The Great Raid on Cabanatuan, page 6
Finally, the captives hobbled into San Fernando, the headquarters of General Homma’s Fourteenth Army. There the men were given small amounts of water and balls of rice, then they were penned up in the Blue Moon Dance Hall, old factories, school buildings, open fields, and a cock-fighting arena.
During the next few days, the POWs, in groups of about five hundred, were marched to the railroad station and ordered to climb into small boxcars, which were only thirty-three feet long and seven feet wide. There was room for perhaps forty POWs, but the guards shoehorned 115 men into each boxcar.
Among those crammed into the cars was Private Robert J. Body, a native of Sarnia, Canada, who had served as a machine gunner with the 31st Infantry and had enlisted in the U.S. Army at age sixteen and turned seventeen on Bataan.
Body remembered: “Both boxcar doors were slammed shut. We had to stand in the ovenlike interior, for there was no room to move. There were only cracks for fresh air. The stink from sweaty, unwashed bodies, along with festered sores that covered most of the captives, created an almost unbearable stench.
“As the train moved along the countryside, we felt we were suffocating. Many did. They remained upright in death, for we were packed in like sardines and they couldn’t fall.
“There were screams of ‘Let me out!’ and loud weeping and moaning. Gripped by dysentery and malaria, many men defecated on themselves and others nearby. Others urinated where they stood and some vomited on those next to them.”21
After what seemed to the POWs like the passing of centuries—the rail trip had lasted about five hours—the train chugged into Capos and halted. Boxcar doors were thrown open, and the captives spilled out, gulping in huge amounts of fresh air. Formed into straggly columns, the captives marched for eight miles in the torrid heat, not having had food or water in two days. They limped through the gate of a collection of rough-hewn buildings and nipa huts. This was their new home— Camp O’Donnell.
Even while the men of Bataan were marching northward, an article splashed across the front page of the Japanese-controlled, English language Manila Tribune on Sunday, April 19, declared:
If in spite of the humane treatment the Japanese are giving these prisoners, they are too weak to reach their destination, there is only to blame the generals of the American forces for surrendering when many of their men were already terribly weakened by lack of food and by disease.
In the days ahead, thousands of the Legion of the Living Dead poured through the gates at O’Donnell. Of the seventy-thousand Americans and Filipinos who had started the march, some fifty-four thousand reached the POW camp. An estimated ten thousand had died of hunger, disease, or brutality, or were murdered along the way.22
5
“Situation Fast Becoming Desperate”
General Masaharu Homma had no inclination to gloat over crushing the stubborn defenders of Bataan. Tokyo had given him sixty days to conquer the Philippines, but one hundred and twelve days had passed—and Corregidor was holding out defiantly despite the hopeless predicament of its trapped garrison. In recent days, Field Marshal Count Hisaichi Terauchi, commander of the Southern Army and Douglas MacArthur’s opposite number, visited the Philippines and demanded that Corregidor be seized—rapidly. Homma, Terauchi implied, was jeopardizing the entire Japanese timetable for conquest in the Pacific.1
Long known as the “Gibraltar of the Far East,” Corregidor is three and a half miles long and one and a half miles wide at its widest point. It is shaped like a tadpole, with its large head pointing west toward the South China Sea. The tadpole’s eastern (tail) section is sandy, wooded, and little more than 150 feet above Manila Bay at its highest elevation. At the center of the island, Malinta Hill rises abruptly to a height of 350 feet, and into this promontory was burrowed the 1,200-foot-long Malinta Tunnel.
At his headquarters in San Fernando on April 8, 1942, General Homma gave the order to deluge Corregidor with a colossal tonnage of shells and bombs. If that bombardment did not bring surrender, then Japanese troops would storm ashore.
Late that afternoon, Japanese artillery on Bataan unleashed a torrent of shells, pounding the Rock from Topside to the tip of the tail. The roar of the big guns echoed for miles across Manila Bay. After the barrage lifted, wave after wave of Mitsubishi bombers dropped hundreds of tons of explosives. Except for the Rocks obsolete pom-poms (antiaircraft guns) that blasted away at the intruders, Corregidor could do nothing to halt the onslaught.
