POW submariner becomes another Earhart witness

TM3c (torpedoman third class) Robert W. Lents was aboard USS Perch (SS-176), when its entire crew was picked up by the Japanese destroyer Ushio after being forced to scuttle their badly damaged boat on March 3, 1942.   Most of Perch’s crew then endured 1,298 days of captivity without their families ever being told that they were still alive.  Of Perch’s 54 enlisted men and five officers, all but five — who died of malnutrition in Japanese prisoner-of-war camps — return alive to the United States after V-J Day.

In the opening paragraph of Presumed Lost: The Incredible Ordeal of America’s Submarine POWs during the Pacific War, Stephen L. Moore’s remarkable tribute to the brave submariners of World War II, the author writes: “submariners accounted for some 55 percent of all Japanese vessels sunk in the war, although their service accounted for only 1.5 percent of the U.S. Navy. . . . Of some 16,000 men who fought in the ‘Silent Service’ during World War II, more than 20 percent did not come home.  This casualty rate was the highest of all American armed forces and was six times greater than that in the surface navy.”

The amazing, inspirational stories of Robert Lents, Perch and the other six U.S. submarine crews captured by the Japanese during the war are told in Stephen L. Moore’s 2021 book, Presumed Lost: The Incredible Ordeal of America’s Submarine POWs during the Pacific War.  Here’s more about the book, taken from its Amazon page:

When submarines failed to return to port from patrol, they were officially listed by the Navy as “overdue and presumed lost.”  Loved ones were notified by the War Department that their siblings, spouses, and sons were missing in action and presumed lost. While 52 U.S. submarines were sunk in the Pacific, the Japanese took prisoners of war from the survivors of only seven of these lost submarines. Presumed Lost is the compelling story of the final patrols of those seven submarines and the long captivity of the survivors. Of the 196 sailors taken prisoner, 158 would survive the horrors of the POW camps, where torture, starvation, and slave labor were common.

Robert Lents’ son, Brian Lents, 76, of Great Falls, Mont., recently informed me not only about his father’s incredible survival as a Japanese prisoner of war, but to add Robert Lents’ name to the still-growing list of World War II GIs including Thomas E. Devine, Robert E. Wallack, Earskin J. Nabers and many others who learned the truth about Amelia Earhart’s presence and death on Saipan, either through their own eyewitness experiences, local natives or through the accounts of her Japanese captors.  

Robert W. Lents married Carolyn Snyder in Greenfield, Iowa on Feb. 1, 1946, and to this union three children were born, Brian, Barbara and Susan. They were married for 73 years and made their home in Iowa where he farmed and worked for the U.S. Postal Service.  After Robert retired from the Post Office, they moved to Mountain Home, Ark., in 1975. 

In a Feb. 7 email, Brian wrote that he’d seen me in an Earhart-related YouTube presentation, and that he wanted to tell me about his father, who was on USS Perch when it was lost in the battle of Java Sea in March 1942.   “Wounded twice he and others were picked out of the water by Jap Destroyer and taken to Makassar Celebes to POW camp,” Brian wrote.  “One day the ramrod of the Jap guards who could speak some broken English told them that he had dealt with Americans before, in 1937 he was stationed on Saipan and two American prisoners were brought in.  Flyers, one was a woman dressed like a man and had short hair other was a man whom was hurt.”  Brian continued:

He even said the word Earhart a few times.  He had guarded them and they were later executed.  Robert was liberated Sept 1945.  Shortly after he was being debriefed about his experiences by a young Naval Intelligence Officer and he related this incident to him.  The officer seemed to get very interested in this and told Robert to stay put till he returned.  Shortly he came back with a senior officer who said, “This is a matter that you are not to discuss again.  And that’s an order. Chief.”  So the old Navy Chief didn’t talk about till towards the end of his life.  For whatever its worth that’s the story.

                   Robert W. Lents circa 1941.

Brian said his father met the prolific World War II author Stephen L. Moore at a submarine convention several years back, when there still “a few POWs” with us.  “Moore was sending Dad his rough drafts of the chapters as he wrote them,” Brian told me in a Feb. 20 email. “So I also got to read them.  Lord how wish I had made copies.  Moore told Dad the book had to be cleared by Naval Intelligence before it could be published.  Well, when I read the book it certainly wasn’t the one I had read.  All the vivid details of the torture that was inflicted on these men had been censored out.  Kind of like the AE case where the real victim is truth.”  For the record, Amelia Earhart is never mentioned in Presumed Lost.

Of all the incredible elements of the Robert Lents story, probably the most amazing is that the former third-class torpedoman lived to the ripe old age of 99 — virtually unheard-of feat among former Japanese POWs — and was married to his wife Carolyn for 73 years!

“Japs took them to Celebes to Pow camp,” Brian wrote in a Feb. 9 email.  “Liberation came after 42 months of hell.  About a year or so after the war Robert was medically discharged from the Navy as Chief Petty Officer.  He then was an Iowa farmer, postmaster and rural mail carrier.  He retired and moved to Arkansas.  He died in the Vets home at Fayetteville, Ark., in Nov 2020 at the age of 99.  He still had Jap iron in his body.  The old body was worn out, but his mind was sharp right up to the end.”

To view his obituary, please click here.

For even more on Robert Lents, here’s a profile by Art Randall that appeared in the American Submariner, originally published in 2005: “A Profile of a Submarine POW Veteran:  Robert W. Lents.”