Ray Harper
U.S. Navy
American Ex-Prisoner of War
Pacific Theater


I was born April 4th, 1919 in Lansing, Michigan. I lived in Michigan until I was 18 years old. I went to Lansing Central High School and graduated in 1937. I enjoyed tennis, swimming and camping when I was young. I had an older brother and an older sister. My father was a motion-picture projectionist and stage manager. I decided I didn't want to follow my father but my brother did. I worked in his theater during high school. I joined the Michigan National Guard in 1936. The Michigan National Guard was the 32nd Infantry Division. The 119th Field Artillery Battalion was equipped with French 75-mm Howitzers used in the First World War. The Michigan National Guard got rid of all horses in 1932 and got Dodge and Chevy Trucks. The guard was federalized in 1940, but I had already transferred to the navy. The guard did fight in World War II. I was with the guard for 20 months. I had made Private First Class. I was discharged and joined the U.S. Navy.

In high school I had a teacher that was a second generation German. He came to Michigan from Indiana. He was also a football coach. He was very Anti-Hitler. He taught U.S. History and Civics. He was telling his students that it would eventually be there job to straighten all the problems out. He convinced me that I would be involved, which eventually I was. He is the reason why I joined the service. "I might as well get in it before it starts." I am glad that I joined the service, rather than sticking around and getting drafted. I enlisted the U.S. Navy in August of 1937 after 20 months with the Michigan National Guard. I have been retired from the navy for 42 years. I enlisted at the recruiting office in Lansing, Michigan. I was sent to Detroit for a day and then to New York. From New York we were sent to the recruit training center in Newport, Rhode Island. The training was 13 weeks long. I finished just before Thanksgiving. In January I had orders to go to San Diego to go to a "Class A" school there. I was in the Communication/clerical School. The school had radioman, quartermasters, signalman, yeoman, & storekeepers. The class ran about 3 months. I missed a month because I had to get my tonsils out and then I had to wait the rest of that month to join another class. I got out of the school in June. I was Seaman 2nd Class at this time. I made Seaman 1st Class in September of 1938. I went into the flag complement of the commander aircraft battle force. The navy was organized in forced at this time. The commander aircraft battle force involved the carriers. I was the only from my class to go to this command. Some of the class went to the USS Langley (CV-1). The others went to destroyers and repair ships.

At this time Admiral Ernest J. King, who later because CICUS - Commander in Cheif of U.S. Fleets, was in command of aircraft battle force. He was a three-star Admiral at this time, but later became a four-star Admiral and was senior to Admiral Nimitz. They wouldn't let the carriers into San Diego bay because it was too shallow, so they would anchor offshore. The four big carriers at this time were the Langley, the Lexington, the Saratoga and the Ranger. By 1938, Roosevelt had built up the U.S. Navy. The first ship I ever went to sea with was the USS Ranger (CV-4) in July of 1938. We went to San Francisco. The original flagship in the force was the Saratoga, but she went to the Atlantic in the fall. In January of 1939, Fleet Problem 20 came up and that was an exercise in the Atlantic, which had to do with defenses against the Germans. I joined the USS Lexington and then we went through the canal. At this time they were having the World Fair in New York. We were at Hampton Rhodes off of Norfolk at this time. We were supposed to go to New York to put on a show, but instead were sent to the Panama Canal due to the situation with the Japanese. We had to protect the Panama Canal. When I went in the Navy in 1937 there were only 78,000 men in the navy at that time. By the end of the war there were about 2,000,000 men in the navy. By the end of Fleet Problem 20, the USS Yorktown and the USS Enterprise had been commissioned and the Wasp and the Hornet were being built. The USS Lexington joined the Pacific Fleet and the USS Ranger stayed with the Atlantic Fleet. I got to go to see on the new carriers the Yorktown and the Enterprise. The USS Yorktown (CV-5) was the one that was sunk at Midway in 1942. I was only on these carriers 2 or 3 weeks at a time.

