War Stories II: Heroism in the Pacific Read online

  When we heard the news of the attack on the radio that morning, a lot of the men asked, “Where’s Pearl Harbor?” I happened to have come through Pearl Harbor, so I had a good idea of where it was. But, yeah, it came as a shock. Suddenly war was thrust upon us. And what was a nice, peaceful existence suddenly became a tough situation.

  Immediately after Pearl Harbor, in fact within eight hours, the Japanese struck the Philippines and caught all of our planes sitting on the landing fields, just like they did in Pearl Harbor. They wiped out the Army Air Corps. That’s when we knew we were in deep trouble, because now we had no airpower of any kind.

  The Japanese people in Manila had trinket shops, which we would shop in on Sunday. But by Monday, 8 December, they were wearing uniforms and sniping at us.

  About three days after they bombed Pearl Harbor and that first attack on the Philippines, they bombed us again—but this time it was all over the place, so they moved us into Bataan, and much of the Filipino army was sent north by General MacArthur to defend against Japanese invasions. Within two days, the Japanese army just poured through. The Filipino army just wasn’t ready. They weren’t fit and hadn’t been properly trained for combat.

  PRIVATE ANDREW MILLER, US ARMY

  19th Air Base Squadron, 20th Group

  Nichols Field, Philippines

  8 December 1941

  I was at Nichols Field and I didn’t have to go on guard duty till midnight, so I went to the theater and I saw the first half of Gone with the Wind. I planned to go back the next night—when I didn’t have duty—to see the second half. But as it turned out, I had to wait four years to get to see the second half of that doggone movie.

  At midnight I went on guard duty, and about four o’clock in the morning the sergeant said, “Wake me up at six.” And then he told me that Pearl Harbor had been hit and all of us were dumbstruck. We couldn’t figure out why those guys in Hawaii hadn’t been on alert. We’d been on alert for a couple of weeks and it just threw us.

  But then, later that same day, we got caught with our own pants down. I guess in war nothing ever goes quite the way it’s supposed to.

  PRIVATE JOHN COOK, US ARMY

  Fort McKinley, Philippines

  8 December 1941

  I was asleep in the barracks when the NCO in charge came in about three-thirty on Monday morning, turned on the lights, and shouted, “The Japs have bombed Pearl Harbor!” We had a formation outside and had to put on our field gear in the dark...from gas mask to helmets, fatigues, and everything. I was stationed at the hospital when we got our first patient early that morning from Nichols Field. I can still see that poor devil lying on the operating table. His heart was pumping the blood through his body, and he was all ripped up—his arm was torn off, and there was a great big gaping hole in his side.

  After we’d finished surgery, there was a bunch of fighter planes scurrying, and we thought they were Americans. Then we heard the rat-a-tat-tat and we took it serious. Some of the trees out there are pretty huge. They must have been thirty-six inches in diameter, and we got behind them. When the planes left we looked around the tree, and there were ridges cut three inches deep into the other sides. How none of us were killed I’ll never know.

  CORPORAL RALPH RODRIGUEZ, JR., US ARMY

  Fort McKinley, Philippines

  8 December 1941

  It was Monday and I went to Catholic mass that morning. As we were coming out of the chapel, some airmen approached us and told us that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor and the damage was great. I couldn’t imagine what really happened but I figured maybe we’re next. But all the anti-aircraft units of our regiment were already deployed around the airfield and they were ready. At least that’s what we thought.

  I was a medic and I wasn’t supposed to carry a gun. I couldn’t find any of the other medics from my unit, so I headed for the hospital. But on the way, a group of Japanese airplanes flew over. They were strafing the airfield. I saw a soldier with two boxes of ammunition running toward a machine gun mounted on a tripod and he hollered at me, “Give me a hand!”

  Even though I’m not supposed to help carry a gun or anything, I fed the belts of ammo into the machine gun while he fired at four planes that tried to hit us. The bullets were going by us and this guy said, “We’ll take those two—don’t get too far away.” Every time a plane would shoot at us, we’d shoot right back at it.

