Robert Lents was born in October 1921 on a farm in South Creston, Iowa where he grew up and worked on a big farm his father rented. When he was around eight years old, his mother died and his father remarried a woman with children. The blended family didn't get along very well, and when Lents was 17 he left home. He wanted to join the Navy, but he was underage and had a pre-existing ear condition, and was rejected. But when the war in Europe worsened, the Navy reconsidered his application, and he entered service on 15 November 1939. Lents went to Great Lakes [Annotator's Note: Naval Station Great Lakes, Great Lakes, Illinois] for training, and when given the choice of airplanes or submarines, he chose subs. He was sent to the submarine base at Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: Pearl Harbor, Hawaii], and worked in the mine shop and torpedo shop there for 11 months. When the new USS Seawolf (SS-197) submarine came in, he was transferred to her crew and sailed to the Philippines. After about five months, his skipper sent Lents to torpedo school for six weeks. At the end of his training, the Seawolf was out on maneuvers, so he couldn't rejoin its crew; but the USS Perch (SS-176) needed a torpedoman, and Lents was assigned to the Perch at the end of June 1940. The Perch was the flagship of the submarines and was conducting survey operations all around the Philippines until it was sent to escort the Marines out of Hong Kong, China. Along the way, they saw loaded Japanese transport ships going south about a week before the war broke out, and reported the sightings. The Perch was addressing engine troubles in the Cavite Navy Yard [Annotator's Note: Cavite City, Luzon, Philippines] when he learned that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941].

The engines of the USS Perch (SS-176) were put back together, and Robert Lents said that the morning after the attack on Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941] about 40 Japanese aircraft bombed the Navy Yard [Annotator’s Note: Cavite Navy Yard, Cavite City, Luzon, Philippines], and sank one submarine and killed about 700 civilians and Navy personnel. The Perch pulled out into the bay and dove. On 10 December 1941, the Perch was sent out on a war patrol. They went north, along the Philippine Islands and to Formosa [Annotator's Note: present day Taiwan] where they patrolled off the Japanese naval base for a while. Then they got a radio message that a ship, loaded with gold according to hearsay, was leaving Hong Kong. The Perch sank the ship, but couldn't watch its demise because a cruiser that was escorting it launched a plane that bombed the sub. The Perch had to go to Darwin, Australia for repairs and resupply. After a couple of weeks, the sub went out on its second war patrol to the Celebes Island where the enemy was "hiding" ships in a bay. The Perch couldn't get into the bay, and while it was guarding one entrance, the Japanese "slipped out of another one," and headed toward Java [Annotator's Note: Java, Netherlands East Indies; now Java, Indonesia]. The Perch pursued them to try to sink some of their landing force. Somehow, Lents said, his ship was put under the control of a Dutch admiral who knew nothing about submarines, who sent them into shallow water. When they dove to dodge a Japanese attack, they hit bottom at 140 feet, got stuck in the mud, and suffered through a barrage of depth charges. When the Japanese left, the Perch surfaced and repaired some damage, and the skipper decided to go back to chasing transports. The Perch was forced to dive again, this time in a little deeper water, but it still got stuck in the mud, and was "depth charged for hours." When the enemy finally left, the Perch got loose and surfaced to make repairs and test equipment. A test dive was unsuccessful, and soon after it was back on top, two cruisers and four destroyers arrived and started "throwing shells," cutting antennae wires off, and the Perch couldn't go anywhere. The skipper said they were going to abandon ship, and ordered everybody off.

When the crew abandoned the USS Perch (SS-176), Robert Lents said some of the guys in the water turned on their flashlights to indicate their location, and the Japanese were shooting at them. Lents and some others swam away from the group, and were eventually picked up by boat and brought to a Japanese destroyer. After about 18 hours, the Japanese unloaded the prisoners onto a Dutch hospital ship that they had captured. The Americans were put in the hold with about 600 to 800 British prisoners who had been aboard a cruiser that had been sunk. They were held for approximately five days without food or water. They were then moved onto a recently captured island, Makassar [Annotator's Note: Makassar, Sulawesi Island, Netherlands East Indies; now Makassar, Sulawesi Island, Indonesia], where they were held in a Dutch army camp barracks. When at last they were allowed to get water and clean up, Lents noticed that the only security was a barbed wire fence. Some of the guys slipped through to raid the nearby houses for food and whatever else they could "steal." They took mattresses and clothes. The prisoners were fed one biscuit a day for a while; when the Japanese began feeding them rice, they served the hot rice directly into the prisoners' hands. Lents found a coconut hull that he used for a vessel, and crafted a fork out of scraps. The prisoners never had enough to eat, and "had to steal to live." In time, the prisoners were taken out on work parties, demolishing bombed structures and putting up new buildings, and building roads. It was all hard labor for 12 or more hours a day. Many prisoners were barefoot, and although Lents had shoes when he started, they finally rotted away. Their captors, Japanese marines, hated Americans, and beat them with clubs. "It was terrible," Lents said.

