The Burma-Siam Death Railway: CPO Otto Schwarz

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 Chief Petty Officer Otto Shwarz. Shwarz was born in the Netherlands, and moved to the US during his childhood. He survived the sinking of the USS Houston and was captured by the Japanese. He spent nearly four years as a POW, enduring unfathomable conditions on “Hell ships” and the “Death Railway”.

In this first part of his interview, he’ll describe escaping the Houston, and the start of his time as a POW.

CPO Otto Schwarz:

I was in the forward powder magazine for tour number one. Which is as far down below the waterline as you can get. And when the word came to abandon ship... Normally they have repair parties who open the hatches to let you get out. Apparently our repair party were either killed or busy somewhere else. But we did manage to open the hatch anyway. We had smuggled a mallet down with us for such a occasion. And it was very difficult getting up because everything was on fire, and everything was filled with smoke, and you couldn't tell where you were going, and you had to do everything by memory or feel. And I had to go aft on the ship to get to the quarter deck to go up and then go forward to my abandon ship station. And we got halfway back and there was an explosion. Apparently the last torpedo hit. And there were 13 of us in my group. And I know I was knocked unconscious for a while, and when I came to there was nobody else there. And I knew where I was by feeling a rifle rack on the bulkhead, and I knew I was in a Marine compartment. So, I made my way forward to the fo'c'sle, went to get a life jacket to find that the compartment had been hit and it was on fire. So, I had no life jacket. All I had on was a pair of khaki trousers, no shirt, no shoes, stockings, or anything. And there was a lot of shelling going on. We were dead in the water after having been hit by four torpedoes and hundreds of shells.

So, the Japanese formed a semicircle around us, put searchlights on, and just sat there pounding us with one shell after another. And there was a lot of hot shrapnel flying all over the place. And at one point I remember being knocked down on the deck and there was a lot of hot shrapnel coming down on me. And some guy noticed it, and he had one of these kapok life jackets on, and he dove on top of me and took some of that shrapnel. And I've never seen him since either.

Just before I left the ship some guy walked up to me and said, "You don't have a life jacket." And he had one on and one in his hand, and he gave me the extra one. So, when I got in the water I put this life jacket on. And so, I had that. That’s basically what happened to me just prior to getting off.

Once I was in the water I found that I was nowhere near anybody. There were no rafts, no lifeboats, no debris, and no people. And so, I just swam. And I was an 18-year-old kid and a little bit lonely out there by myself.

I saw a silhouette on the horizon, which I figured was the western tip of Java. And so, I headed that direction and just went as fast as I could. I swam all through the night. And at one point I could hear a lot of screaming in the distance and a lot of gunfire. And this was long after the ship went down. And I realized that they were machine-gunning the survivors in the water. And at one point I heard a torpedo boat coming toward me and they put a searchlight on me. And in desperation I put my face down in my armpit of the life jacket and I bobbed up and down as if I were dead. And I kept waiting for the bullets to hit. But I could hear them talking and they started poking me with some sort of a boat hook or something. And next thing I knew they turned the searchlight off, revved up their motors, and off they went.

And so, I continued swimming. And I met one guy during the night who was a pharmacist mate. And we swam together for a while, but I started developing very severe leg cramps and I had to stop and try to work these cramps out. And he got mad at me. Said that I was going to get both of us killed. And I told him it was a big ocean, just take off. And he took off and left me. So, from then on I didn't see anybody again.

Sometime the next day, I have no idea what time it was but I know it was well into the next day, the Japanese were landing troops in the area where I was swimming toward. And I could not get to the beach, the currents were too strong. And this landing barge came alongside of me and pulled me out of the water and threw me down. And there was another Houston survivor at the bottom of the boat.When I was first captured, when I was thrown in that barge, I was extremely grateful. Because by then I was really at the end of my endurance and I would not have been able to keep up much longer. So, I was glad to be picked up and thrown in the barge.

And they took us into the beach, and there ended up being about 13 of us, in that group. And they used us to pull carts loaded with ammunition and supplies along with the troops as they advanced on the island. And we did that for four days and four nights.

