Conduct Under Fire Read online

  Manila would be next, Admiral Hart’s office was warned. Air raid sirens wailed throughout the city. George Ferguson tried to get over to Cañacao, but there wasn’t a car, taxi, or caretela that wasn’t being used by the army, navy, or evacuating civilians. The boat to Sangley Point had left without him. And there was no chance, he now knew, that he would be going back to the States.

  He remembered his long days of boredom on the Yangtze River and his boyish enthusiasm at the prospect of hostilities breaking out, which he had seen, opportunistically, as a chance to gain more medical experience. “Damn it have 2½ years of this damn place behind and indefinite time ahead. Oh Hell!” he wrote in his diary. If his hopes of seeing Lucy were dashed, George didn’t let anyone know. This was no time to feel sorry for himself. Besides, he had little doubt that his dreams would be realized; it was only a matter of when. He accepted his lot with a trace of resignation and a wink of self-knowledge. “Guess better not gripe too much,” he concluded.

  Few in the Philippines were privy to the full extent of the disaster at Pearl Harbor, just as it was impossible in the States to obtain accurate information from early news reports. A total of 2,403 servicemen and civilians had died, and another 1,178 were wounded. Eighteen warships were sunk or damaged, including the Arizona, Oklahoma, West Virginia, and California, and 188 planes were lost. It was “a date which will live in infamy,” pronounced Roosevelt on December 8, 1941, as he asked Congress to approve a declaration of war against Japan.

  “So far,” the president acknowledged the next evening in his fireside chat, “the news has been all bad.” It would only get worse, Murray thought. The “Pearl of the Orient” was about to lose its luster.

  3

  Red Sunset

  ŌHASHI KAZUKO was a student at Atomi Women’s College in Tōkyō when she heard the news of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. “Today, December 8, before dawn, the Imperial Army and Navy entered into a state of war with American and British forces in the western Pacific,” read the first bulletin from Imperial General Headquarters (Daihonei), issued at six A.M. An hour later Radio Tōkyō began playing Meiji-era songs such as “Gunkan-mōchi” (the Warship March) and “Battō-tai” (The Drawn Sword Brigade). The city awakened to newspaper vendors ringing bells to hawk the morning extras.

  Young women in Kazuko’s dormitory gathered in a large hall, where the air crackled with excitement. Some shouted, while others literally wept with joy. Japan had proven her might. No longer would she have to submit to Western policies, demands, restrictions, or stereotypes. Japan had found a way out of her economic woes. Now she would be a world power. She would expand her sphere of influence just as the great colonial powers England, Holland, and France had done in India, Malaya, and Indochina. Just as America had done in the Philippines. TaiheiySensō—the Pacific War—had begun.

  Kazuko’s father, Ohashi Hyōjirō, was a gifted surgeon who taught at Osaka University Medical School. He had been called to active duty in 1937, having received “the red paper” (akagami) from the Office of the Draft (chōheika) in Wakayama. He was a practicing Buddhist but was invigorated by the spirit of militarism that swept through Japan in the 1930s and led to full-scale war with China. “Now I can be a man!” he exclaimed on learning of Pearl Harbor. Only five foot four with high cheekbones, a broad face, and a clipped mustache, he thrust an ancestral sword into his belt.

  Miyazaki Shunya was the son of family friends and in junior high school at the time. He feared for his country’s future: America was so big—how could Japan possibly prevail? He was relieved upon hearing of Japan’s stunning success in the sneak attack. “Truly it is time for the one hundred million of us Japanese to dedicate all we have and sacrifice everything for our country’s cause,” said the prime minister, General Tōjō Hideki, in a radio address that afternoon. “As long as there remains under the policy of Eight Corners of the World Under One Roof this great spirit of loyalty and patriotism, we have nothing to fear in fighting America and Britain.”

  Japanese novelist Dazai Osamu put it more bluntly: he was “itching to beat the bestial, insensitive Americans to a pulp.”

  There was no way Japan could win a war against America, Fred Berley believed. The United States was the richest country in the world, her population was nearly twice that of Japan, and she was blessed with vast natural resources. In 1941 U.S. steel, aluminum, and motor vehicle production surpassed that of any other nation on earth and many of them combined.

