Prisoners of War: A Never Ending Struggle

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. . . . For many years I was unable to talk about it. So I had nothing else to talk about. That's all I know. So I did pretty hard too. If you believe like I do that there is a hell where we've been through it already or where we're waiting to see now is heaven. . .

. Americans are no strangers to war. And in every armed conflict it is inevitable that some of our men and women will fall into the hands of the enemy becoming prisoners of war. During the major wars of this century 142,000 Americans were taken prisoner, 17,000 died in captivity, while 125,000 survived. For those 125,000 former prisoners and their families the struggle to cope with this terrible experience never ends. Now in the Persian Gulf our military men and women once again face a strong and determined enemy. They will suffer as all Americans who have gone to war before them have suffered. Among those who will suffer most and longest will be the prisoners of war. But upon their return they will find their way eased by the lessons learned from their fellow veterans

who have preceded them from the hands of the enemy back into the arms of a grateful nation. It seemed like an eternity to me. Every day, every day and half the nights, you know, you didn't get much sleep. Like I say, there was no food. All of us had something wrong with us. Most of us were sick, some of the other things. I had dysentery, real bad noise down there. And I'd often think to myself, I wonder what it would feel like if I could just walk away from this thing and be a free man. I felt like that I hadn't known anything in all my life except just being a prisoner in Japan. Are you having a hot one there? Many of them just have a hard time wanting to talk about those memories, mainly because it's a very painful situation for them. Having to cope themselves as an individual with the different traumatic events, but also seeing some of their fellow friends or fellow soldiers

go through the same type of traumatic experiences, whether they were just injured or beaten or some of them who actually died. They would take us out on details, those that could walk, work, take us out on details, bring us back in the afternoon, and would sleep on the checks that they had there, sometimes outside, most of us outside, because there wasn't enough room for us inside the buildings. Some of the prisoner of war camps were probably about as close to being in hell on earth as you could get. Some of the experiences they went through are really are unspeakable. There are things you simply could not talk about in so-called polite society. In fact, that's part of the problem that many of them have. Their experiences there were so horrifying

and so difficult to talk about, that they are actually afraid to even talk to their wives about it or their children. And as a result, their wives or children don't really understand many times what they went through, and they have almost a sense of shame at times. Dr. Julian has been working with XPOWs for 13 years. He spent 12 of those years at the Veterans Clinic in El Paso, Texas. From his perspective as a professional, Dr. Julian believes there is still much to learn about P.O.W. psychology. Well, I think we're really just in the childhood of learning and understanding how to treat people who have suffered a great deal of emotional and physical trauma as a result of being a P.O.W. I think that we are learning some things, but the process is certainly a lot slower than we would like it to have been. Many of the POWs earlier in this century

and veterans in general suffered from varying degrees of post-traumatic stress, depression, anxiety, and even some psychotic types of disorders. And certainly, it would have been to their benefit had the mental health feel as a whole had a better understanding and the military and perhaps our entire country had a better understanding of the stresses that these people were put under and what it does to the human mind. Psychologists believe the mental problems at XPOWs experience stem from physical abuse during their captivity. Angie Lopez, author of the book Blessed Are the Soldiers, has done extensive research about the torture of prisoners. She has put down in writing some of the horrifying experiences of these soldiers. Torture, whether it be physical, emotional, or mental, that's torture to them.

Torture in the physical sense where you have your toenails being pulled out with a pair of pliers or mentally because you are in a foreign place and behind barbed wire fences and bayonets at your back or at your front. The torture of having been forced to eat the steamed rice, the rice ball filled with maggots. There was no other choice. There was no choice for them. They were captured and they had to stay there in that prison camp and yet, all the while, hoping and praying that our government doesn't forget them, hoping and praying that they will come to safety, hoping and praying that no one else has to ever endure this kind of atrocity. They didn't pay us and they didn't feed us,

like they were supposed to or clothe us, but all the time we were enacted the time that we were in the prison camp. Good and top to the world, as it were killed over there. I couldn't talk to their folks because I knew the details. I'm sure I wasn't telling them they starved to death. I wasn't going to tell them they would beat the death. So how did you talk to the people? Good friends, yours and everything. So it was pretty hard coming home. The guys died so quickly and so fast that you couldn't bury them fast enough. They lay underneath the barracks for a week at a time. And if you never smelt the stench and stink of dead people in a lot of them, you'll never forget it.

