Paths which crossed

McCook’s Teri Shipshock, of the McCook Hospital Foundation and McCook Rotary Club has had a lot of interesting experiences. She has seen a great number of the interesting places, and met many interesting people, with interesting stories. For a number of years she followed her husband, Bruce, a career military men, who was serving. his country in the Air Force, in the United States and at various far-flung U.S. Air Force bases around the world. One of the stories she heard was this story of two Nebraska friends who served their country during World War II.

Harlow Brewer and Don Waggener were classmates and good friends at the University of Nebraska College of Dentistry, graduating with the Class of 1936. Both men were also graduates of the University’s ROTC program, holding Reserve Officer’s Commissions in the Army. When World War II broke out they were called to active service and sent to the Philippines, though at different times.

Dr. Waggener was in graduate school at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota when Dr. Brewer began his military service at nearby Camp Snelling. During that time Dr. Brewer and Dr. Waggener got together frequently to hash over old times before Dr. Brewer, now Capt. Brewer, was sent overseas.

Capt. Brewer arrived in the Philippine Capital city, Manilla, on the island of Luzon in the fall of 1941, shortly before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, on Dec. 7, 1941. The invasion of Luzon began the following day. Within a short time, Luzon was conquered, and Manilla was occupied by Japanese troops.

Dr. Brewer was among the thousands of Americans and Filipinos who were caught up in the invasion. The Battle of the Philippines went on for some three month, though after the first few days the Japanese invasion was no longer in doubt and the operation continued as a mopping up exercise and the rounding-up of prisoners. In April, 1942, the Japanese, under General Homma, began herding prisoners for the journey, which has become known as the infamous Bataan Death March, a hike of some 60 miles, from Mareveles, on the southern tip of Bataan, to Carabatuan, a particularly vile prisoner of war camp in Central Luzon.

We cannot be sure just how Dr. Brewer was treated, but we do know that conditions on the march and life in the Carabatuan prison camp were brutal.

Gen. Homma was forced to deal with some 60,000 to 80, 000 prisoners — more than twice as many as his intelligence had predicted there would be. Food was scarce. Medicines were non-existent. Malnutrition, sickness, and infections were rampant. Japanese guards were young, with little or no training, and oftentimes, sadistic in looking after their prisoners. Prisoners were subjected to extreme physical abuse, including being beaten and being tortured. The “sun treatment” was a common form of punishment---being forced to sit naked in the sweltering sun, within sight of cool water, without helmet or head covering, for hours. Anyone who asked for water was shot.

We know that Dr. Brewer survived the death march and was imprisoned at Carabatuan. That prison was vastly overcrowded. Bad sanitation and poor hygiene caused dysentery and other diseases, which spread rapidly. The Japanese offered no medical care, so it fell upon the American doctors, who were prisoners themselves, to do what they could for the other prisoners.

But they had little in the way of medical supplies, so, besides offering hope and encouragement, there was very little that they could do to relieve the suffering.

Unknown to the Japanese captors, the local Filipinos, who were called in to bury the dead, kept secret records of all those prisoners they buried from the Carabatuan prison. Thus, we know that Captain Brewer died at the Camp on October 31, 1942. He left behind his wife, Alice and a four-year old son, John. He was the only alumnus of the College of Dentistry to lose his life in military service during World War II.

During this time, Dr. Waggoner was in Graduate School at the Mayo Clinic. Among the courses he pursued at the Mayo Clinic was Dentistry as a part of Forensic (Scientific) Evidence.

Forensic Dentistry is at once the oldest of the Scientific branches of Crime Solutions (think Adam leaving his tooth marks on that apple in the Garden of Eden, and among the newest — furthered by advances made possible with the advent of DNA and Computer-aided research.

In 1945, following the end of World War II, Dr. Waggener was assigned to Manilla, to serve in an affiliate hospital of the Mayo Clinic at Clark Field. He was there when a newsletter from the U. od N. School of Dentistry reached him. The letter provided him with information about many of the graduates of the school, including the death of his friend, Harlow Brewer, who had died at the Cabanyuan Prison, just a few miles away from Waggener’s location in Manilla.

As Chief of the Dental Services at the Manilla hospital, Dr. Waggener was asked to assist the Army in the procedure of identifying the remains of the American prisoners who were buried in the prison camp cemetery.

The secret records that the Filipino workers had kept made the daunting task of identifying remains possible. As the remains of each body were disinterred, accurate dental charts were prepared, to be compared with the permanent military record charts for that individual. One of the bodies that Dr. Waggener worked with, and was able to identify through his dental records, was that of his friend, Harlow Brewer.

Immediately, the bodies identified were reinterred, with full military honors, in the American Military Cemetery, in Manilla. In 1949, many of the bodies, which had been interred at the Manilla American Military Cemetery, were returned to the United States, including the body of Dr. Harlow Brewer. In April, of that year, Dr. Waggener was asked, by Dr. Brewer’s widow, Alice, to assist in the graveside service for his friend, at Memorial Park Cemetery in Lincoln, a duty he was honored to fulfill.

Thus ended that series of fortuitous and providential crossings of paths by two old friends in widely separated geographical regions of the world, involving the gamut of human emotions. One classmate lost his life in service to mankind. The other lived to tell their story.

Since 1989 there has been a Memorial Bataan Death March Marathon, held annually at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, instigated by the “Battling Bastards of Bataan.” It is a full marathon, with a number of other categories for those who do not care to run the entire course. Attended by many American military units and supporters from around the world, this race rates among the top marathons in the U.S.

Up to now, there have been survivors of the Death March in attendance, though after these 70 years those numbers have naturally become quite small.