Fevers of Unknown Origin: A Daughter's Story of Her POW Father

My father grew up poor in a traditional Mexican family in Henryetta, Oklahoma. He was born in a tent city in Mingus, Texas on November 26, 1922 to Jesusa Deloris Trevino Rodrigues and Genaro Rodriquez. They had moved the family from Texas when Gregory was one year old.

My father attended Henryetta Public Schools along with five sisters and ten brothers. He was one of Henryetta High School's Fighting Hens and a member of the Track Team.

A biography written by my mother about my father says pointantly, "After football season was over in 1941, Gregory found himself in a "winter of discontent." His desire for travel and adventure prompted him to respond to an advertisement by the U.S. Army. He soon "joined up."  Little did he know what his yearning for adventure would bring upon his childlike mind and body. Had he known, it's my opinion that he never would have left the comfort and happiness of the close nit neighborhood. At least there, the day would end with certainty.  He should have never left ...

Gregory did not return again until October 1945. At the time of his arrival back on U.S. soil, he weighed a mere 87 lbs. He would officially be discharged in May the next year. But his body, mind and soul were, by then, tarnished and used way beyond his years.  All the medals in the world couldn't bring back what he had lost on the hell ships of war and in the prison camps of the Imperial Japanese Army.

Years on end, my father would fall instantly ill with high fever and chills. We grew up with the fevers that he had never knowing if this one would be the last. He would shiver and shake and sweat and kick. Sometimes thet lasted for hours, sometimes they lasted for days. We never knew what caused them. He could be rushed to the hospital but doctors never could find out the origins of the fevers.  It would not be known until after I became an adult and was working in a hospital laboratory in the late 1980s that I heard the term "FUO/Fevers of Unknown Origin." It was at that time that I requested of dad's middle-Eastern Indian doctor by the name of Dr. TP Reddy Tukivakalaka to do a febrile agglutinations test. It was a compiled test of titers of various different rare diseases and viruses. We had a brand new machine in the lab at that time. When the medical technologist applied the serum from dad's blood into the machine, it began to count the typhus titer ... and it never stopped.  Suddenly, we knew "a" cause of his FUO. He was imediately put into isolation. Can you imagine what that is like to a POW?  But .. once again he survived.

My family suddenly felt like we had some "ammunition" to fight with.

Flash back to 1982.

Here is the testimony of my father, Gregory Rodriquez, Ex-POW 768, at the U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Veterans' Affairs, Sub-Committee on Oversight and Investigations Hearing held in Helena, Montana on June 19, 1982.

"Mr Chairman and members of the House Committee: I wish to express my appreciation for the opportunity to insert this, my testimony, into the record.

"I enlisted on February 6, 1941 to serve in the United States Army Coast Artillery Corps. It was my preference to go to Fort Mills and be a member of the 59th C.A.C. stationed in the Phillipine Islands. Arriving in the Phillipines in April 1941, I was stationed on the fortress of Corregidor.

"From that point in time, my life can be described by three words, COMMITTED, CONQUERED, AND CONDEMNED.

"When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, we in the Phillipine Islands, as America's first line of defense, were "committed" to the battle which followed.

"With arms and equipment adequate in World War I, but sadly inferior to the automatic fire power and weaponry used by our enemy, we put up a stubborn resistance. For five months the American defenders of Bataan and Corregidor held the Imperial Japanese Army at bay, upsetting their time table of conquest. Outnumbered and outgunned, we were finally overwhelmed. From that point in time, we were the "conquered' ones. April 9, 1942, Bataan surrendered. On May 6, 1942, Corregidor, Fort Hughes, Fort Drum, Fort Henry, and other defenses were surrendered.

"Abandoned, but unbowed, we faced an uncertain future. The survivors on Bataan had already experienced the infamous "Death March." The conditions and inhuman treatment inflicted upon them, on that march, decimated their ranks through malnutrition, dysentary, starvation, and brutal executions committed by the enemy upon their helpless captives.

