Ernest O. Norquist interviewed by Ed Wicklein, 27 January 1978, side 1.

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    This is Ed Wicklein and I'm interviewing Reverend Ernest Norquist [Norquist, Ernest O.] pastor of
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    the Bethany Presbyterian Church of Milwaukee, who was a prisoner of war of the Japanese in the
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    Pacific during the war. And today's date is January 27
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    1978. Ernie, would you first relate how
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    you happened to become a POW with some reference to dates and
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    place, your age at the time and your military rank,
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    unit and responsibility. Do you remember all of this?
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    [Norquist] Well, I'm not sure I can give you all of that. But,
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    I got into the army before World War Two started.
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    Actually I was being drafted and I had a chance to
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    enlist. And so I enlisted to get as big a trip out of the army as I could. I
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    was eager for a little adventure. And, some people said, "Aren't you be afraid
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    there will be a war?" And I said, "No. Nobody would dare to attack the United States."
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    And so I got over into the Philippine Islands. And, at the time that the
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    war started, I was at Fort William McKinley which isn't
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    far from Manila.
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    And, of course, we wound up in Battan, which
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    is a peninsula, which seemed to be defensible at least for the
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    time being. And I was in what was called Hospital,
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    General Hospital Number Two. I was a medical soldier. And, I started
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    out with the rank of private. At the time I was captured, I
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    was a private. The
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    circumstances of our capture were that the
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    surrender took place. Gen. Wainwright [Wainwright, Jonathan Mayhew, 1883-1953) issued the surrender order. And the
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    Japanese came through the area and just took us in.
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    Of course, before that, there had been a lot of fighting not that far away and treating
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    causalities and so forth. This was April 9
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    1941 that I was captured. [Wicklein] Ah 41 or 42?
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    [Norquist] 42. I'm sorry for you. [Wicklein] How old were you? [Norquist] I was 21 years old.
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    [Wicklein] now.
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    [norquist] Wait I was 22. Yea I was 22. We're changing all kind of things.
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    [Wicklein] Had Corregidor fallen when you were? [Norquist] No. Corregidor held out until the fifth of May.
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    [Wicklein] And then the Japanese just walked into your hospital? [Norquist] Yeah. Well, they came though the
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    tanks where we were.
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    I can still remember them coming down the road. I was standing at the side of the road. And, they just
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    swept by me. [Wicklein] And ignored you? [Norquist] Ignored me right.Right. And
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    took us over. And then the soldiers. Later
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    on soldiers came into our camp. I think they were looking for booty. And, they did take pens and watches and things
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    from people. I had a little flute actually. It was
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    a Filipino flute made of bamboo, and the soldier took my flute.
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    I didn't mind. [Wicklein] Now what. What happened after
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    the troops came, in terms of you all as prisoners?
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    [Norquist] Yeah. Well, they put barbed wire around us. [Wicklein] And, it was the
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    same building? [Norquist. Well. We were not in a building so to speak. We were in a bunch of shacks. And,
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    the hospital was carved out in the jungle, you have to remember, and was built of
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    jungle materials. The frames of the buildings were made of bamboo.
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    And the. There were many tents there in fact there. Where the operations were done was done
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    in a large tent that had been set up in the jungle. [Wicklein] It was really a field hospital? [Norquist] Yes. And
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    such buildings as had been put up were just up were made of native materials. And a few of us in
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    fact lived in a makeshift tent that we had made out of a
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    number of shelter halfs as they had called it, pieced them together and made a tent out of it.
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    But they surrounded us with barbed wire. Some of us made one attempt to escape.
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    We climbed out from behind the barbed wire and got into the jungle thinking that possibly we could get to
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    some hills and make connections with some free people. But we heard shots and we saw
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    soldiers. We were. We remained hidden whenver we heard noises and
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    heard shots and we were afraid. And we had no sense of
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    direction. So we came back. By the way, we found an abandoned hospital, a Philippino
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    Army hospital while we were out. And they had been left behind to die. There were
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    probably about 40 corpses and about three people still alive. There was
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    nothing you could do for them, but that was a shocking thing for us.
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    But we climbed. We sneaked back in through the barbed wire fence and got back
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    into prison camp. And then after some, a few weeks,
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    we were taken down to a place called.
