PETER FRED LARSEN

Voyage on The Ships of Death

Soldiers are killed in wars.  Whether through the rage of combat, the explosion of artillery, or the wrath of communicable diseases, men die.  What is often too hard to endure is death proximately caused by a total lack of human decency.  Sixty years ago today, the last remaining elements of the American bastion at Bataan in  the Philippine Islands fell into the hands of the Japanese army.  The unspeakable atrocities against Americans, unprecedented in the history of our country, were about to begin.  One of those Americans, Lt. Peter Fred Larsen of Dublin, Georgia, was destined to become a mortal victim of one of a series of the most devastating acts of friendly fire in the history of the United States military. However he would not be killed before he and thousands like him suffered through the brutal mistreatment of beatings, malnutrition, and starvation in the prisoner of war camps of the Japanese military  in World War II.

Peter Fred Larsen was born in Dublin in 1916,  in the same year his father William W. Larsen was first elected to represent the 12th  District of Georgia in the Congress of the United States. He attended schools in Dublin until he left for boarding school at Young Harris College in 1928, following the death of his mother Dovie Strange Larsen.  After graduation in the mid 1930s, Peter Fred set out to see the world aboard a merchant ship, no doubt from the prodding  of his older brother Jens.  Jens was an engineering officer aboard a merchant vessel and named his son Peter Fred Larsen, the current Assistant District Attorney of the Dublin Judicial Circuit, for his younger brother.  Peter Fred had a passion for aviation, a love not uncommon for young men of his generation and especially among the young men and boys of Dublin in the 1930s.

In 1940, Peter Fred Larsen enlisted in the Army Air Corps.  His sights and his dreams were focused in the sky.   In  May of 1941, he was commissioned 2nd Lieutenant Peter Fred Larsen.  After a month of leave, Lt. Larsen shipped off to Manilla via San Francisco.  After a brief stint flying planes out of Clark Field, Larsen’s squadron was transferred to Nichols Field, near Manilla.    Just as the Japanese Air Force had destroyed the American base at Pearl Harbor, the fields and planes of the American Air Force were virtually wiped out in the first few days of World War II.  The Americans retreated to Bataan by the end of the year to make a stand, while waiting on reinforcements.    The pilots, flight and ground crews, and even the cooks were re-organized into a front line infantry unit and re-named the Provisional Air Corps Infantry Regiment.

     

Larsen’s regiment learned combat tactics on the job.  The promised supplies and reinforcements  never came.  First there were half rations.  Later, rations were cut in half once again.  The men had only what they had carried with them to Bataan.  For two months, the unit, the only American unit on the front lines, held Japanese forces to a stalemate.  The Japanese, freshly supplied with replacements of men and material, launched a second offensive on Good Friday, April 3, 1942.  The defenders held out until April 9th, when the Americans, under the command of General Edward P. King, surrendered to the Japanese.  Bataan had fallen.  Larsen and thousands of others were taken as prisoners of war.  

The conquered troops were sheparded  into columns and force marched for sixty five miles to Camp O’Donnell.  Thousands died along the way, some from starvation, some from exhaustion, and some were simply killed by their captors.  As long as there are those who talk about war, they will always talk about the death and dying known as “The Bataan Death March.”  Conditions in Japanese prisoner of war camps were indescribable.  As terribly hot as it was in Andersonville, as brutally cold as it was in Elmira, New York, there are not enough words to describe how really bad it really was.  Sometimes, there are things worst than death.

By mid 1944, it became readily apparent to Japanese officials that the American forces, under the command of General Douglas McArthur, would retake the Philippines, just as McArthur had promised.  American planes and submarines were dominating the skies and the seas.  A decision was made to evacuate all of the American prisoners from the islands to the main islands of Japan.  On October 24th, the Asian Maru, a transport ship - unmarked to show its cargo of eighteen hundred and two prisoners - was steaming toward Japan when an American submarine attacked the ship, killing all but eight of the American prisoners aboard.  Those POWs remaining in the Philippines were herded into Bilibid Prison in Manilla for the next shipment of prisoners.  

On December 13, 1944, sixteen hundred and nineteen prisoners, were crammed into the holds of the Oryoku Maru.  Deaths from suffocation began almost immediately.  It would be the last prison ship to leave Manilla.  As the Oryoku Maru was crossing Manila Bay the next day, fighter planes from the U.S.S. Hornet attacked and damaged the ship.  Ten days before Christmas, the Hornet’s fighters returned to sink the Oryoku Maru.  They succeeded.  Peter Fred and those who could make it swam to shore and safety, but not to freedom, their escape foiled by Japanese machine gun positions along the shoreline.  Those who made it were corralled into a tennis court, where many died.  Slightly more than three hundred men never made it to the court.  Fifteen of the sickest men were promised treatment at a hospital.  They were put in trucks, taken to a cemetery, and decapitated on the spot.  