Robert Lents said that for a year and a half the prisoners did everything from building an underground radio station to laying cable. Then one day the prisoners spied a reconnaissance plane flying around, and the Japanese tried to shoot it down. In another couple of weeks, the bombers came, and started bombing everything but the prison camp. The prisoners were made to hide an oil supply in the cemetery, but one night the Allied planes, somehow knowing exactly where it was, blew it all up. [Annotator's Note: Lents chuckles.] Dutch prisoners were added to their ranks, and they came in with all their gear and a colonel in charge. Lents believed he was communicating with the outside through island "half-castes" [Annotator's Note: indivuals with parents who are different races; in this case, with one parent who was Dutch and another who was Indonesian]. The Japanese ended up putting a tin fence around the camp, and took the colonel away. Rumor was they beat him to death during an interrogation. The Japanese came through the camp and terrorized the prisoners as well. Lents remembered there were Japanese "constabularies," and one who spoke English well told him he had been a radio announcer in Des Moines, Iowa in 1936, and planned to go back there after the war, but he wouldn't see Lents there. After the war, Lents had the FBI check, and the man actually had a radio announcers' license in the United States. But Lents never found out what happened to him after the war.

Returning to his memories of the prison camp, Robert Lents said it was about 25 July [Annotator's Note: 25 July 1945] that they took 15 prisoners, Americans and English, and took them out on an inter-island tanker, and kept them topside. When they started out of the bay, Lents saw American ships, and the tanker turned around and went back. The next night they took the prisoners to the Surabaya prison camp on Java [Annotator's Note: Surabaya, Java, Netherlands East Indies; now Surabaya, Java, Indonesia], then moved them by train to the other end of island. The trip took all night and part of a day, made longer because of periodic stops during which all of the guards would jump off and run into jungle; Lents said he thought it must have been bombing scares. They ended up in the Batavia [Annotator's Note: Batavia, Java, Netherlands East Indies; now Jakarta, Java, Indonesia] prison camp, isolated from the rest of the prisoners. In about 15 days they were allowed to join the other prisoners, and when Lents looked at the main gate, there was only one guard. He didn't resist when Lents and some of the other inmates walked out to where the natives were milling around, gesturing and babbling. They were able to communicate to the prisoners that there had been a "big boom" and the war was over. The prisoners located a radio and heard a broadcast that confirmed the news. Lents and his fellow prisoners were airdropped food and got medical care, and the 40 remaining Americans were finally liberated 18 September 1945. But on the night before he flew off the island, a media correspondent came into camp to interview the prisoners, and Lents recognized the voice of a radio announcer from Des Moines, Iowa. Lents introduced himself to Jack Shelley of WHO Radio. Shelly sent word home that Lents, who was listed as "missing," had been found alive. When the news came over the radio in Iowa, Lents' family members, who believed him dead, were shocked.