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    Mare Evalous. There was a great assembly of prisoners from various
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    places places. And not long after that, we were marched
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    up through the peninsula [Bataan Death March]. By San Fernando and over to Manila. We were
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    marched in a long long column with very few Japanese soldiers guarding us.
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    Anybody that fell behind was shot. When America
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    learned about this, of course they talked about what outrage shooting our boys that were
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    helpless. But, of course, you have to realize any army would have done this. If you have very few
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    people guarding, there is still a war on. Very few people. people guarding a large unwieldy
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    a bunch of prisoners. And anybody falls away or seeks to escape.
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    It's understood that they would be shot. It really wasn't that terrible except that
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    we felt horrible seeing our own friends, seeing this happen to them. And it almost
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    happened to me. I got so weary at one point that I gave up. I handed
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    my few belongings to friends. And, I just said, "Fellows, I don't care what happens. I've got
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    to sit down." So I sat down. And, a Japanese soldier came at me with a bayonet and
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    suddenly I had strength of the sugar in my system or something, and I took off.
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    I see like a 2:40 and I was back among them again.
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    I'm going nuts. I managed to hang around all rest of the time.
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    But we were very weak. We hadn't had good food in many many
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    weeks. Of course. Even before we surrendered, we were down to meager rations.
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    And. On the march [Bataan Death March], we were fed very little. And, in fact, people would
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    trade off things to Filipinos along the way. I traded off a pair of shoes for a
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    couple of rotten bananas and also traded off something for some
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    underwear for what they called Poney sugar. And, the Filipinos would press
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    sugar into little blocks and the sugar was from the floors of the sugar mill.
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    And. they would feed it to animals. And, we got a hold of some of those cakes of sugar into
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    us that were delicious. But finally we reached
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    camp [Camp O'Donnell] where we thought we would bed down and then that would be our home. And within a few
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    hours they were yelling at us and getting us back in line. They'd taken us to the wrong camp.
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    So back in line we went. And, finally we got to the place called Cabanatuan
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    prison camp where we were stayed for 26 months and the
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    first days at that prison camp were the worst days. [Wicklein] That was near Manila? [Norquist] No. that was
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    in the province of Nueva Ecija in the great rice
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    growing area in the Central Plains of Luzon some distance from
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    Manila.
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    [Wicklein] Let me go back just for a minute. What happened to your patients in hospital?
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    [Norquist] To tell you the truth,
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    the Japanese took them off by the time we left,
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    there were no patients left at all. They came with trucks and carted the Filipinos
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    away. And what happened to them after that I do not know.
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    [Wicklein] You went into a prison camp and you were going to say?
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    [Norquist] Oh well. The first days were the worst.
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    There wasn't enough food and there wasn't enough water.
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    There was only one water spigot that operated fitfully in
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    the camp. And so, we had long lines of men trying to get water.
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    And there wasn't enough food so that if a stray animal came into camp,
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    they were dead before they took many steps, believe me,
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    anything that moved went into the pot. But many men died in those first days, and it
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    was partly because of starvation and partly because of the disease, because diarrhea,
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    [Wicklein] Dysentery? [Norquist] Dysentery was rampant.
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    We all got it. It's a wonder we didn't all die. We had well over a
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    thousand people. I think there were around fifteen hundred people dead in the cemetery
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    within the first year out of a total population of maybe eight thousand people.
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    So it was rough. But I'll tell you an interesting thing. We had
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    hardly any dental trouble at all because of that, because there was hardly anything sweet to eat.
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    So, the teeth held up well. But as time
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    went on, camp life began to get organized.
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    We had church right from the very start. It had to be clandestine at first because
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    any gatherings were forbidden. Couldn't get together and have a gathering at first.
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    So we met very secretly for church and had to be kind of quiet about it. But
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    there was church right from the start. And I think the church became very popular
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    in prison camp because what else was there that would help to give people the courage to
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    face the kind of conditions that they had. You can name off all kinds
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    of organizations that popular in ordinary life, and they would have had
