading, piano playing. You had to learn to play one song before you could get out and that was about it and showed them how to eat totally blind, you see. And with me, it wasn’t too much of a problem because I typed in high school and I could type enough to get by. The piano thing I had to memorize how to do it and finally I got that through. And then, the Braille, I told you about the Braille.

But it was a full day for them because there were so many. They’d spend an hour, maybe they’d spend an hour with you on Braille and then you’d have to go to another guy and an hour with typing. . . So they were really pretty busy but we were all on the same ward. Ward B was the ward for the blind people. And it was activity going on. They had the volunteers there, people who had visual problems who weren’t in the military who would be there to help. And one of them there set up a chess tournament and so we had a chess tournament within the ward and activities like that. And the rowing and the . . . Then we worked in the PX. I’ll tell you about the PX. On Saturday afternoon, somebody from our ward would go up and work in the PX – the blind because they wanted them to get used to being able to have a little business of their own. Like in these big government buildings, you’d have a little book place, cigarette place or whatever. So I would go up there because I liked to go up and, of course, I could see enough to do that. Well, most of the people down this section were amputees and blinded. Well, I remember the time they told us, “Now don’t help the people that come in. They’ve got to do it for themselves.” Okay. If some guy came in and he wanted shaving cream or something . . . what kind he told me . . . I got it and gave it to him and he had both arms, both hands gone, see? And he had the clamps on it for his hands and he’d move his shoulder to open it and close it and all this with your head down. So, he had his wallet up here so he had to . . . go over here and he had to get his wallet out and get it down with the clamp and try and get the dollar and, of course, the chief who was in charge of the place was sitting there. I said, “Well, let me give you . . .” I couldn’t help it. I said, “Let me give you a hand.” “No, no. Sit back. Let him alone.” And he fought it for maybe ten minutes. He finally got that dollar out and put it on there, closed his wallet and got it back in and I put the thing in a bag and took it. And that stayed with me and I realized the value of what they were doing. Teaching these people so they could be somewhat independent. They didn’t want anybody to go out to be a burden on anyone.

We got to the New York Institute for the Blind. That’s where we were. And they would take us around different places. Well, they took us to the broom factory. They took us to New York I think to socially rehabilitate us. They furnished dates for us and we’d go to Broadway plays. . . . Well, right toward the end, they started talking about possible employment. Now, we had people who were totally blind. But they took us with partial vision and we all went there too, to this place. Some, they were down in the run down section of New York. All buildings, you walk in and there’s a factory inside. Well, it was a factory that made brooms. And these people would get the stick and they were totally blind and they’d make brooms. And they would sweep and bring it over and I thought to myself, “My heavens, this is so demoralizing to look at something like this. Is this what’s going to happen to me? Is this where I’m going to get a job?” And they said they had placements. They could get you placements and things like that. I said, “I don’t care.” I couldn’t do this. It was just nothing. Poor fellows, you know. That’s all they could do, the ones that were there. Now, I don’t know. Lots of our people went on to college because of the provisions for blind in college now. Anyway, it was so disheartening to see that and I said, “I think the guys did the wrong thing. I don’t think they should have brought all these guys in and show them this, the lowest type of job that a blind man could get.” It made a very good impression on me that I was going to have to get something, that I didn’t want that type of work. I was capable of doing something else but I didn’t know what.

But there was something about New York. I can’t remember what it was. It may pop in later. But that’s what happens now. I’m going to be eighty in February and it starts to slip away up here. Some things I can remember more back and the war and everything like that than I can three weeks ago. That’s the aging process. (Laughs).

Asked where he got married. – Oh, we got married in Cumberland, yes at her home. I was down here. I flew up there. First time I flew in a commercial airplane. It had propellers on it. I never had the opportunity to fly in them before. So school was starting. I had gone to summer school already. I had gone to summer school. And then she called and said that she’d come to New Orleans when she got discharged. I was discharged first. I came home. I was discharged in January. From January to June, I didn’t do anything. And summer school started in June so I went to the VA and got signed up for that and went to school. While I was in summer school, she got discharged right before that time. And there were no jobs around where she lives, so she came down to New Orleans because she was down in New Orleans first. When she was in the Navy, she was down in New Orleans before she went to the blind rehab place.

So she was down there working in the Navy hospital in New Orleans when I got there, but she was in the ward next to me and I did not know it. So when we got there, I met her in Philadelphia. I said, “Well, I was in New Orleans.” She told me when she left that she . . . I was still there but I didn’t know the people on the other ward and she was the person that worked on the ward then. She knew a guy from my hometown named Johnny Wilbert. He was a corpsman on the ward and she knew him. So anyway, when she got discharged, she came back to New Orleans because she knew her way around. She figured she’d get a job there. So she got a job there and she worked for some publishing company. I don’t know what she was doing but she worked there. And then, she’d come up on weekends sometimes and meet my family and everything. And I’d go down there sometimes and that’s when we decided we were going to get married. So, she said okay, she was going to go back up to her home. So she quit her job and she went back up. And then she called me on a Sunday and said the only time that we could get married would be that Thursday. Called me on a Sunday. It was that Thursday. No, it was because school started. That’s what it was. It was September 5 because school was starting. She called me. I said, “Well look, we got to do it before Thursday because that’s when school starts and I have to be there.” So she said, “Well, I guess we could do it Wednesday.” It wasn’t Wednesday. It was Tuesday. (It was actually a Friday). A very short time. I can’t remember exactly when but it was only about three or four days notice that we had to get married on this date. So I had to make . . . the plane reservations weren’t hard to make then. They were easy. And I went up and I got there one day and spent the night at her house and we were married the next day. That’s the way it was. And then, we went back. After we got married, we went to Washington, D.C. and we stayed the night there. And then, we got on a plane and came back to New Orleans. And on that day, we took every mode of transportation available at the time. I’ll tell you what happened. We took the train to Washington. We took the flight to New Orleans. We took a Greyhound bus to Baton Rouge. And at that time, there were ferryboats. We took the ferryboat home and had to rent a taxi to come to Plaquemine.

Asked about VJ Day and if people were surprised when the emperor surrendered -
No, no, because in the news people said that the surrender was eminent. That unconditional surrender . . . that the Japanese Diat and the emperor were talking and meeting and . . . but they knew that they were whipped after we took Iwo Jima and we were bombing them around the clock and the atomic bomb. Then they dropped the second atomic bomb at Nagasaki and . . . But when that second one dropped, that was it. Then they made their mind up. But they were just hanging in there hoping, I think, maybe hoping for some other concession besides unconditional surrender. But people were aware.

Well, I was down at the hospital in New Orleans. I had been home on leave and I had gone back. When we got to the hospital in New Orleans, the examiner took us early and found out what I could wear. A lot of people had worms and the doctor told me I had companions. I didn’t know what he was talking about. So anyway, cleared that all up and then they let us come home. They let us come home for thirty days. They called it a convalescent leave. And when the thirty days were up, you’d go back to the hospital, spend two or three days and come back on another thirty days. So that went on for ninety days. So I got to New Orleans in April but didn’t get transferred to Philadelphia until September because of all the leave that was going on in between times. Okay, it was in August, must have been August the thirteenth or fourteenth is whenever it was. And I was down on Canal Street and the news people on the radio had said – there’s no television at that point – the news people on the radio said that when the Japanese sign the surrender, all the liquor stores and the bars in the city, no one could sell any liquor, any whiskey, alcoholic beverages of any kind once the Japanese surrender until the city said it was okay. The city did this themselves. Okay, so I knew then . . . I was down walking on Canal Street passing (?) theater and over the loud speaker it says, “Japan has surrendered. Japan has surrendered.” They had loud speakers around, yes. It must have been some on Canal Street because all the people were there. And a lot of people closed their businesses and everything. It wasn’t mandatory but a lot of them did because they were so happy because having a war for four years and people getting killed, your neighbors and your own family, and then it’s over with and everybody who’s overseas is coming home. Everybody was just beside themselves running up and down the streets yelling, grabbing people and kissing them like they did in New York.

Similar, similar. And so, I saw the guy coming toward the liquor store door and I stepped in real fast before he closed and I said, “I need a bottle of scotch.” Well, he did it. By that time the streets were full of people that were just walking around like they were in a daze, everybody happy as they could be. I got mixed in with a crowd of people and I had to go where they went. I couldn’t go where I wanted to go. So I wound up going into a restaurant with them and everybody came and sat around and I put my bottle on the table and everybody had drinks and we ordered and it was a great evening, VJ day. I’ll never forget it because everyone could relax. There’s no threat anymore. The threat is gone with family being killed and things like that happening. And so many people were affected. We had over six million people in uniform. There were lots in New Orleans. So that was my experience there on VJ day.

Asked if he knew anything about the atomic bomb – I had no idea what the atomic bomb was. When the atomic bomb . . . it was in the early part of August when they dropped the first atomic bomb. I was in bed at home. I was at home on leave and I heard the news on and they said we dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. So I said to myself, “What the hell is an atomic bomb?” I said, “We’ve got five hundred pounders. What’s atoms got to do with a bomb?” We knew nothing about that or the size of it until maybe a week later when we went to a movie and it had . . . the news reels were always on and they had a picture of that thing. Then we realized the size of it. When they dropped the second one on Nagasaki, that’s when the Japanese surrendered completely. They were hanging in there while trying to decide what to do.

Asked what it was like coming back to America – Well, first of all, we were on the ship. . . Did I tell you where we went on the ship? We went down to New Guinea and they fattened us up and all that business. Well, we got aboard ship some time in February and it went from one place to another. It was a transport ship and we didn’t know why we were going to these places till we got back and then we realized they wanted us to look presentable. So we didn’t get to the States until April 3. Now from the middle of February to April 3, that’s a long time. We had a chance to fatten up a little bit. So when we came in . . . everybody couldn’t wait . . . talking about going under the Golden Gate Bridge. That’s when we knew we were safe. Because out there, there was still submarines everywhere. The war was still on.

It wasn’t over when we came back. We got back in April of 1945. No, April of . . . yes, April, of 1945, we got back. That’s right. Well, the war was still on. Well, everybody had to be up and looking when we went under the Golden Gate Bridge. That meant you were home. Everybody was up and it was about, maybe four-thirty or five o’clock in the morning. We went up to the bridge to find out about what the time would be. Everybody, we were all standing on deck. And as we went under it . . . it was just tremendous. Then we pulled into the pier, alongside the pier. They didn’t drop us to anchor out there. We were right alongside the pier in San Francisco and everybody went to the starboard side because that’s where it was tied up and the ship began to move. And the guy on deck, he had a loudspeaker. “All men back to their quarters. We cannot moor the ship because it’s leaning too much.” There’s too much of a list they called it. So everybody had to go back into their quarters until they straightened up and then they said we could get off. (laughs) We were all hanging over the side. So then, they put the gang plank up and everybody had their gear and sea bag and the navy had a little band down there. It was a nice little band. And they started playing “Anchor’s Away,” of course. Then we booed them because they didn’t play “The Marine Hymn.” (laughs) Well, we were so happy to get back and when we got back, there were navy . . . not ambulances but navy like station wagons there to load us all up. Now we were mixed in with the army too. So the navy had to go to one side and the army had to go to their side and marines. So they brought us to a hospital which had been constructed in the middle of a football field. There was a football stadium all around and the hospital was hastily constructed. They were taking casualties from Iwo Jima at that time too.

So they put us in this hospital. It was way out and I forget what part of San Francisco it was and what was the name of the place. So we were in there and they checked us over real good and then they let us make long-distance telephone calls home to our mothers to our homes and stand in line and I think you had five minutes you could talk. The telephone people did this for us free. So we were waiting and waiting in line and finally I got to talk to my mother. I said, “Mom, I’m back.” And I talked with her and how’s everybody? How is this? How is that? And she said, “Sure this is you?” I said, “Yes!” She said, “You don’t sound the same.” Well, being away, whatever accent I had, I lost. But I told her, “Yes, it’s me.” And I talked to my grandmother and it was a very emotional experience. And then I told her we didn’t know where we were going. We thought we might go to New Orleans but I didn’t know. But I would let her know when they told us. So after about . . . we were there maybe ten days, and then they said, “Okay. Everybody’s going to the naval hospital nearest to their home.” And we didn’t know when we were going to leave so I sent her a postcard and told her about that. Then we got on the train and one’s going to New Orleans. And we had to come all the way through Texas and all this.

Cody Miller was with us. I need to tell you this about Cody because it’s a part of everything. So Cody being deaf, he . . . I don’t know if I want to go into this. (pause) But I will. Anyway, Cody’s deaf and we pull into El Paso and so there’s a telephone there. His mother had joined the WAC’s hoping that she could get out to the Philippines where he was. So his sister told him that his mother was stationed at Fort . . Fort. . . what fort is in El Paso? I forget the name of the fort. But she was stationed there. She was in the medical corps. So he said, “Well, my momma’s there.” And we had an hour layover in El Paso. And in the depot, there were telephones. I said, “Why don’t we . . . why don’t you look up the number of the Fort Bliss?” For Bliss is the name of it. “Look up Fort Bliss and I’ll call them and then you can talk to your mom.” So I did. I called them. Sorry, this is very emotional. The phone rang. I said, “Mrs. . . . I asked for Mrs. Miller. Said, “Just a minute.” And she came to the phone and she said, “Hello.” I said, “Just a minute, ma’am.” And I gave him the phone. “Momma!” he said. He couldn’t hear what she was saying. “Momma, mother. Goddammit, Momma!” He was raising hell. I could see the tears coming down his eyes so I took the phone. I said, “Mrs. Miller.” I said, “I’m sorry to tell you but your son is deaf. He can’t hear.” Of course, she broke down and I told her we were at the depot and we’d be there for an hour. So she said, “Well, I’ll see if I can get down there.” I said, “Okay.” So we hung up the phone and I explained to him what was going to happen. So she called. I don’t know if she called back or not but she said she was going to get down there. Okay, so then they told us to wait about a half an hour before the train would leave and I didn’t think she’d be able to get down there that fast. So he says, “Well, godammit, I’m not going on that train till I see my mama.” I said, “I don’t blame you.” I said, “I’m going to stay with you.” He said, “Okay.” So we decided we would stay. We weren’t going to get on the train. We would tell them we missed the train because this was too big of a thing. Well, it so happened, she got there and the train was delayed longer than the hour and she got there and they had their reunion there. And it was really something. Of course, she was in the army. She had to stay her time and then he came on to the hospital in New Orleans. He would go to Lafayette and his sisters were there and he would visit them until his mother got out of the service. But that was a real experience to . . . There he was seeing his mother – first time, hasn’t seen him. She’s worried to death looking for him. And he gets on the phone and he can’t hear her. So where am I?

Yes, what changed when we came back. Well, I got to New Orleans. I think everything was about the same. Of course, I never was in New Orleans that much before anyway. Well, when I got back, I’ll tell you what happened. So when I got in New Orleans, my mother . . . I called them and I tell them I’m there and they come down to see me. They said they were coming Monday. I didn’t know what time Monday but I told them which ward I was in. So I had to go to the dentist because they had to check our teeth out. And I was over at the dentist’s office and they were cleaning my teeth, I think. They had one filling that they had to do. And they were there and the ward came out, and said to tell Private Dupont that his parents are here. My grandfather, my grandmother, my mother . . . my daddy was working up in Tennessee. He was working with the . . . what’s the name of the place where they did the atomic bomb? I forget. Anyway, wherever it was. He was up there. He wasn’t there. So when I came out, I had to go across the lawn of maybe about fifty yards where our entrance to our ward was. It was a little outside building. So I saw them coming out and my grandmother, she was kind of heavy and she must have been at that time maybe sixty, sixty-five, and none of the sixty-five-year-old ladies were very . . . you know, not too active. Well, she started running. “I want to be the first one. I’m going to be the first one!” she said. So there she comes. That was great seeing her. And then my mother was there. Of course, my mother, as soon as she saw me and hugged me and kissed me, she started feeling. She said someone from Donaldsonville had said that they had heard Dupont from Plaquemine had lost his leg in the war. I said, “No, mama. I told you everything in the letter I sent. I said everything was okay. There was nothing wrong with me.” But I told them in the last letter that I wrote that I had problems with my eyes, but I didn’t tell them to what degree. And then, they of course, wanted to know all about it. And my grandfather being a doctor, he wanted to know about it and I kind of told them all of that. But then they set up an appointment when I was on leave with me down with a guy in New Orleans. Best eye doctor down there at that time was a Dr. Buffington and they referred all of their patients down to him. I had to go down there with them to see him to see what the deal was. And finally, they accepted that. . . it was all new to them. Nobody knew that you could lose your eyesight by having beriberi. Or malnutrition. It was unknown. Nobody knew that area. And all the other things that happened from dietary deficiencies all came out.

So when I got back to Plaquemine, I told my mother when I was coming and I said, “I’m going to come in on Saturday. This Saturday my leave starts.” No, it wasn’t a leave, it was a weekend pass. This Saturday. So she said, “Okay.” She said, “What I’m going to do . . .” There’s a train stop at all the old places there, and so I guess they must have told everybody here that I was coming which was kind of embarrassing. So when the train stopped at White Castle, my mother gets on the train. Now people didn’t usually get on the train. She said “I want to be on the train when you come off.” (laughs) Well, we pulled into Plaquemine and Lord, the people out there. The high school band is out there and the conductor. He was a porter or. . . I think he was a porter. He was a black guy. We didn’t have black conductors then. He’s coming down the aisle. He said, “Lord, I sure hope all these people don’t want to get on this train.” (laughs) So when I got off the train and the band was playing and everybody coming around, shaking hands. As we’re driving down, the first thing I noticed about Plaquemine was all the trees had grown. Now that’s a strange thing to do but I can remember how it looked and going down these same roads that I’ve passed so many times, the trees were all much bigger than they were. I said, “That’s kind of stupid.” But anyway, that’s the first thing that I noticed. And the people I’d seen, I had forgotten about. And they all came to my grandmother’s home visiting and it was a very nice thing. But the band, that just did it. Now you know what the band did? I told you that. “Don’t Fence Me In.” That was a popular song back at that time. Not because of the POWs. But anyway, they played that. And they played the Marine Hymn. So anyway, that was when I came back home. There was so much that I didn’t know about my friends. That’s what I wanted to . . . and I had to sit and I think there was someone lost in (?) . . . wanted to know where they were and who went into the service and where and all this business. So I was trying to catch up on all that. And a lot of them would be on leave and they’d come by. It was very rewarding, very happy, very nice to be back home. It was much better than I thought it was going to be. I knew it was going to be nice to get there, but then when it got there, you just wallowed in the happiness of it all.

Asked where his home was – Well, my home at that time is not there anymore. It’s where there’s a hospital, old hospital. It was a block away from the levee. It was an old home that my grandmother’s grandfather had built. They had moved it because the river had changed. They had to move it back and so they moved it and it was just next to the hospital. That’s where my grandpa . . . Grandpa was a doctor there. He worked in the hospital there and that’s where . . . I lived really right across the street from the gymnasium here when I was a little boy because my dad and mom built a house there. And I grew up there but I lived with my grandmother most of the time because all of my friends lived up there. And in summertime, I’d spend my time up there. After school, I’d walk there. My dad would come get me at night. I’d eat supper there. They practically raised me. So during the war, of course, my dad was off working at what is that place in Tennessee where they did the atomic bomb, where they did all of the . . . he was in the office. He wasn’t a scientist or anything. But my mother with my two sisters moved up to my grandmother’s house because it was such a big two story house. And so she rented the other house so that gave her some funds.

Asked how old his mother lived to be – My mother lived to be one hundred. She died in 2001 on April 20 over in Lafayette. She was living over there with my sister. She had a quality life. She worked. She worked more through fashion. She worked in dress shops selling, sales lady, sales person. And she would tell people . . . Men would come and try and buy something for their wives like a birthday and want to get a dress for her and she knew everybody and he said, “I think my wife . . .” She said, “Oh no, let me show you what your wife would like.” And she’d pull one out and sure enough . . . well, she was into clothes. So she did that most of her life and then she retired from that and that’s where we lived until . . . and then when I got married, Angela and I stayed there for maybe a month or so and then mama realized it kind of put pressure on Grandpa and my grandmother, so then she took her house back up here and we went over there and I stayed there when I was going to LSU and I even stayed there after I got the job until I was going to move to Plaquemine. When that happened, I figured “Well, I can’t very well live there if I’m going to move here.” So we rented a place until 1951 and then we built this one.

About J. E. Dupont, Jr. Part VII

2007-12-04T08:58:00.000-06:00

Asked about the information that was worth the Japanese guard’s amnesty. –

Good question. That’s a good question, something to look up. I have no idea. I’ve never heard any report about whatever happened to the results of those examinations and studies that they made on different people. I’m sure it must be somewhere. I don’t think it was destroyed or anything. I don’t know where that would be unless it’d be in the archives or maybe they kind of pushed it off where they don’t want anybody to know about it. But not too many people know that they were given amnesty. It was all a big deal when they were all sentenced to prison for life and all of this and what the awful things they did but then in two or three years . . . .

Asked about the ones who got life sentences . . . I would imagine. From what McDole said, there’s no one in jail now for atrocities that were reported. The Japanese refuse to accept that they committed any atrocities against the Americans or the Allies, the Australians or anyone that they hit. The Australians are really upset about it. And so now, of course, the big deal now is that everybody’s paying reparations to prisoners. And the Japanese can’t pay any to us because that was in the surrender document that no reparations would be extracted from Japan. So when some of these people . . . The Germans with the Holocaust people, they’re paying off all of their people. Well, they started. Why wouldn’t Japan be able to? The Japanese said, “Sorry but we signed a document. There’d be no reparations.” End of story. So what’s happening now, the state courts have been filing suits against Nissan and Mitsubishi and all of those people because the work that these people did in the mines getting steel and things from them, they profited from that slave labor. But from what I can understand, some of the federal courts have thrown them out. They’ve appealed it to federal court. They went from the state court into the federal court and they have thrown it out. They tried to do it civil but it would have to go. I don’t quite know how law works but I know these people in California are still with it.

Asked what the motivation was for the massacre at Palawan – They didn’t want . . . they thought the Americans were going to invade and they didn’t think that they would be able to handle a hundred and fifty men with just about twenty guards. Remember, the order came from Tokyo not to allow a single one to be retaken. I guess they were following that because the airfield was built. They were just mopping up and doing a few extra things.

Asked if he knew any of the men who were killed at Palawan - Oh heavens, yes. I can rattle their names off. Oh, yes. Morris and Joyner and Hammock and all of these guys. Some of them were in my company, all the ones in F company. . . Yes, I probably knew about five or six of them real well. In fact, Morris was one of my closest buddies out in China. That’s why I went to the grave and got pictures of it and all that stuff.

Asked if there was some kind of monument at Palawan today – There is a small monument, a little, small monument. It’s about that high and it tells . . . it doesn’t have their names on there. It just tells what happened there on December 14, 1944. One hundred and forty-four people were murdered by the Japanese and that’s all it says.

Asked what the families of the victims at Palawan heard about the massacre at the time. - All they heard is what was told to them by people who knew their loved ones. The Army, the military would only tell them that were KIA, killed in action at Palawan on the fourteenth of December, 1944. They don’t go into the gory part. I think they knew that they were executed because they would inquire. They would say, “Hey, what do you mean killed in action? There was no fighting going on then. They were prisoners. What happened?” The Japanese killed them all. That’s all they’d say, but I don’t think they went into the gory details at the beginning. They didn’t know about it, you see? They didn’t know about it until April when the seabees finally invaded. That’s when they found the tunnels and all the bones and all that in there. Nobody knew anything about it until the seabees got there. Then the Filipinos told them what happened. The ones who escaped and survived came back and told the story. That’s what told the whole story, the ones who came back. If it hadn’t been for that, they would have said, “Well, it looked . . . I don’t know what happened here. Looked like some people got burned up.” The Filipinos were everywhere.

Getting back to the spittoon. You remember I mentioned this spittoon? Okay on the way, somewhere on the way down, I lost my mess kit and I had nothing to eat out of. They didn’t save plates or anything. You had your mess kit and you went up and stood in line and they threw it in. Well, so what I had, I had a board about four inches wide and about eight inches long that I had nailed a piece of tin onto, nailed it down and had bent the edges up so that when I got my rice into my soup, it wouldn’t spill out all over the place. Well, that’s what I was using for maybe about a week, not a week, no, it was maybe one or two days. When we got to Palawan, the Filipinos had all left. It was a little town. It wasn’t really a town. It was a village with a couple of houses and a pier and there was a beach out there. And there was a drug store there and a couple of little buildings and that was it. Well, when we first got there, we were in this barracks without any guards around or anything and we could walk around and see things. So I walked into this drug store thinking there might be some medicine or something in there. Well, there was a bottle of benzene. I don’t know what benzene’s used for but I got that. I said, “I’ll bring this back to the medics.” And I saw a spittoon sitting on the floor. It was a round spittoon with enamel, white enamel, circular, and the top on it was funnel-shaped. Had a little top that came off and it was funnel-shaped. It wasn’t a big old one like that. It was just one about that big around, about that deep, maybe like that. So I took the top off and it was kind of grimy inside. So I went down to the beach where the sand was. I got some water and I scraped it and cleaned it all out and I used that as my mess kit. And I could have more. I could hold more food than anybody else could which was good. And it came in handy sometimes. And everybody would laugh at me when I tell them about that here and everybody gets a kick out of me eating out of a spittoon. But I should have brought it back. But when we were getting rid of all of our clothes and all of those things, I didn’t want anything to do with prison, just threw it all away and got into nice new clean stuff and no more army stuff. So I wish I had brought it back. It served me well. In fact, people used it to bake things in, to get some extra rice or some other stuff. Especially when the little food packages came in with little corned beef and get some rice flour and make, and cook it and my little spittoon was perfect for a baking dish. So I let it out but I would have to ask some of the cooking form my rent for using it. (laughs) So that was it generally. I don’t know.

These postcards, that my mother had saved that I had sent to her while in prison. Each of them is . . . well my mother has the date that she received them written on them. Now, there’s one of them that has the date on it and it gives the date that she received it. It took about nine months to get here. What they would do, they would get a bunch of these and they would have a Japanese ship go to South Africa to Cape of Good Hope down there or Cape Horn and . . . I forget. . . South America or . . . anyway, the cape down there. And they would meet a Swedish ship, a red cross ship called . .(?) It was a Swedish ship. The Japanese wouldn’t allow it to come into their water so they would meet it at the bottom coast of Africa and transfer mail and packages and what not. And then the ship would go on back to New York. And of course, the Japanese ships would then come on back to us. But that’s how this mail went and it took a long time. Like I said, I’d get fifteen to twenty letters at a time and we only had these to mail. We only had so many words too. Fifty words? Well, maybe that’s as many as you could get on the card. The twenty-five words came when my mother had to write to me.

And you weren’t allowed to have the option of writing, “My health is excellent, good, fair, or poor. And nobody would put poor because the Japanese censors wouldn’t send it. They wouldn’t want any bad reflection upon them. But the thing about it, what’s so interesting now, but the kids like at school is when I bring them is they’re all in Chinese and Japanese writing all over it. And the censors, the mark, the Japanese censor stamp. The circle one. Here’s the American one on the side over there. They would censor it also. As it came in, it was censored. And my mother’s letters were censored as they went out and they were censored by the Japanese also.

Now, there was one person I slept next to in Bilibid. The first batch of mail, they could write as much as they wanted. It wasn’t till after that then they put the twenty-five words. His people wrote to him and he thought they were crazy because they were talking about somebody who had this big farm in the western part. What he did, he described the war in a farming motif of what was happening in the war about the western forty acres or this forty acres, “we’re cultivating that now. I had a real hard time but we’re cultivating that.” And he read them the longest time and finally it dawned on him. And then, when you looked at it in that context, you could see what was happening. But we didn’t know where the places were. So, they kind of camouflaged it. The Japanese never caught onto it. They thought they were talking about a farm. I don’t know how people can think of those things but that happened.

And people would switch letters and let people read them and you got to know some things about it. Some people lied. Some people lied about what their family said. I remember it happened to me. He told me. . . well, he was a friend of mine. We slept next to each other. He got his letter from his parents. Of course, I wasn’t able to read all of them. Sometimes I had them read to me. He told me his mother and father owned this hotel in Kansas City and that he had a red-headed girlfriend and all kinds of things like that and his brother was a major, he was a pilot and all kinds of stuff. And I got to know all of this. And I remember it well. I remember their names and everything. And of course, he was killed on one of the ships. And then, when I get back home, and I’m working then. I’m working in the VA office and I wanted to find out about Hawks. I guess they must be all dead. I’m saying his name, Albert Hawks. So I knew he was from Kansas City or Omaha. I don’t know. It was somewhere up there. So I wrote to that newspaper and I wrote. I said, “Do you have any . . . check you morgue files and see if you have any information on Albert Hawks, U.S. Army, such-and-such. He died such-and-such date.” And they sent me back about his parents, where they lived, and a little write-up. So I wrote them a letter. I told them I knew their son real well and he told me all about the hotel they owned and about his brother who was a major and all this stuff. And they wrote back and said, “No, we never owned any hotel.” And his brother, whatever his name was, well, no, he was a private in the Army somewhere. But, you see, he embellished it a little bit and I felt really badly about it, you know? But I didn’t know. So then I wrote back and told them, I said, “Maybe I got him mixed up with someone else.”

The following is daddy talking with Ms. Jennifer Abraham from LSU who interviewed him. I just thought I’d add it in because it sounds so much like what he would say . . how he was worried about not being able to finish telling her something he wanted to put in the interview.

J. E.: How much you got left on that (on the tape recorder)?
Ms. Abraham: Ten seconds.
J. E.: Okay. I didn’t get to read my thing then. That’s all right.
Ms. Abraham: We can do it next time.
J. E.: What are we going to talk about next time?
Ms. Abraham: Well, coming back to the States and coming back to Louisiana.
J. E.: Oh and going through the rehab and all of that?
Ms. Abraham: Yes, yes.
J. E.: Oh and I had the good . . . Went up to the Philadelphia Naval Hospital and just for the blind people . . .
Ms. Abraham: Yes.
J. E.: I had learned to play the piano before they let me get out. I didn’t tell you all of that?
Ms. Abraham: No.
J. E.: Oh, hell, I learned Braille. I didn’t tell you that?
Ms. Abraham: No.
J. E.: Wait till I tell you how I passed my Braille test. I don’t know if I want to put it on there or not. Maybe I’ll wait to put it on the other one. But when we finish, I’ll tell you about that. That was something in itself. But with all of the people with EENT problems. . deaf like Cody Miller was deaf. . .
Ms. Abraham: What does EENT stand for?
J. E.: Eye, ear, nose and throat.
Ms. Abraham: Okay.
J. E.: That was what they . . . so this was a specialty to them. People with visual problems, people who had hearing problems, throat problems, voice . . . they all went to this specialist hospital, Naval hospital, which handled that solely. And, boy, it was a great hospital. I mean they did everything. We had totally blind guys there. Totally blind. And they had the rehab section That’s where I met my wife. She was a rehab specialist with the Navy. And you were assigned to a certain person and that person would teach you Braille, how to type – I knew how to type because I was in high school and how to play the . . . (end of the tape).

