Bataan (LHD 5) - Naval Cruise Book

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leftthai 4 One of them dropped a note attached to a can of corned beef that read: If you need help, form a circle. We got out there i and formed a circle, Gray said. There were 200 of us. That 11 was a big day. The bombers flew back over us and told us to meet them on the beach. They brought medics and stuff. B- ;: 29s flew over us and dropped food clothes, medicine, you ' d 3e amazed how much. When the men saw the parachutes, they iiad one thought - We have some stars! There was one boy who had been working, patching the Japanese guards ' iniforms, said Gray. It took us a couple of days to make it, ; but we got to work on pulling those nylon parachutes apart, 1 ind we got a flag made up. We were all ready to put the stars m it... and broke the needle. No one had another needle, but Gray told the men not! :o worry. He told them that he would make a needle. I made i needle out of a piece of barbed wire. And that ' s what those 1 stars were sewn on that flag with. We flew that flag and there were some that were so choked up that they could hardly raise •heir hands to put over their hearts. There was many a tears ;hed there. .othefirepk I faced Ge did Hegotti on my rib cf enlaotthisoo ; dintoa4-fw retch out Ob ■ [ survived $ . ere next to ho m. hwji j state, a: ' he number i found all of It t •radio. H ' Ai then that j over for to K -ed that we .-p-O-foo rsThemeow the dljj . S. Gray poses with U. S. Flag and POM Flag. Gray lives in Greenwell Springs, La., with his wife Alyne.

