From Barium to Bataan: Veteran recalls infamous march

I met with James Dixon Beshears, 90, on a cool and rainy day at the small museum on the campus of Barium Springs Home for Children south of Statesville. He made the drive alone from his home in Clemmons in his Buick.

After we shook hands, we walked around the museum together, looking at the hundreds of photos and other memorabilia on display before we sat down for the interview. He and his two brothers were in several of the photos. Despite the grimness of some of his experiences, Beshears smiled and laughed frequently as he told his story.

More than 200 of Barium's young men and women served their country in World War II; 15 are known to have died in service, including Ben Morrow, who survived the Death March but died of dysentery in May 1942.

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Beshears, born in 1919 in the Hanes community near Winston-Salem, said he traveled halfway across the world just to get back to where he started. He now lives in his home beside his only son, Jim, in Clemmons. He is one of a rapidly diminishing group of American veterans of World War II once known as "The Battling Bastards of Bataan."

"J.D.," as he is called, came to live at Barium Springs Home for Children in 1929 after his parents died. His father died when he was 9 years old, and then five months later, his mother died while giving birth to her 10th child. He and Howard and Lacy, the three youngest boys, came to Barium. He graduated from Barium's McNair High School in 1939.

He regularly attends the annual Home reunions held in August.

"Barium's changed since I grew up here, but it's still home," he said.

Home at the Home

At Barium, Beshears milked cows, fired the boiler that produced steam to cook with and worked on the Home's truck farm, planting beans, corn, watermelons and other crops.

"We grew all the vegetables that we ate at the Home," he said.

It wasn't all work, however. He was on the school's football and wrestling teams for four years. The Barium Tornadoes were the state champions in wrestling several years while Beshears was on the team.

His first job after graduation was in a cotton mill in Virginia, then he worked as a plumber's helper in Statesville and then had a job with Gilbert Engineering out of Greensboro, doing surveying for home sites in Virginia.

Off to war

"Me and Ben Morrow joined the U.S. Army Air Corps in May of 1941. They were drafting boys at that time and I didn't want to end up in the infantry," Beshears said.

He trained at Savannah Air Base, Ga., and after boot camp traveled by train across the country to San Francisco, arriving there on Nov. 1, 1941. From there, he went by ship, the SS President Coolidge, to Manila, the Philippines, arriving there on Nov. 20. He was a buck private, a one-striper, on the bottom rung of the military rank ladder.

His Air Corps job was in ordnance — he was part of a crew that would put bombs on a small truck and take them out to be loaded into the bombers. They also would put the fuses in the bombs.

"Where we lived we called it 'Tent City,' as there was no permanent barracks. We delivered the bombs to Clark Field," he said.

"There was a lot of chaos at that time after we learned that the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7. The next day our boys, that is the pilots, wanted to bomb the Japanese on Formosa, but the U.S. hadn't declared war yet. Our planes took off before dawn and flew around and then landed to be refueled at lunch time. That's when the Japanese planes came in. Our guys were expecting a big flight of planes from San Francisco and people were out near the runway waving and all and that's when the Japanese started dropping their bombs on our planes.

"That night we went to pick up some bombs at the air base and took the bombs up to a landing strip in the mountains. Two B-17 Flying Fortresses came in the next day, Dec. 10th. We loaded them with the bombs we had brought up. Capt. Colin Kelly was one of the pilots and they took off to bomb the Japanese troop ships in the harbor. That's when Capt. Kelly got killed."

Capt. Colin Kelly was successful in bombing a Japanese cruiser with his plane, although his B-17 was strafed and disabled. Kelly stayed with the crippled, burning aircraft until the other members of his crew had bailed out. He was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Service Cross and was regarded at the time as America's first hero of World War II.

Loading those bombs was the only time Beshears got to do his official job in the Air Corps.

The surrender

Now and then, Beshears thinks about the surrender of Bataan, the largest surrender of an American army in history.

Of the 75,000 surrendered on April 9, 1942, there were about 12,000 Americans, the rest Filipinos and Chinese Filipinos. Some of those surrendered were able to escape their captors and fought on as guerrillas in the mountains. The number who died on the five- to 12-day forced march to Camp O'Donnell is impossible to calculate accurately, but estimates are that 5,000 to 10,000 Filipinos perished along with around 5,000 American prisoners of war.

"Gen. (Edward P.) King did the right thing, I believe," said Beshears. "We fought for four months. President Roosevelt and them in Washington said not to surrender, but those back in the States didn't know the situation. Gen. King knew what the actual situation was."

Bataan Death March

"We were marched to San Fernando, then we were stuffed into boxcars. We were packed so tight that the dead didn't have room to fall down," Beshears said. "No water, no food, and God it was hot. When we marched, we weren't allowed to get out of ranks. I was weak; I'd had malaria. I was tired, had been about ready to quit, but I would never have surrendered on my own.