**************

This is the beginning of another tape – the date is September 5, 2001.

J. E.: This is a pretty good day because I was married on this day fifty-five years ago.
Ms. Abraham: Happy anniversary! It’s my brother’s anniversary.
J. E.: Come on.
Ms. Abraham: Yes, I’m serious.
J. E.: Well, we were married September 5, 1946.
Ms. Abraham: Oh.
J. E.: Forty-six in Cumberland, Maryland.
Ms. Abraham: Congratulations.
J. E.: And I never thought I’d see the fifty-fifth because when people made their fiftieth anniversary, they were gone.
Ms. Abraham: Big party.
J. E.: They were gone.
Ms. Abraham: Aw.
J. E.: So anyway, I’m quite fortunate.
Ms. Abraham: Well, congratulations.
J. E.: Well, thank you, ma’am.
Ms. Abraham: We’re in your home in Plaquemine, Louisiana and this is our sixth session. Today, we’re going to fill in a couple of holes about being a prisoner of war and also, we’re going to talk about being in the vet hospital and meeting your wife.

Well, we talked earlier about, for example just certain ways that guards at the camps tried to demean the soldiers.

J. E.: Oh, yes. They would try to make you feel bad too, as you said, demean them. And I can tell you about the truck.

Okay, when we were down at Palawan, they were loading a big bodies truck with drums of gasoline to bring out to the airfield that we were working on. And so there were about five American POWs lifting these fifty-five gallon drums full of gasoline. They’re quite heavy and they were struggling and couldn’t get it quite high enough to get it on the truck. And one of the Japs in charge said, “America weak. Japan strong.” So he told these POWs to move to the side and he brought two of his guards there. They put their rifles down and of course, they grabbed it and lifted it and put it up on the truck. “Ah. Japan strong. America weak.” Just to aggravate us but they knew. So that was one of the reasons. And of course, we had to bow to every Japanese guard throughout. . . In other camps where it wasn’t a work detail . . . see at Cabanatuan or in Bilibid prison, there was a patrol of Japanese, two or three soldiers who would walk through the camp constantly just sort of a patrol to make sure everything was okay. And if you were outside and they came by, you had to come to attention and then you had to bow to them with your hands folded. You bowed to them as if they were some type of deity, I guess and they required this. They were quite upset if you didn’t.

There was a guard station at Bilibid prison in the center. Bilibid prison was shaped like a big wheel and the guards or the buildings were angled as if they would be spokes on the wheel. And in the center where the axle would be, there was a round house structure and it was made out of stone and it was open at all ends because the Japanese guards, that was their guard house. And they were always there. Usually the sergeant of the guard was sitting in a big, fat, plush chair and anybody walking from one place to another who passed through there had to stop and bow to him and then go on. Well, when I first got there, of course as I mentioned previously my vision was pretty bad, I walked by and kept on going. Didn’t even know the Jap guards were there and they called me, “Oy!” They’d say, “Oy!” And they’d rattle something in Japanese and they’d do this. They’d wave their hand, put their arm out and wave just their hand to indicate that you had to come to them. So one of the guys said, “Hey, he’s calling you.” So, I went over there.
“Stand.” So I had to stand over at attention with the sun coming down for maybe an hour and then he let me go. So then I was aware of that. But they were like that. It was just to aggravate you and make you feel inferior which is what they did. They were pretty successful at doing that at the time. Oh, what else happened?

We had a deaf guy, one of those deaf friends of mine. Cody Miller was his name. He was a marine also. I don’t know if I told you about him or not. I don’t know whether he should come into the story or not. Now, this is the good part. I have to tell this story because he was a dear friend of mine. Of course, he’s dead now. But we were together so long. I mean he couldn’t hear and I couldn’t see, so we kind of . . . Okay, there’s another story I’ll tell about that. He had one of these jungle helmets, not a military helmet, one of those . . . a pith helmet they call it. He had one of those. And across the top, we had a cloth pinned on it which was written in Japanese that said that he was deaf. So a lot of times, he’d be walking and the Japanese would call him and he wouldn’t hear and they’d come up and grab him and turn him around and he would know then that they would see the sign up there. So eventually, they knew he was stone deaf. So he could read lips so well. He’s from Lafayette. He could read lips in English and in French. That’s gospel. I’m there to tell you I saw it. And the only thing is you’d have to tell him. You’d have to say, “Well, I’m going to speak French.” Now, I don’t speak French, but some of the people there were from Louisiana and some could talk French and they worked with him. But the funny part was . . . I mean he was a humorous guy. The funny part was . . . everybody smoked in those days. That was the thing. And people would talk with cigarettes in their mouth and if you talked with him with a cigarette in your mouth, he’d say, “Take that goddamn cigarette out your mouth. I can’t hear you.” (laughs).

Oh, we had so much fun with him when we got back to the States because he had ear problems, I couldn’t see, and Carpenter, who had eyes like me, he couldn’t see. So we kind of bummed around, we three. And when we got back to the States, people wouldn’t believe. When we got to San Francisco, I remember the first time we went down Market Street. I wanted a chocolate malt so bad and I got in there and got one and I was having my chocolate malt. And he was off somewhere looking at some other things. And we were talking (he doesn’t say who he was talking to) and I said, “You see that guy over there?” He said, “Yes.” I said, “He can’t hear anything. He reads lips.” He says, “Is he good?” I said, “Oh, yes.” I said, “Watch.” So I got his attention and I said something to him like, I told her what I was going to say. I’m going to ask him does he want a malted milk. He said “Okay.” Well, he did that and I didn’t say any words. He just said, “Oh, yes, I’ll have one.” And she couldn’t believe it. She couldn’t believe that he could read lips that good. And then when we all went to Philadelphia, that was the EENT hospital for rehab. They really didn’t want to let us out like we were. They rehabilitate us to the point where we could be employable in something or other.

Okay, so we all go up there. And of course on Sunday, the bars and the night clubs are closed in Philadelphia. Right across the river at Camden, New Jersey, they were open. So we’d go, of course, on Sundays. We all take the subway downtown and get a bus and go across to Camden. And we were in this restaurant one time and we were sitting straight from the bar and he could see. He’d say, “Oh yes. Those pretty girls are talking about you.” (laughs). He could read lips across the bar. He’d say, “Oh, they said, ‘Look at those three cute Marines over there.’” I said, “Come on, man.” “Oh, yes,” he said. I said, “No, they can’t . . .” (laughs).

Ms. Abraham: (laughs) That’s dangerous.

J. E.: Well, it is dangerous but he was an asset, you see.

So that was Cody Miller. He was a fine fellow but he had a problem when he got back, not being able to hear. He thought he’d be able to live with it, but he got married and it got so where it was really . . . I don’t know. He just had trouble then. He tried to get a job. He got a job with the state as a potato inspector. In agriculture. And he had to get an automobile to go. Now being in an automobile and not being able to hear, he got in quite a few wrecks so they let him go there. Then he went into neon tube bending for making signs. He got into that and he did that well. And I don’t know what happened there but something happened. He and his boss had a problem. He had some type of internal problem that I really don’t know. I’d go see him. He’d come over here. And we were friendly up until the time he couldn’t get a job. He had a compensation some in so he had enough money to live on. But he started drinking and then it got to him and eventually he had to go into the hospital and he just died. A lot of them did that. A lot of these POWs got back and it wasn’t like it was. I don’t know if the experience in the POW camps had anything to do with it or people couldn’t understand why they were doing things and they would turn to drink. A lot of them got married as soon as they got back and that never panned out. I get letters from people. I write and they tell me, “Oh you’re fortunate, fortunate you found a good woman.” They said things like that. So it was kind of sad when he died. But I just wanted to mention him that he was proficient. In fact, in the hospital in Philadelphia, he was in the deaf ward up there and those doctors up there thought that no one could read lips that well, that he was putting on an act. They thought it was all psychological and that he was trying to deceive people that he couldn’t hear. Sometimes they would sneak up behind him and clap their hands and there wouldn’t be any . . . but they figured he had trained himself that way. And they began to bring psychiatrists in and he thought that they were cardiologists and they weren’t. And somehow or another, he found out that they were trying to trap him into admitting that he could hear.

Asked if they could just examine his ears. – His eardrums had healed up. They were broken but they had healed up. And they could see a scar in there, but they just didn’t think he could read that well. But when he found out they were doing that, he blew up. He really blew up. He was threatening to leave the hospital. He raised all kinds of hell. They finally calmed him down and then realized that it was true. Then they wanted to train him to teach lip reading. But he said no, that wasn’t for him. I don’t think he graduated from high school and he felt that he wouldn’t be effective in a classroom with other people. But they wanted him to go to some school up there. Some college somewhere and teach deaf kids how he was able to read lips, what techniques he used, to read in French and English. But anyway, that’s the story of Cody.

Asked to tell about some of the people he was with and what became of them –
Well, let’s see. What became of them? Well, Carpenter, the one like me. We were very close friends. He and I were in the same ward because we couldn’t see. My wife knew him well. And so we were real friendly. We never went on liberty without each other. We were on the bowling team. They had a blind bowling team up there. They wanted to teach us how to bowl and of course, they had a railing on the side for blind people and when the railing comes to an end, that’s when you’re supposed to release the ball. Well, they would conjure up teams playing each other like the Valley Forge Army Hospital was quite close to Philadelphia. So the Army had a blind rehab team and we were always competing against the army, the navy and marines would. Well, we had partial vision and most of those army guys, they were stone cold blind and so they set it up. And we felt a little embarrassed to go against those poor people because we could see where the line was and they wouldn’t gutter the balls and all that. So we beat up on them pretty badly. I didn’t think that was a good thing to do, but they said it was good for the army people to compete even though they lost.

Then they had a regatta. Up in Philadelphia, rowing is a big thing with Yale and all the Ivy League schools. Well, there’s lots of, like you used to call them, some kind of rowing club or something on the Schuylkill River which won (?) Philadelphia. What do they call those things, yachts ? Oh there’s a name for them. It’s a club and these men belong to them and they have regattas against each other. And some of the Olympic oarsmen come from up there so it’s a big deal. So the Navy hospital worked a deal out with this one group and there’s a name that they have for them and I can’t think of it. And we would go down there and there were eight of us. There were eight of us on the varsity and eight on the junior varsity. That’s the way they planned it. So the varsity was me and Carpenter and some other guys. I don’t know why. And the others were people who were not quite as proficient as were and like that. So we’d go up there and practice and practice and then they had a regatta between the Army, between Valley Forge, and the Naval Hospital in Philadelphia on a Saturday afternoon. It was a big deal. Isaid, “What’s the deal?” It’s just rowing. They played it up big and the people lined the banks of the Schuylkill river We had to row a mile, I think, a mile and a quarter of a mile. I forget. And we’d practice. And rowing, it’s a little difficult. Your feet are hooked into some clamps to hold you straight, but the seat that you’re on, slides. It’s like in a gym, you know? Okay, you’d go up. But the thing is, when the oars . . . when you’re in the water, the oar’s blade is down. When you come out of the water, you have to flip the blade so it’s parallel to the water so that when you come back, you don’t it the water. And if you don’t do it, then your oar blade will catch the water and the oar itself will come up under your chin because you’re moving quite fast so they call that catching a crab. So we had big fun with that. Everybody would catch a crab and it’d mess everything up. But finally, we got proficient with the thing. And our (?), who sits up front, his name was . . . he was the navy chief. His name was Evangeliste (?) and he knew about all of that and he had his little microphone. And whenever he says “Stroke,” that’s when you do it. And he would determine how fast you were going. If you had to go faster he would increase the sharpness, I mean the speed of the stroke. Make big old strokes. So then we’d have to pick it up and pick it up. Well, we rowed and we went the mile or the mile and a quarter, whatever it was. And it wasn’t too bad. We won by half a length. The army was tough. You don’t have to see to row. And we had the vision and they didn’t. So I don’t know if we had an edge on them or not but we beat the. And after that, the regatta, there was a big reception in the place that sponsored them. I can’t remember what they called them. Might have been a yacht club or something like that, you know? And everybody came and, of course rehab people were there from the hospital and we had a great time.

Asked if he was dating (his wife, Angela Hannon) then? – We were going out then. And Carpenter, he had his girlfriend too. Her name was Maggie. Maggie what? I forget. She was from North Carolina. She had drawl out of this world. But he had one too, from Mississippi. Carpenter’s full name was Herman O. Carpenter. He’s still living up right out of Jackson, Forest, Mississippi.

He will not come to a reunion. Angela and I went up to see him one time. We were going to Maryland once and we stopped by to see him when his mother was living and they were raising chickens. And after his mother died. . . he had a bunch of sisters. He was the only boy. He became a chicken farmer. And we went up there to see him and he talked and we talked a while, and then . . . Well, prior to that, he came down here right after we were discharged. He was there and I was here and he came down. But I was in LSU at the time and I was home on the weekend and he came to my grandmother’s where we lived and he stayed and spent the weekend with us. And then I drove him. I would drive then. See, I could drive then. I didn’t have a license but I was able to drive. I shouldn’t have been but I did. So I drove him back when I went back to LSU and brought him to the bus station and he caught his bus back. But he doesn’t go to the reunions.

I met him after I got back from Palawan. I didn’t know anybody before except the ones who went down there with us from Cabanatuan. Then when I got back from Palawan in Bilibid in the hospital there, this is when I met these people. That’s when I met Cody Miller and the rest of them. We were all in China but they were in a different battalion than I was. They were at different camps. Miller never went to a work camp because he couldn’t hear. Now Carpenter, I forget which camp he was in. He was in some type of labor camp and his vision was like mine. He had vision problems too, with no central vision. I’m sure it was caused by beriberi. That was the only thing that I knew that would cause nerve endings to die. So, that’s the story on him.

I just got married and was trying to battle school and all and the baby comes along. And I was in my third or fourth semester, I forget, because I was going to summer school regular. And I was taking Spanish as my foreign language. And through the first semester, Spanish was okay, no problem because I had a reader. Records and the administration paid a reader and I would get people in the same class with me and I’d use their notes and all and we’d study together. I can’t think of his name. anyway, he wasn’t a Marine. He wasn’t military. He was a regular student. Anyway, in Spanish without anybody there and my trying to remember what the instructor said and I’d fail on my test. I’d have to take my tests orally. Anyway, in Spanish the guys were Senor (?). That was the professor. I’m sure he’s not there anymore. But he understood that I couldn’t grasp it because it ws more reading paragraphs rather than grammar and like that. So I was having difficulty and I’d come home and Angela would try to deal with me. The baby would cry and it got to the point where it was really hectic. So I said, “Well, no, I can’t keep up with this. It’s too stressful. So I talked to the VA counselors and I said, “Can I withdraw?” “Yes.” “Will that affect my rehabilitation.” “No, that won’t affect your rehabilitation at all.” I said. “Well, I think that’d be the best thing to do.” So, I did. I withdrew. Then they set up counseling and I went down there for counseling and took a battery of tests and it came out that I should work in some type of social work. So I had a counselor. He says, “Well, you’re a veteran.” And he said, “How about working to help veterans?” I said, “Well, that sounds good.” So they went and talked to the (?) who was the Department of Veterans Affairs man in charge in Baton Rouge. And they called and said, “Okay, bring him in for an interview.” And so I went in and sat down. He interviewed me, told me all what it was. But he made it appear harder than what it was. Said, “Now, you know, you’re going to have to know medical terms. You’re going to really have to know medical terms because these guys are going to come in and you’re going to have to determine what their problem is, what their chances of getting compensation are.” He says, “And with your not being able to read, do you think you’d be able to do that?” And I was about to say, “No, I don’t think so.” And Angela pops up there, “Sure he can.” (laughs). “Okay,” he said, “We’ll give it a try.”
So anyway, I got the job and I had to go through a training session with them. And Vernon Dupuy was in charge of the training session. In my case, he would read to me and it would be put on tape about what was going . . . and I’d bring it home and then I could study it that way. And so, it was a six weeks course in that. And so that worked out fine. Then afterwards when I took the test, I had to go there to the state and take the civil service test for this position. Well, the guy had to give it to me orally and that wasn’t any problem. That was just a general intelligence test what he gave me because he didn’t know anything about VA stuff. Okay, so after that, they said, “Okay, you’re now certified. You’re now a veteran’s claims officer.” They said, “Well now, we can’t put you in an office right now. Now, you got to get experience somewhere. We’re going to put you in the East Baton Rouge Parish office.” Well, they put me in there and that was a big office. And I had my little desk and my wife was my secretary. But you see, they would put you there, but now since you can’t . . . well, I could type. They taught me how to type in high school and I had it again in the rehab. But since you have difficulty reading the forms, the questions, we can’t afford to have a secretary for you. I said “Well, my wife could do it.” They said, “That’d be fine but we can’t pay her.” I said, “Well, that’d be okay.” So we got an arrangement set up in the East Baton Rouge office and I had my desk. She was there. And they’d come in and maybe want to file a claim and get the 526, whatever the form was, and put it in the typewriter. And she’d tell me what the question was and I’d ask him and sit there and type, type, type, type. I would type it in. We were doing it like that. That went along for about two or three months. That was fine. And when letters came in, she would read the letters to me and then I’d dictate letters to her. So it was going good. Well, I was doing well. I mean I enjoyed that kind of work. I didn’t realize I would like it but I did. Well then, she’s pregnant and she was sick as a dog. So that came up and I said, “Oh, man, what’s going to happen now?” I told them and they came down and said, “Well, tell you what. We have a girl here in the office and she’s a file clerk.” Betty Jo Bernard was her name. Young, she was out of high school. She was a file clerk and they said, “Tell you what, we’ll let Betty Jo be your . . .what you’re doing here.” I said, “Fine.” Well in the meantime, there’s another office adjacent to ours where some ladies worked and one of them knew I couldn’t see and she brought a magnifying glass similar to this. And said, “Why don’t you try this?” So I got it and could see pretty good I told her. “Good,” she said. “Well you can have that.” It wasn’t as strong as this one. So then, I began using this and I was able to read the forms, the small print on the forms and things like that. Well, Betty Jo was there and she worked with me for a while. And then when an opening came out at LSU . . . there’s an office out at LSU. Guy named Ray Robinson was in charge of that but he had so much work to do. This is in the ‘48s and ‘49s when everybody was coming back.

About J. E. Dupont, Jr. Part VI

2007-12-02T11:22:00.000-06:00

Daddy talking about what happened after he was liberated. (Continued from Part V).

And after that, we went back into Bilibid but the danger wasn’t there anymore because the lines had moved up. They had put a pontoon bridge across the Pasig River and they had crossed over and they had pushed the Japanese back. And the artillery piece, it must have been knocked out because there was no more firing going on. But we came back and everything was relatively peaceful and we stayed there for another two or three days, I think. And then they trucked us on up to a rest camp just around Lingayen Gulf. That was an ideal entrance place. And there were some Navy ships there. And we stayed there about a week at the rest camp. That’s where we ate all the food we could and got sick and slept and laid around in big old bunks. And we had diarrhea, of course, from all the rich food.

We were feeling better. We felt the full content feeling which we hadn’t felt. One thing I can remember when we got there, there was ice, crushed ice and they gave us a drink. I don’t know if it was orange or lemonade or something and we drank it and everything was numb. My tongue did not taste anything. It was nothing but numbness as if I had a shot of Novocain in my mouth and my tongue and my throat. When I swallowed, it was nothing because of the coldness. I don’t guess my insides were used to having that cold. And it was like an anesthetic. I didn’t feel a thing for at leas” But I couldn’t taste anything. I couldn’t feel it going down. I don’t know why - - because it had been maybe a few years and you don’t have any ice or anything cold except water from a lake or something. But this was ice, ice cold stuff and it was a rare feeling.

Asked if he got to phone home – No, not there. No, what we did – we got to write a telegram. We got to write a telegram and I think they were twenty-five words and they said, “Write it on a piece of paper.” Well, I didn’t have any paper at the time but I had my mother’s letters. I still had my mother’s letters and on the back of them, they put a Japanese censor seal on it. Well, she could only write twenty-five words in a letter. So what she would do, she would write a continuous thing and she’d mail it every day thinking the letter would be delivered every day, but they’d wait until there was a big pile of them and then we’d get maybe fifteen letters at a time. And so what I’d do is I’d put them in dates after I caught on to what she was doing. I put them in postmark dates and then I’d open one and read it and get the next one and I could follow the story of what she was telling me because she could only use twenty-five words. And she kind of told us about what was happening here but she didn’t say …. she said that …. My grandfather was a doctor. He was the only one who was able to get gas for gas rationing, and how they had gone to New Orleans for something they had to use grandpa’s car because he had gas and things like that, just local things that I would want to know about.

So, getting back to writing home, you have to have a piece of paper to write on because they were debriefing us is what they were doing. They were taking each fellow in and we would group off and you’d sit down and they would say, “Well, now, do you have anything that you want to tell us, anything that happened that you think was unjust that was done by Americans to Americans?”

It happened. Well, like the thing that I remember was right before when we went to Bilibid prison and it was crowded and they sent us out to Fort Santiago. We were there on account of the barracks and it was rusty and we had one doctor there and there was supposed to be some medications. And the medic, I forget what the medication was for but he had medications. And some of the medical people in addition to the doctor had them and he put a sign up on the bulletin board, typed sign. He had a typewriter, typed sign, that the American prisoners were not to be given these particular types of medication and that they return them back into him. And we didn’t know why that was. I forget the details of what it was but it was about the medication. And we read that thing and someone said, “You know what he’s doing with that medicine? He’s trading it to the Japanese for extra food.” And we said, “Can’t be.” Anyway, just before we left, somebody took that letter down from the bulletin board and at this place where they were interrogating us to a certain degree, he turned this thing in, this letter, and I forget the doctor’s name. He was a U.S. Army doctor. And later on, after we got back, I remember reading in the paper a little small thing about this doctor had been court-martialed for his activity being unbecoming in prison camp or whatever, where he had not done the right thing by his prisoners. But they wanted to know about those things.

Then they had people in the camps who the Japanese favored. We had one – oh I hadn’t gotten to Palawan yet – had one down there that was really bad. But we had them where they would - - when you get a group of men together, there’s always going to be someone who winds up with a lot of stuff that other people don’t have. We’d play poker for ….
We got some packages in one time from the Red Cross with canned American foods in them around Christmastime while we were in Bilibid. There would be corned beef and powdered milk. There would be spam. There’d be cigarettes, packs of cigarettes, all sorts of stuff like that. But some people who didn’t smoke or who didn’t particularly care or wanted to get more would gamble with cards and that food. I’ll bet two cigarettes and winner would take it. There’s always one guy who winds up with all this tuff and he has some little people that are his lackeys and that happened in every camp. Well, other people were told to these people who were asking those questions. We told them how all that was and, of course, whatever military action they took, I don’t have any idea.

But getting back to where I started, I needed a piece of paper to write twenty-five words telegram to my mother. So I wrote, “Am free and safe. Will be home soon.” And I printed it all out and gave it to the guy and he took it. And what happened, my mother tells me when I got home, that they knew that the Philippines had been reinvaded but they didn’t know whether we were released or not. And she got this letter in the mail from some colonel that she never saw, never heard about written to her and she opened it up and my little slip of paper was in there, not a telegram. So she looks at it. It says, “Am free. Will be home soon.” It was all printed. She looked on the back and there is a Japanese censor thing on the back and they didn’t know what that was. So she didn’t know whether to believe that it was authentic from me or whether it was a cruel trick that someone was playing on her. So she took it up – she had someone take it up to LSU to someone who knew Japanese up there and they couldn’t tell what it was. It was what they call a chop block or something that - - it’s a stamp but they call it a chop block, I think. Anyway, that Japanese character on it, the people at LSU didn’t know what it was. So she went around the air strip and the people around town and they didn’t know anything. And word hadn’t come out yet that we had been freed so it was maybe a week following that she got a telegram from the Marine Corp that I was free. But I still had that paper. And then, of course, it was all authentic. But evidently they couldn’t get it telegrammed being censored. This guy who was in charge, he just brought out an envelope and stuck it in the envelope, no explanation or anything. It’s strange but that’s what happened. That was the only communication we made while I was in prison camp. After we got aboard ship and we got clothes and left the rest area, we went on down to New Guinea somewhere and pulled in. They didn’t want us to get back home too fast because we were scrawny and awful looking so they wanted to keep us out there. We’d go different places and we’d be on a ship and get off and we built up our weight.

Asked how the Americans treated them - The Americans treated us great. You mean the liberators? Oh, we didn’t sleep that night, that first night. We didn’t sleep. We kept those people up all night talking to them about what had happened in the war. We knew nothing. Of course, the Japanese were telling us that they had landed in San Francisco and all this stuff. We didn’t believe it – we knew they were just making it up. We knew that. But it was just could you survive until they got there? That was the big thing. But they didn’t tell us anything, no. But they told us about North Africa. We didn’t know anybody was fighting in Africa. Told us about the Normandy invasion. We didn’t know about that. We didn’t know about any of those things. We didn’t know about when they recaptured Guam and those other islands while they were coming back. And we wanted to know all of this and about movie stars. We wanted to know all this and all that, all kinds of things. What were the popular songs and we just wanted to know everything being twenty and twenty-one. You don’t know what’s going on.

They were gracious to us. I think they were so happy that they had been able to do this, to see how much we appreciated what they had done for us. And I guess when they saw us all scraggly-looking, they brought some nurses in and some doctors and they checked some of the . . . We were all pretty good except we were just starving. That’s all. But once we got food and then they issued us clothes and we threw away all of our old rags that we wore and got regular things. And they separated the Army from the Navy people. See, there was no air corps then. There was the Army Air Corps but no Air Force as a separate branch service. It was a supply ship they put us on and they gave us clothes and they gave us partial pay and bought . . . we could buy razors and stuff and get back to being human beings again.

Like I said, they didn’t want to be in a hurry to get us back to the States. They didn’t bring us back. We were in New Guinea for maybe a week, tied up there. I don’t know what they were doing there but we would go ashore and there’d be a USO outfit and we would go over there and the Red Cross people would get there and we’d . . . getting us back socially rehabilitated, I think. And finally, we headed home. We were in a convoy, of course, and we landed in San Francisco on April 3 or April 4, somewhere around there. We had been liberated in February, of course. That was two months they kept us before we got back but we were presentable now. We were still thin but we weren’t emaciated. And then, they put us in the hospital. They had a receiving hospital there in San Francisco and all POWs had to go in there. And they checked you over and then they determined what your main problem was, physical problem, health problem. And then they would send you to a U.S. Navy hospital closest to your home. So in my case, I went to New Orleans Naval Hospital there. There were about eight or ten of us that went to that hospital and we stayed in San Francisco maybe ten days. And we had liberty and we’d go out every night. And we had money and it was all new and I remember my first meal. By this time, Iwo Jima was being invaded and we had some casualties coming in from Iwo Jima and they were in the hospital too. So the guy next to me, he and his buddy, when I went on my first liberty, they were able to go too. So, we went downtown together and, I remember, went into this restaurant. And I had always wanted . . . my favorite food was fried oysters. I loved fried oysters. Well, I got a dozen fried oysters and a big chocolate malt and that was my first meal. I had a picture somewhere. Anyway then, we could make a free call home. The telephone people gave us all a free call and you’d line up. Everybody would stand in line and you could talk, I think, five minutes. Maybe five minutes you could talk. So I got my mother, I got her on the phone. And she came and I started talking and she said, “Is this you?” She said, “It doesn’t sound like you.” Well, of course, being away from hoe, you don’t have that southern drawl anymore. I had picked up military language and my words were a little clipped. I’d clip them off. I wouldn’t drag them out like we do in the South. “It doesn’t sound like you.” I said, “Well, it’s me, Mom.” So, we talked a little bit. She told me what happened at home. She wanted to know if I was okay. I didn’t tell her about my eyes. I didn’t know how I could do that. So, I said, “I’m fine.” She said “You got your limbs, your legs and your arms?” I said, “Yes, I have all of that.” She had heard somewhere, someone in Donaldsonville had said that they had heard that I had lost a leg and that rumor came up. I don’t know how that happened. But she was worried about that but that wasn’t the case.

So then, we got on the train the day Franklin Roosevelt died. I remember we were walking aboard the train when the radio was coming on about that. That was, I guess, March … April … it was April sometime when he died. So we got on the train and we go to New Orleans and they brought me to the hospital there. And I called from there and told them that I was there. And so they said they were going to come down and see me. Well, it happened that I was in the dentist’s office. They were checking my teeth at the hospital and word came over the loudspeaker that Dupont in ward two, family is here. The technician said, “Well, you better go now.” Let me go and I had to walk across a wide kind of a big yard and they were coming out of the solarium there. And then they saw me. Of course, I didn’t see them. So they ran over. Of course, my mama was feeling my legs to see if everything was okay. And we sat down and we talked and talked for maybe an hour. (His family; his mom, grandma and grandpa were there, I don’t know if his dad was there or not. I remember him telling me about when they first saw him. His grandma was a “bit overweight” and she was so excited to see him that she started running over to him to be the first one to hug him).

And we couldn’t go home yet because we had what they called . . . we had parasites. Doc said, “You got companions.” We had worms, intestinal worms. So we had to clear all that up before they could let us go home. And then we went home on first leave and my mother met me on the train in White Castle because she wanted to be on the train when I got off. I don’t know why. But we got on the train and got to the depot and there’s the people out there, piles of people. And as I was coming off, there’s a band out there and they started playing “Don’t Fence Me In.” I’ll never forget that. I said. “What a song to play!” Here I am coming home and then “Don’t Fence Me In.” It was kind of a joke, I think, which was fine. And everybody was there and then we went home and people coming in and bringing stuff to eat. And that’s the way it was. It was a nice homecoming. (He had told me that the first place his grandpa took him after getting off the train was to church and then home).

Asked how many people were liberated with him – Well, the camp was set up into two things. There were a bunch of civilians that we didn’t know were there. They were way in the back. From what I knew, about twelve hundred civilians were back there.

