Volume fiVe number four, two thousand nine | Winter

Is it Time for More

Wilderness in Montana?

Living Guthrie’s Big Sky

Jim Messina: The President’s
Problem Solver
Absarokee: Cleaned Up and Good as New

The Windbag Saloon

 Against all odds, after barely surviving
the Bataan Death March, Billings artist Ben Steele
went on to make his life an act of generosity

THE ART OF

SURVIVAL
By Scot t M C Million Photogr a phy By Thom a s Lee

B
en Steele almost went cr azy, for a while there. But art saved
him. The creative process — the ability to make, evoke, display —
put his mind back on track, when he could have become just another
casualty. And having Ben Steele intact in the world has meant a lot
of things to a lot of people. The world has a little better focus because
of him. A little more beauty.
Now 92, the retired art professor talks easily of that time when
his mind teetered, when madness loomed, when he was sick onto
the verge of death in a tropical prison, when he was starved and
abused in the sweltering heat. Food and water were scarce. Death
and misery weren’t.
Beriberi had stricken him, on top of the malaria he already had, and his
body lost its ability to shed water. Though he was starving, he bloated to horrid
proportions. He couldn’t walk and could barely speak, but he could think. And
that’s what beckoned madness.

42
 “I thought I was going nuts,” Steele recalled. “I was sick
and crawling around on the floor, but I had too much time to
think and I really thought I was going nuts.”
His salvation began when he dragged himself to a stove
and salvaged a charred stick. With that primitive tool, he began
drawing pictures on the stone floor: horses, people, charcoal
images from his youth on a ranch in Montana’s Bull Mountains.
And he kept his sanity.
Gradually, his health began to keep up with his mind.
TR A NSCENDING TORTUR E
Ben Steele’s path to Bilibid Prison in Manila, the capital
of the Republic of the Philippines, was a long one, outlined in
hunger and disease and cruelty. It’s told in a remarkable new
book, Tears in the Darkness, the Story of the Bataan Death
March and its Aftermath, by Michael and Elizabeth M. Norman.
The book — which has drawn critical and popular raves — uses
Steele as a central character, telling how a tough young cowboy
from Montana endured everything the Japanese Army could
throw at him.
The Japanese attacked the Philippines — then an American
possession — shortly after they attacked Pearl Harbor. Steele
survived four months of jungle warfare on starvation rations.
THE HELL SHIP
44
After the surrender of 75,000 men — the largest in America’s
history — he survived the infamous death march, 66 miles in the
tropical heat, with little food, tainted water and no shelter from a
sun hot enough to cook your skull. An estimated 11,000 men fell
to disease, hunger or the savagery of the Japanese troops, who
shot or bayoneted stragglers and those who tried to help them.
Steele then survived the atrocities of prison camp, where as
many as 50 men died every day, where prisoners stole potato peel-
ings from the hog slop, where they ate rats when they could get
them, and 10,000 men were forced to share one water spigot.
“Sometimes, you’d wait all day and still not get a drink of
water,” he said.
He survived — but just barely — a work detail building a
road in the jungle, using only hand tools, sleeping on the stones
of a river bank with no shelter from the torrential monsoons.
“That was the worst part,” Steele said of the road project.
“We had a guy who died at the end of a pick.”
More than 300 men started that job. Only a fraction
survived. Steele was among them, and that’s when he wound up
in Bilibid Prison, which had been converted into a hospital for
prisoners of war.
For most of the men there, it seemed like utter hell. But
for Steele, it didn’t look so bad. There was a little food, a little
medicine. And at least there was a roof between him and the
T H E D E AT H M A R C H
drenching rains.
Still, his mind teetered. He had survived so
much, but he had lost so much, too. He’d buried
so many men. And he was so sick — he’d dropped
50 pounds from an already spare frame — and
there was so much time to think.
The drawings — the making of them —
pulled him through, even if they were rough at
first. Engineers and draftsmen in the prison
offered him technical pointers: how to draw
perspective and vanishing points, concepts he’d
never encountered before. The men scrounged
pencils and paper for him, while officers urged
him to draw scenes from the death march and the
prisons, to document the atrocities in the hope
of squaring things later, after the war. Steele
pursued all of this and, as his work improved, he
thought back to the times in Billings when he met
Will Rogers, the famous cowboy artist, a man who Ben Steele, 92, survived the Bataan Death March during World War II and came home
to become an artist and teacher in Billings. On the opening pages, Steele looks at an
had inspired him. He thought, maybe, just maybe, arrangement of his World War II memorabilia at his Billings home. Included are the Bronze
if this hell ever ended, he could make something Star, second from left, the Purple Heart, far right, cards Steele sent home from prison
of this art thing. camp in Japan, and pictures of Steele as a prisoner and just before he was discharged.
M O N T A N A Q U A R T E R LY 45