  But twenty years of disarmament and isolation had taken their toll. In 1939 the U.S. Army ranked eighteenth in size on a scale of the world’s fighting forces, flanked by the armies of Portugal and Bulgaria. Japan boasted 2.4 million combat troops and another 3 million reserves, whereas combined American, British, and Dutch troops in East Asia amounted to a paltry 350,000. The Japanese Army had racked up five years of combat experience in China, while U.S. Army forces in the Philippines were run like an old boys’ club, softened by a torpid lifestyle in the tropics. “The Philippine situation looks sound,” MacArthur confidently told journalist John Hersey in mid-1941. In reality, it was anything but.

  At the beginning of the war, the Japanese Army Air Service had better planes, the Japanese Navy had more surface ships, and the Japanese Army had guns of more recent manufacture, albeit from older models. The Zero fighter, introduced in 1940, outclassed any airplane in the U.S. Army and Navy air forces. The twin-engine Mitsubishi bomber known as the Type 96 “Nell” had a range of 2,300 miles, compared to the B-17 Flying Fortress, which was limited to 1,850. Japan’s cruisers, unlike those in the U.S. Navy, were fortified with torpedo tubes, and the torpedoes themselves had far greater range. Japan had a superior 47mm antitank gun, its .25-caliber Arisaka rifle was lighter, quieter, and more easily assembled and concealed, and its light machine gun was more adaptable to jungle warfare. The Japanese had developed a versatile 50mm grenade launcher, erroneously referred to by the Americans as a “knee mortar,” in addition to a portable 70mm gun capable of hurling an 8.8-pound shell a distance of two miles.

  By contrast, the armament of Fil-American forces was a museum hall of outmoded weaponry. Their 1898 Vickers-Maxim 2.95-inch pack howitzers were drawn by horse or mule; their 75mm guns were wooden-wheel mounted; and the dual-purpose (surface or air) 3-inch guns used in the three antiaircraft batteries around Cavite were vintage World War I. The average American infantryman relied on the 1903 Springfield, a .30-caliber bolt-action rifle with a five-round internal box magazine: it was declared obsolete in 1918, even though it carried a more powerful punch than the .25-caliber bolt-action Arisaka rifle and was modeled after the same 1898 Mauser design.

  The Philippine Army, conceded Major General Jonathan M. “Skinny” Wainwright, commander of North Luzon Force, “lacked even obsolete equipment.” Infantrymen were poorly trained, practicing with wooden weapons, and many had never fired a real gun before being handed an M1917 Enfield rifle. Shoddy American-issue canvas shoes were too narrow for Filipino feet, while guinit helmets made from varnished coconut turned their heads into flashing targets in the sunlight.

  At 7,000 men strong, Philippine Army divisions were smaller than their American and Japanese counterparts, and by December 1941, there were only eight of them on Luzon, two of which were from the Visayas. But not all had been fully mobilized, and only one out of three regiments in each division had completed refresher training when hostilities broke out. For the defense of northern Luzon, Wainwright had a paltry 28,000 troops at his disposal—not the 200,000 that MacArthur claimed on paper—and they had to cover an area hundreds of square miles in size.

  The American-trained 45th and 57th Infantry Regiments of the Philippine Scouts were issued Garand semiautomatic rifles and were widely admired for their courage and professionalism, if not for their equipment and supplies. First Lieutenant Mark Herbst, a doctor with the 3rd Battalion, 57th Infantry, opened the case of medical instruments he had been issued and discovered that they dated back to the 31st Infantry’s 1918 Siber
ian expedition. Some medications were from 1917-type medical chests and were so old they were useless. The 31st Infantry had the distinction of being the only American infantry regiment in the Philippines out of 22,000 U.S. Army troops in the Philippines. But their reputation was more for bibulosity than for bravery; hence their moniker, the “Thirsty-First.” Conditioned by peacetime and supplied with surplus equipment, Fil-American forces, remarked historian Richard Connaughton, were preparing to fight their “first land battle of the Second World War with the weapons of the First.”

