Don Jose: An American Soldier's Courage and Faith in Japanese Captivity

DON JOSE

An American Soldier’s Courage and Faith

in Japanese Captivity

DON JOSE

An American Soldier’s Courage and Faith

in Japanese Captivity

Ezequiel L. Ortiz

and

James A. McClure

© 2012 by Ezequiel L. Ortiz and James A. McClure

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ortiz, Ezequiel L., 1939-

   Don Jose : an American soldier’s courage and faith in Japanese captivity / by Ezequiel L.

Ortiz and James A. McClure.

     p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-86534-857-8 (softcover : alk. paper)

1. Quintero, Joseph O., 1918-2000. 2. World War, 1939-1945--Prisoners and prisons,

Japanese. 3. World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American. 4. Prisoners of war-

-Japan--Biography. 5. Prisoners of war--Philippines--Biography. 6. Prisoners of war--United

States--Biography. I. McClure, James A., 1943- II. Title.

  D805.J3O79 2012

  940.54’7252092--dc23

  [B]

2011050612

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Dedicated to Gladys Quintero,

in memory of all those POWs who did not make it home.

CONTENTS

Introduction

Acknowledaements

1 / From Fort Worth to Corregidor

2 / The War Begins

3 / The Battle for Corregidor

4 / Prisoners of War

5 / The Camp at Cabanatuan

6 / Dreaming of Food

7 / Work Details

8 / Voyage on the Hell Ship

9 / Niigata

10 / The Clinic and the Flag

11 / The Great Chicken Heist

12 / Liberation and Homecoming

13 / The Family That Shaped Don Jose’s Character

Appendix 1: Account of the Hartford Battery by Captain Warren A. Starr

Appendix 2: 60th Coast Artillery Organization and Assignments

Appendix 3: Echoes of a Distant Battle: Air Defense Lessons of the Philippine Defense Campaign of 1941–1942, by Major Charles E. Kirkpatrick

Appendix 4: Joseph Quintero’s Sketch of His Military Decorations

References

Index of People

Introduction

I first became acquainted with Joseph O. Quintero in the course of interviewing veterans of World War II while on active duty in the U.S. Army. We became friends, and I had the privilege of knowing him and his family for more than 20 years.

This is Joseph’s story: the experience of an American soldier who survived years of brutality in Japanese prisoner-of-war camps and became a hero. His narrative is an enlisted man’s view of the war with first-hand descriptions of conditions in the POW camps and personal glimpses of what he and his buddies did, endured and talked about.

Joseph Quintero, the son of Mexican immigrants, grew up in a converted railroad caboose in Fort Worth, Texas, and joined the Army to get $21 a month and three meals a day. He participated in the defense of Corregidor in the 60th Coast Artillery Battery H, fighting alongside soldiers from the New Mexico National Guard. Joseph was among thousands of American POWs imprisoned in the infamous Cabanatuan prison camp in the Philippines. He was transported to Japan on one of the Japanese hell ships and survived an emergency appendectomy enroute.

Joseph spent the remainder of the war in a prison camp in Japan, where he distinguished himself as a medic caring for his fellow prisoners and came to be known as Don Jose. When American troops liberated the Niigata POW camp after the Japanese surrender, Joseph greeted them waving a homemade American flag that had been sewn together in secrecy over the course of a year.

He was awarded the Purple Heart, Bronze Star and Silver Star and several other awards for his exemplary service. After the war Joseph settled in Albuquerque, where he raised a family and worked for many years as a medical research technician at the Veterans Administration Hospital. He died in 2000 at age 82.

Joseph’s narrative forms the framework of this book. In addition, we have included research on the defense of Corregidor and the Japanese prison camps and crosschecked facts from multiple sources. Also included are official documents and personal photos supplied by members of the Quintero family.

