SURVIVED WWII AS A JAPANESE POW
Warren Griswold’s enlistment in the Navy on September 6, 1940, led to a twenty-five year career, but it also resulted in him spending forty-four months as a Japanese prisoner of war. Assigned to the destroyer USS PEARY, Warren’s ship arrived in the Philippines in May 1941 as part of the Asiatic Fleet. When Japanese planes bombed Manila Bay two days after the attack at Pearl Harbor, hot shrapnel from a bomb that hit the foremast of the PEARY penetrated Warren’s back. The next day he found himself at an Army hospital in Manila where it was decided that an operation to remove the jagged metal an inch wide and more than two inches long just below his shoulder, would not help him. He remained in the Manila throughout the rest of the month, moving to a naval hospital and then on December 24th, to a hospital at Santo Scholastica College for further recuperation. It was there that the Japanese took him as a prisoner on the second day of January 1942. For over two years he stayed at various POW camps in the Philippines. What he identified simply as “rough treatment” marked all of his internments. In August 1944 his captors put him on a ship headed for Japan. He spent 23 days at sea in a filthy hold with no sanitary facilities and scarcely room to sit down. Once he arrived on the island of Kyushu in September, the Japanese assigned him to the Fukuoka POW Camp where he worked in a coal mine. Eleven months later the war ended. After the guards abandoned the camp, Warren and three other POWs walked out of it, in a way liberating themselves. During his confinement he lost nearly 70 pounds, dropping from 185. The trio made their way to an airfield held by American forces. From here the military flew the former prisoners to Okinawa and then Manila. Late in September 1945 Warren arrived at a naval hospital in Oakland, California. By October 1 he had reached the hospital at Camp Pendleton where doctors finally removed the shrapnel during a lengthy operation. Fortunately the metal had seared his flesh upon entry, in effect cauterizing the wound which might otherwise have become infected during his captivity.
Anxious to be reunited with their son, Warren’s parents drove to Oakland from their home in northern San Diego County. It had been more than five years since they had seen each other. As his mother recalled, “The sight of that young man coming down the steps of the barracks to meet us, is one we will never forget.” Warren’s mother made a scrapbook to preserve documents related to her son’s wartime experiences. Hoping that her son had become a POW she wrote several letters to him in 1942 but they were all returned to her. Finally, in June 1943 the family received a letter from the Bureau of Naval Personnel informing them that the Red Cross had confirmed that Warren was a Japanese prisoner. His mother carefully preserved the notices she received from the Red Cross as well as maintaining a list of the items she mailed to him. She also carefully kept the postcards she received from Warren which were brief and contained little true information on his condition. When she received a postcard from him after his 1944 transfer to Japan she wrote the word “Overjoyed” to describe the family’s feeling upon receiving it. As his mother explained, “We knew where he was and that he was alive.”
Griswold returned to duty after a six-month hospital stay and remained in the navy until retiring in 1965 with the rank of Chief Warrant Officer. CWO Griswold said that he earned one dollar a day for his labor while a POW and no matter the work he was forced to do he kept going one day at a time through prayer, especially the 23rd Psalm, “I will fear no evil.” “That, and just wanting to live through each day.”
Submitted by CDR Roy A. Mosteller, USNR (Ret)
