Imprisoned by the Japanese: CAPT Lawrence Savadkin

Ken Harbaugh:

I’m Ken Harbaugh, host of Warriors In Their Own Words. In partnership with the Honor Project, we’ve brought this podcast back at a time when our nation needs these stories more than ever.

Warriors in Their Own Words is our attempt to present an unvarnished, unsanitized truth of what we have asked of those who defend this nation. Thank you for listening, and by doing so, honoring those who have served.

Today, we’ll hear from Captain Lawrence Savadkin. Savadkin served on a submarine called the USS Tang during WWII. During a battle with enemy Japanese ships in October 1944, the Tang was struck by a torpedo and sunk. 78 men were killed.

In this interview, Savadkin describes the battle that sunk the Tang, narrowly escaped the sinking sub, and his experiences at a Japanese POW camp in the Tokyo Bay Area.

CAPT Lawrence Savadkin:

My name is Lawrence Savadkin, captain, United States Navy, retired.

My passion in fighting the Japanese stemmed from learning of the attack on Pearl Harbor. I, of course, had served for a while before the Japanese came into the war. I had operated as a destroyer officer from before the war until after we got into the war. As a matter of fact, the war started when we were three days out of Cape Town, South Africa, having escorted a convoy from Halifax or up there in Newfoundland down to there. The convoy was loaded with British troops and we were dropping death charges on suspected submarine contacts. So, the passion about fighting, I'm not sure it was a passion. I felt that it was a duty and I like to do things best I can and I tried hard to do the best I could.

During the period I was aboard, the atmosphere on the Tang among officers and crew were excellent as far as I can judge. Now, please remember I had not served in any other submarine before, but the crew seemed to know what was expected of them and were eager to carry it out and the officers as well. Actually, I was not qualified in subs, so I was busy doing my little submarine notebook that was required and preparing for the examination for qualification in submarines. Consequently, between standing watches, performing as a department head and doing that on top of it all, I took every precious moment of sleep that I could. I spent as much time in the bunk as I possibly could. It was hard for me to learn a great deal about some of the personalities and so forth of people.

We had spent the evening attacking a convoy and had fired all but I guess the last two torpedoes. Of course, everybody wanted those last two torpedoes to go, so we could go home. And there was a ship that we had hit and damaged that was not sinking or sunk. We went back to finish it off. The last torpedo ran hot, straight, and normal and sank the ship and the other torpedo, and we were surfaced. I might add, we were on the surface. This was a night surface attack. Actually, it was a morning or early morning of October the 25th if I recall the date correctly, but the last torpedo malfunctioned.

I didn't see it, but I've discussed it with the people who did afterwards and it did what they call porpoised. Instead of running at a constant depth in the water, it shot up out of the water, bounced around and went into a tight turn. The captain, because I could hear the commands being given over the announcing system and so forth, did everything he could to avoid being hit by the torpedo. The best description I could say is there's this guy driving an 18-wheeler trying to avoid a motorcycle that wants to hit him. You don't have the maneuverability. You don't have the speed. So, that's how she came to her demise and it was on the morning, early morning hours of October the 25th.

Torpedo hit, the people who were on the bridge were left treading water. She went down very quickly by the stern. It was almost like a pendulum dropping and her bow remained out of the water for some time, but the stern was apparently on the bottom. Some of us got out and some of us didn't.

My battle station was the torpedo data computer operator, which is located in the after end of the conning tower on the port side. When the boat got hit and went down, she took a sharp angle, stern going down, water came pouring down through the conning tower hatch between the conning tower and the bridge. That was insufficient time for anyone on the bridge to do anything about it. Normally, it would've been shut from within the conning tower, but with a 25-inch diameter column of water coming down there, it's not exactly a simple matter to do anything, doubled with the fact that you're no longer level.

You're approaching a pretty good angle and they were swept off their feet by the water coming in from above them, I might add, pouring down on them and couldn't get the hatch shut. Then the conning tower flooded, and fortunately, I was spared some of the pummeling around that everyone must have received by being swept off their feet and pushed off because I was already in a position at my battle station leaning right against the after bulkhead there.