They had these walls and sections and we couldn’t go over there and they couldn’t come here. But I thought there were only the three-hundred and fifty people that were in our camp. There was a hospital area. That’s how many that we were aware of. But later on, I find out that there were many more civilians in the back and I don’t know where they ever came from. I think they might have been housed in some other place besides Santos Tomas. I don’t know where they were from.

Asked if any people from Louisiana were with him - Oh yes, oh yes! There was my buddy Cody Miller. He was stone deaf. He couldn’t hear and we couldn’t see. Then I got Herman Carpenter and me. We were all Marines. Cody Miller – after we were captured, the Japanese were cleaning up the island. They were getting all the brass casings from the shells and anything like that and sending them all to Japan because they were going to use all that brass again. When ammunition dumps are on fire, and we had lots of ammunition dumps on Corregidor and the bombs in the shells would set them on fire and when the fire gets so hot you got a fixed shell, that’s a big shell inside of a brass casing, you put that in an artillery piece and you fire it and that’s what they call a fixed ammunition. Then you had big, big guns where you had just the shell itself pushed in the gun first. Then powder bags are pushed in behind it and then they close the breach (?) and then they fire it. And that’s a big thing and you have to have power to kick them out. Well, the fixed ammunition when it would explode, it would go boom and the shell would just roll out from the casing but the firing pin was still there. The firing pin is a smaller charge that sets off the big charge. The Japanese didn’t want these casings being put on ships with the firing pins in them.

So they had a group of prisoners and there were a bunch of shells there, a bunch of casings that had the firing pins still in them. And they had a table there and they had little grips in the table where they would set these casings and Miller, he had a chisel and a hammer and he would go along and he would hit the back where the firing pin would hit and pop the firing pin. It’d pop the firing pin because that’d be the smaller charge. Well, there was one shell that was up on the table and the projectile was out but it was crimped and the full charge was in there. Of course, nobody knew it. They were all dirty and they’re putting them up there and he came down and he hit this thing and the whole charge went off.

Anyway, a piece of the casing caught him in the shoulder which wasn’t bad but his ears were blown out. He told me this. He said, “After I came to, oh, my ears were hurting me so bad they were bleeding.” And after they stopped all of that, he had to have a cigarette. So he took the cigarette and he said, “When I would inhale, somebody would say, ‘Smoke’s coming out of your ears!’” He said, “What?” They said, “Yes, smoke is coming out of your ears.” And he thought and he took another drag and he held it in and he held his nose and his mouth and blew and the smoke came out of his ears. He had nothing. It was all, it was all ripped out I guess. I have to tell you about him because he was a remarkable person. He learned to read lips in prison. He couldn’t hear anything at all so to communicate, he would see people talking and eventually he would pick up what they were able to say. And then he could talk. He learned to gage his own voice where he could talk, too loud or too low. So then we had a few books there and some of the guys would read a paragraph. They let him read the paragraph first. Then they would read the paragraph and they would enunciate the words very clearly and this is how he spent his time and he became very proficient at lip reading but he couldn’t hear anything. And people wouldn’t believe it. If I get started on him, it’s going to take up a whole tape. (laughs).

When we got back, he’d come visit me. He was from Lafayette. He’d come visit me and spend some time with me and I’d go over to his place. But people wouldn’t accept that he couldn’t hear. And he could do it in French or in English but you had to tell him whether you were going to speak French or English. You’d say, “I’m going to speak French now.” And then you would and he would talk back to you in French because they were fluent in French. And if you were talking to him . . . like I said, in those days we smoked. So I had a cigarette in my mouth and I’d be talking to him and he’d say, “Goddamn!” He said, “Take that cigarette out of your mouth. I can’t hear you.” (laughs).

Asked if Cody Miller’s lip reading ever came in handy while in prison – Well, he couldn’t tell what the Japanese were saying, but it came in handy when we went to the hospital up in Philadelphia and we would go over to Camden, New Jersey and they drag you to the night clubs over there and the bars and they’d circle the bars and he could sid . . . he would sit on one side of the bar and people were sitting on the other side. There’d be some girls over there and he could tell us exactly what they were saying. And he’d say, “Oh, look. One of them’s talking about you.” (laughs). Oh yes. He was great to have around when you went out. Oh, yes. But he was a fine . . . he was one of my best friends. But he died back in the early seventies.

There was Herman Carpenter. He was in Mississippi. His eyes were like mine. He’s still in Mississippi. He had a chicken farm there. And I don’t know. He must be retired now. Last time I saw him was maybe ten or fifteen years ago. He does not go to the reunions and I don’t know why he doesn’t go. He lives right outside of Jackson, Forest, Mississippi. It’s a rural area and that’s the way he grew up on the farm. And he raised chickens. Some people who sell chickens, they’d bring him the chicks and send him the food and he saw to it that they got a certain thing and they’d come in a big truck and haul them all away. That’s what he did. But he couldn’t see too well either. And that’s about the only three. Then there were a couple of others from Mississippi I lot track of but they were the two that I was closest with. We were up in Philadelphia together too. That’s what made it so good.

Asked about Soochow – Oh, wait we brought him back. Oh yes, I forgot about him. Well yes, Soochow was with us all the time until we got down at Leyte. Oh, I got to backtrack now. Okay, we were put on board a navy supply ship and when we went some other place, then they took us off. They put us on a British . . . a salt transport. The name of it was the HMS Battleaxe. They brought infantry troops into make landings. We were on that and then we went down to the Leyte Gulf. That place had been secure to the navy ships there and transports there. So they took us off the Battleaxe and all of our gear was in seabags and stuff. They put it on a lighter and they were bringing that aboard and Soochow was sitting on top. And we brought Soochow with us all the way through. He was on our bags. He was on all the ships that we were on. And as they were bringing him to this Army transport, we had gone aboard and the baggage was coming and the captain came out on deck and it was a navy lieutenant (or captain) in charge of (?). And he said, “That dog can’t come aboard this ship.” And we were standing there and said, “Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Captain, let me tell you about that dog. We brought that dog from China. He was our mascot. He went through the whole war. He let us know when the planes were coming before the air raid sirens did. He went through prison camp with us. He almost starved to death. And you mean to say we can’t bring him home now?” he said, “Sorry.” He said, “He can’t come aboard this ship.” So the navy lieutenant, he hard all of us talking and he said, “Captain, you can’t do that.” He said, “Who’s going to know?” He said, “I’m sorry but he’s not coming aboard the ship.” So then he tells us, this lieutenant says, “Okay, guys, just don’t worry about it. I’ll be back with ya’ll later.” So they unloaded the gear and Soochow stayed on the lighter and he went back to shore. And then the next day, another navy lieutenant comes aboard the ship. And we’re all standing around. He says, “Who is the highest ranking NCO here?” Noncommissioned officer. Well, we had one of our cooks, a man named Pappy Wells. He said, “I am.” And he wasn’t too healthy. He said, “Okay, you come with me.” And they left and that’s all we knew about him until we got back to the States. And then, what had happened, the lieutenant told the admiral all that had happened. So they got a plane and they flew them back. They flew Soochow and Pappy Wells back to San Diego. And he . . (laughs) he was at San Diego. We didn’t go to San Diego. We didn’t know what had happened to Soochow. And we went and we left from San Francisco and came home. But a lot of the other guys who were liberated later in Japan after the war was over, they went to San Diego and Soochow was the mascot at San Diego. And they saw him there.

All that is in the book (there’s a book about Soochow). So he was the mascot there for five years. And then he finally died. And they have his grave there and they got his marker and he’s listed among old mascots. They have all kinds of nice names and then you come to one named Soochow by itself. So that’s where he was. Yes, Soochow was something else.

Asked about the hell ships – Oh, the hell ships. That’s something different. When they knew the Americans were coming, the Japanese started sending all the able bodied people to Japan. That’s what they had to do. So they would work up there. They didn’t want them to be recaptured. All the ones that were sickly they kept till last and eventually tried to get them there. So they were shipping them to Japan. This all started around . . . Well, they sent people to Japan early because they needed workers and some didn’t go on work detail in the Philippine Islands. They sent them on up to Japan. A lot of them went in late ’42 and early ’43. But it was no problem there because the Americans hadn’t advanced that far to give them difficulty. Well, starting in September . . . October and September and October, that part of 1944, the American planes were operating in the air. Submarines were everywhere. We had almost destroyed the Japanese navy down at the Leyte invasion. We really chopped them up down there. So we had control of the seas most of the time. Well they would put these prisoners aboard ships trying to get them all out and they would put them in a convoy with Japanese troops and they were unmarked and they were going up in a convoy and our planes would be out patrolling and spot them and they would attack them. Our submarines would attack them with torpedoes. And many of them were sunk. And we lost a tremendous amount of men because of that.

I’ll give you a general history. So the first ship to ever go down was the Tatori Maru. Every Japanese ship has a Maru behind it. I don’t know why but they all do. Well, this ship left in October of 1942 and it brought people to Japan. And going down, it was possibly eight or ten of them but we get down here to the Arisam Maru. It departed Manila, October, 1944 with eighteen hundred American prisoners aboard. It was torpedoed by the USS Snook, on the twenty-fourth of October, 1944. And the source of this was from Calvin Graef. He was one of the five survivors. Three were recaptured by the Japanese. Total perished on that ship, 1,795. That’s POWs who died because of American submarines sunk the ship because they were unmarked.

Asked if they survived by swimming – Yes. They put you down in the hold of the ship. They call the big compartments in ships, holds. They put you down in there. They cram you in, no beds or anything. You’re just crammed in there. And it’s usually two or three holds. There’s on in the aft, one in the midship, and one forward. And when the torpedo would hit those things, it would hit right at the hold and destroy everybody in there when it exploded. Those guys didn’t have a chance to get out. I guess these five who got out of this one must have been maybe on deck or blow out or what not. These five, I know one of the five. I talked with him. He said that he grabbed onto some floating material. Whatever it was, he grabbed onto that. And they tried to stay together but the current would drift them apart. And so he was one of the three that was picked up again. And it was a Japanese destroyer that was coming around and it would spot these people. And well, I don’t guess the Japanese Navy was as cruel and the army was. They pulled up alongside and they would throw them a rope and pull them and brought them up and brought them aboard ship and brought them back up to Japan. But there were two or three others who made it to the Chinese coast.

At least he was still alive. But then he winds up back in prison camp again. But anyway, he made it back. Now, the last one was the Oryoku Maru, the Oryoku Maru. Let’s see how many that had. The Oryoku Maru departed Manila on December 13, 1944. When we got to Bilibid, they were full. People were there. They couldn’t put us in so they sent us to Fort McKinley until after these people left. And they left on December 13. Okay, the Oryoku maru. . . then it was sunk. Let me see how many POWs were on there . . . eighteen hundred of them. It was sunk by the U.S. Navy carrier planes off the Bataan Peninsula on December 15, 1944. Then after that was sunk . . . it really wasn’t sunk. It was grounded. They grounded it because it was sinking and they grounded it. So then they took all the people off. All the prisoners had to get off. And then they had to bring another ship up the Linguyan Gulf. They transported them to the Linguyan Gulf by truck and then the Brazil Maru took them. They put them on the Brazil Maru. The Brazil Maru brought them to Taiwan, called Formosa at that time. While they were in the harbor, the Brazil Maru was bombed and more were killed. Then they put them on the Enuri, the Enuri Maru, and took them, hugged the coast of China on up to Japan. Some of those guys went through three of those things. And of the seventee hundred, 1,426 were killed. Okay, so those are the hell ships.

Asked about Palawan – Okay. The massacre. Of course, I was not there. I think in my earlier interviews I mentioned how I got out of Palawan by faking Malaria. It wasn’t that I knew there was going to be any massacre down there. I just didn’t want to go blind. I wanted to get out and get up somewhere where I wouldn’t get any worse than what I was. Okay, so this is the story that was told to me by three of them who survived.

They had been having American planes coming over there because they had invaded Mindinau which was some other islands, and they were scouting the other. So they (the Japanese) built what they called air raid shelters. It was just really a trench that was possibly four or five feet deep and it was covered over with timbers and it was dirt on top if it. They built three of those to hold fifty men. They were about four feet deep and you would have to hunch over to go in. And they maybe were about four or five feet wide and they would put fifty men in those things. And they had them covered with timbers on top and they put dirt on top of the timbers and then palm leaves on top of that so everybody would be camouflaged. So they’d ring the air raid bell and everybody would go into these things and you’re supposed to stay in there until the all clear was sounded. Well, this one day, the men were out working and the Japanese said, “No more work. Go home, go home. Everybody go home.” At noon, there was no noon meal brought out. So they all got in the trucks and went back to the barracks. And around two o’clock that afternoon – I forget the time – the American planes start coming. So everybody had to get into the tunnels. Well, by that time, they all got into the tunnels and it looked like people weren’t . . . it wasn’t quite the same like it was before. And they tell them to stay in. And some of them would try to poke out and they said “Stay, stay, stay.” And the guards came and they had set up machine guns. They didn’t see all of that at the time and they came with the gasoline and they poured gasoline inside. They threw gasoline inside the tunnel entrance and then they threw torches in there. And of course, there was an explosion inside. And all of the them weren’t hurt with the explosion but the gas, the fumes, everything, they were all burning. And as they came out, they came running out and then the Japanese were prepared with their rifles and their machine guns and they were cutting them down as they came out. Well, some got out without being hit. There were so many of them coming out. And they were doing one at a time. They’d do one and they’d do another one and maybe after about two or three minutes they’d do another one. Well, the ones in the last cave heard all of this noise and peaked out and saw them running out and saw them getting killed up there. So they told the others, “They’re killing everybody!” Well, McDole, one of the guys here, had built an escape hatch. This tunnel was here. The land that the tunnel was built on just outside the prison went down. There was a drop of maybe fifteen or twenty feet to the beach below and the tunnels were dug toward the beach area but didn’t go clean through to make a complete tunnel out of it. It stopped short of breaking through the ground at this drop off. Well while they were digging this air raid shelter, McDole and his buddy, Rufus Smith, and Roy Henderson, they said, “Well, hey, look. Suppose we get bombed and the front of this thing caves in. We’re going to be trapped in here.” So, they realized how far they were and they had a shovel and they dug and dug maybe about four or five feet and got to the outside out there and they said, “Well, we’ll cover this up so the Japs won’t see it. And if our front is blasted, we can always get out the back.” Well, they were in that third tunnel when they saw the execution going on. And so they sneaked out the back and kept down before the Japs got there, but they hadn’t gone very far before the Japs got to their tunnel and set it on fire and were massacring them. Well, in the meantime, they had run down the beach. Rufus Smith gets into a big garbage dump and crawls and burrows himself inside the garbage dump and he was there but he kept a little opening there where he could see. Then he could see what was going on, how they were all being killed. And he said that some of the guys really stood out. Like Captain Bruney (?), he was a National Guard Captain and he was in charge. He came out on fire and he grabbed one of the guards and he dragged him back in. The guard was screaming and yelling he said, but he dragged him in and laid on top of him and the fire got him too. And a couple of others were fighting them. Now, there’s a Dr. Mango (?). Dr. Mango went out and he said, “No! This is terrible. You have to stop all of this. Don’t do this. You have to stop it.” Whammo, they cut him down. They charge them. They tried to fight them. And then, by that time, it might have been thirty-five or forty of them who got out of this third tunnel. And they were hiding until when the Japs finished with all the rest of them, they began going out and looking for the others. A lot of them got into the bay which was right there on the shore and began swimming. Well, then they got on the beach with their rifles and they knew that they couldn’t stay down long and when their heads came up they’d pop them. Now, lots of them hid in rocks. There were big boulders out there.

They were hiding. Rufus Smith was in the garbage now. McDole was hiding behind one of the rocks, I think. And there were three guys . . . there were four. There were four men behind some big boulders that were just on the beach. They were big, huge rocks that were there. They were hiding back there. And the Japs had a patrol boat, a little patrol boat and they were going up and down the beach and looking for people and catching them in the water and killing them there. Anyway, they were riding. They were coming along the shore, and these guys were real secure back of the rock. But the fellow on the end, his foot was out and he didn’t know it. And, all of a sudden, they heard a rifle shot and the guy grabbed his foot. So, rather than pull it back in for them to land, he stepped out. He stepped out because he wanted to protect the others . . . Of course, they cut him down. And I don’t figure they know his name. The ones who were there didn’t know what his name was. But anyway, he gave his life for those three. Then there was the other one that Rufus Smith told me about. When he was in his garbage dump, they caught this one and they caught him and he knew they were going to execute him and they had a bayonet behind him and were poking him in the back. He was bleeding from the bayonet pokes. And when he got to the ones with the gasoline, they were laughing and he said, “Oh, please.” They had the gasoline there with the torches. He said, “Don’t burn me.” He said, “Go ahead and shoot me now.” And they laughed and they poured a little water on each one of his feet and then they put the torch on him and set the feet on fire. And the fire started coming up his legs and he said, “No!” And then they put some on his hands and they caught that on fire. And then he was in terrific pain and they poured it on his head and put fire on his head. And then he just screamed and fell in a bundle and burned. That’s how ugly they were. That was a bad thing. Anyway there were eleven who escaped. Most of them swam across the bay but they did it at night. They laid low until all of the stuff was over with. A lot of the others panicked and just took off swimming.

And there’s nothing about it anywhere. You can’t find anything about Palawan anywhere. You can on the internet but you can’t . . . our history never mentioned it. Our history books do not mention it. The Japanese make no reference to it at all, no reference to any of that. And people would try to get movies made about it, but they will not offend the Japanese because they’re big stock holders in the movie industry. And I tell it all the time because after we’re gone, nobody . . maybe the ones who hear it now will remember it and tell their children and I hope that this can be available for anybody who wants to be. . . that it can be found out this way. But it’s one of the things that I’m determined to keep alive as much as we can. But the Japanese people will say that it didn’t happen. They’ll say, “No, that did not happen.”

Now, going back to the guards, they captured . . . all these people did these awful things. The war crimes people got all of them. And a lot of them were arrested and they had what they called the Tokyo War Crimes trial in Tokyo. And of course, the ones Tojo and of course Yamashito and all the big wheels were hanged. But I want to go back to one other thing. When I said that the Oryoku Maru was sunk . . was grounded and they brought these people to shore and they put them on the tennis court, I wanted to tell you this. Before they went to the Brazil Maru, they had them all there and they were . . .there were about fifteen who had been wounded with the bombing of the ship. Well, they made it ashore and Colonel Beecher (?) who was our Marine colonel, was talking to the Japanese. “Could they please get those guys back to the hospital so they could get their wounds treated and not let them go to Japan to be back with the other disabled people.” Well, finally, the Japanese, a guy by the name of Mr. Wada. Mr. Wada was the one in charge of all of this. He wasn’t a military man. So he said, “Okay, we’re going to get a truck and you pick out the fifteen of the men that have to go and we’ll bring them back to Manila.” Well, they had a colonel there. I’m not going to say his name because he was a problem. A Marine colonel. He was a problem and he caused lots of guys to get beatings. And I’m not going to mention his name because it could be . . . he may have family somewhere. So he went to Colonel Beecher and said, “Put me on that list. I don’t want to go to Japan. I want to get back.” And Beecher said, “No, you don’t want to go there. You don’t know what’s going to happen.” He said, “No, put me on there.” So Beecher put him on there as a disabled one. Well they all got in the truck and the Japanese took them. It was at the Naval base at Olongapoo is where they went ashore that we were there when we landed from Shanhai and the Japanese had control of it. So they got in the truck and went up to San Fernando which was the first town after you get out of the mountains. And they brought them to a cemetery and there was a large hole dug. And these people, they tied their hands behind their backs and each one at a time had to come and kneel down at the hole and they were beheaded one at a time and they were standing there watching. Mr. Wada did that. And the Filipinos witnessed it. That’s how the word got out. The Filipinos saw it all. And they were all put in that hole and covered up. And the colonel – what you call poetic justice, I guess – he didn’t have to be there. So that’s a side story. That’s sad. I had one of my friends there, Charlie Hansel. I really can’t imagine but it must have been terrible to watch that and know you’re coming. I’m going to be the next one. I’m going to be the next one. And have to do that. What else could you do? Off went their head. They were cruel people. . . . cruel, cruel people.

Mr. Wada was executed. Oh yes, Mr. Wada . . . that was all brought out. The Filipinos went up and testified to it.

Let me tell you what happened to the Palawan guards. Palawan guards were found guilty. They were sent to prison, various prison terms: maybe twenty years, some; fifteen; maybe ten depending on their participation, what they did in the crime. They were all imprisoned. That’s the guards from other camps, too, who did bad things. The ones up at Cabanatuan and how they beat you with ax handles at Palawan. They were all sent to prison. Then it comes time for the surrender and all of this business. And MacArthur, now, is the head knocker. He draws up their constitution for them. He did all kinds of things and he was in charge.

Now, there was a unit. I don’t know if you heard about it. There’s a unit with a number. Thirty-one. Yes, when they did experiments. The germ warfare. They would inject a rat poison into American veins and the study would happen to them and all of that. And Koreans too. All those people. Now, using that, remember that. MacArthur then knew about this thing, and he said to those Japanese . . . Now this was after, I think, the constitution was done and they said that they were going to adopt it. He was still the man in charge. He didn’t disturb the emperor. He just let him stay there. The emperor . . . he felt that they wouldn’t have been able to control the Japanese civilians if they did anything to the emperor. The emperor is their god. So MacArthur says to these doctors, “If you doctors would turn over to the United States the results of your experiments . . .” Now why he did that, why he wanted that, I don’t know. But if you would turn over all of the results of your experimentation, I’ll grant amnesty to all the soldiers who are imprisoned. And they did it and he granted amnesty to all of them. There is one of the guards who serves in the Japanese (?) today. True.

I don’t know his name. But there’s one. I may have heard his name. McDole told us this maybe ten years ago. They went back over there. And he found out about this and he had pictures of the guard. He said, “Now look at old so-and-so. He’s walking the streets today.” The ones that were participating in that massacre. They were all out. There are no Japanese in jail anymore. They were all granted amnesty because MacArthur gave it to them. He was the one who put them in. He was the one who released them.

Photo - J. E. Dupont, Jr. in Shanghai Before the Start of WWII

2007-12-01T14:13:00.000-06:00

Daddy holding a rickshaw. The coolie is taking a break.

About J. E. Dupont, Jr., Part V

2007-11-26T17:21:00.000-06:00

Let me tell you about when the tanks came. Remember, I said the tanks came and there was all that noise going on out there? Well, the Japanese communication headquarters was across the street from us and they were shooting that up because they knew it was some type of an important building. So they blasted it all to heck and went on but then later, we found out that some intelligence people went in there and got whatever the Japanese military had. And they started checking it and they found out that the orders for our execution was there but had not been transmitted across to Bilibid. The orders were there and explained how they were going to do it.

I’m going to give you an idea of what we found out afterwards. After we were liberated, we were told this. After the Americans invaded Luzon from Lingayen Gulf . . . There’s two mountain ranges and there’s a valley. And MacArthur’s orders were to go hell bent as fast as possible to Manila to liberate the civilians who were interned at Santo Tomas because there are no more American prisoners of war here. They’ve all been transferred to Japan. They were of the opinion that the Japanese had gotten everyone out which they had not. So they realized that the place at Cabanatuan which was a hundred miles north of Manila was still there where the infirmed people, the amputees and the tuberculosis and then people who were insane were all there. The Japanese were not going to send them to Japan. So the army sent the Sixth Rangers there with Filipino guerrillas who were harassing the Japanese and fighting them all the time to lead them behind the Japanese lines to get to Cabanatuan to liberate and rescue these people. Well, that’s a story in itself. I’ll give you a brief thumbnail sketch of what happened. They had the guerrillas lead them through the jungle area off the beaten path behind the Japanese lines, just this one ranger battalion. And they got to Cabanatuan at night. It was planned that they got there at night and there was a river maybe three miles to the east of Cabanatuan. And across that river were the Japanese encampment of military people. So the guerrillas lined up on the west side of the river prepared to repel any crossing over of the Japanese Army to help. When the firing began at Cabanatuan, they’d be able to hear that. There was a bridge there and they were going to blow the bridge at the same time that they began to knock the guards out of the towers. That was set to prevent anybody from coming and giving them help. There was a gully which ran alongside Cabanatuan to the east. It was a deep gully, maybe five or six feet. Well at night, there were platoons of the rangers who went down along the gullies and encircled the whole camp. They knew at about seven o’clock from the guerrillas that all of the Japanese guards would be in eating their nightly meal and there would be just a few guards out there. So at a given time, I think it was close to seven thirty or eight o’clock. At a given time, everybody opened fire at the same time. The bridge was blown where the guerrillas were. The riflemen knocked the Japanese guards out of the towers all at one time, and at the same time, people with automatic weapons stepped into the window area of the mess hall and began using their automatic weapons on the guards in there. So they really got just about all of them. Maybe about one or two got away but they finally were eliminated. So with that, the prisoners didn’t know what was going on there. I was not there when this happened. This is from people who were there. They were deathly afraid. They thought the Japanese were beginning to eliminate them because we had seen lots of planes. They had seen planes coming over and they were hiding and the rangers had to go find them and tell them, “We’re Americans. We’re not Japanese.” It was a pretty sorry lot. They were amputees and all kinds of sick and elderly people. Finally, they convinced them that they were Americans and they all came out and they had these caribou carts that they put them in, the ones that couldn’t walk. And they went back up. They must have traveled maybe twenty miles. They went back up and got them out safely. That was on the night of January 31st.

So they figured, “Well, that’s it.” Everybody’s gone to Japan but these poor people here. So now they go to Manila to liberate Santo Tomas where the civilians are because MacArthur said that he was going to return and he was keeping his promise and this was his order to get down there. So the tanks that we heard outside of Bilibid were the First Calvary. Santo Tomas is five blocks from Bilibid. And they turned the corner where we were and headed on out to Santo Tomas and they had a confrontation there. I don’t know too much about what happened but I know there were hostages taken. There were tanks that knocked the gates down and they had them surrounded and the Japanese guards had these hostages on the, I think, the second floor. There were about twenty or twenty-five of them. And they told them that if they would give them safe passage from that internment camp at Santo Tomas University that they would release those hostages unharmed. Well, the Americans did that. They knew they were going to get the Japs, no question about it. So they let the guards go and they marched on out and then the hostages came and so they were liberated the night of February 3. Well, they brought them from Santo Tomas to a shoe factory which was outside of Manila.

Alright, that ended February 3. We were still locked up. Then the next morning….the battle of Manila had started. Artillery was going back and forth. And the next afternoon was when the guys at the back gate were pounding on the gate and they knocked down walls and stepped in, these big huge people with new weapons and everything and they were Americans and they got us and that was it. Now, about the shooting up of the building across the street. The communications center, we were told later on by people while we were still at a rest camp up there, that the Americans, the intelligence people, had discovered some documents in the headquarters and they went through them and they had found an order that had been issued from Tokyo for our execution and not to allow us to be retaken. Of course, that order was never given because they blasted them up before they could transmit it across the street to the commander of the Japanese guards. So that took care of that part. Otherwise, we would have been like the ones down at Palawan.

(Asked who made the decision to let them go) I think it was a commander, the guard commander. He knew. He could see what was happening. I mean he knew that there were tanks that had come by that night. He knew the Americans were everywhere and they were coming in. And I guess his reports from up further up Luzon that they were driving toward Manila. So I guess he figured we better get out of here and go join the others where Yamashito was in that walled city and put a stand up. So they didn’t have that many guards. Maybe they had at the most was maybe twenty-five guards. That was a relatively small unit. So that’s when they wanted to get out of there which was fine. I’m glad for it, of course.

(Asked if he thought he had a Guardian Angel there.) Yes, I think so, I think so, yes. I had some help from some place because too many guys didn’t get out.

Once we were freed, we went to the shoe factory where the civilians were. It was outside Manila and we went there and we stayed there. About a block from Bilibid, there was the Pasig River which runs right through Manila. Well, the Japanese across the Pasig River they had deserted everything but that and they had put their artillery pieces on top of the post office building which we could see from our prison. So they were firing shells across and they were hitting different things close by. And the shells, when they explode, there’s fire and all kinds of things that come when a shell explodes. Well, I didn’t know this at the time but from the report that I get… I didn’t know why they had gotten us out of there because they said, “We got to get you guys out of here now because there’s danger around and we want to get you out.” They didn’t say why. Well, there was an ammunition dump extremely close to our prison. In fact, it was a part of the prison. It was built to where it was one section. Bilibid was a big penal institution that the Spanish had and there was a big warehouse right on the side of it. It was loaded with ammunition and they were afraid that when these shells hit that it would hit that thing and if it did, it had so much in there, it would have destroyed the prison when it went off. So when they came in that night, we kept them up all night – those five or ten guys and they radioed their commander that they had found us. They didn’t know POWs were there. So they said, “You guys stay there to protect the POWs.” They didn’t want to walk out and leave us because the Jap snipers were everywhere. So that’s why they stayed. And the next morning they moved their command post up there and then they decided we’d better get them out of here because this ammunition dump was right next door. So, they scooted us out. We must have gotten on some kind of truck. I don’t know, I can’t remember. We wound up at the shoe factory which was maybe six miles out and we stayed there for two days.

7/9/1943 Letter to Grandma from Daddy's Friend, Lionel Delacroix - He was killed in a plane crash in the South Atlantic.

2007-11-26T14:57:00.000-06:00

Friday, 7/9/1943

My Dear Mrs. Dupont:

I don't know where to begin, or in fact, just what to write, but nevertheless here goes:

You see, this morning I received a letter from Mary Neubig, and in it she told me that you had received a telegram from the War Department stating that J. E. was a Jap prisoner. Well, when I read this I almost jumped out of my chair, and the fellows around me didn't know what to think. They hadn't the slightest idea what I was so happy about.

Mrs. Dupont, I just had to write and tell you how happy I am for you, too. I have often thought of you and what you must have been going through ever since you received word that J. E. was missing. You never knew all this time whether he was dead or alive - - now you know. What a consolation! Even though he is a Jap prisoner, I'm sure that doesn't bother you to a great extent, because now you know that someday J. E. will be home again. You must be the happiest person in the world today.

I suppose you are wondering why I have written. Well, you see, ever since you received word that J. E. was missing, I felt that some day he would show up. I never once let myself believe that J. E. was dead. I don't believe in dreams, Mrs. Dupont, but I certainly have had some very strange ones. They were so real. Many times I have dreamed of J. E. showing up like this. Well, it's not a dream this time. I am sure you understand, therefore, how the whole thing has affected me. Yep, I was pulling for him all the time.

