Courtesy of Ben Steele

Transcription

1 n the summer of 1940, 22-year-old Ben Steele was working the sheep camps outside of his hometown of Billings, Mont. As a jack-of-all-trades, Steele was living the life he loved on the Montana plains he loved, riding horses and free of even the most modest encumbrances of city life. Eighteen months later, Steele was one of 76,000 American and Filipino soldiers who surrendered to the Japanese Imperial Army at the tip of the Bataan Peninsula of the Philippine Islands. The surrender of American forces at the hands of the Japanese was the single largest defeat in American military history. What followed was the infamous Bataan Death March. If one survived the brutality of the Japanese along the 66-mile trek north to the town of San Fernando, imprisonment, slave labor and, quite likely, death awaited. Over the course of 1,244 days, thousands were murdered or died of malnutrition and disease. Ben Steele was not one of them. During his 41 months in captivity, Steele lost 50 pounds and suffered malaria, dysentery, beriberi and jaundice, to say nothing of the repeated beatings and torture at the hands of his captors. At one point during his imprisonment, a Roman Catholic priest administered the sacrament of last rites to a dying Steele. But Steele drew on the strength he had gained from his outdoors life back home in Montana. He told himself, The type of life I ve lived, dealing with the elements, I think that s going to help me take care of myself here. Beyond that, Steele relied on his fascination with the magic of drawing, which served as a way to put all this other misery aside. As other soldiers noticed Steele s unique talent indeed, his passion for sketching, some of the officers approached him with a secret project. The cruelty they d all suffered was criminal, they said, and no one was taking any photographs of this stuff, so maybe he should By the fall of 1944, Ben Steele was a prisoner at the Ominemachi coal mine prison work camp. Steele returned home to Montana in 1945, in time for Thanksgiving. Courtesy of Ben Steele 32 ARMY November 2009

2 start drawing it, create a record of atrocities for the reckoning that was sure to follow the war. All of Steele s original sketches, hidden by a priest inside a Mass kit, were lost at sea. But upon return to the United States, he pursued a degree in art and eventually taught art at Montana State University, where, following retirement, he is presently professor emeritus. Over time, Steele has sketched and painted from memory many of the scenes he witnessed more than 60 years ago. The sketches and drawings that follow (reprinted here with the artist s permission) are but a sampling of Ben Steele s lifetime accomplishments. Steele, age 91, lives with his wife in Billings and continues to draw and paint. Most recently, he was subject of a book, Tears in the Darkness: The Story of the Bataan Death March and Its Aftermath, by Michael Norman and Elizabeth M. Norman (see page 80) from which the quotations above, and those that serve as captions for the following images, are taken. November 2009 ARMY 33

3 They dropped so damn many bombs the sides of the trenches were caving in. Then the fighters came in, just coming in right out of the smoke. Hell, I was shooting at them with my forty-five. Really, right at point-blank range. 34 ARMY November 2009

4 If war s gonna come, I wanna be in it. Hell, I want to be over there where it s happening, was Ben Steele s sense of the war that awaited him. Within 18 months of his enlistment, however, his take was decidedly different: Only two things can happen to us now, we re going to be dead or we re going to be prisoners of war. November 2009 ARMY 35

5 I m going to hang in there as long as I can, Steele told himself. If there s going to be anybody left alive from this, I m going to be one of them. Upon his return to the States, he told his mother: [Y]ou just wouldn t believe where I ve been. And I can t even explain that. 36 ARMY November 2009