[Annotator’s Note: This clip begins mid-sentence.] In 1938, Charles Dragich graduated high school. Jobs were very scarce. A friend of his told him about joining the Army Air Corps, so he applied in March. He wanted to get an education in aviation. He got a letter in September ordering him to report for duty. He went to aircraft mechanic school and was then sent to Nichols Field in Manila, the Philippines via the USS Grant [Annotator’s Note: USS U. S. Grant (AP-29)]. Dragich was impressed by the beauty of Manila. He was assigned to the 19th Air Base Group [Annotator’s Note: 19th Air Base Squadron, 20th Air Base Group, 5th Bomber Command]. There were around 220 mean in the 19th. He played on the baseball team and bowled a lot. More units kept arriving and he kept hearing about Tojo [Annotator's Note: Hideki Tojo; former Imperial Japanese Army General and prime minister of Japan]. The American ships were all anchored at Pearl Harbor and the United States almost lost the whole fleet [Annotator's Note: during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. The day after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, they came for Nichols Field around 11:30 that morning. He saw a Japanese plane chasing a P-40 [Annotator's Note: Curtiss P-40 Warhawk fighter aircraft]. MacArthur [Annotator's Note: General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander, Southwest Pacific Area] had a plan and the men were to go to Bataan [Annotator’s Note: Bataan, the Philippines]. They were given Springfield rifles [Annotator's Note: .30 caliber Model 1903, or M1903, Springfield bolt action rifle]. At night, the Japanese would come in on rafts and try to penetrate the American area. They began to run out of food and ended up surrendering on 9 April 1942. It was chaos. General King [Annotator’s Note: US Army Major General Edward Postell King, Jr.] who was responsible for the Bataan Peninsula, negotiated an unconditional surrender. Dragich was then a POW [Annotator’s Note: prisoner of war]. They were told to comply with whatever orders the Japanese gave them. One of the Japanese soldiers took Dragich’s wristwatch, pocketbook, and his water canteen. He wore the same clothes for two years. They were formed into columns and began what was called the Bataan Death March [Annotator's Note: the forced march of 60,000 to 80,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war carried out by the Imperial Japanese Army in April 1942]. Anyone who fell out was instantly killed. There was no mercy. Dragich was in bad shape by the second day so he and another man sat down. When the other man said he could not go on, he was bayoneted and killed by the Japanese. Dragich would have been next but he got up and kept going. They had nothing to eat. The Japanese would drive by on trucks and throw rice balls. If you caught one, you had something to eat, but if you did not, you were out of luck. The Japs [Annotator's Note: a period derogatory term for Japanese] liked to put on a show and put fear in them. One day they beheaded an American soldier in front of everyone. Up until then, Dragich thought the Americans would be there in a few days. But at that point he knew there was going to be war. He saw a lot of his buddies dead on the side of the road. They had to keep moving. By the fourth or fifth day, his tongue was starting to swell up and got so big that he was choking and could not breathe. If anyone left the column for anything, it was instant death, but a lot of them gambled. Dragich went into a burned out house and was able to get water. A Jap shot at him twice. When he got back into the column, several men jumped on him and took his water. He kept praying for his friends. They finally got to Camp O’Donnell [Annotator’s Note: in Capas, the Philippines] and the dying started. People were dying every day and they had to bury them. They had dysentery and malaria [Annotator's Note: disease caused by a parasite that commonly infects a certain type of mosquito which feeds on humans]. They were given rice morning, noon, and night. It was the only thing that kept them alive. If they missed two meals, they would die, and many men committed suicide that way, by just skipping meals.

Charles Dragich saw burials every day [Annotator’s Note: while a prisoner of war of the Japanese at Camp O’Donnell in Capas, the Philippines following the Bataan Death March, the forced march of 60,000 to 80,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war carried out by the Imperial Japanese Army in April 1942]. He had worked at the Philippines Air Depot and had an airplane at his disposal. There was a pilot named George who had played football for the University of Washington. He seemed to be in good shape. Dragich was put on burial detail. They would take the clothes off the dead men because the living needed them. One morning, he saw George in the pile of dead. They buried him. Dragich and around 120 men were sent to repair a bridge. None of them knew what they were doing so they were brought back to the camp. They were moved from O’Donnell to Cabanatuan [Annotator’s Note: Cabanatuan prison camp in Cabanatuan, the Philippines]. One night, they were all rounded up and put on a train and taken to Manila where a boat was waiting to take them to Japan or China [Annotator’s Note: in early October 1942]. They were put about the Tottori Maru, it was a hell ship [Annotator's Note: unmarked Japanese ships used to transport Allied prisoners of war to and from Japan under hellish conditions]. They finally set sail and were halfway to Formosa [Annotator’s Note: now Taiwan] to be deloused when two torpedos were fired at the Tottori Maru. The captain turned the ship in time to avoid the torpedos. They arrived in Formosa and were treated for lice. The ship was hell. They lost 30 or 40 men on the trip from Manila [Annotator’s Note: Manila, the Philippines] to Busan, South Korea. Dragich was kept in the hold of the ship for 32 days with very little water. There were big rats down there. From Busan, Dragich was taken through North Korea and into Manchuria where he was made to work for three years. There were a lot of air raids in the area. On 7 December 1944, the sky was black with B-29s [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-29 Superfortress very heavy bomber]. The prisoners were taken back to the barracks. Many of the B-29s were shot down. The camp they were working in was marked as “must hit” for the Air Force, so the camp was bombed. The guy next to Dragich died from shrapnel wounds. There were about 60 deaths and injuries from that raid. The Americans had no idea that the prisoners were there. Dragich prayed and laid down, expecting the worst. Some of the men who bailed out of the B-29s joined them in the camp. A B-24 was shot down and the men aboard told the camp commander that the war was over. Even after the war ended, on 21 August [Annotator’s Note: 21 August 1945] Tojo [Annotator's Note: Hideki Tojo; former Imperial Japanese Army General and prime minister of Japan] issued an order to kill all of the remaining POWs [Annotator’s Note: prisoners of war]. In the Philippines, they followed the order and killed around 200 prisoners. The atomic bomb [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, 6 and 9 August 1945] saved Dragich. They knew something big had happened, but did not know what it was. Russia declared war on Japan. In Manchuria, they were only about 200 miles from the Russian border. Russians came into their camp. They were very cruel with the Japs [Annotator's Note: a period derogatory term for Japanese]. He saw a Russian soldier pull a soldier off his bicycle and shoot and kill him. Dragich spoke Romanian [Annotator’s Note: his parents were from Romania and he grew up speaking the language]. Romania borders Russia. Dragich went to the Russian troops and found someone who spoke Romanian. They told him the POWs would be taken to Russia, not going home. Finally an American general came in and negotiated with the Russians to get the POWs on a train to Busan.

