 Well, the order came from above, but at that point Commander Sackett was the commander of the Meraviles area. So he gave the orders. The fellow that actually carried out the scuttling was a Lieutenant Commander Al Hedi, who was the first lieutenant. So the decision was made to scuttler because she was still a valuable ship at that point because she could produce lots of little parts and pieces and she was actually doing a lot of work for the Army, like supporting and also construction work that was going on. She was making parts for bulldozers, for tanks, she was making stretchers for take care of casualties. She was a very valuable ship. They literally opened everything up. They could be opened up. The men went to work with sledgehammers on the equipment, the delicate optics and what not. They took out the breech blocks of the guns and threw them over the side. There were four torpedoes left in the magazines and they wrecked them so they couldn't be used. And so eventually everything that was done to sink the ship was done. She was backed out under her own power. She wasn't towed. She was under way until the very end. The canopas are out in the middle of the Meraviles Harbor going down. I was at 228 signal operation battalion on Baton, Army Outfit. My last order I got from the Army was, you are on your own. Baton is being surrendered. The boats were gone. The crew was gone. They had already left and went to Carigador. Me and three other guys, we formed up and we found some floating material and we swam over to Carigador about a mile away. We were fortunate I think. We caught the tide right. Remember, we got to Carigador. The Marines over there said, telling us, go back to Baton. We haven't got anything to eat over here anyway. But they finally let us aboard and we went back with the canopas crew upon Gary trail on Carigador and they formed what they called the Navy Battalion. They were sending people to various units and various smaller ships within the inshore patrol operating out of Carigador and Meraviles. So she was serving as sort of a personnel pool. The largest amount of men went to the 4th Marine Regiment which had been pulled out of China just before Pearl Harbor in late November. They were originally on Baton and then went to Carigador to man the beach defenses. The Marines sent a couple of sergeants to try to teach us how to be infantrymen. The time on Carigador we were there about 30 days approximately from April of 9th until May the 6th. The Japanese landed on Carigador the night of May the 5th. The Navy Battalion went out and fought them with the Marines and the Army. General Wainwright sent her to Carigador and all the rest of the Philippines on May the 6th of 1942. We were ordered to lay down her arms. The war was over for us and that was all of the canopas at that point. She was on the bottom of the ocean. They finally says we're taking you out. We were put on a boat and taken to Manila. We were marched from the docks to the railroad station in Manila. The Filipinos are all on the sidewalks trying to give us something, helping us if they could. We were loaded and taken to commander to one number three. I was there from only a few days really. I was called out of commander to one by name rank and serial number. We were 1500 all told. But they called us out one after another and load us on the Totori Maru Japanese troopship. There were 1500 Americans and 1500 Japanese soldiers on it. We went from Manila to Formosa, stopped there. We went out and headed out and we were fired on by an American submarine. It fired three torpedoes. One of them broached and the routine on the ship was half of the 1500 Americans were below deck. The other half were on top, up on the deck. But we hollered and we saw all the torpedoes and the commanding officer of the Totori Maru swung the ship just enough. One torpedo passed on one side, the other passed on the other side. Both of them missed. They took us off up on the dock and washed us down with fire hoses. We went out again. Submarines were sighted. We went back in. This time they took Japanese soldiers off. And we went from there over shallow waters of China on up to Busan, Korea I think it was. Loaded on the train and taken on up to Gamuk-do. More than 27,000 Americans were held captive in the Pacific Theater during World War II. Nearly half didn't make it home.