Rogers was born in Saltville, Virginia on 1 January 1915.He graduated from high school in 1932 during the middle of the Depression. It was difficult to find a job anywhere. After 3 months he found a job as a Western Union messenger delivering telegrams for 22 dollars a month.Rogers learned to become a telegraph operator and got a job being a part time operator for 65 dollars a month. He thought he was rich at the time; but he only worked in the summer time, so he decided he could not continue. Teletype replaced telegraph operators and Rogers found himself without a job, so he volunteered to join the Army.In July 1939, he went to Bristol, Tennessee and enlisted in the Army for 3 years in Hawaii. He went to basic training in Hawaii. They were increasing enlistments in the army and there was quite a confusion. Basic training at that time only lasted about 2 weeks and gave men bare essentials and then put them out for duty.Rogers was taken from Wheeler Field to Hickam Field outside Honolulu. He arrived there in September 1939 and stayed until January 1941 when he left to go radio operator school. He got back in March.About 3 months later he was sent to an outlying field as a radio operator. It was a very crude set up; no barracks, no PX [Annotator's Note: post exchange]. It was an emergency field set up in case aircraft got into trouble and needed to land quickly. There were 3 of those fields scattered around the island. He stayed there for a year and then returned for Hickam for 6 months and then left again for another outlying field called Barking Sands where he stayed until August of 1941 then returned to Hickam.Rogers was an operator at Hickam until October when the 1st Sergeant said he needed 2 volunteers to go to Wake Island. Rogers had been in the Army long enough to know not to volunteer, but was told that it paid a 4 dollars a day per diem so he said he would go.Another guy in his same squadron said he would go also. Rogers asked his sergeant where Wake Island was and was told it was in the Pacific. He was told that there would be a meeting and would get more details in about 2 weeks and not to mention this to anyone because it was a secret operation. The meeting consisted of the Communications Officer who gathered everyone who was going which totalled 5 enlisted men and an officer. They would leave in November and would be on Wake Island for 90 days. Their job was to be communication support for B-17s that were being sent to the Philippines. Their job was to provide any communication support that was required. On 1 November they boarded an army transport in Honolulu that was headed to Wake Island.They landed on 11 November 1941. At Wake they were quartered with the Marines to establish gun positions. They were quartered and fed with the Marines and slept in 4 man tents. It was another very nice place [Annotator's Note: Rogers is being sarcastic]. There was no water on Wake, no commissary or PX. Men took saltwater showers, and had 1 bucket of regular water to rinse off with.They had nothing to do unless planes arrived, so they just sat around and waited. There were about 1,000 civilian contractors that were there to build buildings like barracks, supply buildings, and seaplane ramps in case the need arose and troops had to be brought in. The civilians were well provided for, much more so than the Marines. The food was much better. The contractors worked 24 hours a day around the clock so their mess facilities were open 24 hours a day.Rogers made arrangements to eat with the contractors and pay them out with the 4 dollars a day they were receiving. This was before the Japanese landed. They were supposed to be eating together the morning that the Japanese landed.Rogers went on duty at midnight on the 7th [Annotator's Note: 7 December 1941]. On the morning of the 8th, a Marine showed up on a motorcycle to take him back to breakfast when over the radio Rogers heard, "S.O.S. [Annotator's Note: SOS is the universal letter designation for distress]; S.O.S." He thougth that someone would get in trouble for sending out a false S.O.S. Then he heard, "Japs attacking Pearl Harbor; this is the real thing, this is no drill."Rogers had the Marine on the motorcycle take him up to the officer's quarters where told his OIC [Annotator's Note: Officer in Charge]. The OIC looked at him like he was making a joke or messing with him. Rogers left and went to the Marine camp to the mess hall and told everyone to get their arms out because they were at war. He told them that the Japs were attacking Pearl Harbor and everyone told him that the Japanese knew better than to do that.

