Woman pieces together her father's ordeal as a prisoner of war

It's been more than 30 years since her father died, but Myia Powers still reflects on the lessons her father taught her about his experiences as a World War II prisoner of war.

Powers, 55, says that as the years pass, her appreciation for what he suffered and her understanding of his philosophies only deepen.

"It wasn't until I was older that I really realized what he had gone through," Powers, of Kalispell said.

Her father, Cecil F. Powers, died of kidney cancer in 1971 when he was 49. Powers was 22 at the time. When her father was 22, he was still two years away from being released from a Japanese POW camp.

In November 1945, Cpl. Powers, then 24, returned home after being in Japanese hands for almost four years. In 1946, he married his longtime sweetheart, Dorothy Shell, and together they had three daughters.

After World War II, Powers continued his military career and retired from the Air Force in the late 1960s as a senior master sergeant.

Myia Powers knows her father was in the service before World War II broke out, but she isn't sure if he started with the Coast Guard or the Texas National Guard. But either way, she knows he was in uniform before the war began and was eager to join the war effort when America entered the fight.

His enthusiasm was understandable, given that many other young men in his town of Abilene, Texas, also were joining up.

"I don't think, though, he quite knew that he was going to be in a Japanese prison camp for four years," his daughter noted.

As a member of the 2nd Battalion, 131st Field Artillery, Powers left for foreign soil on Nov. 10, 1941. His battalion soon sailed toward the Philippine Islands to reinforce troops there. But on Dec. 7, the bombing of Pearl Harbor prompted the battalion to change course and sail toward Java.

The battalion landed on Java on Jan. 11, 1942. About two months later, the Japanese forced the battalion, along with other troops on the island, to surrender.

What followed for the prisoners were years of forced labor under the Japanese.

Some of the prisoners were sent to work on the Burma-Siam Railway, known as the Death Railway. The prisoners constructed the railroad under brutal conditions that included countless hours of work with few breaks, malnutrition and beatings from prison overseers.

Myia Powers knows her father was sent to Nagasaki, Japan, and worked in several different camps in that country during his internment. She remembers him saying he worked in coal mines and ship yards during that time, but she isn't sure whether or not he worked on the railroad.

Those years were hard on the families of the prisoners as well. They spent nearly four years with no communication from their loved ones, no confirmation of what had happened to them, and no idea when they would know anything.

The prisoners became known as the Lost Battalion.

Powers has photos of her father, some of them from newspaper clippings, which now are yellowed and curling up at the ends.

Those mementos, along with books on the battalion published after the war, tell the tales of an experience her father rarely mentioned.

A photo of Cpl. Powers taken the day of his release, Sept. 14, 1945, shows a gaunt man who weighed less than 100 pounds.

"He didn't talk about the atrocities [he witnessed], only about the bad conditions."

She remembers her father occasionally talked about the cold and the bad food that filled his time as a POW. He also talked about receiving beatings in his kidney area, beatings his daughter believes later led to the cancer that killed him.

When she was younger, Powers says she didn't think much about her father's reluctance to discuss the war. But as she's gotten older, it's that reticence that has made her appreciate her father even more.

"What's interesting," she said, "is that he never talked about anything with malice."

Her father, who suffered horrible conditions and treatment under the Japanese, never spoke ill of the Japanese people.

"I've learned that you don't have to generalize societies," she said. "People are people, and conditions are conditions. It doesn't make something a bad culture because something bad happened."

Powers says she didn't fully understand how magnanimous that attitude was until 1996 when one of her father's fellow POWs wrote a book about his experience working on the railroad. Reading that, she learned the extent of the bad conditions and cruelty her dad and others suffered.

That point was hammered home further when in 2001 she visited the Texas Military Forces Museum in Austin, Texas. The museum has an exhibit that commemorates the Lost Battalion, and a banner notes that it was the first set of American troops in combat in World War II.

"It was an eye opener as to what my father really survived," Powers said.

Powers visited the museum again this year and was proud to see her father's photo in the exhibit.

On the Veterans Days since her father's death, Powers says she has reflected on the service that the men and woman who fought past and current wars have rendered to this country. And she's also sure to think back on what her father taught her and apply it to the holiday.

"It's not about beating up on the enemy," she explained. "It's about honoring the heroes and honoring every single person who fought for something they believe in, for our country."

Reporter Camden Easterling can be reached at 758-4429 or by e-mail at ceasterling@dailyinterlake.com