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Bataan vet Dr. Ralph Hibbs dies By PAUL FATTIG Medford resident Dr. Ralph Hibbs, author of "Tell MacArthur to Wait," a powerful book about his surviving a POW camp in the Philippines in World War II, died Sunday at his home at the age of 87. Hibbs, who retired in 1984 after practicing medicine in Medford for nearly 35 years, was one of 60,000 surrendered American prisoners who started on the 70-mile Bataan Death March to prison camps on the Bataan Peninsula early in 1942. Some 10,000 marchers would perish from hunger, heat, exhaustion and brutality. Capt. Hibbs was stationed with a medical detachment assigned to the U.S. Army�s 31st Infantry regiment near Manila when overwhelming Japanese forces captured Manila. During a 1997 interview, Hibbs recalled that he knew they had little chance to survive the march. "When they stumbled and fell, they just bayoneted them and shot them," he said. "They never gave them a chance to get up and get going again. "I told my detachment that we were getting the hell out of this," he said. "There weren�t many guards around in the beginning." When the long column reached a point where it snaked around several switchbacks, Hibbs and several companions slipped off into the jungle. They made it back to an American military hospital where they joined the medical staff. Unfortunately, the hospital staff was taken prisoner when the Japanese forces overtook that part of the island. Hibbs was sent to Cabanatuan Prison Camp No. 1, which would be his home for the next three years. But the prisoners fared little better than they did in the death march: 6,000 men died in the first six months, he said. "They died faster than we could bury them," he said. It wasn�t until early in 1945 that Gen. Douglas MacArthur and his troops liberated the camp. The general sat on the edge of Hibb�s cot as the colonel in charge informed him that only 3,000 men out of the garrison of 12,000 at the camp survived. "MacArthur just sat there and cried," Hibbs said. "You heard a lot of stories about MacArthur. But he was a good man to have on your side during a war." Hibbs� wife, Virginia, who survives, was the widow of writer Erskine Caldwell, author of "Tobacco Road" and "God�s Little Acre." Hibbs was also widowed when they married in the early 1990s. Funeral arrangements for Ralph Hibbs will be announced by Perl Funeral Home in Medford. Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2000 Mail Tribune, Inc.