On Christmas morning, Larsen arrived at Lingayen Gulf.  Larsen and more than a thousand others were stuffed into the holds of the Enoura Maru for a short trip to Takao, Formosa, where they arrived on New Year’s Day.  Those who died on the way were thrown overboard.    All of the remaining prisoners were compacted into the Enoura Maru on January 6th.  Three days later as McArthur was returning to the Philippines, attack fighters in advance of the invasion relentlessly attacked any Japanese vessel in sight. 

Bombs struck the forward hold of the Enoura Maru.  Peter Fred and several hundred others never had a chance.  Their bodies were left where they lay.  Those who survived were treated with the crudest of first aid supplies, dirty shirts, bloody towels - anything which could be used as a bandage.  There were no medicines.  It was two days later when the first Japanese corpsmen arrived, only to treat the minor wounds with useless doses of Mercurochrome.  Dead bodies were stacked.  Survivors were forced to eat their scant meals while sitting on the bodies of their dead comrades.  The bodies were stripped of their clothes by the survivors, many of whom had the same clothes they were wearing two years before when they were first captured.  The dead were hoisted to boats and buried in a mass grave at Takao, although there is some credible evidence that the dead were cremated. Nine hundred of the original sixteen hundred were still alive, but barely.  

Of those 1,619 prisoners aboard the Oryoku Maru, which left Manilla on December 13, 1944,  approximately 1,187 were killed or died along the way.  Shortly after their arrival in Moji, Japan on January 30, 1945, 161 more died, making a total of 1,348 deaths or eighty-three percent of the original group.

When you ride by the courthouse lawn, stop and get out of your car.  Walk up to the monument to those who gave the last full measure of devotion to their country.  Look down the list of our heroes for the name of  Lt. Peter Fred Larsen.  Always remember his story and his voyage on the ships of death.

  (Special thanks to Wash Larsen, nephew of Lt. Larsen, for providing the information for this article.)

CAROLYN JAMES - TOP SECRETARY OF THE ARMY

The Top Secretary of the Army

Carolyn James, of Adrian, Georgia, wasn't the first woman to join the Women's Army Corps during World War II, nor was she the first Georgian out of the some 150,000 women who volunteered to help the war effort in uniform.  But it was this patriotic granddaughter of the founder of Adrian, who made U.S. Military history twice in her 20-year career.

Carolyn Hauser James, a daughter of Thomas Jefferson James II and Inez E. Hauser, was born in Adrian, Georgia on January 21, 1910.  Her grandfather, Thomas J. "Capt. T.J." James, founded the town of Adrian in the 1890s as a base for his railroad, the Wadley & Mt. Vernon, and his massive farming interests.  Not long after her grandfather's death, the James family fell on hard times.  During the years before the Great Depression, Miss James and her family moved to the Miami-Dade County area, where Carolyn took a job as a stenographer in a law office and later in a hotel.

As a divorced mother of a son James Richard Owen, 14, Carolyn decided it was time for her to join the war effort officially.  So at the age of 35, Carolyn enlisted in the Women's Army Corps on March 23, 1945 in Miami.  In the late 1940s, Carolyn worked at Oliver General Hospital in Augusta, Georgia.

The Women's Army Corps provided valuable service to the Army in times of war and peace.  General Douglas MacArthur proclaimed that the WACs "are my best soldiers."  The general added, "They work harder, complain less, and were better disciplined than men." Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower said, "their contributions in efficiency, skill, spirit, and determination are immeasurable."

As the country returned to war in 1950 in Korea, Carolyn and other stenographers saw an increased work load.  Carolyn was assigned to Tokyo, where she was given the task of devising a system to organize and file correspondence related to the truce meetings which were held in hopes of ending the war quickly.

In her position as administrative assistant to the G-1, Carolyn received the Brown Star Medal for meritorious service to the Far East Command headquarters.  The citation for the medal read in part," for devising an ingenious system of processing and filing high priority correspondence and expedient cross-indexing providing a chronological history relevant to the cease-fire armistice negotiations in Korea."