  Well, after the first set of planes dropped their bombs, there was a kind of a lull and we got some more ammunition. Then more Japanese planes showed up. These were dive-bombers and even though we fired the gun a lot, I don’t know if we hit any of them.

  Nichols Field took a terrible pounding that day. It made us feel good to be able to shoot back. A lot of people didn’t get to do that. Later that day, about four o’clock, I was sent to Manila to tend the wounded. We stayed there until Christmas Day, ready to fight.

  AMERICAN FAR EAST COMMAND

  MANILA, PHILIPPINES

  13 DECEMBER 1941

  1230 HOURS LOCAL

  Japanese attacks continued for the next several days. On 9 December, Nichols Field was attacked again with the same intensity that had rained down on Clark Field the day before. And more attacks followed for the next three days.

  American airpower was soon reduced to nil. Four days after hostilities commenced, only six P-35 fighter planes were still operational, and though the mechanics managed to get a few of the obsolete P-26s running, they were no match for the Zekes and Zeros—even though the Japanese had to conserve fuel to make the long flight from Formosa to southern Luzon.

  From more than a hundred P-40s that had been functioning a week earlier, the Americans now had fewer than two dozen. Only a handful of bombers were still able to fly, and half of those were limited to low altitudes.

  On 12 December, more than one hundred Japanese aircraft raided Manila and the surrounding military bases. On 13 December, they attacked with almost 200 planes. The next day, General MacArthur ordered the remnants of the Asiatic Fleet to depart for safer waters and the remaining long-range B-17s to fly south to Australia. Two days after they were gone, the Japanese aircraft carrier Ryujo moved into close range to finish the work that the long-range aircraft had started from Formosa. By then, MacArthur’s Far East Air Force was useless. And with no fleet or air cover for protection, the 15,000 green American draftees and Reservists and 80,000 poorly trained and equipped Filipino soldiers digging in on southern Luzon could do little but wait for General Homma’s 43,000 battle-hardened 14th Army to arrive. They didn’t have long to wait.

  BATAAN PENINSULA

  THE PHILIPPINES

  22 FEBRUARY 1942

  1140 HOURS LOCAL

  General Homma’s troops began their three-pronged attack on Luzon by first seizing the tiny island of Bataan—north of the main island—on 8 December. While MacArthur’s air force was being pounded by air raids, the Japanese marched ashore and overwhelmed the garrison guarding the airfield. Homma now had a refueling stop for his bombers returning to Formosa from their raids to the south.

  Japanese landings on the north and west coasts of Luzon followed on 10 December, and a regimental-sized force was deployed from the Palau Islands to secure the port of Legaspi on 12 December, effectively isolating the U.S.-Filipino army in central Luzon. For the next ten days, the Japanese consolidated their supply lines and mercilessly suppressed any opposition they received from the civilian population.

  General Homma commanded the Japanese army occupying the Philippines.

  On 22 December, General Homma landed forty-eight divisions virtually unopposed across beaches and ports in Lingayen Gulf and followed up by landing 10,000 fresh troops—shipped all the way from Japan—at Lamon Bay on Christmas Eve. Surrounded, and faced with a catastrophic collapse of his food-, fuel-, and ammunition-starved army, General MacArthur reluctantly ordered a phased withdrawal of all U.S. and Filipino troops to the thick jungles and volcanic mountains of the Bataan Peninsula and declared Mani
la an open city—a city that is not defended by a military force and is not allowed to be bombed under international law. The Japanese, ignoring international conventions, continued to bomb it anyway.

  Christmas Day brought no relief to the beleaguered Americans and their Filipino allies. On the northern Bataan Peninsula, the Japanese succeeded in breaking through the Allied lines along the Agno River, killing or capturing nearly 5,000 men—troops MacArthur could ill afford to lose as he waited for reinforcements from the United States.

  At 1745 on New Year’s Eve, as the first Japanese troops swarmed into Manila, Imperial Air Force aircraft operated from captured Philippine airports and bases—and pounded the defenders on Bataan. Lack of medical supplies and hospital facilities created a medical nightmare for the hundreds of casualties inflicted daily on the peninsula’s front lines. The Allied troops suffering from malaria and other tropical diseases continued to fight untreated. By 10 January, rations were cut to one meal per man per day.

