THE VOYAGE OF THE DEATH SHIP

The Prisoners Begin to Suffer From Crowd Poisoning

This is the fourth in a series by George Weller of the Chicago Daily News Foreign Service on the "Cruise of Death" taken by some 1600 American prisoners from Manila to Southern Japan. Approximately 300 men survived the ordeal. Their stories were gathered in prison camps, rest camps, on hospital ships and at U.S. bases in the Pacific.

By GEORGE WELLER
Chicago Daily News Foreign Service

Battered by Yank planes, the Jap hell ship Oryoku Maru, her three airless, stinking holds jammed with sone l600 American prisoners, was aground off Olongapo Point of the island of Luzon.

It was December 1944, and the prisoners, heroes of Bataan and Corregidor, were on their way from Bilibid prison in Manila to Japan. Already they had spent more than 24 hours in the holds and many had died of heat, lack of air or at the hands of men driven insane. They were hungry, thirsty, fouled by their own filth
With the ship aground the ban on going on deck was strictly enforced.
For the next three or four hours, until well beyond sunset and fall of gloom into the holds, there was a scraping of chains and splitting of winches as the captain strove to free the Oryoku Maru. Again the discipline began to crack.

Free Once More

About 8 p.m. the Oryoku floated free once more, moved in toward the American naval base at Olongapo, and about 10 began to discharge her Japanese passengers. Now the Japanese, knowing by the number of dead already stacked on the decks, were fearful that a break for shore would take place. Below decks the sane prisoners were almost equally fearful that the unbalanced would unite against them and rush the ladder. They posted guards there.
There were approximately 16 chaplains in the three holds, and most of them had bibles or breviaries. A few other men had prayer books or religious works. Some read them aloud. A Navy lieutenant O’Rourke who had been on the Chinese river patrol took out his prayer book and read a few words to those around him in the cargo hold by the stern.
Suddenly he stopped and began tearing pages out of the book and scattering them around. Then without warning he made a dash for the vertical iron ladder which supplemented the wooden stairs and began to climb up. A big chief boatswain, Jesse Earl Lee of San Diego, pulled him down before the guard above could draw a head on him. They tied him down to the ladder until he quieted down.

During the first night his fellow pharmacist mates had taken care of "Chips" Bowlin, who had become unmanageable. They had saved him from being forced into the bilges with the miserable wretches whom no one could handle. But this second night he managed to creep away from them, made a furtive dash for the ladder and climbed up it before he was missed. They heard a sentry scream something, three shots and finally Bowlin’s voice: "The only thing that I ask of the Japs is that they give me a decent burial." They never saw him again.

NOT GOING TO JAPAN

Commander Frank Bridget never left his post on the wooden ladder. His voice was hoarse, now, from continually shouting. He was relieved occasionally by an officer of the Fourth Marines, Major Andrew J. Mathiesen of Los Angles. Mathiesen had a cool smile that never came

off. Even in the darkness, hearing his unruffled voice, the prisoners imagined that they could see that smile. "Not going to Japan, boys," he would say. "Still right off of Subic. Not going to Japan."

"For God’s sake, boys," Bridget would rasp, "keep fanning. Don’t leave your place. Every move you make generates heat. There are men in the back bays who are going to die unless you sit still and keep fanning."

Some obeyed Bridget and Mathiesen, but not all. Some could hear, or imagined they heard, men plotting against them in the darkness. They unclasped their knives. Chief Pharmacist Mate D. A. Hensen, worked his way across through the foul and steaming aisles to a little cluster of Chief Warrant officers.
"Look," he said, "I’ve lost my nerve. The fellows over in my bay are plotting against me. They are going to kill me." His friends allowed him to stay until he felt better, told him he was talking nonsense and that he must follow the general order and go back to the bay.
In an hour he was back again, full of the same fear of death. Again they told him it was a hallucination, and sent him back. In the morning he was found dead, his belly slit open.
There was Lieutenant "Bill" Williams, an Army engineer, who took the same line in talking aloud as Bridget and Mathiesen: If not sunk, would land on Luzon and the Japs would never again he able to get together enough ships to take them to Manila.

Some Were Protected

But then there were also nuisances like the doctor who kept imagining he had to see someone in the next bay. He spent the whole night crawling back and forth, and could not be dissuaded from his empty errand.
Some, who were visited by illusions seem to have been protected rather than harmed by them. One seaman medico says: "All that second night it seemed to me that I was not on a ship, but in a big hotel. I could hear people talking in the lobby. Right near me was a man who had suffocated, tangled with another who was almost gone. Other people kept trying to move them toward the ladder to be carried up. I knew this and saw this and it still seemed to me that I was in a hotel."
Captain .James McMinn of Carlsbad, who was to survive and reach Japan, had the idea that he was still in Bilibid prison and kept visiting a friend and suggesting a game of cards.
After Oryoku dropped anchor almost no air came down the hatches, which were about 14 by 14 feet. There were no ventilators; animals could not have been shipped under such conditions and lived. Besides thirst and lack of air, the prisoners were suffering from something known as Christmas shoppers in mild form: crowd poisoning.
Crowd poisoning takes two common forms -- the body may burst out in excessive heat, causing a swoon, or it may turn to a cold sweat, with dizziness and vomiting.
A medical aid man had received a back full of shrapnel on the open deck during the strafing. He had lead in his lungs. "Two fellows began to follow me around in the darkness," he said. "I knew they were out to get me, because I had turned one of them in for selling narcotics at Bilibid."

Overheard Plans

" I overheard them planning to knock me out with a metal canteen full of urine."

"I began wandering around, trying to shake them off. Once I had to relieve myself and could not look for a bucket because they were following me. So I relieved myself right where I was. I felt wild and yet I knew what I was doing. I scooped up the excrement and threw it over the men around me. They raised hell. So just to show them, I scooped up some myself and rubbed it in my hair"
"Then I started fleeing again, trying to shake off my two enemies. When they got near me they would gouge at the wounds in my back. Finally I shook them off. I ended up against a bulkhead that was sweating. I collapsed at the bottom and it was cooler there and I enjoyed the drops from the bulkhead falling on my face."