After he ate breakfast Rogers went up to the radio system that was set up on the apron at the airport. They moved the radio equipment up into some bushes about 200 away, not too far from where the Marine fighter squadron was located.Around 11:00 o'clock [Annotator's Note: 11:00 on the morning of 8 December 1941] the Japanese planes came in. They had come over to bomb those fighter planes. They are lucky they were not killed. That was the 1st bombing they got.Rogers did not know how bad they were hit. He just remained in the radio position.The Japanese had knocked out most of the fighter planes. Only about 5 out of the 12 fighters were still flyable after the 1st raid.There was a Signal Corps officer and the rest of them were Air Force personnel. They moved the transmitter out of the trailer and into the powder magazine and set up operations there. 2 days later the Navy radio station was bombed out, so they turned their radio equipment over to the Navy.All the Navy messages were in code. Before the set was turned over to the Navy Rogers did not hear anything from Pearl Harbor. The only thing he heard was the S.O.S. he heard on the 8th. The Navy had Rogers listen to their transmissions. He did not do any sending or receiving on his own.Every day the Japanese would come in around 11:30 in the morning and bomb them. Around the 11th [Annotator's Note: 11 December 1941] did they tried a sea bound attempt [Annotator's Note: attempt a landing on Wake Island]. The Americans were able to repel that. Rogers believes that the Japanese thought the bombing had been more destructive than it was.On the letterheads that their reunion sends out every month, they printed out what some Japanese officer or sailor said about the attempted invasion, they said considering the number of their forces and the weakness of the defenders that was 1 of the most humiliating defeats the Japanese Navy have ever suffered.There were only a few anti-aircraft guns to defend against the Japanese air raids and those few guns had been taken off of a World War I destroyer and could only fire so high. It didn't take the Japanese long to figure out that they could fly above it.The Japanese knew that Wake did not have ground troops and they underestimated the the defenders.

During the initial attack Rogers was in the bushes away from the air field and could see them fly over. That was around 11:30 on the morning of the 8th. When they first attempted to land on the island, Rogers was in the dugout where they had moved their equipment. He was in the dugout with all the Navy operators and 2 of the Navy communications officers did the deciphering. They called it Commander Cunningham's Command Post but Rogers never saw Cunningham himself.There were 6 Army men- 1 officer and 5 enlisted men in the command post. Rogers reported directly to the Officer in Charge of their group, Captain Wilson, who was a Signal Corps officer.Roger's group consisted of 3 radio operators, a mechanic who took care of the truck engine, and a Staff Sergeant who took care of the transmitter.Some of the guys were called back to Hickam Field before the Japanese attacked.Rogers and his group had no weapons, so when the war started the Marines came out and issued them rifles and tin hats. He knew nothing about a rifle and they issued him no ammunition. A Marine helped Rogers clean the cosmoline out of his rifle but before he could reassemble it the Japanese air attack started. They scattered and after the attack Rogers went back to where they had been cleaning the rifle but he couldn't find the bolt. So he had a useless gun. He carried the gun around for 3 days. He eventually just left it some place. He laughs and said it was probably a good thing he did not get any ammunition because he would probably have used it on the Marines rather than the Japs. [Annotators Note: Rogers is being funny]After the attack they were on their own. The Marines left them alone, so they had to take care of themselves. They went into the communications bunker and stayed there. Everything was haphazard and crude. There was no set time for food. Everything was hit or miss. The civilians would bring food around to them but there was never any knowing when.When the 2nd landing took place, he was still in Cunningham's Command Post. He got no warnings from anyone else.The message he had received he gave to his officer in charge who delivered it to a Marine officer. The Marine officer gave it to the Navy officer who had it decoded. It surprised Rogers that the message about the attack on Pearl Harbor was sent in code and not in the clear. He thinks they might as well have sent the message not coded since it had already happened. No one had any idea what was going on.