You'll never will. It's something that you're just, it stays with you all the time. But they were dying so fast that we'd bury them in great big pits. We'd dig big holes. And in a monsoon season, when the water would fill those holes up and you'd go out there every day on a burial detail and bury these people, sometimes you had to get in there and push them down and get dirt and rocks on them to hold them in there. And then a lot of times that didn't work. And I went out to the, on a burial detail, some of those mornings and I've seen where the guys, the dead people had floated to the top and the wild dogs had been chewing on them. That's a bad thing. It amazes me after talking to so many of these fellows now with the years and I look at them as individual. The stamina and the strength, physical and emotional of going through this. It's unbelievable. And they're still around. Sure, they have a lot of scars and a lot of problems going on. But the fact that they've been able to still undergo something like that takes a kind of a certain type of person really to undergo that and to survive.

Look at the Japanese people there. There was a lot of them were held almost close to four years, some of them. And it amazes me what, talking to them now after so many years, how they managed to hold on. Heavenly Father, bless all our comrades and wives and may we keep on seeing each other for a great while yet. Amen. Well, I wasn't married at the time, but my mother dead. She almost went crazy, you know, thinking about me when I was in the prison camp. And one time, you know, it was in about 1942, 1943 somewhere around there where I had deep theory and the Japanese government let us send a card home and I sent her a card, but I was paralyzed all over and I couldn't write. You know, so my friends just held my hand and helped me sign my name.

So when my mother received that card, oh, it really hit her hard because she thought that somebody was faking, you know, forging my signature, trying to make her believe that I was still alive, but that I was dead. And I think that card did more harm than good. There is some variability, of course, between the different wars and the different nations which held the POWs in terms of how they were treated. The Korean POWs, for example, were the group that were primarily given formal brainwashing, you might say, and in an attempt to get them to, you know, reject their values, reject their country and adopt the communist values of the North Koreans. And that experience appears to have been very difficult for a lot of the men to have handled.

And I think that led to some of their not surviving that particular, you know, POW experience there. Those that were held by the Japanese have different types of emotional problems, say different from the Koreans, from the Vietnam, from the German POWs. There's always something a little bit different. And then the way they come across, the way we have to deal with them, talk with them, the way they deal with their emotions. I have noticed that it has a lot to do with who they were held by. There are countless mental disorders that come about as the result of a capture and dealing with these disorders for some POWs is a never-ending struggle. I never tell them it's going to be an easy process. It is a very painful process. And what we do as an individual does come in, we just start talking to them, slowly deal with the emotions, help them deal with the emotions. A lot of them, fellas, are people who never wanted to deal with emotions.

They don't consider them a mainly thing to be talking about their emotions, talking them to be crying possibly, because a lot of them do go through that. And they don't want anybody to know about this, if they walk out of this office, they don't want to know that. They don't want anybody to know that they were crying in here, or eventually not a lot of anger or this type of thing. So it's just a very slow process in dealing with them on this. I came back from overseas, and I lived up in Silver City. And I'd ask my stepfather to take me downtown. And I wouldn't get out of the car. I was afraid. I was afraid to get out and afraid of people. But I was sitting in the car, and I just watched and wondered these people who had all the freedom in the world to go up and down the streets and do whatever they wanted to do. And then finally, I guess I did get out. My stepfather helped me, and he said, kept saying, let's get out to you, and I get out together. And I got to where I could.

But it's still, it was a strange feeling to be a freedom, free man again. It really was. So I felt like, like I say, that I'd never had anything, it'd done anything in my life, it'd be a prisoner of war. After three years. It is very difficult for their minds. I believe to fully try to make sense out of that situation, out of being placed in a wartime situation, where killing someone is suddenly the right thing to do, where civilians die, where young kids die, where they witness these things. Then as they're taken into captivity, they frequently are witness to many other types of atrocities of even worse levels, coupled with that, the starvation, the imprisonment, the mental and physical torture, basically causes the individual to withdraw into themselves and to become very anxious about the entire life experience that they're having.

