Friendly fire on a Japanese prison ship resulted in the loss of Red Lion soldier’s life

Red Lion’s Thomas Frutiger survived the incessant and deadly Japanese assault on the Philippines in the months after Pearl Harbor in World War II.

And then in April 1942, Lt. Frutiger survived the grueling Bataan Death March with this rule of engagement: If you fell, you were shot.

He survived three POW camps in the Philippines from mid-1942 to late 1944. This son of a Red Lion cigarmaker owed his survival, in part, to his ability to roll smokes for other prisoners and prison guards.

Gen. Douglas MacArthur kept his pledge to return to the Philippines in 1944, but that did not help the lieutenant and his fellow prisoners of war. The Japanese needed their labor, and in mid-December 1944, they packed their prisoners into holds on the converted passenger ship Oryoku Manu for transport to Japan. Work camps awaited there, if you survived.

U.S. and Allied pilots located the unmarked vessel, known today as a hell ship, and bombed it, killing some of the POWS packed in inhumane conditions in its hold. Some POWS fled the ship, swimming to shore in Subic Bay, on Luzon Island in the Philippines. Survivors — Tom Frutiger was one of them to make the 300-yard swim — were detained on a tennis court with no shelter.

In early January 1945, they were again stacked in the hold of another hell ship, the Oryoku Manu and transported to Formosa, today’s Taiwan. The ship almost made it. Allied pilots again targeted this transport and bombed it just off a Formosa beach.

Frutiger did not survive that attack, dying, at age 33, with more than 430 other prisoners.

His story of bravery is worthy of telling on Memorial Day 2024.

DNA testing brings results

Twenty years ago, I spent several evenings at Robert Frutiger’s Red Lion home leafing through a shoebox filled with military papers, wartime correspondence and the Purple Heart awarded to his father, Tom Frutiger.

I wanted to tell Tom Frutiger’s story in a book I was writing about York County’s role in World War II, “In the Thick of the Fight.”

The papers helped tell the story of Lt. Frutiger, a 1928 Red Lion High School graduate trained in the ROTC program at Lehigh University, who was called to active duty from his engineer’s job at York Corporation. He was stationed in the Philippines before Pearl Harbor. The subsequent Japanese attacks on the Philippines forced MacArthur to depart, leaving Frutiger and tens of thousands of other beleaguered U.S. and Filipino servicemen, American nurses and others behind to fight against overwhelming forces.

In my visits in 2004, Bob Frutiger was aware of his father’s service, and he was gratified to see this sacrifice explained on the pages of “In the Thick of the Fight,” which came out in 2005.

Over the years, I would see Bob, who served as Red Lion’s mayor and in other community positions. One time, he informed me that his family had endured a fire at his house, but the shoebox — and its prized contents — were safe.

Then, last year, he told me his interest in his father’s service was ever deepening and had recently evolved into his participating in a military DNA testing program to identify his father’s remains and those of his fellow prisoner. Tom Frutiger was initially buried in a mass grave on Taiwan and later interred in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in an extinct volcano — Punchbowl — in Hawaii.

Bob would send his DNA to the Department of Defense program and received the results before his death on April 10 at the age of 90.

There was a match with his father’s remains.

Six months of silence broken

In the recent visit to the Frutiger Red Lion home, Christina Frutiger, Bob's wife of 46 years, gave me access to the shoebox, now in a plastic box. Bob had added items over the years, and the stuffed shoebox gave way to a larger container.

Bob had added his father’s military file that, among other things, gave new insights into the work of Anne Frutiger — Bob’s mother — to learn of any thread of information about her husband in his captivity. Her work continued after his death — seeking the return of his belongings, for example.

Anne worked at her father-in-law’s cigar factory to support her two son, Bob and Thomas Jr., and joined networks of families of prisoners of war. When her husband’s name was mentioned in a propaganda broadcast from the Philippines, someone in the network would send her an update. She also hosted holiday meetings of the wives of other York County servicemen.

On one occasion, Congressman Harry Haines, a Red Lion resident, told her he had talked with a nurse who made it to America before the Japanese occupation, and she told him that she has seen Tom alive and healthy.

In December 1944, the occasional prison postcard from Tom and other information stopped. That was about the time that Tom was imprisoned in the first hell ship.

Indeed, about six months passed before there was any update. Anne, Robert and Thomas were on vacation when her brother-in-law William traveled to Maryland with a telegram.

“The Secretary of War deeply regrets to tell you … ,” the telegram began.

Her husband was dead.

The young family drove home, Anne keeping a firm countenance at the wheel. As they pulled into their Red Lion garage, she broke down, and the car smashed into the end of the garage. Lt. Thomas Frutiger had died in January 1945 as a result of a friendly fire attack on a second hell ship.

Bob and Tom would fix the garage wall.

‘First heroes of the war’

The Defense Department project at the Punchbowl in Hawaii is using advanced techniques to identify 400 sets of remains of American service members.

The military has underscored the importance of the study.

The POWs who died aboard the Enoura Maru fought valiantly against the Japanese in defense of the Philippines.

”And these guys held out for months against pretty tough odds,” a Defense Department spokesman told HawaiiNewsNow.com.

“They did a lot of very heroic acts in that process. So these are the kind of first heroes of the war who then endured pretty awful conditions under captivity.”

The complexity of identifying comingled remains is expected to take eight years.

But it didn’t take that long to match Thomas and Robert, father and son.

In a recent interview, Christina Frutiger, Bob’s widow, said Tom’s remains were identified, but Bob had resolved not to bring his father’s remains to the family plot at Red Lion Cemetery.

Tom Frutiger is home, she said, buried on American soil in Hawaii.

Other Pacific prisoners in World War II

• Pvt. Paul Steinfelt of Red Lion died in captivity several months after the Bataan Death March in the Philippines.

• Cpl. Boyd E. Sower of York also died in prison – Camp O’Donnel – shortly after the forced march.

• Lt. Victor Witman survived after captivity in Shikoku, one of Japan’s home islands.

• The Rev. Harold Sechrist and family, missionaries to the Philippines from York, survived after three years in captivity.

• The Japanese released another missionary family apprehended earlier in the war. The Rev. Calvin Rebert and his wife, the former Audrie Fox of York, and their daughter were put on a freighter to a neutral port.

Upcoming presentations

Jim McClure will present about “21st-Century York County: Begins with Celebration, with Promise Ahead. But Oh, Those Years in Between Were Rough,” 1 p.m., June 17; “The Hex Murder: York County's Notorious Witchcraft Trial; 11 a.m., June 25. (Zoom only).” https://olli.psu.edu/york/

Jim McClure will present with Scott Mingus and Jamie Noerpel about “History Publishing from Generating the Idea to Marketing Your Work” at 7 p.m. June 6 at the York County Writers Roundtable’s quarterly meeting, York County History Center, 250 E. Market St., York.

Jim McClure is a retired editor of the York Daily Record and has authored or co-authored nine books on York County history. Reach him at jimmcclure21@outlook.com. 

This article originally appeared on York Daily Record: Friendly fire resulted in the loss of Red Lion PA soldier’s life