After the war started their NCO [Annotator's Note: non- commissioned officer] went to Pan Am station and brought back some equipment so they could hear some of what was going on. They could hear the switchboard talking to people but could not hear both sides of the conversation. They knew something was going on but not the full extent. It wasn't until the attack was over that he realized what happened. The Japanese had all kinds of equipment to take care of the island this time around after the failure of the 1st attempt to invade.Someone came by the dugout and said that the island had been surrendered and that they were to stay in their current position until someone came by to pick them up. They all went outside and just sat on the side of the road and waited to be picked up by the Japanese. They had been sitting outside for about 30 minutes when 5 or 6 Japanese soldiers came by and told them hold up their hands and searched them. The Japanese soldiers took watches, rings, bracelets, and American money. They took anything of value. Rogers saw 1 Japanese soldier who had 5 watches on his arm. After taking everything of value they stripped them of their clothing only left them in their underwear and shoes. Some men did not have anything on. They stripped them entirely, bare naked. They were then marched down the airfield and sat them in rows. They had 2 machine guns mounted in front of them.It was like a dream to Rogers. He knew that it was happening, but it did not make any impression on him. He thought they would get everyone down to the airfield and then shoot them all. He wonders today, why did he not get all excited. He just did as he was told. The shock of the surrender was too overwhelming he thinks.They sat on the airfield for the night of the 23rd [Annotator's Note: 23 December 1941], all day and night of the 24th, and on the 25th they were moved. The airfield was coral, so it was rough to sit on. They got no food and no water on the 23rd. About midnight a rain started. That was the only time Rogers ever saw it rain on Wake Island. The Japanese moved them to a hanger. They were packed in and with no breeze the people in the back were passing out. They finally convinced the Japanese to let them out. It was better to be out in the rain than to be inside. Rogers later found out that the Japanese were very efficient at putting 200 people in place designed for 100.

The 24th [Annotator's Note: 24 December 1941] was the same; no water and no food. They could barely talk. On the morning of the 25th, Christmas Day, they came down in the morning to take a detail of prisoners. They gathered up all the clothing and issued it out to the prisoners. There was no telling what they would get. They might get a shirt that fit and pants that didn't, but it was better than nothing. They had boxes of bread and 52 gallon oil drums of water. Everyone got a piece of bread about the size of their fist and a cup full of gasoline tainted water. As soon as they drank the water they threw it back up. Some of the doctors just said to stop drinking it because everyone was throwing up. They were marched to the civilian contractors barracks. The barracks were not bombed and neither was the water distillation plant. They strung barbed wire around the barracks. It was just bare floors at this point. It was a lot better sitting on that floor than on the coral on the air field.They were fed twice a day, something that was quickly cooked like oatmeal. There was never anything substantial like meat. Rogers didn't have a mess kit so he put his hands together and the oatmeal was put in his hands and he ate it that way. He found a piece of tin with turned up edges and that became his mess kit. He still had no spoons so he found a letter opener and that was what he used to eat with. They hid food in various places in dugouts. So 1 night they went under the wire and got some food out and took it back to the barracks. He had grabbed a can and took it. When he opened the can he saw that he had grabbed a can of sauerkraut.Some times depending on who they got, the Japanese would allow them to take stuff if they found it. Most of the time they would not. Most of them [Annotator's Note: the Japanese troops] were pretty rough. Very few showed signs of kindness of any kind. When Rogers started to use the rusty tin for his eating plate, 1 of the Japanese soldiers gave him a type of sand paper to clean off the rust. But most of them were ruthless and showed no compassion. They [Annotator's Note: the Japanese] could not speak English and the prisoners could not speak Japanese. If their orders were not obeyed immediately they would beat them. But the POWs could not understand them.Rogers stayed there [Annotator's Note: on Wake Island] until the 12th of January. On the 11th they were told they would be shipped out. They were given a sheet of instructions on how they were to behave. It told them everything; no walking around, no standing, no messing with the ship's equipment, they were to be fed twice a day and will not eat more than their share of the meal. If they disobeyed the instructions it would mean instant death.Around noon on the 12th they were hauled down to the ocean side and they had a ship anchored out of the island. They loaded the prisoners on barges and took them out to the ship. The ship had a cargo door that was open on the aft [Annotator's Note: naval term for behind] side of the ship. The barges were put on the side of the ship, but because of the tide it was swaying all over since it was not tied up tight. They had to wait until the barge hit the ship and jump through the door. If someone misjudged the distance they would fall in between the barge and ship and get crushed. It was very scary, but he does not think anyone got crushed.

