The navy went straight to work to rout the leaker. Astoundingly, the article had managed to clear censorship channels, with the critical nature of the contents somehow eluding the readers at the US Office of War Information (OWI).
The Japanese had only to read the Chicago Tribune to find that their codes had been compromised! Admiral King was said to be in “a white fury” that months of exhausting, round-the-clock effort to break JN-25—a singular feat on which the tide of the Pacific War had just turned—could soon be for naught. For days, Bill shuttled endlessly between the White House and the Navy Department as the navy and administration attempted to understand how this crucial secret had been compromised—not to mention how such a story could have slipped through the censors’ fingers.
The investigation quickly confirmed that Commander Morton T. Seligman, the Lexington’s XO, had shared a cabin with correspondent Johnston, “in which the reporter observed the classified documents, including a JN-25-C decryption containing the Japanese order of battle at Midway.” Whether Seligman intentionally shared the information or Johnston obtained it by sleuth, the result was the same. Seligman’s naval career was effectively over. Still, more bloodletting was sought.
This was one of many instances in which Bill was grateful that none of his White House associates were aware of his Republican background. Burning with partisan rage toward McCormick, Roosevelt and other prominent Democrats demanded a grand jury investigation; party loyalists on both sides lined up to watch the goring. Roosevelt was not interested in Stanley Johnston’s resignation or censure of the hapless Seligman. He wanted Colonel McCormick’s scalp.
Miraculously, however, in the first week following the initial news leak and its subsequent coverage, the Japanese barely tweaked JN-25. Navy cryptanalysts began to wonder: Was it possible that no Japanese sympathizers or spies had read the article or its reprint in any American newspaper? Code breakers scrutinized new intercepts with bated breath, expecting at any moment for them to become indecipherable. But only small, manageable changes to JN-25 were detected. This wasn’t necessarily unusual—minor code modifications happened all the time. But was Johnston’s article the reason? Only the Japanese knew the answer to that.
BILL FOLDED BENNY’S LETTER and put it back in his briefcase. He was now trying to absorb the latest development in the crisis: a White House visit earlier that day by his old friend “Saffo.” US Navy Captain Larry Safford was the brilliant, low-key head of OP-20-G, the code breaking division within the Office of Naval Intelligence. Saffo had come to Bill with an idea and a request. He hoped Bill might impart his thoughts to higher-ups and tame the hysteria.
The last thing Captain Safford wanted was a long-drawn-out grand jury investigation, trial, and more publicity than had already been generated by the original article. He fretted this would ensure the Japanese would learn that their naval code had been compromised, if that hadn’t happened already. “Bill,” Saffo had said, “we think that with no more publicity on this thing, we can crack the changes the Japs have made to their code since Midway. I’m telling you, they make changes all the time. But if this thing doesn’t go away, we are going to have a much, much bigger problem. You’ve got to stop this lawsuit.”
Bill looked at Safford, mouth agape. “Who, me?” was all he could muster. “Come on, Saffo, I can’t do that.” The old Roosevelt-McCormick political rivalry had overshadowed all reason. “You don’t know how much these two people hate each other.”
Safford shook his head. “Well, Bill,” he said somberly, “if this story gets any bigger, if that grand jury gets going, we’ll never be able to break the Japanese naval codes again. Never.”
Before Bill left the White House late that evening, he put the finishing touches on a memo to Captain McCrea explaining Safford’s grave concerns and recommendations. He had promised Saffo he would give it a try, using his best legal and personal powers of persuasion—and not only because it was the right thing to do for the United States Navy and the war in the Pacific. Almost certainly, Benny stood to gain or lose in the outcome.
Several weeks later, JN-25 was still being used by the Japanese, with only minor changes. Admiral King wasted no time barring Commander Seligman forever from promotion and made sure the only vessel he would see thereafter was an “LSD”: a large steel desk. Stanley Johnston’s award for bravery at the Battle of the Coral Sea was disallowed by the White House. But, inexplicably, the grand jury investigation of the Chicago Tribune was abruptly dropped. No concrete reason was ever given to the press by William Mitchell, the special prosecutor in the case.
13
TO DAVAO: EN AVANT!
