Mitsui Madhouse : Memoir of a U.S. Army Air Corps POW in World War II

Herbert Zincke was stationed at Clark Field in the Philippines when Japanese aircraft struck there only ten hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor. His unit had retreated to the island of Mindanao when all American and Filipino soldiers in the Philippines were ordered by their commanders to surrender. Zincke was shipped to Camp No. 2 on Tokyo Bay, where he was a slave laborer until the end of the war. Soon after their arrival at the Kawasaki labor camp, Zincke and his fellow prisoners began to call their barracks, which were owned by the Mitsui Corporation, the Mitsui Madhouse for the brutal treatment meted out by the Japanese guards. During three years at the camp, Zincke faced three life-threatening scenarios. He might survive the malnutrition, disease, and guard brutality, only to be executed with the other POWs if American forces landed in Japan. Ironically, he also faced a threat from American bombers, which endangered Camp No. 2 because it was located in the midst of a heavy industrial area. (Bombs did eventually destroy it.) This work tells the story of Zincke's survival and is drawn from the secret diary he managed to keep out of his Japanese captors' hands. Zincke recollects a terrifying blow from the Japanese camp commander's samurai sword, the diet of rice and thin soup that resulted in drastic weight loss and an inability to do the required factory work, the POW British doctor who attended the prisoners and was frequently beaten because of his constant efforts to keep the sick men from going to work, and many of the other terrible conditions and experiences he endured during three years of imprisonment.