Pfc. Leon Foster Atha

    On January 21, 1941, Leon was inducted into the U. S. Army at Louisville, Kentucky.  He did his basic training at Fort Knox. Kentucky, and was assigned to Headquarters Company of the 192nd Tank Battalion.  He most likely was a truck driver. 

    In September 1941, Leon took part in maneuvers in Louisiana.  After the maneuvers, on the side of a hill, Leon learned that his battalion was being sent overseas.  He was given a furlough home before returning to Camp Polk, Louisiana.  Traveling west by train, Leon and his company arrived in San Francisco.  They were ferried to Angel Island where the received physicals and inoculations.  

    Leon sailed for the Philippine Islands arriving there after stops in Hawaii and Guam.  With his company, he was taken to Ft. Stotsenburg.  Since their barracks were unfinished, the soldiers were housed in tents along the main roads between the fort and Clark Airfield.

    The morning of December 8th, the tankers were told of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor just ten hours earlier.  Leon with his company were ordered to the north end of the main runway.  As the tankers watched, the sky was filled with American planes.  At 12:30, the planes landed and the pilots went to lunch.  Around 12:45 in the afternoon as the soldiers were having lunch, they watched planes approach the airfield from the north.  It was only when bombs began exploding did the tankers know that the planes were Japanese. 

    Since HQ Company had no weapons to fight planes, they could do little more than watch the attack.  Afterwards, the tankers saw the devastation left behind by the attack.

    For the next four months, Leon worked to keep the tanks of the 192nd running.  On April 9, 1942, Capt Fred Bruni told the members of HQ Company of the surrender.  He told them to destroy their weapons and anything else that the Japanese could use.  He gathered his men together and fed them what he referred to as "Their last supper".  They then received orders not to destroy their trucks.

   On April 11th, the first Japanese soldiers appeared at HQ company's encampment.  A Japanese officer ordered Leon and the rest of his company, with their possessions, out onto the road that ran in front of their encampment.  Once on the road, the soldiers were ordered to kneel along the sides of the road.  They were told to put their possessions in front of them.  As they knelt, the Japanese soldiers, who were passing them, went through their possessions and took whatever they wanted from the Americans.

    Leon and his company boarded their trucks and drove to Mariveles.  From there, they walked to Mariveles Airfield and sat and waited.  As they sat, the POWs noticed a line of Japanese soldiers forming across from them.  They soon realized that this was a firing squad and the Japanese were going to kill them.

     As they sat watching and waiting to see what the Japanese intended to do, a Japanese officer pulled up in a car in front of the Japanese soldiers.  He got out of the car and spoke to the sergeant in charge of the detail.  The officer got back in the car and drove off.  The Japanese sergeant ordered the soldiers to lower their guns.

    Later in the day, Leon's group of POWs was moved to a school yard in Mariveles. The POWs were left sitting in the sun for hours.  The Japanese did not feed them or give them water.  When they were ordered to move again, they had no idea that they had started what has become known as "The Bataan Death March".

    When they given a break on the march, the POWs were ordered into a field.  Behind the POWs were four Japanese artillery pieces which began firing on Corregidor and Ft. Drum.  These two islands had not surrendered.  Shells from these two American forts began landing among the POWs.  The POWs could do little since they had no place to hide.  Some POWs were killed from incoming American shells.  One group that tried to hide in a small brick building died when it took a direct hit.  The American guns did succeed in knocking out three of the four Japanese guns.

    The POWs were ordered to move again by the Japanese.  Leon and the other men had no idea that they had started what became known as the death march.  At some point Leon dropped out of the march.  It is not known when, but he did complete the march.

    At San Fernando, the POWs were packed into small wooden boxcars that could hold forty men or eight horses.  Each car held 100 men.  Those who died remained standing since they had no room to fall down.  At Capas, the POWs left the cars and walked ten miles to Camp O'Donnell.

Although the exact date is not known, Leon was selected for a work detail sent to Manila.  The POWs on this detail drove trucks for the Japanese.  When the detail ended, Leon was sent to Cabanatuan.

    In late 1944, when it became apparent to the Japanese that the invasion of the Philippines was near, the  Japanese attempted to send the healthy POWs to Japan and other countries to work as slave labor.  This was also an attempt to prevent them from being liberated by the advancing American forces.

    When Leon's group of POWs arrived at the Port Area of Manila on October 10, 1944, they were boarded onto the Arisan Maru.  They had been scheduled to be boarded onto the Hokusen Maru, but since one of the POW groups, in another POW detachment, had not arrived on time to be boarded, his group was put on the ship.

