Lucky photo saved
87-year-old's life
Man's
quick mind has been greatest asset through colorful life
News-Press.com
Joe D. Merritt is not the handsome man, he
believes, that he once was.
That is why he refused to have his picture taken, despite the argument that
nobody expects an 87-year-old to look like a young man.
"But I still think like a 17-year-old," he retorted, ending the
argument.
To be accommodating, though, he gave up one
of his most prized possessions — a 66-year-old picture of himself, wearing a
pin-stripped suit, formal topcoat, homburg and, believe it or not, spats.
He is standing next to a 1940 Champion model Studebaker automobile.
It is the picture that saved his life.
Well, the picture and Merritt's Irish proclivity for telling tall tales, his
ability to learn foreign languages without formal instruction, his quick mind,
ingratiating manners and the combined guile of his past life as both a magician
and professional gambler.
It was in
His .30-caliber machine gun position on a
forward outpost had been attacked by too many enemy soldiers to fight off, but
he had fought his way back to his own lines, using only a .45-caliber pistol
with 22 bullets and four hand grenades taken from the first two Japanese
soldiers he had killed during his flight.
He encountered many more enemy soldiers while wending his way back, killing all
of them, only to be seriously wounded by the bayonet of the last one who stood
in his way. The Japanese soldier had slashed Merritt repeatedly, until Merritt
dispatched him with a blow to the head with his then-empty pistol.
Merritt was taken to the hospital, a
primitive facility in the jungle, and lay in a coma for days. When he awoke, he
was too weak to move and soon thereafter was captured when the Japanese overran
the hospital.
"I am the luckiest s.o.b. alive," he said,
describing how, instead of being made to endure the Bataan death march that
killed many Americans and led the survivors to horrendous POW camps, Merritt
and his hospital mates were taken by truck to
There, Merritt was a slave laborer, working as a stevedore on the
He also began running what he boasts was a
major black market and gambling operation, sufficient to keep himself and his
buddies well-fed, well clothed, healthy and, in fact, flush with money.
One day, demonstrating a magic trick on the docks, he tied up the dock master,
embarrassing him. A Japanese colonel warned Merritt never to play such a prank
again.
Days later, Merritt, while out on a detail,
saw the same colonel being driven by an underling in a Studebaker Presidential
model, the top of the line.
Merritt made note of that. Before the war, he had sold Studebakers and the
picture of him standing before the car was actually used in an advertisement in
Life magazine. Merritt, scrounging around for black market stock, had found a
copy in a
Some days after that, Merritt was again hauled before the colonel, who accused
him of continuing to play rather than work and, quite accurately, of taking
advantage of Japanese soldiers by selling them clothing at high prices.
While waiting to learn his fate, Merritt, who
had learned Japanese from his guards, overheard the colonel complaining on the
telephone that his driver didn't know how to operate the Studebaker properly.
Merritt went into his act, telling the colonel that it was an honor to be
standing before him and that he was anxious to tell his father about the
colonel's Studebaker since Merritt's father, he lied, was president of the
Studebaker Corp., having founded it in the middle of a farm field in Michigan.
The colonel accused him of lying.
Merritt reached into his shirt pocket and produced proof of his story — the
picture of himself in the Studebaker advertisement.
Enthralled, the colonel asked Merritt if he
could possibly take time off of his job on the docks to teach his driver how to
properly operate the Studebaker.
Merritt allowed as how he could, and he did.
"I took the worst of circumstances and made
the best of them," Merritt said. "I brought them into my ballpark.
That's the trick of life."
It is a trick that has been the hallmark of Merritt's career — from the time he
made good money collecting and selling postage stamps as a 10-year-old, to learning
at age 17 to turn his childhood magic tricks into card sharking from a couple
of grifters amid the strawberry fields of Plant City,
to finding legitimate careers after the war.
The only time it really failed him was when he was shipped to Japan from Manila
and forced to work in the copper mines, loading eight two-ton mining cars each
dawn-to-dusk day.
He entered the mines weighing 180 pounds,
left at war's end weighing 90.
It was in the mines that he both witnessed and experienced brutality at the
hands of Japanese guards.
Some of those tales — along with heretofore
undisclosed tales of his stealth resistance while working the
He has been writing the book for seven years, hasn't yet settled on a title and
said he is having trouble finishing it because of difficulty reliving some of
the brutality he witnessed.
Merritt still works. He is a full-time commodities trader, working out of his
Then, he goes and writes on his book until
the wee hours.
He scorns any suggestion that he was a World War II hero. He did what he needed
to do to survive, he said.
That's why he won't be celebrating Memorial
Day tomorrow.
• The Moment: Working until 2 or 3 in the morning to chronicle his story of
being a POW on Bataan in the
• Who: Joe D. Merritt, 87, of
• An excerpt from his book, involving a Japanese youth named Mori who had been
captured by the Americans, who in turn, were captured by the Japanese. The
captured Japanese were slaughtered by their own
comrades:
"The
bodies of the Jap POWs were scattered about the cage, limbs hacked off, their bodies slashed open, organs lying in bloody piles. The
extent of their mutilation gave mute evidence of the insanity vented during the
atrocity.
"As
we entered the enclosure, clouds of huge, green flies, drawn by the
death-stench of viscera, rose from the remains to attack us. Pulling shirts
over our heads, we vainly tried to prevent the flies from crawling into any
orifice. Then, while covering the pitiful remains with soil, I came across
Mori's severed arm, the precious roll of rice paper still clutched in his
little, brown hand. I nearly lost my composure. This horrible atrocity had
surely been the work of a Satanic mob of frenzied
maniacs. Literally, a pack of rabid curs that no American, or
Nipponzin, can possibly visualize today. That
brutal, mass execution, the disemboweling and mutilation of their own people, should be known. The depravities of a nation's
soldiers against their own comrades must be recorded for posterity! A horror
for that nation's present day and future citizens to contemplate with disgust
for their past ...
"My
own battle-hardened experience failed me that day and I wept, realizing Mori
had become the victim of the very barbarians he had feared. Then the enormity
of the perils lying ahead for us POWs struck me and I asked Him for strength.
On finishing the grisly task, I said a prayer for my little friend, the first
Japanese to ever offer me friendship. Then I promised myself, 'Always be aware
and alert. Never forget you are now in the hands of unpredictable, inhuman,
vicious savages.' Luckily, I didn't know that ever greater atrocities lay
ahead."
Contact Joe at: jdnlin@swfla.rr.com