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    very little relevance in the prison camp situation. But church did.
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    And, it wasn't only the prayer and the worship, but it was the spirit of helpfulness that the chaplains
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    evinced and that they, that the Christians in the
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    camp showed. Something that helped
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    people to live on. I'm sure that I made some of my basic decision
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    to go to church work, to be a pastor, arising out of the conditions
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    there. And, the Presbyterians would be interested to know that we had several
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    Presbyterian chaplains in the camp. There
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    was chaplain Borneman. [Wicklein] Remember his first name?
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    [Norquist] James I think his first name was. Borneman. [Borneman, John K.] And, then, there was chaplain
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    Frank Tiffany [Tiffany, Frank Leslie]. I noticed in the yearbook there's a Tiffany right
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    now that is a pastor.. And, I'm just wondering if that is some relative of his. But chaplain
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    Tiffany had a regular bible study in the camp. And I happened to be in his Bible study group.
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    And, I can still remember his talking about Princeton Seminary and
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    saying that that would be a great seminary to go to any of you young men wanted to become pastors.
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    He told about the number of foreign
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    students that come to Princeton and talked about the
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    wonderful fellowship there and the level of scholarship and all. And he made it seem very attractive.
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    So when I got back many many years later. I thought.
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    I thought very kindly of Princeton Seminary. And, I finally went there largely through the influence of Chaplain Tiffany.
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    But these men, along with others, did an enormous amount of good in the prison camp. Chaplains
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    organized for instance the handicraft contest. You might say, How could you ever have
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    hand-craft contest in a prison camp? But it is remarkable when the imagination goes to work,
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    how the simplest of materials can find their way to
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    beautiful and useful goods. So people made jewels out of
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    toothbrush handle,s for example. And, they took pieces of
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    metal tin that came from cans that the Red Cross .
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    From Red Cross parcels and made the most beautiful articles with rolled
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    edges so nobody would be cut. Beautiful jewelry armbands. what have you.
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    And, men that got hold of scrap wood actually made musical instruments. There were two
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    violins in prison camp made by a man who was an
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    expert violin maker. And all sorts of talents came to bear within the
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    church life of camp.
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    For example we had the director of the Manila Male Chorus in camp. And, his name was Neville Ball.
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    And, Neville Ball organized a great camp chorus that sang at church meetings and at
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    public holidays such as Memorial Day and so forth. And,
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    this choir achieved very high musical excellence
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    under his direction. We sang. And mind you, he remembered the music
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    and wrote down one copy for the different parts and
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    then a whole team of us would make copies from his
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    memorized music. And, that's how we got our music. And, there was a camp orchestra that used
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    music that he developed for them, too. He was an amazing musician. Unfortunately he died at the
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    end of the war. He was so eager to get home to his wife and his daughters that he left
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    prison camp in Manila before it was safe. And he was
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    killed in the last fighting that took place. That was the end of that.
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    But Neville Ball brought a lot of music into our camp. [Wicklein] He's
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    American? [Norquist] Yes. He was American. [Wicklein] Military? [Norquist] No.
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    civilians were out there. We had some civilians. And, he happened to have a civilian background. I think he had
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    gotten into the American Army somehow. But he had been a
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    civilian years before. There were others to that
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    were outstanding in all the things that helped to put men on their feet.
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    There were gardens. We called them "defeat" gardens.
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    We had gardens there in prison camp and the only trouble with the gardens was that a few people
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    had slippery fingers, and they would steal
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    when the fruit or vegtables were about ready to be harvested. Sometimes in the dark of night, the
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    food got stolen. But you have to remember the terrific temptation of hunger.
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    And for instance when we had communion in prison camp. And, after a while, the Japanese
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    allowed for communion wine to be brought in. It was real wine too. And
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    there was such a temptation for the bread and the wine that sometimes the people who would do the dispensing
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    back of the altar were discovered eating and nipping a little more then their
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    share. Well I think the good Lord forgave them under the circumstances.
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    [Wickleion] So you could have open services finally. Yeah. Oh yes. In fact we had a rather benevolent
