The strong in mind and body, the smart and the brave among the American prisoners being transported from Manila to Japan were still alive after weeks of hunger, thirst and almost indescribable horror.

But in the harbor of Takao, Formosa, death laid a heavier and more ironical hand on the dwindling but still gallant band. Three hundred and fifty died in one day -- from a bombing raid by American planes based in China, and from callous Jap treatment that followed.

For two days the dead were not moved. Then a barge appeared alongside. The dead were going ashore in Formosa,

Out of the middle hold of the ship the dead could be hauled individually, stripped and tied to ropes. But for the forward hold it was necessary to rig a broad wire cargo net, on the end of a boom and tackle. Here Captain (now Major) Arthur Wermuth of Chicago, with the help of a medical corpsmen hauled the bodies like faggots and had them swung away through the hatch by dozens, hugged by the wire net like bunches of asparagus.

Before a load was lifted, if there was a body in it which had not yet been identified, the question would be asked: "Anybody alive from this man’s bay?" Silence. "Anybody know from which bay this man comes?" Silence. Some men were unrecognizable even to those who had lived with them.

For the ugly job of loading the dead there had been little rivalry. The survivors were weak and extremely thirsty. Though the horses which had traveled in the same cargo hold had presumably drunk gallons of water, and though the boat was in harbor, the Japs kept saying, "No water - we have no water." The wounds were kept from healing and further sapped by abnormal loss of water as well as blood.

Then came the command: "We need 30 men to go ashore for burial duty with these bodies. Who volunteers?" Almost every man who could totter to his feet volunteered. His offer was not strictly without self-interest. He hoped that for once, if he went ashore, he could fill up his body with water and renew his thinning blood.

"I wanted to go ashore and try some water with all my heart," said one officer. "But I could not move. So I just lay on my back and watched the wire cargo net, it was about 20 feet square when laid out, I guess -- going down into the hold empty, being loaded, and then ascending, shutting out the light with naked bodies before it swung away out of my sight."

At length the barge, overloaded, moved toward the shore. Among the 10 officers who went were Lieutenant H. B. Wright of the Air Force, Lieutenant Keene of the Cavite Sixth Marines, a South Carolinian and Major John Fowler, 26^th Cavalry of Los Angeles.

They reached the breakwater, tied up, but found that they were too weak to carry the bodies ashore one by one. They attached ropes to the naked feet and dragged them to the point where the breakwater met the sand. There they laid them out in rows. It was a coal dumping yard, and there were black mountains of bituminous coal, thousand of tons, nearby. They left the bodies there on the beach that first night, beside the coal.

A Nightly Prayer

The second day they again loaded the barge with bodies and brought them ashore, placing them beside their predecessors. Each night the burial party drew up and gave a military salute before returning to the ship. And the third day they took all the bodies to a Japanese crematorium near a shrine and rendered them into ashes.

By now an evening prayer had become a part of their simple routine, of the estimated 16 chaplains in the party, both Protestant and Catholic, only three were to live to get to Japan.

The strongest seemed to be the Army priest, Lieutenant William "Bill" Cummings of San Francisco and Ossining, N.Y. One Navy man says, "I shall never forget the prayer that father asked that first night after the bombing, when the Japs would not let us move the bodies. He had often said prayers before that, at other times, but a lot of men paid no attention, then. They kept babbling or arguing or cursing. This night the minute he stood up there was absolute silence.

"I guess it was the first real and complete silence that there had been since we left Manila. Even the deranged fellows were quiet. And I remember what his opening words were. He said, O God -- O God, please grant that tomorrow we will be spared from being bombed." There was just something about the way he said those words that brought the men around.

"Then he prayed. He somehow managed to say everything that was in our hearts -- what we had left as hearts after squabbling with each other. The last thing he did was to lead us in the Lord’s prayer. I think every man there, even the unbalanced ones, managed to repeat at least some of the words after him."

TOMORROW: STOLEN SUGAR, A TWO-EDGED PRIZE.