They assigned a guard to each man. See, they were supposed to be pulled by little ponies, but the ships with the ponies had been sunk. So, they put one of us in the shafts of each cart, and this guard with a rifle. And his job was to keep us moving, which he did by using the rifle butt freely on the back of our backs.

I got my first beating almost immediately upon being thrown on the beach. I sat down on a wooden crate and a Japanese came around and started screaming at me and smacked me and knocked me off the box. So, I don't know what was in the box but... So, I knew we were in trouble. And then of course it got progressively worse from there on. It just got really bad.

After about six weeks we were brought to Bicycle Camp. In October of 1942 we were removed from Bicycle Camp, put aboard what is now commonly known by historians as hell ships, and we were transported up to Changi Prison in Singapore. Changi was a long-time British establishment of barracks for the British army. And the Japanese just herded all the British troops to that end of the island and told them to stay there, they were prisoners. And then that's where they marched us and put us into one of the barracks.

The hell ships, as I speak of, were almost indescribable. They were small, old, interisland steam ships that had been used for any purpose needed. Transporting troops, horses, material. And they were dirty, they were rusty. And they packed thousands of POWs down into the holds of these ships, shoulder to shoulder, and locked us down there for days without any water or bathroom facilities, nothing. It was just a horrible, horrible experience.

Oh, yeah. Some of them of course had dysentery. And of course you can imagine what it was like after three or four days. They let us up on deck occasionally, if you were lucky enough to get in front of all those guys. They had a latrine, a wooden latrine, attached to the side of the ship. And you could get out there and squat and then they would herd you back down. And that was it. But very few people got to use that facility.

We first were introduced to men from other nations actually in Bicycle Camp. Or even before, the survivors of the HMAS Perth were thrown in imprisonment with the Houston survivors. Then when we got to Bicycle Camp, of course we met Australian army troops, and British, and then of course up on the railroad we intermittently ran into people from those nations all the time.

There were Dutch in Bicycle Camp, but they were segregated from us. They were in a separate part than we were in.

Well, we first met these other nationalities of course in the very beginning with the survivors off of the HMAS Perth. Now having a lot in common, being navy, being sunk in a battle together, we immediately came together and the friendship was just automatic. When we met other nationalities it was a little bit different. When we met the British in Changi, they had been there for quite a while, they were established, they had their own uniforms and supplies. And as a matter of fact, they actually used to drill and march as if they were still in the army. And the Americans came there, no clothes, half-starved, sick of the hell ships. And it took a long time before we got to intermingle.

The one thing that the Americans did, which I believe was unique, was that we maintained military discipline, although our officers told us not to salute them because it brought attention to them. But they did maintain their control over us, down through the ranks of the petty officers and whatnot. And I think that that in large part helped us survive.

It was important to maintain a military structure, because otherwise we would be nothing but rabble. And there were even some court marshals in the larger group of Americans.

When we were in Changi we were notified by our own officers that we were moving out again. We had been told, or at least we were told that the Japanese told our officers that we were being sent to a camp in the mountains where we would get good food, and we would regain our health, and we would be very happy there.

Well, we didn't believe anything that was told to us because of the track record. And so, everybody laughed that one off. And with very good reason.

Well, we arrived in Moulmein, Burma, not far from the famous Moulmein pagoda. And it was dark and we were herded into this what was obviously some sort of a prison. And when we woke up the next day we found out it was a leper colony. But we were only there overnight. And then we were sent up onto the railroad to a terminus called Thanbyuzayat.

My group, which was the first group of Americans to arrive in Burma, started working on the railroad from a place called Thanbyuzayat. Which was the Burma end of the Burma-Siam railway. When we were in Thanbyuzayat we were addressed by a Japanese colonel named Nagatomo. And he made a speech in which he told us that we were the rabble of a lost army, that Japan needed this railroad for her military use, and that they intended to build it over the white man's body. And he ended the speech by telling us to, "You always use the motto, be happy in your work." So, that was the beginning. Under our breath we were laughing at the speech because it was so idiotic and childish. Telling us to be happy in our work when we knew we were heading into something. And then shortly after that we were marched out and marched further into Burma to our first work camp.

