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In September 8, 1941, I boarded the President Coolidge and sailed out of San Francisco on my way to the Philippines. Little did I know that I would spend most of the next four years as a prisoner of war.

My life to that point had been happy and somewhat carefree. My father, Philip, Sr., was the University of Minnesota’s tennis coach and the official photographer for the Gopher football team. I often traveled with him as he showed those films to various groups in the Twin Cities and surrounding areas, and sometimes I showed them on my own. I also helped my father build the scoreboard he designed and which was erected on top of Cooke Hall at the open end of Memorial Stadium.

Given my father’s connection with the University, it was only natural that I enrolled there. I found great camaraderie as a member of the tennis team and Theta Delta Chi fraternity and as a volunteer leader with several YMCA groups. Those were wonderful years. In 1939, after earning a bachelor’s degree in physical education, I decided to make the YMCA my career. I went to graduate school at George Williams College in Chicago and then began working at the YMCA’s Camp Menogyn near the Canadian border, a camp I had attended as a boy.

I took on a new role in April 1941, when I joined the Army and was sent to the Philippines, where I was stationed at Clark Field near Manila. At 12:25 p.m. December 8—which, because of the time difference, was December 7 in Hawaii—the Japanese wiped out all the aircraft at Clark Field. We retreated to Bataan and were soon ordered to cut our rations to two meals of rice a day. One month later, our rations were cut to one meal of rice each day. We were sick and starving and resorted to eating anything that moved, including monkeys and lizards.

On the morning of April 9, 1942, I was awakened by the jab of a Japanese soldier’s rifle butt and told to fall in line with the other captured soldiers. During the five-day Death March to San Fernando, men who were too sick or tired to keep up, or who tried to break rank to get water from the wells we passed, were shot or bayoneted and left where they fell. When we reached San Fernando, we were packed into small, steel boxcars. The heat inside was unbearable, and many men died.

Eight hours later, those of us still living climbed out and began a march to Camp O’Donnell, which consisted of a few buildings, no latrines, and just one water faucet. About 55,000 prisoners would eventually reach Camp O’Donnell. More than 1,600 men died during our first two weeks there; more than 4,000 died during the first two months. During the day, we had two jobs: digging latrines and burying the dead. Often, during the night, the tropical rains would wash the dirt away from the bodies, and we would have to re-bury them the next day.

Many of the men I helped to bury were my friends, and I began to build a shell around myself. I shut out all emotions. I didn’t want to get too close to other prisoners, because I knew they would probably die. The nights became very important to me, because I could look at the stars and feel that I wasn’t alone. As I looked at the sky, I began to communicate with a force greater than myself, and I felt a new strength. Nights still mean a lot to me.

In May, many of us were sent to Calauan, south of Manila, to rebuild bridges. We carried 100-pound sacks of cement, sacks that weighed more than I did. I had weighed 168 pounds when I joined the Army, but by this time I weighed only 95 pounds.

Prisoners were organized in groups of 50 and, when an American prisoner escaped during a guerilla attack, the Japanese commander gave an order to shoot all the prisoners who remained in that group. We protested, and he reduced the number to 10, whom we would have to chose. To avoid ever again having to decide which men would be shot if another prisoner tried to escape, we organized "blood groups" of 10 men, each with an interior guard whose job was to prevent prisoner escapes. When a man did try to escape, there were no decisions to be made; the men remaining in that group were executed. Later, the Japanese agreed to follow the Geneva Prisoner of War Convention and lifted the order to shoot 10 men for each one who tried to escape.

The Red Cross delivered letters from our families but, in order to survive, we had to keep thoughts of home repressed. My father stopped writing about my mother and, although he didn’t tell me so, I knew she had died. While working on a detail in the rice fields one day, I had heard her say to me, "I will be with you always." It was the day she died.

Eventually, 500 of us were sent by prison ship to the island of Mindanao, where we worked on a farm in a penal colony deep in the jungle. I got malaria and ended up in the hospital. It was a low point in my life, until I heard the man on the cot next to me humming a song I recognized. It was one of the songs of Theta Delta Chi. He belonged to the fraternity, too, and we became good friends.

After working in the rice fields at Mindanao for 20 months, I was put on a prison ship and sent back to the island of Luzon. If I had had a choice, I would have taken three death marches to one prison ship trip. The Japanese crowded us into the cargo hold of a small freighter, where the temperature reached 120 degrees and many men died. We would pass their bodies up to the deck, and the Japanese would throw them overboard.

We reached Japan in September 1944 and were sent to work in the copper mines on the northern end of Honshu. Every morning we walked down 478 steps into the mine, and every night we dragged ourselves back up those steps. The wind and snow blew through our clothes, and we were weak from a day of using picks to break the copper loose, then loading it into ore cars and pushing the cars out of the mine. At the end of the day, as I climbed those 478 steps, I had to think of something that would keep me going, so in my mind I would plan and prepare an entire Thanksgiving meal, from the dressing to the pumpkin pie.

On August 15, 1945, when we lined up to start the march to the mine, we noticed that we had new guards: kids with no weapons. They said, "No mine today," so we went back to the barracks. We didn’t know what to think. Later that day, they lined us up again and told us the war was over and that America had surrendered. We didn’t believe them.

After three days of not going to the mine, we were lined up again and told that the war was over and that America had won. We climbed to the roofs of the barracks and used cloth to spell out P.O.W., so the American pilots would see us as they flew over. There was no big celebration. After all those years of not saying too much, we had no emotion left.

The Americans parachuted medicine and food to us from B29s, but some of the parachutes didn’t open and the cans of food broke. We put everything from those cans together in a big pot and made what we called B29 stew. The food upset our stomachs, but that didn’t stop us from eating it.

We left camp September 13 and boarded the hospital ship Hope in Sendai. I weighed 68 pounds when I got on the ship and 98 by the time we landed in San Francisco. I had not cried during the three-and-a-half years I had been a prisoner of war, but I cried when I talked to my father on the telephone and was finally able to release my emotions.

I returned to Minneapolis and tried to re-start my life, but it wasn’t easy. I had trouble sleeping in a bed, so I slept on the floor. It also took awhile for me to be able to form relationships with people, but I formed an important one when I returned to work with the YMCA. On my first day there, I met a secretary named Deloris. I married her two years later. Today we live in Golden Valley and have two grown daughters and four grandchildren.

I felt that God had spared my life because I had something important to do, so I remained with the YMCA for 35 years, working with school programs, as a camp director, and with endowment and planned giving. On December 31, 1981, I retired from the YMCA and formed my own company, Phil Brain & Associates, to help nonprofit organizations develop endowments. I received two treasured awards for my work: one from the National Society of Fund Raising Executives and one from the Minnesota Planned Giving Council. In 1990 I was honored again, when the Rotary Club of Minneapolis published Soldier of Bataan, a book about my prisoner-of-war experiences.

My years as a prisoner of war taught me that the line between life and death is very narrow. I believe that many prisoners stepped across that line with at least one foot, but were brought back by a voice, a memory, or the touch of another man’s hand. In truth, I am grateful for those years as a prisoner of war, because they gave me a chance to assess my values and to determine what is really important in life. I also learned that, through prayer, you never walk alone.

Vicki Stavig is a freelance writer who lives in Bloomington. The interview for this article was complemented with material from Philip Brain’s memoir, Soldier of Bataan. The book was published in a limited run, but copies were sent to public libraries throughout Minnesota.