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 Captain Otto Bismarck “Bizzy” Kayser, 1928

Bizzy was born and raised in Parkson, South Dakota, Graduated Colorado Agricultural College, with a degree in Veterinary Science, he was an all-conference guard on the 1925 and 1927 Colorado Conference Champion football teams, star wrestler in the 158# class, Battalion Adjutant, and Colorado Gamma President.

Upon graduation from Bizzy began his service in the US Army Air Force. In November of 1941 Bizzy was assigned to the 5th Interceptor Command in the Philippine Islands. The command was established to provide air defense over the Philippine Islands, He was stationed at Nielson Field in Luzon. However only 17 days after arriving the Japanese attacked the airfield on 24 December 1941 destroying the field and almost all their aircrafts. Their mission changed from air defense to providing ground defense.

They were willfully unequipped, but gallantly fought alongside the Philippine Commonwealth for 93 days. The battle was some of the most intense  of the Japanese invasion of the Philippines, an estimated 10,000 men killed and 20,000 were wounded in in the Battle for Bataan.

The fighting ended on April 9, 1942, when Army Major General Edward P. King surrendered to Japanese General Masaharu Homma. About 12,000 Americans and 63,000 Filipinos became prisoners of war. The Surrender at Bataan led to one of the Worst Atrocities in Modern Warfare, Bataan Death March.

Bizzy was one of the 75,000 prisoners that were marched the 66 miles to San Fernando. Men marched in groups ranging from about 500 to 1,500. Each group was only fed once, a saucer full of rice. At night they were forced into barbed wire enclosures built to accommodate only 500 men. Most of the prisoners had contracted diarrhea or dysentery, from the polluted water they drank along the way, human defecation soon covered the enclosures. The men were forced to sit in human defecation, sleep was impossible, the stench was terrible, the men were covered in defecation

The march lasted from 5 to 7 days. Many men were forced to go barefoot and hatless over the hot rocky roads. They were actively prevented from getting water or food and given little rest. Those who fell by the wayside, or who were observed trying to drink water or get food from the natives, were either clubbed, shot, or bayoneted. Many got malaria and other diseases. Along the road they were laughed at, struck, beaten and spit upon by passing Japanese soldiers and officers. Others, thirsty and crazed for want of food, went insane and were killed by the Japanese. An Estimated 10,000 (1,000 of whom were American) POWs died on the march from Bataan to San Fernando.

Once at San Fernando, Bizzy and the other prisoners were forced to board the boxcars, which should accommodate 50 people were filled with up to 150 prisoners and the doors locked. There the men were forced to stand for hours. There were no sanitary arrangements, the men were forced to defecate upon themselves, the situation was indescribable.

The prisoners were taken to  Capas, where the prisoners were unloaded and put into another temporary open camp in the burning sun for several hours while they were counted. Many were again beaten for no reason. Finally, they were placed in columns of four and marched to O'Donnell Prison Camp, an old Filipino Army Cadre.

Bizzy and his fellow prisoners would be imprisoned at Camp O’Donnell for 71 days of hell, in conditions that were so bad that over 26,000 Filipinos and 2,000 Americans would die of disease and undernourishment, 50 American prisoners would die every day. Finding sufficient able-bodied men to bury the dead was a problem. Often the dead would be thrown into the mass graves. Sometimes the starving exhausted men laying on the ground were buried before they were actually dead.

In July 1942  Bizzy and the other surviving prisoners from Bataan were finally moved to the Camps at Cabanatuan.  The camps also lacked the proper and necessary sanitary arrangements, and the dead were left lying around. Even after they had been removed, the nauseating odor from the near-by graveyard and its shallow graves affected the surviving POW. The prisoners from Bataan were in such poor health that the death rate at the new camp soared again to 50 men/day, it would continue for months.

Attempts to escape or to get in food were severely punished, usually by torture and death. Once it was discovered an American man escaped while on a work detail, five American POW were selected summarily and shot. The camps were then divided into "shooting squads" of ten men each, upon the escape of anyone or more, the rest of the squad were to be shot.

Throughout the war the Japanese Prisoner of War Bureau, at the request of the Japanese industrialists, hastened the transfer of American and other Allied POWs to Japan and other areas to replenish their labor pool.

Groups of men were selected to go labor camps throughout the Japanese empire. In 1942, about 5,000 Americans were sent to camps in Japan. In 1943 another thousand were sent to Davao, Bizzy was left to suffer with about 6,000 others, of which about 2,000 were too sick and would not survive much longer.

Bizzy would remain in Cabanatuan until October 11, 1944, when he and 1,782 other prisoners would be moved to Manila where they were loaded into the Hell Ship Arisan Maru for a labor camp in Formosa (Taiwan). They would once again experience extreme cruelty. Bizzy and his fellow prisoners were crammed into cargo holds with little air, ventilation and food or water, for journeys that would last weeks. Many died due to asphyxia, starvation, or dysentery.

To the surprise of the men, the ship took a southerly route, away from their destination and anchored off Palawan, narrowly missing a devastating Allied air attack on Manila airfields and harbor. The Arisan Maru returned to Manila 9 days later when it was thought safe to do so, and joined another convoy, MATA-30, headed to Formosa.

US intelligence focusing the movements of the Japanese attack forces in the area learned from intercepts that a large convoy was going to be departing Manila heading to Formosa on October 21, 1944. Unfortunately, the US intelligence was unaware the Arisan Maru had just returned to Manila the day before to join the convoy headed for Formosa.

Two packs of U.S. submarines (total of nine submarines) intercepted the convoy on October 23rd, when it was about 2000 miles northwest of Luzon. The USS Shark began its attack around 5:30 PM on October 24, 1944, the convoy was now near Shoonan, just off the eastern coast of China.

One of the survivors aboard reported feeling  the jar caused by the torpedo hits from of the USS Shark, the ship stopped dead in the water. The Japanese abandoned ship after severing the rope ladder leading down into the first hold.

Luckily the prisoners in hold two were table to escape because the Japanese rushed to abandon ship to cut the rope ladders in hold two. Once on deck they lowered  new rope ladders back down to those in hold one. Everyone abandoned ship wearing what life belts they could find and clinging to rafts, hatch boards, and anything that floated, prisoners struggled in the rough waters of the Pacific.

The USS Shark sent a total of three torpedoes into the Arisan Maru. The ship broke into two sections which floated for one- and one-half hours before sinking around 7pm.

No POWs were killed by the torpedo strikes and nearly all were able to leave the ship's holds. The Japanese destroyers deliberately pulled away from the men swimming to reach them.

Only nine of the prisoners would survive the attack. At the time, the sinking of the Arisan Maru  was the largest loss of American lives in a single disaster at sea.

After living through 1066 days of pure hell, Bizzy was tragically lost his fight to survive, presumably drowned at sea during the attack. He was 36 years old, posthumously awarded the Purple Heart. His service has been commemorated on the Walls on the Missing in the Manila American Cemetery in the Philippines.

Ironically had Bizzy not been selected to be sent to the labor camp in Formosa, he would have been rescued just three months later, on January 30, 1945, in the infamous Raid on Cabanatuan. When an elite group of U.S. Army Rangers, Alamo Scouts, and Filipino guerrillas rescued over 500 American prisoners, including last of those held since the Bataan Death March, in a daring nighttime raid on the camp.