The following is from a Telephone interview with former World War II Prisoner of War (POW) RADM Ferdinand Berley, MC, USN (Ret.) (
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"BUMED Oral History Project
Subject: Berley, Ferdinand (RADM, MC, USN)
Interviewer: Jan K. Herman
Date of interview(s): 7, 21, 27 February, 6 March, 3, 10, 24 April, and 1 May 1995
Location: Telephone interview
Biographical Note:
Ferdinand (Fred) Berley joined the Navy as a line officer fresh out of college in 1934, yet his true ambition was to become a Navy physician. But times were bad and the few Navy medical officers on active duty were kept busy caring for young men at CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) camps scattered around the country. In 1937, the year he graduated from Northwestern Medical School, the Navy had only 20 openings for new physicians but the young Dr. Berley took the examination and secured one of them. After a surgical internship at the San Diego Naval Hospital, he volunteered for duty with the Asiatic Fleet. First as a destroyer division medical officer and then a physician assigned to the 4th Marines, Berley saw the Orient quite a contrast from what he left behind. He arrived in Manila in September of 1939 and was assigned as medical officer of Destroyer Division 58. At the time, he was responsible for four destroyers, which constituted a division. A squadron was made up of three divisions. DESDIV 58 had four destroyers-Parrott (DD-218), Bulmer (DD-222), Edsall (DD-219), and Stewart (DD-224). As medical officer, he saw to the health of their crews and staffs. Afterward, Dr. Berley served with the 4th Marines in Shanghai just as war clouds were gathering. He accompanied the regiment when the Marines evacuated to the Philippines in November 1941. There Berley drew an assignment at the Navy yard dispensary at Cavite. He learned the war had started when a colleague shook him awake at 5:30 in the morning saying, "Fred, we just got word. The Japs bombed Pearl Harbor."
"And all I said was, 'Good. Now we can lick the sons of bitches,' and I turned over and went back to sleep."
On 10 December, Dr. Berley witnessed the Japanese bombing of the Cavite Navy Yard, an attack that virtually destroyed the yard and resulted in hundreds of dead and wounded. Just days later, he and his comrades evacuated Cavite and, when GEN Douglas MacArthur declared Manila an open city, the Americans began a harrowing retreat down the Bataan Peninsula toward the port of Mariveles. On the night of 29 December, Berley and his 4th Marines sailed the short distance across Manila Bay by barge. For the next three months, Berley and his comrades withstood the siege of Corregidor, defending the island fortress in Manila Bay from Japanese bombers and later an invasion force that overwhelmed the defenders, forcing their surrender in May 1942.
After his capture at Corregidor, Dr. Berley had a variety of prison experiences. His odyssey took him first to Bilibid, a dreadful prison in Manila, where thousands perished from disease and starvation, then to the farm camp of Cabanatuan, and finally to Japan itself where he worked in the prison hospital at Tsumori Camp in Osaka caring for American and Dutch POWs.
Shortly thereafter, the Japanese sent him to Ichioka, a nearby hovel masquerading as a hospital, the first of several wretched POW camps, before he was liberated in 1945.
Following repatriation, Dr. Berley continued to serve in the Medical Corps, attaining the rank of rear admiral before retiring in 1959. He then practiced surgery in Jacksonville, FL, until he retired in the mid-1980s.
In 2005, he accompanied former Medical Department Historian, Jan Herman, and a film crew to the Philippines for the making of "Guests of the Emperor," part 3 of the World War JJ documentary series, Navy Medicine at War.
In August 2012, Dr. Berley celebrated in 100th birthday in Jacksonville, FL. Among those well-wishers was Jan Herman. "It was a privilege and an honor to be part of Dr. Berley' s 100th birthday celebration in Jacksonville," Jan Herman reported. "He is truly a remarkable man, not only for surviving an ordeal that many soldiers, sailors, and Marines, did not, but for providing expert and compassionate medical care to the men in those prison camps. More than a few of them came home as a result of Dr. Berley' s dedication and skill. But, more importantly, RADM Fred Berley, without doubt, represents the 'The Greatest Generation's' finest.""
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