Erwin Johnson was born in October 1921 in New Orleans, Louisiana. He attended George Washington School through the third grade. In fourth grade he moved to McDonogh Number 12 and then went to Warren Easton Boy's High School after that. He graduated in 1939. He then went to Delgado trade school at night while he worked during the day. Johnson enlisted in the US Army Air Corps because of what was happening in Europe. He was sent to Shreveport, Louisiana to Barksdale Air Force Base for basic training. He then went to Savannah, Georgia to help build a tent city for the incoming Air Force. After that, he went to the Dallas Aviation School at Love Field [Annotator's Note: Dallas Love Field, Dallas, Texas] for six months of mechanic training. He returned to Savannah and left on a troop train 19 October 1941. He went to San Francisco, California and then left there 1 November 1941 for Manila, Philippines, arriving 20 November. Two destroyers escorted them after they left Hawaii. Johnson was on the SS President Coolidge, a converted troop ship. His unit's [Annotator's Note: 27th Bombardment Group] aircraft were on a ship behind them that got diverted to Australia. General MacArthur [Annotator's Note: US Army General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander, Southwest Pacific Area] told General LeMay [Annotator's Note: USAAF then USAF General Curtis E. LeMay] that he needed a lot of men, so they stayed in Manila, Philippines. Johnson was in Manila when Pearl Harbor was bombed. They were bombed later that same day.

Erwin Johnson was an aircraft mechanic [Annotator's Note: assigned to the 48th Material Squadron, 27th Bombardment Group] in the Philippines when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and them on the same day. They had been issued brand new Springfield rifles [Annotator's Note: M1903 .30 caliber bolt action rifle, also referred to simply as the '03]]. On Christmas Day [Annotator's Note: 25 December 1941] he was moved to Bataan, Luzon, Philippines, by boat. The Japanese were bombing them as they crossed Manila Bay. They landed in Mariveles, Bataan, and they bivouacked. They had just gone to sleep when they discovered they had put their tents in front of a battery of 155s [Annotator's Note: M114 155mm howitzer or 155mm Howitzer M1, towed howitzer]. Johnson was assigned as a runner. The US Army Air Corps squadrons were in one area and he took the messages between them, including when they were getting shelled. They held the line there until 9 April 1942. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks him his unit number and says he wants to back up in the story]. Johnson was assigned to the 48th Material Squadron, 27th Bombardment Group where he was on the second line of defense. The first line was the 31st Infantry Division, Filipino Scouts [Annotator's Note: the Philippine Scouts was US Army military organization from 1901 to 1948], and some constabulary, Filipinos who had been drafted. The Filipino draftees would often sneak off and go back home. On 9 April they were surrendered to the Japanese by General King [Annotator's Note: US Army Major General Edward Postell King Jr., Commanding General, Philippine-American forces, Bataan Peninsula]. On 10 April they started the march of 65 miles from Mariveles [Annotator's Note: The Bataan Death March]. Prior to the march, their rations had been cut. They had hardly any food and were running out of ammunition. By the time the march started, many men were already sick from malnutrition and malaria.

On 10 April [Annotator's Note: 10 April 1942], Erwin Johnson and his fellow prisoners of war started their march away [Annotator's Note: Bataan Death March]. They did not get anything to eat on the first day. They were searched and had everything extra taken away. Johnson put his high school ring in his mouth so they would not find it. He managed to keep it and still has it. They would march at night, 100 to 150 men per group to contain them with not too many guards. Sometimes they marched all night and in the rain. If anyone sat down and the group passed, the guards would kill them. During the day they would sit back to back in fields in the sun, without their hats. Some Filipinos in the barrios would come out and give the men rice wrapped in a banana leaf. One guard saw a woman carrying a baby do this and he took the baby away from the woman and shot her. Then he placed the baby on the ground, bayoneted it, and held it up on the end of the bayonet to show the other guard. That was rough to see. Men would try to get out of line to fill their canteens with water. Sometimes they got away with it and sometimes they didn't. Even if they got water, there was often dead animals in any stream. Men got dysentery. They marched for about six days and reached San Fernando where they were put on 40 and eight boxcars [Annotator's Note: 40 and eight refers to the size of the boxcar; they could hold 40 standing men or eight standing horses] at night. They worried about suffocating. Some men died and would have to remain standing due to not having room. They marched another six miles or so to Camp O'Donnell. They sat in front of a stage where they got the rules from the camp commander. They were told they would be put in groups of ten. If one them tried to escape, the other nine would be shot. The Filipinos were separated from the Americans. There was one water spigot in the camp and the lines for water were very long. They would be crawling to get water.

