Approximately 27,000 American soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines were captured by Japanese
forces during World War 2.
Perhaps more than anyone, they eagerly awaited the termination of the Pacific War.
When V-E Day came and went in May 1945, they were still suffering.
Most of them had little inkling when, or if, the war would come to an end.
Radioman Second Class Jack Leaming was twenty-two years old when he was taken prisoner by Japanese
forces on March 4, 1942.
During an air mission over Marcus Island, Leaming’s plane was shot down.
Both he and his pilot ditched in the ocean.
Despite several valiant attempts to paddle their way out to sea and into the path of
American search planes, the waves pushed their raft ashore, where they were caught by the
Japanese garrison.
After a thorough interrogation, Leaming and his pilot, LTJG Dale Hilton, were loaded into
an unmarked prison ship and sent to the Japanese home islands.
They were far from their own lines, and as fate would have it, they would have to wait
41 long months to be rescued.
For the first three months of his captivity, Leaming was held at Zentsuji prison camp on
Shikoku Island, where he was put to work doing hard labor.
Then, in the summer of 1942, he was moved to Osaka Camp Number 1 on the Island of Honshu,
which, at first, consisted of temporary facilities at Ichioka Stadium.
In the fall—along with hundreds of Americans captured at Guam—he was moved to a permanent
barracks along Osaka’s waterfront.
Over the next three years, along with his fellow inmates, Leaming endured all manner
of privation.
Interrogation occurred regularly; as did malnutrition; bouts of diarrhea, dysentery, and beriberi;
torture; beatings; injuries caused by unsafe working conditions—all of these were the
order of the day.
Even more, toward the end of the war, Leaming and his companions had to endure friendly fire.
Starting in March 1945, U.S. Army Air Forces commenced fire-bombing attacks on the home islands.
The Japanese government purposefully refused to mark locations of their POW camps as they
were required by international law, hoping that their murky locations would keep the
Americans from targeting their cities.
But at the insistence of Maj. Gen. Curtis LeMay, aerial bombing of Japanese cities continued
for the next five months, regardless of who occupied them.
On June 1, 1945, LeMay’s B-29s targeted Osaka, raining down thousands of incendiary bombs.
The prison was burned and the inmates were moved to a new location, the city of Toyama,
where they were forced to work as stevedores, unloading soybeans, rice, and scrap iron.
It was at Toyama where Leaming experienced his closest brush with death.
The guards accused him of stealing rice and sentenced him to close confinement.
He remembered the ordeal vividly: "By this time, most of us had been held captive
for almost three and a half years.
We were skeletons.
The diet given to us by the Japanese was insufficient to sustain life.
Some of the men had skin lesions and most of us suffered from beriberi.
Had it not been for our adeptness at stealing soybeans and rice, most of us would have died
months before.
When we returned to camp one evening, the Japanese officer in charge decided to inspect
us, which was rather unusual.
He instructed us to open our cans, water bottles, and mess kits.
He instructed the guards to search our bodies thoroughly.
Two other fellows and myself were discovered with rice.
The contents of our mess kits were thrown on the ground and we were immediately beaten
and then imprisoned.
We were placed in a cell less than a meter wide and three meters long.
Here we remained for three days.
Our ration was one rice ball daily.
It was about three inches in diameter.
It was July; our cell was in a small wooden building, a tool shed in the sun.
It did not have any ventilation.
It was stifling.
There was room in the cell for one man to lie down, one to crouch hugging his knees,
and one to stand.
We rotated our positions as each of us tired.
At one end was a hole used for answering calls of nature.
As it was summer, the odor emanating from it was difficult to tolerate."
Somehow, Leaming and his companions survived the nightmare in the tool shed.
After three days, they were released and returned to work.
Although they knew that American forces were bombing Japan, none of the inmates at Toyama
had any notion that the end of the war was only days away.
Japanese forces had been preparing for an all-out defense of the home islands, conscripting
every available man, woman, and child to fight against an Allied invasion.
Further, Japanese propaganda always made it appear as if the Allies were on the run.
Leaming and the others often doubted the possibility of immediate rescue.
Then, on August 14, the guards at Toyama began loading the prisoners into the cavernous hold
of a prison ship.
No one had yet told them of the use of the atomic bombs against Hiroshima or Nagasaki.
The prisoners began circulating gossip that this was the end of their lives, that the
Japanese planned to send the prison ship into open water and torpedo it, drowning them all.
Suddenly, the guards ceased working as they paused to listen to a loud radio address,
the voice of the Japanese Emperor echoing over a loudspeaker.
Leaming recalled what happened next: "A Marine who understood Japanese climbed
to the top of the ladder, raised one of the boards on the hatch cover, listened, and came
back down.
He was up there for at least five minutes.
He told us the Japanese were going to surrender, that the war was over.
We responded in disbelief.
We did not believe him.
He was nuts!
In frustration, a second man climbed to the top of the hold.
He listened, returned, and told us the Japanese were bowing down in front of a speaker on
the quay and that the Emperor was talking and telling them that Japan would surrender.
We had been in the hold approximately forty-five minutes when suddenly the Japanese uncovered
the hatch and told us to come topside.
They instructed us to fall in and marched us back to camp.
We asked the soldiers with us, our guards, if Japan had surrendered, but they would not
answer us.
That afternoon, one of our contingent, Chief Saunders, was called into the Japanese commander’s
office and told of Japan’s capitulation.
Immediately, Saunders told the commander to take the Japanese guards off the gate, leave
their arms behind, and that they were all confined to their quarters until U.S. forces arrived.
They were our prisoners now.
The tables had turned."
On August 17, an Air Force major arrived at the Toyama camp and helped remove the sick
and dying.
The next day, naval carrier planes began dropping supplies to sustain the beleaguered Americans
until help arrived.
On September 14, Leaming loaded up on a hospital ship, USS Benevolence, where he was screened
and deloused.
After that, he was flown back to the United States and admitted to the U.S. Naval Hospital
at San Diego.
For Leaming—as with many others—imprisonment had taken away years of his life and he struggled
to accept what had happened to him.
Here is how he eventually came to terms with his torment.
"We endured hunger and humiliation and lived as animals.
We became passive and detached in an effort to survive.
If you fracture a bone, it will heal, and you are restored.
With your mind, it is not so easy.
Becoming a prisoner of war can break your spirit, and you can lose a part of yourself.
It is difficult to forget.
It leaves a scar that stretches as far and as deep as the mind and imagination can travel.
It can be repressed, but as long as you remain sane, you know it is there.
We were in constant danger.
POWs were tested by means other men know little about.
We persevered with dignity and loyalty to our country.
I would rather live on my feet than die on my knees.
When it was over and I arrived home, I came to the realization that those war years were
a lot of time to lose and I could never get them back.
They were especially hard to lose because I was young.
As I grew older, the loss became more pronounced.
No matter what, those years were irretrievable.
Finally, if you are lucky and if it is not too late, you accept the facts, get on with
your life, and enjoy it."
Jack Leaming died on August 5, 2013, at the age of 93.
Like 27,000 former American POWs, for the rest of his life, he never forgot the importance of V-J Day.