He survived the infamous Bataan Death March; he survived bombing attacks by his fellow Americans on Corregidor who were shelling the Japanese on Bataan; he survived two hellish internment camps in the Philippines; he survived the terrifying passage in the hold of a Japanese Hell Ship en route to Japan; and he survived forced labor in a condemned Japanese coal mile. Herbert Pepper suffered beatings and malnutrition and contracted tuberculosis and beriberi during those years as a POW from 1942 to 1945.
In 2005, Pepper recounted those horrific experiences in an oral history, conducted by Dr. Julian Pleasants, then director of the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program. SPOHP also had catalogued three other oral histories of POWs held by the Japanese.
In 2008, Deborah Hendrix and Diane Fischler of the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program produced a documentary titled “I Just Wanted to Live!” based on these four oral histories in its World War II collection. The film (both a 35-minute presentation version and a longer 55-minute version) premiered in Pugh Hall on November 10, 2008, in a program titled “Testimony of War.”
Herbert Pepper had been hospitalized in the Lake City VA the week before the premiere but insisted on leaving his hospital bed to come to Gainesville to attend the documentary’s debut. He arrived in a wheelchair accompanied by many family members.
One of the other two ex-POWs, Victor Cote of New Smyrna Beach, also came to the program. The two former POWs shook hands and were both astonished to learn that they had worked in the same coal mining camp in Japan, Camp Fukuoka. Their handshake spoke volumes of their shared prisoner-of-war experiences. 
On October 2, 2012, at age 93, Herbert Pepper passed away at the Lake City VA. He was a true survivor. It was an honor and privilege for the Oral History Program to capture the hell-on-earth years of these heroic men.
Herbert Pepper’s oral history interview is part of the World War II project, WWII-030.