After liberation, Robert Lents was flown to Calcutta, India where he spent six weeks in a hospital. At the time he was admitted, he weighted about 80 pounds, compared to his previous weight of 165 pounds. From there he was sent to Saint Albans Hospital in New York [Annotator's Note: New York, New York] for three weeks before getting a 90 day leave [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time] to go home. While he was in Calcutta, he and another patient used hospital bicycles to "ride all over Calcutta" to build up their weak muscles. Lents remembers how in camp the prisoners were beaten for "every little thing." The prisoners had to salute or bow to "every one of them [Annotator's Note: the Japanese]," and if it wasn't done just right, they "got whacked for that." The prisoners stole from and traded with the Dutch and the indigenous natives, and the Japanese never caught them. They would smuggle goods in loot sacks tied below their knees. To survive, they had to supplement the food their captors provided, which consisted of rice and weeds that grew on the roadsides. Occasionally, if bombers killed hogs, the prisoners got a little burnt meat. Mosquitoes, worms, bedbugs, and rats were a constant worry. Lents tells of how he had an appendicitis attack while he was held prisoner, and had to have an operation, without anesthetic, in a Dutch hospital. He also recalls an incident where he stole a rice cake from atop a Japanese casket in the hospital morgue. He said it was "the way we had to live" for the three and a half years they were imprisoned. Lents said there were about 180 Americans from his ship's [Annotator's Note: USS Perch (SS-176)] crew and an American destroyer in the camp when they started out, and in the end 80 were liberated. He describes a work detail he was sent on to cut scraps from gas tanks. For housing, the prisoners had to clear a smelly hog house where they slept on mats without nets, and the mosquitoes were so thick at night "you could cut them with a knife." Lents had been there a month when he contracted malaria in November 1944. Following that, he developed beriberi, and was put in what they called the "zero ward" where seven or eight men were dying every day. Rats the size of possums could "smell death," and seized upon the corpses. One night, Lents had to fight one off his chest. Only through the help of friends, who smuggled vitamins, food and makeshift crutches to him, did he manage to survive.

On several occasions, Robert Lents and his fellow prisoners outmaneuvered their Japanese captors. [Annotator's Note: Lents chuckles at some of his memories.] An Englishman and two Dutchmen planned to escape by taking a boat to Australia, but were "ratted" out and recaptured. The Japanese beat them in front of the other prisoners, and finally killed them. Lents was out on a work detail, so he didn't know how they died, but his detail found their bodies in the jungle where they were working. Afterward, the prisoners were divided into groups of ten, and told that if any one of the group attempted escape, all ten would die. There were no more attempts. Besides, Lents says, there was no place to go except the jungle and that was teaming with snakes and tigers. The island was "a long ways from anywhere else," Lents said. He and his fellow sailors lost all their personal possessions when their ship sank, and he remembers that the only thing he took when he abandoned ship was his toothbrush. When the survivors were taken aboard the Japanese rescue ship, their captors confiscated everything of any value, including one officer's gold rimmed glasses. Lents got to keep his toothbrush. He described how the prisoners improvised for the lack of toilet paper. When moved from camp to camp, they were accompanied by the same guards, and had to take along their sleeping mats and boards. On one work detail, the barefoot prisoners had to dig material from a coral reef, then 30 or 40 men had to load and pull an old steam engine uphill to pack it into train and road beds. He also recalls one day when a fighter plane flew low over the work crew; the prisoners waved and the pilot waved back, then banked and returned to strafe the road. The prisoners figured they were so sunburned and dirty that they looked like the Japanese or the natives. He also talks about aerial dogfights the prisoners witnessed, and how one day a Japanese fighter flew right into the side of a bomber that fell into the bay. Afterward, Lents saw an American corpse in the morgue, and considered stealing his billfold to return it to his folks. Although he regretted it later, at the time he decided that would not be a good idea. By the end of the war, he had forgotten the man's name. Lents said the prison camp dead were buried in a cemetery on the island, and, supposedly, their bodies were repatriated after the war.

Taken back to the time when the USS Perch (SS-176) was forced to dive and was then depth charged in the shallow waters of the Java Sea, Robert Lents said he was at his station, holding onto a torpedo tube, and trying to stay on his feet. A couple of the torpedoes began to run in their tubes, and although they weren't armed, the crew didn't know if they would explode. The air was foul and hot. An explosion above the room sent pieces of a motor flying, and something hit Lents in the back of his neck. When the ship finally got off the bottom, he went to the pharmacist's mate and was given aspirin. He grabbed his life jacket and rested on the deck a while. When the ship attempted to dive again, Lents went back to work in the forward torpedo room. Then the abandon ship call came, and when he looked around, everyone was gone. By the time he reached the deck, the back end of the submarine was underwater. The Japanese were straddling the ship with shells, and a clipped antennae wire hit Lents' head. Everybody got off, and once Lents was in the water, the Japanese destroyer dropped a depth charge. Lents remembers looking down on the deck of the destroyer, and taking a fall that nearly crushed him. Much later, when he was in the prison camp, he dug a piece of shrapnel out of a sore kneecap. His soak in the salty seawater had healed it over. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Lents about a photograph.] Lents explaines that the Japanese had shot it [Annotator's Note: took the photograph] when the survivors of the Perch were captured. He said the Japanese didn't know what to make of the Americans, and the Americans were unsure of how the Japanese were going to act. What he remembers most was a powerful thirst, and how thick his tongue felt. Some of the sailors took too much water and puked. He also recalls that the Japanese gave them tasty "sea biscuits" that helped them revive some strength. When he was on the hospital ship, Lents observed that they were near an island and he considered jumping off when night fell. Then he looked into the water, and Lents said, "That was out." Body parts and bloody rags had been tossed overboard, and the water was swarming with sharks.