    Leon and 1803 other POWs were packed into the ship's number one hold.  Along the sides of the hold were shelves that served as bunks.  These bunks were so close together that a man could not lift himself up.  Those standing had no room to lie down. The latrines for the prisoners were eight five gallon cans.  Since the POWs were packed into the hold so tightly, many of the POWs could not get near the cans.  The floor of the hold was covered with human waste.

    On October 11th, the ship set sail but took a southerly route away from Formosa.  Within the first 48 hours, five POWs had died.  The ship anchored in a cove off Palawan Island where it remained for ten days.  The Japanese covered the hatch with a tarp.  During the night, the POWs were in total darkness.  Being anchored in the cove resulted in the ship missing an air attack on Manila by American planes.  But, the ship was later attacked by American planes during its stay off Palawan.

    Each day, each POW was given three ounces of water and two half mess kits of raw rice.  Conditions in the hold were so bad, that the POWs began to develop heat blisters.

    The POWs discover that although the Japanese had removed the lights in the hold, they had not turned off the power to the lights.  Some of the prisoners were able to wire the ship's blowers into this electrical system.  Doing this allowed fresh air into the hold.  The blowers were disconnected two days later when the Japanese discovered what had been done.

    The Japanese soon realized that if they did not do something many of the POWs would die.  To prevent this, they opened the ship's number two hold and transferred 600 POWs into it.  During the transfer, one POW was shot while attempting to escape.

    The Arisan Maru returned to Manila on October 20th.  There, it joined a convoy.  On October 21st, the convoy left Manila and entered the South China Sea.  The Japanese refused to mark POW ships with red crosses to indicate they were carrying POWs.  This made the ships targets for American submarines.  The POWs in the hold became so desperate that they prayed for the ship to be sunk.

    According to the survivors of the Arisan Maru, on October 24, 1944, about 5:00 pm, some of the POWs were on deck preparing dinner for the POWs in the ship's two holds.  The ship was near Shoonan, off the coast of China.  Suddenly, sirens and other alarms were heard.  The men inside the holds knew this meant that American submarines had been spotted. They began to chant for the submarines to sink the ship.

    The Japanese on deck ran to the front of the ship.  As the POWs watched, a torpedo passed the bow of the ship.  Moments later, the Japanese ran to the ship's stern and watched as a second torpedo passed behind the ship.  There was a sudden jar and the ship stopped dead in the water.  It had been hit by two torpedoes amidships in its third hold where there were no POWs.  It is believed that the submarine that fired the torpedoes was the U.S.S Snook.

    One of the Japanese guards took his machinegun and began firing on the POWs who were on deck.  To escape, the POWs dove back into the holds.  After they were in the holds, the Japanese put the hatch covers on the holds, but they did not tie them down.

    As the Japanese abandoned ship, they cut the rope ladders into the ship's two holds, but since they had not tied down the hatch covers, some of the POWs in the second hold were able to climb out and reattached the ladders.  They also dropped ropes down to the POWs in both holds.

    The POWs were able to get onto the deck of the ship.  At first, few POWs attempted to escape the ship.  Many raided the ship's food lockers and ate their last meals.

     A group of 35 POWs swam to a nearby Japanese ship, but when the Japanese realized they were POWs, they pushed them away with poles and hit them with clubs.  The Japanese destroyers in the convoy deliberately pulled away from the POWs as they attempted to reach them.

    As the ship got lower in the water, some of the POWs took to the water.  These POWs attempted to escape the ship by clinging to rafts, hatch covers, flotsam and jetsam.  Most of the POWs were still on deck even after it became apparent that the ship was sinking.  At some point, the ship split in two.  The exact time of the ship's sinking is not known since it took place after dark.

    Five of the POWs found an abandoned lifeboat, but since they had no paddles, they could not maneuver it to help other POWs.  According to the survivors, the Arisan Maru sank sometime after dark.  As the night went on, the cries for help grew fewer until there was silence.

    Of the 1803 POWs who had boarded the ship, only nine survived the sinking.  FivePOWs reached China and were liberated.  Four were recaptured and sent to POW camps in Japan.  Three of these prisoners lived to see the end of the war.

     Pvt. Leon Foster Atha died in the sinking of the Arisan Maru on October 24, 1944.  Since he was lost as sea, his name appears on The Tablets of the Missing at the American Military Cemetery outside of Manila. 

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