—Ezequiel L. Ortiz

Ezequiel Ortiz with Joseph Quintero in 1991

Acknowledgements

This book is the result of a promise made to Joseph Quintero shortly before his death in 2000. It took more than a decade to compile his memories and those of his colleagues and family members. The authors wish to thank Margaret Weber and the Quintero family for sharing their family records. We also wish to acknowledge Florence Petrofes for proofreading the manuscript, Shelby Lynn Jones and Dolores Deuel for typing supporting material and Michelle Deuel Ortiz for her critical feedback.

1

From Fort Worth to Corregidor

Joseph Quintero had no thought of fighting a war, much less becoming a hero, when he joined the Army in 1941. His initial motivation was to get a better job: one that paid $21 a month and included free meals and a place to sleep.

The struggle to get ahead had dominated his life. His parents, Faustino and Lorenza Quintero, had fled their hometown of Silao, Guanajuato, Mexico, in 1914 to get married and build a new life in the United States. Faustino found work on a track-laying crew with the Texas and Pacific Railway Company in Fort Worth, Texas, but had trouble providing for a family of nine children in an improvised home fashioned from three railroad caboose cars.

Joseph, as the second oldest, helped put food on the table from earliest childhood by doing odd jobs at a nearby farm. At age 13 he began working full-time herding cows at 25 cents a day. Joseph had been very close to his mother, Lorenza, who kept her nine children together in their makeshift home in a converted caboose in Fort Worth while their father worked long hours.

When Joseph was in his teens, Lorenza became seriously ill and left the family to seek medical care with her family in Mexico, where she died at age 36. Joseph took on more responsibility to care for his younger brothers and sisters after his mother passed away.

By 1941 he was working at Saint Joseph’s Hospital in Fort Worth. Joseph started cleaning windows and quickly gained a reputation as a hard worker. He worked his way up to become an elevator operator, a janitor and eventually a jack-of-all-trades assisting ambulance crews, the mortician and even the cook.

Joseph and his friend, John Adams, visited the recruiting office and learned of the benefits of military life. Joseph and several buddies returned later and decided to enlist. They were turned down for the Navy, Marine Corps and Army Air Corps. Joseph and his friends then visited the Army recruiter. Joseph was 22 but, at 112 pounds, was underweight and failed to pass the physical.

Joseph took this as a challenge. He started eating high-carbohydrate food, including bunches of bananas, until he gained a little weight. He also started running and exercising. When he and his buddies went back to the recruiting office, Joseph demonstrated that he could run up and down stairs and that his weight had gone up a little. Joseph’s friends told the recruiter that if Joseph were not allowed to enlist that they would all take a walk. After the recruiter had a lengthy discussion with his commanding officer, the recruiter accepted them all.

Joseph and his friends enlisted 29 January 1941, and reported to the induction center in Fort Worth to test for job assignments. Joseph was elated when he passed a final physical fitness exam and met all requirements to become a soldier in the United States Army. He was so excited that he shouted I am now an American soldier. Joseph remembered:

After the oath they shook our hands and said congratulations, you are now in the United States Army. I thought I was just getting a government job. Then they said come back here at 1 p.m., we are leaving here. So the sergeant took us across the street to a nice restaurant where I had eggs and hot chocolate and toast. Boy, I thought, they sure feed us good. I want to stay in this job.

After he said goodbye to his father, brothers and sisters, Joseph reported to the train station. Unlike those who enlisted later in the war, Joseph did not attend basic military training but instead boarded a train at Fort Worth with other new recruits and headed for the West Coast to be assigned to a unit. A train ride this long was a new experience for Joseph.

We rode the rest of the day and all night. And the next day it hit me and I got very sad. I didn’t let anybody see me. The other men were playing cards and dice. I was just watching because I had never seen card games or dice games.

After a stop at El Paso, the train continued on to California.

I was the only Mexican in the group. I found out later the other guys were from Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas and Tennessee. They were southern boys, huge, strong boys like football players. I was the smallest one and the only Mejicano, so they called me Pancho and every time the train stopped for some time I would try and get them some wine and whiskey. They trusted me and I was their errand boy. One of them particularly took care of me and said: You are my amigo. Stick with me and I will see that no one bothers you. He was nice to me and I sort of got acquainted with him. He treated me more like a small brother.

