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Ernest O. Norquist interviewed by Ed Wicklein, 27 January 1978, side 1.
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- speakerThis is Ed Wicklein and I'm interviewing Reverend Ernest Norquist [Norquist, Ernest O.] pastor of
- speakerthe Bethany Presbyterian Church of Milwaukee, who was a prisoner of war of the Japanese in the
- speakerPacific during the war. And today's date is January 27
- speaker1978. Ernie, would you first relate how
- speakeryou happened to become a POW with some reference to dates and
- speakerplace, your age at the time and your military rank,
- speakerunit and responsibility. Do you remember all of this?
- speaker[Norquist] Well, I'm not sure I can give you all of that. But,
- speakerI got into the army before World War Two started.
- speakerActually I was being drafted and I had a chance to
- speakerenlist. And so I enlisted to get as big a trip out of the army as I could. I
- speakerwas eager for a little adventure. And, some people said, "Aren't you be afraid
- speakerthere will be a war?" And I said, "No. Nobody would dare to attack the United States."
- speakerAnd so I got over into the Philippine Islands. And, at the time that the
- speakerwar started, I was at Fort William McKinley which isn't
- speakerfar from Manila.
- speakerAnd, of course, we wound up in Battan, which
- speakeris a peninsula, which seemed to be defensible at least for the
- speakertime being. And I was in what was called Hospital,
- speakerGeneral Hospital Number Two. I was a medical soldier. And, I started
- speakerout with the rank of private. At the time I was captured, I
- speakerwas a private. The
- speakercircumstances of our capture were that the
- speakersurrender took place. Gen. Wainwright [Wainwright, Jonathan Mayhew, 1883-1953) issued the surrender order. And the
- speakerJapanese came through the area and just took us in.
- speakerOf course, before that, there had been a lot of fighting not that far away and treating
- speakercausalities and so forth. This was April 9
- speaker1941 that I was captured. [Wicklein] Ah 41 or 42?
- speaker[Norquist] 42. I'm sorry for you. [Wicklein] How old were you? [Norquist] I was 21 years old.
- speaker[Wicklein] now.
- speaker[norquist] Wait I was 22. Yea I was 22. We're changing all kind of things.
- speaker[Wicklein] Had Corregidor fallen when you were? [Norquist] No. Corregidor held out until the fifth of May.
- speaker[Wicklein] And then the Japanese just walked into your hospital? [Norquist] Yeah. Well, they came though the
- speakertanks where we were.
- speakerI can still remember them coming down the road. I was standing at the side of the road. And, they just
- speakerswept by me. [Wicklein] And ignored you? [Norquist] Ignored me right.Right. And
- speakertook us over. And then the soldiers. Later
- speakeron soldiers came into our camp. I think they were looking for booty. And, they did take pens and watches and things
- speakerfrom people. I had a little flute actually. It was
- speakera Filipino flute made of bamboo, and the soldier took my flute.
- speakerI didn't mind. [Wicklein] Now what. What happened after
- speakerthe troops came, in terms of you all as prisoners?
- speaker[Norquist] Yeah. Well, they put barbed wire around us. [Wicklein] And, it was the
- speakersame building? [Norquist. Well. We were not in a building so to speak. We were in a bunch of shacks. And,
- speakerthe hospital was carved out in the jungle, you have to remember, and was built of
- speakerjungle materials. The frames of the buildings were made of bamboo.
- speakerAnd the. There were many tents there in fact there. Where the operations were done was done
- speakerin a large tent that had been set up in the jungle. [Wicklein] It was really a field hospital? [Norquist] Yes. And
- speakersuch buildings as had been put up were just up were made of native materials. And a few of us in
- speakerfact lived in a makeshift tent that we had made out of a
- speakernumber of shelter halfs as they had called it, pieced them together and made a tent out of it.
- speakerBut they surrounded us with barbed wire. Some of us made one attempt to escape.
- speakerWe climbed out from behind the barbed wire and got into the jungle thinking that possibly we could get to
- speakersome hills and make connections with some free people. But we heard shots and we saw
- speakersoldiers. We were. We remained hidden whenver we heard noises and
- speakerheard shots and we were afraid. And we had no sense of
- speakerdirection. So we came back. By the way, we found an abandoned hospital, a Philippino
- speakerArmy hospital while we were out. And they had been left behind to die. There were
- speakerprobably about 40 corpses and about three people still alive. There was
- speakernothing you could do for them, but that was a shocking thing for us.
- speakerBut we climbed. We sneaked back in through the barbed wire fence and got back
- speakerinto prison camp. And then after some, a few weeks,
- speakerwe were taken down to a place called.
- speakerMare Evalous. There was a great assembly of prisoners from various
- speakerplaces places. And not long after that, we were marched
- speakerup through the peninsula [Bataan Death March]. By San Fernando and over to Manila. We were
- speakermarched in a long long column with very few Japanese soldiers guarding us.
