Former POW Revisits Prison Camp In China

Stanwood Camano News - Stanwood, WA, USA

Former POW revisits prison camp in China

By RICK WOOD
Staff Reporter

Hersheal Boushey, 87, of Camano Island, was not sure what memories a recent trip to China would stir up when he boarded a plane for the 14-hour flight across the Pacific Ocean.

After all, the last time he was in Mukden was more than 63 years ago, when he was a prisoner of war.

Boushey made his return trip in October as the honored guest of the Mukden POW (prisoner of war) Remembrance Society, Truth Council for World War II in Asia and the Chinese government.

“Basically, they paid all of my expenses,” said Boushey. “I was treated like a celebrity.”

Accompanied by his wife, Pat, and other family members, Boushey revisited the site of his three-year imprisonment during World War II.

Now called Shenyang, Mukden was a village that housed more than 2,000 allied prisoners from 1942 until the end of the war.

Boushey said he is wary of being saddled with any labels.

“I’m no hero,” he said. “I’m just a survivor.”

When Boushey walked through the remaining barracks of the Mukden Camp, memories of fallen comrades and the struggles they endured came flooding back.
“It was an emotional moment,” he said.

During a small ceremony inside the barracks, Boushey lit a candle in honor of a fellow POW who had survived the war but had recently passed away.

The barracks is now a museum and a place of remembrance, he said.

Boushey joined the U.S. Army in March of 1940 and was sent to the island of Corregidor in the Philippines, shortly thereafter.

When the Japanese Imperial Navy began its assault on the Philippines in April 1941, Boushey and his coastal artillery unit were tasked with trying to keep the invaders at bay.

“We were in a gun position with a .50-caliber machine gun, shooting planes and anything that came towards us,” he said. “We were at this position when an (artillery) shell hit the gun pit.”

He was wounded, and 18 men in his battery were killed in the blast, which knocked him out, said Boushey.

When he regained consciousness, Boushey said he knew he was in a hospital but could tell something was wrong.

“When I looked over, there were ‘Japs’ coming down the ladder,” he said. “That’s when I knew the island had been taken.”

At that point, he and his comrades began an odyssey that included nearly being torpedoed by allied submarines to contending with potentially fatal diseases as the Japanese transported them first to Korea and ultimately to Manchuria.
Starvation and disease took their toll on all of the prisoners, said Boushey.
Boushey went from weighing 165 pounds when captured to nearly 90 pounds when the camp was liberated.

They lost 300 men during the first year of imprisonment, he said.

“In the wintertime, the ground was so cold we had to light fires over the ground to thaw it enough to bury the dead,” said Boushey.

All of the prisoners were used as slave labor to manufacture goods and machinery for the Imperial Army.

He said he remembered the things he and his fellow prisoners would do to affect the war effort.

While working in a machine factory, they would try to sabotage the machines they helped assemble.

“We’d put metal filings in with the grease that was used to lubricate the parts,” recalled Boushey.

Eventually, he was moved to a leather tannery that produced the soles for Japanese combat boots.

“Sometimes we’d write graffiti on the leather,” he said.

In August 1945, Mukden was liberated by Russian forces.

Boushey and his comrades were then handed over to American troops.

“We didn’t go straight home, though,” said Boushey. “They had to fatten us up before our families could see us.”

Decades later when he faced returning to the place he describes as “hell,” he wasn’t sure how it would turn out.

Boushey said the most important thing to come out of his return trip to China was the chance to share his experience with his family.
“I think they have a better understanding of what we all went through now,” said Boushey. “I think it helped me to show them where I was.”

Reporter Rick Wood: 629-8066 ext. 104 or rwood@scnews.com.