CONDITIONS AT CABANATUAN IMPROVED from dire to grim over Barton’s first three months there, from a loss of 1,300 men in June and July 1942 to fewer than 300 in August. This was primarily due to prisoner-generated solutions to waste management disposal and control of malaria-carrying mosquitoes. Though mistreatment by their guards had not abated, these and other morale-building improvements helped the prisoners beat back despair.
The men were heartened as well by persistent rumors of American gains in the Pacific. Despite strict Japanese rules against dispensing war information to prisoners, news accounts managed to trickle in—primarily via Filipinos working at or near the camp.
But when a draft of 400 Cabanatuan prisoners was abruptly shipped to Japan as laborers for the Nippon war effort, the remaining POWs had fresh cause for apprehension. They loathed Cabanatuan in every respect, but shipment to Japan was by far their biggest fear. The prisoners assumed little chance of survival on enemy home soil. So when word leaked of Japanese plans to ship a second, much larger detail out of Cabanatuan, tensions spiked.
Lieutenant Colonel Mori ended their speculation by announcing that a thousand “able-bodied” prisoners would be selected for relocation to a prison farm on Mindanao, the southernmost Philippine island. The “able-bodied” designation disqualified a wide swath of prisoners suffering from various diseases, including dysentery, pellagra, and diphtheria.
The news sparked an outbreak of optimism—despite nagging suspicions that this could be a Japanese trick to get them to depart peacefully and then route them to Japan. But once a knowledgeable senior American officer confirmed—after conferring with the Japanese—that this was not the case, men rushed to volunteer in a rare display of enthusiasm. A move from Cabanatuan but not to Japan was regarded as improving their chances of survival.
The new place, named Davao Penal Colony, became a beacon of hope. It brought the imagined prospect of better food and improved living conditions, plus the psychological benefit of its southern location: nearly a thousand miles closer to Allied-held Australia. Cabanatuan prisoners of all stripes eagerly signed up for the Davao draft; in the end, hundreds were crushed to learn they’d been turned down.
JUST BEFORE SUNRISE ON October 25, 1942, the first of two groups selected for Mindanao was awakened, fed a small breakfast of tea and rice, and ordered out on foot. Barton and Charles and the rest of the first five hundred prisoners marched the several kilometers back to Cabanatuan City in the now-familiar four-abreast formation. With many barefooted and their bodies wrecked and undernourished, the hours-long march proved the most difficult one so far. But they pressed on, eager to appear fit for the journey lest they be removed from the draft of “able-bodied” prisoners. All along the way, local Filipinos flashed their signature V signs and tossed fruit and other victuals to the grateful prisoners.
The next leg of the long southbound journey to Mindanao meant reboarding the dreaded narrow-gauge boxcars that would carry them back to Manila. Barton checked his incipient panic when he saw that the cars had been cooled by hours of overnight rain. Better still, the guards agreed to leave the cars’ sliding doors ajar so the men might get fresh air. Whether this was a rare show of goodwill or a reflection of the guards’ disdain for handling suffocated corpses upon arrival in Manila mattered little to the prisoners.
The prospect of distancing themsel
ves from the much-loathed Cabanatuan had the prisoners actually smiling as the train jerked to life and began rumbling toward Manila. From there, they would board a ship to Mindanao. They chatted quietly, calmly among themselves, swapping yarns and talking, as always, of family.
A locomotive’s rhythmic movement had always had a somnolent effect on Barton, and he eventually dozed off as he so often had on the late train home from the city. Did he hear the stationmaster’s insistent calls in his slumber? “Red Bank! Perth Amboy! Hoboken! Long Branch!” And was that Mother? Out the window on the platform? Scanning faces in the passing windows? But the train in all his dreams would pass right through those familiar stations without so much as a pause.
The long, low screech that brought the prison train to a halt awoke Barton with a start. His attention was redirected to the sound of Filipinos gathering on the station platform of a small barrio. Suddenly rice balls, bananas, and bits of fried chicken were being tossed toward the boxcar openings. Only a few reached their car, but Barton let out a signature barrel laugh after fielding a chicken leg and a fat, sweetened rice ball. When the train resumed, he divided his spoils into impossibly small portions and distributed them to those who had failed to score.