After he returned to the United States, Robert Lents took a test to go to officers' school, but after he passed, he failed the physical exam. That's when he learned that he had a chipped bone in his neck, and he was sent to the hospital. He was among badly injured people and young doctors in training. On the advice of the patients around him, Lents declined a bone replacement operation. He took his Purple Heart [Annotator's Note: the Purple Heart Medal is award bestowed upon a United States service member who has been wounded as a result of combat actions against an armed enemy], left the hospital, and returned home with his wife. During the 90 day leave [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time] that followed, Lents went to the Veterans Administration hospital for malaria, and was deemed 80 percent disabled. He wore a brace on his neck for about a year, and the injury affected his work life for some time. He started out working for a sports scoreboard company, but eventually went to work as postmaster in his hometown, and stayed at the job for 14 years, then took a rural route to be outdoors. Arthritis in his neck forced him to retire. He also suffered from recurrent attacks of malaria.

[Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Robert Lents if he and the other prisoners of war had nicknames for their Japanese guards.] Robert Lents says, "Oh yes," they had nicknames for all of them. The one in charge of the camp was called the "Bad Monk," and he would get all worked up and go into a "frenzy" when he started to beat a prisoner. The prisoners were not supposed to speak with the natives, and Lents was caught trying to bargain with a local, and was shot at, but got away before the guard could reach him. [Annotator's Note: Lents laughs.] Another thing he finds comical is when he poked a stick at a crocodile that the Japanese were keeping in the camp, and it broke loose of its tether. The Japanese chased the animal on horseback, but the crocodile outran them. They finally wore it down, and brought it back. When the war ended, the Japanese were supposed to surrender their arms and report to a central location, but Lents said when the prisoners wandered into town, they found many of the guards there, getting drunk. That's when the prisoners decided to steal guns to protect themselves in camp. Some of the Japanese fighters were still in the mountains, aiming their antiaircraft guns at the hospital plane, when Lents and his fellow prisoners were flown off the island. Lents said he was glad when the aircraft was finally out of range. The plane stopped in Singapore to refuel, and flew into Calcutta, India around midnight. They were served a poached egg and a piece of toast to eat, and the commanding officer announced that he was sending each man a case of beer that he had to drink before getting anything else. Lents said they drank it in bed, with the nurses occasionally checking on their progress. Although it was "only that 3.2 beer" [Annotator's Note: 3.2 percent, low alcohol content beer], and "not that good," it still "got you hopped up pretty good." And the plan worked well to stabilize the prisoners' stomachs. Lents remarks that the prisoners suffered badly from worms, and he personally had to have five treatments before his case was under control. He blames his current stomach problems on what he endured in prison camp.

After the war, Robert Lents hated the Japanese. He said the Australians took over the island on which he had been kept prisoner, and conducted their version of a court martial. Many of the Japanese officials were punished to varying degrees. The meanest one, nicknamed the Monk, was hung. He doesn't feel the same toward the younger generations, but he "wouldn't trust them too far." Lents would like younger generations to understand and remember that World War 2 veterans "saved their neck." He feels it is important that Americans have memorials and institutions like The National WWII Museum [Annotator's Note: in New Orleans, Louisiana]. He was scheduled to take an "Honor Flight" to see the memorial [Annotator's Note: The National World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C.] and he hopes to get to New Orleans one day. There are only two remaining survivors of the USS Perch (SS-176). Lents ended his military career as a Chief Petty Officer.