One of the most compelling reasons is that we were bound together in ten men "Blood Brother Groups". If one man escaped out of this group, the remaining nine men and the section leader would be executed. I believe records will show that this was carried out by the Jap command enough times that we believed this would be the case if we were to escape, and thus cause the death of our buddies.
Going through some of my old penciled papers, I came across one of my blood brother groups, where I kept a daily record when all of my buddies answered present at our evening roll calls.
I am not sure if this group was formed in the Cabanatuan Prison Camp, or early in the Mukden camp before we were issued the permanent prison numbers that most of us remember. This group could have been formed on November 16th in the old camp in Mukden shortly after we arrived there.
In my diary, I have our prison numbers listed from my number of 540 to De Koch's number as 548, and a C.W. Young as number 470. Many of these blood brothers were in Mukden with the following permanent numbers: Brown J. E. 333; Brown K. D. 395; Bruce P. H. 356; Burrows D. S. 355; Griffith E. F. 292 and Young C. W. 1388. There was also a Carpenter M. E. listed with a Mukden number of 1318, so my initials for Carpenter as N. E. may have been an incorrect initial.
only list of actual blood brothers in existence
Posted July 6, 2001