not ov er y et
That was in 1942. It would take three years for the war to end.
By then, Steele had been shipped as a slave to Japan, riding with
1,100 other men for 62 days in the hold of a “hell ship.” In Japan
he labored three miles deep in a coal mine. But at least there was
a little more food and a lot less sickness, and bits of news from
the Korean slaves who toiled alongside him. The Americans were
advancing, they told him.
When the atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima, only 55 miles
away, Steele felt a tremor in the earth he couldn’t explain. Twelve
days later, leaflets from American planes announced the war was
over. Then came food drops. Canned meat. Chocolate. Cigarettes.
Such bounty!
46
The prisoners went on an orgy of eating and smoking. Steele
ate a box of 24 candy bars. He got sick, then ate again.
“We didn’t want to go to sleep because it all felt so good. We
didn’t want to miss a minute of it.”
In the chaos that ensued, it took a month for the Army to
get the prisoners out of Japan. Then Steele spent the next several
months in military hospitals in the American mainland, rebuild-
ing his strength. Mostly, that meant digging in at the chow line.
“There wasn’t anything wrong with me that food wouldn’t
cure,” he said.
Eleven months after the bombing of Hiroshima, he was
discharged from the Army. It was time to get serious about an art
career.
He’d never been an ambitious student. At his country school
while growing up, one teacher even wondered if he was a little retarded.
“I’d raise my hand to go out to the outhouse, then I’d get on my horse
and ride home,” he said.
Though he managed to graduate from high school while putting in
stints of cowboying and bootlegging, the Army taught him the conse-
quences of a lack of education. He had wanted to be a pilot, but didn’t
have enough schooling. He never advanced much.
“I decided in Bilibid prison that I wanted to go to art school,” he said.
So, when the war ended, that’s what he did, landing a place at the
prestigious Cleveland Institute of Art.
Later came a masters degree in Denver and a stint as a civilian
employee of the Army. During all that time, he drew and painted: western
scenes from his youth, war scenes from his time in the Philippines and
Japan. (He worked from memory because his documentary sketches
At 92, Steele still draws
and paints regularly.
These images are from
his sketch book.
M O N T A N A Q U A R T E R LY 47
 from prison were lost when another hell ship went down.) But
he wanted more than a part-time life in art, and by 1959 he
landed a teaching job at what was then Eastern Montana College
in Billings, taking a 50 percent pay cut to do so.
“Money isn’t everything,” he said, and flashed a smile.
mov ing forwa r d
“From the first time I met Ben Steele, he always had a smile
on his face,” said Clyde Aspevig, a former student often described
as the best landscape painter in America today. “He was prob-
ably the best instructor I ever had. He understood a student’s
needs.”
Like the other students, Aspevig knew what Steele had
endured in the war. And like the others, Aspevig admired the
generous spirit he brought back from that hell, the helpfulness,
the genuine interest in his students’ well-being.
Without Steele, Aspevig said, he probably never would have
finished his education.
Steele’s 26-year teaching career came at a tumultuous time
in American art. As the avant-garde grew in popularity, Steele
ignored it and focused on the fundamentals: how to draw, how to
48
convey perspective. After learning that, the students were free to
COME HOME FOR
follow their muse. THE HOLIDAYS!
“He gave us the strength of perseverance,” said John 13 Cokedale Spur Rd
Armstrong, a student in the 1960s who went on to build a long This home was
designed to bring the
career as an abstract artist, a printmaker, teacher and museum outside into the living
space capturing the
manager. “He was the best thing that ever happened to that (art) views of the Absa-
school.” rokas with expanses
of glass and doors
Throughout all those years, Steele continued to paint, from every interior
space directly to the
draw and sometimes to sculpt. He made western art — it all outdoors. Featured in
many publications in-
got snapped up years ago — and some abstract pieces, and lots cluding “Off the Grid
Homes”. The main house is 2500 sq ft of sustainably built
of watercolors and sketches. At times, he worked on sketches or unobstructed open spaces with 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, and a
