This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people. Most of us know that on December seventh, nineteen forty-one, the Empire of Japan launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. However, let’s know that hours later, on December eighth, they also invaded the Philippines, a US territory at the time. One of those soldiers in the Philippines was the late Doctor Lester Tenney. Here’s Doctor Tenney at the National World War Two Museum in New Orleans telling his story. We’d like to thank the museum for graciously allowing us to use this audio.

Let’s get into the story.

And can me give us some information. The first tank battle of World War Two was on December twenty-third at the city of Agou-Ago up at Lingayan Gulf. General Wainwright asked for a company of tanks to meet the Japanese. When we got up to our bivouac area, our post ordinance brought us enough gasolene for five tanks, and so five tanks went into battle instead of a company of tanks. I know what I’m talking about. I was in one of the five tanks. Let me tell you them about tanks. For those of you who are not familiar with tanks, you can put that tank out of commission with one shell. One shell. All you have to do is hit the track. Ben Morin was the lieutenant in charge of our lead tank. The lead tank was hit right away. Once it was hit in the turret, the second shell hit a track. The tank went to the right, ended up in a rice paddy. The four men in that tank were captured that day. The second tank was hit. Aschell went through the tank and took the bowgunner’s head right off and went out the back. Two tanks out of five put out a commission in three minutes. Our tanks had to turn around and head back towards Bataan. I will say that Ben Moran made the comment many minutes later that if he ever got out of that thing alive, he was going to devote his life to God. Ben Moran became a Jesuit priest. So, tanks in the Philippines was not too bright. We ended up with the most unusual army. We had an air force without airplanes, a navy without ships, and soldiers without shoes. We had the old doughboy helmets. We were using Springfield rifles manufactured in nineteen seventeen. Ammunition manufactured in nineteen fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen. When we were firing our guns, we were hoping that one out of every four bullets would explode. That was the kind of war we had to fight at that time. So, it was a disaster for us, really. And yet he told the fighters on Bataan and Corregidor that support was coming. It was not coming. I have a note here from the War Department. I think the end remark sort of tells the whole story. The end remark was that the relief of the Philippines will not be undertaken because it is impossible. Did you hear that the War Department decided that it was impossible to help us? Let me tell you what General MacArthur had to say. This is an instruction to all commanders: Inform your troops that supplies and ammunition are on their way. Airplanes are coming in. Foot soldiers will be here soon. This man lied to us when he knew different, and so we fought the best we could. And Corregidor are held out. That was a thorn in their side, and they had to solve that problem. The Japanese had a flotilla of about thirty thousand troops, tanks, flamethrowers, everything on their way to Australia. But the Japanese had to take their flotilla, turn it around, and come into Bataan. They came in on April third, the First Emperor’s Birthday, and that’s when the push started. And it was disaster. The Japanese were absolutely stepping over their own dead bodies because they had to move forward and forward and forward. Now, ladies and gentlemen, think for a moment. We were on a peninsula—three sides of water. Where were we going to go? We had nothing left. By the eighth of April, everybody on Bataan was already down at the water’s edge. At the water’s edge, and on April eighth, General Wainwright on Corregidor, General King on Bataan, received a message from Douglas MacArthur. The message said, “this garrison will not cup it tore late.” If all else failed, you will charge the enemy. General King said, “I cannot do that.” If I do not surrender my forces tomorrow morning, Bataan will be known and around the world as the first worst disaster in the history of mankind. I can’t do that to my troops. I have to give some of them a chance to live.

And so.

General King gave instructions on the morning of April ninth: “All forces on Bataan are to lay down their arms and surrender to the Japanese soldiers.” A sad day. Most people don’t understand this. Let me tell you the worst military defeat the United States ever had on Bataan. On April ninth, Bataan: seventy thousand people were forced to surrender. Seventy thousand people. And yet, when we talk about Bataan, most people don’t know what we’re talking about. I gave a program some years ago, and one woman came up to me. At the very end, she said, “Oh, I’m so glad I came.” She said, “When I heard it was going to be talking about Baton twirling, I really wasn’t interested at all. Baton twirling!” That’s what somebody knew about Bataan.