The lower hatch was shut by the people down in the control room, which is right under the conning tower. The water began pouring down there too, of course, and they did their best to shut the hatch. They did get it down, but it wasn't watertight. It had been apparently warped or the conning tower's hatch seat might've been warped by the force of the explosion.

I was up there in the conning tower and needless to say, the first thing I wanted to do was get out of the conning tower. That meant I had to move forward and I really lost track of where I was in the darkness. I forgot to say I'm sure that the lights all went out. Of course, there was no power and even the battle lanterns didn't turn on. I guess that's because of the shock. The shock from the torpedo exploding was very strong. As a matter of fact, that seemed to me the boat had bounced up and down a couple of times very quickly and then settled by the stern quickly. I felt around, and in letting go, I held my head back, of course. Lo and behold, there's a gap. The periscope was housed. That means it was down.

Between the shaft of the periscope and the housing that it goes through at the top of the conning tower or the upper housing, there was a little air bubble trapped in there. I rose into that bubble and was able to breathe for a few moments. I realized that was going to last forever. I realized that the conning tower hatch must still be open because nobody was there to close it. I began to try to figure out where I was and get out that conning tower hatch. Again, pure luck, no skill, just good luck. As I flailed around trying to find where the conning tower hatch was, my hand fell on the engine order telegraph annunciator handle. You can feel the touch of it, rotated a bit. It clicked over and it did. There was air bubble there between the forward end of the conning tower hatch and the forward end of the conning tower itself.

Because of the angle air, got trapped up in there. I had another breathing spot. I was able to get out of that, and then I knew of course exactly where I was, exactly where the hatch was and thoughtfully which way was up, although I wasn't sure. I ducked out to go up the hatch and caught a third bubble trapped between the overhang of the conning tower where it extends back over the hatch and the front of the conning tower, not the conning tower, the bridge superstructure there. There's a bulkhead water break, if you will, at the forth end of the bridge. There was a bubble in there and then I was able to duck under and start up for the surface and got there fortunately.

I estimated it was about 60 feet from where I was at the start of my ascent to the surface. When I went to submarine school, we had been taught never hold your breath if you're coming up or you'll have an air embolism, your lungs will burst. They drove that into us at the submarine school by putting us under pressure in the pressure chamber, used the incident to locking out and going up with a Momsen lung. They demonstrated it by opening the mouthpiece on a Momsen lung that was just laying on the deck in there, put us under the pressure, shutting the mouthpiece on the Momsen lung, bleeding the pressure off the chamber. As the pressure got bled off, the air in that Momsen lung, which had been under 100 foot pressure, began to expand.

The lung fabric expanded and then burst like a boom. That's what's going to happen to your lungs if you hold your breath. It was a very impressive lesson and I learned that lesson. I never forgot that even at the time when I was in a position to have to know it, I had to know it. I was able to know it, and it was good training. Matter of fact, I scared myself by knowing that I might be coming up slower than the air is expanding and I deliberately blew out, so that I'd have to catch my breath, but burst to the surface at that very moment. Just fortunate in that respect, but without that training, I would've never had the confidence to do that, open my mouth as I was coming up and expel air.

I have no idea how long it took me to get up. As I rose, I blew too much air out and wanted to take a breath, but fortunately, before I had to take a breath, which if I were still under the water, it would've been a gulp of water. I broke surface and sucked air in. I could see the bow of the Tang. I was that close to her, and needless to say, I wanted to go over and hang on to something that was still above water and get a rest and collect my thoughts and figure out what to do next, but the currents were such that I was unable to swim to the bow. Although I tried swimming toward it, I seemed to be losing ground and getting further away. That was dark, but I could see it. Oh, the next thing I did was I've got to conserve my strength.

I wanted to get some flotation. It was useless to try to get to the bow and I was only exerting myself trying to get to it and tiring myself more rapidly. I wore trousers all of the time, unlike most folks in the submarines that wore shorts. I was also fortunate enough to having been sent to a survival school designed for surface ship people that they required me to go to while I was waiting for the week in San Francisco, that I had to wait for further transportation on a ship to the Pacific to join the submarine.

