Benjamin Hagans was born in July 1929 in Cebu, the Philippines. His father was an engineer in Cuba. His father was an adventurer. He went to the Philippines and was an engineer for MacArthur [Annotator's Note: General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander, Southwest Pacific Area]. He built the water and sewage system for Manila [Annotator’s Note: Manila, Philippines]. His father met his mother at a British embassy event. Anywhere his father could afford to go, he would. He was in the military in France. His father fought in World War One [Annotator's Note: World War 1, a global war originating in Europe; 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918]. He grew up in a native area. He did not wear clothes until he was six years old. They were on a coconut plantation. They would climb coconut trees naked and swim naked. He had two brothers and two sisters. He was the youngest of the family. His father sold Ford cars. Hagans learned how to drive a Model T. They made up games. Their house was 75 feet from the shoreline. They would use the coconut shells as sleds. They would fish and have boat races. Hagans learned how to shoot when he was six years old. His sisters would go to the United States for school and would come back in the summers. Hagans did not know the United States until 1945. [Annotator’s Note: Hagans discusses his siblings.]

Benjamin Hagans enjoyed fishing. He did not wear clothes until he was six years old. He would climb trees and gather coconuts. His father had 480 hectares of coconut groves. It was in the time after World War One [Annotator's Note: World War 1, global war originating in Europe; 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918] and Procter [Annotator’s Note: presumably of the company Procter & Gamble] wanted his coconuts for their soap. They did not have electricity until before the war. They had kerosine lamps and a kerosine refrigerator. Hagans’ job was to trim the wick. He had a horse and a rooster. His father raised German Shepherd dogs. They sold their pups to the Army. They had ducks, geese, sheep, and goats. They did not have many Japanese in the north where they were. They grew hemp to make rope. His father knew the commander of that camp. They did not see any Japs [Annotator's Note: a period derogatory term for Japanese] on Mindanao [Annotator’s Note: Mindanao, the Philippines]. His father had a friend named Colonel Veesey [Annotator’s Note: phonetic spelling]. They were awakened at two o’clock in the morning and told the Japs had bombed Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. They turned on the news and heard about the devastation at Pearl Harbor. His father went to an Army camp and offered himself as an engineer. Hagans wanted to join the Army, but he was too young. He joined the Philippine Army. They made him a courier because he could speak the languages. They gave him a rifle, which was a Spanish-American rifle. They gave him a satchel to carry the messages. He had to get messages from Colonel Ferting [Annotator’s Note: phonetic spelling] to Colonel Sharp [Annotator’s Note: William Fletcher Sharp, commander of the Visyayan-Mindanao Force during the Philippines campaign (1941 to 1942) who surrendered to the Japanese after the Fall of Corregidor], the commander of Mindanao. As he was getting the messages, he saw a PT boat [Annotator’s Note: patrol torpedo boat]. He asked to catch a ride. They let him ride along to deliver his messages.

Benjamin Hagans was on a PT boat [Annotator’s Note: patrol torpedo boat] that brought MacArthur [Annotator's Note: General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander, Southwest Pacific Area] out of Corregidor [Annotator’s Note: Corregidor, the Philippines]. They escorted MacArthur to a grass airstrip. B-17s [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber] landed and picked them up. Hagans became a guerrilla fighter because there was no fighting force left. If he had to fight, he had to fight. He came face to face with a Jap [Annotator's Note: a period derogatory term for Japanese] in a meadow and he froze. His sergeant had to shoot him. Hagans was told to strip the man. They were always in need of food. His mother was with them. They were on a trail and rifle fire broke out. They were surrounded by Japs. The Japs lined them up and made them get rid of their weaponry and take off anything that had brass. They had machine guns in front of them. Hagans was told to stay at attention. They thought they were going to be hung. They violated his mother. She never recovered from it. Then they went on the Mindanao Death March. [Annotator’s Note: On the 4th of July 1942, surrendered Filipino and American soldiers in Mindanao were made to march on a rocky dirt road and under the blazing tropical sun, from Camp Keithley in Dansalan to Iligan in Lanao, the Philippines.] They put General Fort [Annotator’s Note: Guy O. Fort, brigadier general in the Philippine Army, executed by the Japanese by firing squad on 11 November 1942 for refusing their demands] at a stake. Colonel Vesey [Annotator’s Note: Robert H. Vesey, lieutenant colonel in the Philippine Army, killed 3 July 1942] told them to take him down he would take the General’s place. They did and they bayonetted Vesey. It took him two days to die. The lieutenant was injured and when he fell, they ran him over with their trucks. It took them four days to complete the march. They packed them on trucks like sardines. Hagans’ first POW [Annotator's Note: prisoner of war] camp was Bali Bali [Annotator’s Note: Bali Bali Camp, the Philippines] in 1942. In October 1942, they were moved to the western side of Mindanao. Hagans was there until 24 December 1943.