We’ll continue with Lester Tenney’s story here on Our American Stories. This is Lee Habib, host of Our American Stories. Every day on this show, we tell stories of history, faith, business, love, loss, and your stories. Send us your story, small or large, to our email: oas@ouramericanstories.com. That’s oas@ouramericanstories.com. We’d love to hear them and put them on the air. Our audience loves them too. And we returned to Our American Stories and with the late Doctor Lester Tenney’s story. Tenney is the author of “My Hitch in Hell, The Bataan Death March.” When we last left off, Tenney was telling us about the largest surrender of troops in U.S. history to the Japanese. Most of these men would be forced into the Death March, to the first prison camp they’d be held in. Let’s return to the story. Here again is Doctor Lester Tenney.

The ships were called “hell ships” because the Japanese refused to put markings on the ships. No POW markings, no Red Cross markings, just plain ships. And when the American submarines saw these ships, they sunk them. Twenty-six ships were sunk by Americans. Ten thousand Americans died because the Japanese refused to put the marketing on the ships. I went into the first ship that I went into with five hundred of us in the whole of a ship. Thirty-two days later, we arrived in Japan. But for those thirty-two days, when a man died in the hole of that ship, we held a lottery to see who was going to get his water or his rice. There’s no picture that could describe that, believe me, none. We finally arrived, and now I’m telling you about my arrival. Eighty-six Japanese companies: Mitsui, New Bounce Steel, al Kawasaki, mat Mitsubushi. These are big companies. They bought POWs from Japan, and they put them to work. I was bought by Mitsui. Five hundred of us became coal miners. I shoveled coal twelve hours a day, every day for three years. Oh yes, those were the days, all right. The first day we went down in the coal mine. Now, these are a bunch of Americans who’d never been in a coal mine in their life, and now we’re going down there, and we are weak. We hadn’t eaten anything now in months. So, this first day down there, there was twelve Americans and two Japanese in my little group. You remember, I learned to speak Japanese. I learned to speak Japanese after ten easy beatings, not ten easy lessons, ten easy beatings. So now we’re down there. Three Americans were moving this big rock. I mean, they were a rue. They were struggling, moving this rock. And the two Japanese are laughing, laughing. And I looked at him and I said, “Non, Deska, what are you laughing about?” And they said, “H three Americans, they’re so big, they’re so weak!” I said, “Yes, I bet two Japanese could have done it.” And he looks at me and he says, “Nay, chibond done!” I said, “No.” He said, “Yes.” And so he grabbed a hold of that rock and he started to move that rock. I swear he herniated himself. But he moved the rock in place, and he stood up. And I said to my friends, “Let’s give him a round of applauds.” And we applauded him. The next two hours, the two Japanese built the wall. All we did is applaud them. We filled their muscles. “Oh my, oh, you’re so strong!” And they built the wall. So, we did have some fun kind of things like that. If you got out of work, you got out of work because you were sick or injured. If you were sick, you got half raffens. If you were hurt in the camp, you got half rations. If you were hurt in the coal mine, you got full rations. So, when a man broke an arm, or broke a leg, or broke a hand, there was always in the coal mine. Yes, we broke our own hand, we broke our own foot. We would break a bone just to get out of work. For two or three days, and if you couldn’t break it yourself, you hired a breaker. Yeah, with seventeen hundred men there, you could always find a man to do something. And we did have a few that were breakers. They would know how to break an arm or leg or a hand so that you didn’t have to lose it. So you had to pay for it. What did you pay? You paid so many rations of rice, or you paid cigarettes. The Japanese gave us a pack of ten cigarettes once every three, four, or five, six, or seven weeks. You never knew when. But if you wanted an arm broken or a leg broken, depending on what you wanted, the price would go up based on how serious it was. My hand was only five packs of cigarettes. A foot was seven parts of cigarettes. Now my arm was ten packs of cigarettes, very, very expensive. Now, now how are you going to get rice? Well, let me tell you. With seventeen hundred men in our prison camp, you know that there’s always going to be one or two that can’t eat their food today. What do you do with the food? With the food? “What? Where did I get the word ‘food’?” The rice? You can’t save rice because rice gets sour, and if it gets sour, you better not eat it. You’re going to get sick. So, what do you do with your rice when you can’t eat it? You sell it? What do you sell it for—cigarettes? How many cigarettes can you get for a raption of rice? Now, folks, I’m a retired professor of finance from Arizona State University, and I want you to know that I learned everything that was about finance in prison camp. Yeah, maybe you heard of this before. You buy low and you sell high, and that’s the whole philosophy of what we did in prison camp with our cigarettes. If I