This is a brief account of Harold L. Richardson, a 28-year-old Newton high school graduate of the class of 1937 who is one of the few persons alive to tell what it looks like to see an atomic bomb go off in an actual attack. He Is also one of the relatively small group of this country's, armed forces, at the time the last war broke out who survived captivity under the Japanese which lasted for almost the entire duration of the war. And to add just one more of the many possible remarkable features to his life, this young man is re-enlisting in the U. S. Navy when his present 90 day furlough expires.
For 40 months he was held prisoner, was shipped to Japan early after his capture at Corregidor where he was forced to slave away in a coal mine and machine shop, where desperate conditions became so commonplace that the finding of a snake to eat became a red letter day and the arrival of shipment of dog meat were occasions for feverish enthusiasm. He witnessed one man after another being tortured for days and finally beaten to death for little or no reason at all.
Because a fellow prisoner, who thoughtlessly or ignorant that he was disobeying one of the many Jap rules for prisoners, had spoken to a Korean worker at the coal mine during a noon lunch period, Richardson came within the narrowest margin of being mercilessly beaten, starved and mangled into insensibility by the cruel and sadistic Jap who commanded the prison camp, a beast named Fukahara. Only when a Jap guard finally stated that it was "the other fellow" who had been wearing oily rags similar to that which Richardson was wearing but who was somewhat taller, did the Jap release the Newton man to take the other American prisoner who finally died after over a week of ghastly treatment.
Today Harold is enjoying his 90 day leave in and around Newton and Kellogg. His inseparable companion is Boatswain's Mate Second Class Leonard "Junior" White, of Kellogg, also of the navy, who saw plenty of action against the Japs in his 23 months in the Pacific, particularly the Philippines. Harold's leave is up in January when he will get back into service which he reported he "liked in peace time" and in which he plans to remain indefinitely.
Twice Richardson was severely beaten but luckily he managed to emerge without any permanent injuries or scars from the brutal treatment. On one occasion while he was working in the machine shop at the coal mine he accidentally handed a hammer instead of a saw to a Jap who was working along side him. While he (sic-his) back was turned, he was struck a blow on the back of the skull with the hammer which caused him to be considerably dazed but which left him with just enough of his faculties that he was able to wrest the hammer away from his attacker who finally gave up the idea of fighting, for some mysterious reason. The Jap was given to fits of temper and spells of various sorts, Richardson said, and it was intimated he was suffering from some disease of the brain as a result of malaria. On another occasion, when the Newton sailor failed to fall out of line swiftly enough at the given command of a Jap officer, he was made to stand at attention while he was beaten with fists and clubs and kicked about savagely for several hours. He managed to restrain himself from attempting any resistance and came out of this encounter with severe cuts and bruises about the face and body which he nursed for some time afterwards but which could have been much worse as he declared.
One of the things which perhaps figured most effectively in bringing Richardson through the terrible ordeal which lasted from May 6, 1942, when he was captured with they fall of Ft. Hughes, Corregidor, to Sept. 13, 1945, when the recovery team of U. S. soldiers arrived to liberate them from their Omutu prison camp across the bay from Nagasaki, was his early conviction that the best way to survive would be to keep away from the Japs as much as possible. The Newton veteran declared that some of the prisoners believed they might profit by "playing up" to the Jap captors. But this proved false. He pointed out this policy resulted in the Japs always having these men in mind whenever they wished anything done, these would be called first. But whenever anything failed to suit the prison guards and commanders, horrible punishments were meted out to the prisoners guilty of failing to effect complete satisfaction. "The less you had to do with them the better off you were," Richardson asserted.
The group of prisoners the young Newton veteran was with arrived in Japan on Aug. 10, 1943, after a prison ship trip which left much to be desired for comfort and accommodations but which was a "dream ride" compared with the prisoner transport experiences unfolded by those who arrived at Richardson's camp near Nagasaki during the months to come. Because his was one of the earlier movements of prisoners to the Jap mainland, conditions were fairly reasonable, both en route and during the first year or so they were in camp. However, as defeat became more certain for the Nips and they were being pounded harder and harder as the war neared its end, camp conditions became increasingly more inhumane, it was reported.