At that school, among the other things they taught us were to jump into water that had debris in it, which you might expect from a surface or a sunken surface ship, and also convert your trousers into a life jacket if you didn't have a life jacket. You took them off, you tied an overhand knot in each leg, pulled them up over your head and back down into the water and trapped air in them and lay in the crotch with the two legs coming up from under your armpits. You were in a life jacket or a pair of water wings really. I did do that and I credit that with saving my life. If I hadn't have done that and had I lived, I'd have probably qualified for the world's longest swimming record and beat any channel swim that had been performed up until that time.

I knew that the Chinese coast was off to the west and thought maybe I can reach the coast if I try to swim that way, but I discovered I seemed to be going around in circles rather than making progress. Now, the currents in the Taiwan Strait are rather strong and tricky, if I can just put it that way, from a navigator's point of view. Apparently, I wasn't getting very far with my swimming endeavors, and believe it or not, I changed my mind from evading escape to getting rescued. I wanted out of the water. I was cold and shivering, getting weaker and making no progress at all.

I hollered as loud as I could almost from the time I first came to the surface thinking maybe there are people from the bridge still in the water. I learned later there were, but nobody heard me and I didn't hear them. But there was a Japanese boat, small boat running around, picking up survivors from the ships we had torpedoed. I splashed and hollered and made a lot of noise when one of those came by and they came over and picked me up. So, I feel that I was rather rescued than captured.

All of the nine survivors were picked up by, I think, the same boat. It was a small boat, like a whale boat or a gig maybe. When they picked me up, I was alone and I was the only one they picked up and took back to the boats. Others were already on board, the escort vessel that the small boat came from to pick us up. I had heard that and just heard, I have no personal knowledge, witnessing knowledge that there was another fellow that the boat picked up from our submarine who had been badly injured and they didn't bring him aboard the escort vessel. They tossed him back in the water. Whether he was dead or alive, whether it in fact happened, I can't swear to, but it has been said.

Now, after we got together and were allowed to speak to one another subsequent to our capture, I was led to believe the fellows in the forward end of the boat, in this case forward torpedo room, pulled one of the vents that kept the bow buoyant to get it down underwater for two reasons. One so they could maneuver around and the other being that they didn't want the Japanese to start firing at that bow or dropping depth charges alongside it. Oh, they did that. Then they began to organize for escaping from the forward room using the standard apparatus, the Momsen lung, where they were stored along with some in the after torpedo room as well, which is another escape compartment.

Several parties were formed to try to escape. You're limited to the number of people you can crowd into the escape trunk at a time. Some succeeded and some failed. I can't tell you why. There were conjecturing about why in some cases. I might even say one of the reasons of that conjecture, remember that their minds were a bit clouded too from being under the pressure that they were under. Some of them had smoke inhalation undoubtedly. The carbon dioxide was building up in the air that was in there, and although there was CO2 absorbent available, apparently insufficient had been spread to keep it under control. This tends to cloud your thinking ability.

One story had it that one group left armed with weapons and with canned goods because they hoped to survive and keep going. The Momsen lung was not designed to lift much more than a heavy human being and the thought was when they went to ascend, they sank instead, which is reasonable to assume, but this is something that I heard. I did not witness.

We were all locked up in what appeared to be a bathroom. They had those hot tubs. The room itself was very tiny and the nine of us were not able to stand or to lie down on the deck. It was that small so that some of us slipped and then they got kicked up. The others went back down to get their sleep. It was hotter than Haiti's, not well ventilated. It was very uncomfortable situation.

I can't tell you exactly how many days we were in there, but the escort vessel proceeded south, went into a port on the China side of the Straits for an overnight stop, and then proceeded on down to a place that was then called, I think, Takao on the southern end of Formosa. I'm a little rusty on these names, but I'll do the best I can. There we were actually interrogated. That was the first real interrogation that we were subjected to. It seemed like they had us in a warehouse locked up in small rooms there and under constant surveillance of a guard, probably more than one because they only had one of us in each of these compartments, one of these rooms that we were in.

We were not permitted to speak with one another, and I can see the point to that from the interrogator's point of view. We couldn't compare questions and we couldn't compare answers. I think we were there about two days, possibly three. They paraded us through town wearing sandwich boards. Although we weren't advertising Raleigh's or anything like that to the train station. We were put on a train and went from Takao, if I still remember the name of it, right to a place called Kirun at that time on the northern tip Formosa, the harbor up there. We were kept in jail there, what we called the Kirun clink for a couple of days. Then they split us up and they put the enlisted men in the hold of what I understand was a cruiser.

