printing columns into a file

[Jin]

Hi,

I will really appreciate any help on this!

I have a file looking like the following

date        month           year

12              5                1982
30              6               1982
                  3               1982
28                               1877
30              2                1888

As you can see, my file has blanks in a column, but I like to keep it
that way.
When I tried to use awk to print each column into a separate file
(date.txt, month.txt, and year.txt),
it doesn't retain the blank information on emacs but moves the value
below upward to cover the blank. So, it'd be like

date.txt
12
30
28
30

month.txt
5
6
3
2

How can I keep the blank as it is in the original fiile?

Please help.