  Fred had seen Japanese naval power at its finest when he was medical officer of Destroyer Division 58 and his ship, the Parrott, was ordered to South China in February 1940. There in the harbor of Kulangsu, a jewel of an island, was the Japanese destroyer, Harukaze. “Spring Breeze” (as her name meant) was a real beauty compared with the old four-stackers of the U.S. Navy’s Asiatic Fleet. Fred even had a chance to go on board when he and the Parrott’s skipper, Commander E. N. “Butch” Parker, were invited by the captain of the Harukaze to watch sword and bayonet exercises in celebration of the mythical anniversary of the founding of the Japanese Empire on February 11. Japanese battleships such as the Yamato, commissioned one week after Pearl Harbor, were the largest in the world, displacing 65,000 tons or more and bristling with 18-inch guns, compared with the 35,000-to-40,000-ton battleships armed with 16-inch guns in the Royal Navy and the U.S. Navy.

  Still, the idea of Japan attacking the United States was unbelievable, even though the possibility had been discussed in American military circles since 1906. Fred would soon find out just how unprepared America was for war.

  Prewar medical mobilization in the islands depended on the 12th Medical Regiment, the Philippine Scouts, and the Philippine Army. They engaged in maneuvers with the chief U.S. Army unit in the Philippines known as the Philippine Division, comprising the American 31st Infantry Regiment and the 45th and 57th Infantry Regiments. They surveyed Bataan for medical support of frontline troops and hospital sites in the rear. They schooled officers and enlisted men in field medicine, medical supply, and hospitalization, and they instructed regimental bandsmen, traditionally used as litter bearers, in first aid.

  Once Rainbow 5 went into effect in November 1941, Sternberg was designated as the primary hospital in Manila with enough annexes throughout the city to accommodate 3,000 to 5,000 casualties in the event of hostilities. The complex, known as the Manila Hospital Center, came into being on December 8 under Colonel Percy J. Carroll, Sternberg’s commanding officer. Eight annexes were quickly set up in the reconverted Jai Alai Club, Estado Mayor Barracks, the Spanish Club and Girls’ Dormitory on Taft Avenue, Philippine Women’s University, Santa Scholastica College, Fort William McKinley, Holy Ghost Convent and College in Quezon City, and De la Salle College. With the exception of Fort William McKinley, which already had an army station hospital, their staff and supply needs were enormous.

  Twenty surgical teams were formed, primarily from army medical officers and enlisted men. Army, navy, and civilian nurses lent invaluable assistance. The Army Medical Corps and the Philippine Department scoured Manila to procure all available bandages, medicines, antimalarial drugs, and surgical equipment. Filipino Medical Corps and Dental Corps personnel were recruited from the Philippine Army Medical School at Camp Murphy in Manila to work as motor pool, assistant supply, and mess officers. Rizal Station served as the medical depot. Sub-depots were established at Orion, Tarlac, Los Baños, and Cebu.

  Captain Robert G. Davis, commanding officer of Cañacao, worried that the naval hospital’s proximity to Cavite placed it in “great danger.” A more immediate threat was the Sangley Point radio station, with its three 600-foot towers, any one of which, if hit, could fall onto the hospital. Sandbags were placed around Cañacao. Trenches and air raid shelters were dug in the Sangley Point area. Patients and medical and nursing staff were absorbed by Sternberg and the Estado Mayor annex a block away.

  But the location of Sternberg raised similar concerns because it was directly across the street from Philippine Army Headquarters and was forced to observe blackout regulations each night. Estado Mayor, only recently vacated by a battalion of the 31st Infantry, was another desirable target. Nonetheless patients and staff from Fort William McKinley, one of five station hospitals in the Philippines including Fort Stotsenberg, Fort Mills on Corregidor, Camp John Hay in Baguio, and Fort Brent on Mindanao, would soon move into Estado Mayor for the simple reason that Fort McKinley itself was a likely target.

  Technically noncombatants, the medical officers were issued World War I doughboy helmets, gas masks, sidearms and were told to be on the lookout for sabotage. Lieutenant (j.g.) Gordon K. Lambert was trained in industrial medicine and ordered to set up battle aid stations in the Navy Yard—where casualties could be sorted and first aid administered in areas protected from enemy fire. He placed Fred Berley in charge of the Navy Yard dispensary.

  “Gordon, the dispensary won’t last two minutes in a bombing raid,” Fred said in no uncertain terms. “It’s all wood, it’s in the middle of the yard, the paint shop is on one side, and the printing shop is on the other.”

  Fred suggested an alternative: the old paint locker behind the dispensary, which was made of concrete blocks a foot square and was built below street level. There was a door on the side, a window to the left, and an arched ceiling, above which was the old brig. Lambert agreed, and Fred had it stocked with bandages, operating instruments, kerosene lamps, and flashlights. He enlisted forty-five stretcher bearers from the radio school, the band, and the receiving ship. After a cursory lesson in first aid, he told them to report to the old paint locker on the double anytime there was an air alert.

