Held By Japs 38 Months, Ode Craves Little Things.
By Carole Mitchell
After 38 months of captivity, Carsten Ode was granted his most compelling wish. He visited Wednesday with his cousin, Mrs. Earl Ellison, Cedar Rapids, and arrived home in Decorah Wednesday night for his first reunion with his family in 14 years.
Ode, 38-year-old representative of the Globe Wireless company and a seven-year former veteran of Army service in the Far East, was released from Los Banos prison camp in the Philippines Feb. He reached San Francisco on April 8.
Resting at his cousin’s home, 305 K avenue NW, while enjoying the first of the long-anticipated visits with his family, the tall, slender man Wednesday recalled in a quiet, impressive voice. “I wanted most to get home, to see my people and know that they are all right.”
Wednesday night he finished the trip to see his parents, Mr. and Mrs. George P. Ode, his brother, Luther Ode, who live at Deborah, and a sister, Mrs. Esther Rosel of Williams. A brother, Sigurd, is in the Army in Texas.
More quickly realized was a secondary wish, as soon as the parachutists opened the gates of Los Banos prison two months ago, Ode’s craving for chocolate bars. . . “Bars, bread and butter, coffee, milk, sugar,” he recited as he recalled them. “The simpler things.” He was sure that he had eaten at 20 of his cousin’s pancakes Wednesday morning, after his arrival in Cedar Rapids. “Made the Iowa way,” he added in a tone that explained he had been waiting three years to taste them. “I disregarded all laws and advice when I was freed and food was offered,” Ode said, in answer to a question. “If I was going to have a stomach ache, I decided it would be worth it.” Normally a man of 180 pounds, Ode came out of Los Banos weighing 125 pounds, to which he has added 20 pounds in his two months of freedom.
Manila fell several days before Japanese soldiers came to Ode’s house Jan. 6, 1942, instructed him to take a three days’ supply of canned food and explained he’d be back by that time. “They wouldn’t let me take a pillow, bed clothing or mosquito netting, and a netting is the important thing in the Philippines,” he said.
Women Slapped.
Ode was interned for 16 months in Santo Tomas in Manila, where he saw "many women slapped in the face by Japanese just for asking questions on their routine life in prison.”
The food situation became acute last September, when rice rations were reduced to starvation levels, while the prisoners were barred from an abundant supply of wild bananas and coconut, as well as all the food the Filipinois wanted to give them.
“I had about six or seven eggs which cost $10 each, in the last six months,” Ode said, “and sugar, which cost as much as $50 a pound, turned out to be a necessary food not a luxury.”
After working each day, Ode became so weak that he couldn’t move his legs once he reached his sleeping quarters in the evening. Despite the starvation diet that killed many captives, Ode succeeded in pulling through without any sickness. Now, although he is weak and underweight, his only discomfort is from his teeth, which deteriorated in the three-year period.
. . . Treatment was very bad . . .
“Very bad,” he explained slowly. I saw men shot.”
"And my closest friend,” he elaborated, even more slowly, “was hung up by his hands. A year later he died from a heart attack.”
The American prisoners worked two hours daily in the fields and wanted more land for their own gardens, a request denied by the Jap guards.
For smoking, the captives used banana or papaya leaves, the latter also for making their only beverage.
Native Grain.
The only extra source of food was a native grain hidden in its own husks, but the effort to shuck it and cook it hardly made it worthwhile.
“We worked all day long peeling off the husk, and then we had no utensils or fuel with which to cook it. We weren’t allowed to pick up a stick off the road.”
Only once in the 38 months did Ode receive any mail. In three weeks in February-March 1944, he received 19 letters. They had been held by the Japs since the preceding September, when a Red Cross boat docked in the Philippines, also bringing a 50-pound Red Cross box and a package from home. Ode told his cousin that her letter “was wonderful. As many as 100 people read it, because not all off them got mail and every letter was very important.”
The Yanks Were Coming.
Since last September, the captive Americans saw their own planes every day, could hear guns in early January . . .
“It was hard to keep up our morale while we were waiting,” he said.
In a few minutes after chutists landed at 7 a.m. Feb. 23, the Jap guards were beaten and for the first two nights, none of the liberated could sleep as a result of rich food again and “shock” of their freedom.
He expressed mildly his “surprise at good treatment given the Jap prisoners here,” but he appeared to more willing to talk about his pleasure at his homecoming.
It was 14 years ago that Ode, who had worked at the Sanford store in Cedar Rapids in 1929, went to the Far East as a soldier. He served two years in the Philippines, six months in Shanghai, where he won a Yangtze service medal: two years, 1935-37, in Tientsin, China, and again a brief period in Manila, before he joined Globe Wireless as commercial representative in Manila. His company gave Ode a two month vacation, “with more if I want it,” after which he’ll report at San Francisco. “I’d like to get back to the Philippines and get in on the ground floor,” he replied to a question. “I like the Philippines and the Filipinos. They love the Americans and the American way and remained very loyal to us.”
[Photo caption] CARSTEN ODE, who was released from Los Banos prison camp in the Philippines Feb. 23, visits with Judith Ellison, 7, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Earl Ellison, 305 K avenue NW, where he stopped Wednesday enroute to his home in Deborah.
Source: The Gazette, Cedar Rapids, IA - April 1945 (photo included)
Former Decorah Man Dies; Was War Prisoner
Special to the Gazette
WATERLOO — Carsten L. Ode, 63, of Waterloo, a former Decorah resident who was blinded as the result of his imprisonment by the Japanese during World War II, died Thursday enroute to a Waterloo hospital.
Ode was a prisoner of war for 38 months in the South Pacific, being rescued by American forces just 15 minutes before his scheduled execution. He returned to his parents’ home in Decorah, and lost his eyesight about a year later, apparently due to the effects of malnutrition and ill health he had suffered while imprisoned.
In 1946, Decorah residents launched a nationwide campaign that yielded $6,000 for Ode. Ode used that money to attend a school for the blind in Wisconsin and later to set up a cigar store business in Waterloo.
He was married to Mrs. Elda Walker of Waterloo there in 1948, and then became a vacuum cleaner salesman. In 1949, he became a free-lance salesman for Watkins Products, winning numerous sales awards during his 20 years with the company.
He was a member of the VFW and Moose.
Surviving are his wife; one sister, Mrs. A. R. Rosel of Decorah and one brother, Sigurd of St. Paul, Minn.
Services: Saturday at 3 p.m., St. Ansgar Lutheran church in Waterloo.
Burial: Denver, Iowa cemetery. Friends may call at the Parrott-Wood funeral home in Waterloo until 1 p.m. Saturday. A memorial fund has been established for contributions to the St. Ansgar church building fund.
Source: The Gazette - Cedar Rapids, IA — Friday, June 26, 1970