In Busan, South Korea, the USS Hulbert [Annotator’s Note: USS Hulbert (DD-342)] was waiting for Charles Dragich [Annotator’s Note: along with the other prisoners of war of the Japanese who had been held in Mukden, Manchuria (now Shenyang, China) since October 1942]. There were mines all over Okinawa [Annotator’s Note: Okinawa, Japan]. Men on deck would shoot at the mines. One hit the magazine section and blew a hole in the ship. There were 40 foot waves. They prepared to abandon ship. The men in the engine room locked all of the doors, killing themselves to save the rest of the men on the ship. The USS St. Louis [Annotator’s Note: USS St. Louis (CL-49)] came by and tried to tow them in but could not get the line to connect. A tug finally pulled them to Okinawa and Dragich was flown from there to Manila [Annotator’s Note: Manila, the Philippines]. The Geneva Convention [Annotator's Note: standards for humanitarian treatment in war] was worthless. They would take blankets from the men who died and make shoes out of them, that is how desperate they were. To this day, Dragich will not buy anything Japanese. He did not want to get on a ship ever again, so he went to the airfield. The liberated POWs [Annotator’s Note: prisoners of war] were on their own to get back to the United States. He went to Nichols Field [Annotator’s Note: in Manila] and was put on a C-54 [Annotator's Note: Douglas C-54 Skymaster cargo aircraft]. As they were just getting airborne, one of the engines caught on fire and the plane crash landed. He was put on another flight and made it to the States and took a train back to Ohio. The war was over and he was really happy to see his family. The commander put out word to the troops that they were surrendering [Annotator’s Note: when the Philippines fell in April 1942 after the initial Japanese attack on 8 December 1941], and to get rid of their guns and destroy everything they could. They were told it was an unconditional surrender and that it was going to be rough. Dragich stayed in the Air Force for 26 years and served in Korea [Annotator's Note: Korean War, 25 June 1950 to 27 July 1953]. When they surrendered, Dragich thought he was going to die. Dragich was a sergeant and one of the senior men on Bataan [Annotator’s Note: Bataan, the Philippines]. He eventually became Chief Master Sergeant which is the highest enlisted rank. He is very proud of that, as he could not even speak English in the first grade [Annotator’s Note: his parents were Romanian immigrants and he grew up speaking Romanian]. Dragich had arrived in the Philippines in 1939. He has a pilot’s license. After the war, he tested aircraft for Boeing. During the Bataan Death March [Annotator's Note: the forced march of 60,000 to 80,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war carried out by the Imperial Japanese Army in April 1942], if anyone escaped, the man next to them would be shot the next day. Several men tried to escape, but Dragich decided to stick it out and march, hoping the Americans would come soon. The march lasted eight days. They had very little to eat. They would eat leaves, which sometimes killed them. In the winter time, they did not have clothes. It was cold and miserable. They did not bathe for 17 months. They ate dirt and wood. Hunger and thirst are hard to describe unless you have gone through it.

Charles Dragich was on a “hell ship” [Annotator’s Note: unmarked Japanese ships used to transport Allied prisoners of war to and from Japan under hellish conditions; in this case the Tottori Maru, on which prisoners of war from the Bataan Death March and elsewhere in the Philippines were transported from Manila, the Philippines to Busan, South Korea in October 1942]. They called it that because it was hell. They were given no food or water. They were held in the hold for 32 days. Men were dying. They had to defecate and pee where they could. They were jammed in there. There were big rats down there with them. They would eat them if they could catch them. Dragich had malaria [Annotator's Note: disease caused by a parasite that commonly infects a certain type of mosquito which feeds on humans] twice. Another man gave him his last quinine tablet which saved his life. He is only alive because the kindness of that man. Dragich has been through things that people do not believe. His most vivid memory of World War 2 is when he learned the war ended and they were free. They were elated. Dragich loves this country. He expected to die and give his life for his country. He is one of the last survivors of the Bataan Death March [Annotator's Note: the forced march of 60,000 to 80,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war carried out by the Imperial Japanese Army in April 1942].