Erwin Johnson assigned to work details. If they worked, they got a little more to eat so he volunteered for any detail he could get. He would be taken out in a truck, eight to ten guys at a time. They would cut wood in a forest. The Japanese would cut the wood, but the prisoners had to carry it from the jungle to the truck. Johnson feels that accomplishing things like that actually helped him stay strong. He did the wood detail and a bridge building detail. He was sent to Cabanatuan [Annotator’s Note: Cabanatuan Prison Camp, Cabanatuan City, Philippines] for a couple of months to go out on details. On 8 October 1942, Johnson and 500 others went from Cabanatuan to Pier 7 in Manila and were put on hell ships [Annotator's Note: an unmarked ship with extremely inhumane living conditions used by the Imperial Japanese Navy to transport prisoners of war]. They joined 1,000 men that had been taken from Mindanao, Philippines. They lived in a hole where they had to use the bathroom in a bucket lowered to them. They would be allowed on deck for some time in shifts. On the deck, there was a toilet hanging over the side of the ship and they would just go into the ocean. There was a tower that contained their drinking water. One of the prisoners went up and fished out dirty pants from it. Johnson was on deck once when people pointed out a torpedo coming towards the ship. The ship turned and it missed. Another one missed as well. A third was coming straight at them but it just disappeared. Johnson learned later that the American submarines had a lot of faulty torpedoes.

Erwin Johnson and his fellow prisoners of war were taken to Formosa [Annotator's Note: now Taiwan] but then went back to Manila because of American submarine patrols. They then went back to Formosa and they were stripped naked and hosed down, which was good for them. They then left for Pusan, Korea [Annotator's Note: now Busan, Korea]. They arrived in the same clothing that they had worn in the Philippines which was basically nothing due to the heat. In Pusan, it was cold and windy. They were issued Japanese army uniforms to wear. Some of the men were too ill to travel but the others were put on a train and taken to Manchuria. They arrived 11 November 1942 and it was very cold, 20 to 25 degrees below zero. They were put into old barracks that were halfway underground. They were surprised when they were issued six woolen blankets to each person. Johnson thinks that is what saved a lot of men. They needed them alive for slave labor. Some worked in a machine tool factory, some in a tannery, and some in a lumber yard. Johnson was in the machine tool factory [Annotator's Note: Manchurian Machine Tool Factory, also known as MKK]. They would walk from the camp to the factory, four and a half miles, regardless of the weather. Johnson feels that the walking helped them maintain their strength. After four or five months they were moved to a camp closer to the factory, but it was also close to a munitions factory.

They walked to the factory with Japanese guards who would turn them over to the factory guards who were Manchurians and Chinese mostly. The first time Erwin Johnson saw American planes was on 7 December 1944 when B-26s [Annotator's Note: Martin B-26 Marauder medium bomber] flew over and bombed the ammunition factory. [Annotator's Note: These were actually Boeing B-29 Superfortress very heavy bombers according to some accounts.] A couple of bombs hit the prisoner's camp. They had already dug foxholes to take cover in during the bombing missions. Seven men were killed and 34 were wounded despite this. Johnson was tasked with picking up the hands and feet of men who had been hit. There was a prisoner who could speak and read Japanese. The people at the factory would have Japanese newspapers and would give them to the prisoners to smuggle into camp. The papers would describe big victories near Australia, Guadalcanal, the Solomon Islands, the Philippines, and Formosa. The Americans could tell that the American forces were getting closer and closer to Japan through this information. On 17 August 1945, five men from OCS [Annotator's Note: actually OSS, Office of Strategic Services, the intelligence agency of the United States during World War 2 and predecessor to the Central Intelligence Agency or CIA], parachuted in close to the camp. Their mission was to make sure the Japanese knew the war was over. They were captured. They told the camp commander the war was over, but they were not allowed to visit the other prisoners. On 18 August, one of them came into the camp courtyard and told everyone that they were free. [Annotator's Note: Johnson breaks into tears and says that was so long ago that he should not feel that way.]