At the next station, the group of local well-wishers was even larger and better prepared. More food was handed to the prisoners through the boxcar openings, but the larger gift was a chorus of young boys at the far edge of the platform humming a melody. They dared not sing the words for fear of enraging the guards, but the familiar tune “God Bless America” could be heard loud and clear throughout the train compartments. The strengthening effect this had on the prisoners was at least equal to the proffered foodstuffs. “Victory, Joe!” one young boy called out as the train pulled away. Two of his small, dirty fingers were fixed in a defiant V.
Hours later, the men arrived at Manila—hot, tired, and thirsty. Without respite, they formed up and marched back to the familiar intersection of Azcarraga and Quezon. Just before they passed through Bilibid’s gates, one of the men, “Ship” Daniels, collapsed. He had been placed on the Davao roster by a well-intentioned superior hoping that Mindanao’s climate might improve his failing health. Fellow prisoners looked on helplessly as repeated beatings by the guards failed to revive him. Ship was finally picked up and carried into Bilibid. He died later that night.
The returned Cabanatuan prisoners were kept in cramped quarters at the northern end of the Bilibid compound, sequestered from the other inmates. Despite the discomfort, they prayed for only one thing that night: that tomorrow’s voyage wouldn’t prove a ruse for shipping them to Japan.
The next morning, Barton and Charles stayed close as the prisoners assembled into groups of one hundred and began yet another march past throngs of careworn Manilans. Women wept openly at the sight of the diminished, half-clad American soldiers and sailors. But defiant V flashes were also spied and murmurs of “Mabuhay,” or “Long life,” were heard all along their route to the waterfront.
This would be Barton’s third such post-capture stroll, again past the Manila Hotel, the high commissioner’s residence, the Manila Polo Club, and his onetime home, the Manila Army and Navy Club. Despite the many months away, it still stung to see a large Japanese flag flying atop its flagpole. Its gardens were weedy and unkempt, but the club had so far been spared the destruction that surrounded it; bomb rubble, boarded-up shops, and piles of debris now defiled the once-pristine Dewey Boulevard.
The terminus of their march was Pier 7, another familiar landmark. The loading of so many prisoners onto the awaiting ship, an old coal-burning vessel named Erie Maru (which the Japanese had requisitioned from the Americans before the war), took several hours in the hot sun. Enthusiasm diminished as the men were packed tightly into nightmarishly dark holds thick with coal dust. The sleeping bays were three feet high, five feet wide, and ten feet deep, and twelve prisoners were crammed into each one. Worse, they were met in the holds by a tenacious new enemy: millions of tiny, crawling body lice, well established in the deep coal dust. Soon virtually every man’s skin crawled with them.
A competitive game developed: prisoners tallied and compared the number of lice on their bodies. When Charles’s grousing did not improve with the game, Barton urged him to count his blessings instead—for their ever-widening distance from Cabanatuan.
On October 27, 1942, the Erie Maru cast its lines and moved out of Manila Bay. They were all attentive to the ship’s course, nervous that a turn north would confirm their worst fears. But when Erie Maru heeled to port and turned south into the South China Sea, there was collective relief: here was irrefutable confirmation that they were not going to Japan.
The ship proceeded to follow a nine-hundred-kilometer zigzag, hugging the Philippine shoreline as closely as its captain dared, demonstrating an early Japanese fear that American submarines might be lurking off the coast. The prisoners were confined belowdeck at night but were allowed topside during daylight hours. After the second day of the journey, Barton, Charles, and a fortunate group of other naval officers somehow negotiated to remain topside for the balance of the voyage. Free of the desperate confines of the past ten months, they luxuriated in the healthy dose of sea air. Even Charles remarked positively on this development.
Better yet, the food aboard ship was a feast compared with anything since their capture, despite the rueful observation that several of the chow containers bore a “US Navy Base Cavite” stamp. But three meals a day, variously of cabbage soup with any combination of pork, spinach, meat, milk, dried fish, corned beef, and squash, had most of the men feeling much improved almost immediately—particularly in the absence of harsh camp labor to dissipate their new energy stores. Such allowances alone made their Erie Maru overseers seem more humane than those at Cabanatuan. Could this be a harbinger of better treatment ahead?