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    camp commander for a while. He brought radios into camp. We could hear the news. Of
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    course the news was all going against America in those days. And so they didn't
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    mind our hearing it. [Wicklein] It was BBC you were picking up? [Norquist] Well on that radio we could only
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    get the Japanese-controlled Filipino's station. However the Japanese
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    themselves listened to shortwave stations. And, some of us
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    used to sneak over into the Japanese compound and lie under their buildings and listen. I heard Queen
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    Wilhelmina of the Netherlands give a broadcast in English and.
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    Oh. I heard a number of.
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    American Broadcasters came from KGETI and the Japanese
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    themselves were listening to it and the BBC too. Incidentally we had a
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    BBC announcer in our prison camp when we were in Japan. But that's much
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    later. [Wicklein] You had a responsible camp commander. What about the
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    guards?
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    [Norquist] Well when the commander was benevolent, then the guards would tend to be more benevolent too. If the
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    man at the top was tough, then the guards would tend to be
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    sadistic and of course in the early days they tended to be sadistic. And if
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    anybody even gave the impression that he was trying to escape he'd be shot.
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    One man was working in his defeat garden near the fence and Japanese guard thought he was getting too
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    close to the fence and shot him. But our men made protest our officers made
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    protest over this. And, to show their fairness, the Japanese
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    shot the guy that had shot our man. There was a certain rough
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    noblesse oblige about them at times. And, they weren't all bad. They could be friendly,
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    but you never knew you. You could never tell.
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    [Wicklein] You know if there were any Christians among the Japanese?
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    [Norquist] Yes. There was one man, when we were in Japan, that claimed to be a Christian. He
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    got kind of palsy with our men, but later we found that he was he was really somebody that
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    was trying to make reports on the men. And, so they didn't trust him anymore.
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    I'm sure there were some although given the population of Japan, I suppose, what is that? 1
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    percent Christian there weren't that many.
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    [Wicklein] Were you able to have medical units operating in your camp?
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    [Norquist] Yes. Our part of camp was set up as a
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    hospital. They had very little toward to work with.
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    Several of the wards where actually dying wards. They were places where people were, where the
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    hopeless cases were just put to die. And I still have in my possession, the
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    sketches of some of these emaciated people
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    lying there dying.
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    There was nothing to do for them. [Wicklein] And, you had your own cemetery?
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    [Norquist] Well. The Japanese provided an area for a cemetery.
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    We would dig ditches and then we would place the bodies in these ditches. And, they were just
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    placed in piles in the ditches. Much
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    later when the Japanese knew the war was beginning to go against them, they had us
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    put crosses up in the valley at spaced intervals. But there was no
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    relationship with the cross between the crosses and the bodies. They were just heaped together.
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    But this brings me to a kind of an interesting story. There was actually an
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    Indian in our camp. We had a number of Navajo Indians. And, this
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    particular Navajo Indian died and was taken to the morgue. And,
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    from the morgue where the only thing that was done at the morgue was to take the clothes off the
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    dead people so the clothes could be used for the living. And that really was a mercy. That
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    wasn't anything. There's nothing really gruesome about it under the
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    circumstances. So the the leaves were
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    brought together for ferns and other palm
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    branches. And, the dead had these branches placed over them for a
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    certain dignity of privacy when they were taken to the graves.
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    And they were carried on what had been windows shutters. These were used as
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    litters. So this particular fellow was taken to the graveside. He was dumped
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    into the grave and it began to rain. His eyes opened. So they hoisted
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    him up. And, he was brought back in. And, he got
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    to be quite healthy again.
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    So then he died again. And, this time he got to the morgue and people recognized him.
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    And, they said this is the fellow that really wasn't dead. Of course in America you don't have
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    a chance because by the time they bleed you are what's what chance have you got. But anyway
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    there he was he was in the morgue. And, they were going to take him to the grave site.
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    And somebody we'd better make sure this guy is dead. So they listened very carefully and