It's true J. E. and I didn't run around together much just before he joined the Marines, but we always were the best of friends. I often think of the days when we were nothing but kids, and how we used to have so much fun over at Johnny Boy Barbay's house playing with the old gang. Yes, it's little things like that, Mrs. Dupont, that will never be forgotten. Just think, someday I will see the old bozo again, huh?

Have you heard from him lately? Won't you please send me his address. I wrote to him once, but whether or not he ever received my letter, is beyond me. Boy! Won't he have lots of tales to tell the folks back home when this old war is over.

There isn't much to tell about myself. I have been in the Navy almost a year already and haven't had a leave yet. I am stationed at the Naval Air Station, Seattle, Washington, so don't let the San Francisco address fool you. The reason I have such an address is because I'm subject to transfer, I guess. This is a very nice station and the climate up in this part of the country is okay, but you can give me good old Plaquemine any day!

Well, I must close now and see what's what. Hope to hear from you soon, I remain

Your's very sincerely,

Lionel

P.S. I hope everyone's well - - as far as being happy, I know they are. God certainly heard your prayers!

This is the newspaper article that was cut out and put in with the letter. I don't know exactly what year it was.

Hugh Delacroix Dies in Crash

Lionel Hugh Delacroix, whose wife is the former Mary Neubig, was killed in the South Atlantic last Saturday, March 17, in a plane crash, his family was notified.

The son of Mr. and Mrs. H. M. Delacroix, he was aviation radioman and gunner in the Naval Reserve. he had been in service since August 3, 1942. He had been in the South Atlantic for a year.

Young Delacroix was a graduate of St. John High school and attended business college. Before entering service he was employed by the Standard Oil company. He was married last September 17, just six months before his death.

Mr. and Mrs. Delacroix have another son in service, H. M. Delacroix, Jr., who is the Aviation Cadet corps at Carlsbad, N.M. he is on his way home this weekend.

Am Free - J. E. Dupont, Jr. to His Mother - Letting her know he was liberated from Japanese POW camp after more than 3 years - February, 1945

2007-11-17T12:30:00.000-06:00

About J. E. Dupont, Part IV

2007-11-16T16:40:00.000-06:00

Any little bit helped. So I’d go down maybe once a week. Then I got to thinking. I said, “Well, that corpsman down there . . .” His name was Hoover, Red Hoover. I knew him from Shanghai. He was a redheaded sailor and he was in charge of the galley, of the special food place, special diet place. So, I said, “Well, let me see.” So I took the can. They didn’t really need any, see? So I went down to the place and said “Hey buddy, I’ve got to have some more lugao.” “Okay.” And he’d fill up the can. I’d go around behind the building and I’d eat the can. I’d eat it.

And I said, “Well this is pretty good.” I didn’t want to abuse it because he’d catch on. But he’d see me down there regular to get it and I’d go and he’d give it to me and, I think, after a while he’d see me coming in, I think he knew. He didn’t say anything though. I’d come in. He’d kind of smile and say, “Getting your lugao for the library?” I’d say, “Yep.” But he knew. And so, I’d go around behind the building and eat it and that kind of helped me a little bit. Of course, it was still rice. It wasn’t any nutrition.

But it was filling up my stomach and I didn’t have a job yet. So, then three corpsmen needed somebody and they asked me to be their dog runner. I said “Fine.” And they were getting paid pretty good money and they would be able to buy mongo beans which is sort of a green pea-like thing. And, boy when you cook them and boil them, they would taste excellent. So they had a place in Bilibid where there were fires. They made fires. They called it a guan. When you’re making a guan, it means you’re cooking something on the side. They called it a guan. And their little pot . . . it wasn’t a pot. It was like a can that pineapple juice would come in. Somebody would punch holes in it and have a little handle on it. If you had something that had to be cooked and some of the corpsmen did, they could buy things at the commissary that dog robbers couldn’t afford. And they’d fill it up, the three guys, and I’d take it over to the guan place where they cooked it. Now, the deal was they had a little number that they would put on there. I had the number and I’d bring it over and say, “This is for Harvey Gordon and his group that I work for.” And he’d put it on the thing and he cooked it for you. It’d take maybe three or four hours to cook. Then at noontime when I’d go get it, they would pick it up and they would take a nice little cup out for themselves. That’s how they made their money. They worked that way. They would cook the food and they would take a little bit from what they made.

So they took a little bit and I’d take it and bring it over to them and they had enough where I could come in for what they had. They would have enough for four.

They wouldn’t give me any. They’d give me a little cash and I would buy peanuts with that but then I had a little of that, too. And, that went on fine for a while. So, things are going pretty good. I wasn’t losing any ground but yet I wasn’t gaining any but I was better off than I was at Palawan. My eyes are still bad. It wasn’t improving any. So by this time, we’re into 1944 now and Americans are . . . see we know nothing about the war. We don’t know what was happening but we know that the Americans are going to come get us. We know they’re going to get us.

Did I tell you what was in the back of my mind all the time after being captured? After being around the Japanese in China and Shanghai and seeing how they took no prisoners there. They didn’t take any prisoners in China. And when we first got captured, we were apprehensive about what was going to happen to us. Well, they had so many, I don’t guess they could knock everybody off. So the thought always crept into the back of my mind that when the Americans come and I know they are coming, there’s going to be a time when Americans are going to be at the gate and I’m going to be in here and the Japanese are going to be in here. Now, what is going to happen at that time? That was on my mind. So, when the Americans started coming back, we didn’t know it. We didn’t know it at first that they were. They just started calling in labor details saying “We’re sending three-hundred men to Japan.” And they’d stay in Bilibid one night and get aboard ship and go. Then it got to the point where they were bringing more in than they could handle so they figured who was ambulatory. Any ambulatory prisoners would have to leave Bilibid. The Americans did this. The Japanese said they had to have more space so they left it up to the Americans to do what they were going to do. So they said, “Well, the ambulatory people have to be sent to Cabanatuan because we don’t have the space for the ones coming in going to Japan.” So I was an ambulatory patient. I was on quarters in Bilibid. When I got to Cabanatuan, I was ambulatory and I was not on quarters anymore. That meant the farm – hard work. And I had this kind of soft life for about a year, you know?

So I get up there and I’m in a barracks with workers and I got to go out to the farm. And it was hot and they were mean. And we had these litters. They called it a litter. It’s like a stretcher but it’s made out of wood and it’s about maybe six feet long on each side and about that wide with bamboo on it and we’d pile the vegetables on top of that and we’d have to carry it in. And they were heavy. And I’m short. And all the others are taller than I am. And so I get all the weight on my corner wherever I am. I got to walk maybe a mile and a half to get away from the farm to get into wherever they unloaded so that was getting to me and I knew. I said, “Man, things are getting bad.” And I could feel myself going down and the same food that we had while at Palawan except it’s possible it was getting to be a little less. So I said, “Well, I don’t know what’s going to happen.” In the meantime, our planes . . . we’d always see airplanes flying. And this one day, we were sitting down. It was in the afternoon and we were back in off the farm. And we saw way up high coming in from the sea, three flights of planes – it must have been about nineteen or twenty in each flight in a V shape – coming in over the sea. And they passed over Cabanatuan. They had to be way up high. And then they would turn and head south. So we said, “That must be Jap planes. They’re moving some planes from somewhere, bringing them over here.” Well, that was fine. That was about nine, ten o’clock in the morning. At about three o’clock that afternoon, we hear the noise. It’s all motors and they weren’t jets. You could hear the motors. Motors were coming, coming up higher just like they came in. And when they got right to the camp, they started turning. But just before they got there just outside the camp was the Japanese emergency airfield and there was a Japanese bomber, a medium bomber sitting out there. And they were camouflaged from the top so that if you were flying, you couldn’t spot them. Well, when the planes started coming back, we heard the Japanese bomber start cranking up. So it took off and then it began flying. It started flying around the camp. And what the hell was wrong with him flying around the camp, and these planes were coming in and they were way up high. And it turned toward the sea and he’d be flying around the camp and the last two (?) started coming down. They spotted him. And they zoomed so fast. We were there and we said, “Look! Look at those two lanes. What the hell’s going on with them?” And he was flying around the camp and here they come. And they went over the camp and the bomber flips over in flames . . . burning outside the camp. Oh, we were jumping up and down and were yelling, “Hooray, hooray, hooray!” And the Japs in the tower start shooting at us. We’ve got to hustle and take cover. And then we’re saying, “What the hell was it?” It came so fast. Of course, I couldn’t see them. I heard them and I saw them when they went over the hill but I couldn’t tell the markings. And some of these people who had good vision said, “We never saw those markings before.” They said, “It’s not American planes.” I said, “No? What the hell were the markings?” They said, “Well, there was a star there, a white star . . . looked like three stars to us – a big one in the middle and two on the side.” What the hell is that? We didn’t know what it was. What it was, of course, was the new insignia, the Navy insignia with the bar and the star. Well, we didn’t know that at the time. Well, we knew it was somebody good. Somebody said it was Chinese planes (laughs) with stars.

Well, anyway, we were excited. Oh yes, that was the first hit we had seen in so many years. So, they were gone. So then we knew. People started figuring out, “Well, they had wheels, so it’s got to be a land plane.” That’s what we thought. But they said, “No, I don’t believe. It wasn’t a land plane. They were a different kind.” So then somebody concluded, one of the Navy guys said, “You know it might be carrier planes.” That’s what we figured. They were carrier planes. So we were all excited. So by that time, that was on September 22. I’ll never forget that day, September 22. And then, I think, the next two or three days, they started rounding people up and said, “We’re going to have to get people to Japan because they need you up there to do work.” What was happening was they had made the Leyte invasion. We didn’t know about it and the Japs knew they were getting hemmed in and they wanted to get all those prisoners out before the Americans got there. So then they took a bunch of guys who were up in our camp and sent them down. Well in the meantime, I’m still on the farm and still going down and this friend of mine from Plaquemine here, Angelo Borrauno – he still lives here – was working in one of the kitchens. The Americans cooked their own food there. And he saw me one day. This was before the planes came. He saw me this one day and he yelled my name out, “J. Dupont!” I said, “Who the hell is that? Nobody knows me by that name here.” And I stopped and he came running over. He said, “Man, you look bad.” I said, “Yes, I sure do.” He said, “What barracks are you in?” I told him. I said, “What are you doing?” He said, “Well, I’m working here in this galley with Gunner Farrell.” I said, “Gunner Farrell? Hell, he’s a Marine?” He said, “Yes, he was in Shanghai. I said, Yes, I knew him.” He said, “Well, I’ll come see you tonight in your barracks.” I said, “Okay.” I got to my barracks. That night he came down there and he had a bag full of canned goods. Where he had gotten them from, I don’t know, but he gave them to me. Now, that is unheard of where people are almost down at animal level having food brought to them, canned food: milk, sardines, things like that. He said, “Here, this is for you.” I said, “Man, come on.” He said, “No, I don’t need it. I’m working in the kitchen.” He said, “We get extra food in there.” He said, “You said you knew Farrell?” I said, “Yes.” He said, “Well, I’m going to tell him that you’re here and why don’t you come down there tomorrow morning?” I said, “Okay.” Well, evidently he told Farrell and I went down. I knew him from China. We played football against each other. And he said “Boy, how you been?” I said, “Fine.” He said, “You look kind of bad.” I said, “I am.” He said, “Well, what do you think you can do in the kitchen?” I said, “Gunner, I don’t really know. I got visual problems.” He said, “Well, how about could you chop vegetables?” I said, “Yes, I could chop vegetables.” He said, “Well, you’ll be a vegetable chopper.” Well now, chopping vegetables was not chopping carrots or potatoes or anything like that. It was the greens off the vine and a thing they called tulelium(?), which was a shoot, a green shoot like thing that they would chop up and make soup with. That would be the vegetables. So I became the vegetable chopper and I got off the farm and I could chop vegetables. And I’d cut my fingers sometimes but that’s alright. So that was great. Then there was extra food.

One time when I was working there, they brought in some dried fish. And I had to put it in a grinder and grind it up. And that would be put on somebody’s lugao in the morning. Well, I had a pile of it and as I ground it, I would eat it. And this was nutritious, you know? Oh and I started to feel myself getting better. Ah, it was so great. And so I stayed there for possibly two months which was enough to pull me back up from where I was. Vision never got any better but I was feeling better.

So I was just feeling very good. Evidently the Americans, the army must have been moving up closer because then they said, “Okay. Everybody has to leave Cabanatuan to go down to go to Japan” – that’s everybody except the ones who were amputated, amputees, or people like me who couldn’t see. They didn’t want us to go to Japan because we couldn’t help them. They wanted to get us up there, get away from America so we could do work up there for them. Well, then they closed the kitchens down. We only had one kitchen. I wasn’t in on that deal. So then we got down to barely hardly anything. There was nobody, no more work on the farm. They were moving off. By that time, more American planes were around. Then, a lot of people left. We were the only ones left. There was only about two barracks of us left there.

Then they came in one day with a truck. It was all shot up and there were some Japanese soldiers in it. And they had been shot u and there was blood everywhere. And they rolled that thing in. We saw it. I said, “Oh, boy.” Then we saw planes, American planes, scooting around everywhere. They were close and we assumed that this truck had been caught on a road and then they had strafed them. So then they told us, “Okay, the next day or two days from now, everybody go Manila Everybody go Manila.” I said, “Oh, man, they’re going to put us in one of those trucks. We’re going to be in the open . . . Navy planes flying everywhere.” So they put us in the truck. That’s when we had Soochow with us. We brought Soochow with us. He stayed with us all the way through. I kind of neglected him in this other stuff but he’s covered in the book pretty well. And so we put him in the truck with us and there were about five trucks of us. Going out, two Japanese guards in the back and we’re going down the road and I was hoping and praying those planes wouldn’t catch us. Sure enough, we heard motors. And at that time, we happened to be under a clump of trees and we stopped. The Japanese guard got out of the truck, got down in the ditches. They had their rifles aimed up at us, “No get out truck.” We had to stay in the truck. In the meantime, the planes zoomed over and didn’t spot us. And they got back in and kept on going. So we started out about eight o’clock in the morning and a hundred miles. It took us until six o’clock that afternoon to get to Manila, stopping at different places where the planes couldn’t spot us. Well, we got to Manila. The place was full of people. This was November 29 . . . full of people. So they’d move us outside of Manila to a place called Fort McKinley which was a barracks for some type of army unit and it had a fence around it with guards and we were put there. We stayed there. The food there was very bad. They electrified the wires and nobody could get out. And there were just maybe two-hundred of us there. That was there was. There was a wooden building though. And the food was very bad. But there was a dog, an old dog came by and hit the wire and got electrocuted. The Japanese gave that to all the cooks and me, cut him all up and made a big broth out of him. Then we got that on our meal. We only had two meals a day. And we stayed there until January 1, and then we went to Bilibid Prison. See, what the plan was that we were going to go to Japan too. That’s the end. They didn’t want us to be retaken. So people were there before, they’d go to Japan. They were the ones who’d be put on the hell ships – who went out and got sunk on the way to Japan, all those people. And we lost a pile of people there. So, we were the next ones to go.

We didn’t know about the ships being sunk. All of this comes out afterwards but that’s what happened. They were all there waiting till they could get a ship in Manila Bay to get them out of there because the planes were everywhere. Planes were starting to be everywhere. So we go into manila into Bilibid and we’re there. And this is when it gets real bad. This is when they had hardly any food at all. We were probably there on January 1 and all through the month of January. It was very little food, two meals a day, very little rice. They had all the water you wanted but hardly any food. So the Japanese, what they would do, they had big sport. Where their offices were, their garbage was put in one big tub after they ate their night meal. And they had a porch up there where they would look and they would look down on our plates. And they brought that down, a tub full of their garbage and put it there and then they would back up . . . anybody who wanted to go over there, stand back and wait until the Japanese said “Okay,” and then they would all rush to the tub to their garbage and get in with their . . .get with your hands, get what you could because we were at this time at animal level. We would have done anything to get food. We were really slowly starving to death. And I can remember the first time I went. It was so tight I had to get in sideways to get your hand into the tub to get it up and I pulled it up and got a mouthful of rice and whatever it was and I was eating it. And the fellow on the side was facing me and he got his up and put it in his mouth and it was chicken intestines and things hanging out of his mouth. And that’s when I said, “No, no, I can’t degenerate into this.” I said. So I got up and left. And I just said, “No, No, I can’t do that.” But what they would do to guys who were one-legged on crutches and stuff, they’d knock the crutches out from under them so they could get there first. It was that bad.

So we were in bad shape and now comes February. By that time, there are planes bombing everywhere. There was a church there and there was a chaplain there and some of us would go out and pray at night that we would be safely rescued. We didn’t know what the Japs were going to do if the Americans come banging through there. So one night, it was a Sunday night. We’d finished praying and everything and doing what we could, hoping. Then we heard a machine gun off in the distance. No, we heard a crunch. No, we heard the machine gun first. It was off in the distance and the Japanese were always test-firing guns. So we heard it go (emulates automatic gun noise) way up somewhere like maybe three or four blocks away. And then we hear “Boom!” We didn’t hear it anymore. And then quiet, you’d here another one a little closer (emulates automatic gun noise), then nothing. It happened three or four times. And we’re standing outside and they had these big walls around. You can’t see outside, big walls, an old Spanish prison. We’re standing there. The Japanese are in their towers. And then we hear rumbling outside, tank treads. And then we heard a “boom” across the street where the Japanese communications center was. We heard this “boom” and explosions going on. And we looked and then the Japs are shooting out into the streets. Well, what it was, we don’t know all of the at the time, but it was American tanks. This was the Thirty-Seventh Division. They had landed in Lukanin (?) They were coming down to Santo Tomas . . . MacArthur said, “Go to Santo Tomas.” Now Santo Tomas was a university two blocks away where all the civilians were. They didn’t think any POWs were left there. They thought everyone had gone to Japan. We found this out later. So let’s go back to where we were. So we’re all happy and they’re shooting out in the streets and the noise going on. Then the Japs started shooting down at us and we all went inside our buildings because they were stone buildings. Then they came and locked all the doors. This is about seven o’clock at night. And this noise and shooting went on for about half an hour and then nothing . . . stopped. We said, “What in the hell is going on? Why didn’t they come in and get us?” Well, everything was quiet. I’ll tell you what happened after when we go out. So the next morning, they got us out at four o’clock in the morning. Dark. “Out, out, out, out!” Lined us up against that wall. Well, you know what my thoughts were. “Oh man! After all this, can’t be.” Here they come. The Japanese come with all the guards in their battle gear, helmets on, rifles, bayonets. They lined up facing us. I got weak. I really got weak. The blood seemed to drain out of me. Then the Japanese interpreter comes up there and says, “Through the graciousness and mercy of the emperor, you are hereby lawfully released prisoners of war.” He said, “Our duty takes us elsewhere.” He said, “You are free to go and act as free men but it is advisable that you do not leave the compound because it’s very dangerous outside.” He says, “You are in charge of your officers.” And with that, he gave a right face and then marched out the gate, closed the gate. You can imagine what happened. We went wild. We ran to where the food was, got all the food out and started eating it and did everything. We were as happy as we could be but then, things got bad because then shells began being fired from across the Pasig River and going over Bilibid and hitting back behind us.

What had happened, the Americans were driving down toward Manila and they had passed Bilibid up because that’s the only way to get to Santo Tomas. The civilians were there. What had happened was, they got up to the gate with a tank and they confronted the Japanese in there. They confronted then. They didn’t want to break in and the Japanese then took a bunch of hostages and went down into the cellar in one of these university buildings and then they wanted to negotiate. So I don’t know how long that lasted but the Americans were there and finally, the Japanese came out and said that if they would let their guys go, they would release the hostages. They said, “Okay, you release the hostages first and then we’ll let you go.” And they released the hostages. It must have been maybe fifteen to twenty women and little boys and all that stuff because they interred all the people. They let them out and the Americans stood by their word and they let the Japanese go.

Then the Thirty-Seventh Division is advancing. We were out there the next day about four o’clock in the afternoon eating whatever we could find and wondering what’s going to happen. Shells were still going back and forth and we heard all kinds of gunshots going on out there. Then we hear a pounding on the back wall. There was a section where there was a door where they had boarded it up an we heard this pounding back there. “Boom, boom.” And what the hell is that? And the planks fell in and these big, huge people with green and new weapons we’d never seen before, new helmets, and they come walking in. They looked like they were from Mars. But they looked huge to us because we were all skin and bones. These people were big. And I’ll never forget it some of us said, “Who the hell are you guys?” to them and they said, “Who the hell are you?” (laughs).

We said, “We’re POWs, American.” “What are you doing here?” So they got their radio and they radioed their command post that they’d run into some POWs. And they said, “Well hold tight. Hold tight till we get there.” So then, there were five of them on a patrol. They were out scouting and they found this building and they were checking it out. They were fighting building to building then. Then they found us and they stayed there and we took all their cigarettes. Everybody smoked, then took their chocolate. And they were glad to see us, too. “We didn’t know you guys were here!” “Well, we’re here.” Well, later, their command post came up and they got in there and then some nurses came up but the lines hadn’t moved too far yet. They had passed Bilibid but they hadn’t crossed the Pasig River yet which was just a block away. So some nurses came in. I guess they figured some of the guys did need them. But there wasn’t any shelling going on then. And they stayed there with us and they had brought some food and we were eating some of the food they had. But then, some shells started coming in hitting kind of close. And we could tell that they were a little jittery because they had never….they thought we were clear but we weren’t so they said, “Well, we got to get you ladies out of here.” So they got them out and they said, “Now, tonight, we’re going to come up with trucks but we can’t come to the prison here. We’ll be three blocks down and we’ll send someone and let you know we’re there. And you should come out in maybe groups of three or four. No more than that.” And we’d have to go down the street where the sidewalks were and that happened and we started going out. And three of my buddies and me, we were going down. Then there were GIs out in the streets. They were going in and out of the buildings. The battle was going on. And mortar shells were coming in and we’d hear them and this friend of mine couldn’t hear. He was stone deaf. So he and I and Carlton(?), we were going down the sidewalk and we heard a mortar coming and we hit the ground and took cover. And Miller, the guy who was deaf, was standing up and “What the hell is goddamn wrong with you guys?” And we said, “Miller, mortar shells coming in.” “Goddamn, you didn’t tell me. You guys didn’t pull me down with you! What do yo want to do?” So he was all upset because we weren’t pulling him down with us. We still talk about that . Of course they’re all dead now. So we finally . . . I remember this. There was one little GI in a doorway and we had to take cover there. And I was right next to him. I said “Man, how’s it going?” And he said, “Boy, it’s tough!” He was doing his eyes like this (gesturing). I said, “What’s wrong?” He says, “Concrete’s getting in my eyes.” He said, “Bullets are hitting everywhere and when they do, the concrete splatters and it’s getting up in my eyes. And my eyes are all itchy.” And I hadn’t thought about things like that. And this little guy was and he was doing his duty. I don’t know whatever happened to him. But anyway, we had to move out to get on our buses on our trucks. So they took us up to north Luzon where there was a big rest camp and they brought us up there. And then they had all the food that we wanted up there. And we stayed there about five days, I think. And we just ate. They always had the chow line open for us. We got so huge and doctors told us not to eat so much because it would be bad for you. And everybody got sick, of course. The food was so rich and we got sick and they’d vomit and one thing and another. And eventually, must have been after about three or four days, they brought us to the Navy. They separated us, Navy and Army. And the Navy and Marines were together and the army went with their people. And the Navy put us on board a Navy supply ship. We went aboard that. They gave us clothes, all kinds of good food, and everything like that. And this is the beginning of coming back home.

Telegram from Joseph E. Dupont, Jr. to His Parents After Being Accepted into the Marine Corps

2007-11-16T14:54:00.001-06:00

Joseph E. Dupont, Jr. on Marine Track Team in Shanghai China - 1940

2007-11-16T14:47:00.000-06:00

9/5/1940 - Early Letter From J. E. Dupont, Jr. to His Parents (This China Thing)

2007-11-14T16:47:00.001-06:00

San Diego, Calif.
Sept. 5, 1940

Dear Mama and Daddy,

I got your letter with Grandma’s tonight and am answering them both tonight.

The reason I didn’t write a special letter to Daddy is cause it cost too much, these letters are for him too.

I’m trying hard to do good here on the range but it’s pretty tough, but I think I’ll make it.

About this China business, if I get in the 5th Marines, I’ll go to Honolulu, and if I get in the 6th Marines, I’ll go to China, now I have no choice, but if you want me to I’ll go up to the Colonel and tell him that my family don’t think I should go to China, won’t that be something.

The candy won’t melt or anything, in Texas it’s very cool now and all the way out here it’s cool. I still have my pipe and smoke it every night. The reason I wanted cigs, is for when we are shooting and we don’t have much time for rest, we have about 5 min. for rest, and I wouldn’t have time to load my pipe in that time.

My bunk-mate’s name is Ben Wheeler and the other boy that bunks next door is John Roster, he studied to be a priest for 3 years, but gave it up. He has a brother that’s one and a sister a nun, a real nice guy.

Last night, we had some night maneuvers and we had to go through some woods that were full of barbed wire, we had to crawl through it on our stomachs, it took us an hour to go a hundred yards.

Well nothing else happened out here, so I’ll close.

Lots of love,
J. E.

8/31/1940 - Early Letter From J. E. Dupont, Jr. to His Mother (Class Ring)

2007-11-14T16:46:00.001-06:00

August 31, 1940
San Diego, Calif.

Dear Ma,

By the time you get this letter I will be on the Rifle Range, that’s 15 miles from the Base, my address is still the same.

About my ring, one night I was out at Mike’s and the next day we were going on a picnic and I didn’t have any money so I borrowed it from Miranda and gave him my ring as security. How about sending it to me out here, all the boys have class rings, I won’t lose it or do anything with it.

Did you get the picture yet? If you didn’t it’s a picture of the 78th Platoon and the Sergeants and Corporals. It cost us a dollar, the boy sitting next to me is my tent mate, he’s from St. Louis.

I didn’t get the South for about 2 weeks. I wonder if anything is wrong. Maybe they are sending it to the wrong address.

We get paid today the big sum of 7 dollars. That was the balance of what was left after we paid for all sorts of things.

Out on the range, if we shoot good, we get a medal and then we are in line for promotion in about 2 years. But if you don’t qualify, you aren’t much of a Marine, because you are no good if you can’t shoot. I’m going to try hard to qualify.

Tell all the boys that I’ll write when I have time. We don’t have any time to write and when we do, we can finish about one letter, so that’s why I can’t write to every one.

Some of you can send me some candy and cig. All of the boys get them from home.

The reason I’m sending this air-mail, because it’s the only stamp I have left.

Tell Barbara and Willie hello and Rickey too. See about the South for me.

Lots of Love,
J. E.

8/25/1940 - Early Letter From J. E. Dupont, Jr. to His Parents (Seeing stars and able to eat meat on Fridays)

2007-11-14T16:44:00.001-06:00

August 25, 1940
San Diego

Dear Ma & Daddy,

I got your letter, the other day and was very glad to get it.

We had to send our clothes home or throw them away so I sent them home. I have my ring out here with me.

Yesterday, we had to run a bayonet course that was full of dummies with rifles with bayonets on them in their hands. If you were good and did it correct and was fast enough you would get a medal. Oh, I forgot I told you this before.

Last night a gang of us went to the big Navy Carnival, (they were having one out here at the base) and I saw Robert Taylor, Barbara Stanwyck, Carol Landis and Rochester (negro).

Next week, we are going out to the rifle range to practice shooting. It is located about 15 miles from here. We are leaving Saturday to go out there, then my address will be changed. I’ll let you know what it is. If you know of anyone who is going to write me and I’ll get the letter after Sat. tell them to wait until they get my other address. We are going to stay out there 3 weeks.

How’s everybody back home, and how is Rickey. I hope you are feeding him well, does he still hate to eat?

I got a letter from Rattie Landry, he’s out in an Army Camp in Florida. How did he know I joined the Marines?

We go to church out here, every Sun. at 10 o’clock. They don’t have a real church, they hold services in the auditorium. A Navy Chaplain says Mass. We can eat meat on Friday because we are in the “Service”.

In about 3 months I think they are going to ship us to foreign ports. They say that they give you your choice, I think I’ll go to China or Honolulu. What do you think.

How are the kids, did they enjoy my letter? Tell them hello.

Love,
J. E.

8/23/1940 - Early Letter From J. E. Dupont, Jr. to His Aunt & Uncle

2007-11-14T16:42:00.000-06:00

August 23, 1940
San Diego

Dear Tessie and Lou,

I’m very sorry I didn’t write sooner, but I just didn’t have time.

This sure is the life, you get up at 4:30 A.M., exercise till 5:00, then you clean up the camp and eat chow at 5:30. After that you put on your bayonet belt and pack and rifle and start marching. You march until 11, then you eat again, then you rest until 1:00 and then we have bayonet drill, lectures, shinning equipment and other(?). After supper, you fool around until about 7:30, then you go shave and shower, then have mail call and then you have to be in bed for 9:30.

I’m bunking with a boy from St. Louis and all the boys are pretty nice fellers in this Platoon.

Tell mama that I wrote you what we do from daybreak till bedtime, she asked me to write her, but you can show her this.

How’s Lulubelle, Fred and the other delivery boy?

We have the toughest Sergeant in the Base handling us, I got hit on the butt with a saber for not keeping step.

Well, I don’t have much time to write, so I better say so long.

Love,
J.E.

8/23/1940 - Early Letter From J. E. Dupont, Jr. to His Sisters

2007-11-14T16:41:00.001-06:00

August 23, 1940
San Diego

Dear Barbara and Willie,

How are you behaving yourselves, I hope you weren’t giving Mama much trouble.

How is Rickey, you better take good care of him for me or when I come home I’ll spank you good.

I was sure glad to get your letter and you both can write very good, even better than I can.

When you go to school next year, study hard and make good grades.

Mama told me that you can dive off the tower, that’s fine, when you grow up you will be good swimmers.

Tell Daddy that I will write him as soon as I get time to, but it won’t be long.

I sure miss you two brats, I don’t have nobody to push around here and tease like I used to do to you two. When I come home I’ll bring you two something good.

Love,
J.E.

8/22/1940 - Early Letter From J. E. Dupont, Jr. to His Mother (sending money home)

2007-11-14T16:38:00.001-06:00

August 22, 1940
San Diego

Dear Mama,

I got your letter Wednesday night and it was the first one I got for two days. Peter G. wrote me, I got his letter tonight.

How’s everything going on back home?

I wrote Tessie and Louis a letter this morning. It should get there about the same time as this one. I also wrote the kids a letter, I’ll bet they will be tickled.

