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If you didn't have friends to help you, you prob "When we headed to Japan, we were placed in
F ably weren't going to survive. I am here today because boxcars and sent to Pusan, Korea. On the second day ts
of my friends. They saved my life. That experience on the train, I caught malaria, and by the time we
taught me the importance of having good friends, reached Pusan six days later, I was so weak I could not
1:, which is something I've always tried to be since." get off the floor of the boxcar. My friends were told by
"Since" for Frank Prater means since his time as the Japanese to leave me there to die and they were
: a prisoner of war in various Japanese prison camps marched away. That night, they sneaked away from the
during World War 11. Prater, who graduated from Davis guards and came back and got me and took me to the
High in Davis, Oklahoma, in 1939, volunteered for the camp. At the camp there was a missionary doctor who
`- Marine Corps in Dallas in 1939. By May of 1940, after had been captured who had some quinine which he
' training and various duties, he was assigned as a gave me. I- and my friends saved my life. Ili
member of the North China Marines as an embassy "When we arrived in Japan we were placed on a
ti guard. train, but they made us keep the shades drawn so we
"I was assigned to the U.S. compound at couldn't see the bombing damage that they had
m. Tientsin, China. Ali total. we had 148 Marines at the received. The mines were located on the northern
Embassy in Peking, 48 of us at Tientsin and 12 at a island of Hokkaido. We worked in three shifts around
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radio station at Chinwangto, China. We received orders the clock. The barracks, which had been used by
•t in November 1941 to close the Embassy and leave Korean prisoners before our arrival, were infested with
China on December 10, 1941. We were all packed and bedbugs and fleas. We were fed marginal meals of rice,
had our belongings loaded aboard a train to seaweed and fish. If you didn't work to their satisfac-
Chinwangto, the port of entry and exit out of China. tion, you caught holy blazes. One of the guards shot �;
"As everyone remembers, the Japanese bombed and killed one of our guys, just because he wanted to.
Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, but it was already One of the civilians had had enough. He simply refused .
gl December 8 in Tientsin, China. That day we received a to eat and died. �'
: note delivered by a Japanese lieutenant demanding our "Near the end, we could hear bombs being ;;
surrender. If we didn't surrender, our compound would dropped and one day we saw the local women crying
be taken by force. We had 48 guys and the Japanese and knew something was up. Soon thereafter, an
c. had 150,000 men garrisoned between us and the other American plane flew over our camp dropping leaflets Ali
144 Marines at the Embassy in Peking. As a result, we telling us the war was over. They told us to stay where
surrendered. We may have been the only Marines in we were and that food would be dropped in. When they •
history to have surrendered without firing a shot, but dropped the food in, it was in 60 gallon drums. Two
we didn't have much choice." guys were killed by falling food drums. We were liber-
After the surrender of the North China Marines, ated two weeks later. We ate really well for those two ..
the men in Chingwangto and Peking were brought to weeks."
Tientsin in January 1942. And so began the longest When Prater was liberated, he had gained weight
..' three years, nine months and three days of Prater's life. and was up to 124 lbs. He had weighed 165 when they
"On January 29, 1942, we left in a boxcar for were captured. He was sent to hospitals in the U.S.,
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', Shanghai. At Nanking, we were off- loaded and ferried ending up at the Naval Hospital in Philadelphia, where
• across the Yangtze River on small rafts. There we met he met a Navy nurse whom he later married. After dis-
5 the Marines and civilians captured on Wake Island, charge, he enrolled at Oklahoma University, where he
along with the sailors and officers of the U.S.S. received a pharmacy degree in 1950. He and his wife vi
President Harrison, the liner that was to have taken us moved to Alliance, Ohio, where he raised his family and
home. The Marines from Wake were in khakis and ten- was a pharmacist until retiring to Bryan to be near one
nis shoes and were freezing. I had all my possessions of his children after his wife's death. '°
with me and gave my wool dress blue pants to one of "You need your family, but if you don't have ti
the Wake Marines. He told me years later that it was the friends..."
best gift he ever received." Frank Prater's name will be added to the Brazos SI
Prater, his fellow Marines and the approximately Valley Veterans Memorial this November. For more
500 civilians the Japanese had rounded up were put to information, to make a contribution, or if you know a
labor as "coolies." They cleared and built military World War II veteran whose story needs to be told,
installations, railroads, etc. until they were sent to contact the BVVM at www.veterans- memorial.org, or
A. Japan as slave labor in the Japanese coal mines. Bill Youngkin at 979 - 260 -7030.