  At 0300 on the morning of December 9, 1941, Captain Davis was awakened at Cañacao Hospital by the sounds of heavy bombing over Nichols Field, a mere six miles away. The sky was streaked with red and yellow tracer bullets, bursts of antiaircraft fire, and the blaze of burning hangars and planes. The submarine tender Canopus steamed away from the Navy Yard as a safety precaution and was ordered to the Port Area of Manila, where torpedoes and spare parts were unloaded and hastened to Corregidor, but the Japanese had other targets in mind.

  Women employees were ordered to stay home, and civilians began to evacuate Cavite. Aviation gasoline and oil tanks were emptied and dispersed throughout Manila Bay. The navy began destroying secret nonessential documents.

  George Ferguson was assigned to Cañacao, where he found “everyone still running around in gas mask helmets and brown uniforms.” The staff was jumpy at the sound of the air raid alarms. “They’re right though,” he remarked in his diary. “Wish I had sent everything home.”

  That evening Fred Berley rode his bicycle to the movie house to catch Abe Lincoln in Illinois, starring Raymond Massey, Gene Lockhart, and Ruth Gordon. Around 2000, midway through the film, an air raid siren went off. Fred rushed to put on his gas mask, manned his station, and received his first casualty. A sailor from the Sealion had jumped for cover down a submarine hatch and torn a seven-inch gash in the lateral aspect of his right upper thigh, through the skin, the fascia, and the muscle itself. Fred sewed up the wound, then sent him to Cañacao once the all-clear sounded. No raid materialized. The rumble of bombs continued through the night.

  Midmorning on December 10, Private First Class Irvin C. Scott, Jr., looked at the oscilloscope on the mobile SCR-270B unit at Wawa Beach near Nasugbu and spotted an ominous airplane formation approaching Manila Bay from the north. The duty radioman tried to reach Sangley Point but to no avail. He then made contact with Army Radio on Corregidor, but the Army Radio operators there hadn’t heard of the SCR-270B and wouldn’t believe the sighting.

  The same finding raised an alarm at Far East Air Force interceptor headquarters at noon. Enemy planes were tracked forty-five minutes away. Brereton scrambled twenty P-40s and fifteen P-35s, but they were overwhelmed by fifty-two Zero fighter planes escorting eighty or so bombers.

  At 1235 Fred Berley was
waiting for a slice of apple pie in the Officers’ Mess of the Cavite Navy Yard when a siren blared from the power-house. Fred and Murray grabbed their gas masks and sidearms and ran to the paint locker, where a group of workmen stood gazing over at Sangley Point. Lambert and Lieutenant Commander C. T. Cross, a dentist, were fast on their heels. Ships, submarines, and seaplanes gunned their engines to get away from the Navy Yard as quickly as possible. Then twenty-seven planes from the Japanese Imperial Navy’s 11th Air Fleet, flying southeast from Formosa, sailed over Manila at 21,000 feet.

  It was a lovely day, the sky azure, flecked with clouds. “Look at those planes,” Fred said as fifty-four Mitsubishi Zero fighters in two groups of twenty-seven approached Cavite at 23,000 feet. “I can see the bombs!”

  They were oddly beautiful as they fluttered down like leaflets glinting in the sun. The first stick hit the water, causing waterspouts to erupt from the sea refracting rainbows of color.

  “Get the hell inside!” Murray yelled.

  The second stick hit Sangley Point, and then the bombers swept over Cavite, breaking into groups of nine. Within minutes they leveled the torpedo repair shop, the supply office and warehouses, the signal station, the commissary store and receiving station, the barracks and officers’ quarters. Walls of flame leaped out of the earth, and plumes of thick, oily smoke boiled up into the sky. Then a bomb hit the brig above the old paint locker.

  Jesus Christ, Murray thought, the war has just begun and I’m going to die.

  He was strangely calm. He was in peak physical condition, at the beginning of his professional career, and here, now, none of it mattered: not school, college, or medical education; not family, friends, or Laura; not strength, willpower, hope, or prayer. Nameless, faceless, he was invisible to the Japanese, a target not for practice but to be destroyed.