- speakerAnybody that fell behind was shot. When America
- speakerlearned about this, of course they talked about what outrage shooting our boys that were
- speakerhelpless. But, of course, you have to realize any army would have done this. If you have very few
- speakerpeople guarding, there is still a war on. Very few people. people guarding a large unwieldy
- speakera bunch of prisoners. And anybody falls away or seeks to escape.
- speakerIt's understood that they would be shot. It really wasn't that terrible except that
- speakerwe felt horrible seeing our own friends, seeing this happen to them. And it almost
- speakerhappened to me. I got so weary at one point that I gave up. I handed
- speakermy few belongings to friends. And, I just said, "Fellows, I don't care what happens. I've got
- speakerto sit down." So I sat down. And, a Japanese soldier came at me with a bayonet and
- speakersuddenly I had strength of the sugar in my system or something, and I took off.
- speakerI see like a 2:40 and I was back among them again.
- speakerI'm going nuts. I managed to hang around all rest of the time.
- speakerBut we were very weak. We hadn't had good food in many many
- speakerweeks. Of course. Even before we surrendered, we were down to meager rations.
- speakerAnd. On the march [Bataan Death March], we were fed very little. And, in fact, people would
- speakertrade off things to Filipinos along the way. I traded off a pair of shoes for a
- speakercouple of rotten bananas and also traded off something for some
- speakerunderwear for what they called Poney sugar. And, the Filipinos would press
- speakersugar into little blocks and the sugar was from the floors of the sugar mill.
- speakerAnd. they would feed it to animals. And, we got a hold of some of those cakes of sugar into
- speakerus that were delicious. But finally we reached
- speakercamp [Camp O'Donnell] where we thought we would bed down and then that would be our home. And within a few
- speakerhours they were yelling at us and getting us back in line. They'd taken us to the wrong camp.
- speakerSo back in line we went. And, finally we got to the place called Cabanatuan
- speakerprison camp where we were stayed for 26 months and the
- speakerfirst days at that prison camp were the worst days. [Wicklein] That was near Manila? [Norquist] No. that was
- speakerin the province of Nueva Ecija in the great rice
- speakergrowing area in the Central Plains of Luzon some distance from
- speakerManila.
- speaker[Wicklein] Let me go back just for a minute. What happened to your patients in hospital?
- speaker[Norquist] To tell you the truth,
- speakerthe Japanese took them off by the time we left,
- speakerthere were no patients left at all. They came with trucks and carted the Filipinos
- speakeraway. And what happened to them after that I do not know.
- speaker[Wicklein] You went into a prison camp and you were going to say?
- speaker[Norquist] Oh well. The first days were the worst.
- speakerThere wasn't enough food and there wasn't enough water.
- speakerThere was only one water spigot that operated fitfully in
- speakerthe camp. And so, we had long lines of men trying to get water.
- speakerAnd there wasn't enough food so that if a stray animal came into camp,
- speakerthey were dead before they took many steps, believe me,
- speakeranything that moved went into the pot. But many men died in those first days, and it
- speakerwas partly because of starvation and partly because of the disease, because diarrhea,
- speaker[Wicklein] Dysentery? [Norquist] Dysentery was rampant.
- speakerWe all got it. It's a wonder we didn't all die. We had well over a
- speakerthousand people. I think there were around fifteen hundred people dead in the cemetery
- speakerwithin the first year out of a total population of maybe eight thousand people.
- speakerSo it was rough. But I'll tell you an interesting thing. We had
- speakerhardly any dental trouble at all because of that, because there was hardly anything sweet to eat.
- speakerSo, the teeth held up well. But as time
- speakerwent on, camp life began to get organized.
- speakerWe had church right from the very start. It had to be clandestine at first because
- speakerany gatherings were forbidden. Couldn't get together and have a gathering at first.
- speakerSo we met very secretly for church and had to be kind of quiet about it. But
- speakerthere was church right from the start. And I think the church became very popular
- speakerin prison camp because what else was there that would help to give people the courage to
- speakerface the kind of conditions that they had. You can name off all kinds
- speakerof organizations that popular in ordinary life, and they would have had
- speakervery little relevance in the prison camp situation. But church did.
- speakerAnd, it wasn't only the prayer and the worship, but it was the spirit of helpfulness that the chaplains
- speakerevinced and that they, that the Christians in the
- speakercamp showed. Something that helped
- speakerpeople to live on. I'm sure that I made some of my basic decision
- speakerto go to church work, to be a pastor, arising out of the conditions
- speakerthere. And, the Presbyterians would be interested to know that we had several
- speakerPresbyterian chaplains in the camp. There
- speakerwas chaplain Borneman. [Wicklein] Remember his first name?