My group was assigned in the beginning to building embankments on which they would put the track and cross ties and all. And what they did was they assigned us in groups of four. Two men with a pick and a shovel, two men with a bamboo pole from which was hung a burlap sack. And they would fill the burlap sack with dirt and we would run it up the embankment and dump it. And just back and forth like ants building these embankments. When we first went there they told us that we would be responsible to dig a square kilo of dirt per man per day. Well, that turned out to be so easy, and we foolishly got it done so quickly that that measurement soon went out the window and we then were just working as long as they decided we would work.

The work that I described, I don't know how it could be considered as boring because you were on the move constantly. And the Japanese were always hollering and pushing and they had a habit of carrying sticks made of bamboo, maybe three or four feet long. And they whacked us with those things anytime they thought we weren't moving fast enough. And by the way, at that time, all the Japanese guards that went to Burma with us were taken away and we were assigned to Korean guards.

As it turned out these Koreans were absolutely sadistic. And at first it was shocking to us and we were filled with hatred. And they beat us constantly. But then as we got to be prisoners longer and watched how they were treated by their Japanese superiors, we could understand that they were treated like animals, so in defense they went and looked for somebody else to take it out on. And we were at the bottom of the ladder.

Well, one of the things that was puzzling to us at the time, and even more so now that we reflect upon it, is that if they wanted that railroad built, and if they had fed us better, and supplied us with medical supplies so that we didn't all die from diseases, the railroad would've gotten built probably sooner with a lot less deaths. And we couldn't understand why. They had a policy that was obvious to us that they really were building it over our dead bodies. And I just couldn't understand it.

A good example of the things that puzzled us in the way we were treated and how they built the railroad was, for instance, in a number of places we had elephants working. We would cut down trees, trim them, and the elephants would roll them down, and we would use them for stanchions and uprights and bridge work. And they were treated so badly, the elephants, that eventually they all ran away and they had no elephants. So, we pointed that out to the Japanese and the Japanese said, "Well, 10 Americans are just as good as one elephant anyway." So, there's your answer. I mean, if you take enough people and beat them and starve them, but make them keep moving, eventually you'll get something done.

To describe a typical day on the railroad would be a little difficult because there were so many different things that we did that sometimes the typical day was different from the other day. But basically we got up in the dark and we went out and we lined up and we got a little portion of gruel. Which was boiled down rice, to almost like a cereal. If you were lucky, and there was some sugar available, they had these slabs of sugar called shintiga, and they would boil that down and you might get a teaspoon of that on top of this gruel.

Then you would march out to the site, however far it was. They were usually not too far away from the camp. Camps were built right along the track. And you might work until the sun was well up, maybe into the afternoon. If conditions were good they might come out with a watery soup made out of melons, local melons. These were colorless kinds of meat inside the melon and they would boil it. And it was really basically nothing but hot water. And you would get that, maybe a small cup of that over some rice. And the same way coming back into the camp late at night. You would get similar type of food, just some portion of rice and a little bit of some kind of a hot water soup. That was about it. There was never anything like meat or vegetables or anything like that.

If a Japanese guard told you to do something, if he said jump and you only jumped an inch you would end up getting this bamboo stick beat around your head. But as time went on we got to be fairly good with understanding what they were saying. And so, I don't think that that became a major problem in terms of why they would beat us. I think they just beat us because we didn't do what they wanted maybe, and maybe we didn't bow correctly to a Japanese. We had to bow to every Japanese we passed. Even out on the railroad, if we were working and a Japanese soldier, or an officer, or a sergeant came by it was the rule that the first man who saw him had to holler attention in Japanese. And then had to holler bow in Japanese. And if everybody didn't do it correctly they went into orbit and would get very upset.

Well, the men started to get sick almost immediately. As a matter of fact, I remember my best friend, a young seaman, died I believe within the first couple of months we were in the jungle. He had contracted dysentery and got no medication or anything. And he died. And the men started to get sick, we started to lose weight, very rapidly obviously on the kinds of rations we were on. As we advanced up into the jungle, of course it got worse and worse and worse. And at one point the Americans, the group that I was with, had no physicians. For some reason or other when the Japanese sent my group up to Burma they gave us no medical people at all. Not even hospital corpsmen or pharmacist mates or anything. Even though we had plenty of them left back in Java and Changi with the other group. So, consequently the Americans were starting to become very ill with no attention.

