Wayman Simpson

Wayman Simpson

Interview transcript

Wayman Simpson, 77, interviewed by his friend Theresa Sims, 48.
11/18/06, 15:30 Lawton, OK
TRT: 1:42

Korean War POW Wayman Simpson remembers the Korean officer who led the Tiger Death March, a brutal trek that claimed nearly 100 lives.

WS: On Halloween night in 1950, The Tiger took over. We nicknamed him The Tiger because he was so mean. The first thing he did was we had 16 men – from their wounds and everything they couldn’t walk and him and him buddies – machine gunned every one of ‘em. We knew then we was in trouble.

He shot a man a mile on the March. And second day out we ask him to slow the pace down and, uh, you know what he said to us?

‘Let ‘em march ’till they die.’

He wasn’t gonna give us any water. That’s the way he was gonna kill all of us.

But it started snowing the second day out and we ate the snow off the guy next to us and that’s the way we got our water.

We got up to the Prisoner of War camp 12 miles off the Siberian border. I had been in there a little over 38 months. We hadn’t shaved, cut our hair, brushed our teeth, take a bath or nothing. And I had two holes in my left leg that wasn’t healing up, no medical care. It stayed open wounds for 26 months. I finally poured boiling water in ‘em. They healed up after that.

I weighed 77 pounds when I came home. That’s pretty thin on a 6 foot 3 frame, you know. (Laughs.) That’s about the only way we can get by now – just joke about it.

And a lot of the youngsters died since we come home. Because they couldn’t turn it loose they wouldn’t – they just dwelled on it all the time, you know. And I’d make a joke about it. Don’t worry me none. I just let it go.

Lawton, Oklahoma, OK, Westerners, Southwesterners, prisoner-of-war, prisoners of war camps, POWs, POW’s, Korean War, The Tiger, Tiger Death March, work camps, prison camps, labor camps, soldiers, military, officers, survival, massacres, death, dying, tragedy, veterans, torturing, Fear, violence, violent, murderer, murdered, survivor, loss, surviving