- speaker[Norquist] James I think his first name was. Borneman. [Borneman, John K.] And, then, there was chaplain
- speakerFrank Tiffany [Tiffany, Frank Leslie]. I noticed in the yearbook there's a Tiffany right
- speakernow that is a pastor.. And, I'm just wondering if that is some relative of his. But chaplain
- speakerTiffany had a regular bible study in the camp. And I happened to be in his Bible study group.
- speakerAnd, I can still remember his talking about Princeton Seminary and
- speakersaying that that would be a great seminary to go to any of you young men wanted to become pastors.
- speakerHe told about the number of foreign
- speakerstudents that come to Princeton and talked about the
- speakerwonderful fellowship there and the level of scholarship and all. And he made it seem very attractive.
- speakerSo when I got back many many years later. I thought.
- speakerI thought very kindly of Princeton Seminary. And, I finally went there largely through the influence of Chaplain Tiffany.
- speakerBut these men, along with others, did an enormous amount of good in the prison camp. Chaplains
- speakerorganized for instance the handicraft contest. You might say, How could you ever have
- speakerhand-craft contest in a prison camp? But it is remarkable when the imagination goes to work,
- speakerhow the simplest of materials can find their way to
- speakerbeautiful and useful goods. So people made jewels out of
- speakertoothbrush handle,s for example. And, they took pieces of
- speakermetal tin that came from cans that the Red Cross .
- speakerFrom Red Cross parcels and made the most beautiful articles with rolled
- speakeredges so nobody would be cut. Beautiful jewelry armbands. what have you.
- speakerAnd, men that got hold of scrap wood actually made musical instruments. There were two
- speakerviolins in prison camp made by a man who was an
- speakerexpert violin maker. And all sorts of talents came to bear within the
- speakerchurch life of camp.
- speakerFor example we had the director of the Manila Male Chorus in camp. And, his name was Neville Ball.
- speakerAnd, Neville Ball organized a great camp chorus that sang at church meetings and at
- speakerpublic holidays such as Memorial Day and so forth. And,
- speakerthis choir achieved very high musical excellence
- speakerunder his direction. We sang. And mind you, he remembered the music
- speakerand wrote down one copy for the different parts and
- speakerthen a whole team of us would make copies from his
- speakermemorized music. And, that's how we got our music. And, there was a camp orchestra that used
- speakermusic that he developed for them, too. He was an amazing musician. Unfortunately he died at the
- speakerend of the war. He was so eager to get home to his wife and his daughters that he left
- speakerprison camp in Manila before it was safe. And he was
- speakerkilled in the last fighting that took place. That was the end of that.
- speakerBut Neville Ball brought a lot of music into our camp. [Wicklein] He's
- speakerAmerican? [Norquist] Yes. He was American. [Wicklein] Military? [Norquist] No.
- speakercivilians were out there. We had some civilians. And, he happened to have a civilian background. I think he had
- speakergotten into the American Army somehow. But he had been a
- speakercivilian years before. There were others to that
- speakerwere outstanding in all the things that helped to put men on their feet.
- speakerThere were gardens. We called them "defeat" gardens.
- speakerWe had gardens there in prison camp and the only trouble with the gardens was that a few people
- speakerhad slippery fingers, and they would steal
- speakerwhen the fruit or vegtables were about ready to be harvested. Sometimes in the dark of night, the
- speakerfood got stolen. But you have to remember the terrific temptation of hunger.
- speakerAnd for instance when we had communion in prison camp. And, after a while, the Japanese
- speakerallowed for communion wine to be brought in. It was real wine too. And
- speakerthere was such a temptation for the bread and the wine that sometimes the people who would do the dispensing
- speakerback of the altar were discovered eating and nipping a little more then their
- speakershare. Well I think the good Lord forgave them under the circumstances.
- speaker[Wickleion] So you could have open services finally. Yeah. Oh yes. In fact we had a rather benevolent
- speakercamp commander for a while. He brought radios into camp. We could hear the news. Of
- speakercourse the news was all going against America in those days. And so they didn't
- speakermind our hearing it. [Wicklein] It was BBC you were picking up? [Norquist] Well on that radio we could only
- speakerget the Japanese-controlled Filipino's station. However the Japanese
- speakerthemselves listened to shortwave stations. And, some of us
- speakerused to sneak over into the Japanese compound and lie under their buildings and listen. I heard Queen
- speakerWilhelmina of the Netherlands give a broadcast in English and.
- speakerOh. I heard a number of.
- speakerAmerican Broadcasters came from KGETI and the Japanese
- speakerthemselves were listening to it and the BBC too. Incidentally we had a
- speakerBBC announcer in our prison camp when we were in Japan. But that's much
- speakerlater. [Wicklein] You had a responsible camp commander. What about the
- speakerguards?
- speaker[Norquist] Well when the commander was benevolent, then the guards would tend to be more benevolent too. If the
- speakerman at the top was tough, then the guards would tend to be
- speakersadistic and of course in the early days they tended to be sadistic. And if
- speakeranybody even gave the impression that he was trying to escape he'd be shot.
