One of America's True Heros

An early chapter in the life of Salt Lake City's Courtney Kruger

By Tom Owens

This is an early chapter in the life of Courtney Kruger of Salt Lake
City. Courtney had a harrowing 3 year journey through hell when he was
18 to 20 years old. He narrowly escaped death on numerous occasions
simply because the finger of fate pointed slightly to the left or right
of where he was at any particular moment.

Courtney had always loved airplanes. He made and flew models when he
was a boy growing up in San Bernadino California in the 1930's. When
he graduated from high school he followed his good buddy Lowell, from
the model airplane shop, into the US Army Air Corp. He joined on l May
1941 with the hopes of going to flight school and becoming a pilot.

As often happens, world events overcome personal agendas. Such was
the case with young Courtney. As he waited for his slot in flight
school he was assigned to the 19th Bomb Group which was soon sent to
the Philippine Islands as pre war tensions mounted.

Courtney's unit was assigned to the Del Monte airfield in the jungles
of Mindanao in the Southern Philippines. He was there on that day of
infamy, 7 December 1941. In the following weeks he participated in
many momentous events including the evacuation of General Macarthur,
his family and staff on 12 March, and Philippine's President Quezon on
16 March 1942. General MacArthur had uttered his immortal words "I
shall return" a few days earlier as he was secreted out of Luzon on a
PT boat. MacArthur was brought to Del Monte Field on Mindanao and was
then flown to safety in Australia where he planned and executed
the strategy that ultimately prevailed in the Pacific war.

Courtney escaped capture for a few months on the island of Mindanao.
He and his comrades were very lightly armed and hid in the jungle.
After some time the commanding general of his area gave the command to
surrender. Courtney was taken captive by the Japanese soldiers and
interned in the Philippines for a couple of years in various hell
holes. The American and Philippine prisoners were despised by their
Japanese captors and brutalized routinely. Fellow prisoners were
murdered regularly and randomly.

Courtney survived this only to be sent to Japan in an incredible and
harrowing journey. For several brutal weeks they were moved through
steaming jungles and onto several different old ships to the port of
Manila. And from Manila Bay on 2 July 1942 Courtney and eleven hundred
of his fellow POW's were loaded into one of the infamous "hell" ships,
the stinking, steaming hold of an old decrepit Japanese freighter with
the strange name of "Canadian Inventor". They spent months on end in
the bowels of that hell ship through the steaming tropical summer as it
worked its way up the China Sea from the Philippines to Japan. The
prisoners were confined in the most unimaginable conditions and it was
a daily occurrence to pass their dead brothers of the night up through
the hatches and in so doing catch their only glimpse of the sky and
breath of fresh air. The guards brutalized them, and they were fed the
worst gruel one could possibly imagine.

The ship was an old and battered crate that broke down often and was
not able to keep up with the convoys. As a consequence they did not
have any protection from the roving packs of US submarines and bomber
aircraft. These American forces did not know that the ships contained
American Prisoners as they were not marked in any way. As far as the
American forces knew they were normal Japanese freighters and were thus
subject to attack and sinking. Many thousands of American men perished
in these hellish conditions by friendly fire. Courtney's ship wallowed
through this extremely dangerous combat theater with absolutely no
defenses and on several occasions was dead in the water for days on end
as American Submarines patrolled all about them. A sitting duck that
somehow survived against all odds.

Upon arriving in Japan Courtney and his comrades were paraded through
the streets like animals. The Japanese lined the streets and abused
them with rotten fruit, excrement,verbal abuse and beat them with
sticks. He was taken to a Sulfuric Acid plant in Toyama and put to
work as a slave laborer. Again the conditions were beyond belief, but
some how he endured. Along the way he was debilitated with an exotic
tropical disease and was kept alive only by the heroic actions of his
selfless brothers in bondage and an American doctor named Captain
Belinky. His weight fell to 60 pounds, and still he endured. While in
Toyama he not only survived the brutality of his captors but also waves
of American aircraft who were carpet bombing the city as he and his
fellow prisoners cheered them on amongst the falling bombs and
demoralized Japanese guards. One attack lasted four and half hours and
involved over 400 B-29's. The town and factory was completely
pulverized and over 10,000 were killed. Once again Courtney somehow
survived.

Finally one day one of those American War birds landed and at last he
was free. Hunched over, feeble, emaciated, brutalized and diseased, but
by God he was a free and proud American Soldier. He had prevailed
against all odds; he had done his duty with honor and valor. He was
going home.

Courtney is one of America's true heros as are all of those legions of
young men and women who stood up at freedom's darkest moment and said
no to tyranny.

The preceding was published last November in the Tribune's special tribute to Veterans.