In other words, I think it tends to shake up all of the inner stability that we all try to accomplish in our lives. In normal life here, civilian life, it destroys that. The values that they were raised with, the cultural experiences that they had, many of those things are wiped away in a POW camp. It leaves many of these people with a feeling that they cannot trust anything. They can no longer trust that they're going to have a meal at noon time. Here in this country, people take it for granted that they're going to eat when meal time comes around for the most part. Things like that, even the simplest pleasure or the simplest requirement of life are not available many times when they are put in a POW situation. All of those kinds of uncertainties and experiences gives rise to a great deal of anxiety.

That anxiety can be manifest in many ways. It can be manifest in a phobia. It can be manifest in a fear of crowds. It can be manifest in not being able to ever trust their spouse, for example. I feel a heck of a lot better now and I can think better. I can think better than what I did at that time. But I'll never forget. I still dream. Sometimes I wake up dreaming about Japanese coming at me with their rifles and binnets to stick me and I wake up in a frenzy. I still do that. Well, I believe that the nightmares represent the person's mind trying to make sense out of the experiences they went through as POWs. I believe we were talking briefly about the, you know, the contrast, the dramatic contrast between their lives as, say, young adolescents

or young adults here in the American society before they went into the military. Being here, let's say in El Paso or Las Cruces dating, seeing their friends, going to the ballgame, what have you. And then in just a very few short months, a period of time, being taken from that relatively safe, nurturing benign type atmosphere and being suddenly put in the middle of a war zone kind of experience where all kinds of horrors are taking place. People are dying. People are being injured, maimed. Sometimes atrocities are occurring and so forth. And then on top of those life or death kind of threatening experiences, you can imagine this young fellow being captured by the enemy, which of course is in and of itself is usually a rather horrifying experience for the person to have. And then being subjected to all of the additional hardships and perhaps physical or mental tortures of the capture itself.

And then as the person goes through those experiences, keeping in mind as a very young, impressionable kind of individual, their mind naturally is going to try to make some sense out of all these experiences they went through. And as I was mentioning previously, in many respects war is insane and does not make a great deal of sense, particularly some of the individual atrocities and terrible things that occur in a war. And so I believe that these young people's minds as young people had had a very difficult time trying to make sense out of it. And in effect, many of the nightmares and dreams that they do have for perhaps the rest of their life, is their mind's effort or attempt to try to make sense out of a situation that really doesn't make a great deal of sense. I think that's part of the answer. I believe there's more to it than that.

But I think that the repetitive nature of their nightmares or dreams is an example of how the individual is trying to cope with the stress and trying to understand it and trying to categorize it and put it in a part of their mind that will allow them to deal with it and go on with life and adjust cope with life. So I believe that the dreams kind of play a role in all of those areas. The most difficult thing that I had to deal with I think was being accepted as one who had surrendered and because all the others in the group that I knew and my friends in my hometown had not surrendered. So to be accepted again as a whole, a whole person. And you sometimes have the feeling that there's a stigma attached to the fact that you did surrender.

And so wanting to be accepted was probably a great drive and I think is a great drive on the part of the POW that he wants to be accepted in society again. Not one who actually threw up his hands and said surrender. Of course discretion is a better part of valor. And sometimes if you didn't throw up your hands it meant one right between your eyes and you would get the medal for valor but you wouldn't be alive. And what exactly have these XPOW's been doing to cope with these problems? In many cases time itself is the only hope for recovery. But there are various types of medical treatment. Well you get a low heart rate. Wow, you must be in excellent shape there.

You're heart rate about 60 a minute. Some of the things we do it would be to help them with some of the problems using behavior modification, biofeedback, individual therapy. And then of course in the groups we try to help them in a group setting to work out or work on some of the difficulties that they suffered as POW's dealing with different aspects of their problem. An example would be let's say one of the former POW's had a phobia of driving. Let's say that due to their experiences they developed a severe anxiety of the degree that they were afraid to drive. You might set up a program called in vivo desensitization whereby they begin driving very short distances near their house. Let's say initially with someone else in the car they might only drive a block and continue along those lines until you gradually build up to the point