That's what they thought it was, and each of the officers were put on a destroyer when I think it was a destroyer, each on a different one. I was taken into the wardroom and they took one look at me and sent me off to the bathroom. By bath, now I'm talking Japanese term of bath, hachi bath, to get myself scrubbed and clean. They also threw away my clothes that I'd been wearing from the time the Tang went down and provided me with a suit of Japanese naval clothes, clean, sat me down on a stool. A fellow with a razor blade, straight razor pulled my chin up and I thought they were going to slit my throat right then and there, but oh no, he gave me a shave. They put me back in the wardroom indicated one of the transom's sofa, if you will, in the wardroom and said, "That's where you sleep." There were two doors to the wardroom. It was remarkably like a US destroyer wardroom.

They put a guard at each of the doorways. They didn't usually shut the doors. They just had curtains hanging across them, although there were doors. When the equivalents to our stewards came in to set up the mess for the officer's mess, lo and behold, they set a place for me with a knife and a fork and a regular plate and a glass for my water. The others of course all had their chopsticks put out. They were in little boxes that they keep them in highly polished decorative boxes and they slide the lid back. It had a sliding lid and they'd flip it up so the chopsticks stuck out a few inches, then put it down where we would normally put our silverware. The officer came in. He pulled off the top, pulled out the chopsticks, went ahead, and enjoyed his meal.

They put a dictionary in the middle of the table having learned that I did not speak any Japanese and some of them did speak English. The dictionary was principally for my use and I might add I was chided a little bit in the Japanese Naval Academy, they taught them to speak English. Although I hadn't answered yet the question about where I'd gone to school, that hadn't been raised, they knew that all of the naval officers that went to Annapolis hadn't been taught Japanese, but there was every effort made to allow us to communicate, every effort made to make me comfortable as the Geneva Convention rules that I understood called for. I was treated as an officer with the exception of liberty. I might add if I wanted to go to the bathroom, I was taught the proper thing to say and was immediately escorted to the bathroom.

It was very surprising to me not having heard too many stories about the Japanese Navy's behavior before I went out there. Remember, I was in the European theater. Ironically, this may be interesting to you. I had been taught escape and evasion when we were operating in the Mediterranean. On our destroyer, they sent a British officer over who had been in and out of German prison camps for almost his whole career during the war. He was a messenger. In each of the camps over there, they had what they called an escape committee. People trained. You probably have heard about this, and he told us all about these cute things about if you don't know for sure whether you're going in the right way, you don't stop a guy and ask him.

Although you could get away with that easier in Europe than you could here because the Germans mixed up the populations in all of the countries. If he didn't speak a language, that was not surprising. Eat all the radishes and onions and eggs and foul-smelling stuff you could get. If he started to talk to you, heave your breath out right under his nose to discourage him or let him pass by going in the opposite direction. Then when you had a good head start, holler back and say, "That's where Paris is, isn't it?" If he turns around, at least you've got a pretty good head start running to try to lose him. That thing we'd been taught didn't do any good in Japan.

We didn't resemble them in skin color or stature for the most part or other features. We had heavy beards and I didn't see any of them with a heavy beard. It was a different can of worms, but I'm digressing here that the thing was I was treated as an officer on board the destroyer. I was not treated as an officer before I went aboard the destroyer, and I was not treated as an officer except maybe they took it out a little more than an officer than the enlisted personnel.

I wound up in Omori having been put ashore, well having been set out of Ofuna to the other camp. That seemed to be following in something. That might be interesting. Ofuna was an interrogation camp and it appeared as though getting transferred out of there was largely dependent on how soon they got another prisoner more up to date than yourself from either a similar submarine or an identical type submarine or a similar aircraft or an identical type of aircraft and from the same theater within the Pacific area. What they were doing was simply keeping the files up to date. They transfer the old guy out and start interrogating the new guy, which is a pretty smart way of doing things.

