Oklahoma WWII

Just meeting Alexander Mathews, you might not guess his “story.”  Slight of build, soft-spoken, and unpretentious, it is only after listening to him talk for a few minutes that you begin to understand what makes his story so compelling.  Listen carefully, and look into his eyes, as the words and emotions spill out, and you will begin to touch the horror, heartbreak  and heroism of war.

Alexander Mathews was born in Pawnee, Oklahoma on May 11, 1919.  A full-blood Pawnee, he graduated from high school in Glencoe, Oklahoma.  After high school, Mathews attended the Haskell Institute in Kansas, and spent a year in the First Cavalry.  In March of 1941 he entered the Army in Santa Fe, New Mexico.  From there he went to Fort Bliss, Texas for basic and individual training in artillery.  His unit left the United States on September 12, 1941 and arrived in the Phillipines nine days later. 

Just a few hours after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Imperial war planes were heading toward Clark Field in the Phillipines.  American planes were scrambled, then returned to refuel.  While they were on the ground, the Japanese attacked, destroying more than 100 American planes and launching the Japanese offensive in the Phillipines.

Mathews had heard about the attack at Pearl Harbor, and remembers seeing the high-flying bombers coming toward Clark Field, but he says American officers thought the planes were American.  It wasn’t until after they released their bombs and the strafers followed behind them that the reality was known:  the United States was at war. 

Soon, Mathews and other Americans were moved to Nichols Field to await the Japanese advance.  Within three weeks, the Japanese invasion forces were nearing Manila.  General Douglas MacArthur declared it an open city and pulled the American and Filipino troops back to Bataan, where, with dwindling supplies and aging guns and equipment, they would fight the Japanese as best they could.  By March, MacArthur had gathered up his family and left for Australia.  That left the Americans under the command of General Jonathan Wainwright, with Edward P. King serving as the Commanding General of the American and Phillipine forces in Bataan.     

Mathews says the fighting became increasingly hopeless as medical and food supplies “became nonexistent” and it became obvious the remaining American and Filipino forces might have to surrender.  “We didn’t know what we were going to do,” Mathews recalls, “until a little jeep came by with General King, with a white flag on it.”  General King agreed to surrender on April 9, 1942, after receiving assurances from the Japanese command that the nearly 80,000 American and Filipino troops would be treated well. “I just said, well, I guess that’s it,” Mathews told me, “because we realized we didn’t have enough food supply, we didn’t have enough ammunition.”

Mathews says the soldiers were instructed to destroy their guns so the Japanese could not use them.  “We began dismantling what we could of our rifles,” he said, “took the firing pins out and the bolt and buried them, until the Japanese came.  They told us to form a column of fours.  We didn’t know what it was, but it was the death march.”

And so began Sgt. Alexander Mathews’ journey into hell and history.  During the Bataan Death March, American and Filipino prisoners were marched almost 80 miles to Camp O’Donnell.  Starving soldiers were forced to march through the searing heat with little food, water or medical treatment.  “Those that were too weak, if they fell by the wayside,” Mathews remembered, “were either bayonetted, clubbed to death or even shot.”  Thousands died on the Bataan Death March, and many thousands more died at Camp O’Donnell.  The Japanese viewed the prisoners as cowards, and showed them no mercy.

The Americans were used as slave labor, in violation of the rules of war.  Mathews was placed on burial detail, digging graves for his fellow prisoners at Camp O’Donnell.  He remembers going to the infamous prison camp at Cabanatuan, where he cut down tall grass so the Japanese guards could better watch their prisoners.  It was there that Mathews received an indication of the treatment to follow.  “We heard yelling in the back, behind the fence, and some shooting,” he said.  “We heard singing as the Japanese came marching in with the head of this Filipino on a bamboo pole, marching down the middle where everyone could see it.  As we began to get in formation they put us in groups of ten and said ‘if one escapes, the rest of you die.’  That was their way of telling us we were going to be there for a while.”

Mathews, and other American prisoners, were shuttled from camp to camp.  They walked, or were herded onto railroad boxcars, or were stacked into the cargo hold on “Hell Ships” to reach their next destination.  Life on those ships, he says, was the worst part.  “That was the most gruesome experience,” he said.  “You had to stay in that one position and wonder whether you were going to get any water.”

The dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended the war, and Mathews was finally released in August, 1945.  He had spent 42 months as a prisoner of war.

After the war, Sgt. Alexander Mathews completed college and worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs for 33 years.  He later served as President of the Pawnee Tribe of Oklahoma.  Today, he is 88 and lives in Cache, Oklahoma with his wife, Joyce.       

(above)  Alexander Mathews, former President of the Pawnee Tribe of Oklahoma.

(below)  Alexander Mathews with OETA photojournalist Boots Kennedye.

One of the promises made by the men of Bataan and Corregidor to their families, communties and each other is “Always Remember Us, Never Forget Us.”  Mr. Mathews is thankful to have survived, and he is now sharing his memories of World War II with school children in Oregon, Washington, and Oklahoma. 

Until next time, Dick Pryor

(Alexander Mathews was profiled on the Oklahoma News Report on October 10, 2007.  To see the story, click on “Videos” on this website and go to “OETA’s Dick Pryor interviews Oklahoma WWII veterans.)

Posted in The War, OETA, Oklahoma News Report, Bataan, Army, World War II, South Pacific, The Oklahoman | 5 Comments »