Survival was never easy. Soon after their arrival at Woosung, the prisoners began to die of illness, untreated battle wounds and malnutrition. Others died more violently. In June 1942, a young Japanese sentry playfully pulled the trigger of his rifle, and Lonnie Riddle, a civilian construction worker, fell dead at his feet. Two months later Seaman Roy K. Hodgkins was electrocuted while trying to recover a softball from beneath an electrified fence. Later, Marine Corporal Carroll W. Boncher died when he accidentally fell against the same fence.

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After nearly a year at Woosung, the Americans were moved to another prison camp at Kiang Wang. By now they were hardened to days with little or no food, brutal guards and backbreaking work, but it all became even worse upon their arrival at Kiang Wang, which Devereux called ‘the worst hellhole in our captivity.’

At Kiang Wang, Japanese engineers ordered the Americans to build what they described as a playground complex for Japanese children. The prisoners were forced to engage in a year-and-a-half’s labor to complete the complex, which they called the ‘Mount Fuji Project.’ Divided into six-man work teams, the prisoners first cleared an area 600 feet long by 200 feet wide, all by hand. Each team had a few crude spades and perhaps a mattock. They were forced to remove the soil in large woven baskets slung on their backs.

When they had cleared the large area, they began to build an earthen mound 45 feet high, a miniature Mount Fujiyama. As it grew, the prisoners laid a narrow-gauge railroad track up its slope. Then they pushed small mine cars, loaded with dirt and stone, to its summit.

When American officers realized that the ‘children’s playground’ really was to be a large rifle range for the Japanese army, they protested, citing Article 31 of the Geneva Convention forbidding prisoners of war to work on military projects. Otera, however, dismissed their complaint with a sharp retort, ‘Japan did not sign the Geneva Convention.’

By the summer of 1943, as a result of their sparse prison diet and 12-hour workdays, the prisoners were living skeletons, plagued by dysentery, tuberculosis, pellagra, influenza and malaria. Month after month of hunger, cold, pain, bone-weary fatigue, loneliness and despair were severely trying the prisoners. Despite the privation, there was only one rule–survive.

Many prisoners remembered that only the occasional delivery of packages of food, medicine and clothing from home, and the personal, and dangerous, intervention of two men saved their lives.

Loved ones heard little from the prisoners but continued sending them packages and letters. Most mail got as far as the prison camp but never reached the intended recipient. Japanese guards pilfered the packages or kept them in supply rooms for months before delivering them to the prisoners. By September 1943, an estimated 1,000-1,500 pieces of mail had reached the prison camp, but only 719 of them had been given to the prisoners. Christmas mail arrived on December 23, 1943, but was not delivered until April 12, 1944. Mail that did reach the men, however, kept them apprised of the war’s progress. Although Japanese censors read each letter and would not deliver obvious reports of Allied victories, some cleverly disguised messages slipped through. In one case, the prisoners learned of the American victory at Midway Island. ‘Uncle Joe and Uncle Sam met at the halfway house and had one hell of a fight. Uncle Sam won,’ read the letter.

Critical to the Americans’ survival was the intervention of Edouard Egle, a Swiss representative of the International Red Cross. Because they saw their Shanghai War Prisoner Camp as a model for the world, the Japanese allowed Egle far greater access to the American prisoners there than other camps. Egle was a very competent, compassionate man. Between 1942 and 1945, he constantly risked Japanese retaliation by insisting upon providing medical and dental help for the prisoners and by supplying them with food and medical packets. Although Japanese guards looted the packets, enough got through to help the Americans survive.

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