In Tessie’s letter I told her about the training here cause I don’t have much time to write and it would take a lot of writing. I told her to let you read it.

I’m going to send 8 dollars home a month, until we get our raise and you can do what you want with the money, put as much as you want in the bank for me and keep as much as you want for yourself.

I should get the Iberville South to-nite I didn’t get it for a long while.

Tomorrow, we are going to run the bayonet drill against dummies and if we qualify, we get a medal for it. You have to run a hundred yards in 40 sec. sticking dummies as you go. I think I can get a medal, that’s where my track comes in handy.

I borrowed a fountain pen to write these letters, I hope they look good, but excuse the writing.

Well, taps was just blown, so I’ll have to close, tell everyone hello for me.

Lots of Love,
J.E.

8/13/1940 - Early Letter From J. E. Dupont, Jr. to His Parents (from San Diego)

2007-11-14T15:54:00.001-06:00

August 13, 1940
San Diego

Dear Folks,

The going has been pretty tough but I like it fine. How’s everything been back home? If you see any of the gang tell them to write me cause it sure feels good to get a letter from home.

We had a dress parade today. All the Marine Bands were here and we all had our blue uniforms on and did we look good.

I have enlisted for four years, in 6 months we have 12 days leave, but you have to pay your own way home and 6 months more we have 30 days leave. Our pay is $21 a month, but this month I’ll only get about $8 because we have to pay for our uniforms and different things but next month I’ll get the full $21.

Out here if you let the Quarter Master keep some of your money each payday at the end of 4 years you get it back plus 4% interest. Do you think I ought to do that?

Tell Barbara and Willie I got their card and liked it very much and that I’ll write them when I have more time. Tell them also I’ll bring them something back from Calif. When I come home.

I think I’m growing out here the climate is swell. I weigh 169 now.

Tell everybody hello for me.

Love,
J.E.

8/6/1940 - Early Letter From J. E. Dupont, Jr. to His Parents (San Diego & George Allain)

2007-11-14T15:52:00.001-06:00

August 6, 1940
San Diego, California

Dear Folks,

We made the trip out here fine. We arrived Saturday at 12:30 and came straight to the Marine Base.

This morning we had another medical inspection, I passed everything O.K. and this afternoon we had our hair cut almost off (that’s the way the Marines cut their hair).

One thing about this place is the good climate, it’s warm in the daytime and cold at night. They sure feed you well out here – you can eat as much as you want too.

The way they train you out here is that for 8 weeks you can’t leave the base and during that time they drill you from 5:00 in the morning to 6:30 at night, it was tough at first but I’m almost used to it now! I met up with some boys from Chicago and Mississippi and they are pretty nice fellers. There’s boy’s from all over the country out here.

How’s everything back home? Did many people ask about me. If you see George Allain, tell him to come on out here.

I don’t have much time to write so I’ll have to close. My address is:

Pvt. J. E. Dupont Jr.
78th Platoon
Marine Base
San Diego, Calif.

Write me and tell me everything about home.

Love,
J. E.

8/1/1940 - Early Letter From J. E. Dupont, Jr. to His Parents - While on his way to San Diego for Marine Corps training.

2007-11-14T15:45:00.001-06:00

Written on a post card with a picture of City Hall, Forth Worth, Texas on it.
Mailed from El Paso ?

August 1, 1940

Mr. & Mrs. J. E. Dupont
Plaquemine, LA

Just stopped here to eat, will arrive in San Diego Saturday Evening.

Tell Rickey hello.

J.E.

J. E. Dupont, Jr. Missing In Action Telegram - His mother received it on Mother's Day, May 10, 1942

2007-11-14T10:59:00.000-06:00

Mr. & Mrs. Joseph Emile Dupont Sr =

THE COMMANDING US MARINE CORPS REGRETS TO ADVISE YOU THAT ACCORDING TO THE RECORDS OF THIS HEADQUARTERS YOUR SON PRIVATE FIRST CLASS JOSEPH E DUPONT JR US MARINE CORPS WAS PERFORMING HIS DUTY IN THE SERVICE OF HIS COUNTY IN THE MANILA BAY AREA WHEN THAT STATION CAPITULATED X HE WILL BE CARRIED ON THE RECORDS OF THE MARINE CORPS AS MISSING PENDING FURTHER INFORMATION X NO REPORT OF HIS DEATH HAS BEEN RECEIVED AND HE MAY BE A PRISONER OF WAR X IT WILL PROBABLY BE SEVERAL MONTHS BEFORE DEFINITE OFFICIAL INFORMATION CAN BE EXPECTED CONCERNING HIS STATUS X SINCERE SYMPATHY IS EXTENDED TO YOU IN YOUR ANXIETY AND YOU ARE ASSURED THAT ANY REPORT RECEIVED WILL BE COMMUNICATED TO YOU PROMPLY X=
T COMB LIEUTENANT GENERAL US M C THE COMMANDANT US MARINE CORPS.

About J. E. (Frenchy) Dupont, Jr. Part III

2007-11-14T10:14:00.000-06:00

Now, down at Camp in Davao which is down in the Southern Philippines, they had to put this rule in throughout all the Japanese prison camps in the Philippines. They fixed them down at the Davao Penal Colony where they had a bunch of American prisoners. Most of them are officers down there. They were working hard. They were working in the jungle also. But what they did, they got together the ten men and they all escaped and the Japanese didn’t know what to do. So, what they did was they cut everybody’s food ration in half for a week. But that was pretty shrewd. In fact, one of my commanding officers, one of those who was in that escape – they all made it back to the States. That’s another whole story. So this is the example that they set for us about trying to escape. Okay, now where am I on my story?

We got to Cabanatuan and all of this happened and things were getting bad up there. I knew we had to get out of there. Any place would be better than this Cabanatuan because the food was terrible. The Japanese were mean and awful and we knew….the diseases were coming up. Men were beginning to die because the Malaria was so bad. The food was bad. Then dysentery hit. There was no medicine whatsoever. The doctors were left sick and there was nothing they could do for you. We had these Guam blisters. They call them Guam blisters. They’re huge, thick blisters which would develop under your arms from the tropics. They call them tropical ulcers or whatever. And after a while, these blisters would swell up maybe the size of a quarter and there would be puss inside of them and then you’d break the puss and you’d have a crater in your skin. Now, I don’t know what you would call that medically but we had those and they would be very painful, especially under your arms is where it would happen.

So we knew we had to get out. Men began dying and so, the first detail that came up – I think there’s about four or five of my friends and myself we volunteered for the detail. We went back. We were accepted on the detail. They were sending two hundred men to someplace we didn’t know where. We didn’t know what the job was going to be. So they put us on trucks and we go down to Manila and we go into Bilibid again. That was beginning to be sort of a gathering point for anyone going on a detail away from Manila. We were put there one night and the next day, we were put aboard an inner island steamer, a little smaller ship, not an ocean going ship, but in between the islands it was. And we slept on deck. There were no holds where we would sleep in. So we got on that, went down, and there was an interpreter there that could speak English pretty well and he was a pretty good fellow – first Jap I ever ran across who was decent. He had been in America for a while and he could speak English and he loved American music and American songs. And so at night, we would sit up on the deck and he would want us to sing American songs to him. And so, four or five of us would sing different songs. I don’t remember which songs. Back in those days, the modern dance songs that we had. Stardust and I can’t remember.

We finally get to an island called Culion. Now, Culion is a little small island in the Philippines where they have a leper colony. It’s the only leper colony in the Philippine islands. They had one Japanese on the island, only one and he was on top of a hill. He had his tent up there and a little Japanese flag and that’s where he stayed. They couldn’t get off the island because it was isolated. The Japanese didn’t bother with the patients because they were deathly afraid of leprosy—deathly afraid of it. So they got a group, a detail of us from the ship to lower the rice bags on board the ship and load whatever other material we had and there would be the Japanese in the boat, in the launch steering it to the peer at Culion. Then we would have to get out and unload the stuff and put it on the dock because they didn’t want to touch it. And the Jap way up on the top, he never came down. He stayed there all the time. So we did that, got back on the ship, and went down to Palawan. That’s the island, the long, skinny island, the western most island in the Philippines. This is where we were told that we were going to build an airfield in the middle of the jungle. It was going to be for the Japanese military and it was going to be an emergency airfield in case they had to land. They were making plans to begin military operations against the Dutch East Indies and Australia and this airfield was going to be there for them if any of their planes had to make an emergency landing. It was going to be two hundred and twenty meters long by two hundred and ten meters wide. There were coconut trees. There were mahogany trees. All kinds of jungle trees were in this area, just in the wild. And the only equipment that we had was wheel barrows, shovels, picks, axes and that was it. And we go out in the middle of this jungle and so first thing we have to do, of course, is take one section at a time and clear it.

They didn’t give us machetes, I don’t know why. So anyway, we would pick a certain area and clear it. An area approximately maybe fifty by fifty yards or meters, whatever they want to call it. And we’d cut the trees down first. We’d clear all the underbrush out so that just the trees were standing. Then we would have to dig around the roots. We’d dig as far as we could. There were big mahogany trees, huge ones. And we’d dig approximately three and a half to four feet down till we could get all the roots exposed. Then the guys would get axes and they would have to cut those roots below the level of the ground. And when it got to the top root, of course, we’d have to tie . . . We had some trucks. We had a couple of army trucks with a winch on the front. Those army trucks in World War II had a winch on the front with a cable and a hook and you could switch the motors so that the winch would go. So when it was ready to go, they’d tie up the cable around it and the truck would come in and they would turn on the cable motor and it would pull and pull the tree over. Then when the tree was pulled over, we’d have to drag it and haul it maybe twenty five or thirty guys and drag it off to the side somewhere because they were big and you couldn’t cut them down. And the coconut trees were the bad ones because the coconut tree has millions of little roots running out. It’s not like a regular tree. It’s very fibrous. The roots are all fibrous. And we would clear and chop these hundreds of real roots loose and then get the cable from the truck and run it up as high as we could so that we could turn on the cable motor and pull the tree and it would bend. Then we’d start working on the other side of the roots where it was bending where the tension was and it was easy to pop then. And then, eventually, the tree would come over. But the coconut tree is hard to pull down. It really was. Anyway, we would do that and then we’d have to fill the holes in because some of these mahogany trees had huge holes.

There were hills and real small rises and depressions. So we would have people with the shovels and the wheel barrows cutting that down, pushing the wheel barrows and filling in the holes. This was the kind of work – hard physical labor. And this went on for a long time. And eventually, we got the place cleared. But we hit a section where there were some huge mahogany trees – I mean huge ones, solid mahogany. And the Japanese, they said, well we couldn’t cut them down because they were just too big. So what we did was dug around the roots and the Japanese would come in with a drill, a wooden drill and they would drill a hole in a couple of the roots and place dynamite charges in there. Then he’d run the wire out and hook it all up and everybody would back away. And then, they would have the plunger and it’d plunge down and whammo, it would go off and the tree would go straight up into the air, straight up into the air. And just hang up there a minute and then crunch. It would fall back down. It was something to see. It really was. But we had to all back away. In addition to this, after we kind of got the perimeter of the field lined off first and all of the trees off to the side, we knew then that we had to get the middle and get all those trees out so we could level it off really and then prepare to put the landing surface on.

This is the middle of the jungle and it was a jungle which was really a jungle. There were snakes. There were parrots. There were monkeys and they were all in the trees. It was like you were inside of a big zoo. Beautiful parrots out there . . big tall with red and blue faces and the big, long tail of feathers sitting up in the trees, and the monkeys would chatter at you. They would sit in the trees and they would run along and they would chatter at you. They began to get on people’s nerves, you know? Some would try and yell back at them to shut up. And they would pick rocks up and throw at them. Anyway, there was humor that we had there with the monkeys. But finally, it was very difficult work, awful work. I wanted to describe the work first. Then I’ll go into the living area. Okay, the living area was an old Japanese constabulary building which the Philippine army used to hold … to barracks their national guard. They called it constabulary. And it was a big, open … well it had an entrance like a castle and that was the symbol of the . . when the Spanish had it, this was one of their symbols used and so the Filipinos carried that symbol over.

Okay, the barracks was shaped in a square with an inner open area. It was like a square and the barracks ran along. And as soon as you entered, there was a road which was going downhill a little ways. We slept on the floor. There was no furniture and there was a little office and there was a jail inside this little place. I guess so when people acted bad they put them in their little jail. It wasn’t very big. It was about maybe eight by eight bars and that was it – just the bars, yes, and that little jail was there. I’ll have something about that later. So, this is where we stayed. And the clothes – they issued us no clothes at all. We had only the clothes that we were captured in or what you happened to bring. So, shortly after, your shoes wore out. Your pants – if you tore your pants or something and you wanted to patch it, you’d have to get some from somebody else’s old junk they threw away to get a patch to put on it. After a while, the shirts were all gone and we didn’t have shirts. We just went bare-chested. Eventually, you had to cut your pants off because the knees wore out. And pretty soon, some of the guys were just wearing G-strings that the Japanese would give us. They would give you a G-string to wear if you didn’t have anything else to wear. And imagine working out in the jungle like that with the bugs and things coming to get you and biting on you and there were scorpions out there – big, bad mean scorpions. And that tail would be sticking up with his little drop hanging on the end of it. And if you came close to him or bothered him, whammo, it’d hit you and it would really be awful. We had one guy whose pants were too big for him, I remember, and this scorpion climbed up on the inside of his pants and got up to where he felt it on his hip. He didn’t know what it was and he felt it and he hit it and that scorpion hit him. Oh he yelled and tore his pants and pulled them off and this big whelp where it got him and stung him and it just got to a tremendous size and he had to go in… Eventually it went away but it was awfully painful for him.

Then, let’s see – the food at Palawan. Breakfast – we’d have lugao. Now, lugao is rice cooked oatmeal style. It’s soggy, soggy rice and they called it lugao. That’s what the Filipinos called it. It was rice gruel. And we ate that for breakfast. That would be a canteen and a half. At noon, we’d get a cup and a half of boiled rice. They would bring it out in a truck out to the airfield. We didn’t go in. We stayed out there and we would have an hour off. We’d eat one and a half cups of boiled rice with one cup of soup. The soup was made from potato vines boiled in saltwater. And sometimes, we might get a couple of vegetables in it but not very often. Then, at suppertime… let’s see. We came in a suppertime. We had the same thing. We had the cup and a half of rice along with soup and sometimes, there would be some pieces of shark meat in there. But that would be all. It’d be sort of a fish soup night. But before we’d go and eat supper when we came in, we’d go to the bay. There was a bay right close by. Puerto Princesa, the name of the capital, it was just a little village, really and there was a pier out there and it was right on the bay. And they would let us go out. Of course, they would have guards out there and they would let us swim and wash off in the bay every night for those who wanted to. So that was the work schedule.

We’d get up at 6:30 in the morning. We would have tango or bango where we’d have to go out in this area in front and be counted. They’d have to count us all the time. And you had to count in Japanese. And they had four companies of us. And you would be in the same line all the time so you knew what you number was. Like if it was twenty-one, it’d be (Japanese number) in Japanese. We had to learn that, if you didn’t, they’d whack you. I forget what my number was. I think it was twenty-one or twenty-two. Then after we counted off, the Japanese noncommissioned officers and the officers would pay homage to the emperor. They would pull their Samurai swords out and they went through sort of a dance routine. It must have been a sort of praying that they did with their sabers up. I guess saying that they would die for him and all this business and they paid homage to the emperor and then they would bow and when they said a certain word, we would all have to bow. So we did that every morning – had to do that. Then, we’d get aboard trucks and out to the field we’d go, to work. And we’d work from the time we got to the field until noon break and then after noon break, and we ate and we’d work until about five. And then we’d come in on trucks again. And we’d go inside and sit and wait for supper and go to bed and that was it – very boring, boring life.

Okay, a couple of things that happened out on the airfield – one time, the air field was pretty well cleared off and they wanted to put some building up there so there was a wooden barracks that the Filipinos had used in another part of Palawan. They took a detail of men and went over there and they tore that building down piece by piece – I mean piece by piece. And every piece that was taken off, the Japanese would write one of their Japanese characters to let them know where that piece went. And they took it down from the top, from the roof all the way down to the bottom marking every one. And of course, if a prisoner broke one, then he was in trouble. He’d get whacked around and beat up pretty good. But we took that whole building down, put it on trucks. It took a good while, and go out to the air field. Well now, the people out in the air field – there were people still working out there. I remember this well. They were digging a foundation to put up the building that was being torn down. They had to dig. The foundation was going to be four feet. One of the foundations was going to be four feet square, four feet deep, four feet square. And we had gotten it all dug out real nice and, like I mentioned earlier, there were snakes out there. Well, there would be cobras running around, slithering around, not running around And they’d kill them with the shovels and things like that when you see them. And sometimes cobras live in a mound. We didn’t know that. One time, we thought it was an ant mound, ant hill. Whammo, you’d knock it down. It’d be full of cobras. So this one cobra was coming across the field and when a guy saw one and it was going toward other people, they would yell, “Cobra coming! A cobra’s coming!” Well, we had dug the hole. And a guy yelled, “Cobra’s coming” our way. So one of these guys had a shovel. And there was a Japanese guard standing there. He didn’t know what was going on. They really just stood and didn’t know unless you did something wrong. So the cobra comes and the guy put his shovel down and when the cobra was crawling over it, he flipped him into the pit, the one we just dug. So, the cobra falls into the pit and he’s up there. We were yelling at him, throwing rocks at him and things. And finally, this guy gets a stick and it had a kind of an edge on it. Not like a fork but almost like a fork. He’s from Texas, army guy – jumped down into the pit, got the little thing and the cobra by this time was kind of standing up and weaving around. So he got it and he got him down and got this little thing behind his head. And he reached in and grabbed that cobra behind the head and picked it up and put it behind him. And the guard was kind of looking at him. He didn’t know. He took that cobra and took it out and stuck it right in his face and said, “Cobra!” And the Jap had glasses on and when he saw it, he yelled. He screamed. He dropped his rifle and ran. And boy, we didn’t know what to do. Rifle down on the ground, nobody was going to get it because there were lots of other guards around. So by that time, there was a Japanese officer heard the jap scream and saw him run so he came walking over. And the Jap guard stopped. He didn’t know what to do – so the Jap captain came by and we said, “Oh man, he’s going to be the living hell out of us now.” He walked up and he told him .. they had a kind of a pig language that they would talk… told us to kill the snake. So, we killed the snake. And then he walked over to the Japanese guard and just started beating the living heck out of him, knocked him down, kicked him, did everything to the guard, and we couldn’t figure out why. Why is he beating him up? So finally, it dawned on us that this Japanese guard showed fear in the face of the lowly, crummy Americans. He showed fear which was an unforgivable sin. So that’s why he got himself all beaten up. So, that was the story, an incident I’ll never forget.

And while we’re talking about guards and the humorous part, of course, we had nicknames for them. Like Fish Eyes – and they didn’t know what we were saying. We had all kinds – whatever they reminded us of. We had an interpreter. An interpreter from Palawan, he got there. He replaced the guy who liked songs. He got in a wreck in the truck and had to go back so he wasn’t there anymore. So, we got a new interpreter. This guy, he came up and everybody had to gather together and he had to make a little talk. He told us that he was a Christian. He says he was not like the other Japanese. He was not a member of the Shinto religion. He was a Christian and that his Christian name was John the Baptist. So that was very good and so that’s the way he wanted us to call him, John the Baptist. That would be fine. Well, it turned out he was kind of a ‘white rat’. He’d rat on us and he would see something, he’d go rat and they’d come beat us up and things. So then, after that, we called him John the Bastard. We got a laugh out of that. But the best one was one of them who looked like Donald Duck. If you looked at him face-wise, he had a really wide mouth like Donald’s beak would be and he had little beady eyes. And he just reminded you of Donald Duck when you looked at him full face – so we called him Donald Duck. He didn’t know too much English. He could speak a little, not too much but he understood. So one day he came up to one of the guys. Now, I wasn’t there at the time, but this is what I heard. He came up to him and he punched him and said, “Why Americans call me Donald Duck?” Believe me, he was a mean one too, real mean. So the guy didn’t know what to say. He said, “Boy, I can’t tell him he looks like a duck, he’d beat the living hell out of me.” So finally, he says, “Oh, he’s America’s famous movie star. Handsome movie star. All the girls love Donald Duck. Oh, handsome, very handsome. Got all the girls.” So after that, he smiled. He’s walk up to somebody and he’d tap them on the shoulder and they’d turn around and he’d say, “Me, Donald Duck.” “Oh yes,” he said, “you look just like him.” And oh, he was beaming about it. So we had a good time with him for that. We had a little humor there – we had to have it or else you’d lose your mind.

So I was in Palawan for about six or eight months. The work was real hard, real hard. And we’d form a little group. Everybody had their little group at night when you’d come and sit around to occupy ourselves. We’d play little games. We didn’t have any cards or anything, nothing to read. We’d just play a few games like we’d have a spelling game. It had five guys, and one guy would start off with a letter and we’d do a spelling game. One would say, “A”. Another guy would say maybe “C”. Maybe I’d say, “T” and work around. You couldn’t end the word. Whoever ended the word was out. See? It got to be ACTION. If it got be A-C-T-I and you said, “O”, and it was my turn, I’d have to think – they’d give me about a count to thirty to think and if I couldn’t, then I would be out. If I said, “N”, I was gone. And we’d do that until there was just two left. It was something to do. You had to do something. So we’d do that and we got to be real close down there.

Some of my friends were – John Negro. He’s dead. There was Jim Brooks. He’s gone. Jim Powten. He’s from Texas. He’s dead. They’re just about all dead except me, I think, from that bunch that was down there. But there were some other guys that were at Palawan that are going to be at our reunion. But they weren’t in my little group, but we knew them all and there’s not that many of us left. So, we’d do the game and we’d occupy ourselves in different ways. We’d tell stories about back home, what you did. Then the food got so bad and began to decrease that people . . . we were putting out so much work and we were wearing ourselves out. We weren’t getting the nutrition and people began to break down. There’d be all kinds of diseases. Sometimes it would be cruelties. While I was in the field and we were in the field making the air field, if you had to go to the latrine, you’d say, “Banjo.” They called it “banjo”. And we’d say, “Well we got to go play the banjo on the banjo.” And the guard would say, Okay, Okay. And we’d go out. So, if you went out, there’d be all kinds of lush papayas and mangos and bananas and we’d eat them. But if they caught you, then they would really work you over because they didn’t want you to be strong or healthy. They wanted to keep you down. So we would use that sometimes as an excuse. We’d go out there and no guard would be around and we’d hurry up and grab one and eat something.

Guys would get their arm broken by being hit with an ax handle or something like that. They’d break their arm. When you broke your arm, then you were sent back to Manila because you couldn’t do any work. If you had malaria and you couldn’t work, you’d get half ration. Only people who worked got full ration. So anybody who was working, they wanted to get out there to get their full ration because we were really slowly starving to death. We weren’t aware of it but we knew we were getting weak. Well, this one guy, John Boswell, he was caught with some papayas and they had an iron rod. The Japs started beating him across the behind with that big iron rod and he would put his hands back here to protect himself and they broke both of his arms. They sent him back to Manila. This is what they’d do. So everybody’s getting down, getting weak, and beriberi starting to set in.

Now, beriberi, first from what I gather – I’m no medical man, but from what I read about – it’s a lack of vitamin B in the diet and of course, we had no vitamin B whatsoever. From the time we were captured, we didn’t have any unless we’d get some papaya or something now and then in the jungle or a mango. But what it does, it destroys the nerve endings in the extremities. That’s the feet, the hands, the eyes, and then the heart where the nerves come to an end. It destroys some part, now not all of them and it affects different people differently. Okay, some people would have the wet beriberi where the feet and the legs below the knee would swell. They would swell up tremendous where they could hardly walk and it was very, very painful. That’s the wet beriberi, always in the legs though. The dry beriberi would be in the legs also and it wouldn’t be swollen at all but it would be red and it’d be so painful that you couldn’t touch it with your fingers. It would be almost as bad a frostbite. I don’t know how frostbite is but I saw these guys how they suffered with the beriberi and the hands were the same way. They couldn’t touch anything with their hands. And in some cases, it was the eyes and in some cases, it was the heart.

Well, it just so happened that in my case at this time, I began to notice my vision was starting to fail and I didn’t know what it was. Well, we had American doctors there and this American doctor, Dr. Knight, he was a Navy doctor. I went to him and I said, “Well, Doctor, something’s wrong with my vision.” He says, “Well, I don’t know what it is.” He said, “Possibly, it could be beriberi. I don’t know.” This is all something new to us. We didn’t know much about that kind of disease. So he said, “I really don’t know what to tell you to do.” He said, “We’ll just watch it and see what happens.” But it began to get progressively worse. In about three weeks, it went from normal to no central vision hardly at all and so I went back to him. He said “Well, we’ve got to get you out of here because chances are if you stay down here, you’re going to go completely blind.” I said, “Well, Doc, that’s fine but I’m physically able. Will the Japanese accept this visual problem?” “I don’t know,” he said. “We’ll try.” So the Japanese doctor would come in . . . they had corpsmen there, medical corpsmen, but there were no doctors there. The supply ship would come in every month and the doctor would come and they would have sick call. People with malaria, people with broken arms, and the doctor would certify them okay to go back to Manila. Well, the Dr. Knight said, “We’re going to try to get you out of here.” The doctor said, “I’ll explain to him what your problem is.” Well, sick call came. The doctor was there. I was there. Dr. Knight told the doctor that I’m losing my vision and I should go to the hospital because I couldn’t see to do any more work. The Japanese doctor said – it was through an interpreter – he said, “Well, tell us what size glasses you wear. We’ll get him a pair of glasses in Manila.” And that was it. After that, I had to go back to work because I didn’t want to be on half rations. So I went out and I rested as much as I could but they’d get behind us with these axes and ax handles and things. So the next time the ship came, he said “I’ll tell you what we’re going to have to do. These Japanese doctors, they know only broken bones and malaria because they can feel it. They don’t have any other way of diagnosing a condition.” He says, “I’ll tell you what we might do. How good an actor are you?” I said, “Well, what do you mean?” “Well,” he says, “Tell you what we might try. Next time, when the ship comes in, you go down to the galley. Put your head in the oven and just before the doctor comes, have somebody signal you. You come on up to the sick bed and sit in the corner with a blanket wrapped around you and shaking and shivering and we’ll see. He’s going to feel you on the head. You’ll be the first one. We can probably fool him and you can get out.” I said, “God, I don’t know. If they find out I’m faking, you know I’m going to get worked over.” He said, “Well, it’s a chance you’ve got to take.” I said, “Okay.” So, sure enough, I had one of my friends stand there where the stairs went down in the back. The hill was there and there was a lot of distance from the ground up to the barracks. I put one of my friends up on the stairs and he would look and could see when the Jap doctor was coming over. So I went down to the galley that morning, put my head in the oven, got it real nice and hot, waiting, and then, he spotted the doctor. “Doctor’s coming.” I get up and I run through the thing and put the blanket on and sit in the sick bed in the corner, the first one. And he comes in and Dr. Knight was there and he says, “Malaria.” The Jap doctor put his hand on my head and said, “Ahso, okay.” And that meant I was good to go and moved on. Then I sat back and that was it. So I was scheduled to go. And the next morning when the ship left, they called me and they called another guy who had malaria, really had it, and they put a tag on us, said that we had malaria. And we were put aboard the Japanese ship, just we two, and it was a small ship and we went to Manila. So we got out and they brought us to Bilibid prison. That was the hospital. And we go into the hospital and as soon as they get in there, they put is in the malaria ward, me too with him. So I get in there and the American doctors are there then. You see, Bilibid, they only had a few guards there. Big walls were around. It was just like a hospital in the States except it was in a prison. So they put me in there. When I got there, I told them, “Look, I don’t have malaria.” They said, “Yeah, yeah, I know you don’t. You stay here.” So about three days after I was there, they came by. I didn’t have fever and I tried to tell them the story. Finally the doctor came and I told him what happened. “Okay,” he says. So they sent me over to the EENT ward and that’s where they examined my eyes and then told me, “Oh, yes,” they said. So, they put me on a special diet. The Philippine Red Cross would bring in a few things that the doctors used for special cases. So for one week, I was given evaporated milk from a can and a broken egg mixed up in it. Everyday I got that for a week and, boy I could feel my strength coming back and everything. So I stayed there. I was considered on quarters and anybody in the hospital on quarters didn’t have to do any work. So I laid around and the food was a little better than in Palawan but it wasn’t that great.

A lot of officers were there and a lot of the corpsmen were there, Navy corpsmen. They were there. They would be the ward people and the doctors would come by and make their rounds and examine people. And the Japanese paid them, paid them in their Mickey Mouse money that they’d put in the Philippine Islands. And they had a commissary there and if you had money, you could go buy a canteen cup of peanuts or a couple of bananas or a mango or raisins or something like that. So after I got better and beginning to feel pretty good. So they said, “You know what you ought to do. You ought to get to be a dog robber.” Now, a dog robber is someone who works for someone and they pay them for little things. Like making a bed in the morning, cleaning up around their living area, doing little errands and things like that.

Well, one of the officers that I had in China, I talked to him and he said he had one guy but he was gone. I said, “Well, could you use me?” “Yes,” he says, “I can use you. I’ll be glad to pay.” He paid me like twenty cents or whatever it was in Japanese money. So I was his dog runner. I’d wash his clothes and go do errands for him. And the officers lived in one section which was fine. So when I got paid, then I’d go to the commissary and I’d get some peanuts and things like that. And the peanuts, according to the doctors, were very nutritious. So then I started feeling fairly good but still the ration was not enough.

So then they got shipped off. The officer got sent out. He got sent to Japan. And then my job was gone. I wanted to work somewhere because sitting around wasn’t doing me any good. So they had a little library there, a real small library. It must have had maybe two hundred books there and that’s about it. And they were so worn. People would read them. But the covers would start coming off and some of the pages would come out so Mr. Welsh . . . Mr. Welsh was the headmaster of one of the schools in Manila, an American school there. And he was a civilian there and he was put in Bilibid.

So, he says, “Well, yes, we can use you.” And what we did bind the books. We had a little drill that we’d drill and put thread through and put the pages back together and we did things like that. Anyway, one time they needed glue – Remember I was telling you about the lugao that they served us. Well, we used that for glue. And whenever they needed lugao, they had a little tin can about like what pipe tobacco would come in. They’d tell me to go down to the special diet place. It was a little shack that was the special diet place. Go down there to get some lugao to bring up to fix the books with. Well, that was well and good. We’d go down – there were about four of us working in the library and we’d use the lugao to paste the pages and put them in together and all of that and there usually was a little left over. So, we’d all get a little. It wasn’t very much but it was something.