where there may be driving several miles out on the freeway and an effort to slowly decrease their phobias or fears about driving. That would be an example of behavior modification. And biofeedback is a useful tool also to deal with several types of problems that many of the formal POW's have. Again for example if someone was suffering from a lot of anxiety you may teach them a deep relaxation type of method using the biofeedback equipment. Biofeedback is basically a mechanical way of giving feedback to the individual about what their body state is at at any particular moment. And it helps the person to be able to more closely monitor their different bodily functions such as their heart rate or their temperature or their muscle tension, things like that. And the machine gives them feedback as to those different states

and enables them to learn how to control basically, partially control those different autonomic bodily functions and learn to relax for example, learn how to maybe go to sleep better. Many of the POW's have sleep disorders so it might help them learn how to sleep better. Many of them may suffer from other kinds of problems, chronic pain, chronic headaches, migraine headaches, tension headaches, things like that. And again the biofeedback technology is very useful in teaching and the person how to have a way of dealing with those problems that they can use themselves. Once they learn how to do this method they can use it on their own at home and that's very helpful to give them a little bit better feeling of control over their problem rather than the problem controlling them totally. I just let them ventilate, let them let out with the feelings of a person

start just wanting to cry and I let them cry for example, I don't stop them. They want to ventilate so any kind of anger, I let them ventilate that anger or whatever kind of emotion that is. My way of dealing with it is just to let them deal with it and let it come out. I don't push them, I don't say hurry up and get your cry and spill over with it or anything. I don't do it, it's just a very slow process. After they are coping with it very well on an individual basis sometimes they may feel comfortable in dealing with it on a group process. And basically what it is in the groups that I mentioned, these are fellows who went through the same or similar type of experiences. They were all held by, for example, the Japanese. And sometimes that helps them even ventilate some more and release some other emotions about what happened to them and what they're in the going right now. There's a great deal of loss of trust, I think, in the, basically in the human race, you might say, by these individuals because they were made to go through and suffer levels of deprivation, torture and inhumanity that really made them question

the, I think, the goodness of mankind to a degree, at least the goodness of those people who are responsible for them, who are their captors in other words. And as a result of those experiences a lot of them suffer a considerable degree of alienation. You know, they feel alienated from society. They are fearful of growing close to people. And many times it is the close emotional ties that serve as the best treatment for the XPOW. Sandy Morales, a nurse at the Veterans Clinic in El Paso, is in charge of group therapy offered to XPOW wives. She finds that the spouse plays an important role in treating XPOWs. And just from listening to the XPOW we decided that maybe we ought to bring in the wives and kind of get their viewpoints as to how life had been with the XPOW and we thought we could get some information from them.

To elicit information from the XPOW had been difficult all along. So we decided that maybe having the wives come in, they would help in giving us some pertinent information that would help us as far as treating them. As we know my husband went to the one. We are the same. I was talking by myself when talking to that woman in the picture in the paper. The same. We are the same, Zahami. Well, I think that the family is what gives the XPOW the will to live and to continue with their lives. The families are the ones that are the rocks of Gibraltar for them. I feel that I look around, I talk to many of them, and those who are close to their family have a better outlook in life and a better chance for survival. If they know that their family and their friends are behind them. The sad part is that many don't know the true story.

They don't know the full story. And the P.O.W. very seldom talks about himself. They may mention, make a statement here or there, but they don't really tell it all until someone sits down and really listens or really tries to understand them. But the only thing that I have found is that if the wife or the children or the mother and father, brothers and sisters, if they sit there and just let the P.O.W. know that they love them, that's all the veteran needs, that's all he wants. A wife is an extremely important person just to put up with the silence. And you see, that's the thing that the P.O.W. often does to the wife, he just won't talk. And if you chastise him or correct him or something, he'll go right right back to the way in which he was a P.O.W. who got in the corner and he won't say anything, he just won't talk.

