The following Marion Daily Republican article, published in November 1945, details the war experience of William R. Parks as a Japanese POW for nearly 4 years. Bill Parks was the son of F.E. Parks, founder of Park’s Pharmacy.
First Lieutenant William R. Parks, is home again, with a series of narrow escapes from death that outclass the stories of any movie thriller or mystery novel. He was one of 300 now alive, out of a total of 1,619 who left Manila in Dec. 1944 for Japan. The ships he was on, as a prisoner of the Japs, were twice bombed and burned; he had to go thirty days without medical treatment for five shrapnel wounds in his back and his normal weight of 155 pounds dropped to 103 pounds. At times the prisoners ate dogs, worms, lizards and almost anything they could get to sustain their life.
Unless you specifically ask him, he will fail to tell you that he was awarded the Silver Star medal for gallantry in action during the last days of their action against the Japs. His companies were forced to fall back before superior Japanese forces, but he reorganized the troops and they retook the ground holding it, until their entire regiment was surrounded and forced to surrender to overwhelming numbers of enemy troops.
A Second Lieutenant of infantry when captured, he received his promotion to First Lieutenant on September 2nd (1945) when he reached Manila on the way home.
Mr. and Mrs. Parks met him in Galesburg, at Mayo General Hospital from which place he was given a sick leave to visit home. The family first went to Champaign to attend a University of Illinois football game and then came on to Marion on Sunday. Lester Houston accompanied them on the trip.
Bill looks in fine health, but has a great many scars, including those from beri beri and from the shrapnel wounds which were not dressed for thirty days.
Parks was taken prisoner on Northern Luzon where he had been assigned to duty with the Philippine army. Of the American officers on duty with his regiment, seven were killed, three escaped only to be recaptured and the others were all taken prisoner by the Japs. The Americans were placed in a barbed wire enclosure and kept there until June, 1942 when they were all moved to Cabanatuan. He was captured on Christmas, 1941.
In October, 1942 they were moved to Davao in fairly respectable prison ships. They received three meals a day on this trip. They were imprisoned in the old penal colony of the Philippines and conducted their own camp with American medical officers, who had been captured by the Japs.
They were sent outside to work and as there were banana, pineapple, papaya and other tropical fruits available they were able to get plenty to eat.
Parks was sick when he got to Davao and was in the hospital until March when he was placed on plow detail. The Jap plow is similar to our hoe, but very heavy. His duties on the plow detail were as a cook to enable him to regain strength.
In April however the Japs started shutting down on their privileges and their food, when ten men escaped. They started then locking them up and only sending them out to work under guards. Later seven more escaped, killing two of the guards in the escape and then they were further restricted.
In one case he said he knew that American soldiers had been shot but he heard that mere were many other cases. The prisoners were put in groups of ten and told that if any of the group escaped the others would be shot.
Red Cross Packages
During the time he was a prisoner he received six Red Cross packages. The first of these came on Jan. 29, 1943. Each prisoner received a Red Cross package from South America and each two prisoners divided a package from the American Red Cross and one from the Canadian Red Cross.
Life in Davao Prison camp no. 2 was not as severe as later camps. They were allowed church services and on Christmas they had a two day holiday and had some shows.
Among the tasks he was assigned at Davao was the making of rope by hand from Abaca or Manila hemp. He worked at that task for two months.
During the time he was a prisoner or enroute home he suffered from malaria twenty times, had pneumonia once and beri beri.
Moved in June
In June, 1944, they were moved back to Cabanatuan and the mistreatment of the prisoners became more and more severe. On the return trip two prisoners jumped overboard and despite the firing of Japanese soldiers from the ship, swam to shore, made contact with Philippine guerillas and returned to the United States. However each time a man escaped the Japs reduced the food for the remaining prisoners.
In July he was assigned to a detail planting rice in the watery fields around the prison camp.
The most welcome sight to them up to that time was a flight of 80 planes that went across their fields at 9 am on Sept 21st . When the planes went over, they were so high they could not be sure they were American planes. However the planes returned a little later and as they came back the big flight of planes saw a Japanese plane below them and shot it down, proving that the Americans were getting nearer.
On Oct. 13th they were moved to Billibad Prison in Manila and held there until placed on the first of a series of death ships. By that time they saw American planes almost every day, but the American pilots had received excellent information as to their location, as they bombed areas all around them, but did not hit the prison area at any time.
While at Manila he met and talked with Lt. Bob Nourse of Omaha, Neb., nephew of Mrs. Oldham Paisley. Lt. Nourse was one of the 1319 men who died during the fatal trip that followed.
