The World War II Chronicles

by William Craig

  On the Asian mainland, the Communists had just begun to fight. Soviet forces were swarming over the countryside. plundering like the Mongol hordes of the twelfth century. Already they had lanced through weakened Japanese fortifications along the Manchurian and Korean borders and were headed directly for the populous plains around Mukden and Port Arthur. Acting in concert with them, the long-besieged troops of Mao Tse-tung infiltrated from the caves of Yenan toward the big cities of North China in quest of guns and ammunition for the final battle to defeat Chiang Kai-shek. At Kalgan, near the Manchurian border, Russian soldiers captured a huge ammunition dump and turned it over to Communist guerrillas, an action specifically prohibited at the Yalta Conference. Stalin was beginning to break his agreements with the Chiang Kai-shek Government, with America, with all his wartime allies.

  In North Korea, political officers of the Soviet Army agitated in the streets, exhorting the Korean civilians to expropriate all Japanese property. An “Executive Committee” of the Korean People was quickly formed as the Reds moved to set up a base for subversion of the masses. The discernible pattern was a familiar one; Russia had begun to seduce its newly won territories. Slowly a curtain of steel was being established around Stalin’s Far Eastern gains.

  In North China, American OSS units in the field were virtually surrounded by militant Chinese Reds. Major Gus Krause’s prophecy of a new war was tragically accurate. In the countryside around the big cities, the Communists daily grew bolder. They blocked entrance to towns, they engaged in skirmishes with Nationalist and Japanese forces. They also killed their first American.

  John M. Birch was a captain in the Air Force and a special agent attached to the OSS. From the main base at Hsian in North China, Birch operated in forays behind the Japanese lines. Fellow officers knew him as a quiet, unassuming person, devoid of any personality traits which would make him stand out in a crowd. Later, in fact, some at Hsian were hard pressed to recall anything at all unusual about him.

  When Emperor Hirohito broadcast the news of surrender to the Japanese people, Captain Birch was at Lingchuan, in Anhwei Province, positioned there to take advantage of any precipitate enemy collapse. Within days, Birch received instructions from Hsian to proceed toward the city of Suchow in an attempt to ascertain Chinese Communist intentions in the area. The OSS was concerned about the growing menace from the Reds, and had ordered several teams to reconnoiter their territories for further information to be passed on to Washington. Birch headed toward the danger zone at the head of a mixed band of American, Chinese and Korean agents.

  The boyish-looking captain with the protruding ears was exceedingly well qualified for his job. The son of a Baptist missionary, he had spent much of his life among the Chinese people. He was amazingly fluent in the varied dialects of the countryside, and had also acquired a profound understanding of the Chinese. He was deeply disturbed by the rising power of the Communist army among the peasants and firmly convinced that the Reds posed a tremendous threat to the future of the country. Now at noon of August 24, Captain Birch embarked on a supposedly routine journey to Suchow.

  The trip was not easy. The unit went on foot, by boat and by train. Communists were in evidence on all sides. In the vacuum left by the retreating Japanese, they had come out into the open to assume control of key points. Entire sections of railroads were being systematically ripped up by Red guerrillas, who occupied much of the rural landscape. Birch became increasingly dismayed.

  As the OSS team neared Suchow, Birch and the others were forced to proceed by foot due to increasing interference with rail travel.

  On August 25, he and his party had advanced to within thirty miles of their objective. At a rail depot, they ran right into a Communist roadblock, set up to prevent access to the Japanese-held city.

  Birch was furious. Already disturbed by the harassment imposed by the Reds during the arduous journey, he was incensed at this latest incident. He ordered his aide, a Nationalist officer named Tung, to find the Communist commander in charge and request permission to proceed into Suchow.

  Tung found the man and repeated Birch’s instructions. The officer listened for a moment, then turned to an aide and said, “Here come some more spies.” He added that the Birch team should be disarmed.

  Birch’s aide was horrified at this prospect and rushed back to the American captain to warn him. Birch immediately confronted the Chinese commander who had voiced the threat. “So you intend to disarm us. Are you bandits? Are you the man responsible for this situation?” When the officer said that he was not, Birch insisted that he be taken directly to the Chinese officer’s superior.

