The Biography of Herman Shooster

We set up in the city of Iloilo (E-lo-E-lo) in another abandoned schoolhouse; it didn’t take long to turn it into a make-shift hospital. Somehow, I became acquainted with a beautiful Spanish girl, and I dated her often. Our dates consisted of quiet walks. Invariably, we were accompanied by her grandmother as a chaperone. She kept ten feet behind us at all times. This girl also dated an Army Captain. One day a jeep sped up the street to the hospi- tal. Abruptly that Captain lunged out and started running up the steps to the entrance. I witnessed this. He got half way up the steps and dropped. Apparently, he was having a heart attack. By the time we got to him it was too late. He died on those steps. My commanding officer, Major Elvin Shelton, and I, acting as his surgical assis- tant, performed an autopsy on the captain’s body. We determined that he had died from a coronary thrombosis, a blood clot in his coro- nary artery. It fell to me to notify our mutual friend, the young Spanish girl. Young men in the armed services were not supposed to just drop dead! We were all in great health, or so I thought, until then.

I lived on that island for several months. Once I was selected to escort between 100 - 150 wounded Japanese prisoners of war to Leyte Island. To do so, I had to travel to another island and report to a ship that was docked. The prisoners were in the hold. The sailors thought I was crazy, going down into the hold with the enemy soldiers, but that was my job as a medic. I found these men to be very apprecia- tive of anything I did for them, always bowing to me even from a prone position. In another incident, a Filipino who had been beaten to within an inch of his life with a rubber hose was brought to us. I was told he had been a collaborator for the Japs. After the Americans had taken over, the natives took out all their years of wrath on him. He was almost dead, and it fell to me to take care of him. I remember the conscientious care I gave that man. I felt that I had saved his life; it was not for me to be his judge and jury. CEBU - AUG. ‘45 We were transferred to the central part of the island of Cebu. The common knowledge among the troops was that we were being staged for the invasion of Japan. Heavy casu- alties were expected. We might have been soldiers,

but many of us were still kids. The kid came out of me one day when on an impulse I decided to do something wild and jump on the back of a carabao while it was pulling a wagon. I rode him bare- back for a short while, grabbed his horns and yelled. All this was to the utter astonishment of the animal’s keeper. Aug, 6th, ‘45, the first atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. We were numb trying to understand what this meant. On, Aug, 9th, ‘45, a second atomic bomb was dropped on Naga- saki. Japan capitulated a few days later. Unbelievably, just like that, the war was over! We were jubilant! We would be going home!

Transport of Japanese Prisoners 1945

166

Made with FlippingBook. PDF to flipbook with ease