And so it makes it very, very difficult for a woman to be the wife of a P.O.W. It really has to put up with a lot. I dare not come out of the into a room without shuffling or making a noise, otherwise he goes straight up in the air, even after all this time. And you know, it's just, it's hard to remember when we were first married, I'd go by the bed and touch his toe or something and he'd come straight up off the bed. And it hasn't really changed a lot much. And you'd think after all this time it would have gone away, but still a startle reflex is there. We're the psychologists, we're the psychiatrists, and we are their main support. Without us, 90% of them would not function at all, let alone well. Another program that concentrates primarily on the family of the P.O.W.

is the American P.O.W's organization. It is through this program that even more, who heads the group, helps put the pieces together for many families nationwide. We find that by getting the P.O.W. together at meetings, even a chapter meeting, at a state convention, at a national convention. The release, it gives them, they do not, they don't go to these things and talk to worse stories. They don't have to. They've been there. They know just by looking at each other that they have gone through hell. But by being there and being able to see, hey, Joe made it another year, it helps them. And with the families, why is it especially? It's so good to see that they can get together, that they can relax and enjoy,

and we can get together and know that we're both walking in the same footsteps. The most difficult thing for me personally was complete silence, very, very quiet. And to be honest, he didn't realize a lot of these things. He had messed out completely, four years, we'll say, because it was four years of what was going on in this world. And he was trying to find his way too. So I just thought, be patient. You know, accept and keep yourself busy. The XPOW has had a very difficult time discussing certain issues. And that's some of the things that the wives have had to deal with with their silence.

They've wanted to know what it is that's disturbing them and wanting to know in order to be more supportive of them. But because of the difficulty in talking about those issues, at least now the other therapist and myself can go into the group. And hopefully we can elicit that information or given the opportunity to ventilate those feelings. I met his mother while he was a prisoner of war. I was about 17. So I knew for at least a year before I met him where he had been. And this mother would say to me, please write to him. Maybe a letter will get through. Please just tell him that somebody cares. And I couldn't. What could I possibly have said to him? What could I know of the way he was living? So when he came back and we met, we married 33 days after we met. And I think aware of a lot more that he had gone through than a lot of the wives were. My brother was taken a prisoner of war.

In 1943, May of 1943, no, 1944. And returned in May of 1945. He was in a China Burma India theater. And he told me at the time he knew how terrible it was. He said, now be prepared. Jay will not get home. And I said, well, I think you're a very brilliant person and a very wise person. But I said, Jay will come home. And I always felt that way. Joe's eyes glistened with tears as he continued. And he says, at precisely one o'clock, the Japanese lined up in the camp and began to take down their flag and put up our own United States American flag. Then, with a sigh of pride and a catch in his voice, we'll say exclaims, wow, what a beautiful sight, our flag.

After countless days of prayer and hope, the end of captivity had finally arrived. Mama, take this band job for me. I can't use it anymore. It's getting dark, too dark to see. I feel I'm knocking on a heaven's door. Knock, knock, knock in on a heaven's door. When I feel I'm knocking, knock, knock in on a heaven's door. Ooh, yeah, it's happiest. Knock, knock, knock in on a heaven's door. Knock, knock, knock in on a heaven's door.

He said, I'm gonna put my guns into the ground. I can't shoot them anymore. That long black cloud is coming down. And I feel I'm knocking on a heaven's door. When I knock, knock, knock in on a heaven's door. Yeah, knock, knock, knock in on a heaven's door. I feel I'm knocking, knock, knock in on a heaven's door. I feel I'm knocking, knock, knock in on a heaven's door.

These days, it's a different story. He said the mini-21 fish made everybody drink that glass. Now, the military is more aware of the role it must play in preparing soldiers for captivity. Prior to the Vietnam War, the military offered very little training for capture compared to the training that goes on today. They had been trained on the code of conduct, and they fared fairly well, but they still were faced with a dilemma. Because the code in part says that I will give no information that could be useful to the enemy.

I am duty-bound to give no information other than my name, rank, social security number, and date of birth. And in fact, what we know is that in many cases, or in some cases, the soldiers were tortured to the point beyond which they could tolerate it. And in fact, they did give more information than that. So following the Vietnam War, there were several more panels which were created to review to see if we were putting undue pressure on the soldier. In other words, we're asking him to do something that he absolutely couldn't comply with. We talked with a number of former prisoners of war, and I was a part of the panel that did that. And almost to a person, they said, no, don't change it. Leave it as it is, because even though we sometimes cannot live up to it, it still gives us a target to shoot for. So we've essentially lived with the same code of conduct since 1955. For one thing, the Army does not aspire to a philosophy of terror soldier down and then building back up.