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    detected a slight pulse, took him back to the hospital, and he
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    lived. And the last I knew of him, he may be alive now for all I know, but the
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    last I knew of him, he had been put into the hoosegow because he had
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    been caught stealing some liquor. Because you say, How would you
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    ever have liquor in prison camp? But you know. There was an underground. Filipinos would sneak up to the
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    fence. And Americans would come to the fence. And, there would be trading going on. So that's
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    how they got liquor. And, some of them got quite drunk in prison.
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    [Wicklein] You know Navajos had a reputation for communicating with each other in Navajo language so Japs couldn't
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    understand. Did you see expressions of that?
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    [Norquist] No. not really. They were used later in the War in such a way.
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    But in our case they were treated more or less like anybody else and used just as
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    plain soldiers. [Wicklein] Did you have third country nationals, not Filipino,
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    not American?
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    [Norquist] Yes. We had some Norwegians.
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    I recall there was one Norwegian by the name of Stuerhald. [Wicklein] But wasn't in
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    a war with Japan, were they? [Norquist] Well. There was.
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    You see the Germans were fighting the Norwegians. And, these guys
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    were actually in the, in the merchant marine. And, they were
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    captured by a German raider. And, the Germans, it being in the Pacific, the Japanese
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    the German transferred them to a Japanese ship. And, the Japanese ship
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    wound up taking them to the Philippines. So there was a Swede also. And his
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    name was Ane Gustafson.. And I saw him after the war. [Wicklein] He was a neutral? [Norquist] going over to
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    Japan. I mean going over to Sweden. He had been on a merchant ship that was
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    captured by the Germans. A Norwegian ship. And, many Swedes and
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    Norwegians worked together on ships because of the common language. It is really the same language with
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    variations. So. He and I got to be very good friends.
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    And, I saw him after the war in Malmo, Sweden, where he
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    was living with his new bride very lovely young Swedish girl.
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    But you see we stayed there [Cabanatuan] at prison camp in the Philippines for twenty-six months.
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    and then we transferred over to Japan. We went in the ship for well over
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    a thousand of us in this one ship in the hold and we couldn't even sit down much
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    less lie down. And at the end of 12 days we got to
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    Japan. And there, they took us up on deck and hosed us down with sea water,
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    and rinsed off the worst of the dirt, and then took us
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    ashore. We landed at a place called Shimonoseki [Shimonoseki Quarantine Station]
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    And there's another town there named Moji [Moji Prisoner of War Camp]. And from there, we went
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    north to Tokyo. Before we left. I got to tell you one
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    funny thing. The officers had been
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    allowed to take their foot lockers all this distance. Well,
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    one or two of these foot lockers got opened by the G.I.s. And they found that
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    some of the officers were actually transporting coconut all the way up into Japan.
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    And besides it was now rancid. And, the G.I.s were so angry that they had
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    been carrying these foot lockers for the officers that, when we went over a bridge, we dumped
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    them off. I personally dumped off a footlocker containing the possessions of an officer. And, it
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    smashed down below on the dirt. And, I didn't feel badly at all. And, to this day, I don't feel badly about it.
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    You've got to realize that we were an entirely different level than the officers. Even
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    in prison camp, they were often kept separate and lived a little better than we did.
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    And so there wasn't any great love for some of them. On the other hand, some were very dear people and
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    outgoing and cared about the men. And, we had great
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    respect for them, you see. Especially one of the chaplains. The men would do anything for
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    him because he put himself out so much for them. But there was a lot of class
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    distinction beyond what you have in the armed forces today. For instance when we went over
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    to the Philippines. On the way the, ship stopped at Hawaii and Guam. And, the
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    officers got to go ashore, But the men couldn't and so when the officers came back
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    onboard, the men threw pop bottles at them, but nothing was ever
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    done about it. I think maybe some people understood why we felt the way we did. I didn't throw any pop bottles.
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    But we finally got to Tokyo and there we were marched
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    across a small bridge to a little island in Tokyo Bay. I never forget
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    how gray and green that place [Omori Prison Camp] looked. It had about a seven foot wall
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    around it. It was a wooden really a wooden fence. There were no. There was no way you could
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    see out through it. It was all opaque. And there we were