'We on Corregidor were held in the 92nd garage and motor pool area on Monkey Point for two weeks. The three days of captivity without food or water left us physically weak. On the fourth day we were issued a tablespoon of dried rice and a canteen of water twice a day. After about two weeks of captivity, I was loaded on a small inter-island ship with a group of men from the 92nd area compound. After we arrived at the Cavite Naval Base we were forced off the ship one mile from shore. We were forced to swim inland or drown. Thank God I was a good swimmer! We were marched to Bilibid Prison and later to Cabanatuan Camp. From there we went on the "Hell Ship" Tortura Maru to Hotan Camp, Mukden, Manchuria."   

 Authors note:  It is an established fact that the Japanese subjected American POWs to biological germ warfare. The Mukden Camp was the site of the Japanese Unit 731 germ warfare tests. It was at this point in time at Mukden that my father began suffering from the undiagnosed, recurring fevers since his return from the war or most commonly known now in the medical field as "fevers of unknown orgin."  Dad told his children how one winter when he was very ill, the Japanese attending him in the camp hospital, ran a feather back and forth under his nose. He would say to us, "I guess they did it to see if I was breathing. Maybe if the feather moved they knew I was still alive." However, it is now known that feathers laden with germs were used to transmit disease and hasten death in the gravely ill. But as my mother wrote in a book she had published, "In his infinite wisdom, God saw a plan for Gregory's future and brought him out of a situation where many died ..."  Through interviews with other POWs that were encamped with my dad we heard how the bodies of some were frozen then in the spring those parts were dissected.

TESTIMONY CONTINUES:

"If i were to write all that I experienced as a prisoner of war it would fill four or five hundred pages in a book. We were "condemned." We were held for an average of 39 months . Many of us have wounds that are readily discernible to the naked eye. We also have wounds that are not so easily seen. Unseen wounds have left residual effects of beriberi, malnutrition, avitaminous, malaria, dengue fever, and stress related ailments (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder).

"We, as survivors of Bataan and Corregidor, and all EX-POWs, are still "condemned" to fight for rights we feel are deserved to live our remaining years with "dignity." Is this too much to ask for the sacrafice we made to preserve the freedom we all enjoy today?

"Must we once again experience being conquered, not by foreign and hostile forces, but our own bureaucrats who demand "proof" that we are plaqued by the residuals of these diseases and stress related ailments?

"Are we "condemned" to a fruitless battle for fair and better treatment already won by our friends and fellow prisoners of war in Canada? Must we remain "condemned" to pay teh price, both mentally and physically, by demands placed upon us to supply records by the very people who in their own words stated in teh recent study on EX-POWs, 'The burden of proof no longer rests with the claimant, but upon the Administration.'

"Finally gentlemen, the fortunes of war 'condemned" us survivors to three years or more of man's inhumanity to man. If we were called to serve our country once more, my comrades and I would volunteer to serve wherever we were sent.

"The love of freedom demands sacrifice in times of war. The loss of our freedom for a time makes it all more precious for the EX-POW.

"Are we asking too much? Have we not earned the right to live our remaining years with dignity and pride? Surely a country that can supply millions of dollars for foreign aid and benefits to people in foreign lands can set aside a portion of its wealth to provide for its own. Thank you."

My dad died on June 1, 1996. But before that, along with my mother, Lois Marie Baird Rodriquez, he co-founded The Mukden Survivors organization, which brought together for the first time the survivors of Mukden concentration camp. This organization continues to meet annually even to this day and has attracted international media, as well as national media attention. Gregory served as a capable spokesman for the fellow soldier with whom he shared a three-year long hell during WWII. He was also a member of the Executive Board of the American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor.

Sadly, I would have to become an adult before I could fully understand the dynamics of such a complicated man. When he suffered with the fevers and illnesses, we all suffered. We lived with the fear of his death. yet he was so hard to love, at times. But when he did die at the age of 71, we all said, "He has suffered enough." and so we "let it be."

The family had vowed that when he died we would have an autopsy done so we could find the origins of all his illnesses. But when he did die, we just concluded "it was beri-beri heart."

He was buried with governatorial honor guards in the hometown that he loved surrounded by the everlasting Tulledega Hills, the ove of his life and six children who adored him.

May he rest in peace.

 

The end.

After the war, the Japanese submitted to the American government slides from autopsies done on the POWs. Maybe some day they will be opened and made public.

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