World Battlefronts: The Black Hole Of Luzon

• Share

When the doors (of the ramshackle boxcars) were opened, someone, I can't remember who, said we had reached Capas, a town in Tarlac province, and that we were headed for O'Donnell prison camp—named for the town of O'Donnell. . . . A seven-mile hike to O'Donnell prison was ahead of us. . . . My first good look at O'Donnell prison was from atop a rise about a mile off. I saw a forbidding maze of tumbledown buildings, barbed wire entanglements, and high guard towers, from which flew the Jap flag. I had flown over this dismal spot several times, but never had given it more than passing appraisal. I wondered as I looked at it now how long I would be there; how long I could last. As we stood, staring dazedly, there came to me a premonition that hundreds about to enter O'Donnell prison this April day never would leave it alive.*

—Lieut. Colonel William E. Dyess.

Lieut. Colonel Dyess lived through the six weeks' ordeal at O'Donnell, after which surviving American prisoners were transferred to Cabanatuan. He lived to escape, and to tell his story.† On his testimony and that of others, the War Department believes that 2,200 U.S. prisoners died during those six weeks in O'Donnell, and that still heavier mortality occurred among the Filipino prisoners who stayed there after U.S. Army men had been shifted.

Unknown Toll. Last week, reconnaissance units of the 40th Division advancing on Manila came to Camp O'Donnell. The Japs had moved their troops out the day before, after putting the torch to the buildings. The last of the Filipino prisoners had been moved out a year earlier, and no man knew how many had died. A Filipino colonel put the number at 40,000.

One U.S. correspondent counted 4,000 rude crosses in the Filipino burial ground; another saw "thousands" in the American sector.

The true number would be hard to establish. Both burial grounds were over grown with weeds and briers. Hanging from some of the crosses were dog tags with addresses in Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Colorado, Rhode Island and Iowa. The Japanese had put up a rough cement cross with the inscription: IN MEMORY OF AMERICAN DEAD O'DONNELL WAR PERSONNEL ENCLOSURE ERECTED BY IMPERIAL JAPANESE ARMY But O'Donnell itself was monument enough.