In the week ahead, Japanese bombers were over the Rock almost constantly during daylight. Casualties on Corregidor would have been much heavier had it not been for Colonel Stuart “Stu” Wood, Wainwright’s chief intelligence officer, who had learned the Japanese language while serving as a military attaché in Tokyo a few years earlier. Electronically monitoring Japanese radio traffic at Luzon airports, the colonel knew when bombers were taking off to pound Corregidor, and he could even hear Japanese air controllers cursing and yelling, “Get those damned carabao off the runway!” Although the flights to Corregidor required only a few minutes, Wood’s electronic snooping gave the defenders time to take cover.
Members of the U.S. 4th Marine Regiment also put great faith in the advance warnings given by Private First Class Soochow, who had an uncanny instinct for sensing when bombers were on the way to hit Corregidor. Soochow was a small mongrel dog that had been adopted as a mascot by the 4th Marines in Shanghai, China, in 1937. He had become a legend in his own time, riding around teeming Shanghai in rickshaws, and eating sirloin steaks and guzzling beer with the other marines in his own tailor-made uniform.
When the 4th Marines shipped out to the Philippines shortly after war broke out, Private Soochow was smuggled aboard. On reaching the Rock, his two-legged pals soon discovered that when Japanese warplanes were approaching, the mongrel would start yapping and dancing around in circles. Then, when the bombings were about to begin, Soochow hit the foxholes with his buddies.2 There were eleven thousand American and Filipino military people on the Rock, but only the fifteen hundred men of Colonel Samuel L. Howard’s 4th Marines were trained for ground combat and they would be the backbone of the beach defenses. Except for some aging World War I veterans of Belleau Wood fame, and a handful of men who had fought rebels in Nicaragua in the 1930s, none of the marines had tasted combat.
Augmenting Howard’s force was a motley collection of twenty-five hundred beached sailors, grounded airmen, Filipino aviation cadets, supply soldiers, and a handful of retired Filipino mess boys (as they were known) of the U.S. Navy who had been recalled to active duty when war broke out. Most of these men had rifles, but many had never fired one. The main antitank weapons were Molotov cocktails.
In far-off Australia, an anguished Douglas MacArthur held no illusions about the ultimate fate of Corregidor. On April 13, he radioed General Marshall in Washington: “The life of this fortress is definitely limited and its destruction certain unless sea communications can be restored.… You must be prepared for the fall of Corregidor.’3
MacArthur also made it clear to Wainwright that no troops, planes, food, ammunition, or weapons were on the way: “I cannot tell you how anxious I am to bring you relief,” MacArthur radioed. “My resources are practically negligible. I have represented to the War Department that the only way in which you can be reinforced is by use of the Pacific Fleet. I have had no reply.”4
Three weeks into the siege of Corregidor, Colonel Stu Wood, the Japanese language expert, reminded Jonathan Wainwright that Wednesday, April 29, was the birthday of Emperor Hirohito, the diminutive, mild-mannered father of six, who most Japanese revered as a god.
“You can count on the Japs here to give us a rousing celebration,” Wood declared.
By now, General Homma had 116 big guns arrayed along the southern tip of Bataan and near Cavite seven miles across Manila Bay to the east. The largest of these weapons were 240-millimeter monsters that fired thousand-pound shells. When one of these huge projectiles was making its downward flight, its terrific noise sounded to the Americans like a freight train racing through a tunnel.
Masaharu Homma’s “celebration” of Hirohito’s birthday began just after daybreak when eighty-three Mitsubishis unloaded hundreds of bombs. Malinta Tunnel was a particular target, presumably on the premise that Wainwright and his staff would be cowed into surrendering.
Twenty-four hours later, a 240-millimeter shell penetrated an underground magazine where sixteen hundred artillery powder charges, each weighing sixty pounds, were stored. A gargantuan explosion seemed to lift Corregidor out of the water as though a huge, supernatural force had grabbed the island by its tail and was madly shaking it. Soldiers near the blast were tossed high into the air like rag dolls. A score or more were killed instantly from the concussion without a mark on their bodies. Hundreds of yards from the blast, men in the open were knocked down, stunned, but otherwise unhurt. Chunks of stone and debris landed as far as two miles away. A sixty-ton slab of concrete was hurled a thousand yards. Ten-ton mortar barrels were flung into the air as though they were Ping-Pong balls. The explosion seemed to intensify the psychosis of fear and doom that gripped many on Corregidor.