When he first saw the Pacific Ocean, Joseph thought it was the biggest lake he had ever seen. His first stop was Angel Island in San Francisco Bay, where the recruits were issued uniforms and equipment. There he received his first military training: close order drill to teach the new recruits the difference between their right and left feet. Joseph quickly learned the difference after his drill sergeant shouted in his ear: Don’t you get it? This is your right, this is your left! He never knew anyone could speak with such a commanding and demanding voice. At night he lay in his bunk thinking about the day’s activity while pointing at his toes, this is my right, this is my left, what in the world did I get myself into. A few days and many hours of drill later, the recruits were assembled and told they would soon depart for the South Pacific.

The transport ship USS Republic (AP-33) was Joseph’s home for the next two weeks. Originally a passenger liner, the aging ship had been used as a troop transport in World War I and was again pressed into government service in the 1930s. Joseph had never seen such a big ship. It took two days to board all the equipment and assign the troops to their new quarters. The first morning out at sea the breeze began to blow, and at times like this Joseph would block out the constant machine noise of the ship’s engines and gaze out at the ocean. In one of his letters home he wrote: staring out, I see nothing but sea. It’s like living way out in the flats of West Texas on a ranch where your closest neighbor lives maybe fifty miles away.

The Republic made a refueling stop at Pearl Harbor and took on provisions. The troops were not allowed off the ship and spent the one-day stop on work details loading provisions for the rest of the voyage. I was glad that we got underway again, Joseph recalled. I was not feeling very well and reported to sick bay.

Joseph was examined by a military doctor and was diagnosed as having a case of the mumps. What a bummer, he said to himself. Here I am at the prime of my life, on a voyage of a lifetime and now I have the mumps. The Republic arrived in Manila 22 April 1941, and Joseph was admitted to a hospital and remained there for 12 days. Once he was cleared for duty he rejoined his unit, which was now stationed on the island of Corregidor.

Corregidor was the largest of four fortified islands that guarded the entrance to Manila Bay. Sometimes known as the Gibraltar of the East, the island had an extensive network of tunnels, underground facilities and defensive positions.

Joseph found his unit, the 60th Coast Artillery, living in tents. He was assigned to Battery H (Hartford), a 37mm air defense battery. Because he was one of the smallest men in the unit, he was given the job of relaying orders as a flash radio operator instead of the heavier work of handling the antiaircraft guns. His new boss was another Fort Worth native, Sergeant Edward A. Grounds, chief of the communications section.

Joseph’s hospital stay had put him behind in training, and he had to start from scratch to learn the mission of the battery and his own duties. He was issued a Springfield rifle and reported to the rifle range in order to learn how to aim and shoot a weapon that was almost as tall as he was. His first shot was a frightening experience: The rifle kicked him hard in the shoulder and the muzzle blast made his ears ring for a few moments. No harm was done, the range instructor told him: He had completely missed the target and the bullet was on its way to the moon. After several days at the firing range he became proficient and was satisfied that he could at least hit the outer edges of the target.

Later he learned to fire a 50-caliber machine gun. It jumped in all directions, up down right and left, Joseph remembered. It reminded me of learning to march; right-left or was it left-right. He also learned to toss a hand grenade and spent long hours practicing self-defense using a rifle with an attached bayonet. Training days were fun, he said. Learning new methods of self defense made me aware of the importance of being prepared for whatever may be in my future. It instilled in me a sense of pride to belong to the fine soldiers of Hartford Battery.

The routine of the peacetime Army was much the same from one day to the next with a posted training schedule outlining each day’s activities. Joseph described it this way:

A typical day started with early morning formation and roll call. Because of the heat most of our days work was done in the early part of the day and consisted of more close order drills, marching in formation, and some physical training. I was actually getting to like the close order drills now that I knew the difference between my left and right foot. Once in a while I would screw up but this usually went unnoticed because we were in ranks according to our height and, being rather short, I