"I'll Live Through This"

Prison life is real life, too--stripped of all pretensions and pleasures. An uncivilizing process, prison life almost inevitably reduces man to the status of a beast living for mere survival. Prison demands the best in man, often brings out the worst.

Six weeks ago, a Navy general court-martial at Brooklyn's Naval Shipyard began the trial of stocky Chief Signalman Harold E. Hirshberg, 29, a regular Navy man and a section leader in several Japanese prison camps after his capture at Corregidor. Chief Hirshberg was charged with hitting six men in his charge, and of informing against three who planned to escape. One of the three had been tortured to death by the Japanese.

Witnesses testified that Hirshberg had threatened, slugged and cursed fellow prisoners, that he had once declared: "I will live through this if it costs the life of every man under me." The defense declared that Hirshberg had shielded his men, got them extra food, clothing and sick-time.

After three weeks the court-martial had found Chief Hirshberg not guilty of informing against the three prisoners who planned to escape, not guilty of hitting four of his accusers, but guilty of beating two of them. Last week, it gave him just about the stiffest sentence it could: ten months in the Navy's Retraining Command (correction school) at Norfolk, Va., to be followed by dishonorable discharge.

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