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Medford man recalls years in Japanese POW camp Dive bomber pilot Walter Haines was beaten to near death by the Japanese after they found out he was a "fly boy." [Mail Tribune / Jamie Lusch] Sunday Mar 18, 2018 at 2:00 AM Mar 19, 2018 at 7:23 AM Vickie Aldous Mail Tribune @VickieAldous Piloting a dive bomber during World War II, U.S. Army Air Corps 2nd Lt. Walter Haines had little chance when he came up against a Japanese pilot intent on shooting him down. Haines had been ordered to fly out from Australia to help fend off a Japanese takeover of the island of Java. But without the .50 caliber ammunition he needed for his forward-firing guns, Haines was left with only one smaller caliber gun in the back operated by his gunner. The Japanese pilot hit Haines’ plane at least twice, forcing him to crash land on the island of Sumba. “I managed to put the plane down on the ground, but it flipped over. When it flipped over, it threw me out and landed on top of me and pretty well crushed my chest,” Haines, now 99 and a Medford resident, said of the 1942 crash. Dutch people on the island, which is part of Indonesia, rescued him, but the Japanese eventually captured the island and took everyone prisoner. The Japanese especially hated pilots for dropping bombs on their country. They learned Haines was a pilot, or “fly boy.” “They decided I shouldn’t live anymore. They tried very valiantly to beat me to death that night. They worked me over pretty well and left me lying out in the dirt compound,” Haines said. Haines’ gunner dragged him to a dirt cell, where he lay for 14 days without moving, suffering from internal bleeding and a ruptured spleen. “That was one of the worst beatings that I ever got,” he said, although more followed. Haines eventually ended up in a prisoner-of-war camp on another island with 7,000 Allied prisoners, including almost 100 Americans. He became a cook, serving up thousands of pounds of rice each day. “That’s all we had to eat. We never had enough, and at times they would cut your rations,” he said. Haines took a work party out each day to fill carts with rice from warehouses. One of the carts they used was reserved for fruits and vegetables that went to a kitchen where food for the Japanese was prepared. “I was the only one who was allowed to carry things from that cart into the Japanese kitchen,” he said. “I made myself what I called loot sacks. These were little cloth sacks that tied onto my legs under my dungarees. I could pick up an orange or a piece of fruit or anything that was edible and put it in my loot sack and walk out with it. I stole everything I could. I never ate any of it. “Everything that I stole I took down to the kitchen where they were taking care of our Allied wounded and dying. And believe me, they were dying by the handful every day.” Haines said an American in the camp had lost his leg when it got caught in a piece of rope from a ship. The man used his hollow artificial leg as a secret storage compartment for radio components. “There were many guys who did things that were more heroic than anything I ever did,” Haines said. Haines said the prisoners had no shoes, so they would improvise and use wood to make clogs. One day, he noticed that the commander of the prisoner-of-war camp kept stopping at an improvised tailor shop where prisoners made clothing. The commander had a bolt of green cloth and was having the prisoners make him a suit. Each day, the commander would be delivered by his driver, who would then sit on the front bumper of the car and take a nap. “Well, that was pretty tempting,” Haines said. “I finally went over and opened the trunk and found out there was a spare tire. I had that spare tire out of there in nothing flat.” He used tread from the tire to make soles for a pair of shoes. The tops of the shoes were made from leather leggings Dutch soldiers wore to fend off snake bites in the jungle. Eventually the prisoners learned the war had ended and they walked out of the camp. Haines had heard there was a women’s camp on the island with an American inside and went there to find her. She was an officer with the Salvation Army. “I told her if and when we got ourselves out of there, I would get her out of there and take her,” he said. An American plane flew overhead, dropping leaflets that asked the soldiers on the island to check for booby traps on the runways. They walked back and forth, making sure it was safe to land. Then English officers landed in a plane and said they were there to liberate the prisoners. But they asked for written information on everyone, including their name, rank, serial number and hometown. Gathering and translating all the information would have taken days. The next day, a male American officer and a Women’s Army Corps officer landed and asked whether there were any Americans in the camp. “How soon can you leave?” the male officer asked the prisoners. An English officer intervened, saying the prisoners couldn’t leave until they had provided the written information. “We’re gonna be out of here tomorrow,” the American officer responded. Haines hurried to get the female American in the prisoner-of-war camp. Her name — M.L. Kruschwitz — and Haines’ name are on a tissue paper-thin passenger manifest of 22 Americans, 11 Canadians, one English man and three alternates listed for rescue that day. In September, 1945 — more than three years after crash landing his dive bomber — Haines was airlifted off the island to freedom. — Reach Mail Tribune reporter Vickie Aldous at 541-776-4486 or [email protected]. Follow her at www.twitter.com/VickieAldous.