On Death Ships
That Lt. Bill Parks is alive at all is a miracle. He tells of his experiences as though recounting a narrative of any other trip, but the horrors he experienced and the narrow escapes he had can be pieced together from his own comments and the comments of others, some of which are being reprinted now in a series of articles running in the Chicago Daily News and the St. Louis Post Dispatch. Parks says that the statement in these articles he has read are very accurate thus far.
On Dec. 13, 1944, Parks was one of 1,619 American officers and enlisted men marched from Bilibad prison camp in Manila and placed on the Oroyku Maru to be taken to Japan. Of that 1.619 only 300 lived to tell of the trip.
They were all placed in the three holds of the ship. To reach the hold they had to climb down a 36 foot wooden ladder and the first ones were forced into stalls or compartments, while others were forced in so tight they could not sit down and had to stand. The only air came thru the opening on deck into the hold, which the Japs later partially covered.
After the prisoners were all locked into the holds of the ship. Japanese civilians were placed on the top deck to be taken to Japan.
This date for their departure had been selected because the American bombers had decreased their flights for a few days, but on Dec. 14th they came over again and strafed the ship several times burning the ship the next morning about 10 o’clock and bombing their ship which had evidently been damaged by the strafing and was heading for Olongapo Point near Subic Bay Naval Base.
The Japanese civilians were removed from the ship which had caught fire, but the Americans had to swim 200 yards to shore. Before swimming, Parks said he climbed up into the ship’s kitchens or galley and filled his mess kit with rice and his canteen with sugar and ate some of the food that had been prepared for the Japanese crew and civilians. When some of the Americans didn’t swim fast enough, Japanese soldiers on shore fired shots at them.
The first night on the boat, more than a hundred of the officers suffocated and others became insane in the darkness of the hold and its stifling air.
Practically no food was given to the prisoners, and it was lowered in buckets, the same kind of buckets lowered for sanitary uses.
As the prisoners reached shore they were again herded together and taken to a tennis court, with no protection from the blistering sun. Official reports are said to show that the temperature in the hold of the ship where the prisoners were kept was as high as 135 degrees. On the tennis court it was probably as hot, but it was open and the men could get plenty air.
Count of the prisoners at the tennis court revealed that between 200 and 300 had died during first part of the trip to Japan. It is believed that at least one hundred died the first night from suffocation.
While on the tennis court the prisoners were not given any food for two days. They were allowed water, but no food. For the next three days they were each given a spoonful of uncooked rice a day in addition to the water.
On Dec. 21 and 22 they were placed in trucks and taken to San Fernando Pampagna and lodged in a jail and a theatre pending the arrival of another ship in Lingayen Gulf.
After two days at San Fernando they were crowded into box cars, so tight that no one could sit down and then the doors of the box cars were locked shut.
Thus he spent his fourth Christmas with the Japs, locked in a box car without food, enroute to San Fernando del Union in Lingayen Gulf where on Dec. 26 they were placed on another ship bound for Formosa.
The ship he was on had previously been used by the Japanese for the transport of horses. The manure and refuse from that trip had not been removed, when they were again crowded into the holds of the ship for another trip, in which more men became insane or died of suffocation.
In Formosa
They arrived at Formosa the first week in January and had been in the harbor about a week when American pilots spotted their ship and again bombed them. The ships were not marked in any manner as having prisoners and the prisoners were all below decks so the American pilots had no knowledge that they were bombing their own men.
When the first of the two prison ships arrived in Formosa the Japanese would not permit the removal of the American bodies from the vessels, but they did remove about 350 bodies, took them to shore and cremated them. Most of those who died on the first prison ship were cremated with the burning ship.
The Japanese did not prepare any lists of those who died on these prison ships until they reached Japan and then they reported that they all died on Dec. 15th , the day the first ship was bombed and burned.
By the time they reached Formosa only about 900 of the original 1,619 remained alive and on Jan. 13th they were placed on a third prison ship for the last leg of that trip. As Formosa is north of the Philippines, it was getting cold, and men were dying from exposure as well as lack of nutrition and suffocation. Lt. Parks said that when he left Formosa he only had a pair of shorts, a small thin shirt and no shoes at all. That was all the clothing he had during the entire trip.
Hit By Shrapnel
Lt. Parks was struck by three pieces of shrapnel that came thru the side of the ship, when it was bombed at Formosa and had to proceed on to Japan with virtually no clothing, no medical attention, for thirty days and allowance of five spoons of water a day and almost no food.
