Spruance rightly paused before answering. Yes, there would be hell to pay: the open firing of an army general by a navy admiral on the joint recommendation of another navy admiral and a Marine Corps general? But lacking better alternatives—and with the faltering army line becoming dire—Spruance concurred. He issued the following order to Holland Smith:
You are authorized and directed to relieve Major General Ralph Smith from command of the Twenty-Seventh Division, US Army, and place Major General Jarman in command of this division. This action is taken in order that the offensive on Saipan may proceed in accordance with the plans and orders of the Commander, Northern Troops and Landing Force.
When General Jarman stepped in, the line advance dilemma resolved quickly, but a furious reaction by army brass ensued. The long-simmering interservice rivalry in the Pacific—rooted in the struggle for theater primacy between Admiral Nimitz and General MacArthur—roared into public view. Bill admonished war correspondents aboard that this was a strictly military matter and not fodder for newspaper reports. He then shuttled endlessly between Rocky Mount and Indianapolis as part of an attempt to contain the firestorm.
But it was too late, thanks to reporters in Pearl Harbor who had somehow sniffed out the story. The controversy was lustily played out by the largest newspaper chain in the country. Strong coverage of the “navy scandal” story gave its owner, conservative William Randolph Hearst, an ideal opportunity to advance his political agenda in support of MacArthur. Hearst editorials spewed blame at the marines for excessive loss of life in the Pacific and called for General MacArthur, whose leadership resulted “in little loss of life, in most cases,” to be named supreme commander of the Pacific.
MacArthur’s abject failure and subsequent personnel losses in the Philippines, and the fact that he hadn’t had much enemy contact since, factored little in the press accounts. Scandalous headlines dominated: Holland Smith was the butcher he had been declared to be after Tarawa, and he fired gallant Ralph Smith for refusing to send his men into certain slaughter. The precipitating facts and factors in the Smith vs. Smith contretemps faded into the background. Another press account competed unsuccessfully for attention: that Ralph Smith was not sufficiently battle tested and/or lacked the requisite training and discipline necessary to advance men under fire.
On July 9, Admiral Turner declared the island of Saipan securely in Allied hands. The final carnage was staggering: the Americans suffered 16,000 casualties (dead, wounded, and missing). Japanese losses were worse: at least 24,000 dead and 3,612 missing. Enemy casualties climbed sharply toward the end when defenders launched a series of final banzai charges, and Japanese-born civilians by the thousands rushed to the island’s steep cliffs and jumped to their deaths. When the battle outcome was certain, Admiral Nagumo, General Saito, and their senior commanders all committed ritual suicide rather than surrender. The loss of Saipan also prompted the once-powerful prime minister, Hideki Tojo, to resign his cabinet—all proof of how catastrophic the sacred island’s loss was to the Japanese.
Turner and the amphibians went on to prevail at Tinian and Guam as well, and on August 9, the Marianas conquest was complete. But Operation Forager had taken its own toll on Bill Mott. Over the two-month campaign, he had progressed steadily from unwell to seriously ill. On August 10, the day after Guam was secured, he collapsed on the bridge.
When Bill regained consciousness, he was on a stretcher alongside numerous battle casualties awaiting airlift to Pearl Harbor’s Aiea Heights Naval Hospital. Humiliated that he hadn’t kept the pace he demanded of himself and further embarrassed to be evacuated alongside gruesomely wounded marines who’d given nearly their all, Bill sank into despondency. Not only did it likely mean back to a desk job, but it also meant he had failed in his quest to reach Barton—a possibility he had never even considered until now.
It was in this morose frame of mind that Bill, waiting for trans-Pacific air transport, looked up to see Admiral Turner standing over him, holding an Armed Services paperback edition of The Razor’s Edge. He’d been looking all over for him, the admiral said cheerfully. He thought Bill might like to read W. Somerset Maugham’s brand-new novel while recovering. Even at this zenith of self-loathing, Bill thanked and then apologized to Turner, who he was sure was about to become his ex-boss.