Of course, I'm sure we were doing the same thing, but I didn't know anything about intelligence in those days. At any rate, in Omori, newly arrived drafts such as I was were kept in a special detention barracks. We were not permitted to talk to the other prisoners or mingle with the other prisoners, although those of us in one end of that barracks were allowed to freely communicate and associate with one another when we weren't out working on a work party somewhere. Another interesting thing I think was the fact that it was a long building separated by a partition without a door in it. Now we're in one end of the building. Even more freshly caught prisoners are in the other end of the building and the door between the two ends was open.

The guard would sit on a stool there, keep us from trespassing into the other's territory. After the bomb had been dropped, I'm sure you know what I mean by the bomb. Aviators, were bad people to get caught in Japan. We felt it was important to get the word to the aviators as soon as we could to disassociate themselves from any knowledge or connection with a B-29. They seemed to be prime targets for punishment. What they worked out I thought was very clever. First of all, you'd say a few terrible things. You and I would talk to one another. The doorway is off to our right, let's say, your left, I guess, and the guard sat on a stool in that doorway.

So, we would start saying terrible things about that guard carefully watching his expression to see if he understood what we were saying. If he blinked when you called him a you know what, we knew he understood us. If he seemed to be perfectly at peace with us calling him all sorts of dirty names, we figured he didn't speak English or understand English. Then there'd be a pilot on the other side within earshot, and I'd say, Darrell, never ever admit you'd ever been near a B-30-1. Some of them could understand figures and nijuku was the Japanese word for it, but don't say that. Say 30-1.

But no, we heard about the bomb. We heard about it. We heard of it. Through rumors in the prison from an aviator. Didn't believe it when I heard it, but we heard about it. As a matter of fact, I think all of us were lucky to be alive, particularly at Ofuna when practically every garden at camp must have lost people, relatives in the raid.

The way we were treated at Ofuna was being granted slightly more liberty as time went on. The first period was isolation, and then we were allowed to talk to the people in the same barracks we were in. First barrack was called iku by the Japanese, and niku, which was the second barracks. There we had some association with the other people in that barracks. Sanku, which was the third degree of leniency, everybody was allowed to mingle together, walk together in the exercise yard, considerably more liberty. But if you did not follow every regulation, and sometimes it was hard to understand, the orders given in Japanese took a while to get to know.

The punishment varied from a blowing out to what we call a knuckle sandwich like that or to swinging a stick and beating the living be Jesus out of you with it. But interestingly enough, principally across your buttocks, you assumed a stance with your arms up into your air and they squatted a little bit and they'd swing this thing like a ball bat and bring it up under your buttocks. Hurt like the devil, sometimes made you so sore and tore the muscles up a little bit, I guess, so you couldn't stand afterwards for a while, but I now know why babies are spanked on their bottoms. Your bottom was meant to take one hell of a lot of beating without very much permanent damage, but that was the way it went.

Food, of course, was atrocious by our standards, chiefly rice and more educated people tell me most of it was maize and sometimes a vegetable, mostly not. Tea, of course, to drink. Oh, the food wasn't adequate from my point of view. Medical attention, absolutely lacking. Even at Ofuna, they had a pharmacist there who seemed to take the light and hurting you rather than easing your pain. But two things, one, I don't think he was very well qualified, and secondly, I think he was a bit sadistic, but you could ask others about that.

At Omori, we were put on work details and it was chiefly pick and shovel stuff, digging shelters, both I guess for people I don't know and for provisions and other military stores into the sides of hills. It was not the tunneling from the surface down in and out, but tunneling from the side of a hill in. That's the type of work that was there. Again, the food wasn't plentiful and it wasn't appetizing.

Remember that our food was fertilized with human dung. That was one of the jobs we had, honey dipping. For one farmer, so much urine and so much solids and for another farmer, all one or all the other way. Look, if there's a potato that you could pick up and scrounge without the guards seeing you, grabbing it and swallowing it, you'd do it. You forgot about the fact that you didn't wash it and all of that. Of course, under the ground, that wasn't as evident that it had been fertilized with that stuff fallen out of the ground, but O'Kane was not treated any better because of his status as a commanding officer.

If anything, he might've been treated a little rougher. I've seen him take the beatings with us when we got group punishment. I never recall seeing him punished by himself as so many of us were from time to time. But in group punishment, he was right up there with the rest of us.

