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By Al Zdon
Louis Ignaszewski saw a little more war than most Americans – and he saw it from both sides.
Not only was he wounded and later captured at
Corregidor, he was also in ships that twice were hit by American submarines, and he was present when the atomic bomb was dropped in Nagasaki.
And to top it all off, he was present aboard the USS
Missouri in Tokyo Bay when the Japanese formally surrendered. He stood among the soldiers and officers behind the table where the signatures were made on the surrender document, not as a random witness,
but as a guest of his friend, Gen. Douglas MacArthur.
Ignaszewski was just a kid off the farm in Easton, Minnesota, not far from Albert Lea or Blue Earth, when the U.S. Army sent him a message that
started with "Greetings." He was one of the first men drafted in Faribault County as the nation began to gear up for the war that was still months away. "I was just lucky I guess."
Ignaszewski had
been raised on a farm in northwestern Minnesota near Stephen. He advanced through the first eight grades in a county school and never attended public schools again. At home, he only spoke Polish, and he
is still fluent in the language of his parents. When the family wanted to go the ten miles into Stephen, which wasn't very often, they took a horse and buggy.
When he was 12, his family moved to a
farm near Easton, and, like so many kids, as America began to slide into the Depression, he worked rather than further his education. He was still working when the call came from Uncle Sam on June 17,
1941. He was 25 years old. "Everybody went in for a year and that was supposed to be it. You were supposed to come home after a year's time, but that didn't happen."
Ignaszewski was first sent to
Iowa, and then on to training in Maryland at the Edgewood Arsenal. "There was no reason why I shouldn't be happy. The food was okay and I was making $21 a month."
The camp was brand new, and he and
the other young soldiers helped build the camp's roads and buildings. In advanced training, he learned how to use chemical weapons including nerve gas at the camp. The weapons were never actually used in
the war.
He was sent to San Francisco where he boarded a ship bound for the Philippines. Aboard the same ship was the 194th Tank Battalion from Brainerd, a National Guard unit that had been
federalized just before the war began.
The ship arrived on Nov. 20, 1941, and Pearl Harbor was bombed on Dec. 7.
"We really had no idea that we were going to war until the Japs bombed Pearl
Harbor." Simultaneously, the Japanese attacked the American positions in the Philippines. Being at war was a shock to Ignaszewski and the other soldiers since the rumor was that they would only be on the
Islands for about six months for extended maneuvers.
On Christmas day, the Americans were evacuated from Manila and Clark Air Base, right during Christmas dinner. Ignaszewski and his buddies decided
they were not to be denied their holiday dinner and so they appropriated four large turkeys from the kitchen. As it turned out, that was the only food they had on their trip to the Bataan Peninsula.
Two months later, he was transferred to Corregidor, the huge fortress on the island that guarded Manila Bay. He was assigned to the 2nd Chemical Company and his job was to create sulfuric acid for
batteries used by the search lights. When the bombs rained down on Corregidor, as they often did, Ignaszewski took refuge in the Malinta Tunnel, the major artery in the fortress's maze of underground
passageways.
When the sulfuric acid manufacturing plant was destroyed by the bombing, Ignaszewski volunteered to operate a phase of the production that had to be done outdoors with no protection from
the bombardment. For his actions, he earned the Bronze Star. In April of 1942, he was struck by shrapnel in the leg and face, and he still carries four pieces of metal in his leg. It wasn't until the
1990s that Ignaszewski received his belated Purple Heart for his war wounds.
He said he encountered MacArthur many times in the Corregidor spaces. "He was a smart man. He always let you know he was
MacArthur."
As part of Ignaszewski's duties, he had a truck. One morning he was ordered to clean up himself and his truck and head to MacArthur's headquarters. MacArthur had been ordered to leave the
island, and Ignaszewski helped him pack the general's and his family's belongings for the trip to Australia. He put the general's gear on the truck and brought it to the waiting PT boats. When he had
completed his task, he said the general shook his hand. "I told him he might as well take me along, but he said that we'd meet again under better circumstances than this."
Bataan fell on April 9,
and, less than a month later on May 6, Corregidor surrendered its 13,000 American and Filipino troops. Ignaszewski and others were herded out unto a small airport runway and kept without food for several
days until Fort Drum, a nearby island, also surrendered.
Ignaszewski did not join the infamous Bataan Death, but instead was kept on the island for five more months working for the Japanese
conquerors. He helped load equipment and supplies that were being sent back to Japan. Part of his duties was to remove and incinerate bodies that were found in the fortress.
The treatment at this
point was good, he said. The Japanese guards were humane, and there still was a supply of food stored away in the island's tunnels. In November, Ignaszewski and others were sent to a camp in the
Philippines where he made and repaired tools. Because he was a skilled worker, he got better treatment than other prisoners in other parts of the camp.
Still, it was not the Hilton. The prisoners
subsisted almost entirely on rice, and many times it was filled with worms. "At first, the worms in the rice, you'd pick them out. But after a couple of months, you ate whatever came. Let the worms look
out for themselves."
When one prisoner was caught stealing tomatoes, he was brought in front of the other prisoners and was beheaded. "I made up my mind that if one guy was going to come home, I'd be
the one. You never thought about it (going home). You just lived day to day, surviving."
Ignaszewski and his seven companions in the tool shed spent two hours a day learning Japanese, and after a few
months were able to carry on conversations with their guards. The camp was turned into a large vegetable farm that included raising caribou and ducks for food.