- speakerOne man was working in his defeat garden near the fence and Japanese guard thought he was getting too
- speakerclose to the fence and shot him. But our men made protest our officers made
- speakerprotest over this. And, to show their fairness, the Japanese
- speakershot the guy that had shot our man. There was a certain rough
- speakernoblesse oblige about them at times. And, they weren't all bad. They could be friendly,
- speakerbut you never knew you. You could never tell.
- speaker[Wicklein] You know if there were any Christians among the Japanese?
- speaker[Norquist] Yes. There was one man, when we were in Japan, that claimed to be a Christian. He
- speakergot kind of palsy with our men, but later we found that he was he was really somebody that
- speakerwas trying to make reports on the men. And, so they didn't trust him anymore.
- speakerI'm sure there were some although given the population of Japan, I suppose, what is that? 1
- speakerpercent Christian there weren't that many.
- speaker[Wicklein] Were you able to have medical units operating in your camp?
- speaker[Norquist] Yes. Our part of camp was set up as a
- speakerhospital. They had very little toward to work with.
- speakerSeveral of the wards where actually dying wards. They were places where people were, where the
- speakerhopeless cases were just put to die. And I still have in my possession, the
- speakersketches of some of these emaciated people
- speakerlying there dying.
- speakerThere was nothing to do for them. [Wicklein] And, you had your own cemetery?
- speaker[Norquist] Well. The Japanese provided an area for a cemetery.
- speakerWe would dig ditches and then we would place the bodies in these ditches. And, they were just
- speakerplaced in piles in the ditches. Much
- speakerlater when the Japanese knew the war was beginning to go against them, they had us
- speakerput crosses up in the valley at spaced intervals. But there was no
- speakerrelationship with the cross between the crosses and the bodies. They were just heaped together.
- speakerBut this brings me to a kind of an interesting story. There was actually an
- speakerIndian in our camp. We had a number of Navajo Indians. And, this
- speakerparticular Navajo Indian died and was taken to the morgue. And,
- speakerfrom the morgue where the only thing that was done at the morgue was to take the clothes off the
- speakerdead people so the clothes could be used for the living. And that really was a mercy. That
- speakerwasn't anything. There's nothing really gruesome about it under the
- speakercircumstances. So the the leaves were
- speakerbrought together for ferns and other palm
- speakerbranches. And, the dead had these branches placed over them for a
- speakercertain dignity of privacy when they were taken to the graves.
- speakerAnd they were carried on what had been windows shutters. These were used as
- speakerlitters. So this particular fellow was taken to the graveside. He was dumped
- speakerinto the grave and it began to rain. His eyes opened. So they hoisted
- speakerhim up. And, he was brought back in. And, he got
- speakerto be quite healthy again.
- speakerSo then he died again. And, this time he got to the morgue and people recognized him.
- speakerAnd, they said this is the fellow that really wasn't dead. Of course in America you don't have
- speakera chance because by the time they bleed you are what's what chance have you got. But anyway
- speakerthere he was he was in the morgue. And, they were going to take him to the grave site.
- speakerAnd somebody we'd better make sure this guy is dead. So they listened very carefully and
- speakerdetected a slight pulse, took him back to the hospital, and he
- speakerlived. And the last I knew of him, he may be alive now for all I know, but the
- speakerlast I knew of him, he had been put into the hoosegow because he had
- speakerbeen caught stealing some liquor. Because you say, How would you
- speakerever have liquor in prison camp? But you know. There was an underground. Filipinos would sneak up to the
- speakerfence. And Americans would come to the fence. And, there would be trading going on. So that's
- speakerhow they got liquor. And, some of them got quite drunk in prison.
- speaker[Wicklein] You know Navajos had a reputation for communicating with each other in Navajo language so Japs couldn't
- speakerunderstand. Did you see expressions of that?
- speaker[Norquist] No. not really. They were used later in the War in such a way.
- speakerBut in our case they were treated more or less like anybody else and used just as
- speakerplain soldiers. [Wicklein] Did you have third country nationals, not Filipino,
- speakernot American?
- speaker[Norquist] Yes. We had some Norwegians.
- speakerI recall there was one Norwegian by the name of Stuerhald. [Wicklein] But wasn't in
- speakera war with Japan, were they? [Norquist] Well. There was.
- speakerYou see the Germans were fighting the Norwegians. And, these guys
- speakerwere actually in the, in the merchant marine. And, they were
- speakercaptured by a German raider. And, the Germans, it being in the Pacific, the Japanese
- speakerthe German transferred them to a Japanese ship. And, the Japanese ship
- speakerwound up taking them to the Philippines. So there was a Swede also. And his
- speakername was Ane Gustafson.. And I saw him after the war. [Wicklein] He was a neutral? [Norquist] going over to
- speakerJapan. I mean going over to Sweden. He had been on a merchant ship that was
- speakercaptured by the Germans. A Norwegian ship. And, many Swedes and
- speakerNorwegians worked together on ships because of the common language. It is really the same language with
- speakervariations. So. He and I got to be very good friends.
