Eight big truck loads…. It was the last of the [work detail]…. Two lasted long enough for us to lay them out on stretchers under a mango tree where they immediately expired. Another dozen in extremis we laid out on the ground until the Japs would release them to us for bedding down. The rest, horrible walking creatures, like Haitian Zombies, the living dead dirty, bewhiskered, hollow cheeked, sunken eyes, some too weak to stand. Others still up on their pins, fighting to the last ditch to carry their few remaining articles…. Pitiful broken human hulks.
Thomas H. Hayes
Lieutenant Commander, U.S. Navy; imprisoned in Bilibid Prison, Manila from July 2, 1942 until December 13, 1944; became chief surgeon in in October, 1943. Perished on the prison ship Oryoku Maru in 1945.
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