On December 14, 1941, Wesley and his group were sent to establish an emergency landing field at the southern tip of Mindoro Island at San Jose, 140 south of Manila.  After Bataan and Corregidor fell, he and about 50 others started hiking east through jungle and rough terrain to the east coast of Mindoro to the village of Mansalay.  They commandeered three outrigger canoes and made it to the Tablas island.  From there they went south to the island of Tablas.  From there they went south to the island of Panay following the west coast to Pandan.  Because of increased pressure from the Japanese, they travelled to Cuyo Island in the middle of the Sulu Sea covering about 175 miles in two-to-three weeks.

It was there on May 20, 1941, that the Japanese finally captured them.  The Japanese Navy loaded them on a seaplane tender and sent them to Manila Bay and then to Bilibid Prison.  Knowing the conditions in the prison weren’t conducive to a long life, he volunteered to work on a farm.  He was sent to a place called Clark Field, which was one of the better prison camps.  He spent two years there until late summer 1944 when he was moved to Cabanatuan then onto the Nissyo Maru, a shop in Manila Bay, and transported to Mojji, Japan, what he called 19 days on a hell ship.   They were then transferred to a train and sent to prison camp Fukuoka III.  For the next year, they spent every day traveling from the camp to the Yawata Steel Mill.  The order was given near the end of the war when the invasion began; the Japanese were to kill all the prisoners.  Wesley said that if it were not for the atomic bomb, they would have all been killed.  The A-bomb saved lives – the lives of the prisoners, the allied troops that would have invaded, and the Japanese who would have fought to the death of every man.

The soldiers were repatriated on September 13, 1945, when the Marines under Col. Davis took over Fukuoka III.  They were taken by train to the docks in Nagasaki where some were put onto a hospital ship and others were put on the aircraft carrier Endeavor and taken to Okinawa.  A couple of days later they boarded a B-24 bomber and flew to Clark Field where they changed planes to a cargo plane for a quick flight to Manila.  Two weeks later they boarded a Dutch transport ship back to Seattle, Washington, and then on to Ft. Lewis.

After medical check-ups and treatments, the soldiers were put on troop transport trains back across the country to Ft. Devens.

After 110 days of leave, Wesley had to report back to Ft. Devens where he was given a choice:  Go to a new base for assignment or go to Ft. Dix, NJ for discharge processing.  He chose discharge, went to UNH, and graduated with a BS in Occupational Therapy.

After a few years he felt the need to enlist again but in the new Air Force and went through BootCamp again.  When they told him he would have to go through survival school, he vehemently protested, and wound.  He retired from the Air Force in 1966 as a Staff Sergeant.

This story was chronicled by Deby Jo Ferguson, ‘A Walk Though Hell.’