Former WWII POW Recalls Horrific Conditions

Former WWII POW recalls horrific conditions

By Andy Porter of the Union-Bulletin

Fifty-eight years ago Wilbur Smith was digging his own grave. It was July 1945 and Smith was a prisoner of war held by the Japanese in Thailand, a long way from his hometown of Walla Walla. In the 3 years since his capture, Smith, 83, had survived torture, disease, beatings and forced labor on the Burma-Thailand railway, which included the famous (or infamous) bridge over the River Kwai.

That July, at a camp called Nakom Noyok, he and other men were digging tunnels into a mountainside. They had been told the shafts were bunkers for explosives, but Smith knew differently. A friendly guard had told them that orders had been received to ``annihilate the POWs, no survivors.'

Fortunately, those orders were changed and on Aug. 1, he and the others were shipped to another camp in Bangkok. Five days later, the first of two events took place in Japan which soon brought an end to his captivity.

``The A-bomb saved us,' Smith said Thursday, the day after the world marked the 58th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. For Smith, that event and the Japanese surrender on Aug. 15 marked the end of a personal saga which began Feb. 28, 1942, when torpedoes slammed into the heavy cruiser USS Houston and sank it in the Java Sea.

Flagship of the Asiatic Fleet, the Houston had been fighting a valiant, but losing, battle against invading Japanese forces. Smith was one of the estimated 357 survivors out of 1,200 crewmen aboard the ship.

Born in Umapine, Smith grew up in Walla Walla and joined the Navy after graduating from Walla Walla High School. He went through basic training in San Diego and ``the Philippines looked pretty good to me, so I signed up for the USS Houston,' he said. That was in 1940. Two years later, covered with oil from his sunken ship, he washed ashore on the island of Java and began life as a prisoner of war.

After a stint in the Changi prison camp at Singapore, Smith was one of hundreds of allied POWs shipped to Thailand to build a 260-mile long railway link to Burma ``through some of the thickest, wettest and most unhealthy jungle in the world,' he said. ``A handful of rice a day was all you got and it was dirty rice,' he said about a typical day.

``We would build about 10 miles a day. The Chinese were ahead of us clearing the bamboo and trees and our job was to fill in embankments by carrying earth in baskets,' he said. ``We had no machinery, not even a good shovel.' Many prisoners succumbed to malnutrition, infections, disease and beatings. Smith suffered malaria, dengue fever, jaundice and stomach ulcers, among other ills. Smith somehow managed to survive. He attributed it, in part, to being ``pretty fit' at the start of his captivity along with the aid a Dutch doctor, also a prisoner, who taught them to use remedies made from native plants and other materials at hand.

Another survival mechanism, Smith said, was concentrating on things that would take his mind off the misery. ``I tried to watch the beauty of the jungle. I would watch the monkeys and the birds and once in a while I would take a chance and get off the path and get an orchid,' he said.

After completing the section of the road leading up to the Burmese boarder, he was put to work at Kanbuirri, which was the campsite for construction of the bridge over the River Kwai, later made famous by the movie of the same name. After that came a series of other camps and jobs, including playing bass tuba in an Australian band ordered to entertain Japanese troops going to India. Eventually, Smith found himself in the Bangkok POW camp where news of the war's possible end began to filter in.

``We had heard rumors in July that the parachute troops had landed close by us,' he said. ``When the A-bomb hit, that kind of decided it.' After liberation came a recuperative stay in Calcutta followed by a hopscotch journey home by airplane through Karachi, Cairo, Casablanca, the Azores, Bermuda and eventually, Washington, D.C.

``We stopped at Walter Reed Hospital and were given the option of going to a hospital in Florida or going home,' Smith said. ``Hell, everyone wanted to go home, no matter how sick they were.' Smith returned to Washington state and, after marrying his wife, Colleen, settled into the small house on Second Avenue in 1947. He worked for Montgomery Ward for 29 years as the store's auto manager before he retired.

The years have not dimmed the memories of those times or the traumas. ``There isn't a day goes by I don't think about it,' Smith said. ``But I've learned to live with it. ``I have no complaints. I've lived a good life, although I had one spot that wasn't good.'