The Newton sailor's normal weight has been around 160 pounds but while he was being held prisoner, he tipped the scales at as low as 110 pounds, he declares. Although conditions at the camp were frightful in most respects, it was considered one of the easiest on inmates in all of Japan, it was stated. Only some 250 men died of starvation, disease, maltreatment and brutality of one sort or another during Richardson's two year stay there. During the last year, some of the new prisoners coming in "were nothing but a heap of bones with skin thrown upon them," he reported. Working conditions were deplorable, so bad that many of the men intentionally broke their arms and legs in an effort to escape the torture some tasks assigned to them in the condemned coal mine in which they were compelled to work. Finally these disabilities even were not considered sufficient by the Jap officials for a man to remain away from his work and the practice proved futile and too costly, thus finally being abandoned by the unfortunate enslaved captives.
In the camp there were some dozen Iowans one of whom was a youth named Eddie Carr, a marine, from Des Moines. Carr contracted pneumonia during the last winter and finally died from disease on Sept. 6, this year. During his furlough, Richardson made a visit to Carr's home and gave a report to his parents.
Many persons in this country saw from time to time, the printed form postcards which the Japs allowed prisoners to send back to the States to relatives and friends. Most of the cards were already printed and only the signature was allowed to (Continued on page 2)
actually be written by the prisoners themselves. Harold states he was allowed to "write" one every three months but upon arrival home, he discovered that only two of the many he had sent had ever arrived at their destination.
For three and one-half years the Newton youth lived on a diet which consisted chiefly of a bowl of rice and a small amount of soup, served three times a day. Harold recalls three shipments of dead dogs which were sent into the camp and boiled up for the soup which was deeply relished by everyone. Shipments consisted of 69, 74 and later 54 dead dogs, it was reported. Dog meat, when cooked, gives off a very repellant odor, Richardson declares, but the meat "doesn't really taste bad," he stated. However, since leaving the prison camp, a few of the things farthest from his mind include ordering rice or soup and as for dog meat, well, he feels he can get along without that. Snakes found in pipes when pipe laying work was in progress, also furnished another of the few "delicacies" and diversions in food.
Some of the tales which prisoners coming into his camp related during the last phases of the war concerning their experiences in being transported to Japan were among the most gruesome episodes the Newton Navy man has ever heard. It became commonplace to hear prisoners tell where they were stuffed down into the holds of filthy ships until they were packed shoulder-to-shoulder, backs and stomachs against the bodies of those next to them. The only time they began to have room to change position was after a sufficient number had died from suffocation, disease or starvation. Some became so deprave they turned viper and began sucking blood of live and dead comrades. Food and drink aboard became forgotten for prisoners, it was related. Many had lost as much as 100 pounds. When the men who survived these ordeals finally arrived at the prison camp, they plainly reflected the fiendish treatment which had been their unhappy experience.
"The only thing we had of any value and consolation was HOPE," declared Richardson. "We kept up our hopes throughout the entire experience and although our feelings for the future were considerably shaken from time to time, most of us never gave up our hope. Whenever anyone did give up hope, he just died because he no longer had anything to keep him going," he stated.
Asked whether he ever had nightmares since his liberation as a result of all the savage brutality he experienced, the Newton young service man stated he never has dreamed of his captivity. And he doesn't want to! When the inquiry was made concerning his feelings at seeing fellow buddies being tortured publicly and being beaten to death, Richardson declared at first such things used to affect him and his companions but after a while witnessing such sights registered very little upon the onlookers. Every man became so accustomed to such demonstrations they hardly felt any emotions at all, for everyone knew that the next one chosen for such horrors might be himself and all were resigned, he said.
The Japs had located prisoner-of-war camps in and around areas of war important factories, mines and other concerns and many times our own men were injured and even killed by bombs dropped from American planes, he declared. Once a fire bomb raid near their coal mine caused part of the camp to be ignited and burned out and living conditions were not improved by this experience. However, Richardson and his companions could feel the increasingly heavy assaults of allied air power spelling the defeat of Japan and this was also reflected in the attitude of the Jap commanders of the prison camp. Some American prisoners brought to the camp predicted the war would be won by February of 1945 but this proved, of course, too optimistic.
