The distant, paper-thin notes of Taps, a somber reminder of the acute suffering and death of countless veterans, are a source of indescribable sadness for Ben Dunn, who has seen fellow soldiers give up their lives to preserve ours.

I don’t like Taps.’ I’ve heard it too many times, Dunn said. I can remember when the bugler played it long ago with all the sick people around it really shook me up.

Dunn, an 80-year-old Murphysboro resident and Gorham native, is a retired World War II veteran who served nearly all of his four-year enlistment as a Prisoner of War. When Dunn attended SIUC in 1941 as a history major, he had to make a decision about the war.

Fearing a mid-semester draft because he had a low draft number, Dunn volunteered in June 1941 for one year in the U.S. Army. He did not return home until 1945.

I figured I could have served for one year, be back home to enjoy the summer in 1942 and start college again in the fall, Dunn said. That’s not what happened.

Dunn left for overseas duty with the 26th Field Artillery Headquarters Battalion in November 1941 from San Francisco. His seven-ship convoy, escorted by the USS Pensacola, was already deep in the Pacific Ocean en route to the Philippines when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.

The convoy of ships was re-routed to Australia, where Dunn was one of the first American troops to land.

Protect Java from the Japanese

Dunn arrived with 620 soldiers on the island of Java in the Dutch East Indies, which is now called Indonesia.

He describes the operation as being the placement of a token force on Java. The soldiers had to protect Clark Field, which housed several B-17 bombers.

The Dutch ship transporting Dunn from Australia to Java was lucky to have made it without being sunk.

We came to find out that the Japanese were sinking just about every ship between Java and Australia, Dunn said. I think since the Dutch ship was so fast, it eluded the Japanese.

While U.S. soldiers protected and maintained Clark Field, the Japanese would fly over, bombing and spraying the airfield with machine gun fire.

Eventually, Dunn’s battalion left for Australia, but left behind 17 men. Dunn was one of the 17 who remained behind because he had one of the lowest ranks in the unit. One battalion, made up of 500 troops, remained on Java to defend it from Japanese invasion.

Eighty-thousand Japanese land at Java

On March 1, 1942, Japanese forces landed on the east and west sides of the island. Dunn’s unit began moving two firing batteries of cannons to the west of the island.

The Japs were overhead all day long when we were on the move, Dunn said. As we moved, the trees provided protection, and the planes couldn’t see us.

Under the influence of Japanese propaganda, Java troops refused to fight the Japanese, and many left for the jungles. Japanese propaganda was common throughout the Pacific islands, and it was effective.

The Houston, a U.S. battleship off the coast of Java, was sunk on March 1 when the Japanese invaded the island with a force of 80,000 troops.

The Houston was our only hope of getting off that island, Dunn said. We had 500 Americans and 1,000 Australians left to fight 80,000 Japanese.

If we had known what was going to happen to us in the next four years, we would have died in those jungles fighting.

Shortly after the Japanese invasion, the Dutch surrendered the island. Troops on the island were ordered to report to a tea plantation, where Dunn said that the Japanese were relatively kind to the Americans.

The Japs didn’t know what to do with us, Dunn said. The Japanese didn’t believe in surrender. They would commit suicide before surrendering. You weren’t going to see any Americans committing suicide.

The men were moved around periodically on Java before arriving at the Bicycle Camp, where Dunn worked at boat docks, built air fields and did other odd jobs. The troops were forced to learn simple Japanese orders and numbers.

Dunn noticed that as time went on, treatment of POWs became harsher.

One Japanese soldier said kioshi’ (attention) to me and made a hand gesture, Dunn said. I thought he was waving to me, and I waved back. He was actually giving me an order, not waving. He slapped me in the face and that was hard to take. But I had to.

Every morning, the POWs lined up at the Bicycle Camp and had to sound off, in Japanese, what number they were in the line. Dunn said he would look down the line, figure out what number he was and try to remember what that number was in Japanese.

You didn’t dare make a mistake, he said. If you made a mistake they would beat you they would hit you in the teeth with the butt of their rifles. Hell, they did it to their own people.

POWs were shown newsreels of Japanese violence. Dunn saw a reel from 1937 showing Chinese being forced onto their knees before Japanese soldiers put bullets into their heads.

Dunn’s acquaintance captured in Battle of the Bulge

While Dunn was being starved and overworked in the Japanese prison camp, an acquaintance of his was retained in a German prison camp in Bavaria.

Paul Townes, 80, a Murphysboro resident and retired lieutenant colonel, knew Dunn when they both attended SIUC in the late 1930s. Townes was captured in the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944.

I was a POW in Germany, but it was nothing like what Benny went through, Townes said. If Ben hadn’t been such a great physical specimen, he wouldn’t have made it.

Ben had some rough experiences, but he didn’t let it get to him.

Houston’s sailors survive torment

The Bicycle Camp had running water and lights basic essentials that Dunn would do without after he was moved in June 1942.

Dunn recalls seeing sailors from the U.S. Houston around the camp. Only 350 sailors of 1,100 had survived the sinking of the ship off the Java coast.

When I saw those sailors in the camp, they had no clothes and their bodies were full of sores, he said. They didn’t have any gear, and they ate rats and cats and anything they could find. There was one sailor who used a baby’s potty to eat his rice out of.

Most of the meals given to the POWs were rice, which Dunn said was dirty contaminated with worms and bugs. Through time and hunger, most soldiers learned to ignore the bugs and dirt.