But Turner seemed to miss none of the turmoil that was clawing holes in Bill’s stomach. “You’ve done a fine job, Commander,” said the admiral, a man not given to flattery. “If you can get yourself well by the time the ship returns to Pearl, consider your job as my flag secretary and legal officer a permanent assignment.”
30
DECAMPMENT
AS EARLY AS MAY 1944, changes in guard behavior and camp routine at Davao augured another mass prisoner move. Agitated by yet another successful escape, camp administrators had been further spooked by rumors that local guerrillas, whom they believed to be greater in size and strength than their own tiny garrison, were planning to storm the camp and free the remaining prisoners.
Nearly all productive work details had stopped. Rice paddies and vegetable gardens were not replanted, and tools and equipment were being crated and shipped out. In addition, all prisoners were given dysentery tests, presaging the dreaded possibility of shipment to Japan.
The most recent escape had taken place in March. An eleven-man work detail, armed with heavy shovels, had left the camp to reinforce fences around a cucumber field near the jungle perimeter. Following a work break, one of them clubbed the head guard to death. Another prisoner struck the second guard, but not hard enough to kill him. The group then fled into the rain forest. Six of the escapees survived the jungle trek, met up with the guerrillas, and joined their forces.
Not long afterward, guards overseeing another work detail discovered a cache of vitamins, chocolates wrapped in papers with “I Shall Return” stamped on them, and a copy of Free Philippines, the Filipino resistance publication printed by the US Army, all compliments of Courtney Whitney’s PRS advancement efforts. Reprisals, including further food curtailment, fell once again on the innocent.
But the point of having nothing left to withhold was fast approaching; the Japanese needed a new strategy to prevent escape. Each day some action by camp administrators or a comment by the despised hunchback interpreter, Shusuke Wada, increased prisoner suspicion that they were going to be moved. The men had long feared being sent to Japan, but now even more so; thanks to contraband radio reports, they knew that the war had turned decisively in their favor and that liberation of the Philippines was approaching.
In late April, 750 prisoners had been trucked off-site with orders to finish constructing two nearby airfields. The sudden urgency to accelerate completion of the airstrips—one near Barrio Lasang and the other near Davao City—was yet another sign the Japanese feared that the Allies were closing in. Communications were severed between the airfield detail and the prisoners that remained at DAPECOL—another precaution taken by the increasingly uneasy prison administration.
Speculation finally came to an end on June 5, 1944, when a fleet of empty flatbed trucks rolled in and parked across from the camp compound. The prisoners were told at tenko that evening to prepare for an early-morning departure; they were leaving Mindanao for good. Each was handed an ominous-looking thirty-six-inch strip of white cloth and told to bring it with him the following morning, along with any remaining personal belongings.
At first, the men were oddly nostalgic, remembering their initial elation upon arriving at Davao nineteen months earlier. Then an almost festive mood swept the camp. Charles and Barton, their surnames near the beginning of the alphabet, would be in the first echelon to move out. They wasted no time organizing activities for their final night, of which the guards were surprisingly tolerant. After a moment of hesitation at the thought of his precious spaniels Jasper and Sable back home, Barton joined Charles and Ken Wheeler in the sacrifice of the protein component of the last supper, the camp’s stray dogs and Susie the cat and
her offspring. Barton’s motive was pure: to live long enough to see Sable and Jasper again at Lilac Hedges, at which time he would somehow make it up to them.
The ensigns stripped all remaining edibles from individual gardens and the prison kitchen—mostly cassavas and squash—rounding out the final Davao repast. Against the din of screaming scarlet macaws and raucous parrot chatter, the men talked and even laughed as the unfortunate animals sizzled on spits and the potpourri of residual victuals simmered in a pot over a campfire.
In an unexpected act of clemency, the Japanese distributed several bags of mail that evening that they had inexplicably been holding back. It was on this occasion that Barton Cross received his first letter from home, from his mother, dated a full year earlier—June 1943. He was overjoyed. Written in her familiar, sweeping hand, it included family news, greetings from neighbors, and photos of her, Arthur, and Rosemary. Bill’s and Benny’s activities were not mentioned, perhaps because of their military positions and combat activities.