large oil paintings of his war years, a collection of which hangs kitchen with modern green house. Features that make this
home efficient and eco friendly include radiant floor heat-
in the Western Heritage Center in Billings. ing, Icynene insulation, naturalItalian plaster walls, sealed
concrete floors, massaranduba (FSC certified) wood floors,
And he hasn’t quit. reclaimed red wood, teak and locally harvested Douglas fir,
2KW Solar array grid intertie, gray water and xeriscaping.
“I still like to do something every day,” he said in his A guest house with studio and workspace is foot steps away
offering 1700sqft with a bathroom and kitchenette and
modest home beneath the Billings Rimrocks. “I really like to do quality sustainable finishes consistent with the main house.
watercolors.” MLS#164488 $975,000
But most of his career focused on his students’ needs, which 9250 South 19th
Anderson school
meant that, until recently he never attracted lots of attention. district home in a
country setting with a
wonderful creek border-
Steele poses with his wife, Shirley, in front of a painting Steele RICE AND MEN ing the property. This
quality home is ready
made of his childhood home. for your creative use.
“He never got what he should have gotten,” Armstrong said. An architect designed,
quality home built sus-
Now, with the success of the book — Steele’s prisoner of war photo is tainably and efficiently
using locally reclaimed
on the cover — the renown is coming. The book earned rave reviews, it’s wood trim and beams throughout, high grade insulation, stained
being translated into Japanese and Chinese, print and broadcast reporters are concrete floors and in floor radiant heat. Ready to live in but
has room for creative renovation. Bring your horses and build a
knocking on Steele’s door, and universities are interested in obtaining his war facility on the 6+ acres. There are so many options for creativity
with this one of a kind gem! MLS#163214 $795,000
works. Though he’s not the author, he’s signed thousands of books.
“They’re trying to make a celebrity out of me,” Steele said with another 2519 Valhalla Court
one of his grins. “But I think they’ve got their work cut out for them.” Adjacent to Bridger
Golf Course, Bzm
He said he long ago gave up any rancor he held toward the Japanese. walking trails & XC
He couldn’t see any point in it. ski trails in winter!
Solid oak flooring,
“You can’t make rules for war,” he said. “You’re out to kill each other. solid fir trim and
You’re just lucky if you’re one that survives.” pine panelling create
a warm quality feel
But he’s done more than just survive. He nurtured the career of scores throughout. A few convenient and efficient qualities
of artists and teachers of art, people who spread beauty and aim for truth, that make this condo unique include central vac, water
who work with the soul. He married well — his wife of 57 years, Shirley, is a softener/filtration, R25 insulation for efficiency and
extra quiet sound insulation btwn neighbor. Best of all
published poet — raised three children and created a body of art that illus- is the exterior maintenance and lawn care along with
trates the horror of war in ways that photographs just can’t accomplish. snow removal are taken care of by the condo association.
MLS#163163 $290,000
He came home intact, mentally and physically. His life is an act of sanity
in a crazy world. He survived such horrors, then spent a long life focused on 23 Bridger Pines Condo
First time Home
art, making it and understanding it. Buyer? Take advantage
of the tax extension!
That counts. Investors? This pencils
It helps things make sense. well! Great Ski in Ski
out condo loaded with
upgrades and natural
An exhibit of 10 Ben Steele oil paintings of his imprisonment in the sunlight. This quaint
cozy ski condo is the per-
Philippines will be on display at the Western Heritage Center in Billings, fect get away only minutes from Bozeman yet tracks from acres
of fun. Make this a rental property for $700.00/week or more.
through Dec. 23. The center is located at 2822 Montana Avenue. Or use it as your vacation home! MLS#163691 $179,000
“Tears in the Darkness, the Story of the Bataan Death March and its
Aftermath,” published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, is available in book-
stores everywhere.
Megan Ulrichs | Realtor | 599-2764
M O N T A N A Q U A R T E R LY 49