- speakerAnd, I saw him after the war in Malmo, Sweden, where he
- speakerwas living with his new bride very lovely young Swedish girl.
- speakerBut you see we stayed there [Cabanatuan] at prison camp in the Philippines for twenty-six months.
- speakerand then we transferred over to Japan. We went in the ship for well over
- speakera thousand of us in this one ship in the hold and we couldn't even sit down much
- speakerless lie down. And at the end of 12 days we got to
- speakerJapan. And there, they took us up on deck and hosed us down with sea water,
- speakerand rinsed off the worst of the dirt, and then took us
- speakerashore. We landed at a place called Shimonoseki [Shimonoseki Quarantine Station]
- speakerAnd there's another town there named Moji [Moji Prisoner of War Camp]. And from there, we went
- speakernorth to Tokyo. Before we left. I got to tell you one
- speakerfunny thing. The officers had been
- speakerallowed to take their foot lockers all this distance. Well,
- speakerone or two of these foot lockers got opened by the G.I.s. And they found that
- speakersome of the officers were actually transporting coconut all the way up into Japan.
- speakerAnd besides it was now rancid. And, the G.I.s were so angry that they had
- speakerbeen carrying these foot lockers for the officers that, when we went over a bridge, we dumped
- speakerthem off. I personally dumped off a footlocker containing the possessions of an officer. And, it
- speakersmashed down below on the dirt. And, I didn't feel badly at all. And, to this day, I don't feel badly about it.
- speakerYou've got to realize that we were an entirely different level than the officers. Even
- speakerin prison camp, they were often kept separate and lived a little better than we did.
- speakerAnd so there wasn't any great love for some of them. On the other hand, some were very dear people and
- speakeroutgoing and cared about the men. And, we had great
- speakerrespect for them, you see. Especially one of the chaplains. The men would do anything for
- speakerhim because he put himself out so much for them. But there was a lot of class
- speakerdistinction beyond what you have in the armed forces today. For instance when we went over
- speakerto the Philippines. On the way the, ship stopped at Hawaii and Guam. And, the
- speakerofficers got to go ashore, But the men couldn't and so when the officers came back
- speakeronboard, the men threw pop bottles at them, but nothing was ever
- speakerdone about it. I think maybe some people understood why we felt the way we did. I didn't throw any pop bottles.
- speakerBut we finally got to Tokyo and there we were marched
- speakeracross a small bridge to a little island in Tokyo Bay. I never forget
- speakerhow gray and green that place [Omori Prison Camp] looked. It had about a seven foot wall
- speakeraround it. It was a wooden really a wooden fence. There were no. There was no way you could
- speakersee out through it. It was all opaque. And there we were
- speakermarched into a, into a couple of
- speakerdormitories. They were barracks.
- speakerAnd we sat down. And, a few of the limies that were there, the British
- speakercame over and began to tell us what the camp was like and they said watch out for the bird.
- speakerIt turned out that the bird was Corporal Watanabe [Watanabe, Mutsuhiro].
- speakerAnd, he had a violent temper. And, he would begin to beat people up at a moment's
- speakernotice for almost anything. And, for instance, if a man's
- speakerblanket blankets were not just perfectly matched up and
- speakerfolded perfectly, he would beat the man up. And
- speakerit happened that one day we were standing at attention. And he said, "When I speak you,
- speakermust look at me, do you understand?" And, we understood. But I let my eyes
- speakerwaver a little bit to watch something that moved, going across the yard. And,
- speakerhe came up to me and he pulled me out of line. And he said, "cut or done it all down.
- speakerDo you not understand when I speak you must look at me." I said, "Yes, sir."
- speakerAnd he said, "You must be severely punished. Do you understand?"
- speakerI said, "Yes, sir."
- speakerSo he hit me and I went down. And, I got up again. He hit me again,
- speakerand I went out completely. Well it happened that he had been
- speakertelling us that we should go around and pick up pieces of paper and clean up the area before I
- speakergot hit. And, when I woke up, I was walking and I was going around sort
- speakerof halfway looking for pieces of paper, so he had made his point. But when we were
- speakerin Japan we worked. We worked in
- speakerrailway yards. We worked on ships. We worked in
- speakerfactories. In the Philippines, we had mostly worked on
- speakera farm. We had raised the food for our own compound. And, we
- speakeralso worked on an airport that was never used while we were in the Philippines. And I got a funny story
- speakerconnected with that. And that is that some of the fellows were assigned to be
- speakersurveyors. And so, they went around with tripods and with
- speakernotebooks and everything. So, a couple of friends of mine had a great imagination and
- speakerdecided they would be surveyors too. So they got a hold of some sticks and made a
- speakertripod and dyed it black. And, they got a notebook. And, they went
- speakeraround waving to each other atdistances.