On the carrier I would sleep on a hammock. Most of the carriers carried about 3,330 men. Before pearl harbor I would have to say the average age of the men was 23. The carriers today carry about 5,000 men. In 1939 I made 3rd Class Yeoman. Yeomen did most the typing, administrative work on board ship and were usually the messengers. My Chief Yeoman was James. Commander Valentine was operations officer. Commander Glover was the tactical officer. Commander Caldwell was the communication officer. All these men eventually became Admirals. I had a good relationship with these men, but we did not fraternize. I made alot of "temporary" friends. On most Saturday nights that I had off, I was going to a Christian Fellowship. This was a serviceman's fellowship. In 1939 I had a friend that was a Yeoman 1st Class and he had decided that he wanted to join the Asiatic Fleet. The Asiatic Fleet was the name of the naval forces based in Manila and Shanghai. I talked to a couple of guys who had been there. They told me it was kind of Romantic. I applied for transfer to go to the Asiatic Fleet because I knew it was possible. The staff approved it and I was on my way. I caught the USS Henderson out of San Diego that October and I was on my way to Manila Bay. The USS Henderson was a WWI Transport. The navy only had two transports in those days, the Shalmont and the Henderson. We went to San Francisco first. Before we got to Honolulu we had hit a bad storm. This was my first at sea. We tied up at Honolulu and then we went to Guam. Before we got to Guam our engines broke. We lay in the middle of the Pacific for two days. This was in December and the water was very calm. We had Christmas at sea. We were only at Guam over night. We got into Manila on January 2nd, 1940. I was assigned to the communications office of the 16th Naval District on the island of Cavite, Luzon. Cavite Province is on the east entrance of Manila Bay. Across the Bay to the west was the Bataan Peninsula. Cavite was very mountainous. Historically the defense of Bataan was known as Operation Orange. MacArthur's father developed it. We had about 13,000 on Corregidor when it fell. The initial Japanese assault on Bataan was in February. The American Army had Filipino scouts under American officers. The first Japanese ship I had ever seen was the prisoner of war ship I traveled on.

I was in Cavite from January 2nd, 1940 until December 10, 1941. We were bombed on December 10, 1941. Our barrack was on the ground floor of the radio station. The second floor was the radio intercept. This was where the radio intelligence people worked, copying and deciphering Jap code. Our radio call sign was NPO. We communicated with Pearl Harbor on Monday morning. The Japs hit Clark Field and Nichols Fields on Monday Morning. We could see Nichols Field across the bay from Cavite. We could see the bombing and the strafing and the fire. It was already Wednesday before the Japs got around to bombing Cavite. We had one 3" gun that only went up to about 12,000 feet. We didn't have the proximity fuses at this time. The Asiatic Fleet at this time had the Heavy Cruiser USS Houston (CA-30), the Light Cruiser USS Marblehead, two divisions of submarines, and a squadron of WWI Destroyers. The USS Boise was a light cruiser that had just recently been assigned to the Asiatic Fleet. The Asiatic Fleet also had about six gunboats from China and four Byrd class mine sweepers. The navy also had one PBY squadron that came out in 1941. While we were being bombed, the Japanese were making landings on the beaches. We had the 31st Infantry Division, Philippine Scouts, Philippine Artillery, and Horse Cavalry. General Wainright was in charge of the Army in the Philippines. The bombing was pretty bad. We weren't able to fight the fires. We only had a minor fire fighting station for small fires. During the bombings I stayed in Fort Sanfelepe, which was built by the Spanish. One bomb did hot the Fort, but no body was hurt. The bombing warning started at 12:30 in the afternoon and at 2:30 the bombing was over. I went back to our quarters and they were on fire. There were alot of dead Filipino bodies scattered. We had our orders then to move to Corregidor. We had two submarines at out yard, The Sea Lion and the Sea Dragon. The Sea Lion was sunk and the Sea Dragon was hit but not sunk. The Sea Lion was never salvaged. The Sea Dragon was repaired and went to sea. Corregidor was bombed until December 29, 1941. The only shipments that came in was medicine and fuses for bombs. They were brought in by submarines and any important people were taken out by submarines.

After the initial Japanese assault in February 1942, they had brought their artillery with them. Bataan surrendered on April 8, 1942. May 5, 1942 is when Corregidor fell and that was the end of American control of the Philippines. I was in a tunnel on May 5, 1942. The navy at this time had four tunnels. We had food and supplies in the tunnels. We had bunking in these tunnels but not sanitation facilities. We were transferred to Cabanatuan on May 21, 1942 packed like sardines on a train. We got to Cabanatuan on May 24. There were three camps at Cabanatuan. It was built with the intent of housing a Philippine Army. I think one of the camps had never been used. I ended up at Camp #3. I was there a couple weeks. All that we did was cleaning the camp. They started taking groups out for working detail. I was picked for a working detail on the first of September. 150 of us boarded trucks and were taken to Manila. We were given rice and water. We boarded barges and were taken to Palauan. The detail was on Palouan on the Island of Portaprincesa. Palouan was the long slender island to the west of the archipelago. It was between the Zulu Sea and the South China Sea. There was a natural harbor in the center of the island. I remember there were alot of misquitos. It took about two days to get there. We had to jump into waist high water and make our way to the beach and form up.