Singapore-bound via a hell ship

When the POWs left Java, they headed to Singapore on Japanese ships, referred to as hell ships by American POWs.

The Geneva Treaty specifically states that a ship had to identify itself if it carried POWs, but the ship that carried Dunn and the other POWs was unmarked. Dunn remembers the tiny rooms in the hold of the ship with 50 men crammed into them. The conditions made it impossible for anyone to lie down or rest.

Imagine 50 men stuffed into a little area. We were crossing the equator you can imagine how hot is was down there, Dunn said. We got two bowls of rice a day, and needed to get permission to use the bathroom.

The trip to Singapore took four days.

Gibraltar of the Far East

The Japanese had so many prisoners at Camp Changi on Singapore that they let the English run their own prison camp. The English would receive orders from the Japanese and ensure the tasks were carried out.

The troops began experiencing starvation in Singapore. Red Cross ships would bring rations to the island, where Dunn said that English officers would hoard them in their quarters.

I came across some English officers once, and they wanted to play basketball, so I agreed to play and got some of my buddies at the camp, he said. When the score was 50-0, they said they had enough and invited us to their quarters for tea and crumpets.

I saw walls and walls of rations, and from that point on, we stole everything we could from the English. We stole them blind.

Dunn left Singapore after three months with other Americans on a 3,000-ton ship called the Dai Moji Maru.

The trip to Burma

The two-ship convoy that transported U.S. and Dutch troops to Burma was illegally unmarked. During the trip, Dunn recalls hearing U.S. bombers flying overhead when he peaked out of the hold and saw the planes’ bomb doors open up.

The planes were bombing our ships without knowing they were full of Dutch and U.S. troops, Dunn said. The bombs missed our ship, but they really hit the other ship transporting Dutch prisoners.

Because the bombs hit the center of the boat, Dunn said that many Japanese were killed instead of the Dutch. Dutch soldiers began jumping overboard while the ship was going under.

The Japanese never gave POWs any type of life preservers, Dunn said. Those Dutch were drowning the Japanese in the water and taking their life preservers. The Dutch would just hold their heads under the water until they were dead.

Needless to say, the Japanese on our boat were very upset seeing the Dutch come aboard with life preservers on.

In January 1943 after Dunn arrived in Burma, he began construction on a railroad, underwent 12-hour workdays and became deathly ill with malaria.

Dunn helped construct a 260-mile long railroad through dense forest. The railroad ran from Rangoon, Burma, to Bangkok, Thailand. It provided the Japanese a quicker supply route of materials from the Gulf of Siam.

In all, more than 60,000 POWs assisted in the construction of the railroad.

From May to October (1943), during the monsoon, they worked us hard, Dunn said. Men were dying of malaria and other sickness. They starved us, and we were working in few clothes.

Some days, American POWs walked as far as seven miles to reach their work sites while building the railroad. Of the 350 men sent to Burma with Dunn, 100 died from malaria, beriberi and starvation.

When you got too sick to work, your rations were cut, and Americans got less rations than anyone to begin with, he said. Men got tropical ulcers on their bodies and had to have amputations.

With a tearful expression, Dunn described the horrifying deaths caused by beriberi, which causes fluid to accumulate in the ankles, stomach, face, legs and scrotum. If it gets into the lungs, it will certainly cause death.

If you got sick and had to go to a camp, when you heard your buddy gasping for air, you knew it was over for them.

Dunn developed dysentery and malaria while working on the railroad, and he was sent to the 80-Kilo Camp. Of 80 sick and wounded men at that camp during Dunn’s stay, 51 died of curable illness.

They didn’t have a chance, Dunn said.

Dunn had a serious malaria attack before being transported to Thailand in January 1944.

I remember thinking to myself, Here I’ve gone through all of this and now look at me,’ Dunn said. If I died, I just hoped that I would be buried and have a marked grave.

Dunn was taken to Thailand where he stayed until he was liberated from the war, and promoted to private first class for his years of capture.

When Dunn returned home to Gorham in September 1945, he said that he did not let his experience get to him. Dunn’s tour of duty earned him eight medals, including a Purple Heart and a POW medal.

I could handle things pretty well, Dunn said. Other guys got back, and they were scared all of the time. They would commit suicide, or they couldn’t sleep or eat. Not me, I went on.

Townes said many young people today can learn a lot about responsibility from Dunn.

Too many kids today don’t understand responsibility, Townes said. Benny did what was responsible for him to do. Benny doesn’t pass the buck; he takes responsibility for his actions.

After Dunn returned, he got his degree from SIUC and became principal and superintendent at Gorham and eventually superintendent at Murphysboro.

Dunn taught baseball at Gorham to help him deal with the stress of what he had experienced overseas.

Today, Dunn is dedicated to informing school children about the events of World War II. In 1996, he revised his book The Bamboo Express. Three thousand copies of the book are in circulation.

Ben didn’t go public with his experiences for a long time until he began seeing things that were detrimental to people his age, Townes said. He saw more veterans’ benefits being eroded by politicians, and he saw fewer veterans in legislative branches.

Dunn said experiences such as his seldom are mentioned in history books.

People don’t know about the Japanese atrocities against U.S. soldiers, Dunn said. I’ve got to tell them the truth about what happened.

I think what the war taught me was that we should treat all people the same.