When the war started, Arturo Camacho was one of five soldiers in Battery E of the 60th Coast Artillery Unit, camped at Middleside, right on top of the Mariveles Mountain on the island of Bataan in the Philippines. He was a plane spotter, and gave radio reports of enemy action, and Camacho said he had plenty to report. At night the Japanese didn’t bomb, but in the daytime, the pilots would get in position between the target and the sun, in order to blind their enemy. Camacho’s small group would sit in the shade of a big tree stump, moving around it as the sun changed position; at lunch time, they would go on a flatbed truck to the base below, and bring back food for the man who stayed behind on watch. Philippine soldiers manned the anti-aircraft guns, and the unit got credit for one rising sun. To commemorate this auspicious event, the crew got an old board, drew a red circle on it, and tacked it up in their camp. Camacho stayed on Bataan for a while, until word came to sail to Corregidor.

Arturo Camacho’s unit was moved to Corregidor, and trained to take over the 12-inch mortar at Battery [Annotator’s Note: indistinct identifier]. He said they shot quite a few out of there, and when they went off, the dirt and shrapnel came out all around the gun. The floor of the battery had to be kept clear and even. Camacho sometimes slept on the pile of shells in the battery. One morning a runner showed up with the news that Corregidor had surrendered, and the soldiers strung up a sheet to stop the Japanese from shelling their position. The Japanese boatman who brought the prisoners to the mainland of Manila confiscated their valuables, and they were deposited in a civilian prison. Although he had malaria, Camacho did not want to be admitted for treatment. From there, the prisoners were sent out to work camps. Camacho had to walk five or six miles to work on the extension of an airfield. There was one day of rest during a two week period. He said if he stayed in line, he was not mistreated. Camacho remembers a wrestling match—held just for sport—between one of the American soldiers and a Japanese officer. The prisoners slept on boards in barracks equipped with mosquito nets, but some of the boys contracted beriberi anyway. The captives ate mostly rice; Camacho thinks he had a case of scurvy, which cleared up with the addition of tomatoes to his diet. At one point, he made biscuits out of flour made from stolen rice. Camacho said anytime they could get something extra to eat, they would take it.

Arturo Camacho remembers going down to the docks, and coming away with a canteen full of brown sugar that had been scraped from the deck of a ship. The cook boiled it down to syrup, in order to clear it of dirt. The syrup was eaten with Camacho’s rice biscuits. He also talked of the day the Japanese showed up with a bulldozer that moved more dirt in one day than the prisoners, operating with makeshift carts and shovels, could move in a whole month. Camacho remembers that the Philippinos, who were working for the Japanese, were always helpful. He sold a pair of socks and a shirt his mother sent him to a Pilipino for 50 pesos. The Americans were able to correspond with their families by means of preprinted cards. Camacho tells the story of a line between the American camp and what he called the “limey” camp. One happy morning a British officer came over the line saying “Come on chaps, I have some bloody good news.” The war was over.

When Japan surrendered, Camacho remembers, the emperor spoke on the radio. He recalls that his Japanese boss was called ‘Tits,’ a name that didn’t please him at first; but when the British prisoners explained that it was short for the small bird the English call a titmouse, he broke out in a big grin. Camacho called him a “good little man.” Out of curiosity, Arturo Camacho went back up to the dry docks where he used to work in Japan on a detail they called the gas gang, which was comprised of seven men who moved a cart full of oxygen bottles for the welders’ use. After he was liberated, he was sent to a hospital in Washington state. There, Camacho said he languished, while other soldiers were leaving every day. When he went to the office to find out what was going on, he learned he had been overlooked. Finally, he got meal tickets and set out by train to San Antonio. Along the way he was grilled by other soldiers about his prisoner experience. Once he left San Antonio for Fort Worth, he had a little more freedom. When he got off the train in Ranger, Texas, a lady he knew paraded him down Main Street, giving him a hero’s welcome, before driving him Home.