In order to keep warm on this trip and because they were in such tight quarters the men had to lie down on their sides. The space, just room enough for 20 men to lie down in that manner, forced them to turn over at the same time they changed positions. During this time, Parks said that his wounds were draining all the time and gave off a very offensive odor, but that was just one of the things they had to put up with even to be alive.
He gives credit to a package of vitamins which his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Ernest Parks, sent as having helped to give him the strength it required in order to withstand the ordeal. The vitamins were supplied to them in Aug. 1942 thru the Red Cross and U.S. Government. The package reached him in Aug. 1944 or two years later. He started taking them at once, so felt he had built up quite a little resistance by the last of Dec. when the death ships sailed. It was the only package his parents were allowed to send, and the only one the government was able to handle thru the International Red Cross. Special address slips were furnished for this purpose by the government.
Next of kin of prisoners were only permitted to send one package to Japanese prisoners. This package was limited as to size and could only weigh 11 pounds. The one parkage his parents sent was the one that contained the vitamin pills, as well as playing cards, some underwear and quite a number of other items. The underwear he said he traded to Japanese for food.
When they finally reached Japan only 450 of the original group of 1,619 were alive and during the first thirty days 150 more of those prisoners died of exposure or malnutrition. When they reached Japan they were all furnished with shoes and with clothing to protect them from the cold, which was becoming more severe every day.
One prisoner became so crazed one evening during the voyage and sad he was going to kill some Japs, so he grabbed a weapon and killed 2 or three of the guards before he was bayoneted by the Japs.
In the Japanese prison camp, known as Moji or Fukoka Number 3, he received medical treatment and sulfa drugs were available for the use of doctors. It was while in this prison camp that he was in the prison hospital for five weeks with pneumonia. The Japanese Prison Commander at Moji, he said, was a fairly decent chap.
Had Pneumonia
After recovering from pneumonia and the Americans started getting closer, Parks with others in his camp were moved on April 25, 1944 to Korea, placed on trains and taken to Mukden, Manchuria where they were held until liberated. Only officers were removed to the Mukden camp. Previously there had been no separation of officers and enlisted men.
During the time they were in Japan, they saw American planes daily and while their food rations were short, their guards said the prisoners were getting larger rations than the Japanese civilians.
Parks said he remembers the date of their arrival at Mukden because it was on April 29th, the Emperor’s birthday and they were given extra food in honor of that event.
They did not have a radio in their camps, as was true at Cabanaruan where Major J.K. Wallace and those imprisoned there could keep in touch with the progress of the war, but they did bribe guards to obtain Japanese newspapers for them and one of their fellow prisoners acted as an interpreter and told them the news.
Asked about reports of slapping and beatings, he said that it was a custom in the Japanese army and transmitted to the American prisoners. In the Japanese army a three star private can beat a two star private and a two star private can beat a one star private and so on with officers or enlisted men. Any officer or soldier could slap or beat another of lesser rank.
He said that when he was first captured they ordered him to bow instead of salute and he told them he wouldn’t do it, but they beat him until he changed his mind.
He said beatings were given quite regularly for minor offenses. They even beat their chickens for not laying eggs he said when the real reason was their failure to feed the chickens.
In Manchuria they ate soy beans and maize, but no rice for the first time. Their soy beans he said had to be cooked for twenty hours to be good or palatable. This camp he said was well organized with good buildings, good food and no work. He said they played bridge most of the time.
While in the Philippines he said they ate almost anything they could get, dogs, lizards, snakes or some of the large, long earthworms found only in the jungles.
The news of their liberation was late in reaching them, although they knew something was pending, because of the marked change in the attitudes of their guards and prison staff.
Parachutists Land
On Aug. 15th a B-24 flew over Mukden and they saw six parachutists land. The parachutists had evidently tried to reach the prison camp but were forced to land outside at a distance. Japanese soldiers encountered these six parachutists who had a Japanese interpreter with them, a Hawaiian resident.
The prisoners saw these American parachutists brought to the prison offices, saw that they were still wearing their side arms, carrying their parachutes and drinking tea with the Japanese officers and smoking cigarettes with them, but they could not find out what news they brought.
The Japanese colonel said that while their credentials seemed to be official, he had no instructions to turn prisoners over to them, so he sent them downtown to spend the night at a hotel. When the six parachutists returned the next morning they took over and Major General Parker told the prisoners that the war was over, although the terms of surrender had not been signed so they could not leave the compound.