So, the Japanese went to a nearby Dutch camp and they got a Dutch doctor to volunteer to come and be with us. And he was a godsend. He saved our lives because we ended up with the lowest death rate of any group in the jungle. Only because of his knowledge of local herbs. His name was Henri Hekking. He had been born and raised in Indonesia by a grandmother who was an herbologist. And he knew all the herbs. And he was just such a magnificent man. And he became my lifelong friend until he died a few years ago. And he was our savior actually, because our group ended up with the lowest death rate along the line.

I can make some observations of the medical orderlies that were with us. As I said, the Americans had none in my group. So, we took an ordinary seaman, second class, assigned them to Dr. Hekking, and he taught him how to be a medical orderly. But these men worked tirelessly all the time, exposed to all the diseases, and they certainly deserved any honors that we could ever bestow upon them because they were absolutely miraculous. There was an American doctor named Lumpkin, who was with the main bigger group of Americans, and he worked himself tirelessly until he finally died.

When Fred Miles, who was my best friend at that time, became so ill, the person in charge of my group was a 131st field artillery captain. And at that point in time he was reluctant to face the Japanese to any degree. And when Fred died I lost my cool and I really lambasted this captain because I said, "You killed him. Because if you were any kind of an officer you would've fought the Japanese and had him sent back to the hospital." And I was very deeply affected by that. And from that moment on I actually had no really close American friend after that.

I had very little contact with officers. And I'm sure that the officers' behavior ran the gamut from the guys that were heroes and stood up to the Japanese and the ones who stayed in their huts and just forgot the whole thing. But there were many examples of bravery among officers, especially among the Australians. The Australians had, as far as I could see, really, really great officers who would do anything for their men. My observation of the British officers was that there was a very distinct caste or social line between officers and ORs, ordinary ranks. And you could see it everywhere you went. And the Dutch, of course, all the officers were colonials and they were used to dealing with servants and the troops were, I don't think from what I could observe, the very little contact I had with them, I don't think they were really considered too much.

Well, along the railroad line nationalities were always separated. Americans lived in one hut, Australians lived in another. But of course when we were not working, what few opportunities we had, we intermingled quite freely. And of course I was with the Americans. And as I said before, once my friend Fred died I was kind of lost, and I didn't form any great close relationship with any of the Americans.

And at one point when we were going deepest into the jungle, I had malaria, beriberi, and dysentery all at the same time. And Dr. Hekking came to me and said, "Look, we're moving out and we're going deeper in the jungle. And if you go with us, you're going to die." He said, "If I send you back to the 55 Kilo," which was known as the death camp, he said, "who knows, you might survive." So, I said, "Well, whatever you say." So, he sent me back there. I was separated from the Americans then for many months. And I was taken care of by a group of Australians. And so, from then on I had this very close relationship and this deep affection for the Australians.

The criteria for being too ill to work was dependent upon the situation and the guards and the engineers. If they were lagging behind in a certain project they would go right through the dysentery wards, malaria wards, and just tell the doctor, "He goes out, he goes out, he goes out." And they decided who went out, whether the guys could even stand up and walk. And the doctors were very gallant, some of them who stood up and said, "No, they're not going." And then the Japanese would beat them and eventually get the men they wanted.

Let me say that for the most part most of us were sick with something all the time. We either had malaria, or beriberi, most everybody had beriberi. But that was not an excuse, you still went out to work. And there were times when men would just collapse and they would drag them off to the side and continue working.

They kept us out there as long as they had a need for people to be there. And it didn't make any difference to them whether you were dying or what.

Well, for the most part rest was very, very spasmodic. When you would get in late at night, and if you were lucky enough to get a bowl of rice and you flopped down on your sleeping platform, which consisted of pieces of split bamboo tied together with vines, chances are that within minutes your body would be covered with lice and bed bugs. It was very difficult to, unless you were so totally exhausted that you just went off, it was difficult to get any real rest.

