It was unmistakable from the beginning that the Japanese had not lost their intention of killing their prisoners by thirst. The Americans from Manila, now on a freighter fresh from the principal harbor of Formosa, whose water tanks should have been filled to the brim, received one-half canteen cupful of rice daily, but of water they received two to four spoonfuls daily.

"If you forgave the Japanese everything else," says one survivor, "I cannot see how you could forgive the way they denied us water all the way from Manila to Japan. Some starved, some were suffocated, some were shot by guards, some died of sunstroke, some died of cold; all things that were deliberately caused and avoidable. But everybody was kept thirsty all the time."

They soon found out that they were in the submarine zone. Three days from Takao, they picked up a crippled, torpedoed ship and towed it for a day. Their steerage way was barely five knots. Then the prison ship was ordered to turn back for another distressed ship. They towed that one for two days.

Then they began to approach the islands off the China coast. "We passed unholy looking little islands, ugly and completely bare. The water around them was a nasty yellow. I suppose we were at the mouth of the Yangtze or the Whangpoo. But if you had been on deck and seen the water, there was something you dreaded almost more than dying: the idea of being slipped over the side and descending into that yellow Chinese sea-mud.

The Japanese had no water to give, but they had plenty of water to sell. At the rear of the two passageways between the bays there were two open gratings, through one of which swept the so-called "Wind of Death." The gratings were the trading center.

By now the Americans had little left to offer. The keepsakes a man parts with last began to go.

The Japanese liked American wedding rings, the solid gold kind. For a thick, heavy one a Jap would bring you five canteens full of water. Annapolis and West Point rings, the most valued possession of the professional officer, were always bad seconds to wedding rings. They never brought more than four cigarettes, and an early glut brought them down as low as two.

For a pair of shoes you could get two cans of tomatoes or salmon or a handful of tangerines. For a heavy Navajo turquoise ring Lieutenant Russell Hutchison of Albuquerque gained two straw mats, enough to save his life and that of another officer.

Captain William Miner saved his life and that of Major F. Langwith Berry of San Francisco by trading a fountain pen for a straw mat. "We considered that a tremendous bargain," says Berry.

The clothing issued on the Olongapo tennis courts had been skoshi -- insignificant in amount -- but the cold Manchurian winds blowing out of the Yellow Sea did not induce the Japanese to issue more.

The prisoners lay huddled as far back in the bays as possible, staccato coughs coming from their parched throats. The icy wind seethed and sang through the cracked partitions and swept the passageways.

Once Lieutenant Colonel Johnson said to a Japanese officer who knew a little English, "Listen, if our men don’t have at least some more water, they will die -- die, I tell you!" The Jap looked him over calmly and said, "Everybody potai (dead) -- okay, okay."

As the freighter wound her way through the desolate islands off the Chinese rivers, hiding by night against prowling submarines, the prisoners began to die at the rate of 20 or more daily. A man whose husky constitution made him a body collector says: "Every morning was the same. The ladder guard would waken me and say that it was time to get busy. I would take a handful of sugar and swallow it for breakfast before I touched the bodies. Then I would slowly make the circle of the bays. I didn’t make any pretense of being dignified or tender. I would just stop at the bay and put my head in and say, `got any stiffs in there?’ They might say, `Yes, we’ve got a big one this morning.’ `Well,’ I’d say, `get him out to the edge here. I haven’t got all day.’ Sometimes they would help me, but sometimes they would just say, `Come on in and get him yourself.’ That would make me sore. I would dive right in there and knock them over until I got what I was after. I’d haul him out. Nine times out of ten he’d be stripped naked already and there’d be nothing for the clothing committee. It must sound callous to say so, but death meant nothing to us. If you made it, you made it; if not, you died. That was all there was to it."

The fifth day out of Takao Commander Maurice Joses of Santa Monica, the regular navy doctor who was in nominal command of the entire party but had been failing ever since the Subic Bay bombing, called to his side Boatswain Clarence M. Taylor of Cloverdale, Va., and Long Beach, Cal.

Joses was suffering from extreme diarrhea or dysentery. Even for its own commanding officer the party could do nothing. The last of the hoarded handful of sulfaguanadine tablets obtained from the Red Cross at San Francisco Pampanga was gone days ago.

"I’d like to talk to you a little, Ty," said Jones. " I don’t think I’ll be able to make it through the night." Taylor gave him the usual reassuring encouragement. But the doctor was right. When the first light came through the hatch, their commander was gone.