  He told Tung, “I must find out who these soldiers belong to and who the commanding officer is.” Fearful of the consequences, others in the Birch party cautioned him to be more subtle in dealing with the belligerent Communists who now escorted him along the rail line. One of the Nationalist officers in the OSS team whispered to Tung, “Tell the captain to be more polite to this group.” Although Tung repeated the urgent message, Birch refused to change his attitude. He was disgusted with the hostile guerrillas and determined to have a showdown.

  He spoke to Tung as they marched along: “I want to find out how they intend to treat Americans. I don’t mind if they kill me, for if they do, their movement will be finished. The United States will use the atomic bomb to stop their banditry.”

  The Communists led the OSS team from one position to another, looking for the one officer Birch had requested permission to address. The American captain’s temper was growing shorter by the minute as he was forced to walk around and around in the custody of the Red guerrillas. Finally he exploded. Seizing the nearest officer by the collar, he shouted, “You’re worse than bandits.” His aide, Tung, said quickly to the officer, “He is only joking.”

  In this tense atmosphere, a senior Communist officer appeared from a building and stood watching the two men shouting at each other. Suddenly he shouted, “Load your guns and disarm him.” His finger pointed directly at Captain Birch. Tung saw that Birch was in no mood to be coerced, and pleaded, “Wait a minute. I’ll get his gun for you.” The Communist officer in charge looked at him coldly and said to his men, “Shoot him first.”

  A guerrilla cocked his gun and fired into Tung’s right leg near the hip. As he fell to the ground, another soldier fired at John Birch. Tung heard a man say, “Bring him along,” apparently in reference to Birch, who was lying in agony in the dust. Before Tung lapsed into unconsciousness, he heard Birch cry, “I can’t walk.”

  The Communists dragged the OSS captain to another spot, where his hands were bound behind his back. He was then prodded into a kneeling position before his captors. A Communist officer stepped behind him, placed a pistol to his head and blasted a hole in his skull. The body sagged face down, blood spreading quickly from it. Then, perhaps to hinder identification, Birch’s face was repeatedly slashed with bayonets.

  Several days later, other OSS agents found him, his hands still tied behind his back, his G.I. fatigues caked with blood. He lay in the dirt, his face a festering mass without any recognizable features. The body was photographed, wrapped in a white shroud and placed in a pine box. Taken to Suchow, Birch’s original destination, it was buried on the side of a hill overlooking the city. His murderers had long since vanished into the countryside.

  The details of John Birch’s death were brought back to OSS headquarters. Pictures of his mutilated body were displayed to shocked American officials who could do nothing more than relay this latest symptom of Communist hostility and aggressiveness to Washington. They hoped that such evidence of Red tactics in China might alert the United States Government to take a more positive stance in the crucial weeks ahead.

  NINETEEN

  Lazarus

  In Manchuria, General Jonathan Wainwright was still missing. In Washington and Chungking, alarmed officials continued to worry about his fate, and his rescue had assumed paramount importance. In the eyes of the American public, Wainwrig
ht was a martyred hero of the dark days of 1942. He symbolized the men who had paid the price for American unpreparedness before Pearl Harbor.

  Wainwright was a professional soldier, a prototype of the men who led the American army during the tedium of peace before World War II. His family had a military heritage dating back before the Civil War. His grandfather had been a member of the first class to graduate from the Naval Academy in the 1840’s. Killed at Galveston Bay in 1863, he had initiated a family tradition of duty to country. Wainwright’s uncle had been killed in 1871 in a gun battle with a pirate ship off the coast of Mexico. In that same year his father had entered West Point.

  In 1906, Jonathan himself graduated from the Academy and embarked on a career which included thirty-four long years of relatively uneventful service. He did fight against the Moros in the Philippines, and he served as a staff officer in World War I. But mostly he trained the small peacetime army. In 1938 he was made brigadier general.

