We are all familiar with the Four Chaplains who lost their lives that others may live when USAT Dorchester in WWII was sunk. Also we are familiar with Medal of Honor recipients Chaplain Emil Kapann, Korea, and Chaplain Vincent Capodanno in Vietnam. U.S. Navy Medical Doctor Capt. L.B. Sartin describes the heroic efforts of many taken prisoner in the Philippines in WWII.
Among three chaplains mentioned in his narrative who served at the Bilibid POW hospital were three chaplains deserving recognition. They include Catholic Chaplain Lt. Cummings, Catholic Chaplain Maj. Duffy and Protestant Chaplain Lt. Col. Wilcox. Sorry their full names were not mentioned in the narrative.
Sartin further singles out the heroic efforts of Cummings. In my opinion, based on Sartin's narrative, there should be posthumous awards of the Bronze Star for two of the chaplains and the Medal of Honor for Cummings. Unfortunately Cummings lost his life on the prison ship when he left the Philippines from October to December 1944.
After the surrender of 75,000 Americans by Gen. Edward King Jr. to the Japanese forces during World War II, the American troops were forced to march 65 miles from Mariveles to San Fernando, with the march ending in Capas. This is now known as the Bataan Death March. Camp Pangatian was then used as a POW camp for the soldiers who survived the death march. In mid-1942 the Japanese transferred 6,000 American POWs from Camp O’Donnell to the Cabanatuan vicinity. The POWs were assigned to work details and hard farm labor. Almost 3,000 died from executions, disease, beatings and starvation.
Sartin describes the heroic performance by the naval hospital in the Philippines from the beginning of hostilities on Dec. 8, 1941 to the liberation of the Japanese prisoner of war camp at Cabanatuan, P.I to Jan. 20, 1945. He acknowledges “Army and Navy medical personnel on their superior performance of duty at O’Donnell, Cabanatuan, Lipa, Palawan and Bilibid work camps where American prisoners of war were starved, beaten and worked to death under the most horribly degrading conditions that Americans have ever been ...."