There was a small passageway that went all the way up the side of the ship to the front of the ship. It was lined with soldiers and ship's crew and they would spit on them, kick them and do whatever they wanted to. A Japanese soldier was pointing at the ladder into the cargo hold. 2 or 3 guys jumped accidently and fell through the cargo hold, the rest of them climbed down. All of them were loaded down there, over 1,000 people, and it was difficult to sit. They sat in the hold for 4 hours before the ship got underway. It was hot; people were thirsty and they would not allow air in. They had no idea where they were going. Rumors started after the ship got underway. The Japanese fed them once in the morning and once at night. The Japanese cooked the food and the prisoners had to distribute it. Every morning they got about a teacup of rice and, if they were lucky, a small piece of fish like a sardine and they got a small cup of tea. They got the same thing each morning and every night. The prisoners judged their days and nights by what they were being fed and when. They could count their days on board ship by their meals. They slept on steel decks which got very cold when the water they were in got cold. Each man was issued 1 thin blanket. The men would double up to keep warm. It took 7 days to get to Japan. When they got to Japan they docked at Yokohama.After the ship sat idle for a while someone hollered down and yelled Rogers' name. They [Annotator's Note: the Japanese] put a "su" on everything. Rogers was caller "Rogers-su." When Rogers climbed up out of the hold he joined 7 other men on deck who were Navy radiomen. They were then taken off the ship.Rogers was in summer uniform from Wake. When he left the ship in Japan it was 33 degrees with 2 inches of snow on the ground. They took them down to the docks and gave them each 1 Marine blanket that they had captured on Wake. They stood on the docks for 25 or 30 minutes until the captain of the ship's guards came out and made a speech to them which they could not understand. Then they were loaded on a small truck and taken on about a 30 minute ride. They were unloaded in front of an American style house. The name over the door bell was Dennison. They were told later on that Dennison worked for 1 of the oil companies in Japan.Rogers guesses that they [Annotator's Note: the Dennisons] had been shipped out because the only furniture in the house was in the dining room. They kept them in the dining room of the house where there was a dining room table and about 6 chairs.Rogers had taken a shower on the day of 7th [Annotator's Note: 7 December 1941] on Wake Island and had not had a shower since then. Here it was the 19th of January and he had not showered; he had a beard, his hair was long, and clothes were dirty.They were given hot baths and a barber came in and shaved them and cut their hair. That was also the best food Rogers got the entire time he was in Japan. They had some Japanese women come in and feed them twice a day. They were served a mixture of vegetables which was very good and they got quite a bit of it. It was the only good food Rogers got the whole time he was in Japan.Rogers doesn't recall how long they were there. They took them in and questioned them, 1 or 2 at a time. This continued for about 3 days.Rogers was surprised that he wasn't asked questions of any value.The questions were not demanding and they did not force and accepted whatever he told them. They asked him about the codes. He said he was not allowed to handle codes only commissioned officers could and they accepted it. They asked their opinion about the Japanese soldiers and how they fought. Rogers was surprised that the Japanese didn't work them over to try to get more information.That was the only time that they were questioned. They were there for about 7 to 10 days.

One afternoon they were taken to a railroad station and put on a train but were not told where they were going. The next morning they arrived in a seaport from where they took about a 2 hour trip across the Inland Sea then another hour long train ride which ended at the place they would be staying, a camp called Zentsuji. The people who had been captured on Guam had gotten there before the group Rogers was with. This was in February. Zentsuji was a well organized camp. The prisoners did their own cooking and the Japanese issued the food. The food was issued by weight.They got rice and soup 3 times a day. It was never enough. A lot of times they never knew what was in the soup, but they ate it.For the 1st 2 or 3 months Rogers was there, the men were all given a small loaf of bread and a bowl of noodles every morning. After he had been there 2 or 3 months the bread disappeared and they were given rice and noodles. After a few more months the noodles disappeared and they got rice and soup. In the soup they would sometimes get eggplant or potatos but most of the time they did not know what they were eating.1 time they [Annotator's Note: the Japanese] brought in a great big wooden tub that was about 6 feet around and 3 feet high. They also brought in some green stuff that Rogers couldn't identify. The Japanese put a layer of the green stuff and put salt on it then put a layer of wood on top of that. They then did another layer just like the first and then another and another. They did about 4 or 5 layers. After this had sat for a while they [Annotator's Note: the Japanese] took it out and made soup with it. Nobody could eat it. They would chew it and chew it but could not swallow it.They tried eating a boiled cat 1 time and it was like trying to eat a rubber ball. They could not swallow that either.There comes a point of being hungry where it is no matter what anything tastes like, it is just a matter of trying to fill the hole. They would eat anything no matter if it tasted good or not. Good taste was just a bonus. They ate grass hoppers and snakes. The Japanese had a storage facility nearby and the rats would eat the rice and get big and fat and the prisoners would catch and boil the rats.They would never ask someone shat is was. Most of the time they didn't want to know. For horse food the Japanese would make big cakes out of what was left of soy beans they had pressed to get the oil out of. They would keep a bunch of the cakes near the docks to feed their horses. The POWs would help themselves to this horse food.1 time Rogers found human waste in the soup. He scooped it out and ate the soup. In Japan they fertilized all of the gardens with human waste.Rodgers had several jobs and 1 of them was to help fertilize the gardens. 