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II briquettes. The disease steadily worsened. My skin looked like a balloon full of water, Gray said. He grew so weak he couldn ' t go out on detail anymore. His food intake was scaled back to half-rations. A Japanese doctor in the camp from UCLA Medical School had taken a particular interest in the prisoners. He had been forced to serve in the Japanese army while visiting his grandfather in Japan. When war broke out, officials there refused to let him go back to the U.S. His fluent English allowed him to communicate freely with the prisoners. He knew each of the 1,200 men by name. He was worried about Gray. He walked up to me one day and said, ' Gray, how are you doing? ' And I said, ' I don ' t think I ' m going to make it. ' He said that he ' d have the cooks pick me up and let me swat flies in the kitchen. I could just sit there all day and swat flies. With the Japanese officers thinking Gray served a purpose - to swat flies in close proximity to their food - the doctor thought his condition might improve. I sat there and the American cooks in the kitchen would walk by and put food in my mouth, Gray said. They ' d say, ' Gra ' , open your mouth, ' and then they ' d cram something in there. They couldn ' t be seen feeding me. Gray started getting better. Eventually, he was allowed to work as a rice cook in the kitchen. While they were at Davado, a Japanese officer approached a group of American prisoners one day and handed them an American flag. He said, ' This is your flag. We don ' t want to destroy it. We want you to destroy it. ' We couldn ' t. We saw them tear it down at Bataan when we surrendered. We didn ' t know what to do. We debated the issue and decided that we would cut the stars out - there were 48 then - and keep them and burn the rest of it. If we got caught, whoever got caught with them — off would come their head. That ' s the way it went. The men vowed to keep the stars together. Over the course of their imprisonment, they would shift the stars to different prisoners in order to avoid arousing suspicion. Someone always had the stars, and they were always kept together. In July 1944, the prisoners were moved back to Manila to board a ship for Japan. It was just a few days prior to Gray ' s birthday on July 14. On my birthday, I was sitting in the hold of this ship. It was hot as hell. There were hundreds of men jammed in the hold, sitting on the deck with their legs interlaced. The latrine consisted of five 1 -gallon buckets that spilled on the floor and the men. It was dark and damp and hot, said Gray. There was always somebody hollering or trying to cut their wrists. They went wild. Sometimes they would just lunge at each other and you ' d have to pull them off of one another. And then you ' d have to try to get them back to their senses. People who went crazy like that wouldn ' t last long afterwards. ..They ' d be dead in a few hours. 224 The bodies were left in the hold to rot for three, sometimes four days before they were taken out. The men spent 60 days in the hold of the ship. Night and day. We never left that hold Sixty days on the China Sea, Gray said. We even broke down out there - it was horrible. The ship finally arrived in Japan and the men were sent directly to Yokkaichi. Gray lived at the prison camp for six months. His number was 160. We were nothing. Everybody lost their names — everything. These was no identity. Gray was also a iho informs. One of the jatread: ' gj forma neet them L flew 0 ' uJ one il rtwgoi andt Noi iworry. H ' I shell of his once husky frame, having dropped from 202 pounds to 108. Only six months before the war ended, the prisoners were shipped to Toyama. It was approaching winter in Japan an many of the men were dressed in little more than g-strings from their days in the Philippines. They shared blankets and huddled together to retain body heat. While there. Gray was caught stealing rice. The guards, •; beat him until he passed out. Then, they tied him up and hung jsweres him from the rafters. I was tied so that my toes barely touched ;-«: the ground. I would stand on my toes to give my wrists a little} relief and then hang to give my feet a little relief. The guards kept a watchful eye on Gray. One evening, a sergeant came in for guard duty and sauntered over to the fireplace and stoked up the fire. Then he slowly pivoted and faced Gray I said to myself, ' He ' s about to burn me. ' And he did. He got the poker red hot, and he burned me under the arm, on my rib cage; across my arm, and on my back. I passed out when I got this on over here, he said, pointing to his wrist. When Gray was taken down, he was stuffed into a 4-foor by 5-foot cell. His 6-foot plus frame could not stretch out. Onct a day they ' d feed him a ball of rice and a half-cup of tea. While Gray tried to clean his burn wounds with the tea, guards woul walk by, break open his scabs and then laugh. I survived it, i; Gray ' s only comment on the ordeal. I am a survivor. Whenever Gray thought he was near death, he wouk hear his mother ' s voice, as clear as if she were next to him calling his name, JaaaayyySSSSsssss! I ' d hear Mama ' s voic and I ' d move a little, said Gray. It was jusj like she was right there. Misery was a way of life. Hope had Ion run out. In their traumatized state, th prisoners failed to notice that the number o guards at the camp had steadily dwindle We walked out one day and found all of th Japanese bowed down at the radio. That wa on August 18 ' (1945). It was then that w found out the war had been over for thre days. We hadn ' t even noticed that we ha only two guards there. A low-flying American aircraft dropped a note off to th men at the camp telling them to paint the letters P-O-W on th top of their camp building if they were prisoners. The men we back to the carbide plant to gather carbide ash, which resembl lime, and painted the letters on top of the camp with the as! Shortly after that, three American dive bombers flew over then

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Thomas A. Craigg Jr. Earns the Title It Can Not be Inherited Nor Can it Ever be Purchased. You or No One Alive Can Buy it for Any Price. It is Impossible to Rent and It Can Not be Lent. You Alone and our Own Have Earned It with Your Sweat, Blood and Lives. You Own it Forever. The Title United States Marine On September 1 7, 1940 at the age of 22, Thomas A. Craigg Jr. enlisted in the Marine Corps. After he completed boot camp ii San Diego, he volunteered for Asiatic duty and was assigned to 4th Marine Regiment. The so called China Marines wen responsible for guarding American interests in China, Guam, Wake and Midway Islands. When the war broke, Craigg s regimeni fell under the Army control, and he was sent to the Bataan Peninsula. When supplies ran out for the thousands of American Philippine and volunteering forces, Craigg was swept away in the sea of prisoners and taken by the Japanese on the Bataan Deatl March to Camp O ' Donnell. Craigg survived the trauma and horrors of captivation on Bataan and went on to serve the Corps foi ; 22 years, retiring in 1963. Awarded the Bronze Star in 1992, the North Carolina resident is currently awaiting word of an aware | of the Silver Medal... 1 NOYEMBKR 11, 1992 - Private First Class Thomas A. Craigg Jr., United States Marine Corps is presented the Bronze Star Medal for services rendered against Japanese enemy forces for the Defense of Bataan and Corregidor from 7 December 1941 to 10 May 1942. 226