CARLSBAD, Calif. — Sixty-seven years ago this month, on April 9, 1942, I was surrendered to the Japanese Imperial Army on the Bataan Peninsula in the Philippines. At my first prison camp, the Japanese commandant turned to the American prisoners of war (POWs) and told us that we were "lower than dogs" and "they (the Japanese) would treat us that way for the rest of our lives." Then he said, "We will never be friends with the piggish Americans.
For a long time I thought he was right. But we have both changed. This year, I welcomed the Japanese government's first official apology to the American POWs, 63 years after our liberation.
If my fellow soldiers or I had known the consequences of being a POW of the Japanese, we would have fought to the death. After three long months of jungle fighting against a better-equipped invasion force, the American and Filipino troops were starving, sick, exhausted and out of ammunition.