Conduct Under Fire Page 14

  THIRTY MILES ACROSS the water the people of Manila rose on the morning of January 2, 1942, to find Japanese soldiers entering their city. “They came up the boulevards in the predawn glow from the bay riding on bicycles and on tiny motorcycles,” wrote Life photographer Carl Mydans. “They came without talk and in good order, the ridiculous pop-popping of their one-cylinder cycles sounding loud in the silent city.” From their rooms in the Bay View Hotel, Mydans and his wife, Shelley, watched them lower the American flag in front of the High Commissioner’s residence. Then the Japanese flag was raised in its place as a band played “Kimigayo,” the national anthem. Radiant red on a field of white, it represented Amaterasu, the Sun Goddess and mythical progenitor of the mighty Yamato line.

  The Manila Bulletin issued a free four-page extra with the headline ORDERLY OCCUPATION and that included a statement from the High Commissioner’s Office:At this time it is our best judgement that businesses should open today, and this will be the most reassuring thing for the public. Excessive movement in the streets should be avoided, but the occupation forces should be presented with the fact of a city operating quietly and normally.

  The scene was anything but normal. Pier 7 was in flames, fires burned out of control, and a “carnival of looting” went unchecked in the Port Area after the quartermaster threw open government warehouses to the public. Shiploads of provisions remained behind. Trucks, jitneys, ice wagons, bull carts, “even a police car” drove away with foodstuffs, furniture, beds, mattresses, appliances, lumber, bolts of wool and sharkskin, cigarettes, and rusted sheets of corrugated iron. A newspaper advertisement placed too late by I. A. Marquez & Co., “Architects & Builders in Quezon City,” shilled for a “Re-enforced Air Raid Shelter. From P500 up. We also sell Sandbags. Delivered anywhere in Manila or Suburbs.” The men on Bataan and Corregidor could have used some. The Japanese were bombing them daily and assessed the damage the next morning with a high-wing monoplane known as Photo Joe or a twin-engine, twin-tail observation plane.

  War Plan Orange-3 assumed that Japan would make a surprise attack on the Philippines, but the Japanese failed to anticipate an American withdrawal to Bataan, instead envisioning a battle for Manila. With Manila safely in Japanese hands, Imperial General Headquarters reasoned, Homma could ship out the crack 48th Division to Java. The 7,500-strong 65th Brigade would take its place. But the “Summer Brigade,” under the command of Amherst-educated Lieutenant General Nara Akira, was an occupation force, not a fighting one. The men were older, ill trained, and underequipped for the battlefront. If MacArthur overestimated the number of enemy troops in Luzon, Homma’s intelligence grossly underestimated the number of USAFFE forces on the peninsula.

  By January 7, 80,000 American and Filipino soldiers were entrenched in defensive positions on Bataan, 50,000 of whom were on or near the main line of resistance. Wainwright was in charge of I Philippine Corps on the west side of the line. Parker commanded II Philippine Corps to the east. Fil-American forces had numerical superiority but were stretched over a wide area, whereas the Japanese could concentrate their strength, pick their targets, and outnumber USSAFE positions. Moreover, the Japanese controlled the air and sea.

  The Battle for Bataan began in earnest on January 9 with an attack against the II Corps on the Abucay line. The 57th Infantry of the Philippine Scouts guarded the East Road, the untested 41st Division of the Philippine Army stood to the left, and Major General Albert M. Jones’s 51st Division of the Philippine Army occupied the extreme west portion of the line from the slopes of Mt. Natib to Abucay-Hacienda five miles away from the town. Withering artillery fire from II Corps prevented Colonel Imai Takeo’s 141st Infantry from making any gains on the East Road, though Colonel Takechi Susumu’s 9th Infantry reached Album on the western side unopposed.

  At almost the same time, the 5th Air Group under Colonel Hoshi Komatarō began a three-day campaign against I Corps artillery positions, airstrips on Bataan, and targets in the Mariveles area. The barrio was bombed again, and this time it was burned to the ground when a movie theater storing ammunition took a direct hit. The statue known as The Cry of the Balintawak, commemorating the Filipino rebellion against Spain in 1896, stood with its arms outstretched amid flattened buildings and palm trees with their fronds blown off.

  At dawn on January 10 MacArthur and Sutherland left Corregidor by PT boat to bolster the troops on Bataan. They landed at Mariveles, drove up to Balanga on the east coast of Bataan in a Ford sedan to inspect Parker’s II Corps senior officers, and then conferred with Wainwright along the Pilar-Bagac road.