2 of them would haul the waste over to the gardens and would mix it with soil. Then they would put it on the vegetables. That wasn't too bad on the vegetables in the ground but it was also put on leafy vegetables and that was how it ended up in their food.For about 2 weeks Rogers worked in a Japanese bakery. He ate well then. They made a paste from boiled beans and sugar and would make buns that they would put the paste inside of which was very good. They also baked a white bread called officer's bread.Rogers then went to work in a galley for 3 or 4 months helping to cook and dole out the food. He would work from noon 1 day to noon the next day and then had a day off.Rogers was then transferred to the docks again. There he handled rice, charcoal, wine [Annotator's Note: Rogers may be saying lime], and army food. They had to handle anything and everything.The Japs were not good at figuring things out. They get their mind set on something and they go with it. 1 day they were unloading some Japanese Army hardtack, which to Rogers was better than US Army hardtack, and they put it in individual mesh bags in a 5 gallon oil drum then put that in a wooden crate and would lift it up. They [Annotator's Note: the Japanese] figured that the prisoners couldn't get into that, but they did. 1 night they were stealing some and the guard started coming toward them so they had to stack it up in the middle of the wooden crate they were taking it out of. The next day when they [Annotator's Note: the Japanese Army] came to haul the crates off they saw that one of the drums had been opened. It was a mess, the Japanese guard started screaming and yelling. Nothing was ever done to the prisoners for that. Rogers thinks they never questioned them further because they thought it must have been their fault that the can was open because there was no way the can could have been opened in the middle of the stack under their [Annotator's Note: the Japanese guards] watchful eyes.

The prisoners would steal stuff whenever they could. Sometimes the men would get searched. Everyone would throw their hands up and the guards would check their pockets. The prisoners could hide things in their hands because the guards only searched their bodies. The prisoners even made what they called "loot sacks" out of old socks that they would tie inside of their clothing. It was fairly easy for the men to hide things because the guards did not check in conspicuous places.Rogers got some beatings. The guards would take a piece of bamboo and split it. Then they turned the split sides around and tied it back together so when they beat the prisoners they were beating them with the sharp edges.Another thing they did was take a piece of 2 by 4 and put it between the legs of the prisoners then made the prisoners squat down on it which tore out their ligaments, similar to a football injury. They also had steel buckets full of water that the men would have to hold straight out from their bodies and if their arms started to lower they would hit them. The Japanese liked to kick them because they had hobnails in their shoes. They liked picking on the big guys rather than the smaller ones because it made them feel special that they could beat someone bigger.A lot of times the prisoners didn't know what they were getting beat for. They would just go up and start beating on men.They could even tell how the war was going by when they got more and more beatings.The guards gave the prisoners English newspapers which were all propaganda and none of them believed it. 1 news story was about an American fighter pilot and a Japanese fighter pilot who were in combat and the Japanese ran out of ammunition. He looked down into the bottom of his plane and saw a rice ball. He picked up the rice ball and threw it at the American and when the American pilot ducked down to avoid the rice ball he lost control of his plane and crashed.The papers would always tell where the battles were but according to them the Japanese never lost a battle.They could tell by where the battles were taking place the way the war was going. It gave the prisoners hope knowing that the war was going badly for the Japanese.The camp Rogers stayed in held about 400 men, both officers and enlisted men. There were men from the Philippines, Dutch, British, and New Zealanders. Rogers was the only Army enlisted man in the camp. All of the others were Marines and sailors. So everyone called him "soldier." The camp was Zentsuji on the island of Shikoku.For the most part the prisoners worked on the railroad docks. Occasionally they worked on the ship docks. Rogers worked at 3 different locations, but was always doing the same thing.The Japanese started treating the prisoners worse and worse as the war went on.When the prisoners were not working they played cards but the Japanese told them not to gamble. They didn't have much worth gambling for but they gambled anyway with the little money they had.The Japanese payed the prisoners to work. Non-commissioned officers got 15 cents a day and a private got 10 cents a day. They ended up with about 3 yen a month. They had a canteen where they would sell notebooks and pencils, but nothing to eat. They sold them vitamins which the doctor told them were no good, but they ate them anyway to fill the hole. They did not sell any clothes either.

