He helped free POWs
by Mary Wakefield Buxton
 |
| Mary Wakefield Buxton |
Urbanna, Va.— This year I have enjoyed hearing many World War II tales that I am passing on to readers in order to document some important Middlesex history. What was it like to land in Japan right after the atom bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? This kind of personal experience needs to be recorded while we can still get the story. Lester Harris, formerly of Urbanna, who once taught science at Middlesex High School and eventually went on to become a college professor teaching students at Loma Linda Medical School in California, knows very well. He was interested enough in preserving his eyewitness account of WWII history to share his story with me. Thank you, Lester, and all other WWII vets who have contacted me.
Lester was among the first Americans who landed in Japan after the atomic bomb explosions. His unit quickly pushed their way through Japan to free prisoners of war (POWs) held in a prison camp near Hiroshima before any harm could come to them. Lester discovered that the imprisoned emaciated POWs awaiting release looked more like skeletons than men. They were captured soldiers from Australia, England, New Guinea and the USA. Some were survivors of the infamous Bataan Death March in 1942 when the Japanese forced captured Americans and Filipinos on a deadly forced evacuation from the Philippines.
Lester witnessed seeing these men as they came through the gates of a living hell to freedom. The vivid images stayed with him throughout his life.
After Lester served 18 months in the U.S. Army in New Guinea and after moving on to the Philippines, his unit landed in Japan immediately after the twin explosions in order to free prisoners. The American soldiers were totally unprepared for what they had to do because there were no support units on hand to feed and shelter them. “I slept in the empty street when we arrived in Japan and I recall it was so cold I stuffed newspapers in my uniform to keep warm,” he said.
He was awakened that first morning in Japan by his sergeant who told him they were being sent to a ship on a special mission. The men steamed south along the coast and entered the Sea of Japan. Lester soon learned they were headed for one of the more egregious POW camps and speed was of the essence.
The small band of soldiers was concerned about being in enemy territory, but wherever they went they saw no signs of Japanese. The citizens had retreated into their homes. After boarding a train for the last leg to the POW camp he remembered pulling into a station at 4:30 a.m. The Americans were starving and cold. Japanese women wearing Red Cross symbols appeared with hot tea and cookies. The soldiers were concerned the cookies might have been poisoned but they were too hungry to care and quickly devoured the refreshments.
The next morning they commandeered a hotel near the POW camp and converted the tiled kitchen into a large one room shower by running hot water pipes overhead with shower heads attached. The next morning they began processing the POWs who, at that point, were hardly more than skin and bone.
As hard as the war was on American soldiers, Lester realized anything was better than what it had been like being a POW in Japan. The men had been forced to work in coal mines from dawn to dusk with only rice and cabbage soup to sustain them. It was a slow death and only the very strongest survived the ordeal.
Lester and his unit helped the men into the mass showers and as the POWs straggled in, some barely able to walk, and stepped out of their raggedy clothing, Lester handed each one a bar of soap for their first hot shower in years. “Freedom is a bar of soap,” one of the men said to Lester, and he never forgot the words.
“We’re going home!” Lester recalled another man said as he left the shower to dress in his new uniform and head for a US Navy ship to take him back to the States. Those words rang in Lester’s brain for the rest of his life. Lester is now 89 years old and living with a daughter in King and Queen County.
Dear readers, do some of you feel that you have a hard life? Think of those who endured the hardships of WWII. Hearing these stories will put all present-day troubles in perspective. The suffering back then was far greater than what most of us know today.
WWII Vets, you experienced firsthand a harrowing chapter in U.S history. Ignorance of history is a dangerous thing. Sharing your memories will help teach our young the history they need to know for future survival. We must be prepared. Call or write Mary today.
