Zero Chance | True WW2 Stories

POW doctors during the Bataan Death March and camps had no anesthesia and no surgical tools. They improvised surgery using broken glass, sharpened spoons for surgical tools. For sutures they used needles and thread from army sewing kits while fellow prisoners held the patient down. American and Filipino prisoners were left with no medical care at all. When one exhausted prisoner developed severe abdominal pain, the diagnosis was clear to the POW doctors: appendicitis. Under normal conditions the operation was routine. In a prison camp along the march route, it was almost certainly a death sentence.
The POW begged the camp doctor for help. The doctor initially refused. There was no hospital, no anesthesia, and no proper instruments. Attempting surgery under those conditions would almost certainly kill the man.
Desperate, the prisoner made one final request. If the doctor could not save him, he asked that the doctor at least help him die quickly and spare him the agony that was coming.
The doctor later recalled that the prisoner’s determination changed his mind. The man’s attitude convinced him that he might have the strength to survive the attempt. With the help of other prisoners, the doctor improvised what little equipment he could and agreed to operate.
Months later, while held at a POW camp, the doctor learned that the prisoner had survived the ordeal. In a place where death was constant, the story became a rare source of encouragement — proof that resilience and determination could sometimes mean the difference between life and death.
Source:
Elizabeth Carr, Japanese Prisoner of War Camps: Attitude, Medical Treatment & Survival, Senior Thesis, UNC Asheville, April 2009.

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