  “Where are your 155mm guns?” MacArthur asked Wainwright.

  There were six of them, Wainwright replied, then suggested they walk over to two of the guns nearby.

  “Jonathan,” said MacArthur, “I don’t want to see them. I want to hear them!”

  It was MacArthur’s only trip to Bataan once the fighting began, and the men in the field would never forgive him for it.

  “Shit,” said Ernie Irvin of Battery C. “We never saw the bastard!”

  Murray was driving to the Section Base around 0800 on the morning of January 10 when he noticed a plane coming in low over the bay as if making an approach for a landing. Then he saw the “flaming asshole” on the wings of a Zero as the fighter locked in on him. Two other fighters began strafing the road and beaches. He jumped out of his car, whipped out his .45, and ran looking for a foxhole. But no foxhole was in sight. He dove into a creek bed that protected him on three sides. The odds were in his favor, he figured—until he saw all three planes bearing down on him at no more than 500 feet. They opened up their machine guns, and he fired back wildly. This wasn’t war, he thought, it was blood sport, and it was only by a miracle that he escaped unhurt.

  That same day Japanese planes dropped hundreds of leaflets over the very positions MacArthur had visited:Sir: You are well aware that you are doomed. The end is near. The question is how long you will be able to resist. You have already cut rations by half. Your prestige and honor have been upheld. However, in order to avoid needless bloodshed and to save the remnants of your divisions, you are advised to surrender. Failing that, we will continue with inexorable force which will bring upon you only disaster.

  Yours Very Sincerely,

  General Homma Masaharu

  Japanese Expeditionary Force

  On January 11 the Japanese launched their first heavy infantry attack. Colonel Imai Takeo’s eastern column, the 2nd Battalion, 141st Infantry, took aim at the juncture of the 41st Division and Colonel George S. Clarke’s 57th Combat Team, Philippine Scouts. It was early evening, around 1900. There was a “weird” cast to the light that Clarke couldn’t explain, though it didn’t seem to come from tracers. Japanese artillery and mortar fire against the II Corps line was met with a blast of machine gun fire. And then the strangest thing happened. Japanese soldiers who seemed “crazed by dope” walked head-on into an artillery barrage. Each man carried a trench mortar, and many of them had light machine guns, and they kept on coming—for hours. The first wave shouted Banzai and deliberately set off land mines, blowing themelves up to clear the field for subsequent troops. Then another wave of men, again shouting Banzai, hurled themselves against a barbed-wire entanglement. Pinned in place, they were easy targets for Fil-American gunners, and that seemed to be the point. For they formed a human bridge over which the troops behind them could advance. In spite of stiff resistance, the Japanese managed to knock L Company of the Third Battalion, 57th Infantry, back to the reserve line; they even stole their foxholes. But the next morning the 21st Infantry of the 21st Division of the Philippine Army reclaimed the Abucay line.

  In the meantime, hundreds of Japanese snipers had circumvented the main battle position. Members of an elite special service corps, they were expertly camouflaged with branches and leaves. As many as eight might hide in the bole of a tree; as many as 150 could be on the ground. They remained perfectly quiet, still as statues, until a target came into their line of fire. Americ
an officers were particularly prized. The Japanese used their language skills to entrap: “Kill me, Americano,” they’d say to lure troops out into the open. Or one Japanese soldier would proclaim “Me surrender!” emerging from the brush with a rifle over his head. Then, as an American went forward to disarm him, others would spring up in a deadly ambush. The Japanese rattled Filipino soldiers by calling out in Tagalog, “Ikaw ay mamatay,” meaning “You are going to die.” The words were terrifying in the darkness to a people who were naturally superstitious. You didn’t know who was speaking, and you could only guess where they were. Sniper parties were formed to flush them out, and by the end of the next day most of the Japanese had been eliminated. Clarke was determined to “take as few prisoners as possible.”

  Hunger was a constant companion. Supplies were moved from the Camp Limay depot and a large dump near Little Baguio to distribution points so they would be accessible to the fighting and service units. But there simply wasn’t enough food. Between the soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, and some 26,000 Filipino refugees, there were 110,000 mouths to feed on Bataan and Corregidor. Half-rations were officially prescribed on Bataan on January 6, but it would be difficult to furnish a daily diet of even 2,000 calories. Other food sources were sought.