Erwin Johnson was a prisoner of war being held in Mukden, Manchuria when he was told the war was over on 17 August 1945. All hell broke loose when it was announced. Over the next couple of days, American planes dropped food bundles to them. The American prisoners got to the guns and made the Japanese guards do the work around the camp. They stayed until the middle of September. They had some problems with the Russians who actually liberated them. They were told to remain in camp, but men were leaving and going into town anyway. Johnson and some friends found a brewery and had a good time. The next day they went back to the brewery, but the Russians had found it and would not let them in. Johnson was shipped by train to the port of Dalian, China and then went by ship to Okinawa, Japan. They ran into a typhoon and had to go out to sea to ride it out. His ship hit a mine amidships, killing four American sailors in the engine room. This was early in the morning and Johnson was up on deck with his life preserver. Some other former prisoners were on the side of the ship looking at the mine when a wave pushed the ship into it. The shrapnel took one of the ex-POWs [Annotator's Note: prisoners of war] head off. Johnson was on the opposite side from the blast. The ship tilted to nearly 45 degrees and Johnson climbed up on a rail and prepared to slide down into the ocean. The ship righted itself though. They eventually were towed into Okinawa. From there, they returned by plane to Manila. Johnson then boarded the USAT Klipfontein and arrived 6 November 1945 in Seattle, Washington. He was then taken to Fort Lewis in Tacoma, Washington where he boarded a hospital train to Fort Sam Houston, Brooke General Hospital, San Antonio, Texas. After a couple of days, he flew back to New Orleans, Louisiana around 9 November to his awaiting family. He needed dental work and would go back and forth from the hospital to New Orleans. He was also sent to Miami Beach, Florida for two weeks of R&R [Annotator's Note: Rest and Relaxation].

Erwin Johnson spent his furloughs in New Orleans, Louisiana. After his furloughs were exhausted, he went to Camp Shelby in Hattiesburg, Mississippi where he mustered out on 20 June 1946. He got out of the service as soon as he could. He returned home and went to work. He did some drafting work for Johns Manville Corporation for a couple of months before deciding to take advantage of the G.I. Bill and enrolled at Tulane University in New Orleans. He graduated in 1952 with a degree in mechanical engineering and went to work for North American Aviation Company in Los Angeles, California. He left here and took a trip all around the country by himself from Portland, Oregon to Portland, Maine and then south to New Orleans, before returning to Los Angeles. He became homesick and returned to New Orleans to work for International Harvester. He married and then worked for an electric company. He ultimately retired from the Port of New Orleans in January 1993. He raised five boys.

[Annotator's Note: It appears that a question was asked during the tape break regarding what supplies were received in the POW camp.] Erwin Johnson had been a prisoner of war of the Japanese in Mukden, Manchuria. He received a toothbrush but not toothpaste. He would use anything. There are more things like that he cannot remember. He had joined the US Army Air Corps because he had a background in mechanical work. World War I photos of the men in the trenches, made him not want to be in the infantry. He considered the Navy because life on a ship was not so bad overall, but he hoped he could become a cadet and fly. He was sent to airplane mechanics school instead. After he enlisted and was heading for the Pacific, he did not think the United States was going to war with Japan. He had heard that Manila was good duty. He was surprised by the attack on Pearl Harbor. He heard the news the morning of the bombing while he was at Fort McKinley [Annotator's Note: Fort William McKinley, now Fort Andres Bonifacio, Manila, Philippines]. There was an incident where a Japanese plane flew over fairly low and they were told to scatter. Johnson went into some tall weeds to hide. The plane was low enough to strafe and then it dropped what Johnson thought was a bomb. It hit about 100 yards away. He went to look at it and saw that it was a wing tank.