Back at the 55 Kilo, as I said, this group of Australians that for some reason or other took me under their wing, were sneaking out of the camp and dealing with the natives and were able to get, from time to time, little amounts of meat or vegetables. And they were sharing a lot of this with me. And eventually I recovered and I was assigned to go back to the line. Fortunately, by that time, it was December of 1943 and the line was finished. So, I was taken from the 55 Kilo up the line to my group, and I joined them and we went from there to Kanchanaburi where the bridge on the river Kwai was.

In addition to those many health and starvation problems that I mentioned, we came across a new thing that really knocked us for a loop. And that was the monsoon season. We've come to find out that out there it will rain for seven days a week for five months. Steadily pouring rain. And even though you were in a tropical forest, or jungle, it got very cold. And especially at night. And we would go out to work in this pouring, pouring rain. And if you were working on embankments, or anything that you worked on, you would be deep in mud and everything was filled with water. And it was a horrible experience. And especially going back to camp at night, because it was so cold and everybody was freezing. And I remember one time I thought I had outsmarted the system. I had stolen a burlap rice sack, and I opened it up and tried to make a little blanket out of it. And I put it over me that first night and, oh, my, I jumped up in the middle of the night, it was just absolutely covered with bedbugs and lice. I threw that thing away fast.

Even in the darkest of days we managed to keep our spirits alive. And we did joke a lot with each other. We laughed as much as we could. Conversation usually got around to food. Sex was the last thing on our minds. We just wanted food. But there was a good rapport among the men. And there was a lot of kidding. The sailors of the Houston used to kid with the soldiers from Texas. The sailors of the Houston would kid with the sailors of the Perth. And as much as possible we kept this spirit going. And that also is one of the ingredients that helped us survive.

The Aussies and Americans were fierce in their kidding with each other. In a very loving way, because we really, really liked them. And we used to kid them a lot about actually being British. And they used to get mad about that and say we're not British, but yet you couldn't say anything against the Queen.

I don't remember a time when I said to myself you're not going to get out of this. Again, I was a going from day to day kind of person. And I did, I just went from day to day. And I never thought about not making it or making it. I just took each day and went on.

Very few people know about the fact that the Japanese had written orders to their prison camp commanders to exterminate all prisoners of war if there was any type of landing or invasion in the area that they were in. They were very specific, in a strange way, about how to do this. You could bomb them it said, things of that nature. And these plans, when the war ended, the Japanese of course started burning all their records. And the only record of that execution order was found in Taipei, in Formosa. And it was used in the war crimes trials in Tokyo. And very few people knew about it.

But we knew that something was going to happen because the Japanese started to take the camps and build, for instance, machine gun nests pointing in the camp. Some camps they were building caves in the mountains near the camp. Later on I found out that in the Philippines they actually took about 200 Marine POWs and put them in a cave and poured gasoline in and exterminated them. So, it's a reality.

See, we didn't know the extent of it. We didn't even hear about it really. We only watched for signs. And when we saw the Japanese building machine gun embankments pointing into the parade ground you didn't have to be too smart to know that that was there for a reason. You know? But we didn't know actually about the execution order. And I found that out later after I came home.

One of the things that I shall never forget is when we were burying men, which was of course a daily occurrence, and most of them were of course Australian and British, and they would play The Last Post, which is their equivalent of our Taps. And the sound would waft over the camp. And to this day I can hear it and it's the most moving thing. Here these men were being buried, not even as well as paupers anywhere, just a hole in the ground and dumping the body in. But they were given respect even under those conditions. And then that Last Post is such a moving thing. And we heard it so often, just constantly.

When The Bridge on the River Kwai premiered I was contacted by Columbia Pictures and invited to go to New York for the opening night of the movie. And when we sat there, the opening scenes, the hairs on the back of my head stood up because they were so accurate. Going through the jungle on a train and coming to the camp and all that. And of course the movie was based on a novel by a fellow named Pierre Boulle and it had no American in the novel at all. But in order to make it saleable to the American market they of course put William Holden in as an officer of the Houston.