  January was harvest season, and grain had been stacked in fields that were cultivated along Manila Bay, but much of it remained unthreshed. So the Corps of Engineers dismantled two rice mills at Orion and Balanga, and moved them to the Little Baguio dump; soon the mills were yielding 30,000 pounds of polished rice a day. The supply of palay (unhusked rice) lasted a month.

  A quartermaster bakery was set up in early January and operated as long as there was flour. Fish traps were rigged along the coast and netted thousands of pounds of fresh seafood daily—until Japanese dive bombers destroyed them. For meat, the quartermaster and the Veterinary Corps rounded up carabao for slaughter. The carcasses were shipped to Corregidor for cold storage, then ferried back to Bataan at night for consumption. Many of the carabao were abandoned by Filipinos fleeing the Japanese. But many were also poached by hungry soldiers who saw the beasts of burden as a large steak on legs. Carabao were worked like oxen—the natives used them to pull plows through the rice fields. Their meat was tough and stringy, tasting “just like the mud it used to wallow in,” according to one gourmand, but it was packed with protein. Poaching reached such proportions near the Navy Section Base that on January 15 Captain John H. S. Dessez, commanding officer of the U.S. Naval Reservation and all naval units on Mariveles, issued a warning concerning “Livestock, slaughter of.”

  It is reported that indiscriminate slaughter of livestock in the U.S. Naval Reservation and adjacent areas is being conducted. This livestock is private property although it may appear to be wild. This slaughter will be considered looting and will be treated accordingly.

  In early January MacArthur had sent a dire warning to the War Department regarding the food crisis: “If something is not done to meet the general situation which is developing the disastrous results will be monumental.” The delay in implementing WPO-3 was already taking its toll.

  Theft was not limited to what could be eaten. At Cabcaben the Army Quartermaster Corps had set up an unloading station for vessels that had made the run from Manila. The area was under guard, but during one air raid marauding marines stole provisions that they ended up sharing with the boys from the 192nd Tank Company. When Ted Williams spotted an unattended tractor trailer nearby with its keys still in the ignition, he swiftly commandeered it for the mobile 270B radar unit in his detachment that had been moved to Bataan from Batangas. Williams was also able to “requisition” drums of fuel for the 192nd Tank Company, and as a token of appreciation, the sergeant offered him a ride in a tank one night.

  “It’s a ball, Willie, you’ll getta bang outta it!”

  The twenty-year-old marine jumped at the opportunity. That evening, with two other tanks in tow, they turned onto a dirt road that led straight into the line of defense. It was hot inside, dusty, and difficult to breathe. After several miles the commander waved his hand, and the tanks rumbled off the shoulder and hid beneath the trees. They kept their engines idle for hours. In the moonlight, the road looked like a tunnel dug out of a forest of rattan and bamboo. Finally the tank commander nudged the driver. Japanese soldiers on single-speed bicycles were heading in their direction. He waited until they passed by. Then the driver punched the starter, and the tank roared into action, charging its prey. Five .30-caliber machine guns opened fire, mercilessly mowing down the unsuspecting riders and raking the underbrush for those who dove into it for cover. The tank thundered up the road dragging down and crushing to death anyone and anything in its path. The carnage of the night still clung to the tank’s undercarriage and rollers when it returned to camp. It made Williams’s stomach churn.

  He knew the symptoms well. A pain in the small of the back. A throbbing headache. Chills that made you tremble so violently beneath a layer of blankets that your cot shook and your teeth chattered. You fell into a deep sleep, only to awaken drenched in sweat with a howling fever. Remission the next day, then the cycle began all over again. It was exhausting, debilitating, and there was no point staying in Mariveles.

  Murray was too ill to treat himself; he could barely sit up in bed. But once a corpsman got him to Hospital No. 2, he found that the staff there didn’t want to treat him either. As 2nd Lieutenant Leona Gastinger, an army nurse, described it: “If you went off into the wildest part of the jungle and brought along a bunch of bunk beds and set them up by a little stream and supplied yourself with a few pills, you’d have an idea of what Hospital Number Two was like.”