There were about 150 of us that were taken on this detail from Cabanatuan. Portaprincesa was abandoned as far as we could tell. It was a very primitive place. We had up to 350 prisoners there. We had prisoners come and go. They had alot coconut palm trees as I remember. We slept on the floor. It was very hot down there. Our diet was hard corn, red rice, or bread with a bowl of pork soup. They would bring in various greens and fruits. We didn't like the greens but ate them anyway. We had nicknames for most of the Jap guards. There was a Jap there who was Baptist, we called him John the Baptist. He saved my life. I also made a great friend while there, Ray Denzimore. He was a Sergeant in the Aircorp engineers. He was my best man at my wedding. My other good friend I made while I was there was Fred Jackson, a Marine Corporal from the 4th Marine Division. What we were down there for was to build a Japanese auxiliary airfield. We were on Palauan for 26 months. The Japs would wake us up every morning around 6:00AM and would have us on trucks on our way to work by 7:00AM. About every 20 minutes we had a rest period. We supplement our food down there with Bananas, Papayas, and Coconuts. I made a set of playing cards. I also made a cribbets board. No one knew how to play so I had to teach everyone so that I would have someone to play with. By 1944, we had constructed a grass landing strip and then a concrete strip. The strip was about 60 to 70 meters wide and about a kilometer in length. We had to knock down alot of jungle to get clearance for the landing strip. We had one concrete mixer that had an engine and we had a smaller one with no engine. We had one caterpillar tractor with blades on it to move dirt. We also had one roller. We had alot of wheelbarrows and dynamite.

We had malaria but very few cases of dysentery. The sanitation was fairly good for the condition we were in. We had a water line running in to us from a nearby river. There were Philippine Guerrillas on the island that would pester the Japanese. In September of 1944 we had about 300 men. Most of the work had been completed so that split the camp. About half the men stayed and half the men we transferred elsewhere. That left about 150 men in the camp. The Jap we called John the Baptist had a very strong administrative influence on the prison. When I heard about the splitting, I thought to myself that I would like to stay in the camp. I found out that I was in the group being transferred. I found another prisoner that was staying and he wanted to switch with me. I had asked John the Baptist if we could switch but he declined. Their policy was those who had been at the camp the longest would be transferred. On December 15, 1944 the contingent that remained in the camp was massacred. So I figured that John the Baptist saved my life. While at that camp I had never seen any prisoners executed but I did hear the shots. We were transferred back to Manila and then to Bilibit Prison. We were there two weeks and then we were put on ships. This was October of 1944. The name of the Ship was "Hora Maroo." We were at sea for 39 days. Submarines attacked the convoy we were in many times, but we were never sunk. We finally arrived in Hong Kong. Each night we would go to sea and we would return each day. I figured that we would do this because Hong Kong would be bombed during the nighttime. We finally went to Fermosa on November 19th, 1944. Trains took us to a camp there. I would say it was at this time when all of the men seem to be in pretty bad shape. I was down to 119 pounds from 165 pounds and I was 5'10". I was then sent to Kawasaki. This was a factory detail. Primarily it was just an industrial complex. Now they were salvaging scrap metal and bringing it to this factory for the construction of aircraft. In the factory we were under civilian directions. The Jap soldiers refereed them to as "Foos". This was a Suzuki Corporation operation.

I was a religious man. I had alot of faith. In the camps I was in there were never any Chaplains to my knowledge. We were only of Fermosa for two months, December and January. We had a snowstorm in Kawasaki. The 15th of August we knew something was up. I heard Emperor Hirohito surrender on the radio. After that the Jap Army began to disappear. There were about 30 of us. Due to stormy weather and mines, the U.S. Navy was delayed in arriving to liberate us. We got on trucks and went down to the harbor. After an hour of waiting a landing craft with a coxswain and ensign in it approached us. This was how we left the island, on a landing craft. We went out to the USS Lansdowne. Our first meal aboard was hot dogs sauerkraut and ice cream. This was the first Yankee food we had in 3 and a half years. We were transferred to the USS Constellation. I then was transferred to the USS Ozark.