  In 1940, Wainwright received his most challenging assignment when he was sent to Manila to command the Philippines Division then being formed under a stepped-up program. There, General Douglas MacArthur directed the overall defense of the islands. Retired from the American Army in 1937, the famous soldier had gone to the Philippines at the request of that nation to help build up its fighting strength.

  Neither MacArthur nor men like Wainwright could work a miracle in the brief time allotted. Though the Filipinos were given some semblance of training in the period of grace before Pearl Harbor, it was not enough. Equipment was practically nonexistent. Airpower was negligible. Ground troops had only a rudimentary knowledge of field strategy and tactics.

  On the morning of December 8, 1941 (December 7, Hawaii time), General Wainwright rose in his darkened bedroom to answer the insistent phone. He learned that Pearl Harbor was devastated. At this point the general, in his thirty-sixth year of service, embarked upon the climactic assignment of his career—and perhaps the most cruel duty an American general endured during the entire war.

  The Japanese struck boldly at the Philippines. On the first day they destroyed almost every bomber and fighter plane the United States had in the Far East. Within a week they invaded Luzon at several points and engaged the American and Filipino divisions in the first major land battle of the Pacific war. Wainwright fought a hopeless fight. Outnumbered, outgunned, his inexperienced men died on the trails in front of the onrushing enemy.

  By December 23, just fifteen days after hostilities began, MacArthur saw that only one maneuver was left. He initiated War Plan Orange-3, the long-agreed-upon strategy of withdrawal to the Bataan Peninsula, on the northern side of Manila Bay. Here the Americans would stand and make a final effort. Wainwright was ordered to take his troops into this jungle fortress and assume predetermined positions.

  As commander of the northern Luzon troops, Wainwright held the Japanese at bay while other elements from southern Luzon moved up to and around Manila into the temporary sanctuary of Bataan. For over three months these men denied control of the peninsula to the Japanese. For over three months the thousands trapped on the steaming battleground managed to live, and challenge the enemy. During that time, MacArthur was ordered to Australia by President Roosevelt, and Wainwright assumed supreme command of all forces in the Philippines. Rarely has a man been given a more onerous responsibility.

  War Plan Orange envisaged a six-months defense of the islands until help came from the United States. The forces on Bataan were holding fairly well to that concept. The only flaw was the lack of reinforcements from America. No armada was on its way. No fleet or concentration of air power was being readied at Pearl Harbor to bring relief to the beleaguered men on Bataan. They were isolated, without hope.

  The soldiers had eaten the last horse and most were starving to death. Malaria had sapped their strength. Ammunition was very low. On April 9, guns stopped firing and an ominous silence came over the bay. On Corregidor, the island fortress at the entrance to the harbor, Wainwright looked across at the peninsula of Bataan and felt desperately alone.

  The Japanese concentrated on Corregidor with ferocious intensity. Large-caliber shells rained on the Rock, where men trembled in tunnels. Over a thousand wounded lay helpless in the hospital deep inside the cavernous fortifications.

  On the fifth of May, the Japanese landed on Corregidor and moved toward the main headquarters. Wainwright had to make a dreadful decision: to sacrifice the remaining survivors in a suicidal resistance, or to surrender in order to keep his men alive.

  At 10:30 A.M. on May 6, the radio station on Corregidor came alive: “Message for General Homma … message for General Homma.…” A white flag went to the top of a pole at noon, and the Philippines command of General Jonathan Wainwright ceased to exist.

  Wainwright went into captivity. When he heard the details of the Bataan Death March, he wondered if he was to blame for the horrible aftermath to surrender. Would it have been better to have ordered a fight to the last? He became a tortured man. For over three years his conscience nagged him. Wanting rescue badly, he nevertheless feared its consequences.

  By the summer of 1945, Wainwright resembled a skeleton navigating under its own power. He weighed less than 130 pounds. The skin on his face was tightly drawn, and his clothes hung grotesquely on his six-foot-three-inch frame. His spirit had been sapped by the harsh treatment received in various Japanese camps, yet he had struggled manfully to stay alive until the day of freedom. The general was confined at Sian, a small waystop northeast of Mukden. Only thirty-five other prisoners were with him. Half of them were Allied general officers or high officials, such as the governor of Singapore and General Percival, the defender of that bastion when it fell in 1942.

