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 “He’d come home, all you’d see is his eyes,” recalls Bill today.
“The rest of him was all covered over with the coal dust. There was
five of us [kids] in my family. Dad called us the hungry five.”
At age 14, Ingram was expelled from school for what today would be a
frivolous offense. His options were few, but Bill knew what he
wanted. He enthusiastically enlisted in the Navy on his 17th
birthday in June 1941.
He thrived on the rigorous training at Great Lakes, and was proud
when the Navy assigned him to the USS Houston, a heavy cruiser then
sailing the seas west of the Philippine Islands.
On December 7th Ingram was somewhere west of the Hawaiian Islands
steaming toward Australia where he was to join up with the USS
Houston crew. Once on board, he instantly became the greenest and
youngest member of a crew of old salts and experienced hands. Within
days the Houston was back at sea as part of a small naval task
force.
 While patrolling the Java Sea on February 27th, 1942, the task force
encountered a Japanese invasion fleet. It was an uneven fight, and
one day later, just after midnight, the USS Houston was hit by
torpedoes and naval gunfire. The ship was listing heavily when word
went out to abandon ship; Ingram jumped into the water about 3 a.m.
“When I hit that water, I started to swim,” he recalls. He swam as
hard and as long as he could to avoid being sucked down with the
ship, then found himself alone in a vast ocean as he watched his
ship slip under the waves. “I was in that water all night long by
myself, in the dark, from three o’clock in the morning until three
or four o’clock the next afternoon.”
Ingram’s troubles were just beginning. He was picked up by a
Japanese patrol boat, then transferred to a larger ship, but no
other Americans were on board. Soon a Japanese officer began an
interrogation. “You are a baby,” the officer began. After each
question Ingram answered “I don’t know; I don’t know that,” and he
spoke the truth.
“Every time that he asked me a question, there was a sailor standing
behind me; he had his fist rolled up and he’d hit me with the inside
of his fist right on the ear. … I couldn’t hardly hear what was
going on after about five minutes,” Ingram said.
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When they finally decided that Ingram indeed did not know
anything, they tossed a life ring into the water, then threw
Ingram in after it. He swam away from the screws, then realized
they were using him for target practice. Once again he swam for
his life.
Ingram’s luck finally improved. He was picked up by a small
group of Houston sailors who had commandeered a native fishing
boat. The group eventually made it to land, and headed for a
building flying a Red Cross flag where Javanese natives gave
them some food and clothing, then “they put us in a cell. It was
a jail. It wasn’t a hospital, it was a jail!”
It wasn’t long before Japanese soldiers arrived and took the
small party of Houston sailors captive.
Of the USS Houston’s original crew of 1,061 men, 368 survived,
and most of them, including Ingram, spent the rest of their war
working in the hellish jungles of Burma constructing the Burma
railroad, which the prisoners derisively called the “Death
Railway.” The name was all too fitting, with over 12,000 Allied
prisoners of war dying during its construction.
Ingram survived that ordeal, but by 1945 his health gave out. He
came down with a serious case of malaria, and cannot remember
his liberation or his trip through Calcutta to New York City. He
gained his senses once in America, took the train to Illinois,
and surprised his mother when he arrived on her doorstep in
Springfield.
 “The happiest day of our lives,” his mother wrote on a snapshot
taken that day. “Our second son Billy had arrived home after
three years and eight months in a Japanese Prison Camp.”
Bill Ingram made the Navy his life after the war, retiring in
1961 as a Chief Petty Officer. He suffered unimaginable
cruelties during his captivity, but endured it all with his
spirit intact. He now lives in Jacksonville, Fla., close to the
ocean he loves.
[Mark DePue, Director of Oral
History, Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum]
Mark DePue is the Director of Oral
History at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum. You
can listen to Bill Ingram’s entire story and many others in the
“Veterans Remember” section of the program’s website,
www.oralhistory.illinois.gov. |
