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Audio
Pellett, Father Marian_Z34_WAPA-246_WAPA 4170_OralHist_Audio_public.mp3

Pellett, Father Marcian_Z34_WAPA-246_WAPA 4170_OralHist_Audio_transcript.pdf. Father Marcian was thirty when he came to Guam, and thirty-one in December 1941. At the time of this interview, he has been in Guam for fifty-two years. On Monday, December 8th, 1941, the Japanese bombed Guam at the same time that they were bombing Honolulu (where it was Sunday) and the Philippines. Father Marcian was at the commissioner’s house after performing a High Mass when a young man who had run seven miles from Agat to Umatec began yelling in Chamorro that the Japanese were bombing Sumay. The second day a plane came and shot over the houses. Overnight the Japanese started the invasion. On Wednesday there was bombing. Father Marcian and a corpsman [sp?] and a marine stayed in a shack that night and surrendered to Japanese soldiers going by the next morning. Father Marcian and the corpsman were taken to a house and told to stay there or they would be shot. That night they learned the Japanese had left, and they went back to Father Marcian’s house and stayed for a while.

On January 3rd Father Marcian was imprisoned with other priests, and on January 10th they were taken to Japan. They were on the ship with American marines and there was little food.
They arrived in southern Japan and stayed in a prison for two weeks, and then were taken to Kobe, Japan. They spent two winters with other British and American prisoners in the Canadian Academy, the first without heat. There was almost no food and they lost a lot of weight. There were about 160 people in the camp. They were moved to another camp just before the B-29s started flying over Japan in 1944. They remained in the camp until after the emperor’s surrender.

General Macarthur arrived in 1945 and started sending rescue teams to the camps. They were transported to Seattle and then flew or took a train to their individual places. Father Marcian returned to Guam on March 18, 1946, and saw that it was all torn up. He knew two people who were killed in a massacre.

Pellett, Father Marcian_Z34_WAPA-246_WAPA 4170_OralHist_Audio_transcript.pdf

American POW during the WWII Bataan Death March in the Philippines, 1941.

American POW during the WWII Bataan Death March in the Philippines, 1941.