They are soul-filled words, forged through tortuous days and bone weary nights sitting around a campfire when death was surer than life and the endless days faded one into another until you quit wondering when it was going to be over. Jim Bollich understands for he is a member of this fellowship of suffering and a winner in the grim contest to survive.

Jim Bollich was born into a large family in the rice-growing region of Eunice, Louisiana, on August 19, 1921. He grew up spending much of his time outdoors.  He learned to hunt and fish in the damp, humid climate and he learned to be wary of certain mean-spirited “critters.” He recalls the time when his older brother was bitten by a copperhead.  There was such a fuss made that when Jim was bitten by a cottonmouth, he refused to tell his mother.

“I was about twelve and knew I shouldn’t have been running along the levee because snakes like to lay up there. Well, one got me, and I didn’t want to tell my mother. I found a bottle that said ‘snake bite medicine’ in the medicine cabinet, but I didn’t know whether to drink it or put it on the bite. I ended up pouring it over the bite, and wrapped my foot in the bandage and went to bed. I was surprised when my foot was better the next morning.”

He survived.

During much of Jim’s youth, the United States anticipated a war with Japan and was in the process of building up the Philippines, which was at that time a commonwealth of the United States.

Jim joined the Army Air Corps and became an aircraft mechanic. On November 20, 1941, his unit arrived on the Island of Luzon in the Philippines and camped in tents near Manilla to await the arrival of their planes.

Eighteen days after their arrival, December 7, 1941 dawned and the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. For the men in the Philippines, on the other side of the International Dateline, it was December 8 and the men on Luzon had no way of knowing that the United States was at war.

Mere hours after the bombing of the fleet at Pearl Harbor, and after nightfall when the men were in their tents, the Japanese began their attack on Luzon.

"We had no knowledge that Pearl Harbor had been bombed until after the war.  Ninety percent of the planes on the ground were destroyed, and we had no way of knowing that the rest of our planes had been diverted to Australia. We had very little organization, but we waited for the planes. Thirty-two dive-bombers were also diverted to Australia. Later we were moved to Bataan to take care of nine P-40's that we weren't trained on. I remember my breakfast on Christmas morning was sardines and crackers."

The tragic events of history leading up to the Bataan Death March might be documented in black and white, but the events were written in blood. Soon after Manila fell, General MacArthur moved his command to a tadpole-shaped island in Manila Bay called Corregidor, leaving General Wainwright in charge.

The brave men on Bataan endured months of starvation. The commander first reduced rations by three quarters.  The soldiers then ate the horses and mules in their cavalry.

Jim remembers that General Wainwright requested his personal horse be eaten first. " I weighed 165 pounds when I entered the Air Corps, and weighed 92 lbs in my new shoes and uniforms when I was released."

History records the surrender of the Bataan troops as the largest surrender in United States history. After more than four months of siege, on April 9, 1942, General Edward King surrendered 75,000 starving American and Filipino troops to a Japanese Army of 54,000 men. The men destroyed the equipment to keep the enemy from using it, and left everything behind.

The Japanese, unprepared for the sheer number of prisoners, marched them from Bataan to Camp O’Donnell 90 miles away in what has become known as the Bataan Death March.  The men, weakened and malnourished from the long siege of Bataan, were beaten, bayoneted, and tortured if they lagged behind. Some fell in their tracks while others who helped the sick or wounded were forced to give up their burden and continue the march without them.

"Do you know about the blood brothers? If one person in a group of ten escaped, the entire group would be killed," explained Jim. "A lot of men died of beriberi (Vitamin B1 deficiency), and dysentery. Out of 85 or 90 of my group, only 35 survived." Ironically, at twenty years old, Jim wasn't old enough to vote or to drink legally, but he was old enough to be a prisoner of war.

General MacArthur left Corregidor in May of 1942 for Australia.

After reaching Camp O'Donnell, and enduring the horrific conditions there, Jim was among a thousand men packed in one of two compartments in a ship. The ship put into Formosa (Taiwan) and the men were taken off the ship, made to strip and then were hosed down. They then were ordered to put on their wet clothes and marched back into the wet damp compartment.

By the time he arrived at the prison camp in Manchuria, he had pneumonia. A Japanese doctor came to see him and handed him a white powder in a piece of paper and told him to take it. "I went to bed thinking I was going to die, but I awoke and those birds sounded beautiful to me."

Jim was taken to Mukden, Manchuria and, along with thousands of other men, made to work as slave laborers in a factory. "We went from the humid climate of the Philippines to Mukden and a temperature as low as 49 degrees below zero. What was good for us was that this wasn't rice country, but they grew soy beans and we actually started gaining weight."

Faith played an important role for the prisoners. "Everyone prays in a foxhole or a prison camp. I had one prayer that the Lord would take care of my family and that I would live to be 35 years old."

Near the end of the war, the Japanese command ordered that all prisoners of war be killed in case Japan lost the war. "I'll never forget when a group of American parachutists were dropped near our camp to be picked up by the Japanese. Their mission was to warn the command to not kill us. At first, the Japanese didn't believe them and treated them really bad. Those men were really brave."

Jim believes the atomic bombs dropped on Japan saved his life, but it was the Russians who liberated Mukden.

When he arrived home after the war, he dropped by the local barber to get cleaned up. "The barber began to talk about everyone who had been lost or gone off to war. He began to talk about me, and that is how I learned my two elder brothers had been killed in the war. I paid the man, and never told him I was the prisoner of war he was talking about."

Jim has written ten books.  When asked why he writes about this experience, he said, “So I don't forget them, and so we don't forget. It's a way to keep their memories alive."

Perhaps it is both a blessing to survive and a burden to remember.

Jim received a total of $1600 of back pay when he returned home from the war and then took advantage of the GI bill to become a petroleum geologist. Jim and Celia have been married well over four decades. They have two daughters, five grandchildren, and one great grandchild.

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