"To have a close friend a buddy to help you might be the difference between survival and death."
"As the days passed, the compounds holding captives at night became filthy; sick and dying almost filled the areas. The dead were not being buried. The terrible odor was sickening."
"Sometimes when the compounds were crowded, they marched us all night."
"I had 10,000 teeny blisters on the bottom of my feet."
"The compound was full of people a lot of dust, dirt and filth; I just fell into the dirt and slept."
"People were going crazy they were 'nuts!' sometimes talking to themselves, sometimes screaming!"
"We all had dysentery, and there was no water. Usually there was no food."
"We finally reached the train a few box cars with doors closed in the hot sun they were stifling hot like a furnace."
"We were jammed one hundred to a car standing room only. Men fainted, but there was no place to fall down."
"They didn't open the door until we reached the destination.
"When we had reached Capas, it was pandemonium, Japs and captives all milling around. They tried to count us as we rested."
"Then we were told to line up-in columns of twos. We started the march on a dirt road some six miles to Camp O'Donnell."
"Some captives had marched all the way from Bataan close to one hundred miles."
"It wasn't the march that killed us; it was the continual delays along the march the standing in place for two or three hours at a time without food or water."
"If you stepped out of line, you were apt to have a bayonet in your gut."
The exact number of dead from the "Death March" was probably known only to God. The best estimates were anywhere from 12,000 to 17,000.
Deaths at Cabanatuan: During the first eight months of camp, deaths totaled 2,400. Some thirty to fifty skeletons, covered by leathery skin, were buried in common graves each day. The Japs issued documents certifying that each death was caused by malaria, beriberi, pellagra, diphtheria, in fact, anything but the real cause starvation and malnutrition.
After the war, when the Graves Registration searched the Cabanatuan cemeteries, they found and disinterred 2,637 bodies.
Sanitation: From the beginning of camp, sanitation was a serious problem. Flies, including the blue and green bottle types, were present everywhere. Maggots thrived in the latrines, weakened the walls, resulting in cave-ins, and sometimes engulfing the visitor. Daily rains further weakened the walls.