POW, J. E. Dupont, Jr. - His story of how he faked malaria to save his eyesight.

2007-11-13T16:01:00.000-06:00

He was at Palawan at this time working on an airfield for the Japanese. He noticed that his eyesight was deteriorating. He was able to get out before the Japanese massacred most of the prisoners at Palawan on December 14, 1944.

Well, it just so happened that in my case at this time, I began to notice my vision was starting to fail and I didn’t know what it was. Well, we had American doctors there and this American doctor, Dr. Knight, he was a Navy doctor. I went to him and I said, “Well, Doctor, something’s wrong with my vision.” He says, “Well, I don’t know what it is.” He said, “Possibly, it could be beriberi. I don’t know.” This is all something new to us. We didn’t know much about that kind of disease. So he said, “I really don’t know what to tell you to do.” He said, “We’ll just watch it and see what happens.” But it began to get progressively worse. In about three weeks, it went from normal to no central vision hardly at all and so I went back to him. He said “Well, we’ve got to get you out of here because chances are if you stay down here, you’re going to go completely blind.” I said, “Well, Doc, that’s fine but I’m physically able. Will the Japanese accept this visual problem?” “I don’t know,” he said. “We’ll try.” So the Japanese doctor would come in . . . they had corpsmen there, medical corpsmen, but there were no doctors there. The supply ship would come in every month and the doctor would come and they would have sick call. People with malaria, people with broken arms, and the doctor would certify them okay to go back to Manila.
Well, the Dr. Knight said, “We’re going to try to get you out of here.” The doctor said, “I’ll explain to him what your problem is.” Well, sick call came. The doctor was there. I was there. Dr. Knight told the doctor that I’m losing my vision and I should go to the hospital because I couldn’t see to do any more work. The Japanese doctor said – it was through an interpreter – he said, “Well, tell us what size glasses you wear. We’ll get him a pair of glasses in Manila.” And that was it. After that, I had to go back to work because I didn’t want to be on half rations. So I went out and I rested as much as I could but they’d get behind us with these axes and ax handles and things.
So the next time the ship came, he said “I’ll tell you what we’re going to have to do. These Japanese doctors, they know only broken bones and malaria because they can feel it. They don’t have any other way of diagnosing a condition.” He says, “I’ll tell you what we might do. How good an actor are you?” I said, “Well, what do you mean?” “Well,” he says, “Tell you what we might try. Next time, when the ship comes in, you go down to the galley. Put your head in the oven and just before the doctor comes, have somebody signal you. You come on up to the sick bed and sit in the corner with a blanket wrapped around you and shaking and shivering and we’ll see. He’s going to feel you on the head. You’ll be the first one. We can probably fool him and you can get out.” I said, “God, I don’t know. If they find out I’m faking, you know I’m going to get worked over.” He said, “Well, it’s a chance you’ve got to take.” I said, “Okay.” So, sure enough, I had one of my friends stand there where the stairs went down in the back. The hill was there and there was a lot of distance from the ground up to the barracks. I put one of my friends up on the stairs and he would look and could see when the Jap doctor was coming over. So I went down to the galley that morning, put my head in the oven, got it real nice and hot, waiting, and then, he spotted the doctor. “Doctor’s coming.” I get up and I run through the thing and put the blanket on and sit in the sick bed in the corner, the first one. And he comes in and Dr. Knight was there and he says, “Malaria.” The Jap doctor put his hand on my head and said, “Ahso, okay.” And that meant I was good to go and moved on. Then I sat back and that was it. So I was scheduled to go. And the next morning when the ship left, they called me and they called another guy who had malaria, really had it, and they put a tag on us, said that we had malaria. And we were put aboard the Japanese ship, just we two, and it was a small ship and we went to Manila. So we got out and they brought us to Bilibid prison. That was the hospital. And we go into the hospital and as soon as they get in there, they put is in the malaria ward, me too with him. So I get in there and the American doctors are there then.
You see, Bilibid, they only had a few guards there. Big walls were around. It was just like a hospital in the States except it was in a prison. So they put me in there. When I got there, I told them, “Look, I don’t have malaria.” They said, “Yeah, yeah, I know you don’t. You stay here.” So about three days after I was there, they came by. I didn’t have fever and I tried to tell them the story. Finally the doctor came and I told him what happened. “Okay,” he says. So they sent me over to the EENT ward and that’s where they examined my eyes and then told me, “Oh, yes,” they said. So, they put me on a special diet. The Philippine Red Cross would bring in a few things that the doctors used for special cases. So for one week, I was given evaporated milk from a can and a broken egg mixed up in it. Everyday I got that for a week and, boy I could feel my strength coming back and everything. So I stayed there. I was considered on quarters and anybody in the hospital on quarters didn’t have to do any work. So I laid around and the food was a little better than in Palawan but it wasn’t that great.

Censored Letters Part 2 to Joseph E. Dupont, Jr. from his Mother

2007-11-13T12:19:00.000-06:00

1/27/1944

Southern California, Washington D.C., play in Rose Bowl grand teams, wish you could see or hear game, will let you know winner.
Hug, kiss, Mama

****************************

(no date)
Grandma Auntie and I went to Baton Rouge, Grandmas glasses needed changing, we squeezed in a little shopping, Grandpa kept house.
Love, Mama

****************************

(no date) (I guess 2/2/1944)
Today is your birthday, Happy Birthday my dear, keep up courage, next year I’m hoping to give you hug kiss on this day.
Mama

****************************

(no date)
Hope you’ve had news from home, I’ve been writing regularly since June, also sent Christmas box you must have it by now.
Kiss, Mama

****************************

(no date)
Dear Joseph,
Tulane, L.S.U. football game Saturday, L.S.U. team all youngsters pretty good, will let you know how it turns out.
Love, Mama

****************************

(no date)
Grandpa moving his office to the house, will use library, back room, bath, very sensible don’t you think, Grandpa getting on in years.
Mama

****************************

(no date)
We are moving Grandpas office, everythings in a mess, boxes, books, everywhere, you know Gramp, very little patience, remember to pray.
Your Mama

****************************

(no date)
Joseph Dear,
We finally finished moving Grandpa’s office, what a job hundreds of books, George Jr., Gregory were a big help,
Love, Mama

(same envelope)
Grandpa’s office at the house is very nice, so spacious, he is well pleased, he has the library, back room and bath,
Love, Mama

****************************

(no date)
We are making plans to join daddy in Knoxville after school closes, hope everything works out, don’t forget to pray dear.
Love, Mama

****************************

(no date)
Auntie selling gifts, glass ware in store, we went to New Orleans to select things, it simply poured but we had fun.
Love, Mama

****************************

(no date)
Tonite Se Se Jumonville is celebrating her sixteenth birthday with small party, Barbara, Earl will go hope nothing happens this time.
Love, kiss, Mama

****************************

(no date)
Barbara had her first date yesterday afternoon for the show, she was ready and all excited, boyfriend had to break date.
Love, Mama

****************************

(no date)
Barbara boy friend Earl Blanchard had to escort his mother uptown to do her Saturday shopping, Barbara was disappointed, her first date.
Love, Mama

****************************

(no date)
Barbara quite popular, little boys always around, she uses them already, had them washing her bicycle, anxious to hear from you again,
Mama

****************************

(no date)
Adrienne is more serious doesn’t care for boys, likes sports fairly well, disposition like yours my dear, a Dupont, but looks like her mother.
Mama

****************************

(no date)
Spent afternoon at Aunties helping Louis cut shrubbery around house, was getting out of control, having house done over inside, really needs it.
Mama
****************************

(no date)
Barbara is regular tomboy likes softball, basketball, also the boys, good swimmer, she has the Landry temper, quite a combination.
Love, Mama

****************************

(no date)
Dear Joseph,
Harry here for few days, going to Cornell University, has several degrees, has learned to swim, sends his best.
Love, Mama

****************************

(no date)
Plaquemine is to have a Youth Center, at old Alamo, games, music box, etc, I’m to be supervisor, remember your good times there.
Love, Mama

****************************

(no date)
Daddy still working in Tennessee, we are planning to join him this summer, wish you were coming along, Daddy was here Christmas.
Love, Mama

****************************

(no date)
Mavis Schwing, John Ocmand married recently, she is still plump and bulging, he boxed during your high school days, remember.
Mama

****************************

(no date)
I bought new spring bonnet, Kelly green with pink rose sitting on top, plenty green veiling, rather silly looking, but so stylish.
Love, Mama

****************************

(no date)
Joseph Dear,
Spring is really here, close your eyes tight, bet you can almost see Grandma’s garden in bloom, its still beautiful.
Love, Mama

****************************

(no date)
Dear Joseph,
We are starting our first week of Lent, Mass every morning eight o’clock, services as usual, Sundays, Wednesdays, Fridays.
Love, your Mama

****************************

(no date)
Joseph dear,
Adrienne making Solemn Communion May 7, will send you picture, am making her a lovely dress.
Love, Mama

****************************

4/2/1944

Palm Sunday again, we received palms as always, remember you’d bring home enough for the family, say a prayer.
Mama

****************************

4/9/1944

Joseph Dear,
Today is Easter Sunday, Christ has risen, pray have courage my dear, look forward to next Easter.
Love, Mama

****************************

(no date)
Holy Week and all church services are over, I prayed especially hard during the procession, the repository altar very beautiful.
Love from all,
Mama

****************************

(no date)
Adrienne made Communion, she was beautiful, wish you could have seen her, will send her picture soon, everyone sends love, remember prayers.
Love, Mama

****************************

(no date)
Joseph dear,
George, Freda have new son Michael, Adrienne Godmother, you now have niece, nephew you’ve never seen.
Love, Mama

****************************

(no date)
Holy Week, wish you could assist at services, whenever I see little Altar boys I think of you my dear.
Love from all,
Mama

****************************

(no date)
We are trying to make a good lent especially for you, your little sisters also praying hard, remember to pray my dear.
Your Mama

****************************

(no date)
Adrienne making first Communion soon, both your sisters will be Confirmed later on, I’m busy making white dresses for the occasions.
Hug, kiss, Mama

****************************

(no date)
Barbara, Adrienne want string of pearls, daddy is giving Adrienne hers for first Communion, Barbara hers for graduation from seventh grade.
Love, Mama

****************************

(no date)
Daddy gave your sisters each string of pearls Adrienne hers for Communion, Barbara for graduation from seventh grade, they are thrilled.
Hug, kiss, Mama

****************************

(no date)
Had forty hours Devotion this week, Barbara Child of Mary, Adrienne Holy Angel, both in procession, remember when you were an altar boy.
Love, Mama

****************************

(no date)
Peter G. and Gloria visiting, so is Lorraine, they all ask about you, its three months since I had the second card from you.
Mama

****************************

(no date)
Grandmas veiling on hat caught fire in church while lighting candle at Blessed Virgin’s altar, fortunately someone was nearby and smothered flames.
Mama

****************************

(no date)
Grandma was a little shaken up, luckily she only had a little of her hair singed off, it could have been tragedy.
Love, Mama

****************************

1/7/1944
Teenie married December 28, quite affair only immediate families, she was a beautiful bride, Mr. Geislman the groom from St. Louis.
Love, Mama

****************************

1/7/1944
Gerald, Berret, Popeye, home for Christmas, they called, wanted the latest news about you, are all anxious to see you soon.
Hug, kiss, Mama

****************************

1/11/1944
Billy couldn’t get home for Christmas, Connie sort of lonesome, still haven’t set the date, Mercedes finishes Southwestern in February.
Love, Mama

****************************

1/19/1944
A. M. Posner, Champ here on visit both look great, we had long talk, both wanted news about you, send their regards.
Love, Mama

****************************

1/19/1944
Peter G. Gloria Ghant will be married next week, she’s red headed very attractive, from New Orleans, I’m sure you know her.
Hug, kiss, Mama

****************************

1/19/1944
Dear Joseph,
Peter G is home, first time since he had accident, looks grand, doesn’t wear glasses anymore, anxious about you.
Love, Mama

****************************

(no date)
Haven’t heard from Billy, Connie since they left, still in Carolina, saw Lorraine today she is here for short visit.
Love, Mama

****************************

(no date)
Mercedes, SaSa, Genevive, Elmire Marix, were bridesmaids they were lovely in blue dresses, carried pink camellias, Connie carried an orchid, very handsome.
Love, Mama

****************************

(no date)
Sent wedding presents to Grace, H.C. crystal jar, Peter G., Gloria, crystal dish, haven’t made up my mind about Connie’s and Billy’s yet.
Love, Mama

****************************

(no date)
Peter G.’s mother gave reception for them Sunday, lovely party, most of your friends were there, they missed you, they will live away.
Love, Mama

****************************

(no date)
Ann Pugh has a daughter about six months old, she lives in Baton Rouge, simply can’t remember her husbands name. All send love,
Mama

****************************

(no date)
Billy, Connie married month, Connie says she won’t be home until Billy can come along, that will be August, five months away.
Love, Mama

****************************

(no date)
Olive, Shelby have a new son, that makes two, Johnny they call the oldest, he is a beauty, looks like Olive.
Mama

****************************

(no date)
Homer Delacroix was married recently, girl from Texas, they were here on visit, send regards, Lionel and Mary will be married soon.
Love, Mama

****************************

(no date)
Fred Thompson, Josie Julliat were married Monday in White Castle, Grandpa gave him his health certificate, he asked about you, send regards too.
Mama

****************************

(no date)
Adies little Ann two years old, such a big girl looks like Vera, but a little tough like her daddy, don’t forget prayers.
Mama

****************************

(no date)
Magdelin giving a reception for Grace and H.C. wish you could be here to enjoy it, he is going back soon Grace will stay.
Mama

****************************

(no date)
Dear Joseph,
Connie was over to tell me their plans, they will live in South Carolina a while, Connie sends love too.
Mama

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3/12/1944
Tootie had his tonsils removed, he’s still away from home, Elizabeth spends Sunday with us occasionally, she’s working now.
Love, Mama

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(no date)
Billy, Connie getting married twelfth February, eleven o’clock Mass, bridesmaids, no men, only Billy’s younger brother best man, your job my dear.
Love, Mama

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(no date)
Sent Connie, Billy a piece of silver, their wedding presents are beautiful, details later, miss you very much my dear.
Love, Mama

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(no date)
Connie gorgeous bride in ivory satin, Billy handsome too, church was decorated with calla lilies, RoseLee Grace sang Ava Maria beautifully.
Love, Mama

Censored Letters Part 1 to Joseph E. Dupont, Jr. from his Mother

2007-11-13T10:50:00.000-06:00

Censored Mail Addressed to:

Private First Class Joseph E. Dupont, Jr.
U.S. Marine Corps, American P.O.W.
Interned in the Philippine Islands,
Philippine Military Prison Camp #10-A
c/o The Japanese Red Cross,
Tokyo, Japan,
Via: New York, New York

10/19/1943

Dear Joseph,
Yanks won world series from Cardinals. Billy Connie engaged, want you for best man, hope you can make it.
Love, Mama

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10/25/1943

Dear Joseph,
Cold weather, Barbara Adrienne have bicycle, remember yours, Teenie engaged, stranger from St. Louis, married before Christmas.
Love, Mama

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11/4/1943

Dear Joseph,
Grandpa, Grandma, improve with age, Grandpa still working hard, loves it, waiting for you to paint office again, remember
Love, Mama

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11/11/1943

Dear Joseph,
Lorraine, Ory married August, live in Texas, always ask about you, L.S.U. beat T.C.U. fourteen nothing, first score forteen years.
Love, Mama

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11/11/1943

Grandpa, Grandma celebrating 45 wedding anniversary November 23, tomorrow, wish you could be with us to wish them many more, hug, kiss,
Mama

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11/23/1943

Dear Joseph,
Tulane swamped L.S.U. 27, nothing, wish you could have seen game, L.S.U. mostly youngsters, Grandpa was tickeled, don’t forget prayers.
Love, Mama

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11/25/1943

Bought your birthday present, wish I could send it, it will keep until you get home, put it away with your things, Love,
Mama

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11/25/1943

Football season over excepting Rose and Sugar bowl games, don’t know who plays yet, Notre Dame unbeaten, wonderful team. Miss you, Mama

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11/23/1943

Dear Joseph,
Am enclosing pictures, your sisters are big girls, hope you recognize us, Talbot took it in Father Robin’s yard.
Love,
Mama

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11/29/1943

Dear Joseph,
Haven’t seen any of your friends lately they are working away from home, get news of them through their mothers.
Love, Mama

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11/29/1943

Dear Joseph,
Peter G. in accident away from home, nothing serious, his family a little worried about him, he’s been away quite a while.
Kiss, Mama

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12/7/1943

Dear Joseph
Am helping Auntie decorate store for Christmas, we are putting same pretty snow scene in window, remember, Connie sends love too.
Mama

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12/7/1943

Aunt Olives been very sick, she’s on the mend now and giving everyone the dickens, Grandpa goes over twice a day,
Love,
Mama

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12/7/1943

Georgia Tech defeated Tulsa in Sugar Bowl 20-18, thrilling game, heard it over radio, 70 thousand people attended game.
Love,
Mama

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The following censored letters were mailed to Philippine Military Prison Camp #3:

12/7/1943

Teenie visiting inlaws to be in St. Louis, don’t think the wedding will be before spring, wish you could make it.
Love, Mama

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12/17/1943

Daddy planning on being with us Christmas, wish we could all be together, will be thinking about you my dear, pray always.
Love, Mama

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12/17/1943

We are making Christmas Novena, very cold in mornings, remember we made novenas together, you served at Mass then, seems so long ago.
Mama

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12/17/1943

Dear Joseph,
Georgia Tech, Tulsa, play in Sugar bowl New Years, Georgia favorite, also Southeastern conference champions this year.
Big hug, kiss, Mama

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12/21/1943

Dear Joseph,
Grace and Gascon are married, he couldn’t get home, so Grace her mother and his went to Florida for the wedding.
Mama

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12/21/1943

Dear Joseph,
Received your second card on my birthday, we are all happy to get more news from you, wonderful birthday present.
Love, Mama

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12/21/1943

Received Christmas card from Lionel Delacroix he wants your address, such a nice boy, he thinks so much of you, schoolmates, remember?
Love, Mama

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12/21/1943

Saw Connie, Mercedes, SaSa Sunday Morning, they wanted to see your card, they were all excited and thrilled, send love.
Hugs, kiss,
Mama

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1/7/1944

I played Santa Clause at little Farrell Tircuit party, the children loved it, you should have seen your mother, pillow and all,
Love, Mama

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1/7/1944

1944, Happy New Year dear, a whole year to look forward to, so keep up that courage, hope for the best.
Hug, kiss, Mama

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1/7/1944

Southern California upset Washington favorite, to win its seventh straight Rose Bowl game, score 29 to 0, grand game.
Hug, kiss, Mama

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1/7/1944

Auntie planning to give Barbara dance at home for her birthday, she will be thirteen January eighteenth, so grown up, and pretty too.
Mama

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1/7/1944

Dear Joseph,
Bought Christmas present for you, will have to save it until you get home, I know you will like it.
Love, Mama

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1/7/1944

(blank) beat Texas (blank) in Orange Bowl (blank) Texas tied Randolph Field (blank) in Cotton Bowl, wish I could send clippings.
Mama

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1/11/1944

Dear Joseph,
Daddy spent holidays with us, all the family were here as usual, asked about you, we missed you my dear.
Love, Mama

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1/11/1944

Went to eight o’clock mass Christmas morning, stopped at crib, asked little Jesus to take care of you my dear, don’t forget prayers,
Mama

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1/11/1944

Dear Joseph,
Grandpa, Grandma both had flu, up and about again, quite a bit of sickness due to cold and rainy weather.
Kiss, mama

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About J. E. (Frenchy) Dupont, Jr. Part II

2007-11-12T13:25:00.000-06:00

We didn't care for MacArthur because he was the one who made the blunder at Clark Field. He didn't have time to talk to anybody. The air corps general tried his damndest to get him to give permission to hit Formosa before they could get us and he paid no attention. He was an egotist. Anything that came out, it said, "General MacArthur says." It wasn't a communication from headquarters. General MacArthur this and General MacArthur that. You can ask any Navy or Marine person about MacArthur and he just.... Evidently, he must have been a pretty good general. He handled the Korean War pretty well, and he wrote the constitution for Japan and all this. He must have been brilliant in ways, but in his fighting, he wasn't that great...as far as we know.

This is one of the tactics. I'll tell you about this little thing. When they were fighting on Bataan, the Japanese....Bataan is a kind of a not too skinny peninsula but it's a peninsula. The Americans were holding up pretty good. They took Manila on January 1 and they drove down a little bit and then they stopped them. Americans stopped them, the Thirty-first Infantry and the Filipino Army. They stopped them. But then the Japanese came around and landed behind our lines from the sea from the South China Sea. Now we could see that. We could those ships out there and we reported those and then the artillery on Corregidor tried to traverse their guns over, and they could traverse them over a little bit, and so they did that and they fired. And they hit a few Jap ships, but some people got ashore. It was a place called Longoskawayan Point, somewhere in that area. So, they pounded that area, but the Jap invasion group was there. That's when they got a bunch of sailors whose ships had been sunk. There were lots of other Navy ships sunk out there. After Admiral Harp had gone, these people didn't have anything to do so they were given to the Marines and we had them. They were put with us. Well there was a group on Bataan. We had some anti-aircraft units there and there was a naval base there at Mariveles and there were sailors there and the Marines were training them for infantrymen. Well, when they landed behind the Japanese lines, behind the American lines, the Japanese did, they organized what was called a navy battalion. They had all these navy people who didn't have any ships and they took a few submarines from Corregidor and brought over to put in with them to show them infantry tactics and combat and jungle warfare and all that stuff. And they became a naval battalion. They went in and tried to move the Japanese out, tried to eliminate them. And they had a little place called Pucot Hill where there was pretty good battle there. And they couldn't dislodge them because they had caves already made and the artillery coming over from Corregidor wasn’t doing anything for them and they were in these caves. So, the men on Bataan couldn’t have these people behind their lines. So, the Marines and Navy couldn’t dislodge them because they were too well in the cave and the equipment we had couldn’t do anything about it. They didn’t know how to do it. We had a few casualties, not many. So they brought some Philippine scouts in. Now, Philippine scouts are real warriors. They knew what they were doing. They would go back from the days when America took the Philippines over and they got these people and trained them, so they call them Philippine scouts. Well, they got a group of those to go over, and what they did, they brought a bunch of dynamite with them, and it was a rocky area so they got on top of the caves and fired the dynamite and let it go down to the mouth of the cave and whammo, let it go off. So, they wiped them out. They captured a few. Anway, by that time, they were getting close.

So we’re getting into March . . . MacArthur left – we’re in March and we’re coming into April. Bad things happen in April on Bataan. On April 9, the lines broke. From what I understand, there were two mountains. They had fortified the sides of the mountains. They didn’t think the Japanese would be able to come over the mountains.

On April 9th the lines broke. The Japanese came over the mountains and the Filipinos cracked. I think they had just about enough and the thirty-first infantry . . . Those people, when they were fighting on Bataan, they were on minimum rations. They were suffering from malaria something awful because of the jungles and they were just defeated. The weaponry. We didn’t have M1’s. We didn’t have bazookas. We didn’t have flame throwers. We didn’t have any of those things. The hand grenades that they had were World War One hand grenades. Many of them wouldn’t go off. This is what we were fighting with, World War One equipment. We had Springfield rifles which were five rounds and every time you’d fire, you’d have to click, click and none of this automatic stuff. The only automatic weapons we had were machine guns, World War One thirty caliber. We had fifty caliber machine guns and a BAR, Browning Automatic Rifle, which holds twenty rounds in a clip. And that was all. The Japanese had all kinds of things plus the air.

They’re coming in and we had no artillery on Bataan to amount to anything. Okay, so then the lines broke, and the Japanese broke through and then it was just a terrible situation. There were a couple of hospitals there. We heard that the Japanese had went in and killed everyone in the hospitals. Whether that was so or not, I don’t know because I wasn’t there but we heard all these tales. Well, Bataan fell. They captured a bunch of people. A lot of people escaped and came across to Corregidor. They got any kind of debris they could find, anything floating. They’d gang up on little boats and they’d get over there. So we had a lot coming over. And of course, we’d have to be careful who was coming. We had to make sure they weren’t Japanese if they came at night. We’d have to halt them, “Who are you? Identify yourself.” And you could tell by the way they talked if they were Americans. So a lot of them were put in with the Marines because they had no other place for them. Okay, after Bataan fell, then, as I said earlier, all of the big weapons on Corregidor were pointed toward the sea. And Bataan faced the back part of Corregidor where there were no weapons to amount to anything. So, then they began moving their equipment in. And this is when our job took an importance because we had the scope and we could tell….. After everything was gone and the Bataan Death March had begun and everyone was out of there, they were setting up their gun positions. Okay, there were one or two guns that could traverse to catch maybe half of Bataan and that’s about all. So, then as a I recall, once he was there, I remember this one day that there was a lot of dust going. You could tell it must have been some truck movements. So I radioed down, called down to the headquarters and I give them the azimuth reading. You don’t know what azimuth read is? “Nope.” Okay, well, you got a compass and on the scope was sitting on a huge compass design. So what I would do, I’d get my scope and I’d zero in on where this flash was, where this dust was and I had crosshairs. And I got just about in the middle of all this activity and I’d look down and it would give me a degree reading, one of three-hundred and sixty degrees. So, I’d call up and I’d say, “Hey, at one-hundred and thirteen degrees, looks like there’s a Japanese convoy because there’s a lot of dirt going on and this is Battery Morrison.” Now, when I’d say “Battery Morrison,” they had the map there in the plotting room. They knew where I was and then they would get a – I forget what they call it – they would put it at the one hundred and thirty-one degrees, whatever I said, and it would draw a line from there across. Then he’d get a report from another observation post saying the same thing. They’d give them their azimuth reading, which would be different. Wherever those hairs crossed, that’s where they were. They’d radio. They’d call that into the batteries that could handle it and they would then start firing. And I didn’t see it because after they started firing and those other people relieved us, they said they could see parts of trucks going up in the air and so they must have caught a convoy going. Then at night, we would spot their flashers so they started firing regularly then. Once they got those positions, those artillery positions in, we were under siege for twenty-eight days. And they continually firing at night, daytime, you didn’t know when. That’s why the bombing we could handle because when the bombing was gone, the planes were gone. But with shells, shelling, they could put it at anytime. It doesn’t take long for them to come across that four miles. So, we’d spot the flashes. We’d watch and we’d catch a flash somewhere and hold it and watch again and maybe it’d be about five or ten minutes and another one. After we’d get about five from this place, we’d call in azimuth reading on that position and I guess somebody . . . it was kind of an artillery dual going on all that time. So that wen on. We were under siege I would say for twenty-one days. We were bombed constantly because we were the only thing left. Corregidor was the only outpost the United States had in the Western Pacific or the Eastern, whatever you want to call it – out in the Pacific aside from Midway. And of course, no help was coming now. In the meantime, the plan is really devastating us. Coming in, bombing up. Our refrigeration plant was hit. The water tower was hit. Our food was cut to twice a day because we didn’t have enough food. They didn’t know how long we’d be there or what.

Well, I’ll tell you a little sideline now. On the …oh, it must have been the third or fourth bombing. The army post always had mules. Well, one of the mules was hit and, of course, what they did, the cooks dressed it all up and they sent some to each – we called them galleys galley. Each galley, where we were, and some of the Army people got it too, and we’d have mule meat which was not bad if you didn’t have anything else. So then people said, “Well, that sounds pretty good. What are you going to do with mules?” Well, I don’t know. You can’t slaughter them because they’re government property. We said, “Well, you can’t destroy government property.” But the cook said, “Well, we got to take them out and fee them grass.” So, instead of bringing them out in the morning, we’ll bring them out around noon because that’s when the planes came in. We’d bring one or two out and let them eat grass. So, anyway, then they cut us to two meals a day.

The meals consisted of canned stuff, that’s all we had. We hadn’t gotten to the K rations yet. In fact, we didn’t have K rations as such. The Army may have but the Marines didn’t. The Marines had what they call a D ration which was a chocolate bar which was loaded with whatever you’re supposed to have. And you drank water and it filled up in your stomach and you were full. It was a chocolate bar about an inch thick and maybe six inches long and maybe three inches wide, and that would be a meal. D ration, that when you really…..that’s last of the rations. That’s the most extreme that there is. But we would have canned goods. There were a lot of canned goods there that they would get to us. They’d be canned green beans and peas and whatever meeat they could find. There would be some canned. It’d be salmon and things like that. And they’d bake bread. Now, they would bake bread for us because each galley had its own little bakery of some kind and they’d do the cooking outside in the stoves. They brought the stoves outside. They put them in a recess so they wouldn’t get hurt with the bombing. So, we were outside. We were the only ones outside.

Okay, on the emperor’s birthday on April 29th, it’s Emperor Hirohito’s birthday, I’ll never forget it. That’s when they really laid it on us. It was a day long shelling. All buildings, of course, the water reservoir were all destroyed and so on. There was a bad, bad bombing at that time. Then, on May 2nd was the heaviest shelling that we had ever gotten. I think that they said some of the people inside those tunnels, they had nothing else to do. They were covered and this is what they came up with. There were twelve, two hundred and forty millimeter shells . . now a two hundred and forty millimeter shell is about twelve inches across, twelve inches across diameter and possibly about two and a half feet long. And, when it would it in a jungle area, it would cut down to ground level all of the growth for sixty yards, all around. They were tremendous shells. Anyway, they had about five or six batteries on Bataan and then south of Corregidor where the south channel was, that was a province called Batangas. They’d put artillery pieces over there also. And they were firing from there and from Bataan and from the air on this little two and a half mile island. Everybody says it’s like living on the bull’s eye of a target. Well, they dropped twelve, two hundred and forty every minute for a five hour period. Every minute, twelve two forties were hitting on this island. Twelve every minute or every five seconds, one was hitting. Plus fifty-six bombing runs and they were softening us up for the invasion is what they were doing. But this was really a tremendous shelling thing. And everybody was almost slap happy because of the constant …even at night, you couldn’t rest because the shells were coming and daytime, the bombs would come in with the shells. So, this is when everybody was down pretty low. Well, let’s get to the invasion part now because they were softening us up.