In the week before Christmas, 1952, James' meritorious achievements led her assignment by General James A. Van Fleet to his 8th Army headquarters in Korea.   Master Sergeant James, the first ever master sergeant in the United States  Women's Army Corps, was joined by Corporal Louise M. Farrell, of Billings, Montana as the first two members of the WACs to be permanently assigned to duty in Korea.

Carolyn James once told her family friends  that while in Korea, she was scheduled to receive the Bronze Star from General of the Army Douglas MacArthur.  She related that she wore her best uniform to headquarters.  Just as she was to enter the building, however, a bird left its droppings all over her uniform, leaving her with a dilemma - see the General in that state, or go back and change and risk being late.  She chose the former, which is perhaps why I never saw a photo of the ceremony, although her uniform blouse shows she wore the medal.

Carolyn, in a January 1953 letter to her cousins, Anne Laura Hauser and Melville Schmidt ,  wrote, "I was transferred to Korea on 18 December, after the Far East Command had made a thorough search for a WAC to fill the position of personal secretary to General Van Fleet, and finally decided I had the desired qualifications - although my tour was about up.  However, when they approached me, I volunteered to extend for six months.  Since there are no other WACs in Korea, Eighth Army recommended that I bring another for company, so I chose a girl who had court reporting experience.  We had the honor of being the first two WACs to ever be permanently assigned to Korea's combat area." 

"Of course, everything considered,  Public Information Office and the other publicity media decided it was good material for WAC recruiting purposes, so for one week prior to our departure, we were constantly being photographed - motion and still; televised, and radio interviewed   Then we were flown over in a special mission B-17, " James continued.

"We were cordially received by all in headquarters here.  They have really done everything to make us comfortable and happy.  We're billeted in a senior officers' billets , which had a portion of the second floor allotted to female personnel - Red Cross workers, the Chief Nurse of the Eighth Army, and us.  We eat our meals here in headquarters in a little spot right outside the kitchen of the Army Commander's mess," the revered sergeant said. 

Sergeant James stated, "My duty hours are quite long -- from 0800 to 2100 and sometimes 2200 (9:00 and 10:00) at night.  However, movements are so restricted and the working conditions are so pleasant, it isn't too bad.  We have a little Korean house girl who takes care of our clothes, which gives us added freedom from outside chores."

With fond remembrances, the Adrian native recorded, "I have certainly enjoyed my short tenure as General Van Fleet's secretary, for he is without doubt one of the finest men I have ever had the privilege of knowing.  He is a superior field commander, American and humanitarian, and is respected and admired by everyone - Koreans included." 

In summarizing her war experience, Sergeant James stated, "The devastation and misery in this country as the result of this war is indeed heart-rending, but there is much evidence that our government and its people are doing everything possible to alleviate much of the suffering.  Aside from the many government-sponsored welfare organizations, every military unit (including the front-line units) has its own welfare program in the form of aid to orphanages, hospitals, etc.  It certainly increases one's pride in his country and its people to see such a genuine display of generosity toward those less fortunate." 

Carolyn's time in Korea was short as an armistice was signed on July 27, 1953, although a 1963 Colorado Springs Gazette article stated that M. Sgt. James has gone to Korea six months before hostilities began in 1950. 

James was assigned as Chief Clerk of the General Staff office at  ARADCOM Headquarters in Colorado Springs, Colorado in the summer of 1956.  In her seventh and last year at ARADCOM, James served as Administrative Officer of the Training Branch, G-3.

With the passage of The Military Pay Bill of 1958, Congress added pay grades of E-8 and E-9. With the new law in effect.  Carolyn H. James became the first in the Women's Army Corps (WAC) promoted to grade E-8, making her the first WAC promoted to master sergeant (or first sergeant).  It was during her tenure in Colorado Springs when Master Sgt. James was promoted to Sergeant Major (E-9) making her the first woman in the history of the United States Army to hold that esteemed enlisted man's rank.  

In 1963, Sergeant Major James was awarded an Oak Leaf Cluster in lieu of a second Army Commendation Medal.  She was assigned to the Women's Army Corps School at Fort McClellan, Alabama.  A second Oak Leaf Cluster was awarded to before her April 1965 retirement ceremony.   

Carolyn James lived for nearly two and one half decades in Colorado Springs following her retiriement after twenty years of service to the Army.   Sergeant Major James died on May 8, 1991 in local hospice.  

And thus the story of the determined and patriotic lady from Adrian, Georgia, who grew up to serve the country as the top secretary in the Army.