Barton was euphoric, and the photos made numerous rounds during the festivities. While the prisoners indulged themselves under the stars that night, they speculated endlessly on their destination, about which camp administrators had been tight lipped. The men suspected and hoped for Manila, but, as ever, they worried about being shipped to Japan.
The next morning, the first group was ordered to assemble at 0400. Barton and Charles rousted themselves from their hard bunks and took one last look around. At each juncture of their now two-and-a-half-year imprisonment, hope had vied with apprehension as to how their next set of living conditions would compare with the last. But with the amulet of a letter from home tucked into a tiny satchel, Barton radiated optimism that things were on the upswing.
ON THE MORNING OF June 6, 1944, as the epic cross-Channel invasion of Western Europe—D-day—unfolded continents away, 1,239 war prisoners were marched to the awaiting trucks outside the Davao Penal Colony. Those who still had shoes were ordered to remove them and tie them around their necks. Any prisoner who failed to follow orders exactly received a rifle butt reminder. The guards’ generous demeanor of the previous evening had vaporized; they were visibly nervous and determined to prevent another escape.
The twenty-two truck beds were loaded to overcapacity. Thirty men were jammed into each, tight against one another, then ordered to remain standing even though the slatted sides were barely eighteen inches high. A guard with a long rope then boarded each truck bed. Beginning in the right forward corner, he tied the rope around the waist of the first prisoner, and successively tied him to the man on his right and left, or to the person in front of him if he was at the end of the row. This continued until all thirty men on each truck bed were tethered together with a single piece of rope.
As the truck engines growled to life, the men were ordered to blindfold themselves with the strips of white cloth they’d been issued the previous evening. With these tasks complete, two armed guards boarded each truck, and the convoy rumbled out of Davao in the semidarkness.
It was a difficult trip. The men lurched and reeled; they couldn’t brace for stops, acceleration, turns, or cavities in the rutted road that they couldn’t see. Slowing jammed them forward, accelerating swung them backward, and turns pitched them outward. More than once, an entire truckload nearly toppled over the low railing.
When the tethers and blindfolds were finally removed, the prisoners found themselves at the Lasang dock, not far from where the Erie Maru had first off-loaded them in October 1942. Once on the docks, the men were ordered to sit in the hot sun for hours while the trucks left to collect the rest of the prisoners. Anchored out in the harbor was a single ship: a rusted freighter with Yashu Maru painted on its side.
With signature adjectives, Charles Armour noted that the ship did not carry any markings indicating that it would be carrying prisoners of war. They all knew Allied submarines lurked in nearby waters. How would the submariners know to let them pass? “Maybe they should just paint a big bull’s-eye on her,” Charles remarked, but in a tone less defiant than in the past.
When the second group of prisoners arrived, those that were removed from Davao in April to work on the airfield were not among them. When questioned, Mr. Wada declined to disclose their whereabouts. Speculation on the fate of these many friends rippled through the group as they waited.
In the peak afternoon heat, the prisoners were ferried out by launch to Yashu Maru, and the dreaded boarding began. Barton and Charles were among the first to descend the ladder into the dark, steaming hold; alphabetical loading made their very surnames a curse. The first group was jammed so tightly into the hull’s canted rear that they couldn’t sit, much less lie down. The men girded themselves for a miserable trip. No reminder was necessary that their voyage to Mindanao had taken eleven days.
Ominously, the Japanese guards began removing all life jackets from the hold’s storage area. But just when it seemed things were going from bad to worse, they distributed Red Cross parcels to every prisoner—for which any prisoner would have happily traded a life jacket if given the option. Such was the unpredictability of their captors. Spirits gradually declined again as Yashu Maru languished in the harbor for an impossible six days. Some prisoners became so agitated after crouching so long in the airless hold, they had to be tied up like dogs.