"I'd say I walked about 65 miles, from San Fernando to Camp O'Donnell, a prison camp. I saw them (the Japanese) hit the Filipinos who came out to the roads and tried to give us something to eat, maybe a little ball of sugar or rice, while on the march. The Japanese would beat or kill them, hit them with bamboo sticks in the back or on the top of the head," he said.

Other survivors of the March testified to seeing the Japanese guards bayonet or decapitate prisoners with their swords. There were also reports that trucks ran over prisoners who fell out along the route.

"On the march, if you didn't move quickly enough they'd hit you with bamboo sticks," Beshears said. "Once we got to Camp O'Donnell they died like flies, the Americans and the Filipinos."

"I remember a Japanese general spoke to us soon after we arrived," Beshears said. "I remember he said, 'We are enemies and will always be enemies.' I think that was Gen. (Masaharu) Homma. After the war, they hung him."

From O'Donnell they went to Cabanatuan Province.

"(The Japanese) made us into what we called 'Blood Brothers,' " Beshears explained. "That meant that if you escaped or tried to escape, they'd kill the other nine men. We went together even when we had to go relieve ourselves at night.

Beshears said they eventually marched to Manila, where 2,000 men were loaded into two holds on a Japanese ship.

"Guys were sick, there were no facilities, many had diarrhea, and they took us to Seoul, Korea, then to Mukden, Manchuria, on a train," he said. "At Mukden, they put me to work in a textile factory. I ran a loom making canvas. I also got to work on a farm detail — we plowed with a shovel.

"There I was, halfway around the globe, working on a truck garden like back at Barium Springs and then in a textile mill like I had worked in in Virginia!

End of the war

"We saw American planes fly over from time to time," Beshears recalled. "This was in July and August 1945. We didn't know the A-bomb(s) had been dropped. A plane flew over one day and dropped three bombs. There was a Japanese aircraft factory nearby it was trying to hit. One bomb blew a hole in the 10-foot wall of our camp. Another bomb exploded inside the camp and killed 19 of our guys. The third bomb hit the camp latrine, but thank God, it was a dud.

"Later, an American plane flew over and five people bailed out over the camp with some radio gear," he said. "They were a Japanese interpreter, a Chinese interpreter and three stateside Yanks. The Japanese held them for about an hour, then they were allowed to set up the radio gear.

"It was on that radio the Japanese at the camp learned that the war was over and that they had surrendered. ... The next day, they started dropping food to us by parachute."

Getting home the hard way

"I got on a train in Mukden and from there went down to Korea, and got on an American ship ... and went to Okinawa," Beshears said. "Well, the ship was hit by a typhoon and then hit a Japanese mine, which exploded. It didn't sink her, but she did take on a lot of water before they got the compartments sealed off. Another ship gave us a line and helped tow us into Okinawa. That mine killed eight sailors in the engine room and two men like me who had been POWs.

"At Okinawa, I got on a plane and got to Manila. The tire on the plane blew out as the aircraft landed. The pilot just barely got it stopped before the plane went off the runway.

"There was a Displaced Persons Center in Manila. There I got on a ship to go to the U.S. On the way out of the harbor our ship hit a sunken ship and we were delayed for another three days or so, making sure our ship was still seaworthy. We were supposed to come into the U.S. at San Francisco and my brother, Howard, planned to meet me there. He was still in the Navy.

"They rerouted us to Seattle. I remember seeing the harbor and the lights at night and it was so beautiful to finally be back home, to see the U.S.A. They kept me in a hospital there in Fort Lewis, Wash., for a while and my brother Howard found me.

"Next, they put me on a hospital train that took me to Asheville, to Moore General Hospital, where I stayed for a while.

"My other brother, Lacy, who had been in the Navy but was now discharged, met me there. I finally got back to home about Thanksgiving. The war had ended in August and I was still a buck private," he said.

In 1947, Beshears married Maxine, a Forsyth County girl, and the couple had a son whom he lives beside today. Beshears found employment with the Western Electric Company in Winston-Salem, from which he retired in 1982.

After Maxine died of cancer, he remarried, this time to a former Barium Springs girl named Evelyn, but that marriage ended in divorce. He plays a lot of golf these days, usually five times a week. He is a member of the American Ex-Prisoners of War organization.

Beshears was among the 73 surviving veterans at the Bataan Death March Survivors Reunion that was held in May in San Antonio. At that reunion, the Japanese ambassador to the United States, Ichiro Fujisaki, formally apologized on behalf of the Japanese government.

"There were about 500 people at the banquet that was held that Saturday night. I listened to him," said Beshears, "but I never did hear him say that his government was sorry for the way they treated us POWs or for Pearl Harbor or for anything else."

Forgive and forget?

Beshears credits his general good health and well-being to a higher authority.

"I've got a good co-pilot," he says with a chuckle. "You know, the Big Guy upstairs. I prayed a lot while a POW during the war, still do, and it helps.

"I've heard preachers say to forgive and forget, but you can't forget. I don't believe that. You have flashbacks."

We shook hands again as J.D. Beshears put on his coat and ball cap. On the cap were an embroidered American flag and eagle and the words: "These colors don't run."