This story originally aired on Veteran's Day of 2006. It's a personal story produced by KNAU's Gillian Ferris recounting her grandfather's experience as a prisoner of war during WWII. But, it's also a story of how her grandmother and mother endured the anguish of waiting to know his fate. Gillian has reproduced the original story following the recent death of her grandmother and shares it with us on this day of remembrance.
I was only 6 weeks old when my Grandpa Jack passed away, and I've spent my whole life wishing I'd known him in the regular sort of way a grandfather and granddaughter might know each other: spending Christmases together, playing in the park, being there for my college graduation. But the way I grew up knowing my Grandpa Jack was through the stories and pictures of his extraordinary survival.
The story started on February 22nd, 1943, when my grandmother, Jessie, received a Western Union telegram from the United States Army. It read: "Your husband, Major Jack W. Schwartz, Medical Corps, reported a prisoner of war of the Japanese government in the Philippine Islands. (Period). Letter follows. (Stop)."
A letter did follow, as well as 3 years of waiting, not knowing if my Grandpa Jack was alive or dead. I'd always wondered how my grandmother endured the agony of not knowing, and how my mother, Jean - who was only 4 at the time - dealt with the disappearance of her beloved father. So, a few years ago, I interviewed them to see if they could explain to me how they made it through that time.
"It was terrible", my grandmother said, "because you didn't know whether he was going to come back or not. You just wait, and wait and wait."
Jack was an Army doctor stationed in the Philippines at the time of his capture. For a long time, my Grandma Jessie had a good grip on the story. But at almost 90 years old, Alzheimer's Disease having scattered many of her memories, my mom had to help fill in the details. "I know they had to move the hospital into the jungle in Bataan because the city was under siege," she said. "There are some pictures in Life Magazine which I have of him operating in the jungle, in a tent in the trees. But when the Japanese invaded the island, they captured everybody that was there, so he was a prisoner right from the beginning of the war until the very end."
The news of Jack's capture rendered my Grandma Jessie almost incapacitated by fear and anxiety. She spent a lot of time locked in her room. She became virtually unable to care for my mom. "You just feel like lying down and going to sleep," she told me. My mom remembers that my grandmother stopped shaving her legs with a razor, using tweezers instead because it took so long and was something to do that took up time.
For my mom, Jean, it was a very confusing and scary time. She said none of the adults ever explained what was going on. "I had a lot of nightmares during that time," she told me. "It took many years for the nightmares to stop. And the adults were very frightened and very sad. It was just a time that felt very perilous and ominous."
She tried to handle her fear by conjuring up a new father for herself during Jack's absence. "I remember wanting to have a daddy," she said. "A lot of the kids didn't have daddies, they were all overseas, and I had a little fantasy about Roy Rogers. I thought he was so strong and smart and I wanted him to be my daddy. We'd go to the movies every Saturday downtown, and the Roy Rogers movies were especially important because that was my daddy there riding that horse!"
If only Jack had been as free as Roy Rogers. But the truth was, he was suffering unimaginable torture. He survived the Bataan Death March, was transferred to several different camps where he was beaten and starved by his captors for years. When the end of the war finally came, my Grandpa Jack was among the last remaining American prisoners to be liberated. He had malaria, dysentery and nightmares when he made it home.
My mom asked my Grandma Jessie if she remembered the day Jack returned. "You went to San Francisco to meet his ship when he came in, didn't you?" "Yes," my grandma said. "I think we came back on the train together." My mom replied, "You told me the first night he came back he cried all night. Do you remember that?" My grandma didn't. "Isn't that funny?" she said, "that I don't remember that."
I was glad my Grandma Jessie had forgotten the horrific parts of Jack's story. For her, the only memory was love. "He was a wonderful man," she told me, "and I just knew I'd see him again because I knew he loved me, and I loved him."
My grandmother recently passed away, and my family gathered at Arlington National Cemetery to bury her alongside my Grandpa Jack. Her name was etched on the other side of his headstone. During the funeral, I looked around the vast, serene cemetery, and it came to me that my grandparents were both war veterans. They had both survived pain and fear, and they were lucky - luckier than many others - to have made it back to each other.