Erwin Johnson was an aircraft mechanic at Fort McKinley in Manila, Philippines when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. The Japanese came ashore north of Manila, in Lingayen Bay [Annotator's Note: Lingayen Gulf, Philippines]. The Filipino newspaper headline said there were 100 ships there. Johnson knew the Japanese could not be stopped. MacArthur [Annotator's Note: US Army General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander, Southwest Pacific Area] put Operation Orange [Annotator's Note: War Plan Orange (Plan Orange, or, Orange); General Douglas MacArthur's revision to the plan was War Plan Orange-3, or WPO-3, for the defense of Manila Bay, Philippines] into effect, which meant everyone would go into Bataan to protect it and Manila. After the American troops went into Bataan, the Japanese declared Manila an open city. Johnson did not see the Japanese come ashore. On 25 December 1941, the squadron cooks had a table full of food for Christmas dinner set up under the bamboo trees. The Japanese started bombing them so the men had to get on trucks with all of their belongings. Their personal items were in footlockers in Manila, so everything was lost. They went to Pier 7 and boarded a boat to Bataan. Once there, Johnson's squadron [Annotator's Note: 48th Material Squadron, 27th Bombardment Group] was divided into three groups as a second line of defense. They would switch duties between them so that one group was always resting. Being in the US Army Air Corps, they did not know anything about being infantry. They learned quickly. They did not do much fighting due to being on the second line. The 31st Infantry Regiment, 3rd Battalion, was the first line of defense and did most of the fighting. Johnson was in the 27th Bombardment Group on one side of Mount Samat on Bataan. The 19th and 20th Bomb Groups were on the other side and they did see some combat. They did what they could until they were surrendered on 9 April 1942.

Erwin Johnson was involved in the defense of Bataan, Philippines and thought that the Japanese were just going to push them out onto the tip of Bataan and eventually drown them all. Instead they surrendered and started the march [Annotator's Note: the Bataan Death March]. Some men made it over to Corregidor [Annotator's Note: Corregidor Island, Manila Bay, Philippines], which held out until 6 May 1942 when they surrendered. During the march, the Japanese heading toward Corregidor would hit the marching prisoners with their guns or pieces of wood. The Japanese were using artillery against Corregidor. Corregidor's guns were mounted in the opposite direction of Manila Bay and were useless. Johnson could hear all of the artillery going out. The news to surrender traveled fast amongst the retreating soldiers. They knew the Japanese had broken through the first lines of defense. Johnson thought they were all going to get killed. At some point, they were told that General King [Annotator's Note: US Army Major General Edward Postell King, Jr., Commanding General, Philippine-American forces, Bataan Peninsula] had surrendered them and to lay down their arms into piles. In Mariveles, they passed two hospitals, one of which had a large, red, cross on the roof, but it had been bombed anyway. Mattresses were in the trees. They all sat down in a huge group surrounded by Japanese with machine guns on the hills. They sat during the whole night of 9 April and began marching the next morning.

Erwin Johnson says that the guards at Camp O'Donnell [Annotator's Note: Capas in Tarlac, Luzon, Philippines; former United States military installation used as Prisoner of War camp by the Japanese] were pretty brutal. Many of the prisoners were dying. There was a barracks called the "Zero Ward" where the men who were not expected to live were put. Johnson went one day and saw his First Sergeant was there. He was naked and messed up and Johnson could not help him. He told him he would come back the next day but he had died. The men would put the body on a blanket and fold it to be able to carry it. They would take it to what they called Boot Hill and bury them. If it was late in the day, the body might not get covered and the next day they would see dogs eating the corpses. [Annotator's Note: Johnson picks up a book to show the interviewer a picture but can't find it.] At Cabanatuan [Annotator's Note: the Cabanatuan Prison Camp, Cabanatuan City, Philippines], Johnson was on work details. He would accompany the Japanese into town to get supplies. The Filipinos would give them some rice wrapped in a banana leaf and the Japanese on the truck would let them eat it. Johnson went out almost every day. He did a lot of work at O'Donnell as well but can't recall everything.