- speakerNobody gave them away. They went on for about a week that way and got out of a lot of heavy work.
- speakerAnd finally decided, they couldn't pull it off much longer so they gave up. But in.
- speakerIn Japan it was amazing the ingenuity that the British had. You see some
- speakerof them had been criminals. And, they'd been sent over to the Far East as alternative
- speakerto prison. And so they had gone to Singapore and Hong Kong and
- speakerother places in the Malay Peninsula. And, some of them were
- speakerexpert thieves. And, they stole the Japanese blind. They got a hold of
- speakerwiring and they had hotplates going in prison camp. And there they got a hold of any kind of
- speakerfood. If you had to give an order for a steak or for or for
- speakersalmon or what have you, you'd put in the order with one of these British. And,
- speakerin a short time, he have it there for you. But, you had to pay for it. And you pay for it in whatever
- speakerpossessions you had if you still owned a good fountain pen or a good watch, why that
- speakermight do. Or, it might be something else that they desired. And another thing about the British, they
- speakernever went without tea. Never did they go without tea in prison camp. They always had
- speakersome way to steal the tea and have it there and found ingenious ways to cook it. Like for
- speakerinstance we had a delouser in camp that deloused clothing. It
- speakerwas worked on the steam principle. Well a teapot would get slipped in on top, and you could get
- speakerthe tea. Would get hot. And speaking of the
- speakerheat, we had a bath in prison camp [Omori Prison Camp] that would hold about fifteen men.
- speakerAnd all of us would get to bathe. And, we did it by rotation so
- speakerthat one time you might be toward the beginning and another time you might be toward the end. And, the water was mighty
- speakerscummy if you were toward the end.. And, you just sort of smeared yourself and hope that it was clean a little
- speakerbIt. But there was an underground going. The
- speakerBritish ran it. They could steal about anything they wanted because they worked all over Tokyo.
- speakerNot to say that life was rosy in prison camp. It wasn't.
- speakerThe food was better there. We got the same ration the Japanese soldiers, except they
- speakerhad 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
- speakeris carried in the water. Typhus is carried by lice. [Norquist] I don't know
- speakerI don't remember it, to tell you the truth. I don't remember seeing
- speakertyphus, but it's possible there was. I know we had a
- speakerlot of typhoid fever. I had it myself. And,
- speakerthere was a lot of yellow jaundice when we were in the Philippines. [Wicklein] There were a lot
- speakerof P.O.W. ships that were unmarked in going from the Philippines to
- speakerJapan that were sunk by American submarines. [Norquist] Friends of ours were killed that way.
- speakerOne of our good friend of mine made one of these rare escaptes in that case.
- speakerHis ship went down. And he made it to the coast, the China coast. He was rescued.
- speakerAnd is he is still still alive. He's chaplain Robert Taylor.
- speakerA Southern Baptist and he's now Representative for
- speakera Baptist university down there, right around, Dallas. I've forgotten the name.
- speakerTexas Texas Southern or whatever that means that. He is
- speakerstill alive.
- speaker[Wicklein] When were you Limmer liberated?. Forty five?
- speakerProbably [Norquist] Yeah. Yeah. Well before I tell you about that. I just must mention Christmas season in prison camp.
- speakerbecause in prison camp Christmas was a sad time, but it was beautiful what the men did.
- speakerOne year, forty-three I think it was. They came up with a Christmas tree in prison camp [Cabanatuan Prison Camp], all made
- speakerout of bits of paper. It looked like the real thing. And, somebody had carried ornaments all the way
- speakerthere and put them on it. We have a plays in prison camp. They put on the Dickens "A
- speakerChristmas Carol," for example. And, we sang the Christmas hymns. We went around. I was in the
- speakerchoir 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
- speakerhear these Christmas songs. But, of course, the war was going against the
- speakerJapanese in nineteen forty-five very heavily.
- speakerAnd we had air raids that were devastating areas. Sometimes, the shrapnel would whiz through
- speakerour camp [Omori Prison Camp]. And, there were
- speakerfirebombings that lit fires that were so bright that we could read a newspaper in
- speakerprison 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.
- speakerIt had a big cross on it. And there were times, when American fighter planes flew over and wagged
- speakertheir wings as they went over us, as much as to say we know we are there, but
- speakerthey bombed not too far away.
- speakerAnd.
- speakerWe didn't glory in some of the sights we saw. The bloated bodies floating against our
- speakerisland. We took poles and pushed them away. And of course we also felt sad when our
- speakerown planes were shot down. And, sometimes the fragments of the plane or a
- speakerpilot's uniform would float against our island [Omori Island]. Vocalise said
- speakerthat happened. We felt sorry for the Japanese people during this thing too. Standing in long
- speakerlines for their thin soup. They were much worse off than the military were. The
- speakermilitary was on top of the heap the whole way through. [Wicklein] You were still going into Tokyo during the bombing?
- speaker[Norquist] Yes.
