Pacific War Veterans Know What Freedom Cost

Francis Agnes still smiles to recall the good time he enjoyed as a young American soldier in the Philippines in 1941, before the Japanese army invaded.

But it wasn’t fond memories of serving in a foreign land that brought the 73-year-old Everett, Wash., resident to Seattle’s Cleveland High School this week. He joined other World War II GIs in a Veterans Day assembly to affirm to his grandchildren’s generation the sacrifice and hardship he and millions of other Americans endured in that global conflict a half-century ago.

“Freedom is not free,” Agnes said in an interview. “Somebody has paid for the freedom we have today.”

The World War II generation of veterans will receive special Veterans Day focus Saturday when President Clinton dedicates the site of the future World War II Memorial on the Mall in Washington, D.C.

Agnes and a friend, Ernie Loy, 78, share a unique perspective of the war. They are two of a handful of Americans who witnessed what historians call the two benchmark military events of World War II in the Pacific.

Both survived the initial Japanese attacks on the Philippines, which drove 76,000 Filipino and American personnel into the Bataan Peninsula in the month following the Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. From separate prison camps on Honshu, both men saw the U.S. atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, which led to the Japanese surrender the following month.

In between, they and their fellow prisoners of war endured 42 months of torture, abuse and deprivation at the hands of the enemy.

Both men were enlisted members of the 20th Pursuit Squadron, an Army Air Corps unit sent from California to the Philippines in late 1940 as part of the permanent U.S. military presence there. In December 1941, the squadron was based at Clark Field near Manila.

Peace came to a sudden end at Clark Field about 18 hours after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, said Loy, who now lives in Maple Falls, Wash.

“I was coming out of the barracks, getting on my motorcycle, and had it shot out from under me” by a Japanese fighter, Loy said. All but three of the unit’s aircraft were destroyed on the ground, and the unit’s personnel scattered into the countryside.

Soon they evacuated to the Bataan Peninsula at the southwest end of Manila Bay. The Japanese army besieged the peninsula for three months before its 76,000 starving defenders, including 12,000 Americans, surrendered.

Loy and Agnes were swept up into the deadly Bataan Death March, a six-day trek from the peninsula to prison camps near the city of San Fernando.

For the next two years, Loy and Agnes lived and worked in the hellish prisoner-of-war camp in the Philippines.

In early 1944, they were swept up in a massive relocation of American POWs to the Japanese mainland.

When the atomic bomb detonated, Loy and his fellow prisoners dove into a trench to escape the flash and shock wave. Agnes said he was too distant to feel or hear the effects of the weapon but recalled the mushroom cloud.

Within days of Hiroshima and the second atomic bombing of Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945, the Japanese guards began withdrawing from the prison camps where Loy and Agnes were kept. By early September, the men were receiving food and clothing parachuted in by American bombers.

Repatriation for Agnes, Loy and about 15,000 other American POWs quickly followed. Malnourished and suffering from various illnesses, their physical recovery took months.

Both men opted to remain in military service. Agnes retired in 1961 as an Air Force captain with 21 years of service, while Loy retired the following year as a senior sergeant.

“I don’t think about it every day,” Agnes says of his POW experience. “Once I took that uniform off, it was the end of that life.” He worked for the Washington Employment Security Department for another 25 years before retiring in 1986.

But Agnes finally confronted his POW experience by joining the veterans group American Ex-Prisoners of War, and served as national president of the 23,000-member group during 1990-91. Thanks to the organization, Agnes said, “A lot of the people are finally being able to make closure to what happened to their lives.”

Loy, who worked for the Boy Scouts national organization after retirement from the military, said his painful memories have largely faded, although not completely. “They come back only at night with nightmares,” he said.