On May 2, Wainwright cabled George Marshall in Washington: “Corregidor subjected to continuous shellfire, the heaviest concentration yet experienced. During one five-hour period, twelve 240-millimeter shells fell per minute for a total of thirty-five hundred hits in only one (gun-battery) area of Topside.”5
That day, two PBYs managed to elude the air and sea blockade and landed on Manila Bay south of Corregidor. After a medicine shipment and a few mechanical fuses were unloaded, thirty nurses, three civilian women, and seventeen military officers scrambled aboard. Soon the flying boats skimmed across the bay and lifted off for Australia.
On Lake Lanao, Mindanao, the PBYs landed for refueling. Staff Sergeant Jerry L. Coty of the U.S. 19th Bomb Group and a few comrades were assigned the task of pumping gasoline into the aircrafts’ thirsty tanks. A short time later one PBY, while preparing for takeoff, hit a submerged object, ripping a hole in one of its pontoons. Crew and passengers climbed out of the damaged aircraft and rapid repairs were made. However, the plane’s load would have to be lightened because of the damage.
Jerry Coty recalled: “Much to our disgust, several of the male officers, including a few West Pointers, pulled rank and bumped several lady nurses. These men got flown to safety and the nurses were left behind.”6
Early in the afternoon of May 3, the twenty-fifth day of Homma’s all-out effort to blow Corregidor off the map, Americans on Topside, peering through high-powered telescopes, detected an alarming development: The Japanese had collected scores of motorized landing barges along the Bataan shore. Clearly, an amphibious assault against the Rock would be launched soon. At the same time, Wainwright penned in his report: “Corregidor experienced its 287th bombing (today) since the war began.”7
Then Wainwright cabled MacArthur: “Situation here fast becoming desperate. The island is practically denuded of vegetation and trees, leaving no cover, and all structures are leveled to the ground.… Terrain pockmarked like craters in the moon.… Casualties since April 9 (from bombings and shellings) approximately six hundred.”8
Although Malinta Hill and the thick concrete roof and walls provided immunity from bombs and shells for Jonathan Wainwright and his staff and communications technicians, the tunnel was a subterranean Hades. Along with the military people, the excavation was crammed with two thousand Philippine civilians, who were too terrified to go outside, so they defecated and urinated on the floors and walls. The heat and humidity were stifling. Unwashed bodies gave off a horrendous odor. Huge black flies and cockroaches were everywhere. When bombs or shells crashed above the tunnel, the lights flickered, then went out, plunging the tomb into inky blackness. Unless one had a watch, he did not know if it were night or day at any given time.
In the tunnel’s hospital lateral, wounded men were tenderly cared for by American nurses, who came to be known as the “Angels of Corregidor.” These young women moved from cot to cot, consoling the dying, calming the wounded, administering injections, bandaging, giving water to those who were paralyzed, feeding those with no arms. Wearing GI coveralls or khaki shirts and slacks or skirts, the Angels often had to cover their faces and those of the patients with improvised masks of wet gauze as shields against the thick dust generated by crashing bombs and shells above them on Malinta Hill.
In charge of the operating room was Lieutenant Eunice F. Young, a native of New York. She had joined the Army Nurse Corps in 1939, and, after two years at Letterman Army Hospital in San Francisco, volunteered for overseas duty, arriving in Manila in August 1941. When the Japanese struck at Corregidor, Lieutenant Young and other nurses organized the operating room in Malinta Tunnel and staffed it twentyfour hours a day as the violence swirled around and on the Rock.
Young remembered: “We never seemed to be without wounded men waiting for surgery. We put in eighteen-hour workdays, seven days per week.”9
Early in the morning of May 4, Corregidor shook under a monstrous deluge of bombs and shells, possibly the heaviest cascade of explosives on such a small area that history had known to that time. Within a few hours, an estimated sixteen thousand shells streaked onto the Rock, and then the Mitsubishis winged overhead, unopposed as usual, to drop their lethal cargos.
