Physician’s Diary Tells of Medical Horrors on Bataan Death March : World War II: Army doctor captured by Japanese secretly recorded the nightmare maltreatment, disease and death during infamous trek.

An Army doctor captured by the Japanese in World War II secretly recorded a litany of maltreatment, disease and death on the infamous Bataan Death March in a diary he frequently hid in his pants or in mud.

Three years ago, Dr. Calvin Jackson’s wife found the nightmarish jottings, many of them barely legible, in a desk drawer. Together they painstakingly transcribed the diary, often using a magnifying glass, and turned it into a book.

For more than 3 1/2 years, life for Jackson was a daily fight for survival as a prisoner of war. His experiences are etched in his memory and in the diary, part of which tells of the forced march in April, 1942, 50 years ago this month.

Jackson saw thousands of American and Filipino soldiers die as he trudged 80 miles through seemingly endless stretches of the Philippines jungle. They suffered from dysentery and malaria, thirst and starvation. Up to 10,000 died.

The diary, protected by a brown canvas cover, was his companion. He hid it in his clothing or buried it in mud near his barracks at prison camps.

He wrote in it nearly every day from Feb. 20, 1941, to Oct. 3, 1945, when he arrived in San Francisco after the war.

When he returned to his home in Kenton, 50 miles northwest of Columbus, he put the diary in a drawer in his den. It stayed there for more than 40 years until his wife, Goerdis, found it when she was cleaning.

“She said, ‘What are you going to do with this thing?”’ said Jackson, now 88. And then she told him: “You’re going to write that up so people will know what went on during the war in prison camp.”

The couple completed the manuscript in 1991 and took it to Ohio Northern University in Ada, Jackson’s alma mater. The school agreed to publish it.

All 550 copies of the first printing of the 273-page “Diary of Col. Calvin G. Jackson, M.D.” were sold last fall. There are 700 in the second printing.

An officer in the Army Reserves, Jackson was called to active duty in February, 1941, at the age of 37 and sent to the Philippines that August.

In January, 1942, U.S. troops were driven out of Manila by the Japanese and forced to retreat to the hilly Bataan peninsula.

On April 9, 1942, Jackson and a friend were driving from one U.S. hospital to another when their car ran out of gas. As they were walking to a nearby village, two Japanese soldiers captured them. The same day, Bataan surrendered to the Japanese.

Jackson and his friend joined 76,000 other soldiers who were forced to walk to prison camps in what became known as the Bataan Death March.

On April 11, Jackson wrote, “Marched at night as in day. Terribly hot, dry, dusty. . . . Very little water. . . . There were many artesian wells along road, but we were allowed to fill canteens only a few times. Lots of boys fell out of line. They were left lying alongside of the road.”

After Jackson arrived at a POW camp, many of the early diary entries were about the weather and food. But as conditions deteriorated, he kept track of POW deaths and lamented the lack of medicine.

“Other men are in terrible condition, feces odor is everywhere in wards, men thin, gaunt looking, emaciated, unshaven ragged and dirty,” he wrote on June 10, 1942. “The barracks are crowded, hideous mess.

“Their looks are unbelievable and sickening. These young men look like old, old men. Swollen faces, hands, legs. Little clothing, rags. One boy fell dead in front of the hospital.”

Jackson and some other prisoners were moved to Japan on Sept. 6, 1944. On Aug. 15, 1945, he learned through a Japanese interpreter that the war was over. He was freed Sept. 4. He retired as a colonel on Dec. 31, 1953.

For a while after his release, he had nightmares.

“Every night, I dreamed that I was in the kitchen of my house shooting Japanese soldiers as they came on my property,” he said.