The first to admit that he did not volunteer for military service, Myrrl W. McBride, Sr., was just a young man trying to work and return to college when he was drafted into a world completely foreign to him and a war he never envisioned. Soon he would suffer through one of the most tragic events in U.S. military history—the U.S. surrender at Bataan and the Bataan Death March.
This memoir, written in 1948 while memories were fresh but never before published, recounts the horrors of the march and its aftermath, followed by three and a half years as a prisoner of war at Camp O’Donnell, the Bilibid and Cabanatuan prisons, onboard a prison hellship, and in slave labor in Japan. The heartbreaking narrative reveals qualities that were undoubtedly critical to the author’s survival—his courage, ingenuity, sense of humor, and enduring hope.

After the war, Myrrl W. McBride, Sr., secured a graduate education at Sul Ross College and the University of Texas. Later an educator at St. Joseph’s College and in the public school system in Albuquerque, New Mexico, he died in 1993.

Myrrl W. McBride, Sr.
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 208
Bibliographic Info: 3 photos, notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2010
pISBN: 978-0-7864-4768-8
eISBN: 978-0-7864-5838-7
Imprint: McFarland

Foreword by Myrrl W. McBride, Jr., and Gerald F. McBride      1

Introduction      5

I. In the Philippines      7

II. Death March and Camp O’Donnell      36

III. Contact with Guerrillas      58

IV. Cabanatuan and Bilibid Prisons      97

V. Prison Ship to Japan      103

VI. Slave at Yodogawa      107

VII. Slavery in Coal Mines      171

VIII. Liberation      184

Chapter Notes      195

Bibliography      197

Index      201