This WW II vet doesn't do parades
By David G. Brenzel
Although I am one of the few remaining World War II veterans who
was a member of the Battling Bastards of Bataan and Corregidor, I don 't do
parades.
To beat the draft, I joined the regular army for a tour of foreign
service that the Japanese Army and Pearl Harbor extended to five years overseas,
including 40 months of slave labor as a prisoner of war.
Thirty months of that slave labor were in Yokohama, where I was a
welder in a Mitsubishi shipyard refurbishing the Japanese Navy.
We put in full days on empty stomachs, kept lively by guards
carrying pick handles, which we referred to as vitamin sticks.
Our living quarters were in a warehouse on Tokyo Bay about 2 1/2
miles from the shipyard. This will explain my being on parade for literally
thousands of miles in Yokahama alone, sharing the city streets with the public
morning and night to and from the labor.
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