- speakerYes. But our factories were bombed, and there was little left of them, very little left.
- speakerSometimes you would see miles of devastation as we went along in our old decrepit bus that was
- speakerpowered by charcoal. And, it would move very fitfully sometime and had
- speakerto wait for the charcoal to get up enough gas to get it going again. Very
- speakerfitfully through the streets.
- speaker[Wicklein] Any communication with Japanese civilians?
- speaker[Norquist] Yes. Yes. There were a few times. For instance when we
- speakerwent out on work details, we'd get to talk with them. Most of the time we
- speakerfound they didn't know English, but we did talk to them, and we talked to Japanese soldiers
- speakerin Japan. They seemed more free to talk than they had been in the Philippines. And
- speakerthey would say things like wars are no good. And someday you go back to New York,
- speakerand I go to Tokyo. Peace is good. We would say, "Yeah."
- speakerSensi Dhami, Dhami. War is
- speakerno good. They too had their
- speakerlosses. 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
- speakerwere.
- speakerIncidentally I have met some Japanese after the war. We found we had a certain comradeship
- speakerbecause we'd been in the same war together, although we'd been on the opposite side. But I mean, for instance, that I
- speakerhave no thoughts about Fiji Islanders. I know they're human. But I have no feelings about them. The Japanese, I kind of
- speakerlike because I did have at least some cultural relationship with them
- speakerduring 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
- speakerin a camp where they shot all the guards dead when they were liberated. He still
- speakerwalks out when he sees, away when he sees a Japanese in this country.
- speakerWell actually in our camp they took away all the mean guards long before we were liberated. And, they left some
- speakerteenagers there that, I think, were only civilians.
- speakerWhy should you hate them but. When we were freed, as a matter of
- speakerfact, our men went down into the village. I think the name of the village was maybe Watashimin
- speakerand they went down into the village. And, it wasn't long before they were fraternising around and
- speakersororisizing 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
- speakercame by announcement. The British Major in charge of our camp called us
- speakertogether and said, "Gentlemen. The day for which you have waited all these years has at last
- speakerarrived. You are now free men." And a great cheer went up. And, by the way, I had a little
- speakeradvance notice of this. They asked me if I could. They knew I had crayons so I made
- speakersome flags. I made a British flag and an American flag, and we hoisted them up after flipping
- speakera coin as to which should have a preferred position.
- speakerAnd, we hoisted them up at that very meeting. I had a
- speakertrumpet with me all this time. It had been taken from me once, but I got it back. And, I still have it.
- speakerAnd they had me play "The
- speakerStar-Spangled Banner" and "God Save the King," along with the
- speakertroops singing it. Our men were very patriotic in all those days. Everybody kind of had a
- speakerlove of country. It was engrained in them. And, I still have a streak of that in me.
- speakerAs much as I hated the Vietnam War, I have a great love for America and believe
- speakerit even has to be strong in the kind of a world in which we live. I feel that way.
- speakerBut we were freed then, and it was about August 22nd,
- speakernineteen forty-five. And then September 13 we
- speakergot to leave camp. And we went in a very nice train. Before that of course we've
- speakerbeen traveling in poor conditions. But, now we were taken onboard a very
- speakernice train with mohair green upholstery and taken down to the coast
- speakerwhere we got on an L.S.T. that took us out to a hospital ship, which took us back to this
- speakercountry. It was the risk. [Wicklein] So, you went right back? You didn't? [Norquist] It took quite a while to
- speakerget back. It had been a cruise ship, the Entaeus. I think of
- speakerthe Eastern Steamship line. And that's how we got to come
- speakerback. And I remember seeing these first sailors that we saw on the ship how
- speakerbig they were compared to us. Huge! And, how pretty the girls
- speakerseemed to be. Probably they weren't all that beautiful, but I can remember lying in my bunk on the ship
- speakerand looking at the nurses and thinking how beautiful. I suppose it wasn't abnormal to think
- speakerthat way.
- speaker[Wicklein] After yourself. I mean, after they announced that you were
- speakerfree. Did the camp [Omori Prison Camp] continue to function in the same way. Or did you have a logistics
- speakerproblem 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
- speakereat it all. They brought in phonographs and phonograph records and
- speakergenerally were buttering us up. But then, of course, that happens also with every army like in
- speakerBataan, before we were captured, our people took amazingly good care of the
- speakerJapanese prisoners toward the end. And, the Japanese the inspectors came through and said, "Oh, sure, sure."
- speakerall. They were very pleased to see what nice beds they had and everything you know.
- speakerAnd but this was this is what normal people do. [Wicklein] Did you ever see Red Cross
- speakerrepresentatives? [Norquist] Yes. There were Swiss and Swedish representatives
- speakerthat came through to inspect our camps. And during the period when they came through, we always knew
- speakerthey were coming. During the period when they came through, the rations were good you know.