The picture itself was based on some fact, but from then on it was strictly Hollywood. I know that in England they boycotted it. We took a different stand because at that time in our history ex POWs were getting no special recognition from the Veterans Administration. There were no special benefits, there was no special concern to what they had been through, and we were really being pushed aside. When that movie came out it raised the consciousness of the American people that there were Americans in those conditions. And then we started to get legislation passed and they started treating the POWs in a different light.

No, I didn't feel hostile to the movie at all. I felt that as bad as it was in terms of not being factual, it was based on some fact and it did us a lot of good. And why not get the good out of it that we could?

I'm very concerned over the fact that the American public know little or nothing about the experiences that went on on the Burma-Siam death railway in general, and what American POWs underwent at the hands of the Japanese. There are so many examples of how the experiences that we went through have been totally ignored. Just as an example, the battles that we had are totally ignored. Even by naval, by the naval people. You go to the Naval Memorial in Washington and up on the rotunda they have the battles, the great sea battles. They don't have the Java Sea Battle, or the Sunda Strait Battle. They start with the Midway. You know? And of course that has to be felt by us, because we did make a great sacrifice. And we sacrificed for almost four years after that. And yet to have that part of the war be totally ignored in history books and in schools has always bothered me. And that's why for many, many years, up until I went blind, I would visit schools two, three times a week giving a slide presentation, telling the whole story. It was my effort to educate at least as many people as I could contact.

Well, I think my experiences, anyone's experiences, are part of the whole that you become. I think that in terms of after effects from it, health wise and all, I think I've suffered a great deal. But in terms of myself and my character and my career, I think it helped me. And so, it's a balance thing.

For instance, I gained quite a bit of notoriety locally for my experiences. And I went to work for the post office as a letter carrier. And within a few short years I was able to go up the ladder of management until I finally became a top member of the board that ran all the post offices in northern New Jersey. I would never have been able to do that unless I had a recognition value, that people knew me, knew my experiences. For instance, the last job that I held had a requirement of a degree in labor relations and personnel, which I hadn't even completed high school, but yet I did the job and apparently did it well enough to where my boss fought and fought and had me assigned and given the promotion to that job.

There's no doubt in my mind that one who goes through such an experience in life has got to be affected in one way or another by it. Some men I find are very bitter. I never was bitter about what happened to me. At all. I'm proud to say that I belong to an era where we took everything in stride in terms of what happened to us. We didn't look at the fighting that we did, or the sinking, or the capture, as being anything that we were owed anything for. It was part of the contract. We joined the Navy, we became combatants, and we lost. And we ended up prisoners of war. And I maintained that attitude throughout my life. You certainly appreciate life a lot better. And if you happen to be blessed with a good marriage, and children, and grandchildren, then you know that it was all worthwhile.

I've been back a number of times. And the first time that I went back we started out in Java, or Indonesia, and I went to the original jail that I had been put into. And then I visited the jail that the rest of the men were in. And then we stayed in a beautiful, brand new four-star hotel. Right on the grounds of what had been Bicycle Camp. And I'll never forget that first night that we went there. We went down to this really nice restaurant with glass walls overlooking these grounds. And my wife told me later that the waiter couldn't even get me to order anything. I just sat there like I was in a daze. I just went out of it. You know? And then we went on up to Thailand. I don't remember getting any deep remorseful feelings about it. There had been many years passed since. And I just enjoyed going back there and retracing some of my steps. But I don't remember having any trauma, except for that first night. That first night really, really got to me.

How do I feel about the Japanese? Might be a little bit hard to explain. I did carry a very deep hatred for what they had done to me, or to us. I also realized, as I get older and more mature, that one cannot hold the sins of the father against the son. And I would have no problem mingling with Japanese people and would welcome an opportunity to freely discuss my past and their past. It has never happened and I guess it never will happen. But as far as the ones who actually committed the atrocities against us, I still feel that they will never be honorable people until they openly face what they did and admit it. Until they do that I don't think that we can consider them as honorable people.

Never could I forget it.

Ken Harbaugh:

That was Captain Tom Wilson.

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