(Asked about Soochow) – Soochow was with us wherever we went. He was on Corregidor during all of this shelling and bombing. But he got wise. He would whine. He would crawl down in a hole. He knew. But he could hear the bombing. And we’d be sitting around and some of the guys were, “Look, Soochow’s getting in a hole.” Well, the damn planes would come in there and maybe about five minutes after that, the sirens would start. So, he could hear the planes. Well, I forgot to mention him, but, see he was with the first battalion and they were in a different area from where we were. But, this is what I heard. Now in prison camp, I can give you a lot about him.

Let’s see, where am I here – okay, all beach defenses were destroyed. Remember the things I was telling you about? Well, all of that was destroyed – gun positions were blasted out. Down in the section where the invasion was made, it was sandy and it had a nice little beach, but they had to go up about fifteen feet to get to a place where they could move across the island. So the Army had some search lights and it was on a little track and they rolled it into a little hill and they had steel doors that closed it off. Well, on the night of the invasion, about ten o’clock at night on the night of May 5th, they knew the Japanese were assembling because they could see them. We could see them over on Bataan marshalling their … trying to get their boats together but the artillery pieces couldn’t swing around there to get them. It just couldn’t swing that far to get those boats. But, we knew they were coming. We didn’t know when. So everybody was on alert. Well, the night of May 6th … in the meantime … let me tell you what else the Marines did. They said “Well, we don’t have any beach defenses.” So what they did, they started stringing barbed wire out in the water. They had these things that we used for road blocks. And they got those things out and they put them below the level of the water and it was barbed wire out there in that area where it would be….everybody figured it would be the landing beach.

And they had that set out there. And we had to alert everybody. I don’t know if you remember the old horns. No, you don’t remember because you’re too young. Back in the old days before you had electric horns, there was a horn that you would push down that would go “arrooga, arrooga.” Well, they had these things there but they had a little crank on it and it went “aroow, aroow, aroow” when you would do it. It had a little horn like. Well, most beach defenses had those things and whenever that went on, that meant the invasion was beginning, was in progress. So, we’re on the observation post and then we hear (horn sound). I said “Oh boy, here it comes.” Ten o’clock at night. Well, the moon was just coming up. Well, the guns started shooting flares out. Our people started shooting flares out. And they could see up. Of course, we had out everybody but all the heavy weapons, the fifty caliber machine guns and the thirty calibers, were kept undercover during all the bombing raid. They were all brought out. They knew where they were to be. They set them all up. Then, they rolled the search light out. They rolled it out. Everybody was in position. They didn’t quite know where they were. Nobody was firing. Nobody had given the work to fire. Well then they clicked on this searchlight. It lit the whole damn bay up almost and you could see them. You could see them coming in. And everybody zeroed their weapons in on them, and then they started firing. Well, the artillery over there spotted the flood light and they began firing and, of course, they hit it and destroyed it. It had been on for maybe a minute, a minute and a half and that was it. But everybody had range and the zero on them and they opened up witht the machine guns. On a machine gun, every fifth round is a tracer. A tracer is a bullet that has phosphorous and you see them in some of these combat movies. You’ll see these things streaking off. Well, that’s tracers. So each gun could fire the tracers and they could see where the bullets were going.

The Japanese had their landing craft which was really a craft that they used in Manila to put automobiles on from a ship to bring ashore. That was their landing craft that maybe had steel about a half an inch thick. You could see the machine gun bullets going through there and it was like going through butter. Well, some of the boats, they hid them out pretty far and then they were moving in and then they came into the barbed wire part. And the propeller got tangled in the barbed wire and they couldn’t get in. and they had to drop their front where the cars would have come off and the Japs with all their gear on were coming out. Well, when they came out, they were in water deeper than they were. And they’d go down and they’d get tangled up. And they were getting chopped up pretty good. And people thought at that time, we’re going to repel them. God damn invasion, we’re going to repel it. Well, then there was another bunch. We had them pretty well stopped out there. Another bunch was coming and the tide took them the wrong way. And the reports going back to – what we heard afterwards, of course – the reports going back to the Japanese is that it looks like the invasion is going to fail. Well, this group had got caught in this tide went around … the commander, his name was Sato. I remember reading about him. They went around. We had Marines on one side where they landed and Marines on the other side protected from the South China Sea. Well, when the fighting started, they came across and they were filling in on the beach defense over here and left it unguarded. So the bunch in that tide swung around. Nobody was even aware. It wasn’t done purposely. It wasn’t their style. They were going to make a frontal entrance. And they worked their way in and got troops aboard that island from the south side without any resistance. Naturally they came across and then our guys are out here and they come in from the back on them. So that caused havoc. And then they tried to get around and they were coming from this side. So by that time, there was another transport with two tanks on it. And what they did, they drove across the island first. They drove across the island, cut off the tail part. And Malinta tunnel was sitting up across the bay, oh, I’d say a half a mile from where they cut across. And naturally, they turn their direction going in that direction. And they were mopping up on this other end but they hung out there. They didn’t get them. They battled all night long. They knew what was happening. General Wainwright was in charge of the operation and he knew he had a lot of people wounded in the hospital area and that tunnel area and the word that we got was that he knew that if those tanks got to the tunnel, that they would enter the tunnel and they would just blast away at everything and it would be a massacre. And all of the wounded were in there. Headquarters was in there and there would be no way . . . We didn’t have any anti-tank guns. We didn’t have any World War II equipment. So those two tanks that he got aboard were the downfall. So then he said, “Well, I guess we’ll just have to surrender to prevent a bloodbath because the battle is lost now.” So they surrendered. Of course, I was up in observation. We were trying to spot flashers across to get our artillery and knock off some of theirs to lessen the shelling. They had called in some reserve units that were held in reserve and they went out the back of Malinta tunnel to get to where it was and for some reason, they had some type of observer that spotted it and they were throwing shells in there. And they almost wiped out that whole battalion as they went out the back to go reinforce our people to stop them from coming in. So, they surrendered. So, we got the word after that to surrender tomorrow at noon. That’s when the surrender would be. Cease fire. Firing would stop and tomorrow at noon, there would be a surrender. That was supposed to be just … Colonel Howard sent out an officer with a white flag and two other guys to meet the Japanese highest ranking officer. I forget who it was. But anyway, he said that, well, he didn’t think he could surrender and the spying stopped for a while and they negotiated and that’s what it was. But, Japanese in certain areas still kept shelling even though the cease fire was supposed to be in effect. So people had to keep cover all night. But then the word came by runners, all of the telephones were blasted out. The wiring was gone. You couldn’t’ use your field phones so they had to send runners to tell different people what was going on. So they came up and said, “Okay, you’re to report down to bottom side tomorrow morning. Destroy your equipment. Destroy your equipment and report down to the bottom side tomorrow morning.” Of course, I hesitated to destroy my rifle. Then I’d have no defense at all. But I followed orders and took out my bolt. I took the bolt out and field stripped it, took the firing pin out so it couldn’t be used and threw them in different places. And there was nothing there but a stock and a barrel. I took my bayonet. I broke my bayonet. And the next morning, I started walking down to where the Japanese were and they had a check point there. Everybody came through and you had to walk in with your hands up and they’d pull you over to the side. If you had any rings, they would pull them off. One officer had a graduation ring from a military academy and he said, “I can’t get it off.” Of course, they got the bayonet out and the guy pulled it off. It was either that or they were going to take off his ring. They took your fountain pens. They’d take anything you’d have. Of course, we all gathered in a place called ninety second garage area. It was an area where an engineering outfit had some kind of equipment that went into the sea and it was all concrete but it was all blown up and the hangers were all blown up. I think some type of aircraft that flew in on land also was there so they could come up on the beach. And in that area they called it ninety second garage area. It was a cove off of the South China Sea which I don’t know how big it was but there must have been ten or eleven thousand men crammed in there.

(How did you feel about the surrender and, also of other folks?) How did I feel at that time? At that time, I was devastated and I didn’t realize. I didn’t know. It’s kind of foggy like, you know? We’d been bombed and shelled all that time. We looked slap happy. I think that’s what they wanted. And we would get down there and you see somebody you know and you don’t know what to do. You don’t know what’s going to happen. Now, we knew in China, the POW’s were always executed. The Japanese never kept any POWs. Why? Because they didn’t want to fool with them. This is the way they were. They just slaughtered you.

How did the Japanese feel about those that surrendered? Now see, that’s another area that I would get to. They felt that we were the lowest of the low…they said that we were dishonorable warriors because we surrendered. In Japanese military culture, death before dishonor. And when you surrender, you have dishonored yourself and your ancestors. And you were fit only for slave labor and we were worse than anything. I had it written somewhere. But this is the way they looked upon us and they let us know it. We were nothing. We had no honor at all. We didn’t choose to die. We surrendered and that was awful. And another thing that’s awful for them is to be slapped. They would rather be killed than to – what they call – lose face. To lose face to them, that’s the worst that can happen. That’s what happened to us. This is the way they looked upon us. And they let you know that you were nothing to them and that to execute you was just like stepping on a roach. And this is the way they did it.

After we got captured and we weren’t executed at the beginning, I thought to myself, “They can’t execute ten thousand people. They just can’t do it.” So then they talked about … rumors passed coming around that we were going to be exchanged for Japanese nationals that we had. Well, that was a bunch of bull. They exchanged state department people. Well, we hung on to that. That gave us hope. I think the officers put that stuff out just to give us a little hope because we were just in despair – had nothing to eat, nothing to drink.

Then they started labor details. Well, I don’t want to get into that. So then when we get to prison and we see that they’re not going to execute us, we go on work details and different things. Then we begin to think. You say, “Okay, so here I am. I’m here.” We know America’s going to win the war. No question about that. Now when the time comes, the day coming is to get us some kind of way, a rescue or….the Japanese are not going to walk away and say “here we are”. They did in Japan because that was their home country and they surrendered. But to us out in the Philippines, I said, “No. The Americans are coming.” I said, “They’re not going to just say, ‘Okay, you guys, we’re going to leave. Goodbye.’” I said, “No, it’s not going to be like that.” And that worried me. I said, “I know. I know what they’re going to do. I just know they’re going to execute those people because they’re going to know they’re the (U.S.) is coming.” And this was in the back of my mind all the time.

Once we got down to ninety-second garage and they had so many people and you could see that they were getting Americans to go work on details to clean up the island to send stuff back to Japan – unused ammunition and food. They found a lot of food there and put it on board ship and sent it away. So we were doing work details for them those eight days or so that we were there.

The process of the surrender – Okay, when I went down, the guy … I had my high school graduation ring on but I took it off and I put it in my watch pocket. And I didn’t think he’d find it there and he just … though I think I had a fountain pen or something and he took that and a little old wallet that I didn’t have any money in it and he took that. And I went on through and I had to go where all the other guys were. Then, we were all sitting around this one area and we had to march to this place where everybody was kept, the ninety-second garage. And where we had to march through was the actual battlefield and there was not one dead Japanese there but every dead American was there. And they had been in the sun for about three days. They kept us in one place about three days and then they moved us to ninety-second garage. And that was, of course, to discourage us, I’m sure. And we walked through the battlefield and there were these American guys laid out there all mangled and not one dead Japanese. Marched us through that, made us go through the whole battlefield where all the shell holes were and debris and then we went to the other place. Well, that was depressing to start with.

But, later, let me tell you this. I want to go back to the bombing, to the shelling, because I forgot that…so, after about three or four days, they had to get a detail to go pull their people up out of Manila Bay that had gotten killed and had drowned there. So they got POWs to go. I didn’t go. Guys who were on that detail told me about it. They’d have to go down and drag up their guys, unhook all their equipment – they had on all their equipment on and all that – bring them up, bring them to show. Then, the Japanese with their Samurai swords would cut off their left arm and throw it in a pile. And then put the body over in another spot. They burned the bodies but they burned the arms but that’s what they scooped. They mixed them all up, but they’d scoop them in their little vases and send them back home. The guys that they selected on that detail had to drag them up out of the beach, out of the water out there, and they said there were quite a few of them. They were still doing it when we left. So I guess some other Japanese had to do it then. But that’s what they did. They cut their left arm off and they would butn it and scoop up some ashes and send it back to their people.

Now, I want to tell you about this. When the planes were coming in, they were up at nineteen thousand feet. We couldn’t even … our shells were up at nineteen thousand. The planes were up at twenty-one, twenty-two thousand. We couldn’t hit them. But a submarine came in. The submarine came in at night under the Japanese blockade. I guess they were silent running or whatever, and they eased in under the blockade. They came and surfaced at night by north dock. And what they were bringing . . . they were bringing some fuses. We were radioing back and forth. They were bringing some twenty-two second fuses and nobody on the island knew anything about it. Nobody on Corregidor knew. They got it over to the anti-aircraft people and at night, they changed the fuses on the shells that they had from nineteen seconds to twenty-two seconds. And they changed all of them. They didn’t tell a soul. But in the meantime, the submarine unloaded all of that and it had to have ballast. Ballast is when you have a ship … and a ballast keeps it from flipping over (it’s underneath). So they had all of these fuses down underneath there and that was ballast coming in – but they didn’t have any ballast going back. So the skipper of the submarine, U.S.S. Trout was the name of the submarine. The Philippine mint was also on Corregidor. I didn’t tell you about that when they burned all the money. When they burned the money, hundred dollar bills, lighting cigarettes with hundred dollar bills and such so the Japs couldn’t get it. And the silver was put in the..well that’s another story. You see, I forgot all that.

So the submarine brought the fuses out and had to have ballast to it so they said, “Well, we got the Philippine mint here and look, we were trying to find a way to get rid of all of this gold bullion which backs up the Philippines.” So we said, “Fine, Gold’s heavy.” So they brought the gold down and put the gold down in there as ballast. And then they got some Navy nurses and some Army nurses and put them aboard and some other key personnel. Now who the key personnel was, we don’t know. Sure wasn’t a PFC, that’s for sure. So they got off and records got off and things like that. They brought all that back, all what had happened up until this time. And this is about oh, possibly May 1st, somewhere in there – right before the invasion. And they went back. They sneaked back underneath and got out. They got out, no problem. But then, later on, after the war is over, this captain of the Trout wants to claim to that gold as salvage because there’s an unwritten law of the sea, something where if you…... But he maintained it was salvaged that if he…..it was going to be destroyed. So, by law of the sea…..anyway, it didn’t go very far but he really tried.

We didn’t know about changing the fuses. Nobody knew it. And here come the planes the day afterward and we watched and there were three flights. Three flights, I think, of maybe.. I don’t know if there were twelve or twenty or what there were but they were coming over Samui(?) and the guns started firing. And, of course, then we heard all kinds of explosions up there. Boy, it hit right in the middle of them. Of course, the bombs were going off and we were all excited – jumping up, yelling, screaming. We finally got a lick – but then we had to watch out because wheels were falling out of the air. Parts of aircraft were falling down and some were missing the island but some were hitting on the island so we all had to take cover but it was such a great day to have that happen. I think they knocked down maybe eight or ten of them. It was a good lick, really good lick. And then after that, they had to come in higher and their bombing was not as effective. The wind would take the bombs but that was a great deal.

We were ill-prepared for World War II. They had trouble in Congress getting – they had some of what they call “doves” in Congress. All of them were against --- We were in the middle of a depression. He knew if we got into the war, it would lift our economy because of the material that was needed in all areas. He started by having a lend-lease agreement with Europe where we would send supplies over to them and they would lease us land in the event we ever needed it and it all came in handy when we got into the war. So, he was helping Churchill. Well, I think that Churchill cut a deal with him that he would do these things if they would, once they were ready for war, they would help them out in North Africa. Because Rommel was kicking their butts in North Africa until we got over there. And that was about the time when we were being strung out over here and not one bit of help from anybody.

Well, anyway, now this thing about the submarine is in a book somebody had. That’s where I found out about it. I didn’t know at the time. I just knew a sub came in and took out some people.

Well, let me tell you what they tell us. We had a historian come to one of our meetings one time and he said, “Let me tell you why you guys were left out there on purpose. You were expendable. Once this thing started, they scratched you off. You had to stay out there because they had to show to the world to the other nations that we told we would defend them in the case they were invaded that we would fight to the last man to defend them.” This was to reinforce that feeling throughout the world where we had commitments to help somebody if they were under attack and I think that’s the way it was in those times. He said there was no intention. You guys were chalked off as soon as the Philippines…as Bataan fell. That was it. In fact, as soon as you landed on Bataan. Now, I maintain that had the planes at Clark field not been hit, had General MacArthur done what he should have and told General Brumen to go and hit Taiwan, they would have destroyed those planes. Planes could only fly about five hundred miles. They couldn’t go like they are today. They could not have come from Japan to the Philippines by air. They would have had to come by sea and our planes would have blown them out of the water. That one little dumb mistake because of his egotism. He was in conference. He couldn’t be disturbed.

Asked what he was in conference about – “That’s a bunch of bull. Nobody knows. His aide was doing the talking. They never got to talk to MacArthur. General Sutherland was his aide. And every time they’d go, General Sutherland would say, ‘I’m sorry but the General is not available. He’s in conference.’ I don’t know with whom. But this really is what caused the downfall of the Philippines. They never could have gotten us because it’s too long a distance. And we had the submarines. We had the naval ships there. But, once he destroyed the Navy yard, the Navy couldn’t stay there any longer. They had to go where their supplies were. So, that one incident, in my opinion is what caused the downfall.

He was responsible for it. Now, I say that. He may not have been aware of what he did – but it was devastating. When you have no air power at all, you’re at their mercy. And they were over us all the time. In fact, there was an observation plane flying over Corregidor most of the time in the daylight spotting artillery targets for the artillery on Bataan, the two hundred and forty millimeters. And then, they would pen it in. Some people wouldn’t be able to go get their chow. They’d be afraid to go because they might call an air strike – I mean a shell attack on them. That siege was pretty bad for twenty-eight days.

MacArthur with his pompous self down in Australia says, “Wainwright should not have surrendered.” Well, that’s easy to say. He didn’t know what the situation was. He never set foot on Bataan when the battle was going on. He kept his butt in that tunnel and he would come out when there was no bombing of course and sit around. And they’d sit out in the sunshine and all that and you could tell. Anyone who didn’t have a tan, you knew was a tunnel rat. And that’s what we called them because if you’re out all the time, you’re going to have a tan. Whenever you had to go into the tunnel for something, you’d see them all with their pale complexion. They’re scared to death. And because they never faced the bombing, they never knew how they could conquer it being in there like a mole in a hole all the time.

I mentioned the amount of shelling that we received from the Japanese artillery pieces on Bataan after it fell and I had indicated that there were fifty-five….there was a shell, a two-hundred and forty millimeter mortar shell that landed on Corregidor every fifty-five seconds. Well, that was wrong it was a mistake. I mistook an “S” for a “5” and it was really five shells. No, it was one shell fell every five seconds which meant about twelve shells a minute fell during a five hour period. That’s what I wanted to get across, try to show the intensity of the shelling in addition to the bombing from overhead since we had no air force.

Now, back to the Ninety-second Garage. It was where all the prisoners on Corregidor were herded. They had possibly ten to eleven thousand Filipinos and American prisoners of war. Everyone was herded into here. It was a low area with hills circling around it and the Japanese had placed sentries on these hills and set machine guns in placements up till there was no escape from there. You could go into the water if you wanted to try to swim across Manila Bay that was full of mines and sharks but no one tried that. So, you were hemmed up in there pretty well. Well, there was no water. For the first three days, there was no water. Now, to hear people talk about, well, you can’t go too long without eating. Well, you can go much longer without eating than you can without water. It was hot. Corregidor is two degrees… no, no, it’s more than two degrees above the equator but we were down into the awfully hot area and it was in May and the concrete was there. It was all broken up because of the shells and bombs but the water pipes were destroyed during the shelling and the bombing. And the only water that was available was what you had in your canteen when you went there. And fortunately, I had gotten an additional canteen and had two on my cartridge belt. Of course, the cartridges were gone but I used the belt to carry the canteens and that kind of carried me through but it didn’t last very long. Now, three days without water is excruciating. It is terrible. It was so bad. The heat was so intense that we perspired a lot and you needed water. If you were on a work detail, you possibly could get some water wherever you were working. But without it, some of the men who were wounded couldn’t go and they had no water. Now, whether anyone died of thirst or not, I don’t know but I can remember in my case, I would go to bed at night and I can remember dreaming of lying in a shallow pool with a water fall falling down on top of me. And it was that bad that you dreamed something like that. Anyway, within three days, there was a trickle out of a spigot. They installed a pipe somewhere. And there were, as I said, ten or eleven thousand men and this spigot ran at half-speed. There was no water pressure. It was more than a drip but it wasn’t full force. So men would line up there and stay in line for possibly two and three hours working to get their canteen filled with water. And some who were injured, they would get a stick and the canteens have a screw top, and then they have a chain which holds the top so it won’t get lost. So what they would do, they would unscrew the cap and hook it over this long stick about maybe three feet long and they could hook maybe eight or ten canteens on there as they were waiting in line. So they would go up to the spigot and then they would unscrew them all and fill them and put them back on again and bring them back to the area where they were at Ninety-second Garage. And it was a constant thing because usually men formed a group of four. For some reason it just happened that way. You couldn’t have any larger group. You could have a small group but no larger and you would stake out an area of what was yours. And in our case, there was a pile driving scaffold that was there made of big timbers and we got there kind of early and I had a shelter half that I’d brought so we stretched that across the top and latched it with some rope and we had shade most of the day which was much better than most of the other guys. And we had another fellow, his name was Bones. He was one of my buddies. He was wounded in the butt with a piece of shrapnel and it became infected and he couldn’t go on work details. So we’d have to get him water and bring him food from the work detail. Once you completed a detail, the Japanese would give you some of the food which was our food that they were taking from our food storage tunnels that were built there. And they were loading it aboard ship to take to Japan. So if you did a fairly good job working, hauling these cases down to the ships, they would give you maybe one can of Vienna sausages which was the large can, not the little cans that you see in the store today. And maybe another can of peaches and that was it. So, we’d go back to our area and we’d share this with the other guys who weren’t on the detail. Maybe two or three would be on the detail at one time and then we’d have enough that would carry us through. So we’d share it the people who couldn’t go.

Now there were no latrines at Ninety-second garage. There was an open area and the shell holes were there and these shell holes were used as latrines for maybe ten, eleven thousand men. And after eleven days or so, it gets to be a terrible, terrible place to be with the stench and the big blue flies that were everywhere. They were near the latrine. They’d be flying around on your food trying to get on it. And they would – and a lot of people developed dysentery. They developed all kinds of awful diseases because of this. Well, after eleven days, of course, that’s when they decided to move us from there aboard ship into Manila and I think I covered that when we went and got to manila and we had to wade ashore and then we made the victory march for the Japanese on a Sunday afternoon. I think I’ve covered that. Okay, so that’s what Ninety-second garage was like.

That was possibly four miles down Dewey Boulevard and through the city of Manila to the prison. It was across the Pasig River which runs almost through the middle of Manila. We stayed there this one night and it was already being used as a prison. Prisoners that had been captured earlier were there, not the ones from Bataan but people who were captured, like the ones who were in a hospital that was run by the Navy. When Japanese came by, there was no fighting there. They just took over the hospital and all of the people in it. The patients and the doctors, and they moved them into Bilibid Prison. So, those people were permanent but we were transits. We stayed there one night. Then, we went. The next morning, we were put aboard metal boxcars, maybe a hundred men to a boxcar, and we were shipped up North about a hundred miles to a place called Cabanatuan. It was the name of the town and about eight miles out of the town was a training camp that the Philippine army used to train their soldiers. The camp was a very large area and there were lots of these barracks built out palm and bamboo and thatched roofs and they were just very rustic. There were tiers. There was tier as you walked in the door. There was a walkway that was about maybe four feet wide that went from the entrance to the exit of the place, just one shot. Then, about three and a half feet off the floor was a tier which was laced with bamboo slats. Long bamboo slats were there and that went the extent of the building. Then you had a little … up higher approximately about six feet, there was another tier and these buildings were possibly thirty-five feet long and on each side, they had these tiers and these men would get in there and each person had his little spot. You brought your blankets and there was no walls or anything, it was just all wide open and you slept on these bamboo slats which you got used to after a while. And this was the type of housing that we had a Cabanatuan.

There must have been twenty-five to thirty of these types of building that housed us. Of course, the Japanese were across the street in their section. So this was the camp. This is where it was. It was so bad up there. I think I mentioned that earlier how the food was very bad. I think our food was rice constantly every day. We had a canteen cup full of rice. A canteen cup is about a cup and a half of regular measurement. And you would have a canteen cup, a half a canteen cup of soup which was made from potato vines. They grew potatoes on a farm. They had a farm tied in with this Cabanatuan, big farm. And the prisoners were there to work the farm and they told us that we would work and we would grow our own vegetables for ourselves. Well, that was a big fat laugh. And when harvest time came, the Japanese army took all the vegetables and we had what was left of what they didn’t want. So we’d have rice constantly three times a day and nothing else. There were bathing facilities at all, no washing. There was fresh water but you couldn’t bathe in it. You could fill your canteen with it an drink it but that was it. It was restricted to that. Now there was a stream, a mountain stream. Maybe once a week, they’d get fifty to a hundred men who would want to go up to this stream and we would get into it. The water was rushing pretty fast and we would enjoy that and be able to bathe and keep ourselves fairly clean after a week or two of dung.

Then we had three young army guys who…they were eighteen like we all were, eighteen or nineteen. And they decided they were going to escape. The prison just had a barbed wire fence around it with Japanese sentries and the sentries would patrol the barbed wire fence. Well, one sentry would have to go possibly a hundred and fifty yards. That was his area but when he passed one, you could time it. He wouldn’t be back for quite a while. So these three army guys escaped. And, of course, they would always count you. They would count you every morning when you were awakened and every night before you went to bed, you were counted. They called it Bango or Tanko. And you’d have to line up in front of your barracks and they’d go down and count the prisoners. The Japanese were there with a list of how many men were there. And they discovered these three men were missing from this one particular barracks. So they sent out a patrol and they caught them. And they brought them back.

I really don’t know how far they had gotten but they got them that night and brought them back. Well, then they wanted to set them up as an example of what would happen if one would be caught escaping again. They tied them up outside the camp. They took these three young army guys and they tied them up outside the gate. They tied their hands behind their backs in such a position where they were stooped over. First they beat them. They had ax handles and other types of big clubs that they would beat them with. When any Filipino would pass by in a cart going to market or something, they’d stop them and make them beat the Americans with ax handles and whatnot. And this lasted for maybe a day, a day and a half and they were pretty well beaten up. So the, they brought them inside and they tied their hands. They had a stake in the ground and they tied their hands behind their backs and tied it to the stake in the ground. Then they made them kneel down and they put a two by four board in between their legs so that when they were kneeling down, this would cut the circulation off in their legs and their hands would be tied to the post behind them and a rope was put around their neck and it pulled against the stake in the ground so that they were facing the sun. Now, their faces were all torn up and beat up and their bodies were also. And the Japanese left them there for one day and of course, their faces swelled up and their lips and everything. Well, you couldn’t really see their eyes because it was all closed over and they were beginning to look purple. I don’t know what brought that on. But anyway, after one day of this, the Japanese came to them and of course, these men were just about out of their heads by this time. And the Japs came to them and told them that because they were merciful because the emporer was merciful, they could request to be executed which would end their sufferings or they would have three more days of this type of treatment because they escaped. Well, these guys were out of their head and I guess they were in so much pain… they brought a little letter there for them and they all scribbled their names on there indicated that they requested to be executed. Now, I guess this was to …in the early days, the Japanese wanted to have some excuse for executing people. Well, down the line, they didn’t need any. They didn’t need any kind of approval before they executed you. So these men signed. They all signed. Then they called the whole camp out. They had to set an example. They called the whole camp out and they took these three people and they brought them up on a knoll. There was a little knoll in the camp and they brought them up there and they made them dig their own graves. They dug them. They weren’t very deep of course because they were pretty well beat up. But anyway, they made them dig their graves. Then they stood them in front of the graves and we were all brought out there and lined up to watch this. They brought their firing squad up, lined them up in front. Then they went to each man with a cup of tea and asked him, did he want to have a cup of tea. This was their, I guess, execution ceremony. I don’t know why but they’re trying to ingratiate themselves with us and none of the men took the tea. I guess their lips were so banged up. Then they offered them a cigarette of all things. And then after that, they offered them a blindfold and they all took the blindfold. And then the firing squad marched in front and they gave the command and they fired and they fell back into their graves. And then the Japanese officer who was in command of the firing squad went into this grave and gave them coup d’etat into the head. They fired a bullet into each one of them’s head to end their sufferings.

Then they issued an order that all men in the camp would be formed into ten man squads. They called them shooting squads and what that was, you had ten men – if any one of the ten escaped, the other nine would be executed. That was the rule. So what that did…that made one aware of who their other nine companions were and kept track of them very closely because you wouldn’t want to be caught in that situation. It taught us – not taught us a lesson – but it let us know that they were serious about this and that they would have executed anyone who happened to escape and the remaining nine. Also, it gave you a sense of “Hey, I don’t want to be responsible for the death of nine other men.” So that was a deterrent.

An Excerpt from About J. E. (Frenchy) Dupont, Jr. Part II

2007-11-12T13:13:00.000-06:00

Then we had three young army guys who…they were eighteen like we all were, eighteen or nineteen. And they decided they were going to escape. The prison just had a barbed wire fence around it with Japanese sentries and the sentries would patrol the barbed wire fence. Well, one sentry would have to go possibly a hundred and fifty yards. That was his area but when he passed one, you could time it. He wouldn’t be back for quite a while. So these three army guys escaped. And, of course, they would always count you. They would count you every morning when you were awakened and every night before you went to bed, you were counted. They called it Bango or Tanko. And you’d have to line up in front of your barracks and they’d go down and count the prisoners. The Japanese were there with a list of how many men were there. And they discovered these three men were missing from this one particular barracks. So they sent out a patrol and they caught them. And they brought them back.

