Valley City Postmaster Brownell Cole was a survivor of the Bataan Death March of WWII. Here is his story along with the scrap of paper that was read by the prisoner camp commander announcing the war was over that he discarded after reading it to the camp and Brownell picked up and saved. The War One day in 1940 while sitting in a local bar with one of his co-workers, an Army Recruiter sat with them. He explained that if they enlisted they could be sent to the Philippines. At that time, it appeared that the U.S. would go to war in Europe and Brownie would be safe in the tropical south Pacific. He had a desire to see the world and was fascinated by the Orient. He had read about it during his youth. Both Men eagerly joined, and were sent to Angel Island in San Francisco for training. Brownie wrote a letter to his mother explaining how he hopes all would work out. He explained it would be heartbreak if he could not go overseas. Within a few weeks he was disembarking in Manila when someone asked him if he was from North Dakota. He responded, “Yes. Why?” The other soldier said they are unloading a new Ford coupe with North Dakota plates. Brownie went over to the car and found the registration. It belonged to Major Gordon Utke of Enderlin, North Dakota. A town 13 miles from Lisbon. Brownie quickly tracked him down. When they first met, he introduced himself. The major said I got something for you. He opened up his desk drawer and handed Brownie a letter from his mother. The major explained that their parents had become friends back home and knew they would meet up with each other. The major and Brownie became close friends and got an apartment together off base. They enjoyed their time in the city of Manila. The major talked about “Sis,” his sister. The two of them were very close. They had grown up on a farm five miles north of Enderlin. As children they depended on each other for companionship. One day, Brownie and another buddy of his came up with “get rich quick” plan. It involved pawning a gold wedding band that belonged to his deceased grandmother. They had made their wealth and he was going to get it back the next day. The next morning was December 7th 1941, a day that would change the world. Brownie arrived on based when a buddy of his called him over to a radio. There were reports of Japanese bombing Hawaii. After the Japanese had destroyed the U.S. Fleet at Pearl Harbor, they headed to the Philippines. Brownie was on the front lines for about a year. He drove a large truck and it was his job to find supplies and food for his men. Since the Japanese had cut off all supply routes to the Philippines it was a job that was harder and harder to do. U.S. was losing the war. There were a couple of times he saw General Douglas Macarthur. Finally the evening came when the men were gathered to listen to the radio. An address came from General Macarthur to surrender. Even though the General had evacuated during the night to Australia he made the famous comment “I shall return!” No one could image how much worst things would become. While getting supplies, he became separated from his own troops. While driving through the mountains to find them, he came around a corner and was stopped by a Japanese tank that had the barrel facing him. He got out of his vehicle with his hands up and they let him approach the tank. Since he didn’t have any supplies on the truck he was not much use or danger to them. Brownie offered them each a cigarette and talked them into moving the tank over so he could get his truck through. To his surprise they cooperated. Soon he found a group of the men that he surrendered with. They had retreated to the end of the Bataan Peninsula. The Japanese placed them into formation and marched them 60 miles in the tropic heat without any food or water. This would become known in history as the Bataan Death March. There were about a 100,000 men in this march. Thousands died during it. Bodies were left in the road. Many had been driven over by tanks and other heavy equipment. Brownie once admitted to seeing a young Filipino couple that was holding a baby who tried to give food to some men. They were abruptly machine gunned down. The parents and infant were gone in an instant. While marching he could feel himself start to faint. He knew if he dropped that a bullet would be put through his head. Brownie dove for the ditch. When he regained consciousness there was only a male Filipino standing by him who said with pleasure. “Oh Joe…you are alive!” He must have been out for a while for everyone else was gone. He took Brownie back into the jungle where there was a small village. They gave him food and water and let him rest. They offered to keep him there but he knew the whole village would be killed if the Japanese ever found him. Since there was no other place he could go, he decided he must find his men. They were being held in a fenced in compound when he located them. They were later marched to a train station and loaded onto cattle cars and taken to a P.O.W. camp. In