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HIROHATA Why I wasn't there--- |
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In response to our query, Clemens A. Kathman related the following
experience of his treatment and transfer away from Hirohata: 23 Feb 2004 Regarding your inquiry about my not being on the Hirohata rescue roster. I had, what turned out to be an ruptured appendix while at Hirohata. In late February and early March I944, I developed a severe pain in my right side. I made sick call, but nothing was noted according to the Japanese Corpsman diagnosis and he over ruled Capt. Sied and I was sent back to work. The pain got better and I continued to work until one morning I could not move the right leg. They carried me to the sick bay and Capt. Sied noted a large mass in the right groin area. He put me in the camp hospital. The Jap Corpsman had the Steel Mill doctors come in and see me. Nothing was ever done. I was running fever and hurt all the time to the point that I could not sleep. Finally Capt Sied and a U.S. Navy Corpsman with the assistance of two "Blue Heaven" pills, and Capt. Sied's straight razor, cut an opening in my back, just over the right hip bone and drew off a quart of puss that had accumulated from the ruptured appendix. They flushed out the cavity with potassium permangnate solution and bandaged it up. I got my first night sleep that night in three weeks. They kept the cavity open until it healed up. I was returned to the TB ward. (Capt Sied told the Jap Corpsman it was Tubercular) The Japanese were deathly afraid of TB and they had a small area away from the other men they had designated as the TB ward. I developed a bad case of diarrhea, which left me a 97 pound weakling before we got it stopped. With some God-sent timed Red Cross packages and a couple of cups of soy bean milk. I got back on my feet. Enough so that they put me on light duty around the camp. But during this time the abscess cavity filled up again and they had to lance it. Capt Seid decided that it would continue to fill up until the old appendix was removed, so he put a half-inch rubber drain three inches long and inserted it in the drain hole. This I carried until I returned to Bruns General Hospital and had the appendix removed. In late 1944 and early 1945, U.S. Air Corp started bombing the large port cities of Japan. They were using napalm bombs and a large POW camp among the Kobe dock area was hit and many of the POWs were burned badly, some dead and others dying later. The Japanese started breaking the larger camps into smaller numbers. At that time there was close to 500 in the Hirohata camp. On May 6, 1945 they shipped out 134 men. (able bodied). Again June 19, 30 of the POWs who were on light duty were shipped out. I was in this latter group. We joined several other small goups in Osaka and were sent to a small port town named Fusiki, in the Nagoya area. At Fusiki we worked as stevedores until Aug. 15, 1945. We went to work that day but came back to camp without ever working. Two days later the Japanese told us the war was over and plans were being made for our release. This is rather a long explanation of why I was not on the rescue roster of Hirohata. All my friends and close acquaintances were left at Hirohata. I can't even remember any of the 30 who went with me. After we went to work at Fusiki, I worked with a multinational group. The camp was made up of men from 14 nationalities. Most were from U.S., Britian, and Dutch East Indies. I worked with a group of British, Australians, Hindus, Turks, Greeks, and two Egytians. The British and Australians were captured in either Hongkong or Singapore. The mixed nationals were all crew personel who had been rescued when the Japs sunk their ships. Later, after I was in the hospital in Santa Fe, New Mexico I picked up a copy of the Nov. 19, 1945 "YANKS" weekly newspaper and there was a bunch of pictures taken at the Fusiki POW camp the day we boarded the train to our rescue point. It was then I finally found out where I was. After Aug 15th and before we took the train, we found out that there was another POW camp there. I have never found or seen these camps mentioned anywhere. Maybe you can enlighten me about them. Of course they could have been listed under another name and I was not aware of them. In going through my all my notes and odds and ends that I got home with, I found an address that Capt. Sied wrote in my address book while we were both hospitalized at Bruns General Hospital in Santa Fe, New Mexico. This is the first time I have been through this stuff in 40 years, I guess, with your inquiry and the fact that I have started recording some of this, I broke it out today and ran into many things that I had forgotten I had. Among them was the good doctors address. I always thought he was from that area as he and his wife both worked on the Navajo Indian Reservation near Gallup, New Mexico, before he was called up from the reserves in early 1941. And while we were there I had dinner several times with the both of them and it was my understanding they were going back to the reservation to work. When I got married in August 1946 I received a nice gift from them and they were still in Santa Fe. Then a couple of years later I got an Obit notice from a POW buddy that Captain Sied had died. So far, that is all I have ever been able to find out about his demise. I keep referring to him as Capt. when the last time I saw him he had a Major's pin on. So I guess like all of us he got advanced a grade in pay. The address he wrote in my book gives 1738 S. 9th Street, Terre Haute, Indiana. Newspaper article: January 1st, 2005 |