Enduring the horrors of POW camp

Condemned to forced labor in factories that supported Japan's military-industrial effort, some POWs secretly carved tobacco pipes from large chunks of wood as a subtle form of sabotage. Others engaged in riskier acts: According to former Mukden Camp prisoner Ralph Griffith, those assigned to the blueprint office deliberately inserted small errors into technical drawings, while others simply threw tools into the area to have concrete poured.

On display at the museum are the work badges some of the POWs had worn, with their assigned numbers. These were the numbers by which they were remembered — called out by the Japanese during roll call, stripped of name and identity. Griffith was simply No 552.

Life in the camp, marked by debilitating winter cold, chronic starvation, constant beatings, and unrelenting disease, took a devastating toll. Edmund Jemison — prisoner No 253 — nearly lost his sight due to severe malnutrition and required extensive treatment after the war.

Keeping that in mind, it's particularly heart-wrenching for a museum visitor to read the letter written by William Burrola to his father, telling the old man that he and his elder brother Joseph — both imprisoned at Mukden — "are being well taken care of". "It was sure good to see snow gain," wrote Burrola, noting that "it is another Christmas".

Some attempted to escape. On June 23, 1943, three American POWs escaped from Mukden Camp but were recaptured and executed on July 31. The youngest, Ferdinand Meringolo, was just 20 years old. Their escape was aided by Gao Dechun, a 19-year-old Chinese laborer at the factory where they worked, who risked his life to obtain a map of Northeast China. For his bravery, Gao was severely beaten and sentenced to 10 years in prison — a term terminated by Japan's surrender on Aug 15, 1945.

On Sept 2, 1945, aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, General MacArthur signed Japan's Instrument of Surrender, before passing the pen to General Wainwright, honoring him with a deeply symbolic gesture.

In a later interview, Griffith recalled his "first free day", when a little Chinese girl at the camp gate took his hand and motioned for him to follow. She led him to a nearby home, where he was welcomed with rice wine and a hot meal.

"When I signed up for the army at 17, I had my choice between Hawaii, Alaska, Panama and the Philippine Islands. I asked the recruiting officer which was the farthest away and told him that's what I wanted," he recalled.

In May 2007, Griffith — who passed away in 2020 at the age of 96 — returned to Shenyang for the first time since his release in 1945. Today, a wax figure of him as an elderly man sits alone on the lower bunk of a bed inside the sole surviving two-story brick barrack once used by POWs — a quiet tribute to his visit.

"Grin and bear" — that was Griffith's way of enduring. Others, like Joy, who had wagered on when the war would end, sought escape through sleep, described by one POW as their opiate.

On the reverse side of the agreement, Joy had scrawled a tender poem to his young wife:

"I'm getting tired so I can sleep,

And sleep well enough to dream,

And dream of you, my dear, the whole night through …"