It was the usual custom for the guards to force the prisoners to be in bed by 9:30 but the night the parachutists arrived the Japs didn’t bother them and they stayed awake all night and the Japs stopped beating or slapping any of them. During the next few hours B-29s flew over dropping food and clothing for them and on August 18th the Russians came into the city late in the afternoon and the Jap garrison was put in the guard house and the Americans became the guards.
One of the B-29s which landed at the small Mukden airport was unable to leave because the Russians were having such a good time with the Americans they wanted the American flyers to stay there. When the American started to leave anyway, the Russians ran a bayonet thru the tire of their landing mechanism and they had to wait for another plane to bring them a new tire.
About 300 of the sick prisoner were flown out of the Mukden camp and the other 1,500 were taken by train to Dairen (Port Arthur) where they were placed on boats a day apart, headed for home.
Mine Hits Rescue Ship
Parks was on a Navy transport which was hit by a floating mine, during a small typhoon. This mine had evidently been blown loose during the storm. It damaged the engine room, killed two sailors and two prisoners, and necessitated their ship being towed to Okinawa. It also knocked out the heating system on the ship and they had no warm food for the day and a half and the ship had to be towed.
He became ill with malaria at Okinawa and was in the hospital for a week before being flown to Manila to receive his promotion and award for bravery. He sailed from Manila on October 9 and landed in San Francisco on November 1 after more trouble with the ship he was on. It was the first voyage of the ship, with an inexperienced crew, who first permitted the boiler to run dry. They made port with a single boiler, changing ports of debarkation from Frisco to Seattle and back to Frisco.
During the first 20 days after he was released and could get all the fine American food he wanted, he gained a pound or more a day.
He is due to report back to Mayo General Hospital in Galesburg from sick leave on December 3 and says that he will then probably receive another 90 day leave after which he will probably be associated with his father in the drug business.
Lt. Parks expects to be home two weeks, and then visit in Chicago, Springfield and other places before returning to Galesburg. He will visit with Mrs. S.H. Martin at Chicago to present her with a handkerchief and testament that belonged to her son, Lt. Howard Martin, a close friend of Lt. Parks, whom he was with at the time Lt. Martin died.
Souvenirs that Lt. Parks had collected to send home before the Japs attacked were all lost during the invasion but he collected a few additional items, which he brought with him. Chief of these is the wooden tag he was forced to wear as a prisoner. It was made of wood with his number painted upon it. The number was “1992.”
Included among the other souvenirs is a Samurai Japanese officer’s sword, a Japanese ladies overnight bag, a geisha girls all silk kimono, a Japanese and a German camera, a Japanese airplane compass, a small Japanese flag with a collapsible pole, Japanese cigarettes, money and papers published over there telling of the end of the war.
A silver lighter with his initials, sent to him by a friend in Springfield for Christmas 1941, was given to him by his parents when they met him in Galesburg. It was returned in the spring of 1942 as undeliverable because of the fall of the Philippines. The lighter had been retained until recently when it was learned he had been released and then forwarded to his parents here for presentation.
Major Arthur Wermuth, the so called “one man army” of Bataan was a close friend of Parks and they went over in the same stateroom before the war started. They also returned on the same ship.
Lt. Bill Parks brought home with him the Silver Star medal awarded to him in 1942 for gallantry in action shortly before his regiment was forced to surrender to overwhelming numbers.
According to the citation, which accompanied the medal, the award was made for “gallantry in action against an enemy of the United States. On the night of Dec. 23-24, 1941, Second Lieutenant William R. Parks was on duty with Companies E and F, 91st Infantry when the enemy launched his attack on the front of the 9151 Infantry at about 11:00 pm, 23 Dec. 1941. Second Lt. domed their front line positions and moved to the rear.
“Disregarding his own personal safety in the face of the enemy and with great effort of leadership, Second Lt. William R. Parks reassembled his units and reoccupied their original front line position. This position was held until about 9 am 24 Dec. when the remaining troops in this area were forced to surrender to a much determined and superior enemy force.
“This action of Lt. William R. Parks increased the morale of his unit and at the same time demanded greater respect in general for American personnel on duty with the Philippine army.”
The citation was signed by Brigadier General L.R. Stevens, Commanding Division and was dated “March 9, 1942, 91” Division in the field, Bataan, Philippine Islands.
(Extracted from Marion Daily Republican article dated November 10, 1945 and republished in Williamson County’s Greatest Generation by Harry Boyd)