  For the next forty-five days, Bataan was a bloody war of attrition. General Homma, increasingly pressured by Tokyo to finish the campaign, was forced back with heavy casualties in three failed attempts to land forces behind the American–Filipino lines at night. The tenacious defenders gave ground slowly, falling back only when overwhelmed by superior numbers or when ammunition supplies were depleted. On 22 January, General MacArthur gave the order to withdraw to prepared positions on the road connecting the towns of Pilar and Bagac. It would be Bataan’s final defense line.

  Through the first two weeks of February, the defenders beat back a dozen concerted Japanese assaults. From his headquarters on the island fortress of Corregidor, at the mouth of Manila Bay, MacArthur continued to beseech Washington for aid. Though the Allied troops were pounded daily by Japanese air raids and raked by naval gunfire, the island’s deep defenses anchored the rear of those trapped on the peninsula. The Allies became increasingly confident that they could hang on until relief arrived from the United States despite the appalling conditions on Bataan. Among the troops on the line, there were rumors that a force was being assembled in Hawaii to arrive “any day now.”

  On 15 February, the defenders’ hopes were dashed by news that the Japanese had captured Singapore. This prompted a widespread realization that the victory would free up tens of thousands of fresh troops and planes for Homma to throw against them.

  Five days later, fearing that Philippine president Manuel Quezon would be captured in a Japanese breakthrough, General MacArthur convinced him to depart his homeland and prepare a government in exile. Under cover of darkness, President Quezon embarked on a U.S. submarine for Australia. Two days later, President Roosevelt issued secret orders to General MacArthur, directing him to leave the Philippines as well and establish a new headquarters as commander in chief, South Pacific, in Australia. It was the first confirmation that there would be no forces dispatched to rescue “the battling bastards of Bataan.”

  MacArthur, conscious of what his departure would mean to his long-suffering soldiers, was loath to carry out the order. He knew that rations had been cut from the prescribed 4,000 calories a day for a combat soldier to half of that, and soon they would have to be cut again.

  He was likewise aware that his troops were already scrounging to supplement their scant rations. They were eating horses, pythons, caribou, monkeys, mules, iguanas, snails, and whatever else they could get their hands on. Milk, coffee, and tea had long since disappeared. MacArthur’s men were beginning to starve.

  When a quartermaster found some harvested, unhusked rice on the Bataan Peninsula, he brought all 250 tons of it to an undamaged rice mill to be milled. But the rate of consumption was fifteen tons of rice a day for the 80,000 troops—so the 250 tons of rice lasted fewer than three weeks.

  Food was only one of the necessities in serious shortage. Medical supplies were almost exhausted, and medicines—especially morphine and plasma—were running out. The medics and surgeons had to improvise to save lives and keep even the most minor wounds from becoming dangerously infected. Many died of malaria who would have survived and recovered if they’d had quinine, but it was now nearly all gone. So, too, were other lifesaving drugs, like sulfa for treating infections. Vitamin deficiencies were likewise becoming apparent, with bleeding gums, and nearly every soldier had some kind of upper respiratory infection and a constant cough.

  The climate and constant combat were also taking a toll on uniforms. Most of the men were missing parts of their clothing. Many had lost their boots or shoes. What remaining garb was left became torn and ragged and ordinarily would have been considered unserviceable. But nothing was thrown away.

  Fortunately, most of the Americans didn’t know their situation was as hopeless as it was. Many thought only their own unit was low on food and other necessities, and that help was on its way. If they had known the truth, they might have given up completely.

  These were the realities that Douglas MacArthur confronted as he anguished over how to follow the orders of his commander in chief and still meet his responsibilities to his men. After conferring with his closest aides and General Jonathan Stilwell, he reorganized the defenses on Corregidor and Bataan and made plans to depart. On the night of 11 March, he and a few members of his general staff boarded four PT boats and headed for Mindanao. Addressing his men, he promised, “I shall return.”