I don't know why he was singled out, but in this niku building where they allowed us to associate among the people in the building, we still had individual cells except they got crowded. I don't know of any other pair that were ever put together, but I had to sleep in a one-man cell along with O'Kane and one issue of blankets, so you can imagine how cozy it was. I felt that I got to know him, although it was only for about a week. I got to know him quite well there and respect him a great deal more than I would normally have respected him, understood better why he wanted to get the war to an end. He talked about his wife and the two children constantly.

He talked about how we might better conduct ourselves under investigation, under interrogation, having pointed out to us that if we knew they knew the answer to the question, go ahead and give it to them. If you'd already been compromised, someone else had been compromised and you knew it, there was no harm in letting them know that what they had was good. But if you lied, that's also useful information. That was an interesting point, but in discussions with him, I became aware of what a great family man he was, what a great personal responsibility he felt for trying to get the war over with as soon as possible. It was educational.

Then when we were separated to different cells, which was much more comfortable, believe me, we would sit in the exercise yard during the periods we were allowed to. He had a very agile mind for inventions. He liked to invent things, and I don't know if he did anything about it after the war was over.

They thought we were sketching escape routes and that thing, which again, looking back to the experience in Europe and the training there versus the experience in Asia, we had a lot of aviators among the prisoners. Some of them were seaplane pilots. We knew near Ofuna, there was a seaplane base. You could see them rise above the top of the hills nearby. The angle that were coming up and so forth, we couldn't have been far from a base. Hey, come on, we can get out of here. Getting out of camp would've been the simplest thing in the world. We could have overpowered the guards at camp, I'm sure of that. I really feel sure of the fact we could have overpowered them, but then what?

We said, "Why don't we go over there and grab one of those airplanes?" The pilots said, "Well, we know how to fly an airplane, but we don't read Japanese. I'm sure the instruments are not marked in English. Where is the switch to do this, and where is the switch to do that?" They could recognize a stick or a yoke, but there were a lot of other things to running an airplane than just recognizing a stick and a yoke or the rudder pedals. They said, "We are sure we'd never get out of that airplane safely or even at all. We wouldn't be able to cut the engines on without a little more time than we thought we would have if we boarded a plane." So again, we constantly thought of escape and I suppose some prisoners did escape from Japan. I don't know. I didn't hear of any.

The Harold Stassen, I'd never forget his name as long as I lived.

He was in charge of the landing party that came ashore at Omari to release us. He got up on the platform there and announced that we would be released, but it wouldn't be immediately. It hinged on certain other terms. It still had to be discussed, but he and his people were going to make an inspection of the camp. I think it was before they did that, anybody that had been seen at sick call and was being attended by a doctor was going to go right away and that's all right.

He made his inspection tour and mounted the thing again, and he said the conditions that the camp was in and the way the people who were in the camp, their condition was such that anybody that felt he ought to see a doctor would be taken out of the camp. Well, I guess you know that that was everybody that was left in camp. That's all there was to it. He simply said, "If you're sick of being here, we'll take you out." So that's what happened.

What was taken aboard the hospital ship, given a quick examination, apparently was deemed well enough not to have to go to bed, sent down to the mess hall. I might exaggerate, but I think I ate about a dozen eggs at one sitting and some ham or something that they might've served with them and then was transferred to an amphibious type ship. I don't know what the designation for it would be, an LPD or something like that and put in a bunk on board there for fishing and berthing. I think I was there maybe two days. Again, I'm out of the dates now and I have notes I could look at to refresh myself and I doubt if they're important.

Well, now these pilots took us, said, "We're going to take it back to Guam." They hadn't even received permission to do this. They were doing it on their own. Guam didn't even know we were going to get there until they radioed in their arrival report. But what they did do for us was they said, "If you'd like to see Tokyo, we'll circle it for you." Fine. Somebody said, "Great idea."

They managed to crack the cargo door, the one we came through as passengers too, but on the side of the plane. Each in turn wanted to and grabbed by the seat of its trousers, let them crack the door, and I think every one of the prisoners on that airplane peed on Tokyo. The airplane circled it and then we were flown to Guam, got there.