  Except there were no pills, at least for Murray. He knew what he had and the one thing he needed—quinine bisulfate. But he was told he had to wait for a white blood cell count. Nothing worse than an army nurse telling a navy doctor what he had to do. The problem was that the pathologist, Captain Harold Keschner, was so overwhelmed with cases, as Captain John R. Bumgarner acknowledged, that “he and his assistants couldn’t possibly run malaria smears on all patients.” The hell with that, Murray thought. He’d die if he stayed there. With the help of his corpsman, he returned to his aid station, scrounged up some quinine, and was back at work in a week, half the average stay for a malaria patient. A good thing, too. For the site of Hospital No. 2 alongside the Real River was a perfect breeding ground for mosquitoes.

  As 1st Sergeant Houston Turner of Company B, 31st Infantry, said: “We had wounded and sick in the company that refused to go back to the hospital. . . . You were always better off with a buddy, because at least that way someone would take care of you.” Ruth Straub, a nurse at Hospital No. 2, put it another way: “I guess we are all self-imposed prisoners-of-war,” she wrote in her diary. “All we’re doing is protecting our own lives.”

  Miraculously, John Bookman managed to escape malaria but not hospitalization. Murray had him admitted to Hospital No. 1 for acute, nonsuppurative cellulitis. The cellulitis cleared up after a few days, but John was nagged by edema. One of the consequences of malnutrition, edema causes an increase in the body’s water content relative to the loss of tissue and is recognized by puffiness around the face and ankles, though it can also take more severe forms. Patients suffering from malaria, dysentery, anemia, and vitamin deficiencies were particularly prone to it.

  Malaria aside, the Cabulog River valley grew too hot for comfort. Enemy air activity intensified, bombers overshot Battery C, and fighters sprayed the area with machine gun fire. Murray’s aid station was in danger. He contacted Carey Smith and evacuated his patients to Hospital No. 1. Then he joined John and Bernard Cohen in the only place that was secure: underground.

  Tunnel No. 4 was one of the nine storage tunnels in the Mariveles area. Unfinished, it also sheltered crew members of the Canopus who preferred ships to machine guns and would rather work at night and sleep during the day. A hundred feet long by ninety feet wide, it was sparsely outfitted with a
small radio and telephone communications center, administrative offices, and a field kitchen. Down the center ran a narrow-gauge mine railroad, and overhead a string of bare lightbulbs. Steel double-deck bunk beds lined the chiseled walls. The water that dripped from overhanging rock was trapped and piped for showers, which were voluntary.

  Beyond the beds was a small hospital in a lateral tunnel that John had improvised with a portable operating table, a wheeled stand for a glucose drip, scalpels, hemostats, scissors, and a white pan for bloodied instruments. The doctors worked there during the day and slept outside at night.

  Necessity made strange bedfellows. During one raid an Army Air Corps lieutenant dashed in for cover and ran smack into John’s arms.

  “Hello,” John said politely as he extricated himself from the stranger. “I’m John Bookman.”

  “And I’m David Hochman,” came the abashed reply.

  Hochman was another New Yorker, surgeon of the 16th Bombardment Squadron, a unit of the 27th Bomb Group. They had arrived in Manila in late November, though the fifty-two A-24s that would have given them wings—and were part of the Pensacola convoy—never made it to the Philippines. An air force without planes. A navy without ships. An army without food. They had much in common.

  With Hayes stationed on Corregidor, the navy medical staff on Bataan reported to E. L. Sackett, captain of the Canopus and commander of naval forces in the Mariveles area. Sackett had cleverly listed the submarine tender, tilted its cargo booms, blackened the areas around its bomb holes, and ignited oily rags in smudge pots to shield her from the attention of Japanese bombers. From the sky the Old Lady looked like an abandoned hulk—but at night she was the belle of the ball, buzzing with activity as a machine shop, repair shop, and weapons forge. In spite of her bedraggled appearance, the Canopus offered the best accommodations around, with hot showers, cold drinking water, and refrigeration, which enabled her to serve what Sackett considered the greatest luxury, “real butter.” First Lieutenant Carter Simpson of Battery C couldn’t get over the elegant dinners in the ship’s ward room, where officers were attended “by mess boys in white jackets!” he noted in his diary. To top it off, the Canopus stored barrels of ice cream mix that the galley gladly turned into chocolate sundaes for those who asked. Such amenities made her a natural attraction for army officers romancing nurses, marines ostensibly on business from Corregidor, and the boys from MTB Squadron 3. Crippled in her outward appearance, the Canopus was a floating pleasure dome for officers and their guests, far removed from the rugged life of the front.