From Bataan Through Cabanatuan
By CHAPLAIN JOHN K. BORNEMAN
--- bombardment front the air. Directly after the surrender, An amazing and heart-stirring account of the activi- Chaplain Perry O. Wilcox, the senior Chaplain on the ties of Army and Navy chaplains in Japanese prison "Rock," appealed to American authorities for their aid in camps in the Philippines is here given by one who securing Japanese permission to bury our fallen comrades. was there. The story he tells reminds us of the hero- Their bodies were already bloated and the stench from ism of the Christians in the days of the Roman them became almost unbearable. No single American persecution, officer would give Chaplain Wilcox assistance in this request and one who could have aided directed Chaplain
Wilcox never to use his name to the Japanese in any
C HAPLAINS of the United States Army and Navy who request.
participated in the surrender of our Philippine forces In many respects our work as Chaplains was hindered in April and May of 1942 might well have voiced the as much by the Americans as through Japanese prohibiwords of St. Paul which are recorded in his Second Letter tions. It was Chaplain Albert W. Braun who finally talked to the Corinthians, Chapter I, verse 8: "For we would not, to the Japanese and when he requested permission to bury brethren, have you ignorant of our trouble which came to our dead it was readily granted. us in Asia, that we were pressed out of measure, above The Japanese concentrated all Corregidor Chaplains in strength, insomuch that we despaired even of life." the hospital for several weeks and refused them permisThirty-three Army and four Navy Chaplains were sion to visit the combat men in the concentration area or to among those surrendered to the Japanese; of these twenty- hold services for them. This difficulty was overcome when one were Roman Catholic and sixteen Protestants. Out the Chaplains would get into the area under the guise of of this total of thirty-seven, twenty have made the supreme litter bearers when men had to be carried to the hospital. sacrifice. Chaplain Albert W. Braun and Chaplain Francis McSURRENDER Manus, the latter of the U. S. Navy, Chaplain Herbert The surrender of Bataan 9 April 1942 found many of Trump of the Navy, and the writer, paid many sub-rosa the Chaplains with their organizations and all of these visits to the area and held such services as were possible made the long, tedious and dangerous "Death March" under the circumstances. along that peninsula with death as their constant com- CABANATUAN panion. Some of the Chaplains were on duty in the Bataan
hospitals and a few managed to reach the sanctuary of a On 23 May 1942 the men of Corregidor'were taken to hospital and thus were not members of this most in- Manila but Chaplains were not permitted to accompany famous march. The end of the march was Camp O'Don- them. The excuse of the Japanese was that we had to take nell where conditions were so horrible as to cause the care of the thousand patients in the hospital. We had been death of hundreds of men each day. Here the Chaplains directed to prepare for this evacuation and stood under a present labored as best they could to ease the pain of men boiling sun from early morning until six-thirty that eveor togive them some attention in addition to spiritual. It ning before we were directed to return to the hospital and was here that Chaplain Alfred C. Oliver, Jr: senior Chap- await further orders. The 1st of July we were loaded into lain for the Philippine Department appealed to the Japa- a transport and taken to Manila and then to Cabanatuan nese to permit the Philippine Red Cross to bring in food which we reached 3 July late in the afternoon. and medicine which this organization was prepared to do. At Cabanatuan we were reunited with many of the The answer of the Japanese Commanding officer was not Bataan Chaplains but some of them were serving in Camp only a curt "NO" but a threat that if such a request would No. 3 and others were still doing duty in General Hospital be repeated the lives of the men signing such a letter No. 1 on Bataan. Chaplain Perry O. Wilcox was left at would be the forfeit. Conditions at the camp became so Bilibid as the Chaplain in charge and he was joined by bad that the Japanese decided to release the Filipino pris- Chaplain William T. Cummings. oners so they could die in their home barrio and the The Cabanatuan Camp had a hospital which ran a daily Americans were moved to Camp No. 1 at Cabanatuan. patient rate of more than 2,200 for more than a year. The This new camp was opened on 2 June 1942. Chaplains doing duty here had come in when Camp No. 1 The fortress of Corregidor was surrendered 6 May 1942 was first opened and were well organized under the zealand nine more Chaplains were added to the list of war pris- ous leadership of Chaplain Oliver by the time we arrived oners. We had been unable to bury our dead on Cor- from Corregidor. As nearly as can be ascertained four regidor for several days due to the constant shelling and years later the following Chaplains were serving the patients. under the most difficult and dangerous conditions:
EDITOR'S NOTE: The story of the Chaplains service in Bilibid Prison at tients under the most difficult and dangerous conditions: Manila is not included here nor that of Davao Penal Colony. The writer Chaplains Richard E. Carberry, William Dawson, Albert was not present in these camps. Chaplain Perry O.,Wilcox was the Chaplain D. Talbot, Robert P. Taylor, Mathias E. Zerfas and Leslie for Bilibid. Chaplain Albert W. Braun is one of the few surviving Chap- F. Zimmerman. lains who served at Davao. F. Zimmerman.
April- 14 23 Apri May, 1946