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    marched into a, into a couple of
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    dormitories. They were barracks.
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    And we sat down. And, a few of the limies that were there, the British
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    came over and began to tell us what the camp was like and they said watch out for the bird.
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    It turned out that the bird was Corporal Watanabe [Watanabe, Mutsuhiro].
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    And, he had a violent temper. And, he would begin to beat people up at a moment's
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    notice for almost anything. And, for instance, if a man's
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    blanket blankets were not just perfectly matched up and
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    folded perfectly, he would beat the man up. And
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    it happened that one day we were standing at attention. And he said, "When I speak you,
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    must look at me, do you understand?" And, we understood. But I let my eyes
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    waver a little bit to watch something that moved, going across the yard. And,
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    he came up to me and he pulled me out of line. And he said, "cut or done it all down.
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    Do you not understand when I speak you must look at me." I said, "Yes, sir."
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    And he said, "You must be severely punished. Do you understand?"
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    I said, "Yes, sir."
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    So he hit me and I went down. And, I got up again. He hit me again,
  • speaker
    and I went out completely. Well it happened that he had been
  • speaker
    telling us that we should go around and pick up pieces of paper and clean up the area before I
  • speaker
    got hit. And, when I woke up, I was walking and I was going around sort
  • speaker
    of halfway looking for pieces of paper, so he had made his point. But when we were
  • speaker
    in Japan we worked. We worked in
  • speaker
    railway yards. We worked on ships. We worked in
  • speaker
    factories. In the Philippines, we had mostly worked on
  • speaker
    a farm. We had raised the food for our own compound. And, we
  • speaker
    also worked on an airport that was never used while we were in the Philippines. And I got a funny story
  • speaker
    connected with that. And that is that some of the fellows were assigned to be
  • speaker
    surveyors. And so, they went around with tripods and with
  • speaker
    notebooks and everything. So, a couple of friends of mine had a great imagination and
  • speaker
    decided they would be surveyors too. So they got a hold of some sticks and made a
  • speaker
    tripod and dyed it black. And, they got a notebook. And, they went
  • speaker
    around waving to each other atdistances.
  • speaker
    Nobody gave them away. They went on for about a week that way and got out of a lot of heavy work.
  • speaker
    And finally decided, they couldn't pull it off much longer so they gave up. But in.
  • speaker
    In Japan it was amazing the ingenuity that the British had. You see some
  • speaker
    of them had been criminals. And, they'd been sent over to the Far East as alternative
  • speaker
    to prison. And so they had gone to Singapore and Hong Kong and
  • speaker
    other places in the Malay Peninsula. And, some of them were
  • speaker
    expert thieves. And, they stole the Japanese blind. They got a hold of
  • speaker
    wiring and they had hotplates going in prison camp. And there they got a hold of any kind of
  • speaker
    food. If you had to give an order for a steak or for or for
  • speaker
    salmon or what have you, you'd put in the order with one of these British. And,
  • speaker
    in a short time, he have it there for you. But, you had to pay for it. And you pay for it in whatever
  • speaker
    possessions you had if you still owned a good fountain pen or a good watch, why that
  • speaker
    might do. Or, it might be something else that they desired. And another thing about the British, they
  • speaker
    never went without tea. Never did they go without tea in prison camp. They always had
  • speaker
    some way to steal the tea and have it there and found ingenious ways to cook it. Like for
  • speaker
    instance we had a delouser in camp that deloused clothing. It
  • speaker
    was worked on the steam principle. Well a teapot would get slipped in on top, and you could get
  • speaker
    the tea. Would get hot. And speaking of the
  • speaker
    heat, we had a bath in prison camp [Omori Prison Camp] that would hold about fifteen men.
  • speaker
    And all of us would get to bathe. And, we did it by rotation so
  • speaker
    that one time you might be toward the beginning and another time you might be toward the end. And, the water was mighty
  • speaker
    scummy if you were toward the end.. And, you just sort of smeared yourself and hope that it was clean a little
  • speaker
    bIt. But there was an underground going. The
  • speaker
    British ran it. They could steal about anything they wanted because they worked all over Tokyo.
  • speaker
    Not to say that life was rosy in prison camp. It wasn't.
  • speaker
    The food was better there. We got the same ration the Japanese soldiers, except they
  • speaker
    had access, of course, to stores on the outside. We didn't. But they got the same. We got the same rations the soldiers got when we were in Japan.
  • speaker
    [Wicklein] You had mentioned delousing. Did people come down with typhus?
  • speaker
    [Norquist] Yes. Typhoid was. [Wicklein] Not typhoid, but typhus? [Norquist] Typhoid fever. I don't know. [Wicklein] Typhoid
  • speaker
    is carried in the water. Typhus is carried by lice. [Norquist] I don't know
  • speaker
    I don't remember it, to tell you the truth. I don't remember seeing
  • speaker
    typhus, but it's possible there was. I know we had a
  • speaker
    lot of typhoid fever. I had it myself. And,
  • speaker
    there was a lot of yellow jaundice when we were in the Philippines. [Wicklein] There were a lot
  • speaker
    of P.O.W. ships that were unmarked in going from the Philippines to
  • speaker
    Japan that were sunk by American submarines. [Norquist] Friends of ours were killed that way.
  • speaker
    One of our good friend of mine made one of these rare escaptes in that case.
  • speaker
    His ship went down. And he made it to the coast, the China coast. He was rescued.
  • speaker
    And is he is still still alive. He's chaplain Robert Taylor.
  • speaker
    A Southern Baptist and he's now Representative for
  • speaker
    a Baptist university down there, right around, Dallas. I've forgotten the name.
  • speaker
    Texas Texas Southern or whatever that means that. He is
  • speaker
    still alive.
  • speaker
    [Wicklein] When were you Limmer liberated?. Forty five?
  • speaker
    Probably [Norquist] Yeah. Yeah. Well before I tell you about that. I just must mention Christmas season in prison camp.
  • speaker
    because in prison camp Christmas was a sad time, but it was beautiful what the men did.
  • speaker
    One year, forty-three I think it was. They came up with a Christmas tree in prison camp [Cabanatuan Prison Camp], all made
  • speaker
    out of bits of paper. It looked like the real thing. And, somebody had carried ornaments all the way
  • speaker
    there and put them on it. We have a plays in prison camp. They put on the Dickens "A
  • speaker