- speakerAnd we were usually issued some nice clothing to put on and all this and that to make
- speakerit look good. This sort of thing happened.
- speaker[Wicklein] Did your experience help shape your thought and
- speakerphilosophy on life? [Norquist] Oh! I'm sure of that.
- speakerFor one thing, I suppose that
- speakerI have an abiding loyalty to the church, which has been with me all my days,
- speakercoming out of how much the church meant to us in prison camp. And I can't conceive, in fact, of going by a Sunday
- speakerwithout going to church, even on vacation I do it. If we are not near a church,
- speakerwe have our own service.
- speakerAnd much of what's the, what the Church does in the world in terms of its outreach and
- speakerrefugees, situations, places of hunger, places of rehabilitation after earthquakes,
- speakerafter the devastation of war and so forth,
- speakerI can relate to directly because of the prison camp
- speakerexperience. These things mean something to me.
- speakerI suppose also I have a little more contentment
- speakerwith life because of what happened. To me, it's good to have
- speakeran appetite and a simple meal. I don't need to have an expensive meal. I
- speakerenjoy simple foods: a little oatmeal in the morning is just as
- speakergood to me as having ham and eggs. Whatever I have,
- speakerI feel a sneaky sense of gratitude for, let's say. I suppose
- speakerthat colors. Also, one did a lot of dreaming in the Camp and dreaming about
- speakersomeday having a good wife, having children and seeing them
- speakergrow up and seeing good come into their lives. All of this
- speakeris fulfilled in abundance and
- speakerfor this, I am very grateful too. [Wicklein] Thank you.
- speakerAre there other pertinent things you think ought to be mentioned, that we might have missed?
- speaker[Norquist] I don't know about that.
- speakerI suppose one can mention that, after one goes through an experience like this, one always
- speakerhas a sense of comradeship with the other people that went through it. So that we do have
- speakerreunions around the country. I haven't been to too many, but it has been good to see some people who
- speakerwere there with me. I have some abiding friendships with a few people that were in prison camp with me,
- speakernotably with Roy Toulson, a fellow
- speakerChristian very devout. He's a photographer works for a newspaper out of
- speakerDenver area. And, right here in the Milwaukee area where I live, we have
- speakera group of ex prisoners of war that now gather infrequently. We used
- speakerto gather once a month, but it hasn't been so often. Many of them have died off and have been severely ill.
- speakerMany of them carry the physical scars of their problem
- speakerand will all
- speakertheir life. So. We have been able to help one
- speakeranother and had to go to a number of funerals, for men that have died
- speakerup 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.
- speakerWe have ex-German prisoners, some of whom tried to make escapes. So they have quite interesting
- speakerstories to tell. But it's a common experience anyway.
- speakerAnd the gatherings though that occur in the Maywood and Chicago
- speakerarea, in North Carolina and on down in San Diego, out
- speakeraround Seattle Washington and other places are those that were
- speakerprisoners in the Far East.
- speakerSo most of them were from the Philippines. [Wicklein] Anything else
- speakeryou can think at this point?
- speaker[Norquist] It's I think much else.
- speakerThe. Time colors one's memories.
- speakerNow I remember mostly the good things. You know also talk about the
- speakercruelties and even the tortures that did
- speakeroccur. It would be unfair not to mention that. [Wicklein] For what purpose? Well for example, there was one
- speakerman that tried to escape. And, he got out of the Camp [Cabanatuan Prison Camp] . And, they
- speakerbrought him back in to make an example of him. They gave him a slow death. I was eyewitness to this. We
- speakerwere lined up to watch it. And they took their bayonets and pricked him as he lay twitching on
- speakerthe ground. Small cuts and very small
- speakercuts that gradually did him into death.
- speakerAnd another time there were men that apparently tried to escape. There was some
- speakerdoubt about it. But, they made them stand in the sun, tied to
- speakerpoles. And if you got any idea how hot it gets in the Philippines, you know what
- speakertorture that was. And, we were all lined up at the edge of the fence. And, we had to watch them.
- speakerWhere on command, they dug trenches in the ground. And then, the soldiers took
- speakertheir guns, and there were the reports. And, the men slumped and fell down in their own graves they had dug with their own muscles.
- speakerAnd we of course reacted strongly to this. We were
- speakerterribly grieved and felt so frustrated and helpless, not to be able to help them,
- speakermen that we knew and loved. Helpless men.
- speakerAnd other things happened too. Sometimes the whole
- speakercamp would have to go on low rations because one person had done something
- speakerthat the admins didn't like. But, I like to remember the
- speakerfun and the humorous things. Sometimes, it was a gruesome kind of humor, like
- speakermen would sometimes get into arguments. They call it cabin fever, I believe.
- speakerAnd, they would fight very vociferously, verbally
- speakerover questions that were very trivial. And, sometimes within three hours, both of them were
- speakerdead. Kind of a gruesome kind of a joke in a way.
- speakerI remember
- speakerone