Eul, now on 90-day furlough, interested in seeing what “topside of B-29 looks like”
Home on a 90-day furlough after three years as prisoner of the Japanese, Cpl. Robert Eul of Maspeth is home with the Silver Star Medal. He is keenly interested in “getting a ladder and seeing what the topside of a B-29 looks like.”
Eul, who is 24 and the son of Mr. and Mrs. John Eul of 59-93 Fresh Pond Road, explained he had plenty of chance to see what the big bombers looked like from underneath during air assaults on Japan. He was in the Philippines 22 months before he was captured when Corregidor fell in May 1942. With him was his battery mate, Cpl. Joseph Korbo of 37-03 24 Ave Astoria, but they were separated and did not see each other again until the war was over, and both were liberated.
One beating administered by his Japanese captors Eul remembers particularly. He and other prisoners were forced to work on Japanese airfields, and he and two other men took some coconut oil which the Japanese used for tractor fuel. This they spread on their rice and according to Eul, “It wasn’t bad chow.”
But when the Japanese found out what they had been doing, the three were beaten with pick handles.
Eul was evacuated from the Philippines in 1944 and transferred to a mountain camp on Honshu. Here there was a vegetable garden on which the prisoners worked every day, but when the vegetables were ready to eat, the Japanese confiscated them.
The prisoners were not told the war was over until a week after the surrender, but Eul said they knew something was up for they were not forced to work in the led mines any longer, and they were given all the rice and beans they wanted.
Finally released, Eul and his companions made their way by rail to the town of Sendai where they met American sailors.
He has six years of army service behind him.
His older brother, Arthur, 29, has just been discharged from the Army with the grade of staff sergeant after service in Europe. Another brother, Lawrence, 18, is in training at Pensacola, Fla. as a Navy aviation machinist’s mate.
The three brothers attended PS 73, Maspeth. Arthur then attended Richmond Hill High School and Lawrence went to Newtown High School, Elmhurst.