I really don’t know how far they had gotten but they got them that night and brought them back. Well, then they wanted to set them up as an example of what would happen if one would be caught escaping again. They tied them up outside the camp. They took these three young army guys and they tied them up outside the gate. They tied their hands behind their backs in such a position where they were stooped over. First they beat them. They had ax handles and other types of big clubs that they would beat them with. When any Filipino would pass by in a cart going to market or something, they’d stop them and make them beat the Americans with ax handles and whatnot. And this lasted for maybe a day, a day and a half and they were pretty well beaten up. So the, they brought them inside and they tied their hands. They had a stake in the ground and they tied their hands behind their backs and tied it to the stake in the ground. Then they made them kneel down and they put a two by four board in between their legs so that when they were kneeling down, this would cut the circulation off in their legs and their hands would be tied to the post behind them and a rope was put around their neck and it pulled against the stake in the ground so that they were facing the sun. Now, their faces were all torn up and beat up and their bodies were also. And the Japanese left them there for one day and of course, their faces swelled up and their lips and everything. Well, you couldn’t really see their eyes because it was all closed over and they were beginning to look purple. I don’t know what brought that on. But anyway, after one day of this, the Japanese came to them and of course, these men were just about out of their heads by this time. And the Japs came to them and told them that because they were merciful because the emporer was merciful, they could request to be executed which would end their sufferings or they would have three more days of this type of treatment because they escaped. Well, these guys were out of their head and I guess they were in so much pain… they brought a little letter there for them and they all scribbled their names on there indicated that they requested to be executed. Now, I guess this was to …in the early days, the Japanese wanted to have some excuse for executing people. Well, down the line, they didn’t need any. They didn’t need any kind of approval before they executed you. So these men signed. They all signed. Then they called the whole camp out. They had to set an example. They called the whole camp out and they took these three people and they brought them up on a knoll. There was a little knoll in the camp and they brought them up there and they made them dig their own graves. They dug them. They weren’t very deep of course because they were pretty well beat up. But anyway, they made them dig their graves. Then they stood them in front of the graves and we were all brought out there and lined up to watch this. They brought their firing squad up, lined them up in front. Then they went to each man with a cup of tea and asked him, did he want to have a cup of tea. This was their, I guess, execution ceremony. I don’t know why but they’re trying to ingratiate themselves with us and none of the men took the tea. I guess their lips were so banged up. Then they offered them a cigarette of all things. And then after that, they offered them a blindfold and they all took the blindfold. And then the firing squad marched in front and they gave the command and they fired and they fell back into their graves. And then the Japanese officer who was in command of the firing squad went into this grave and gave them coup d’etat into the head. They fired a bullet into each one of them’s head to end their sufferings.

Then they issued an order that all men in the camp would be formed into ten man squads. They called them shooting squads and what that was, you had ten men – if any one of the ten escaped, the other nine would be executed. That was the rule. So what that did…that made one aware of who their other nine companions were and kept track of them very closely because you wouldn’t want to be caught in that situation. It taught us – not taught us a lesson – but it let us know that they were serious about this and that they would have executed anyone who happened to escape and the remaining nine. Also, it gave you a sense of “Hey, I don’t want to be responsible for the death of nine other men.” So that was a deterrent.

An Excerpt from About J. E. Dupont, Jr. - Fighting on Corregidor Before the Surrender

2007-11-09T17:23:00.000-06:00

February, there wasn’t very much in February. March, it picked up a little bit in March, the bombing did. And then you could tell that the Americans were having problems. In the meantime, we get word that General MacArthur is leaving. He’s going to Australia. Now they kept telling us all the time that help was on the way. They did. They would say, “Men, just hold out. They guys on Bataan are about to….” Of course, we weren’t involved in the fighting like they were at this time. Help is on the way, we thought, we really thought. We didn’t know how bad Pearl Harbor was hit. We figured the Navy’s going to come out here. We’re going to get some help. They’re not going to just leave us out here. And people were believing that stuff. Well, if MacArthur’s getting out, things don’t look too good and they don’t want him to get caught by the Japanese of course. So, that kind of demoralized everybody. And then they said, “Well, he was ordered out by President Roosevelt. They’re going to put him in charge of the Dutch and the British and all of the rest of them and he couldn’t do it from here, so they’re going to put him in Australia to do it.” Well, I didn’t witness any of this but the Japanese had set up a blockade on us about…they knew how far those guns could fire so they put a blockade out beyond that. The guns tried firing at them but they never hit them. And it was the Japanese warships, formed a circle so that any incoming ship would have to pass through them. Well, when MacArthur left, some PT boats – Patrol Torpedo Boats by the Navy. It’s flat. It’s almost like a boat that pulls a water skier, but it’s wider and it has torpedo tubes on the side and they put the torpedoes in there. And they can go along and they can aim their torpedoes with their PT boat. And when they’d see a ship out there, they can aim it and when the torpedoes are fired, then they swerve and the torpedoes are going. This came in handy.

So MacArthur left on two of them. He took his family. He took his wife. He had his wife there. He had his little son, Arthur who was nine years old, and his Chinese maid was there. And in addition, a guy told me down at the dock that saw him, he brought some Chinese rugs and a few other things. And yet, there were nurses out there, American nurses with Army hospital and Navy nurses who didn’t go. Okay, so he’s gone. So then, morale is kind of down. Things don’t look good. But they kept saying they’re not going to desert us. They’re not going to hang us out to dry.

9/28/1943 - Letter to J. E. Dupont, Jr. from his Mother - While a POW

2007-11-09T09:52:00.000-06:00

September 28, 1943
Plaquemine, LA

My Dear J. E.,

It’s letter writing time again. And, how are you my boy? Now we can settle down for a nice little chat. Especially about football, your favorite sport. The first game of the season was played Saturday night. Sure wished you could have seen or even heard the game. LSU and the Georgia bulldogs – about twenty-five thousand fans were in the stadium. A nice crowd considering everything. We were all huddled around the radio. Grandpa really likes his football games over the radio. Barbara and Adrienne are getting to be football fans also. I suppose they take that from you. Bernie Moore is still head coach at LSU. The score was LSU 33 – Georgia 27. LSU made a thrilling touchdown in the last minute and a half of the game – one of the finest opening games ever played. And while these boys are not so polished, they are real football players – so the commentator said – most of the players on the team are youngsters, sixteen and seventeen years old The star, Steve Van Buren from New Orleans is twenty two years old. This is his third year. Bill Scholl, another star player is also from New Orleans. Van Buren made three touchdowns and kicked the extra points for the four touchdowns. I think he is the quarterback. LSU was ahead at the end of the half – then Georgia nosed them out – but LSU came through at the finish. Georgia was the Rose Bowl champion last year.

Juanita Suarez and Baby Alycee Wilbert are freshmen at LSU this term. They are quite grown up and so attractive there are four hundred more girls than boys at LSU this year. Rather tough on the coeds. Tulane will play their first game Saturday – will let you know how it turns out for them. Don’t know their opponents as yet. I’m not so up on my football. The World Series will start next week. The New York Yanks and the St. Louis Cardinals will battle it out for the pennant. These same two teams fought it out last year. The Yanks were the winners – will let you know how it turns out. Bill Lee is with the Philadelphia Phillies – they are not so hot – somehow Bill seems to be on the down grade.

Am enclosing two pictures of us Talbot Grant took them, in Father Robin’s yard. Can you recognize the sweet olive tree? They aren’t very good, but they do resemble us – hope you like them. Adrienne first with the pigtails, me next, then Barbara. I’m sure you will be amazed seeing how your little sisters have grown. Barbara is almost a young lady. I will send a picture of daddy in my next letter. I haven’t received it yet. Daddy is still in Knoxville, Tenn. He really gets around the country now.

Plaquemine is just about the same as when you left. Most of the girls are still here – your boy friends are all away – guess that’s the way it has to be. I keep busy sewing and working around the house. Eva is back at Grandpa’s office – Auntie is in Shreveport visiting the Wayne Williams’. They are in the money now – they have a beautiful home with all the trimmings. So, you know Auntie is having fun. She likes her parties and good times.

Barbara and Adrienne are helping Louis at the drug store after school and on Saturdays while she is away. Today is Grandma’s birthday. She is sixty six years old – we gave her some grand smelling soap. Wish you were here to give her a big hug and birthday kiss. We are hoping that time is not so very far away. I’m wondering if you received the Christmas box, the cable sent in early July and my letters. I write regularly each week – I’m saying a little prayer that you do and that we will see you soon my dear. We send our love, a big hug and kiss to you.

From, Mama

9/6/1943 - Letter to J. E. Dupont, Jr. from his Mother - While a POW

2007-11-09T09:51:00.000-06:00

September 6, 1943
Plaquemine, LA

My Dear J. E.,

Hope you have your Christmas box and letter by now. The ship sailed for the Orient last Thursday, September the second. Same day Barbara and Adrienne started to school again. They are up to their necks in lessons every night. I see to it that they study one hour – it sure annoys them. They would also like to study with the radio on. Remember you used to try that – but nothing doing. They study in the dining room.

Grandpa was almost foaming at the mouth – he came home from the hospital in a rage. Dr. Holloway is at Mayos in Rochester with Mr. Ned Schwing. He is very sick – not much chance for him. Anyway, while Dr. Holloway is away, the other doctors are making a few changes at the hospital. New housekeeper, another nurse for the operating room – Rose Borrona will take that job. Her husband died last year, they are really short of help. Dr. Martinez was to see about a small sign for the front of the building. The sign turned out to be a huge affair, and was Grandpa mad. They put it up after dark – and when Grandpa saw it, he really raved – poor Martinez had to take it down. Grandpa said it looked like a sign on a dime dance hall. They finally had a suitable one made. Guess Dr. Holloway will have a heart attack when he gets home and sees all the changes. They are building a new kitchen on the side next to Grandma’s dining room.

Earle, Lucille, Adrian and Pete were here Friday night – Earl is leaving on a long trip, he came to tell us goodbye. He will have his job with the highway when he returns. He is the state’s resident engineer, a real nice job – about five hundred a month – not bad. Louise Simpson, remember she worked at Barker’s drug store, well she and Viallon from White Castle are getting married Tuesday. He just came home – he had been away for a year. Lena Mae, her sister, is also getting married. She and Pie Trosclair were very friendly. She is going to marry the Fama boy – I’m sure you know him. His mother owns the Dew Drop Inn. He is studying medicine – they say he is going to make a first class doctor. He and Lena Mae are getting married in November. I was really surprised – they have money, you know.

Cletus Durand is marrying Mary Ann Milazzo soon. That almost floored me. Saw Teenie at Mass yesterday. She looked darling – all in white. She asked me had I heard from you yet. I had to say no we are still waiting. Also saw Connie – they sit on the opposite side of the Church. She always gets in a little late. She gave me a big smile. Billy hasn’t been home in quite a while. Mercedes has been going to summer school. She comes home once in a while. I saw her last week. These friends of yours don’t change – maybe get a little prettier.

Everyone at home misses you plenty my dear and are anxious for the day when you will be home once again. Take care of yourself, pray my dear. We all send our love – a big hug and kiss.
Mama

8/30/1943 - Letter to Joseph E. Dupont, Jr. from his Mother - While a POW

2007-11-09T09:45:00.000-06:00

August 30, 1943
Plaquemine, LA

My Dear Joseph,

It’s a week since I mailed your Christmas package and letter. Hope you enjoy them both. I don’t suppose Santa Clause comes down the chimney; you haven’t any need for one in the tropics. I suppose he just walks in the front door. Anyway, I’m so glad he paid you fellows a visit. He would have loved to bring more, but regulations have to be followed. I’ll be able to send you another box in sixty days – I’ll make a few changes in the next one. We are having a little rat trouble – one seemed to take a liking to our upstairs. He stayed a whole day – he frolicked from room to room – the cook, Grandma, Adrienne, and Barbara couldn’t get rid of him. So, at bedtime, we crept upstairs after Grandpa – holding our breath – there he was on the clothes basket near our room. We opened the door very easy and rushed in – one eye on the rat all the time. Next morning, he was gone, at noon, Louis searched the upstairs, every nook and cranny – no rat. Hope that really is the last of him. We joke about it now. The town seems to be infested with them. We had a little high water this year – that drove them in. You know how afraid of lizards I am, they still have me bluffed. Bet you have huge ones out there. Grandma has quite a few on the evergreens – they really give me the creeps.

School starts Thursday, September the second. Will Barker and Roland Daigre are seniors this year. Barbara will be in the seventh grade. Next year she will be in high school. Little Adrienne is in the sixth grade, right behind Barbara. They are almost young ladies – Adrienne is cute. Sometimes she doesn’t go to the show on Sunday afternoons – when it’s a poor show, she saves her money. Not Barbara, she must go, Adrienne says she sits with her boyfriend. Can you imagine Barbara with a beau.

Connie works at the Iberville Bank – that is until she and Billy are married. Teenie just plays the lady and hangs around, looking very pretty. She will be married before Christmas. Bill Lee is not with the Cubs anymore. They sold him to the Philadelphia Phillies. I hope he does better – he is definitely on the down grade – will let you know more about baseball later on. In about six weeks, it will be world series time. Walter Rhorer and Marion Daigre are getting married this week. I don’t know the little girl she lives over the bayou, you must know her. Rosemary Schlatre has two children – remember she married Berkley Rhorer before you left home. Albert Dupont has a son and he must be about a year old. Mr. Cameron, Miss Saucier and all the old regulars will teach school again this year, they all ask about you. Tootie Dupont and George Guidry, Jr. have been married since April – the marriage was on the up and up – Father Champine married them – he is in Baton Rouge, that’s where they were married.

We all send our love – a big hug and kiss – take good care of yourself – and don’t forget to pray my dear.

Love, Mama

8/19/1943 - Letter to J. E. Dupont, Jr. from his Mother - While he was a POW

2007-11-08T10:17:00.000-06:00

August 19, 1943
Plaquemine, LA

My Dear J. E.,

I’m a little late with your letter this week, cause I wanted to give you a bird’s eye view of Charles Ory and Lorraine’s wedding. It was this morning at eight o’clock Mass. Lorraine looked darling in a slate blue crepe dress – American beauty hat veil and glovees – she carried a prayer book with an orchid and a shower of white ribbons and little white tube roses – her mother gave her away. Mrs. Hebert looked lovely, in an American beauty dress with black accessories. Shelby was best man, Grace Neubig, the bridesmaid, she was darling in brown. She is such a darling girl. Ory had on the conventional blue suit and he looked the part of the nervous groom. He is a nice boy. He finished law last summer.

Harry graduated last June with all kinds of honors – college did him worlds of good socially. He is friendly and entertaining. I don’t think he gets around with the girls very much. He is working in Tennessee. Dee sent him your address, he is anxious to write to you. Daddy had a birthday August 17, he couldn’t get home for the occasion. He was forty-seven years old, but doesn’t look it. He hasn’t changed a bit. Barbara and Adrienne sent him a cute birthday card.

I’m sure you remember the trapeze and swing Barbara and Adrienne had in the back yard. Adie wanted it for his little girl Ann. Auntie was very glad to get rid of it – she says the neighbors children meaning the little Gonsolins worried her so, and you know your Auntie, she is still very particular. Remember you used to sit in the swing – much to your little sisters annoyance. That was after your operation – that wasn’t so very long ago. Louis went to New Orleans yesterday in his car, it is really getting old. The same old Ford he had when you were here – it’s at least six years old but still runs pretty good. Guess that’s all that’s necessary. Barbara and Auntie held down the drug store. Barbara is a first class little clerk. Auntie says she sure will miss her when school opens. That will be in about two weeks. Grandpa wanted to go along with Louis to get a few things he needed, but couldn’t make it on account of he had a few teeth pulled. The trip would have been too much for him. The weather is so hot now. You know Grandpa will be seventy December the fourth. He is just as active as he was when you were here – he does all the laboratory work at the hospital – you know the other doctors.

Every time I see any of your friends – Teenie, Connie, Mercedese, Merle, Grace, Mary and also your boy friends – even Mrs. Posner, they all want to know if I’ve had any news from you – I tell them all that I’m praying and hoping. We all send our love – wish we could do more.

A big hug and kiss.

Mama

8/9/1943 - Letter to J. E. Dupont, Jr. from his Mother - While a POW

2007-11-08T09:57:00.001-06:00

Plaquemine, LA
August 9, 1943

My Dear J. E.,

And how have you been this past week? Hope it didn’t pass too slowly, the old town is just about the same, nothing much ever happens around here. When you walk down the street, you see the same people, relatives and friends, say hello to all – your friends, that is the few who are still home still go dancing at Mike’s – it hasn’t changed. I bet Mike has the same juke box he had when you were here.

Winifred LeBlanc, Ann Bryant, Grace Neubig, Winnie Austin, and Merle are still around and single. Not many boyfriends for them. Father Raine has been transferred to New Orleans. We have a Father Speaker from Chicago in his place – tall and very handsome – about thirty three years old, I’d say. Robert and Talbot still have their filling station across the street – Louis still goes over there every chance he gets – and Auntie gets annoyed as usual. The Jim Jumonville’s still live next door – they are really in the money – guess they will be millionaires one of these days. Frank died last December, he had heart trouble – poor fellow. He was in bed about six months before he died.

Freda’s mama isn’t on the hospital staff anymore – she has been doing private duty these last six months. Her brother from California is visiting here and Baton Rouge for a few weeks. They live on the railroad in Woodruffs old funeral home. It has been renovated – and makes for a very nice home. Grandpa had to go to the clinic first, and wasn’t very anxious to do any visiting. He sure is annoyed – you know Gramp.

I wonder if you remember the white paper dress Barbara wore in a contest at the high school about nine years ago – white paper tissue paper all cut like feathers – had her picture taken it. Adie’s little Ann is going to a mother goose party at Mrs. Helen Richard’s. Her little boy is just about Ann’s age. Two and one half years. Ann is wearing the paper dress, renovated a little – full of red hearts, the queen of hearts. She looks adorable in it. Honestly, she is a little toughie – Vera is so precise – I think she is a little afraid of Ann – Georgie Porgie, it reminds me of the mother goose dance you kids had at the Elks. Those were wonderful days – if we could only bring them back.

I am so anxious to get a few words from you – am still hoping for an answer to my cable. Did you ever get it? Maybe I’m wishing for too much. I write every week. I try to collect any little news that I think might cheer you and give you a little more courage. Continue to pray my dear. I’m sure things will turn out right for you. So very many good people are praying for you and all your comrades.

We all send our love, a big, big hug and kiss.

Mama

8/2/1943 - Letter to J. E. Dupont, Jr. from his Mother - While a POW

2007-11-08T09:20:00.000-06:00

August 2, 1943
Plaquemine, LA

My Dear J. E.,

Here it is the middle of summer and very hot – I suppose when you get this letter, it will be fall or winter – although where you are, I know it doesn’t get cold – maybe you would welcome cold weather. Isaac, Grandma’s yard man has been sick for almost two months – he’s getting old and feeble – sort of looks like Uncle Tom – the yard was growing up in weeds almost like a jungle – George Jr. and Greg went to work, they mowed and cut the grass – Freda helped them – she is big and husky. It reminded me of the summer vacations when you mowed our lawn. Remember, you’d get lazy and I’d have to nag. You’d even get your friends, boys and girls to come out and help. I often think of and wish for those days again.

Remember Willie Price – he used to work at the hospital? He was up here to see Grandpa – he has a bad leg – he wanted to know all the news about you – he mentioned the time you had your tonsils taken out. You were only three years old. You went over to the hospital all dressed up and thrilled because you were to be operated on.

Yesterday morning at mass, Lorraine and Charles Ory’s bands were announced. It made me feel sad – he is such a nice boy – so anxious about you and the tough break you got. Lorraine always asks about you too. She looks about the same, a little heavier – a little more matured – still very attractive. Grace Neubig is giving a shower for her. I’ll send a gift – don’t think I’ll go.

Earle Hubert is up and about again – she is spending two weeks in New Orleans with friends. She is going with a cute fellow, he is studying medicine. Earle will teach school in Shady Grove this term – she certainly is a beauty. Remember how popular she was her first year at L.S.U. In fact, she was popular all through college. Berret was home last week for his vacation. He came over to see me – we had a long talk most of it about you. He is still unattached, says no girl will have him. He dates Baby Merle – she still doesn’t have a steady. He is the same old Berret.

Gerald Posner finished school last year with all kinds of honors – he really is smart – also studied hard. Haven’t seen him in quite a while. I see him mama – she always asks about you she likes you so much. Alfred is still hanging around. He is married – has been for over a year. The girl is from Rosedale. Can’t think of her name.

All at home are well – missing you plenty – also praying for you and hoping for the day when you will come home.

We send our love a big, big hug and kiss.

Your Mama

7/23/1943 - Letter to J. E. Dupont, Jr. from his Former Teacher, Sr. M. Victorine - While a POW

2007-11-08T09:17:00.000-06:00

St. Basil Academy
Plaquemine, LA

July 23, 1943

Dear J. E.,

You cannot imagine how happy I was to learn of your whereabouts. At least we entertain some hope of seeing you in the not too distant future. We hope you are humanely treated and rest assured J. E. that our daily prayers are offered up that God may give you strength and courage and endurance to fulfill His holy Will. We know it is hard. Be brave, pray and trust in God and some day you will have a happy homecoming. If not to your earthly home, then to the Heavenly mansions into the bosom of your loving father.

Fond Love,
Your devoted teacher,
Sr. M. Victorine

7/5/1943 - Letter to Joseph E. Dupont, Jr. from his Mother While a POW

2007-11-07T12:27:00.000-06:00

Plaquemine, La
July 5, 1943

My Dear J. E.,

It’s so nice to be writing you regularly again, after such a long time of waiting. I will write once a week. I know you will enjoy getting news of the family also about your friends. I think you will be hearing from a few of your old friends soon, as they are planning to write.

Had a long talk with Connie a few days ago, she was all thrilled about you, she and Billy are still very much in love, and are planning to marry in the distant future. Lorraine and Ory are still courting, they always ask about you. I like them both very much, I could write on and on about your friends, Shelby and Olive’s son Johnny is a darling, he is a year and a half. When he was an infant, he looked just like you. Now, he is the image of Olive, she really is a beauty. Merle is still single.

Your little sisters Barbara and Adrienne had a great time on their vacation, the very first time they were away from home, while they were gone, I had to take care of Charlie, that’s Barbara’s turtle. Some little boy gave it to her, he’s a cute little green thing with a few red specks on is face, honestly I believe he know us. Remember the little turtle you brought hom to them, you caught him while out swimming. We filled the bucket to full of water, the next morning he had disappeared, that seems like such a long time ago.

Am planning to write once a week, wish I could do more, but that’s all for the present. Prayers will help my dear, so keep yourself close to God, he alone knows what the future has in store for us.

We all send our love, also a big hug and kiss

Your Mama

6/28/1943 - Letter to J. E. Dupont, Jr. from his Mother While POW

2007-11-07T12:24:00.000-06:00

Plaquemine, La.
June 28, 1943

My Dear J.E.,

We were so happy and glad to get news of you, it’s been such a long time waiting, we hope you are well and taking good care of yourself.

There is so much I’d like to tell you I hardly know where to begin. Daddy is fine, he was home for a two weeks vacation, he is still working away from home, wish you could see him. Your little sisters Barbara and Adrienne aren’t little anymore, you would hardly recognize them. Barbara has her hair bobbed and is a darling, Adrienne hasn’t changed so much, still long and skinny, pretty too. They left this morning for a weeks stay at Istrouma with the 4H club. I know they will have a grand time. They left before the letter came telling us the good news about you. It doesn’t seem so very long ago that you spent two weeks there remember? I still have the card you wrote us, also the boy scout trophies. I’m about the same, a few pounds heavier. My middle age spread you know, a few more wrinkles, also a few gray hairs. Grandma and Grandpa are fine, they improve with age, they too miss you very much. Grandpa still works hard and spends most of his time at the hospital, Eva, Auntie, Louis are about the same, Louis still has his drugstore, Barbara has been working there during vacation, she has a bicycle now, waits on customers, also delivers packages, your old job when you were her age.

Your aunts, uncles, nieces, and nephews are all well. Write whenever you can, we are so happy and relieved we miss you plenty, I will write whenever possible – Pray hard my boy.

A big hug and kiss to you,

Mama

An Excerpt from About J. E. (Frenchy) Dupont, Jr. - In the Philippines

2007-11-06T09:28:00.000-06:00

...... But anyway, we were breaking out bivouac area and we were going back to the naval base because we were going to have a Christmas dinner. It was Christmas Eve morning and everybody broke camp and packed their gear and got in the trucks and went back to the naval base. And it was in the afternoon, I think, around two or two-thirty when Japanese bombers came over the naval base. There were three of them. I think they had been on a bombing run some other place and had a few bombs left. So, they came over and we were walking in an open area and we look up and there were Japanese planes. Of course, we had some anti-aircraft weapons and machine guns that were firing at these planes. And, of course, everyone took cover. And I happened to be in a concrete culvert, sort of a ditch like thing. And I jumped into that. I had never been exposed to any bombing raid or any type of hostility before. It was a game for us. It was like a football game. We were here, Japs. We were going to kick their butts. You know, the little scrawny rascals couldn’t see twenty-five feet. All of them had big magnification on all of their glasses. Well, the bombs started falling and they made a noise. It wasn’t a screaming noise. It was a swishing noise and it reminded you, if you can imagine a boxcar, a train boxcar dropping from a high, high place coming down wit the swish that it would make. And then when it would hit the ground, the ground would shake as if you were inside some type of box and someone was shaking it around. Your face would bang against the ground. It was terrible experience. When the bombs went off, the bombs create a vacuum and then the air rushes back in and your pants legs flop and all kinds of feeling that you never had before. And then, you become aware of your mortality. Then it dawns on you that some people who hate you are trying to kill you. At first, you don’t think of these things. It’s a big game. But this dawns, “Hey this is for real. They’re trying to kill us.” It’s a strange thing that happens. And after that, you say, “Hey man, this is a hell of a situation.” Buildings were being blown up. Fires were started everywhere. Men were screaming who were wounded from the shell fragments. And then inside of maybe ten minutes, they were gone and the debris was there. Everything on fire. When it was over, everyone of course, was in a state of shock because it was the first time we had been under fire of any kind. But as the time went on of course you condition yourself to this and then you become where it’s not as scary as it was before. You’re able to cope with the situation and you know you have a duty to do and you kind of just get used to it, if at all possible. You never get used to it. So this is the way we felt.

9/28/1941 - World War II Letter from J. E. Dupont, Jr. to his Parents

2007-11-05T15:30:00.000-06:00

Shanghai, China
September 28, 1941

Dear Mama,

Received your letter and one from daddy in Jackson. Sure was glad to hear about the job.

Sgt. King, the fellow that daddy met, I knew him well. He sure is a nice guy that sure was a coincidence their meeting like that.

We are now having a cool spell here now and it reminds me of home. The weather is just the same. Speaking of cool weather, this is the time of year for football. What kind of team will Plaquemine High have this year and LSU, Tulane? We started practicing last week and it looks like we’ll have a pretty good team. For the first time since I’ve been playing football, at last I’m playing under two good coaches. Lt. Shofner played for Tennessee for 4 yrs and Lt. Mann, he played fullback for the Navy. I’m playing quaterback as usual. Our first game is next Saturday. I sure miss those LSU and Tulane games, but we get the results in the paper.

Say, if you can, get a Time magazine (Sept 1) page 27 and they have a pretty good article on the Marines in Shanghai and they give just the way it is out here too.

The USS Henderson comes in today with some more men and they are taking a lot of them out. When the ship leaves, there’ll only be about 600 of us left. Rumors are that they’re evacuating us slowly but surely, I don’t know but before the last boat left, there were 1200 and now we’re cut practically in half. Oh well, no one knows.

Well, I’ve been in China almost a year now. It sure doesn’t seem that long. I hope the next year passes as quickly as this one did.

How’s Gramps and Grandma, Eve and everybody getting along? I hope you and the kids like living in Jackson. I wonder how I’ll like it. I guess if I’ve lived here for 2 years, I can live anywhere and like it.

Lots of love,
J. E.

9/14/1941 - World War II Letter from J. E. Dupont, Jr. to his Parents

2007-11-05T15:11:00.000-06:00

September 14, 1941
Shanghai, China
Dear Folks,

Received lots of mail today. Happy Birthday to you Daddy – it’s kind of late but I guess that’s ok.

Well I guess things are quieting down over here. We were pretty worried for a while. It looks as if things have shifted to the Atlantic with the sinking of those Americans. Well I guess we’ll be in the war soon now. If we go to war with Germany, I’ll be in the safest spot in the world.

It looks as if we are going to have an early winter this year. We are having a cool spell now. It sure is a relief from tht heat we’ve been having.

I sure was surprised to hear that Shelby was married. I didn’t think he’d do anything like that but I wouldn’t put it past Olive.

I sent the “famous” Christmas check to Tessie. I found it in a Christmas card. I was looking through some old mail I had and found it stuck against the inside of the envelope.

I took the Corporal’s exam last week but didn’t pass it, mainly, because I hadn’t been in the service long enough. Oh well I’ll pass the next one I hope.

We’re going to start practicing football next week. I think we’ll have a better team than we had last year. How do the LSU, Tulane, and Plaquemine High teams look this year?

Well it’ll be one year that I’ve been in china on Nov. 24. It sure doesn’t seem that long. I hope the next passes as fast as this one did.

There’s nothing new going on here, the only amusement we have is to go to movies and a few night clubs. Most of them are restricted because Japs own them.

I think there is a mail boat coming in Monday, so I’ll guess I’ll be writing again next week. How’s Grandpa and his feet getting along?

That’s all for now.
Lots of Love,
J. E.

8/20/1941 - World War II Letter from J. E. Dupont, Jr. to his Parents

2007-11-05T15:09:00.000-06:00

Shanghai, China
August 20, 1941
Dear Folks,

Received three letters from you yesterday. The latest one was dated June 29 and the most recent July 13.

So you received the pictures finally, that’s one thing they can do in China and that’s make pictures. Did you notice the blue eyes. You asked me about the medals – the cross is for being a sharpshooter with a rifle, the other one if you’ll look has three bars hanging on it, every time you qualify with a certain weapon, they put another bar in. The 3 are for bayonet, pistol, Browning Automatic rifle, I have another one for the Thompson Sub Machine Gun (Tommy Gun).

You should have received the bracelets by now. I gave them to a corporal to mail for me in the states, he’s a pretty good fellow, it probably took him quite a while to settle down after he got there, I think he’ll mail them.

Well I almost got a chance to go to the U. S. Naval Academy. This is how it happened. I was called in the office the other day and some officers were in there, and they asked me how would I like to go to Annapolis and I said fine, well they said that they had been watching me for some time and that my record was excellent and that they thought that I would make a good officer. Well, after that, we went into the qualifications to get there. I had all of them except one – AGE. I would have to do 9 mos. Sea Duty, and when that was over, I would have to be less than 20, I could have gone aboard ship here but by the time 9 mos. were up, I would be over 20. Anyway, I know how I stand with the officers out here and that helps a lot.

There’s going to be a corporal’s exam next week. I don’t know if I’m going to take it yet. But I sure hope I can.

I don’t know when this will get to the States. Most of the mail was brought to the States by Japanese boats, but since they’re not landing there anymore, I don’t know when the next mail boat will leave. Tell everybody hello for me.

Lots of Love,
J. E.