about a two-year period he was moved to two different camps. At the second camp Brownie found his friend, the major. They were able to spend a short period of time together one rainy evening. The conversation centered on their families. In later years Hollywood would make movies about what happened in at these camps. While Brownie was incarcerated in the Philippines, the U.S. started to win the war. So the Japanese began moving the healthier troops to Japan. They were loaded into the cargo hold of freighters. Once on board, there was very little room to move and the tropical heat was stifling. Very little food and water was given to them. Men would go mad. There were accounts that some guys would try to cut their fellow soldiers throat so they could have the blood to drink. Once a week they were brought out of the hold and hosed down, then returned back to the hold. The human filth was unimaginable. Brownie was able to trade some cigarettes for a rope and blanket. He made a hammock and hung it from overhead pipes. He was able to keep above the crowd and could stretch out. Soon they landed in Japan, were loaded onto railroad cattle cars and shipped to a camp in the mountains. They were used as slave labor in ore mines owned by Mitsubishi. He spent about a year and a half there. It was very cold in his camp and men were freezing to death. To help keep the men warm, Brownie and another prisoner took a wooden fire ladder and broke it up to burn. The guards found out about this and both men were severely beaten and left in a dog kennel for several days. It was Christmas Eve 1944 when they were released from the kennel. When they got back to the barracks the other men had decorated a tree limb with foil wrapping from their cigarette packages. They sang some carols and gave each other cigarettes or some other small possession to each other as gifts. Brownie’s spirits hit the lowest point during the war and he said that he bawled like a baby. In August 1945 they knew something big was going on with the war. Early one morning they were ordered to stand outside in formation. They worried that they were going to be shot. The men knew they would be executed if U.S ever attacked Japan. That is why they were shipped there. The leader of the camp came out to speak to them. In a few sentences spoken in English he said the war was over, there were American troops that would come liberate them. Brownie weighed about 95 pounds when he left the camp. In a few days he made it through the burnt out remains of Tokyo to an American ship. Instead of heading straight back to the U.S., Brownie went to Manila to find his grandmother’s ring. But first, he wrote a quick message on a post card and gave it to a Red Cross worker. The card was to his parents who had not heard from him in about a year and half. They had no idea if he was alive. They also knew that about 70% of the guys Brownie was with at the beginning of the war did not make it. Once back in Manila, which was destroyed, he found the neighborhood where the pawnshop was and located the owner. Through his P.O.W. atrocities he was able to keep with him a small bag with some personal items. One of them was the pawn receipt. The family that ran the shop buried their gold items in coffee cans to hide it from the Japanese. Brownie spent a day going through items until he found his ring. The bottom of the ring had his full name engraved in it, “Brownell.” With his ring back in his possession, he caught a military flight to Honolulu. While over the south Pacific, the cowling around one of the engines caught fire from oil build up. Brownie had found a place on floor of the plane in which he was sleeping. The captain hollered back “Hang on men, we are going to dive.” He grabbed the leg of a seat as the plane dove. Within several seconds they pulled out of it. It was a maneuver they used to blow out engine fires. Once in Hawaii, he boarded a ship. It was a rough stormy crossing to San Francisco. He joked that being a P.O.W. was easier than being in the American hands trying to get home. He described what a wonderful sight for the men on board seeing the Golden Gate Bridge come into view. In San Francisco, they were sent to a railroad station. There was a hospital train for them. The first thing Brownie did at the station was to place a call back to Lisbon. It had been years since he had spoken to his parents and he didn’t know if his father was still alive. He last heard that he was in poor health. It took time to get the call hooked up across the country but finally the operator had his mother on the line. More tears were shed than words spoken. Brownie finally asked, “How is Dad?” He heard some more clicking and his father answered the phone. The Lisbon operator knew the family and also routed the call to Leon’s office. Leon had been elected as County Register of Deeds and his whole staff came running into his office as news of the call had spread.
Posted on: Thu, 14 Aug 2014 20:56:33 +0000
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