And it used to be kind of that way, that was pretty much professed, that you brought him in and you made him do it for things the Army way. Psychologically, you could make a case for that, I suppose. But we found that it's not necessary, in fact, it's self-defeating in many cases to do that. I think we've gone a long ways in recognizing the individuality of the soldier and that you could make him a member of the team in a positive image of the Army from the day he enters the Army. And you can keep that positive image even though it's tougher than it was physically and also mentally demanding. You don't isolate him and say, you won't make it, you'll break if you're captured, you'll break in combat. You're too weak, that sort of thing, it's not done. Instead, you're okay, you can do this, now let me show you how to do it better.

We will train you to survive in combat and that's our mission. You see it on your faces and you can tell in their attitude when you graduate from basic training and also from AIT advanced training that they're positive and they're confident. I don't think we had that confidence in years past, so from that standpoint I see very positive experience to basic and AIT for the vast majority of the soldiers. There are some that are not brought up to that standard for any number of reasons and generally they are washed out. We teach all three components, we teach the law of land warfare, we teach the code of conduct and that's the point we emphasize. And we teach the survival escape and evasion so that they can keep from becoming prisoners. And that's not only done in basic training and it's not only done in advanced individual training.

That training continues throughout the soldier's career. It receives refresher training in the code of conduct and minimum of once a year and most all of our field training exercises deal with in part survival escape and evasion. When a soldier is captured it's impossible to predict the reaction what he or she would do. But before too long American troops may once again find themselves making firsthand decisions. The legality of the order to surrender is never generally questioned anymore but it is a dilemma because a commander has not only got to decide for himself whether he's going to be a prisoner but he has to also decide if his soldiers are going to become prisoners. And if they are in such condition that they in fact can no longer resist and must surrender. And he's also got to take into consideration what type of treatment he would expect the soldiers to get if he in fact surrenders them. And I think he can appreciate that dilemma if you look at some of the people that we might be facing now as Saddam Hussein or Ayatollah Khomeini or Libyan friend or any of those.

It's a very very difficult decision to make. Sometimes the decision is made under duress. Sometimes it's made under such stressful conditions that the commander and the individual soldiers have to take it almost on a case by case basis. Well if I was at home and being a civilian not in the military and if someone attacked our country I could still become a prisoner of war just sitting in a city doing nothing. So what difference does it make if I would have a better chance being a ready soldier than someone on the streets not knowing how to fight. The training is still all the same. You should train for combat if there's a situation that has come up or not. It doesn't really matter what is going on anywhere in the world. You always train for combat. And if the situation arises that just helps you out a little bit more better because you can relate. You can say okay we are doing a certain class or certain exercises training wise and we say this is the reason why we're doing this because.

And you have a realized situation now to relate it to instead of saying well back in World War II they did this. It didn't work so we're training this way. But now you have a real live situation to relate it to and it seems in a little bit better. Well honestly I can't tell you I don't know. It's not something that could really be simulated by training exercise or something like that. If being through a stressful situation like basic training or something like that you have a lot more confidence in yourself. But something like that you almost have to have the ultimate confidence in yourself that you have an absolutely zero fear or have faith that there's always a way out or something like that effect. Mentally we just imagine basically you just put them for a private going through basic training that is not really just a physical aspect of it.

Of the training that they have never really been on a certain physical program that builds your mental in some aspect. But for just being here for basic training you really don't get a lot of improvement I guess you'd say. But you have to be further on down your career in the army that starts to build higher and higher. I don't really think that it builds my opinion just from basic training your mental stamina whether you're going to break or not break if that's what you want. I don't think it's going to matter a whole lot just from being through basic training. I wasn't there but I do care and through the oral histories of our POWs I have learned about the atrocities that did happen. And it does bother me about the Middle East crisis. Hopefully it'll just stay a crisis and not a full fledged war.

But it does bother me to the extent because I too have sons in the Marine Corps and I have sons in Saudi Arabia. And I sometimes wonder what's going to happen to my own sons. You look at Vietnam and we have over 2000 Vietnam POWs and our government is not doing anything about it. And I wonder what's going to happen to my sons if they too become POWs. As it is Vietnam haven't been brought back. I don't see that they're trying hard enough. Now what's going to happen with the Middle East? Are they too going to be captured and just left there to die or rot? Is the government going to bring them back or are they just going to leave them there and say well we just can't go pick them up.