After enduring an almost ceaseless avalanche of explosives for more than three weeks, untold numbers of men on Corregidor reached the limits of their endurance. While bombs were raining down, a few GIs leaped from foxholes and scrambled around in circles, babbling incoherently. Others stood stonelike in the open, staring sightlessly. A few shot themselves deliberately in the foot or hand, hoping to be taken to the temporary safety of the Malinta Tunnel hospital. Some put the muzzles of rifles or pistols to their heads and squeezed the trigger, forever ending their dreadful ordeal.
On the dark night of May 5, a spooky silence blanketed the Rock. Along the shoreline, the tense men of Colonel Sam Howard’s beachdefense force peered seaward, trying vainly to split the blackness with their eyes. Just past 9:00 P.M., alarming news reached the waterfront: The electronic “ears” on the Rock had picked up the sound of barges starting their engines on the Bataan shore.
Minutes later, the eerie hush was fractured. Japanese guns across the bay began to roar, and countless shells screamed into Corregidor. For two hours, the barrage was so heavy that the island shook and quivered as though an earthquake were in progress. Thick clouds of black smoke covered the Rock, and the pungent odor of cordite fumes filled nostrils. Howard’s beach defenders clung to the bottoms of their foxholes, foreheads and palms sweaty, stomachs knotted, hearts pounding furiously, mouths dry. Many were praying, some to themselves, others out loud. Abruptly, as though shut off by a switch, the bombardment lifted. Silence returned. It was 11:10 P.M.
A few minutes later, a squad under Sergeant John F. Hamich, dug in near Cavalry Point on the north shore of Corregidor’s curving tail, discerned the shadowy contours of many barges approaching.
One of Hamich’s men called out: “Here come the bastards!”
Nearby, a GI searchlight flashed a long finger of illumination across the black seascape, bathing in its glare the faces of hundreds of Japanese soldiers packed into the landing craft. Hamich’s squad, along with Americans to either side, sent a blistering fusillade of machinegun and rifle fire into the oncoming barges.
Above the ear-splitting crescendo, the Americans could hear the screams of Japanese soldiers as bullets tore into fragile flesh and bone. Perhaps half of the first wave was killed, wounded, or drowned. However, a large number of the invaders, led by Colonel Gempachi Sato, scrambled ashore and headed westward along Corregidor’s tail toward Malinta Tunnel.
Sharp, confused clashes erupted in the darkness.
Despite the stubborn resistance put up by Corregidor’s marines, soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Filipinos, the invaders kept pouring reinforcements ashore. In a lateral of Malinta Tunnel, Corporal Irving Strobing, an army radio operator, was broadcasting to Honolulu station WTJ a play-by-play account of the death throes of Corregidor:
We are waiting for God only knows what. Lots of heavy fighting. . . Shells were dropping all night faster than hell. Too much for guys to take. Corregidor used to be a nice place but its haunted now.10
Just past 10:00 A.M., General Wainwright received the crushing news that he had been expecting but dreaded to hear: Japanese tanks were ashore. His men had neither tanks nor antitank guns. The death knell had sounded for doomed Corregidor.
Gripped by anguish and bitterness, the Old Cavalryman remained silent for several minutes. Never in history had an American general been confronted by his predicament. Months earlier, Washington had sacrificed the Philippine garrison on the altar of global strategy. Nearly all of the Rock’s big guns and mortars had been blasted into twisted metal. His men were outnumbered, emotionally spent, ill-equipped, and lacking in firepower. Homma, on the other hand, could bring in fresh, fully armed reinforcements, and his 240-millimeter howitzers and warplanes could pound the American-held portion of the Rock at will. If Wainwright attempted a last-ditch stand, thousands of Americans and Filipinos would be slaughtered. Was there any military logic in continuing the grossly uneven struggle when the Japanese were going to overrun the entire island within forty-eight hours?
His gaunt face contorted by distress, Jonathan Wainwright turned to an aide, Brigadier General Lewis C. Bebee, and said, “Lou, I hope I am doing the right thing.”
