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798. Pensacolian Rescued from Cabanatuan 1945

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Private John Sidney Alford was born on August 3, 1921, the son of Julius and Etta Alford. His father was a blacksmith at Ft. Barrancas and was an old Army sergeant himself. John would have been a member of the Pensacola High School Class of 1942 but chose instead to drop out and enlist in the military. In those days, Ft. Barrancas had an Army recruiting station, so John went down on February 4, 1941 to visit his father and talk to the recruiter. While he was there, he wound up signing his enlistment papers for the Coast Artillery Corps that was stationed there at the time. He was assigned to the 60th Antiaircraft Battery, and two months after signing on the dotted line he was shipped out to the Philippines on the 22nd of April as America tried desperately to reinforce their Far East forces.


On January 3, 1942 Alford was wounded from concussion and bomb fragments during one of their daily bombardments. The medics carried him down to the medical ward located deep inside the mountain fortress. Beyond preliminary treatment, all the medical staff could do was patch him up the best they could and send him back to duty on the front line. He and his companions fought on until their surrender by General Wainwright on the 6th of May. Their heroic stand had severely upset the entire Japanese time table for the conquest of the Pacific Theater. It was supposed to go off like clockwork and catch the Americans off guard. The plan was to keep them off guard until proper defenses could be erected to rebuff any attempt to recapture their relinquished territory. All of that was now a shamble thanks to a handful of Americans that included an even smaller group of Pensacolians!


But now the enemy was responsible for another 11,000 men they were not prepared to care for. According to the Japanese Samurai Code, every solder and sailor was to die fighting for his Emperor and should never even consider the shame of surrender. Thus, they had never planned for the 76,000 men from Bataan and now they had 11,000 more from Corregidor! However, the Corregidor defenders caught a break by being placed on barges and brought over to Manila rather than being marched up the Bataan Peninsula like those from the “Death March.” Upon landing, the prisoners were marched through the streets of Manila, a bedraggled and pathetic column of emaciated, but proud and defiant soldiers. The destination for most of them was the same as their predecessors, the infamous Camp O’Donnell. But for some, it was the POW camp known as Bilibid located within the city of Manila or one of the other outlying prisons. The doctors, nurses, and civilians on Corregidor were forced to remain on the island for several additional weeks before being sent to the Santo Tomas Camp in Manila. Having divided the Corregidor defenders into three separate groups, Private John Alford was left in the initial contingent leaving the island. He was in the group that was sent to the Bilibid Camp plus others who had miraculously survived the defeat of the Bataan forces.


As it turned out, Bilibid Camp proved to be just an interim stop the facilities were proving to be too small to house those from Bataan and Corregidor collectively. To ease the overcrowded conditions, some of the prisoners were marched off to the hellhole known as Camp O’Donnell. Here some were eventually buried, and even more were later sent as slaves to the homeland of Japan. Private Alford spent two years at Bilibid before his transfer to Cabanatuan near the town bearing the same name, located 100 miles north of Manila. He wrote “they called Cabantuan a ‘summer camp’ because the prisoners could ‘work for themselves.’ This meant they could grow their own vegetables and keep one third of the harvest for themselves. The seeds were stolen from the Japs when they weren’t looking. They also stole blankets, wood for bed frames, springs for the beds, and anything else that wasn’t tied down. Their diet wasn’t ‘a la Oscar’ at the Waldorf! They ate rice, potato peelings, and ‘Hong Kong’ a fancy name for weeds. Alford said the Japs gave them meat and fresh vegetables occasionally just to let them know such things existed.


He said they all had ‘the book,’ a term for all the maladies you could find in a medical book such as beri-beri, yellow jaundice, dysentery, scurvy and such. Malaria was also there, but Alford was lucky enough never to catch it. He did break his foot after dropping an oil drum on it. He lost 48 pounds while a captive but said, ‘mother’s taking care of that.’ In fact, his mother, Mrs. Julius E. Alford has brought her son’s weight back up to his normal 160 pounds. In the camp they were up by 6:00 AM and in bed by 9:00 PM. During the day they worked on assignments given to them by their own American administrators. They had their own medical unit that had to operate with little to no medical supplies. They also had their own chapel but were only allowed to congregate in a group on Sundays. Alford related that from time to time the men were struck by their captors. The main offense was failure to bow to the Jap soldiers and the corporal punishment ranged from a slap in the face to a 20 lash whipping with bamboo poles or pick ax handles.


They were shown American films, with the Marx brothers being a favorite. But the deal was that after the movie you had to sit through reel after reel of Japanese propaganda films about the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. He stated that it was seldom that any of them had thoughts of escaping. The Japs operated on a system whereby if one escaped nine of his comrades would be punished for his misdeed. The Japs would not allow baseball games, disbanded the orchestra, and a few other things they said interfered with the progress of the Imperial Army. The men made themselves playing cards for entertainment. They would sit in the compound and look over the mountains to the east and imagine that one day there would be hundreds and hundreds of American planes coming over them. Well, one day there appeared thousands of planes coming over them.”


On January 29, 1945 Alford and an Englishman were sitting around the Cabantuan when suddenly the whole compound erupted in machine gun fire. They hit the ground terrified that the Japanese had decided to wipe them out before they could be liberated, a rumor that had persisted for months. They had heard from some of the Filipino civilians in the town that the American army was only twenty miles away and they were all aware of the brutality of the Japanese. But the matter was decided within minutes when a fully armed American soldier with a booming voice yelled for them to head for the main gate “on the double.” Those that were able started running and those that weren’t shuffled along the best they could. This “liberation” raid was made up of 112 US rangers and Filipino guerrillas and became one of the greatest rescues in the annuals of American military history. In all, they released 511 prisoners of war from the bonds of hell. They marched the emaciated soldiers twenty-two miles back through the jungles to the Allied lines.


Even Hollywood recognized the heroism of the courageous rangers who wiped out the entire Japanese garrison. In 1945, Edward Dytryk released his John Wayne film “Back to Bataan” and in 2005 John Dahl sent his film “The Great Raid” into every theater across America to commemorate their heroic rescue! Alford returned home on April 1, 1945 where his mother tried her best to fill the emaciated soldier up with his favorite food, “cooked shrimp.” He was granted ninety days leave before having to report back to duty, but fortunately the war with Japan ended before he was to return to combat. Alford would marry Mary Teresa Bouknight in Escambia County in 1946 and passed away in Pensacola on December 29, 1981. He was buried in the Florida National Cemetery in Sumter County, Florida.


American POW's in the Philippines 1945


Corporal John Sidney

Alford, WWII POW


Pensacola News Journal 4-8-1945



Pensacola News Journal 5-1-1943


Pensacola News Journal 1-4-1942


Pensacola News Journal 5-7-1942


Pensacola News Journal 2-2-1945




Pensacola News Journal 3-17-1945



Pensacola News Journal 4-8-1945


Pensacola News Journal 4-19-1945


Military Registration Card 1945


Pensacola News

Journal 12-30-1981


Bushnell, Sumter County, Florida




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