Benjamin Hagans was sent to the west side of Mindanao [Annotator’s Note: Mindanao, the Philippines]. His job was to help with logging for the Japs [Annotator's Note: a period derogatory term for Japanese]. They gathered food in the swamps. They had to strip when they got out of the swamps because of leeches. Everything was open. They made huts out of coconut leaves. It was humid. Food was practically nonexistent. In October 1943, high-ranking officers came to inspect the camp. The men who ran the camp were told to feed them fish heads. Most of them had dysentery [Annotator’s Note: dysentery is an infection of the intestines that causes diarrhea containing blood or mucus]. They had five gates to go through. Each gate had a Jap soldier guard. Hagans was sitting with one of the guards. The guard said California is hot. Hagans told him he was in the Philippines. The guard insisted it was California and then hit him in the head with the butt of his rifle. Hagans was knocked out, and beat him up and he soiled himself. The other guards picked him up and hosed him off. This was the worst beating he had received so far in the camp. He had a large gash on his head. His jaw was puffed up and his eye was swollen shut. There were about 500 prisoners there. None of them tried to escape. Hagans had an operation. They did not have a doctor in their camp. The guard doctor operated on him with no pain medication. It took about half an hour. The operation was due to a leech. It got infected. On Christmas Eve [Annotator’s Note: of 1943] they decided to move them using Japanese ships. They went to Manila [Annotator’s Note: Manila, the Philippines].

Benjamin Hagans remembers they were in the sea and the Japs [Annotator's Note: a period derogatory term for Japanese] got drunk. One guard went overboard. They were in the South China Sea. Sanitary conditions were nonexistent. They had buckets. The rats were plentiful. After five days the stench was so bad that even the Japs could not stand it. Finally, the Japs opened the hatches. It was a great relief. They handed the dead prisoners up level by level. Then the buckets went up. They were given hoses to hose out the hold. There was a ship coming up next to them. It was the battleship Musashi, one of the largest battleships ever made. Water was scarce on the ship. When they got to Manila [Annotator’s Note: Manila, the Philippines], they ran out of water. They were told to drink their own urine. When they unloaded, they were all half-sick. They were sprayed down with fresh water. That was their first drink of fresh water in three days. They were taken to Cabanatuan POW [Annotator’s Note: prisoner of war] Camp [Annotator’s Note: Cabanatuan, Philippines]. Roll call was twice a day. They would line up 100 people in a block. The Japs would count them. If you were sick and could not get up, they would be executed. Hagans got together with an Army sergeant. They always knew when something bad happened to the Japs because they would beat people up for the slightest offense. The sergeant wanted Hagans to catch the dogs and kill them. They would make soup out of the dogs. When they ran out of dogs, they moved on to the cats. Then they went for the rats. In late 1944, they had a grasshopper invasion. Hagans made himself sick on grasshoppers.

