CHAPTER THREE
"Death At Cabanatuan"
The American prisoner-of-war camp at Cabanatuan,
75 miles north of Manila in the Province of Luzon, was roughly a
long rectangle of about 5OO by 700 yards, bounded on one of the
shorter sides by the road from Cabanatuan City and on the other
three sides by once-cultivated fields. These fields had not been
tended since the Japanese attack on the Philippines, and they were
now overgrown due to neglect. The prison stockadewas split
crosswise into three groups of about 230 yards wide each. Both
of us were in group 1, the section nearest the road. Each group
contained barracks for approximately two thousand American
prisoners, mostly officers, although there were some enlisted
men. Caban&tuan Camp No. 2, six miles further into the jungle,
was laid out along similar lines, with most of its prisoners
American enlisted men.
At the north end of our rectangle was a moat which
occasionally filled with water during heavy rains, and which we
used for drainage for our latrines and urinals. Nearly always
in this section were to be found a number ofprisoners dead or
dying of dysentery and starvation, men who had made it this far
and could go no further.
At the opposite end from the moat was the enclosure
used by the Japanese soldiery for their barracks, mess halls,
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