"One of the most interesting memories I will carry with me from the three years and four months I spent as a prisoner of the Japanese is the general stupidity of the Japanese people as a whole," said Harold. "They were so stupid at times that it was actually funny."
Harold Richardson was approximately the second Jasper county service man to be captured by the Japs. On May 8, 1941, the war department reported him "missing in action." On March 12, 1942, nearly a year later, he was officially reported to be a prisoner of the Japanese. He has two sisters in Des Moines, Doris Griffith and Mildred Parmenter. A brother, Ralph, had served for 12 years in the navy before he was killed in a motorcycle accident in California while on leave. His mother died a number of years ago and his father, Walter, who was a Newton business man, died in 1938.
One of the most interesting facts surrounding his imprisonment at the Japanese camp was his disclosure that of all his personal possessions which he had when first captured, only two—his Newton class high school ring of 1937 and a fountain pen which he had obtained when he was in sixth grade—was he able to keep secreted from from his captors. Hiding places were in holes in the ground, under floor boards of barracks and of all places, in his back pockets when he was being searched. Things hidden in rear pockets were seldom, if ever, found by the Nips for they do not have back pockets, Richardson declared.
Asked what he felt the Americans should do with the Japanese people now since the war is over, the Newton sailor stated: "The best thing we could do with them would be to feed them exactly like they fed their allied prisoners of war," he declared impassionately.
In the prison camp were some 50 "Christian" Japs who were enslaved because they had become converted to western religious sects. They could speak English and were treated as beastly as were other non-Japanese prisoners, Richardson asserted.
The first sign of Jap tendencies to commit atrocities came shortly after Corregidor fell. A group of Japs took approximately 100 American prisoner and began marching them directly, in formation, toward the edge of a high cliff where it was intended for them to walk off or receive tortures and finally be killed. Just as the men were approaching the cliff, however, an American-educated Jap officer appeared and thwarted the fiendish plan. A month or so later, the first men of his group to be killed were tortured for days and finally put to death when they attempted to escape from the Cabanatuan prison camp in which Richardson and others were being held.
On Aug. 15, 1945, the day following the Jap emperor's official acceptance of the allied peace terms, prison camp officials declared that there would be no work for an indefinite time by orders of the high command. By the next day, however, the inmates had taken over the camp and the entire Jap city of Omutu, where they declared their own law. The Jap camp commander was discovered after a brief search and when a group of Texans, who had been incarcerated, finished their "visit" with him, he was reported "breathing very lightly." However, a short while later, when some Chinese, who had been held in a camp nearby for some five to eight years had arrived, Richardson stated Kukahara was finally "liquidated."
What Harold had to say regarding his experience in witnessing the explosion of the atomic bomb which was dropped on Nagasaki, Aug 9 of this year, which he saw from a distance of some 50 miles across the bay from where he was being held, has already been published in detail in this newspaper. Briefly, however, the Newton sailor was walking with his back to Nagasaki and was just coming in from the coal mine when he and fellow prisoners heard a bomb blast which they recognized as being much greater in intensity than most of those heard previous to that time. Turning about, they saw a rolling, growing, snow-white cloud moving high into the sky. Suddenly a flash of bright colors lighted the scene, with red and blue predominating. This was all to be seen of the explosion of the second and last atomic bomb but it was enough. He and his buddies were happy because they thought a large chemical plant had been struck in Nagasaki. As the days followed, reports of huge numbers of persons being killed began pouring into the camp and guards were saying "the Americans were unfair because they were using an explosive and weapon the Japs knew nothing about." It was not until Sept. 13, 1945, that he and his fellow companions finally learned that an atomic bomb, with a force three million times more powerful than TNT and carrying blast power equal to the usual peak bomb load of 2,000 Superforts-had been dropped on Nagasaki.
Harold saw the wreckage en route home and can give a detailed report of the scene where some 225,000 persons were killed and all was reduced to wreckage. His experience in seeing this explosion marks him as one among the few living persons in the world who saw the result of unleashing the atomic secret of the universe which is predicted to have brought about a new era in the history of the world.