  They had come to this remote land only the previous fall from Formosa, where the bulk of the Bataan captives had been kept for over two years. During that time, many men had died and others had become living corpses. The enemy had been callous, calculatedly inhuman and vindictive. The worst treatment came from the Japanese privates and corporals—the beatings, the occasional punches in the face, the hours at attention in the freezing cold. Wainwright himself had been beaten badly on several occasions. What hurt him more, however, were the less direct torments. When Red Cross packages arrived at the camps the men would delight at the thought of food. Yet the packages seldom were distributed to the prisoners. Their hopes for this little extra supply of nourishment would rise and fall quickly as the commandants managed to “lose” the packages or pass them out to their own soldiers.

  For over three years, Jonathan Wainwright managed to survive this life. He amused himself as best he could. He read Northwest Passage and Oliver Wiswell over and over till he could recite them almost word for word. He played solitaire by the hour and kept track of the times he won. He was the official sharpener of razors for the Allied personnel in the camp.

  Though he picked up bits of information about the war by various means, he had no inkling that the Americans were even as close as Okinawa. He saw no planes, heard no bombings. For him, the war was still far enough away to make the future seem especially grim. Having barely survived the unbelievable cold of the Manchurian winter, he was despondent about his own life. He had nearly frozen to death in the barracks. Temperatures of 45 degrees below zero made the meager stove heat almost useless. Though he slept in all the clothing he could find, he shivered through the long, bitter nights and into a spring that was filled with a bleak sameness. The food was tasteless and barely palatable. There was cornmeal mush at breakfast, a thin gruel for lunch, and vegetables and soya curd for supper. Day in and day out, the monotonous, barren existence preyed on Wainwright and the others.

  On August 16, after exactly twelve hundred days in captivity, General Wainwright was sitting in his room playing solitaire—game number 8,632. Corporal Willard, an orderly, knocked on the door, stuck his head in, and smiled: “I congratulate you, General.”

  “Really? For what?”

  “The war is over.”


  Wainwright’s mind reeled, “I don’t believe it. Who told you?”

  Willard told him that a Japanese interpreter at the camp had just explained that the Russians had invaded Manchuria and Japan had sued for peace.

  Dazed, Wainwright said, “Was he drunk or sober?”

  Willard answered, “Well, he’d had some sake.”

  Though not completely convinced, Wainwright could not sleep all night.

  In the morning, the Japanese commandant, Lieutenant Marui, confirmed the prisoners’ wild speculations. They were lined up in formation and told, “By order of the Emperor, the war has been amicably terminated.” The phrasing of the speech struck the small group the same way at the same instant. They broke out into a spontaneous burst of laughter, which rose to an hysterical pitch. The years of imprisonment, the moments of torture, the sustained humiliation burst out of the mouths of the thirty-five emaciated soldiers and echoed among the foothills of the Manchurian mountains.

  Major Robert Lamar arrived at the gates of Sian on August 19. While Sergeant Harold Leith remained outside, Lamar entered the commandant’s office. Lieutenant Marui was quite gracious and promptly offered the doctor a cup of tea. When Lamar asked to see the prisoners, Marui said he would have to wait until the next day. The two men began to argue. After a prolonged discussion, the Japanese officer relented and sent for General Wainwright.

  Several minutes later, the emaciated man appeared. He did not enter. Instead, he waited at the door. He stared at Lamar and whispered, “Are you really Americans?” Lamar nodded and identified himself.

  Wainwright waited where he stood until Marui signaled him across the threshold. Then he took a few steps in, stopped again, and bowed from the waist to his captor.

  Major Lamar quickly jumped up and offered the general a chair. Marui shouted, “He must remain standing.” Wainwright said nothing. Lamar insisted that he be seated. Another argument began. During it Wainwright stood to one side, listening calmly.