    Christmas Carol," for example. And, we sang the Christmas hymns. We went around. I was in the
  • speaker
    choir that went around singing "Adeste Fidelis." and
  • speaker
    "O, Little Town of Bethlehem," and all the rest. It meant so much to the men to. It gave them a great lift to
  • speaker
    hear these Christmas songs. But, of course, the war was going against the
  • speaker
    Japanese in nineteen forty-five very heavily.
  • speaker
    And we had air raids that were devastating areas. Sometimes, the shrapnel would whiz through
  • speaker
    our camp [Omori Prison Camp]. And, there were
  • speaker
    firebombings that lit fires that were so bright that we could read a newspaper in
  • speaker
    prison camp from the fires that were burning in Tokyo.
  • speaker
    [Wicklein] Was your camp [Omori Prison Camp] marked P.O.W.? for me. [Norquist] Yes.
  • speaker
    It had a big cross on it. And there were times, when American fighter planes flew over and wagged
  • speaker
    their wings as they went over us, as much as to say we know we are there, but
  • speaker
    they bombed not too far away.
  • speaker
    And.
  • speaker
    We didn't glory in some of the sights we saw. The bloated bodies floating against our
  • speaker
    island. We took poles and pushed them away. And of course we also felt sad when our
  • speaker
    own planes were shot down. And, sometimes the fragments of the plane or a
  • speaker
    pilot's uniform would float against our island [Omori Island]. Vocalise said
  • speaker
    that happened. We felt sorry for the Japanese people during this thing too. Standing in long
  • speaker
    lines for their thin soup. They were much worse off than the military were. The
  • speaker
    military was on top of the heap the whole way through. [Wicklein] You were still going into Tokyo during the bombing?
  • speaker
    [Norquist] Yes.
  • speaker
    Yes. But our factories were bombed, and there was little left of them, very little left.
  • speaker
    Sometimes you would see miles of devastation as we went along in our old decrepit bus that was
  • speaker
    powered by charcoal. And, it would move very fitfully sometime and had
  • speaker
    to wait for the charcoal to get up enough gas to get it going again. Very
  • speaker
    fitfully through the streets.
  • speaker
    [Wicklein] Any communication with Japanese civilians?
  • speaker
    [Norquist] Yes. Yes. There were a few times. For instance when we
  • speaker
    went out on work details, we'd get to talk with them. Most of the time we
  • speaker
    found they didn't know English, but we did talk to them, and we talked to Japanese soldiers
  • speaker
    in Japan. They seemed more free to talk than they had been in the Philippines. And
  • speaker
    they would say things like wars are no good. And someday you go back to New York,
  • speaker
    and I go to Tokyo. Peace is good. We would say, "Yeah."
  • speaker
    Sensi Dhami, Dhami. War is
  • speaker
    no good. They too had their
  • speaker
    losses. They'd lost their parents or they'd loss this and that. They were sad. They were just human beings like the rest of us
  • speaker
    were.
  • speaker
    Incidentally I have met some Japanese after the war. We found we had a certain comradeship
  • speaker
    because we'd been in the same war together, although we'd been on the opposite side. But I mean, for instance, that I
  • speaker
    have no thoughts about Fiji Islanders. I know they're human. But I have no feelings about them. The Japanese, I kind of
  • speaker
    like because I did have at least some cultural relationship with them
  • speaker
    during all this period when we happened to be on opposite sides in the War.
  • speaker
    [Wicklein] It is interesting. One person in our area who was taken in the Philippines went to Manchuria
  • speaker
    in a camp where they shot all the guards dead when they were liberated. He still
  • speaker
    walks out when he sees, away when he sees a Japanese in this country.
  • speaker
    Well actually in our camp they took away all the mean guards long before we were liberated. And, they left some
  • speaker
    teenagers there that, I think, were only civilians.
  • speaker
    Why should you hate them but. When we were freed, as a matter of
  • speaker
    fact, our men went down into the village. I think the name of the village was maybe Watashimin
  • speaker
    and they went down into the village. And, it wasn't long before they were fraternising around and
  • speaker
    sororisizing around so to speak in a way that one would think no war had ever existed.
  • speaker
    [Wicklein] Were you set free by troops after the Americans came in or? [Norquist] No no no no it
  • speaker
    came by announcement. The British Major in charge of our camp called us
  • speaker
    together and said, "Gentlemen. The day for which you have waited all these years has at last
  • speaker
    arrived. You are now free men." And a great cheer went up. And, by the way, I had a little
  • speaker
    advance notice of this. They asked me if I could. They knew I had crayons so I made
  • speaker
    some flags. I made a British flag and an American flag, and we hoisted them up after flipping
  • speaker
    a coin as to which should have a preferred position.
  • speaker
    And, we hoisted them up at that very meeting. I had a
  • speaker
    trumpet with me all this time. It had been taken from me once, but I got it back. And, I still have it.
  • speaker
    And they had me play "The
  • speaker
    Star-Spangled Banner" and "God Save the King," along with the
  • speaker
    troops singing it. Our men were very patriotic in all those days. Everybody kind of had a
  • speaker
    love of country. It was engrained in them. And, I still have a streak of that in me.
  • speaker
    As much as I hated the Vietnam War, I have a great love for America and believe
  • speaker
    it even has to be strong in the kind of a world in which we live. I feel that way.
  • speaker
    But we were freed then, and it was about August 22nd,
  • speaker
    nineteen forty-five. And then September 13 we
  • speaker
    got to leave camp. And we went in a very nice train. Before that of course we've
  • speaker
    been traveling in poor conditions. But, now we were taken onboard a very
  • speaker
    nice train with mohair green upholstery and taken down to the coast
  • speaker
    where we got on an L.S.T. that took us out to a hospital ship, which took us back to this
  • speaker
    country. It was the risk. [Wicklein] So, you went right back? You didn't? [Norquist] It took quite a while to
  • speaker
    get back. It had been a cruise ship, the Entaeus. I think of
  • speaker
    the Eastern Steamship line. And that's how we got to come
  • speaker
    back. And I remember seeing these first sailors that we saw on the ship how
  • speaker
    big they were compared to us. Huge! And, how pretty the girls
  • speaker
    seemed to be. Probably they weren't all that beautiful, but I can remember lying in my bunk on the ship
  • speaker
    and looking at the nurses and thinking how beautiful. I suppose it wasn't abnormal to think
  • speaker
    that way.
  • speaker
    [Wicklein] After yourself. I mean, after they announced that you were
  • speaker
    free. Did the camp [Omori Prison Camp] continue to function in the same way. Or did you have a logistics
  • speaker
    problem in getting food or what?
  • speaker
    [Norquist] No. As a matter of fact, even before that, the Japanese had brought in so much food you couldn't
  • speaker
    eat it all. They brought in phonographs and phonograph records and
  • speaker
    generally were buttering us up. But then, of course, that happens also with every army like in
  • speaker
    Bataan, before we were captured, our people took amazingly good care of the
  • speaker
    Japanese prisoners toward the end. And, the Japanese the inspectors came through and said, "Oh, sure, sure."
