Phil Budahn, the spokesman for the Department of Veteran’s Affairs, says the heroes’ resilience has always caught him off guard. “It’s hard to imagine human beings with these experiences surviving with their integrity and values intact,� Budahn says. “Or for that matter, surviving at all.� Former prisoners such as Carter are forced to move on after experiencing cruel parts of history some overlook. After that, as Budahn says, it’s not easy to face the present. Carter’s story and spirit astound Columbia’s veteran community. His fellow veterans at the VFW Post 280 regard Carter as a hero among them. Veteran Gary Hahn says Carter has seen some of the worst and that it’s remarkable that he survived to share his experience. “He could teach us all a little something about living,� he says. When Carter drudges up his wartime recollections, he opts for the ones that make him smile, like the time he was
Harold Carter remembers meticulous details of his trip back to the prison camp where he was held captive for more than three years. When he returned in 2005, he was greeted by news trucks and treated like a president, he says.
clever enough to trade corn for cigarettes, or when he made a friend in the barracks of the prison. His smile darkens slightly, though, at what he says is his happiest memory of all — Aug. 20, 1945, when the Russian military liberated the camp, four days before he was marked to be killed on the camp’s death list. Carter remembers his response upon leaving the liberated camp: “I’ve been in prison for five months. I’m leaving this place.� He walked away from his personal hell for the last time before inventory had even been taken –– or so he thought. In 2005, Carter returned to the site of his captivity. A museum sits where the prison once did in remembrance and reverence of the people who suffered and died on
its grounds. Carter and his wife revisited the place where he became a full-fledged adult and re-met the people with whom he had grown up. It was his longawaited closure; it was peace. It was the place where he’d been treated the worst and the best in his life because of Japanese torture he endured there and the respect the Chinese government offered him years later, Carter says. Carter has come from the man whom he wanted to be to the man he is; from the horrors that life dealt him to the cards he deals for pleasure; from the experience that changed his life to the experience that made it worth it. + EMILY ADAMS r VOXMAGAZINE.COM 13