Personal Narrative Essay: Japan's Attack On April 8th

You will never receive this but I am going to write it anyway. The Japanese launched a major assault on April 8th. We could hear the artillery rumbling in the distance and the busses were constantly roaring into the hospital. By that time I was hobbling around on my leg. Somehow I had not yet caught malaria and the dysentery had cleared up by then. Half of the men had one or the other by that time. The ones that had both at the same time were in a bad a state. Most of them simply died because there was nothing that anyone could do. I tried to help as an orderly since they wouldn’t release me from the hospital. They were overwhelmed with the amount of wounded and sick coming in. I mainly cleaned those with dysentery and tried to comfort those

The prison is a large open camp surrounded by a barbed wire fence. We were forced to march from the hospital to the railroad it took 6 days they forced us to march with no food or water 60 miles. If you fell behind, talked to guards, or tried to help someone they either beat you or killed you. I watched in horror as an officer refused to give up his wedding ring and he was forced to his knees and beheaded. Men simply fell over dead from exhaustion. When we reached the railroads they packed us in boxcars like sardines. We had no water still and packed in the cars people passed, out died and defecated everywhere. The camp is not much better our barrack are simply open sided bamboo huts. There is one water spigot for the entire camp I think there are about 7000 of us in here. There are a few latrines but they are just mountains of filth. The water table is so high that two feet down you hit water. The latrines are full of maggots and flies and the filth is everywhere. People are still dyeing like

The goons tossed the camp yesterday I had a few letters written on the back of small pieces of cardboard. I had put them into a leg of a stool that I had hollowed out but, they took all of the furniture and burnt it in front of us while we had to stay in formation for two hours. A guy in the front rank passed out and they revived him and then beat him until he passed out again. We then carried his broken body to the hospital. It can’t really be called a hospital it is only an open hut like the rest. The doctors have no medicine and there is not much that they can do. We are given a handful of rice and maybe a fish head if we are lucky. I have had suffered throug everything that is common in camp the dysentery and malaria are constantly going through camp. You know who has malaria simply due to the fact that they are wrapped in their blanket. My first case was horrible and I got it in June of last year. I was freezing so I knew what it was. I then started vomiting, had a severe head ache, then fever. The other two cases were bad but not as severe. Everyone here has had it even some of the guards. I have volunteered to help bury the dead we have to drag them outside of camp and bury them. One of the guys simply fell over dead after helping dig the grave. We simply took his tags and pushed him in with the other 20 guys. I have little hope of ever getting out of here. At the rate we are going when help finally comes they will find our