  • speaker
    all. They were very pleased to see what nice beds they had and everything you know.
  • speaker
    And but this was this is what normal people do. [Wicklein] Did you ever see Red Cross
  • speaker
    representatives? [Norquist] Yes. There were Swiss and Swedish representatives
  • speaker
    that came through to inspect our camps. And during the period when they came through, we always knew
  • speaker
    they were coming. During the period when they came through, the rations were good you know.
  • speaker
    And we were usually issued some nice clothing to put on and all this and that to make
  • speaker
    it look good. This sort of thing happened.
  • speaker
    [Wicklein] Did your experience help shape your thought and
  • speaker
    philosophy on life? [Norquist] Oh! I'm sure of that.
  • speaker
    For one thing, I suppose that
  • speaker
    I have an abiding loyalty to the church, which has been with me all my days,
  • speaker
    coming out of how much the church meant to us in prison camp. And I can't conceive, in fact, of going by a Sunday
  • speaker
    without going to church, even on vacation I do it. If we are not near a church,
  • speaker
    we have our own service.
  • speaker
    And much of what's the, what the Church does in the world in terms of its outreach and
  • speaker
    refugees, situations, places of hunger, places of rehabilitation after earthquakes,
  • speaker
    after the devastation of war and so forth,
  • speaker
    I can relate to directly because of the prison camp
  • speaker
    experience. These things mean something to me.
  • speaker
    I suppose also I have a little more contentment
  • speaker
    with life because of what happened. To me, it's good to have
  • speaker
    an appetite and a simple meal. I don't need to have an expensive meal. I
  • speaker
    enjoy simple foods: a little oatmeal in the morning is just as
  • speaker
    good to me as having ham and eggs. Whatever I have,
  • speaker
    I feel a sneaky sense of gratitude for, let's say. I suppose
  • speaker
    that colors. Also, one did a lot of dreaming in the Camp and dreaming about
  • speaker
    someday having a good wife, having children and seeing them
  • speaker
    grow up and seeing good come into their lives. All of this
  • speaker
    is fulfilled in abundance and
  • speaker
    for this, I am very grateful too. [Wicklein] Thank you.
  • speaker
    Are there other pertinent things you think ought to be mentioned, that we might have missed?
  • speaker
    [Norquist] I don't know about that.
  • speaker
    I suppose one can mention that, after one goes through an experience like this, one always
  • speaker
    has a sense of comradeship with the other people that went through it. So that we do have
  • speaker
    reunions around the country. I haven't been to too many, but it has been good to see some people who
  • speaker
    were there with me. I have some abiding friendships with a few people that were in prison camp with me,
  • speaker
    notably with Roy Toulson, a fellow
  • speaker
    Christian very devout. He's a photographer works for a newspaper out of
  • speaker
    Denver area. And, right here in the Milwaukee area where I live, we have
  • speaker
    a group of ex prisoners of war that now gather infrequently. We used
  • speaker
    to gather once a month, but it hasn't been so often. Many of them have died off and have been severely ill.
  • speaker
    Many of them carry the physical scars of their problem
  • speaker
    and will all
  • speaker
    their life. So. We have been able to help one
  • speaker
    another and had to go to a number of funerals, for men that have died
  • speaker
    up here. [Wicklein] All P.O.W.'s from the Far East or from all over?
  • speaker
    [Norquist] Well. The one, the group that meets here in Milwaukee is from everywhere.
  • speaker
    We have ex-German prisoners, some of whom tried to make escapes. So they have quite interesting
  • speaker
    stories to tell. But it's a common experience anyway.
  • speaker
    And the gatherings though that occur in the Maywood and Chicago
  • speaker
    area, in North Carolina and on down in San Diego, out
  • speaker
    around Seattle Washington and other places are those that were
  • speaker
    prisoners in the Far East.
  • speaker
    So most of them were from the Philippines. [Wicklein] Anything else
  • speaker
    you can think at this point?
  • speaker
    [Norquist] It's I think much else.
  • speaker
    The. Time colors one's memories.
  • speaker
    Now I remember mostly the good things. You know also talk about the
  • speaker
    cruelties and even the tortures that did
  • speaker
    occur. It would be unfair not to mention that. [Wicklein] For what purpose? Well for example, there was one
  • speaker
    man that tried to escape. And, he got out of the Camp [Cabanatuan Prison Camp] . And, they
  • speaker
    brought him back in to make an example of him. They gave him a slow death. I was eyewitness to this. We
  • speaker
    were lined up to watch it. And they took their bayonets and pricked him as he lay twitching on
  • speaker
    the ground. Small cuts and very small
  • speaker
    cuts that gradually did him into death.
  • speaker
    And another time there were men that apparently tried to escape. There was some
  • speaker
    doubt about it. But, they made them stand in the sun, tied to
  • speaker
    poles. And if you got any idea how hot it gets in the Philippines, you know what
  • speaker
    torture that was. And, we were all lined up at the edge of the fence. And, we had to watch them.
  • speaker
    Where on command, they dug trenches in the ground. And then, the soldiers took
  • speaker
    their guns, and there were the reports. And, the men slumped and fell down in their own graves they had dug with their own muscles.
  • speaker
    And we of course reacted strongly to this. We were
  • speaker
    terribly grieved and felt so frustrated and helpless, not to be able to help them,
  • speaker
    men that we knew and loved. Helpless men.
  • speaker
    And other things happened too. Sometimes the whole
  • speaker
    camp would have to go on low rations because one person had done something
  • speaker
    that the admins didn't like. But, I like to remember the
  • speaker
    fun and the humorous things. Sometimes, it was a gruesome kind of humor, like
  • speaker
    men would sometimes get into arguments. They call it cabin fever, I believe.
  • speaker
    And, they would fight very vociferously, verbally
  • speaker
    over questions that were very trivial. And, sometimes within three hours, both of them were
  • speaker
    dead. Kind of a gruesome kind of a joke in a way.
  • speaker
    I remember
  • speaker
    one
Details
Title

Ernest O. Norquist interviewed by Ed Wicklein, 27 January 1978, side 1.

Description

Ernest Norquist was a prisoner of war, held by the Japanese Army in the Philippines.

Creator

Norquist, Ernest O., 1919-2004. (interviewee)
Wicklein, Edward C. (interviewer)

Date

1978
January 27, 1978

Type of resource

sound recording-nonmusical

Genre

oral histories
sound recordings
interviews

Form

audiocassettes

Extent

1 audiocassette (90 min.) : analog

Language

English

Subject names

Norquist, Ernest O., 1919-2004.

Topics

World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives.
World War, 1939-1945--Prisoners and prisons.

Rights status

Contact repository for more information

Physical location

CASSETTE 381; Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia, PA

Related item

[Interview of] Rev. Ernest Norquist, WWII prisoner of war [sound recording] / by Edward C. Wicklein.--http://catalog.history.pcusa.org/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?biblionumbe...

Identifier (local)

cassette381_norquist1978_side1

PID (Persistent Identifier)

islandora:116426

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