The prisoners had their own doctors they had to rely on. They had a Japanese doctor assigned to them but he was not 1 of their better doctors. He was more like a horse doctor. They also had a Japanese corpsman, but he knew very little.They had to get the Japanese doctor's approval for everything. For example, if 1 of the guys had a strained back, they would have to get the Japanese doctor to look at it and he decided if they could take the day off or not.The corpsman tried to tell the prisoners' doctor how to treat patients. The prisoners had 4 doctors. 1 of the doctors managed to bring a small medical kit that could be carried around. As far as medicine went however, they had nothing.The only medication they could get from the Japanese was aspirin tablets and a little mercurochrome. 1 time they were able to get medicine from some "Chinaman" who was there working on the docks. They got in with him and got some sulfa drugs which they had gotten on the black market.1 day Rogers got really sick. When the doctor held sick call, which he did every night after the work party got back, Rogers went to see him even though he didn't think there was anything the doctor could do for him. It turned out that he had pneumonia and had a fever of 105. They gave him some of the sulfa drugs and he was back to work in 3 days. Rogers thinks if he did not have those drugs he would have died. For the most part if a prisoner got something bad they wouldn't last.Rogers also had to have some teeth pulled. They did have a dentist but he didn't have anything but a dental chair and some forceps, no Novocaine or anything like that. Rogers had 3 teeth pulled with no anesthetic. The Japanese gave the doctor an aspirin and told him to rub it on the tooth to kill the pain. A guy got behind Rogers and held his head back while the dentist pulled the teeth.The prisoners developed a high pain tolerance. They could endure much more pain. When Rogers got back home, long after he had gotten out of the service, he a problem with his eye watering. It wouldn't stop so he went to the doctor who told him that his tear ducts were blocked. The doctor stuck a needle in his tear ducts and was surprised when Rogers told him that the procedure didn't hurt much. Rogers told the doctor that he had developed a high pain threshhold. They operated on people [Annotator's Note: in the prisoner of war camp in Japan] without any antiseptic with mess kit knives and they lived.Rogers said he never lost his sense of humor. Once a man lost his humor he would go down hill from there. To Rogers it seemed like the older people did it better than the younger people. If anyone ever gave up, they were a goner. A lot of people died just because they gave up. Not of any disease or being sick, they just gave up living.When Rogers was firing [Annotator's Note: working the stoves] in the galley the Jap who ran the galley would come out and issue the food. The man had a little teapot and would give the prisoners a little tea. If he wanted tea he would come out of his office and whistle and Rogers or 1 of the other prisoners would run and get his teapot and would fill it up with water from 1 of the pots. They would bring the tea back to the man who would then put a big handful of sugar in it.The coal they were given was not good coal so Rogers was constantly having to keep the fires going. 1 time he had 1 fire going for the soup and 1 going for the rice. It seemed like whenever he would get 1 of them going good the other 1 would go out. Rogers was getting teed off and about that time he heard the man whistle. He took the teapot and filled it with tea and water. At about that time Rogers needed to go to the head [Annotator's Note: naval term for restroom] so he used the teapot as a head since he had it. He gave it back to the officer who added his sugar and drank it. It didn't bother him a bit.Rogers guesses that he got around 5 Red Cross packages. At some locations people got more than at other places. In the camps around Yokohama they got more. Packages for Zensuji had to be reshipped so they got a lot less.Rogers doesn't feel that the Red Cross parcels did them much good.1 guy at Yokohama told Rogers that he had gotten 10 packages. Rogers knows he did not get that many.

