To hell and back

Memorial Day | On Sept. 7, 1944, Edward Treski received a lifetime dose of perspective | Edward Lee Pitts

Handout

Last January while chauffeuring around my 87-year-old grandfather, he struck me speechless when, frustrated over losing his driving privileges and heartbroken that his wife of 63 years now lived in a nursing home, he blurted: "I have no idea why I am still alive. I should have died that day."

"That day" was Sept. 7, 1944, when 23-year-old Army 2nd Lt. Edward Treski descended into a war experience so hellish he could only be saved by a torpedo and a grenade.

For two years, three months, and 15 days he survived as a prisoner in three Japanese internment camps spread around the Philippines—places where the punished found themselves hanging by their arms at the camp gate or beaten with electric cattle prods while standing in water. Where guards played games to keep their saber skills sharp by swinging their swords at kneeling prisoners' necks, seeing who could get closest before turning the blade to whack with its flat edge. Places where prisoners would hide the dead to get extra food rations until the smell became too great and where the decomposing bodies would rise out of their graves every rainy season demanding to be reburied.