THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, May 24, 1995 TAG: 9505240486
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY CHARLENE CASON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 97 lines
When John Nelson and Tom Capin talk about ``going native,'' the World War II veterans aren't discussing plans for a tropical vacation.
It's the shorthand they use when they get together to reminisce about their time among the headhunters of Borneo.
Members of an American bomber crew, the two men parachuted into the jungle mountains of the Japanese-occupied island near the end of the war. Hiding for months from their enemies, the crew members found the natives friendly, even protective.
It's a good thing.
Wayward Japanese soldiers found out what happened when the native Dyaks didn't like you.
``Sure, they cut their heads off,'' said Capin, a 71-year-old psychotherapist from Omaha. ``They had skulls displayed on a rack the way we dry dishes on a dish rack. But they were an honorable people. Headhunting was part of their religion.''
Capin got together last weekend in Hampton Roads with Nelson, a Tucson resident whose son is a Virginia Beach Navy man, and with their former crewmate Dan Illerich of Friendswood, Texas. The occasion was the 50-year reunion of the Army's 5th Heavy Bombardment Group, which drew about 160 people.
Capin was happy to be found by anyone back in November 1944 after the B-24 Liberator went down during a run over Brunei Bay, on the northwest coast of the Malaysian island of Borneo.
``I followed a river, and was without food for 7 1/2 days,'' Capin said.
Two Dyaks found him and took him back to their village. For four months, the 6-foot-5 fair-skinned redhead wore a loincloth, spoke only the Dyaks' tongue and hunted wild boar with a blow gun.
He resolved that, if he were going to live among the natives, he would be the best tribesman he could be.
Short of indulging in their one little idiosyncrasy.
Headhunting, long a tradition among warring tribes in the Dutch East Indies, actually had been outlawed in 1936. But when it came to the hated Japanese, the Dyaks were known to resurrect the practice.
The mission that landed Capin and Nelson in Borneo is inked in their memories as vividly as the blue ``eye of the mountain'' tattoo that Capin received in a native village and that still covers the inside of his left arm.
The 10-member bomber crew had been ordered to attack an airstrip in the Philippines. But at the last minute, they were ordered to join a four-squadron bomber group headed for Brunei Bay to keep the limping Japanese fleet from assembling.
``We all had a bad feeling when we heard where we were going,'' Nelson said. ``I think every one of us wrote a letter home, in case it was the last one.''
The plane went down in flak from 40 Japanese cruisers and destroyers and three aircraft carriers.
The pilot and co-pilot died; the other eight crewmen parachuted out. One was never found.
After almost four months living in villages, the seven men were reunited and joined seven Navy airmen who also had been shot down.
Australian commandos reached them, and worked for a couple of months setting up a radio station and fashioning a landing strip from bamboo rods.
A small Australian reconnaissance plane finally landed and took them out, one at a time.
The bomber crew members - listed as missing in action for eight months - finally were reunited with their squadron in the Philippines around the Fourth of July.
``We were in no shape to go back to flying, and they dropped the atomic bomb while we were still in the Philippines, so most of us got out of the service and went home,'' Capin said.
Capin lost 70 pounds in Borneo. He suffered from amoebic dysentery, parasites, malaria, infected boils and malnutrition.
Nelson had most of those ailments, too.
They still carry with them the lessons they learned from those months in the jungle.
Capin became a Methodist minister. ``I figured it was payback time. If someone helps you, keeps you alive, you owe the human race,'' he said.
Nelson said he learned tolerance and a low-key approach to life.
``I'm one of the luckiest people in the world, to still be alive,'' he said. ``People call those natives savages, but that's a misconception. They were wonderful people, with a wonderful culture.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo
John Nelson - in the inset color photo and third from left in the
back row of the group - and Tom Capin, second from right in the
back row, were in a 10-man crew whose B-24 Liberator was shot down
over Borneo on Nov. 16, 1944. The three men from the left on the
front - the pilot, co-pilot and navigator - were killed. The
remaining seven parachuted into the mountains of Borneo and spent
several months with native headhunter tribes.
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KEYWORDS: WORLD WAR II by CNB