were causing the deaths of more than 50 Americans each day. We were to see unconscious Americans, exhausted on the march, tossed into shallow graves and buried while still alive. We were to see our fellow American prisoners drop by the score from dysentery and malnutrition, and their bodies litter our prison camps while waiting for the Japanese to get around to giving us permission to bury our dead. More than a thousand had died before the Japanese permitted us to hold religious services over their bodies or to mark their graves. We were to see Americans tied up and tortured in full view of our prison camp, beaten and battered until they were no longer recognizable as human, before they were finally removed for execution without trial. We were to see and experience a daily pattern of existence and treatment which will remain with us as nightmares and revolting memories for the rest of our lives. Among the ten of us, these nightmares and memories resolve themselves into one simple conviction: Japan as a military power must be utterly and finally defeated, soon. Asprofessional military men--one a graduate of Annapolis, the other of West Point--we are fully aware that atrocity stories, as such, can be dangerous in wartime. Yet we feel most emphatically that this story should be told. We feel that all our people should be given a clearer picture of the enemy we face in the Pacific. Most important of all, we feel that the Japanese treatment of American military prisoners, at least in the Philippines, should |