Operation Disclosure Official
By TerraZetzz
My dad was a POW during WWII. He was 16 years old. He was stationed on Fort Drum, a massive rock and cement fortress whose purpose was to guard the Bay of Manila, Philippines, from Japanese ships. Fort Drum had the largest guns in the Pacific Theater, 17 inch bore cannonsâŠmonstrous. If you were caught outside during firing of these massive guns you would be killed from the concussion alone. Thatâs how monstrous they were. You had to be down below. They were able to keep the enemy backed offâŠuntil they ran out of ammo. They were captured and sent to concentration camps and forced into horrific slaveryâŠMindanao, Corregidor, Borneo, and other places I donât recall. For 3 1/2 years he was subjected to unimaginable crimes against humanity, war crimes. Someone managed to share pieces of writing paper and short broken pencils so he would write letters to his mother and father. He expressed how he kept dreaming of coming home and getting married and start his own business and raise a family. He never let go of that dream. In the end, he was only one of eight men of his original company/platoon who survived. It scarred him for life. He weighed 81 pounds when he came home. His normal weight was 155 pounds when he enlisted.
Thereâs more to the story, of course, and I have the pieces of paper with his written letters to his parents. The carbon pencil written letters are fading and are hard to read. He kept those letters hidden so well that his captors never found out about them. The letters are safe and in a dark, dry place.
