Free First Into Nagasaki by George Weller

by the camp commandant, who still rides about Omuta undetained and unrebuked. Olguin needed a pencil to make out a receipt for the light worn on his mining cap, and borrowed one from the mess sergeant. Possession of pencils or paper was forbidden by the Japanese. The Japanese commandant saw him and began beating him with a sheathed sword. He was then thrown into jail by soldiers who held him foodless for two days. “They kept me kneeling on bamboo at attention all day. Because it was in March, and cold, the Japs also took me out in the wind and poured buckets of water over me, which gave them a great laugh.”
    Joe Medina (Taos):
“I’m a blaster or explosive man. I’ve seen plenty of Japs killed in the mine with a cave-in. But I’ve been fortunate; they never laid hands on me.”
    Omuta, Japan—Tuesday, September 11, 1945 2300 hours
    To: Commanding officer, Recovered Personnel section, Yokohama
    From: George Weller, Chicago Daily News correspondent, Prisoner of War Camp 17, Omuta, Kyushu
             
    september eleven twentythree hours message begins todays drops gratefully received stop unfortunately personnel were injured and installations damaged including two kits on dispensary stop therefore aiming point for camp seventeen containing seventeen hundred persons been moved halfmile southward stop drop ground for camp twentyfive containing four hundred prisoners remains same
             
    paragraph chinese camp containing roughly two thousand received seven drops today which was their first help since surrender stop chinese especially need general issue medicine
             
    paragraph chinese buildings were hitherto unmarked due failure japanese inform chinese of manila agreements conditions regarding marking prisoner war buildings for air drops
             
    paragraph as of september twelfth northward facing roof markings of all three prisoner war camps near omuta will bear under prisoner war inscriptions their respective designations seventeen twentyfive and quote china unquote message ends
             
    Omuta, Japan—Wednesday, September 12, 1945 0100 hours
    Allied Prison Camp #17, Omuta, Kyushu
    American and Chinese prisoner coal miners emerging from underground darkness in central Kyushu are discovering for the first time that their prison camps are adjacent.
    For nearly one month since the surrender the Chinese have been going foodless because their Japanese guards have departed from the camp. Their serious medical condition was discovered today by two parties headed by American doctor Captain Thomas Hewlett, of New Albany, Indiana, and Crystal River, Florida, who was captured on Corregidor, and Australian Captain Ian Duncan, of Sydney, captured in Singapore.
    B-29s today dropped the Chinese their first food supplies since the surrender.
    Hewlett reported that the nearest Chinese camp commander is a remnant of a party under American-trained Airman Lieutenant Colonel Chiu, which left North China two years ago, then numbering 1,236. Three hundred men died on reaching Japan. The Japanese never provided a camp physician and the Chinese have none. Thus in the Chinese camp every man regardless of condition has been considered by the Japanese fit for underground work. Fifty are seriously ill, about half of these with deficiency disease.
    This Chinese camp counted 70 men killed by Japanese guards in two years, plus 120 dead of disease, with 546 still living.
    The other coal miners’ camp of Chinese consists of what remains of 1,365 who left China eighteen months ago; 54 have been executed or otherwise beaten to death by the Japanese, and 60 died of mining injuries.
    Many of the surviving Chinese are “as thin as skeletons,” with bandages made of rags or newspapers. The camp has one Chinese doctor who possesses neither a scalpel, forceps, thermometer nor stethoscope.
    Both those Mitsui mines worked by Americans and those worked by Chinese are defective, “stripped” mines,