They [Annotator's Note: the Japanese] let some of the Red Cross packages go to pot. They would put them in store house and never issue them. They cannibalized some of the packages too. They took their share [Annotator's Note: Rogers is being somewhat sarcastic], especially the cigarettes.The packages varied. One guy told Rogers that he got soup in his. Rogers never got soup in his. Rogers got D chocolate bars [Annotator's Note: US Military issue "D" ration], a can of corned beef, some sugar, butter, and some cigarettes.The variety created a trading situation. Anything of value would be traded. Some of the people had never smoked, but started smoking. Some guys would develop such a bad habit they would trade all of their Red Cross packages for cigarettes. They would trade all of their food for cigarettes. The doctors tried to stop it but they couldn't.Rogers got quite a few letters which he brought home with him. He had 30 or 40 letters. He was able to write occasionally too, but was dependent on when they [Annotator's Note: the Japanese] allowed them to write. There was not set schedule. Sometimes it would be a month sometimes 3 months or 2 months or 6 months.The prisoners could not put in any type of information because they would throw it out. They had to say they were getting plenty of food and clothes and that the treatment was good. He does not know if the people back home believed them or not but at least they knew that he was still alive. It gave them hope.The desire to get back to the States was what kept Rogers alive. It started out with "The war will be through in '42." Then it was "We'll be alive in '43." Then "Home once more in '44." And finally "Home alive in '45." Every year they came up with another phrase. They could not lose hope or they would die. Rogers had to convince himself that he could do it.Some of the men Rogers lived with on the island he did not know until he got there because he did not serve with them on Wake and nearly everyone had nicknames. 1 of the guys was captured in Alaska [Annotator's Note: this is probably not correct]. He was a very smart guy. He was a farm boy from Missouri. He got good at stealing and he got the nickname of "Fingers Brown." He could sit down in front of a Japanese soldier and start talking to him and could be stealing stuff out of the box he was sitting on at the same time. He made little tools that he could hook with and suck with. He was really smart, but one would never know it being around him.In August [Annotator's Note: August 1945] or September they got liberated. They left to go to work at noon. 2 soldiers came up and marched them back to camp. Rogers knew something was up, but they weren't told anything until the next day. The food rations got a lot better the next day. They got flour and canned tangerines.They only had 1 officer in the camp because shortly before the war ended they [Annotator's Note: the Japanese] had moved all of the officers out of the camp leaving only enlisted men and that 1 officer.

They [Annotator's Note: the Japanese] called the officer over and told him that the war was over. About a half hour later, the guards were all gone. Rogers thinks they left because they thought the prisoners would work them over, especially the guys who had been rough on them.The prisoners did go looking for 1 of the Japanese guards who was a civilian they called "Harry the Horse." He carried an officer's saber, but he wasn't a military guy. He had been a guard at 1 of the work sites. If they found him they were really going to work him over.They stayed there for 2 weeks before the Americans showed up. They got food by air drops. Messages were sent in with the air drops telling the prisoners to mark the drop zones. They made a PW sign on top of the barracks. Some of the items broke loose from the parachutes and free fell. They made a sign for the next drop in a vacant field and did not go over there until the drop was over so they would not get hit.There was food and clothing in the drop and Rogers was surprised they did not drop any medicine.Some of guys threw up from trying to eat too much at 1 time but most of the guys didn't have any problems. After a week or 2, an officer and a nurse came by to see the state of their health. After they left Rogers doesn't remember seeing anybody until the day they were going to be shipped out.There was some military personnel on the train but Rogers doesn't recall any troops coming in and surrounding the camp. They were just there, like always, except there were no Japanese around them. Some of the prisoners got a little scared and broke into a Japanese armory and stole weapons in case they were attacked. They were able to leave and take hikes and they were not bothered.The war made Rogers appreciate things such as his freedom. Even after all this time, he hates to see people leave food on their plate. That was so long ago but even now, it bothers him when he cannot finish his food. He hates to see stuff wasted.Rogers believes that any change in the country as a result of the war was temporary. After the war people went back to the way things were, especially those who never saw service.Rogers doesn't think World War II changed anything in the United States that much.Having the National World War II Museum is important because a lot of people do not know much about the war or what they do know is incorrect information. It is not taught in schools. Even during the war, things that were told were not true, all false. So it is important for the truth to come out, to speak to the people who were there who experienced it, and see how they felt.