“Oil My Back, it’s an Order” — What Japanese Women POWs Had to Rub While the Officer Lay Face Down

In the thick of World War II, humanity was often obscured by the chaos and hatred of the battlefield. But in a small, dimly lit room at a prisoner-of-war camp in the Philippines in 1945, an act of mercy shattered the walls of enmity built up by years of propaganda and war. This story, an unlikely connection between a Japanese prisoner and an American soldier, began with four simple words that carried a profound weight: “Oil my back.”

Takara, a 23-year-old nurse in the Imperial Japanese Army, had been captured just weeks earlier after the brutal Battle of Okinawa. She, like many other women in her position, had been subjected to years of propaganda, fed a steady diet of lies about the cruelty of the enemy. The women were told that the Americans were nothing more than ruthless monsters who would strip them of their dignity, torture them, and, in some cases, kill them. After everything she had seen in the war, Takara was prepared for the worst.

As the women were taken to the camp in early 1945, the cold, dreary weather matched the despair they felt. They were housed in a makeshift barracks, freezing from the harsh conditions and emotionally numb from the constant threat of what might come next. On one particularly cold day, the women were summoned by an American officer, Sergeant Caldwell, to administer a medical inspection. What they did not expect, and what shattered their preconceived notions of the enemy, was that this wasn’t just another routine check—it was the beginning of something that would change their lives forever.

The order given to Takara and her fellow prisoners was simple: “Oil my back.” The officer lay down, exposing his scarred and burned back, a reminder of the toll war had taken on both sides. Takara, with trembling hands, was instructed to apply oil to his wounds—an intimate and vulnerable act that went against everything she had been told about the enemy. She had been trained to see Americans as monsters, and now she was tasked with touching one, and more than that, with tending to his wounds.

For a moment, Takara froze. The situation felt like a trap, one she had been prepared for by the officers who had conditioned her to expect nothing but cruelty from the Americans. But as she touched the officer’s back, something unexpected happened: he didn’t flinch, he didn’t yell or demand anything further. Instead, he simply lay there, breathing steadily, his scars a testament to the brutality of war—scar tissue that came not just from enemy attacks but from the violence inflicted on both sides.

Takara’s hands moved across his back, feeling the scars from shrapnel, the burns from napalm—the same wounds she had seen on Japanese soldiers and civilians. And in that moment, a realization began to dawn on her: this man, this American soldier, had suffered just as much as her comrades, if not more. He wasn’t a monster. He was a man.

As she finished her task, something strange happened. The officer spoke—first in broken Japanese, then fluently. He thanked her for the treatment, for the oil, and he began to tell her a story she wasn’t prepared for: he was once stationed in Yokohama, Japan, before the war, where he had lived and worked for five years. He had taught English at a school near the harbor, and his wife, a Japanese woman named Miyuki, had been killed during the firebombing of Tokyo in March 1945. The words were shocking, and Takara stood there, struggling to process the gravity of what he was saying.

For the first time, Takara saw the enemy in a different light. The officer wasn’t just a faceless aggressor. He was someone who had loved and lost, someone who had once been a part of the world she knew. The silk kimono pattern on the photograph he showed her—blue waves on white—was the same as the fabric her own mother had worked with in Yokohama before the war. The connection between them was no longer one of enemies, but of shared humanity.

As Takara stood there, the realization settled heavily upon her. This man was not her enemy; he was a man who had suffered just as much as she had. And in that moment, she understood something profound: war destroys more than just cities—it destroys people, families, and the very fabric of humanity. But kindness, the simple act of showing mercy, can rebuild what war has torn apart.

What followed in the camp was a quiet transformation. Takara, the women in the barracks, and even the American soldiers began to break down the walls of distrust and hatred that had been built up by years of war. The exchanges between them were small, at first, but they grew. Takara, the other prisoners, and the soldiers began to realize that they weren’t enemies anymore. They were simply people trying to survive, and maybe, just maybe, they could heal together.

As weeks passed, the women were given clean clothes, hot meals, and medical care. They were treated with a kindness they had never expected from their captors. And as they healed, both physically and emotionally, the question of how to return home weighed heavily on them. How could they go back to Germany, to a country that had told them lies, that had sent them to fight for a regime that had destroyed so many lives?

The story of Takara and the American soldier, Sergeant Caldwell, is not just one of survival—it is one of understanding, forgiveness, and the power of kindness to bridge even the deepest divides. As the war came to an end, the women of the camp were repatriated, but they carried with them the memory of their transformation. They had come as enemies, but they left as people who had shared in something far more powerful than hatred: humanity.

Greta, one of the women from the camp, later wrote in her diary, “The Americans defeated us not just with bombs and tanks, but with something far more dangerous. They defeated us with kindness.” It was the kindness of one soldier, sitting in the snow, offering his coat to a woman who thought she would freeze rather than accept help. It was the kindness of a man who had lost everything but still found the strength to show mercy to those he had been taught to hate.

This story serves as a reminder that even in the darkest times, humanity can prevail. It shows us that kindness, no matter how small, can break the cycle of hatred and create something far more powerful than victory.