Charles Balaza enlisted [Annotator's Note: in the Army] on 12 February 1940 prior to the entry of the United States in World War 2. Germany had attacked Danzig, Poland. Balaza, being of Polish descent, decided to enlist. His father disagreed with his son's decision but signed the recruitment authorization anyway. Balaza was posted to the Philippines. He had to be shown on a map where the Philippines were located. It was a long way from home. As he sailed on a troopship from New York, he looked at the Statue of Liberty and doubted that he would soon see it again. He would not see that Statue again for five years. En route to the Philippines, the ship hit a hurricane off Nicaragua. The waves covered the ship at times. It was an extreme storm. After the heavy weather, Balaza became very sick. The ship made its way to California after passing through the Panama Canal. The ship then voyaged to Hawaii and Guam before landing in the Philippines.

Charles Balaza was in Manila Bay on a minesweeper during the morning of the Pearl Harbor attack. He was returning to Corregidor on a beautiful day after a three-day pass. He heard what sounded like thunder and looked up to see 27 Japanese bombers. His first reaction was that they were on a good will tour. He did not realize that were returning from bombing the airbase near Manila. As they passed, he saw the antiaircraft guns open up on them. He was confused by what he saw and heard. Upon landing on Corregidor, he was told to get to his battle station with the search light battery. The unit [Annotator's Note: Battery D, 59th Coast Artillery Regiment] had 60 inch searchlights to illuminate the mine markers in the Manila Bay channel and out to the China Sea. He was in Section 4 at the entrance of Manila Bay. He saw General MacArthur leave [Annotator's Note: US Army General Douglas MacArthur, Supremem Commander, Southwest Pacific Area]. He thought manning the searchlight was a safe assignment. He did not realize the searchlights gave away their position to the enemy. They were continuously shelled and strafed for five months without any air or sea support. No reinforcements were provided. Food and medicine ran low. Men died of malaria and dysentery. The order to surrender surprised Balaza but he came to realize that they were significantly outnumbered. During the initial phase of the Japanese assault on the Philippines, Balaza observed a series of stars in the darkened skies that formed a cross. They seem to illuminate the area he manned with his searchlight crew. After a time, the stars faded back into the horizon. After the surrender of the island, Balaza and other Americans were nearly executed by Japanese soldiers before an enemy officer intervened. Balaza had been stationed on top of the Malinta Hill commanding a searchlight. The enemy bombers flew over his position. After the surrender, he went on a work detail to bury dead. The Japanese stayed far behind them in case the Americans stepped on a mine. The dead bodies smelled horribly so a burial grave was dug close to each body. The Japanese dead were stacked to burn in row after row like cordwood. A cocky Japanese officer drew his saber and poked around but eventually was blown up by a mine. Prior to the island invasion, Balaza went to the latrine. He watched the shelling come in until it came so close that he had to expeditiously return to his position. He felt a sting in his rear. It was from a piece of shrapnel lodged in him. It had to be removed and the methylate administered to the wound stung badly. That application cured him even though it was extremely uncomfortable. It was not nearly as bad as what some of the defenders of Corregidor had to suffer.

Charles Balaza was in the same Corregidor tunnel as General MacArthur [Annotator's Note: US Army General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander, Southwest Pacific Area] during an air raid. It was an ammunition tunnel for the 92nd Filipino Scouts. He spoke briefly to the General. It was one of two meetings Balaza had with MacArthur. He spoke with him during inspection on a different occasion. Balaza never spoke to General Wainwright [Annotator's Note: US Army General Jonathan M. Wainwright] although he thought him to be a nice individual. The Japanese bombers had a scheduled routine for dropping their loads on Corregidor. The whole island was hit heavily for five months. After the bombing, the enemy artillery on Bataan would shell Corregidor for a half hour or more. During the bombings, Balaza felt himself floating without realizing his body was moving. After the surrender, General Houma [Annotator's Note: Imperian Japanese Army Lieutenant General Masaharu Homma] came into Malinta Tunnel. He asked for "Wainwright" and was told he was in a different lateral. A Japanese soldier pointed his bayonet at Balaza and indicated he wanted water. Balaza gave him his canteen, the soldier thanked him, and off they went. The Japanese were carrying automatic weapons and flame throwers when they entered the tunnel. The enemy soldiers were not small but rather large men and carried a heavy load of gear. It was Balaza's first close-up experience with the enemy.