Erwin Johnson was on the Tottori Maru hell ship [Annotator's Note: an unmarked ship with extremely inhumane living conditions used by the Imperial Japanese Navy to transport prisoners of war] as the first group to leave the Philippines in October 1942. Most of the other groups did not leave until 1944. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks about building a road, but Johnson does not recall that.] When they first started the march [Annotator's Note: the Bataan Death March], they had to go up a hill. There were Filipino bodies that had been rolled over by Japanese trucks so many times they could hardly tell it was a human body. In Manchuria, Johnson was working in the office of a munitions factory. He was supposed to be drawing plans for the Japanese. He was in a large room with a lot of workers and Johnson had to empty the trash cans. In the afternoons, he was sent outside to help with any digging that had to be done. The prisoners were fed a cornmeal mush and a piece of bread in the morning at the camp. Lunch at the factory would be a bowl of purple grain they called maize and a bun. They would get a little bit of rice when they returned to the camp. They had to be in bed by nine o'clock. Their beds were straw mattresses on a small platform. Each man had a small area and one small shelf above the head of the bed. They were allowed to keep some things. They had a small coal scuttle a day that they could use in big German heaters. It got down to 40 below and there was a lot of snow but they still had to walk to the factory to work. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks him about a guard called The Wolf, but Johnson does not know anything about him.] Johnson learned of a lot of happenings in the camps later but he just kept to himself and did what he was told. One man would never take a bath. There was a vat with hot water that was open to the outside. They would have to strip, get a cup of the water and pour it over their body, even when the temperature was below zero. The guy got to smelling pretty bad and other men started taking his clothes off of him. He complained that he did not want to die of pneumonia, saying that nobody ever died of filth. [Annotator's Note: Johnson laughs.]

Erwin Johnson was a prisoner of war in Mukden, Manchuria and worked in a factory there. Some of the men would smuggle stuff from the factory into the camp. If they were searched and something was found, everyone would have to take strip naked and stand in the snow. The cooks in the camp would put food in big bowls with handles to be taken to the factory. Some of the guys hollowed out the handle so that they could pass notes back and forth. Once they were putting down a concrete floor in a warehouse. The Japanese would put a guard outside each door but none on the inside. The soil was sandy and there were big overhead cranes inside. There was a lot of American machinery in there. The prisoners would dig a big hole in the sand and bury some of the equipment. Then they would concrete it over. The Japanese could not figure out how their machines were disappearing. Johnson did not see the men parachuting near the camp, coming to tell the Japanese that the war was over. A Japanese patrol captured the men and brought them in. The commandant took the men to the camp once he found out it was true. The camp commander, The Bull, did not want to cooperate but eventually did so. There were men in a prison inside the camp and they were released. Johnson says learning they were free was hard to believe but was a good feeling. The Americans came into the camp for two days straight before giving this news to the prisoners. Johnson and the men would see the American smoking while talking to the camp commander, so they knew something was happening.

Erwin Johnson was captured by the Japanese on the Bataan Peninsula, Philippines. The prisoners were forced to start a march 10 April 1942 [Annotator's Note: the Bataan Death March]. When the Americans were rounded up, the Japanese treated them badly. Once the march started, men started trying to get out of line or get supplies and then it got worse. Johnson did not think about escaping much. He just tried to keep up with the group and do what he was told. If the Japanese saw someone out of the group, that was not good. Some men did get away into the jungle. They were close enough to Filipinos who would take them into their barrios and hide them. Some of the men did make their way out of Bataan and some did join guerilla groups. The guerillas would blow up trucks and a US Marine did escape and worked with them. That Marine was a sergeant and was later made a Captain. [Annotator's Note: Johnson is likely talking about James Carrington whose interview is also available on this website.] Johnson had dinner with him a few times after the war. Johnson tried to get out of line to get some water once. He almost made it back to the group when he was seen by a guard. The guard hit Johnson in the head with his rifle butt. Johnson got up and tried to stand at attention when a Filipino woman started yelling at the guard. As soon as the guard turned away, Johnson got back in the group.