After about a year, he was put on a ship
and sent to Japan. The ship, however, was struck by a torpedo from an American submarine and was destroyed. Ignaszewski and two others clung to a hatch door in the water for two days before they drifted
ashore in the Philippines. Two days later, they were recaptured by the Japanese.
Again, Ignaszewski was put on a ship, and again the ship was hit by an American torpedo. This time, however, the ship
was able to limp into Formosa. The men were put to work unloading ships for a time. He then was sent to Japan and put to work at Fukouka Camp 3, about 12 miles from Nagasaki.
His job was to shovel
coal at a power plant, and he was there in a large brick and stone building when the Americans dropped the second atomic bomb on Aug. 8, 1945. Ignaszewski said the heat of the blast was intense, but he
was protected by the building. "Being inside the brick building saved my life — I was sheltered from the blast and the radiation. If I wouldn't have been there, I wouldn't be here today." For two
days, the guards kept the men locked in the basement of the power plant.
On Aug. 15, the Japanese surrendered, an event that the prisoners in the camp were completely unaware of. The prisoners
figured, however, that something was afoot when their guards didn't show up for work the next day. They really didn't know what to do, though, and hung around the camp for another week expecting
something to happen.
They finally got their courage up and explored as far as the guard house, only to find it empty. A group of them, including Ignaszewski, decided to be bold, and they boarded a
Japanese train that took them through the ruins of Nagasaki. "There was nothing left there. Everything was dead."
Eventually, the train brought them to Tokyo where they were befriended by a
Spanish-Japanese businessman.
Ignaszewski said he had little trouble with the Japanese civilians, partly because he was dressed in Japanese clothing and, by this time, he spoke fluent Japanese. He
also only weighed about 100 lbs., and his skin was dark from constant exposure to the sun. He looked Japanese. In all, he had been a prisoner of war for over three years.
Shortly thereafter, the
battleship USS Missouri pulled into Tokyo Bay, and the men approached one of the launches from the ship. They were mistaken for Japanese and told to go away, but one of the former prisoners called out to
the sailors, "It's about time you got here – we've waited long enough for you." When it was determined that they were prisoners of war, they were brought aboard the ship to be debriefed.
While
on the battleship, they learned that the surrender ceremony would be performed on the ship, and soon afterward Ignaszewski spotted MacArthur on the main deck below him. He asked the officer in charge to
inform MacArthur that he was there and wanted to speak with him. This request was immediately denied.
Ignaszewski was able, though, to get a note to MacArthur telling him that "Iggy" was on board. The
general, he said, bounded up the ladder to the next deck to greet his comrade from Corregidor. "He remembered me, what I looked like, and gave me a big bear hug that nearly crushed me. I was very skinny
and he was about 250 lbs."
The prisoners of war were guests at MacArthur's table that night and the next morning for breakfast. "We ate with the officers, but we couldn't eat very much because we
weren't used to eating. I had a couple of beers and that about killed me." They stayed overnight in officers' staterooms. The next morning they were invited to be by MacArthur's side during the signing
of the surrender document.
Later MacArthur's staff sent Ignaszewski a copy of the surrender document, a treasure that he still owns.
Ignaszewski and the other former prisoners were taken back to
the Philippines to an Army hospital to recuperate and gain weight before heading back to the United States. He gained 35 lbs. in less than a month on good American food.
Back in the states in
mid-November, Ignaszewski was first sent to Fort Lewis, Washington. He was not allowed to communicate with his family until he reached the hospital in Clinton, Iowa, he was being sent to. The train from
the West Coast first made a stop in Minneapolis where then-Mayor Hubert Humphrey heard that a group of wounded veterans was coming through. The Army didn't want to let the men off the train, but Humphrey
insisted and held the train up for two hours while he took the group of veterans to dinner at the Sheraton-Ritz Hotel.
In Iowa, Ignaszewski was finally allowed to contact his family. During the war,
they had only been informed that he was missing in action. They had assumed that he was dead and had even planned a funeral ceremony. When they heard his voice on the phone, they were ecstatic. They
drove all night over 300 miles to get to his hospital bed.
Ignaszewski spent a year and a half in hospitals recuperating from his ordeal. He had nine operations, seven of them to remove shrapnel and
to fix broken bones in his left leg. As recently as the 1990s, he had a piece of shrapnel removed from his face at the VA Medical Center in Minneapolis. He has also been bothered through the years by
recurrences of malaria. He is unsure of the effects of the radiation poisoning he received at Nagasaki, but he did have some affected skin removed from his hand several years ago. He still takes
medication for malaria every day.
For years after his war experiences, he suffered from vivid flashbacks and nightmares. As time went by, he was able to overcome the PTSD, and in his 70s he finally
began to talk about his experiences.
After he returned to Easton, he operated a restaurant for a time, and he owned his own trucking line. He was famous in his hometown as a fix-it man for many
years.
In 1988, Ignaszewski was selected to represent the United States as one of "MacArthur's Heroes" in dedicating a monument to MacArthur in Australia. He was the only enlisted man in the honor
group.
He married his wife, Angelina, about two years after the war and they were married for over 50 years until she died three years ago. He lived in his own home in Easton until this year when he
moved to a nursing home in Wells. He has suffered several strokes, but he vows to return home to live again.
This story was compiled from many sources including an interview with Louis Ignaszewski
in Wells in December, 2004. Much of the material for the story, including quoted material, came from prior newspaper accounts. The newspapers included the Mankato Free Press, the Fairmount Sentinel, the
Faribault County Register, the Wells Mirror, and the Albert Lea Tribune.
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