There aren't any POWs. Are they going to deny it? I wonder about that and I anger about it. Not only for my sons but for the many other sons and daughters that are over there. I don't want us to be in another war. This will be number four in my lifetime. And I'm afraid. I just don't like war. It's got to be a better way to do things except when you come across a maniac like Saddam Hussein. Then I think we have to do what we're doing. It's going to be a living hell. It's going to be a living hell for them. Because I think it's going to be just as hard on them as the Japanese were on our men in Baton and Corrigidor. As the Vietnamese were on our men as the North Koreans were. The Germans were far less severe on the prisoners that they took.

Yes, we starved. We starved along the rest of them. And there were occasions when some of us were similarly shot. But we did not endure anything like what they did in the Far East. And I think the Arab world and the Arab mind is of the same caliber. And they'll put them through seven kinds of hell if they're captured. They'll wish to hell if they'd saved the last bullet for themselves. The threat of war is a constant reminder to the XPOW of what he has experienced. And while some have learned to live with their memories, few will ever forget their ordeals. For them, it is a never-ending struggle. The Secretary was helping me because he was giving me medication for the nervousness and depression and all that. But seemed like the medication that he was giving me was causing more harm than good.

I didn't feel so nervous with my stomach, but I was getting more and more depression. In fact, I got to the point that I thought that the only way out was by shooting myself. So I decided to quit that medication and I started feeling better. So I think that the medication was the one that was causing all that depression. But it does help because they give you advice, you know, what to do and things like that. Try to raise those things out of your mind. And that which is too hard, you know, to raise those things. When he can come in here and say, Robert, I can deal better with life. I can sleep better. And his wife comes in and says, yeah, he's not getting angry as much anymore or doesn't get angry as much. He's outdoing things now. He can cope with people a lot better. And we were not a few of those. So it doesn't make you feel good that there are some that they can finally reach for themselves, that peace of mind for themselves.

Most of us, let's face it in civilian life, go throughout our normal day to day lives with no serious threats to our lives at all on average. And particularly, no threats or atrocities that are man-caused or man-made. There's some evidence that man-caused pain, suffering and killing is even more traumatic to the human mind than let's say a natural type of incident such as an earthquake or a, you know, a bus wreck or something like that. Even though those things are traumatic as well, there seems to be an added twist to the hurt of it when it is caused by another human being. We were laying down prone on an embankment ready for the Japanese.

And while they were coming, that's when the earthquake started. We shot back at them, but then when they got too close, we started running back as we were already told to surrender. And we went, our group that I was with went to, to the hospital number one that they call, we had a hospital out of the field. And there's where we surrendered all of our arms, put them all in a big pile, rifles, guns, knives, and baskets. That's Japanese were there, they took everything away from us. All things are coming together right now. I think the worst part of it is over, but I lived with this for a long time. I haven't got enough fingers to count the number of times I went to these scatras. And I would get into depression and I'd start dreaming at night and everything in my life would say that I'd wake up screaming in the middle of the night.

And it bothered her, it really did. So she lived a part of what I went through too, by listening to me and by observing me. But I believe that the same thing where everything's come together right now. The last time I went to the psychiatrist she went to, and we both kind of put things together. We're trying to put it all behind us now. Back to the happiest guy in the world right now. In 1955, the president authorized the military code of conduct, a simple written creed that states in six articles, the principles that Americans have honored in all wars since 1776. I am an American fighting man. I serve in the forces that guard my country and our way of life. I'm prepared to give my life in their defense.

I will never surrender of my own free will. If in command, I will never surrender my men while they still have the means to resist. If I am captured, I will continue to resist by all means available. Every effort to escape and aid others to escape. I will accept neither parole nor special favors from the enemy. If I become a prisoner of war, I will keep faith with my fellow prisoners. I will give no information nor take part in any action which might be harmful to my comrades. If I am senior, I will take command.

If not, I will obey the lawful orders of those appointed over me and will back them up in every way. When questioned, should I become a prisoner of war, I am required to give my name, rank, service number and date of birth. I will evade answering any further questions to the utmost of my ability. I will make no oral or written statements disloyal to my country and its allies or harmful to their cause. I will never forget that I am an American fighting man responsible for my actions and dedicated to the principles which made my country free.

I will trust in God and the United States of America. The United States of America The United States of America