  After three harrowing days and nights avoiding Japanese ships and aircraft, MacArthur and his party arrived on Mindanao in the middle of the night. There, he and his staff boarded a U.S. aircraft for Australia. It marked the beginning of the end for the Philippine defenders.

  On the night of 15 March, the Japanese launched an all-out artillery barrage against the last American–Filipino line of defense. On 20 March, President Roosevelt named General Jonathan Wainwright commander of all U.S. forces in the Philippine theater of operations. The following day Wainwright moved his headquarters to Corregidor and placed General Ed King in command of all Filipino and American forces on Luzon.

  The Japanese, now aware of MacArthur’s narrow escape, blanketed Bataan and Corregidor with leaflets promising good treatment to those who surrendered and lampooning MacArthur for “running away” from the Philippines and “abandoning them to starve and be killed.” Ironically, the Americans began to look forward to the Japanese leaflet drops—they used them for toilet paper.

  By the end of March, the Japanese begin using radio broadcasts to add emotion to their propaganda. U.S. troops also received American broadcasts. In one, MacArthur himself pledged, “Help is on the way from the United States. Thousands of troops and hundreds of planes are being dispatched.”

  If only it’s true . . . became the fervent hope of the defenders. But by 1 April, it was apparent to all that there would be no new supplies and no reinforcements.

  No one from Washington ever told the troops in the jungles of Bataan that help was not on the way. They were, in fact, led to believe just the opposite. Three months of jungle combat, starvation, and diseases such as malaria and dysentery had taken a huge toll on troop strength. By the first week of April, just 30 percent of the defending soldiers were combat effective. The American and Filipino patients in base and field hospitals surged to 12,000. Sickness killed more allied soldiers than the Japanese Imperial Army.

  Major General Wainwright was given command of the Philippines when MacArthur fled. He was later forced to surrender Corregidor to the Japanese.

  On 2 April 1942, the Japanese began their final offensive, with massive air and artillery bombardments. General Homma, desperate for a final victory, brought up tanks to support his infantry. After four grim days of intense fighting, it became clear that the Allied troops on Bataan could hold out no longer. It was obvious that further resistance meant a hopeless slaughter. Homma had made it clear he was ready to annihilate any remaining American and Filipino forces who resisted.

  Before departing, MacArthur had instructed General Wainwright that even if food and ammunition failed t
o arrive, and though the Japanese might be poised to destroy the American and Filipino armies, that the troops should valiantly fight on and kill as many Japanese soldiers as possible.

  Likewise, FDR, who knew of their plight, had ordered “no surrender” as far back as February. So the only order still in effect was “resist to the end.”

  But without food, medicine, or ammunition, and faced with increasing numbers of fresh, well-supplied enemy soldiers, following such an order would result in a slaughter of crushing, colossal proportions.

  The remaining senior officers in the Philippines now had two choices: accept annihilation or consider surrender. General Ed King commanded the Philippine Army and the U.S. forces on Bataan. King felt that no sane man could consider anything but surrender. He sent word to General Wainwright asking for direction. Wainwright responded with a direct order: “Counter-attack!”

  GENERAL ED KING’S COMMAND POST

  BATAAN PENINSULA, PHILIPPINES

  8 APRIL 1942

  0900 HOURS LOCAL

  Sick with malaria, exhausted from days without sleep, and demoralized by the plight of his weary warriors, General King decided to ignore his superior’s impossible order to “counter-attack” and instead to open negotiations with the Japanese commanders to end the fighting. At midnight on 7 April, and aware that he was acting on his own, King informed his staff of his decision. Several of his officers wept.

  At dawn on 8 April, after destroying classified equipment and material and after seeing to the escape of dozens of nurses and some 2,000 men to Corregidor, General King sent two of his staff officers out in front of the U.S. lines carrying a dirty bedsheet as a makeshift white flag of truce. Having made contact with a Japanese officer, they were escorted to the command post of the nearest division commander, General Nagano. With “safe passage” assured, King came forward to meet with the Japanese general. Since Nagano didn’t speak English, his aide, Colonel Nakayama, acted as interpreter.