Finally, on June 12, the engine sputtered to life. A cheer went up as the movement generated a subtle flow of air belowdecks. Yashu Maru departed its prolonged anchorage in a small convoy, and the captain steered a careful northward course. Fearful of attacks from above and below, he hugged the coast so closely it seemed at times the ship might run aground.
Once under way, the men were allowed to rotate to the deck for rations and to relieve themselves. To ease the crowding below, a few lucky ones, including Barton and Ken Wheeler, were allowed to sleep on the deck, a tremendous reprieve. However, that privilege ended after only a few days when two prisoners, army officers John McGee and Don Wills, jumped over the rail into the ocean. This time the hatch was bolted shut.
Defiant and hopeful that McGee and Wills had made good on their escapes—despite the thirty-foot drop to the water and the hail of gunfire that followed their overboard leaps—the locked-down prisoners began to sing. Hoarse, repeated strains of “God Bless America” drifted up through the floorboards. A visibly irritated Mr. Wada finally opened the hatch and glared down at them. “You crazy Americans,” he spat, and slammed it shut again.
Misery below mounted as the convoy plied glacially north for three more days. Then suddenly the prisoners lurched as the ship turned abruptly, accelerated, and headed toward land. It seemed they were making an unscheduled stop at the island of Cebu, south of the San Bernardino Strait. The date was June 15.
To the prisoners’ relief, the hatch opened, and they were ordered to exit the ship. The guards yelled, “Speedo! Speedo!” as the 1,237 men struggled up the ladder. Squinting out into Cebu Harbor, they were taken aback by an enormous formation of Japanese warships.
The bewildered prisoners were herded ashore and marched to an old American bastion, Fort San Pedro. The building, which still bore the sign “USAFFE Headquarters,” had been heavily bombed, but its shell was intact. The interior was a heap of stones, dirt, and coal ash.
The men were held here, without explanation, for five days. Eventually a local Filipino tipped them off as to the cause of their detour: the Americans had landed at Saipan, and the Japanese Fleet that they had seen in the harbor was now battling the US Navy in the Philippine Sea. The thrill of hearing that their countrymen were so close shot through the group like an electric current. The outcome of the engagement was not yet known, but to the prisoners, the Allies were hard by and on the offensive, nourishing their hopes of imminent liberation.
On June 21 the prisoners were rousted off the fort’s floor and marched back to the docks. Smudged black from the coal ash, they drew sympathetic stares from Filipinos all along the route. At the dock, their guards w
ere testy and brusque, leading to upbeat prisoner speculation on the winner of the naval clash. But the grins soon vanished.
Crammed belowdeck on an even smaller ship, they braced for another stretch of misery. The prisoners murmured prayers and clung to their sanity for five more days inside a hold normally used for coal storage. A collective sigh went up at the clank and grind of an anchor chain followed by a splash. They were back in Manila Harbor.
The psychological relief this brought was short-lived as the desperate men remained in the hold for another four days in the scorching June heat. They fretted and cursed. Why had they not disembarked? Was this just a stopover en route to Japan? The uncertainty was as maddening as the dim and increasingly fouled quarters.
On the afternoon of June 26, three weeks since departing Davao, an unfamiliar guard finally opened the hatch and called down, “All men go now!” The body of a prisoner who had died of heat exhaustion was lifted out first, followed by a long queue of litters. The hold’s rear echelon, including Barton and Charles—badly depleted but able to walk—were the last to emerge.
In stark contrast to his appearance and present circumstances—and the emotional state of many of the others—Barton’s morale was “sky-high.” The news at Cebu surely meant that the US Navy was on the way! Armored in optimism, he gulped the harbor air and lined up for the march back to Bilibid Prison. Given the range of lesser alternatives, all the prisoners were encouraged by this development. Here was a place they could walk around, breathe fresh air, and even lie down—if on a cement floor. And also reunite with old friends.
The Davao returnees were greeted warmly by several familiar faces, including some of the original navy doctors and medics from Canacao Naval Hospital. These were the men who had cared for Barton and so many other wounded during and after the attack on Cavite. But the doctors were shocked by what they saw.
The Jersey Brothers Page 31