Benjamin Hagans was in Cabanatuan [Annotator’s Note: Cabanatuan, Philippines] for all of 1944 and part of 1945. He would steal food from the Japanese. He would be sent to Bilibid [Annotator’s Note: Bilibid Prison in Manila, the Philippines] for an attitude adjustment in September 1944. They were going to be sent to Japan to be slave laborers. The boat he was to go in was a luxury liner. The Jap [Annotator's Note: a period derogatory term for Japanese] civilians were getting on the boat as well. In the middle of loading the boat, they stopped and made everyone get off the boat. There was a radio somewhere. The United States had won a big battle. The two ships in front had been sunk. They were sent back to Bilibid. Hagans was there until liberation day [Annotator’s Note: Bilibid Prison was liberated 4 February 1945]. Things were not good at Bilibid. They would have to sing the Japanese national anthem. Hagans used to be able to speak good Japanese. The food was nonexistent. Hagans was in a bunk when they were liberated. Three weeks before liberation, the youngsters were taken to a civilian camp. He ran into his mother, father, and brother. The night they were liberated, he saw a tank with a star on it. It was a Sherman tank [Annotator's Note: M4 Sherman medium tank]. A sergeant popped out and asked where the Japs were. He threw candy bars at them. There was a firefight. Hagans jumped out of his bunk and landed in some bushes. The entire 1st Cavalry Division volunteered to go behind enemy lines and save the prisoners. They were told they would be fed. They stood in line and saw a table filled with food. Hagans's teeth were loose. He went through the line nine times. He was sick the next morning. Two soldiers died from overeating. The doctors came in and checked out all the prisoners. They weighed them. Hagans weighed 56 pounds. They started giving them shots. Hagans got six shots and vitamin pills. He could take it with milk. There was coca-cola and chocolate bars.

When Benjamin Hagans was on the ship coming back, his teeth started to settle. He put on 17 pounds in three weeks. He could not seem to gain any more weight. They gave them worm pills [Annotator’s Note: albendazole and mebendazole are the drugs of choice for the treatment of hookworm infections]. He took the worm pills and then he put on more weight. When they landed at Fort Mason [Annotator’s Note: in San Francisco, California], they went through a general hospital. He was there to get injections every day and he took a lot of pills. They put him on a troop ship to Walter Reed [Annotator’s Note: Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland], and from there he was sent to a hospital in Cincinnati, Ohio. He stayed there from July 1945 to November 1946. He was treated for several illnesses. He was reunited with his parents on the night of liberation [Annotator’s Note: Bilibid Prison in the Philippines was liberated 4 February 1945]. His brother Bill joined the Navy in Michigan. When they were liberated, he saw a Navy officer and he knew it was his brother Bill. It was quite a reunion. Bill took Hagans to Leyte [Annotator’s Note: Leyte, the Philippines]. Bill took him to an airfield to see P-51s [Annotator's Note: North American P-51 Mustang fighter aircraft] and he got to go for a ride. They flew for an hour and a half. Then they went to deliver supplies.

Benjamin Hagans remembers the officers’ mess had a menu. Hagans was with his brother, Bill, for three weeks. Then they went to the United States. He was released from the hospital on Thanksgiving Day in 1946. He was treated very well. They gave him shots for cholera [Annotator’s Note: an acute, diarrheal illness caused by infection of the intestine] and almost immediately his dysentery [Annotator’s Note: an infection of the intestines that causes diarrhea containing blood or mucus] calmed down. Then they treated him for cholera only, and all his symptoms started to go away. The doctor was in Africa when Hitler [Annotator's Note: German dictator Adolf Hitler] invaded Poland [Annotator’s Note: 1 September 1939]. Hagans was discharged. He was given his mustering out pay. It was cold outside. Then he went to a bar. Then he went to Union Station and tried to buy a ticket to go west. He did not have enough money. He hitched a ride on a freighter and stopped in Denver [Annotator’s Note: Denver, Colorado]. Then he went to New Mexico. He took a freighter to San Diego [Annotator’s Note: San Diego, California]. A man in the soup kitchen line noticed his medal for being a POW [Annotator’s Note: Prisoner of War]. The man asked if he had family, and he said no, and the man took him home with him.

Benjamin Hagans did not talk to people about his wartime experience for a long time. The Japs [Annotator's Note: a period derogatory term for Japanese] were shelling the prison camp he was in. He could see people dying as he ran into a building. He went into a room and there were boots. It was dead American soldiers. The next room was Japanese boots. He could see people being hurt and the ground getting torn up. It was calm in those rooms. Every time they got shelled he would go into that room because it was safe. He hated the Japs. He has been interviewed six times. The war made a better man out of him. He joined the Army, and everybody was treated the same. He was a rich, spoiled kid. The war made him appreciate life and having a roof over his head, food, and camaraderie He retired from the California Department of Forestry. He decided to stop hating and start liking people. He thinks future generations need to learn about the war. Children today have no idea about what he went through. They have everything and do not appreciate it. He thinks they should join the military and have to serve overseas. It will make them like their country.