Admiral Lock would got the word that there were two submarine officers on the airplane and what they had done was taken us and put us in beds at the hospital in Guam. He sent a driver out for both of us, well two different drivers. He sent a nurse from the submarine group out and a driver to pick us up independently, take us back. There was a party going on at the club that night and sat us down at the table at the party as his guests and my nurse took pity on me. First of all, when you have hepatitis, you don't care about drinking and I could hardly hold anything down for long anyway. I didn't care about drinking and the food didn't mean anything to me. I had a very slight appetite and dancing wasn't exactly my fond and the nurse appreciated it.

She said, "I'll talk to the admiral and let me check you and put you back in bed where you belong." However, the word was put out to the two pilots, each of the airplanes, the pilot of each airplane, if they were willing to fly SPOWs they brought into Guam back to Pearl, they had permission. And both pilots jumped at the opportunity. The next morning I spent one night as I recall at the hospital on Guam and the next morning we took off and the following night I spent at Aiea Naval Hospital in Honolulu. From there they kept me just long enough, I think two, three days. I'm not sure. Again, the submarine force, they gave me an escort officers, gave him a pocket of money.

I don't know how much. Sent him out to let me get a uniform at the submarine base and buy some chocolate ice cream sodas, which I would drink and then get rid of. However, took good care of me, made me miss my airplane that I was supposed to catch to go to the West Coast. So, they put me on a commercial plane, flew me into Oakland, got up to the Oak Knoll Hospital. Then as soon as they determined it was safe to turn me loose and send me to a naval hospital closest to my leave address, which happened to be a hospital on Long Island.

My folks lived in Forest Hills at the time. I forget the name of that one. They transferred me out there and I flew out there. You talk about telegrams. I have copies of the telegram I sent from Oakland, telling my mother when I would arrive at LaGuardia and then another telegram from... I forget the name. My folks got a telegram from the Navy Department congratulating them on my release saying that they were going to send me back to the states as soon as they could and keep her advised of my whereabouts so they could meet me. They heard from me by telegram, by phone, actually I guess I called them from the Naval Hospital in Oakland.

They heard from me first. So, in my file at BUPERS, they keep files on your correspondence. I don't know if they're still active or not. There is a message from my mother to BUPERS responding to their telegram to her about notifying me of my whereabouts. As soon as I got home, she sent this message to him and said, "Lieutenant Savadkin has reported to me at my home. Henceforth, I will keep you informed of his whereabouts." That's a funny thing to read in your record, but it's there.When the Tang went down, I weighed about 155 pounds. When I was released from prison camp, I weighed about 90 pounds. I think I put 10 pounds on the first day roughly. These can be ascertained, I'm sure, by breaking out the medical records. I don't know, but that's my guess. When I came home, I was about 120 pounds and I was sent on rehabilitation leave, they called it. I sat on a stool in the kitchen and my mother cooked all day, all night.

It made me of the well aware, and I'm talking about my whole naval career now, of how cruel it is to engage in that kind of warfare where you maim and never mind killing and mess people's lives up. Number two, the POW bit of it taught me patience. That really drove patience home to me. You sure had to put up with a lot and keep your mouth shut and just do it. It taught me a great deal of patience. It taught me a great deal about other people too. I witnessed, and this is a personal observation, Japanese enlisted men sneak food to us from time to time.

One guy who spoke a little English, his father had been in the import-export business and spoke some English, said, "I am a Christian." That's how he explained away the kindness that he gave us and I was touched by that. He himself got beat up a couple of times, getting caught doing this thing. They beat their own people up too. I learned, I think, to understand trying to control terror where if you shook all over, you were incapable of doing things carefully. It was most important to remember lessons you had learned, particularly the lessons that helped you out when you're in a pinch.

I've learned to be more tolerant, I'll put it that way, of others who either don't have enough between the ears to know better or who have human feelings if I could express it that way. They're not ashamed to exhibit them.

Ken Harbaugh:

That was Captain Lawrence Savadkin.

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Warriors In Their Own Words is a production of Evergreen Podcasts, in partnership with The Honor Project.

Our producer is Declan Rohrs. Brigid Coyne is our production director, and Sean Rule-Hoffman is our Audio Engineer.

Special thanks to Evergreen executive producers, Joan Andrews, Michael DeAloia, and David Moss.