Wilburn Snyder - POW Years

POW Years

Snyder was so eager to join the United States Army that he claimed to have been a year older than his actual age. In June 1940, he wanted to "get in on the ground floor” of a second world conflict which seemed imminent to many. "I was seventeen. I went by myself and enlisted," Snyder sad. His parents were reluctant to give their consent and regretted having done so when Snyder was declared missing in action at Bataan.

After serving fifteen months at Fort Crockett in Galveston, Snyder was deployed to the Philippines as a combat medic in the 3rd Battalion of the 31st Infantry. From that outfit of twenty-nine men, he was one of five who returned to the United States.

On Snyder’s death at the age of eighty-five, the Houston Chronicle quoted his daughter, Theda Cuellar of Houston: “He had no hatred towards those people. As a Christian, he put away all that hatred, but he wanted people to know what they went through.” Cuellar said that her father suffered twice from malaria during the internment and was left for dead, but a United States Army buddy stole medicine from the Japanese invaders and nursed Snyder to health.

After American forces under general Edward P. King, Jr., surrendered on April 9, 1942, Snyder, along with some 12,000 American and 68,000 Filipino defenders of the Bataan peninsula, was forced to march sixty-eight miles over fourteen days to the prison camp. On this journey, a large number of the soldiers, denied food and water by the Japanese, perished. In surrendering, King disobeyed orders, but Snyder and other captives contended that the general had no alternative. Snyder said that the surrender was respected by the men who were afflicted from a lack of food, quinine, medicine, and ammunition.

“I think it was one of the bravest things for him to do. He risked his whole military career when he did that because he did it against orders. He’s a tremendous man in my eyes. He saved about 12,000 Americans’ lives," said Snyder in a Memorial Day 2007 interview with his hometown Baytown Sun newspaper.

In his own words, Snyder recalled the Death March:

"Any troops who fell behind were executed. Japanese troops beat soldiers randomly, and denied the POWs food and water for many days. One of their tortures was known as the sun treatment. The Philippines in April is very hot. Therefore, the POWs were forced to sit in the sun without any shade, helmets, or water. Anyone who dared ask for water was executed. On the rare occasion they were given any food, it was only a handful of contaminated rice. When the prisoners were allowed to sleep for a few hours at night, they were packed into enclosures so tight that they could barely move. Those who lived collapsed on the dead bodies of their comrades. For only a brief part of the march would POWs be packed into railroad cars and allowed to ride. Those who did not die in the suffocating boxcars were forced to march about seven more miles until they reached their camp. It took the POWs over a week to reach their destination."

Snyder said that the march could have been easily achieved had the men been in good physical condition and not denied sustenance. "It was the condition that we were in that made it . . . a death sentence." Snyder said that he and his comrades could barely walk a few steps without seeing another dead body. They saw so many of their friends die . . . I know this sounds hard to believe, but we actually got used to death," Snyder recalled.