Charles Balaza and the defenders of Corregidor were taken by troopship to the shores of Manila. They were offloaded a couple hundred feet from shore and had to swim for land. Some men could not make it. Some had to be helped. Those that did reach shore were taken to Bilibid prison. Balaza did not think he would make it at that time. The prison was an austere and hostile environment. Balaza amused himself by watching cockroaches. There were a few thousand Americans with him. His apparel was an assortment of uniform gear from multiple services. Men were eventually reduced to skin and bones from lack of food. Days ran into one another and became a blank in his memory. Balaza constantly wondered about the future and how he would be treated. He was taken from Bilibid and put on a freight car. There was only a five gallon rice bucket for collection of body waste. The bucket could not be thrown overboard. Men had diarrhea and dysentery. It was a terrible situation. Balaza assumed a complacent attitude about his future. The prisoners were taken to San Fernando to a fenced graveyard. He had to eliminate his bodily wastes over those graves. He had no other choice or option. The prisoners of war, POWs, had no shelter and very little food or water. The march continued for 12 hours to Cabanatuan. The guards were replaced but the Americans only stopped one time during the march. The POWs looked like the walking dead. Local people would offer the Americans water but the POWs fought for it. The Japanese had to break up the fights. Water was at a premium. Some POWs refused to share their precious supply. Balaza gave some of his canteen water to another needy American. He held those who would not share in low regard.

As Charles Balaza prepared to enter Cabanatuan, he had access to a water pump and filled his canteen. The Japanese said the water was bad and needed choline tablets for purification. Balaza had some and shared his tablets with all those except the men who had not shared their water before that point. Ultimately, he shared those tablets even with them. Greed and hunger will force a person to do most anything. He even ate dog meat while in prison in Japan. Returning from laboring on a work detail at Nichols Field in the Philippines, Balaza saw a chicken that was captured by some POWs [Annotator's Note: prisoners of war]. He thought the men were cooking the chicken, but it turned out to be a fattened cat. Cabanatuan was used as a holding area for work details mustered to several other locations. At Nichols Field, the POWs worked on building a runway. The prisoners were marched everywhere. They were never transported. The Japanese officer at Nichols picked on tall men. He was brutal. Balaza never wavered around him, but stared him in the face. The enemy officer would move to another man and slap him around. Balaza was blistered on his hands very badly while working. He was assigned to carry five gallon buckets of water to the workers. There was only wire to carry the heavy buckets. That was rough on the blisters. Balaza decided to get out of that detail. He spoke Japanese well at the time and told the guard that he was ill and needed to go to the bathroom. He had diarrhea very badly and rushed to the latrine. He was put on sick call the next day by the American doctors. Fearing that he might spread dysentery, he was shipped back to Cabanatuan. Balaza aided a man with elephantiasis. Walking or sleeping was very difficult for the man. Balaza helped the suffering man go to the bathroom including cleaning his rear afterward. It was distasteful, but Balaza knew he had to do so. The man died soon afterward. The sickness was rampant at Cabanatuan. Burial details were frequent. Graves were hard to dig in the volcanic ash. Wild animals picked up the dead from the shallow graves. That was the way things were at Cabanatuan.