More heartening still was the explanation for their prolonged layover at an anchorage on the island of Panay. A Filipino stevedore at the Iloilo City docks tipped off the prisoners: a fierce sea battle between the Japanese and Allied navies raged near the Solomon Islands. As a result, the Erie Maru was ordered to remain at Panay until further notice. “Japanese Navy losing!” the stevedore exuded in a triumphant whisper. This was a shot of adrenaline for Barton, who thrilled at the prospect that Benny was there in the Solomons—thousands of miles closer to the Philippines than he could have imagined—directing fire from Enterprise.
When the Erie Maru finally departed Panay and steered east through the Surigao Strait and into the open Pacific, Japanese crew and guards warily donned life jackets. Fear of American submarine strikes loomed even larger as word had circulated of hit-and-run strikes on Japanese shipping in the area. Not one of the Japanese transports that had been struck—whether carrying goods, munitions, or people—had seen its presumed American attacker. That the Erie Maru bore no markings as a prisoner-of-war transport made her fair game.
During the wait at Panay, Barton had become acquainted with a number of the older naval officers in the Davao draft. One, Commander Melvin McCoy, had been two years ahead of Benny at Annapolis, a connection the two men enjoyed exploring for days on end. But when McCoy’s talk turned to the possibility of the naval officers taking over the ship, Barton declined comment. Reprisals for a failed mutiny attempt would be severe—likely resulting in the torture and death of many innocent friends, if not all of them.
Strengthened by the improved rations, McCoy and others had whispered the possibility of charging the ship’s crew and commandeering the Erie Maru to Australia. Philippine constabulary troops were also aboard and, although under Japanese control, they were presumed to be sympathetic with the prisoners’ plight. Barton was relieved when the would-be conspirators concluded the odds were too great to risk so many lives, and the matter was dropped.
Despite obvious uneasiness among the crew, the Erie Maru sailed unmolested all the way to Davao Gulf at Mindanao. On November 7, eleven days after departing Manila, her lumbering engines finally
downshifted and the ship dropped anchor by a simple wooden pier. The place was called Barrio Lasang, a tiny logging anchorage northeast of Davao Harbor.
After the lines were secured, an American voice boomed from the rusted loudspeaker: “Now hear this. Now hear this . . . We are to disembark [at Barrio Lasang] and march to Davao Penal Colony, a distance of twenty-seven kilometers (sixteen miles). Food will be distributed at the end of the gangplank. When you leave the ship, form a column at the far end of the pier. That is all.”
After a meal of rice and camotes, however, the prisoners were ordered to sit in the midday sun for several hours without explanation. The men had come to call this familiar exercise the “sun treatment,” which they believed the Japanese guards deliberately employed to weaken them so they would be easier to control.
They were finally rousted to their feet in the peak-afternoon heat, assembled into columns, and directed up a narrow jungle road that cut through dense vegetation. The prisoners marched deep into the night, and by the wee hours, the road had tapered to a steep, deeply rutted trail. Visibility was practically nil, despite bright flecks of moonlight filtering through the rainforest canopy.
Several fell out from sheer exhaustion as the going grew more difficult. But unlike earlier marches where they might have been slapped, bayoneted or shot for the same transgression, collapsing Davao-bound prisoners were loaded onto a truck trailing the columns and driven the rest of the way. Approximately halfway to the camp, Charles was loaded onto the truck. By then, Barton’s world had narrowed to the dirt path directly in front of him, and he managed to make the entire trek to the promised land on foot. It ended at 0400, after nine grueling hours.
Barton was among the first to stumble into what initially seemed like a jungle clearing, but once his eyes adjusted to the dim, a tidy compound of barracks and other outbuildings spread out before him. In the predawn glow at least, Davao Penal Colony appeared as hoped for: a significant improvement over Cabanatuan. The prisoners were herded into a large warehouse-like building. After the order “Fall out. This is the end of the line,” an exhausted Barton Cross curled up on the floor alongside a thousand other hopeful arrivals and surrendered to a deep and welcome sleep.
The Jersey Brothers Page 16