Charles Balaza worked on a farm detail at Cabanatuan. Fertilizer for the crops was human defecation. "Honey buckets" were collected in the camp and spread in the fields. It smelled badly. Balaza pulled a vegetable from the field and ate it immediately even though the fertilizer was spread through the area. Hunger makes a person desperate. Most of the vegetables went to the Japanese army, not the POWs [Annotator's Note: prisoners of war]. Brutality was rampant. Escape attempts were treated harshly by the captors. Japanese sentries abused the prisoners. Four men were executed near Balaza's barrack for trying to escape. One of the Japanese soldiers on the firing squad returned to the camp crying. Food was very meager. Red Cross food was available but the Japanese took it all. Warehouses were loaded with food, clothing and medicine. In the years of captivity, Balaza only had half a dozen packages issued to him. A few days after the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, he received a package. Balaza had no access to radio or news of the war. Information about the progress of the war came from knowing Japanese and being able to understand from the enemy what was going on. Friendships helped individuals survive. Groups of three or four were formed to aid each other. Balaza observed a Japanese civilian teasing POWs over a piece of meat. He refused to fall prey to his wicked game. The meat was thrown next to Balaza, and he shared it with the other men in a stew. They even had a frog added to the stew. Balaza understood that the prisoners had to work together to survive. Being greedy would limit their chance of survival. Bartering was done but the Japanese often cheated the POWs in the process. There were few nice guards and those few were subject to being beaten for their good deeds.

Charles Balaza was on a work detail when he saw a Japanese guard hit an American POW [Annotator's Note: prisoners of war] with his rifle. The stock was broken and the soldier looked very fearful. The sentry suffered miserably when he returned to the camp. The harsh treatment was common for enemy soldiers. There was a ranking system the enemy used to decide on which individual prisoner to beat. American prisoners never knew if they would survive the next minute let alone the next day. Conditions were harsh and unpredictable. Balaza and a buddy were working in a coal mine. The friend decided to leave the coal mine. He ended the day by laying in front of a guard shack and playing dead. Despite horrendous torture by the enemy, he lay perfectly still. He convinced himself to not move. That feint worked and his friends brought him back to the camp. Balaza learned that he could convince himself to overcome pain. He went through a surgery in the camp without anything for his pain by doing exactly that. It is a mental exercise he can accomplish to achieve that state. Things never improved for Balaza during his captivity. He learned war news only from the Japanese captors and their behavior toward their prisoners. The POWs were treated harshly as the war deteriorated for the enemy.

For Charles Balaza, flights of American planes over the prison camp foretold the oncoming victory. The end was near. The Japanese had the POWs [Annotator's Note: prisoners of war] on the parade ground when the contrails of the B-29s [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-29 Superfortress very heavy bomber] flew over. Balaza saw a huge billow of smoke rise in the direction of Nagasaki. Rays of flashing light were near the center. It was the atomic bomb. From that point, the Japanese were very friendly and less harsh with their captives. A Japanese general was slated to inspect the camp the next day. The POWs were given new clothes to wear and the food improved. The general never came. News reporters came in and announced the war was over. The Japanese guards had left. The Americans immediately left the camp. The freed POWs went to Okinawa. It looked totally destroyed. Balaza felt sorry for the Japanese people. He holds nothing against them today. All the Japanese are not bad. Some prisoners have never forgiven them. The bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki definitely ended the war. Had an invasion of Japan occurred, the Allied prisoners were all to be executed.

Charles Balaza is concerned that the American government never tells the civilian population what happens during the war. Other Allied prisoners were paid for their service and servitude during the war. The United States did not do that. Balaza has flashbacks of his prison life. They occur all the time. He even sees Japanese guards during current times. He blames himself for actions on Corregidor. He has bad dreams of executions, beheadings, mine cave-ins and other horrible memories. There were friendly fire attacks by American aircraft and submarines on the unmarked prisoner of war ships. The dreams are not every day but may occur three or four days in a row and then not again for a month or so. He has recently felt fear resulting from his captivity. It is a fear of the unknown that he cannot fully explain to his psychiatrist. After Balaza's position was knocked out on Corregidor, he went inside the tunnel to assist his buddy on a machine gun nest. It was near the location where Balaza saw Generals Homma [Annotator's Note: Imperial Japanese Army Lieutenant General Masaharu Homma] and MacArthur [Annotator's Note: US Army General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander, Southwest Pacific Area] before the latter left Corregidor. While there, he experienced a close call that almost blew his head off. Balaza's buddy threatened a man who attempted to escape the combat. The friend pointed his .45 caliber pistol at the man and refused to let him by his position.