Days went by before Benny heard back. Between debriefings, Morrett had priority personal matters of his own to attend to, most importantly a reunion with his fiancée, Pat Taylor, who since his capture had joined the Waves. She was now working at the Navy Department in Washington! He had phoned her after landing in San Francisco when he first set foot on American soil. “Pat, darling, I’m home!” he’d said. “I’ve missed you so much!” While she’d sounded happy to hear his voice, he sensed restraint. Maybe it was just shock, he decided—after all, he’d been listed as missing for nearly three years.
Morrett could barely contain his excitement when Pat arrived for their reunion dinner at the Statler. Trim and athletic, dark haired and beautiful, she looked stunning in her Wave uniform. The engagement ring he’d given her before his deployment still sparkled on her left hand. And in the little spare time he’d had since his return, Morrett had bought her a strand of pearls. The wrapped box bulged from his uniform pocket while they waited to be seated.
But over dinner in the Statler’s chandelier-bedecked dining room, Pat broke the bitterest of news. He’d been gone so long, she explained uncomfortably, that she had given him up for dead. She was dating someone else now. She was open to two suitors, she said, incredibly, but the engagement was off.
A devastated Morrett—pearls still in his pocket—returned to his fellow ex-prisoners in their Statler suite. When he opened the door, he got another surprise. In front of him were Calvin Graef and four other friends he hadn’t seen since his group of 750 men departed the Davao Penal Colony to work on the Lasang Airfield. Johnny Morrett’s merciful God seemed to be playing tricks on him now.
Already unmoored, Morrett was speechless at first. But over the course of the evening, and with the help of a few cold Ballantines, the others caught him up on what seemed incomprehensible to all of them. A month after the Shinyo Maru went down, Graef and 1,800 others had boarded another Japanese transport, the Arisan Maru, which met an identical fate—torpedoed by an American submarine.
After all their debriefings but before the two survivor groups left Washington—variously for hospital treatment, war bond drives, or home—they were escorted to the White House to meet with a warm and sympathetic President Roosevelt. Following that, they were taken to meet with Secretary of War Stimson and Army Chief of Staff General Marshall.
In his quiet, dignified way, Marshall apologized to the former prisoners for help not arriving before the fall of Bataan and Corregidor. He offered no excuses, just that American forces weren’t in a position to rescue them at the time. The men thanked Marshall for his candor and expressed no bitterness. Realizing they were in the company of two historic figures at the crest of a historic war, they apparently only wished to remember the moment that way.
ONE OF THE SURVIVORS’ other final meetings in Washington was with Benny Mott. It took place shortly before Christmas 1944, and while its precise location is unknown, most likely it was in the Statler’s darkened, smoky bar, where the survivor group often congregated. Benny caught up with three of them—Johnny Morrett, Bert Schwarz, and Calvin Graef, all onetime fellow prisoners of Barton Cross.
Talking with stricken families since their return had taken a toll on the group. So many weeping responses had overwhelmed them. Not only did each conversation rekindle their survivor guilt, but also it extended their grief over hundreds of lost friends. But when meeting with Benny, Morrett, Schwarz, and Graef had relatively good news.
When Morrett’s detail departed Davao for Lasang, he assured Benny, Barton was alive and well at the prison camp. And even though there was no Arisan Maru casualty list yet, Calvin Graef felt certain that Barton Cross was still at Cabanatuan in early October when he and the first draft of prisoners were trucked from Cabanatuan to Bilibid.
News that Barton was still alive when these men departed the Philippines was good reason for Benny to sponsor a round of drinks. But the news wasn’t all good. This was the first that Benny had heard of the Arisan Maru—another ship loaded with American prisoners sunk by another American submarine. Unlike the Shinyo Maru incident, the Arisan Maru sinking—which would constitute the worst disaster in US naval history—was apparently a taboo topic in senior military circles.
Graef also told Benny about the arrival of British and Dutch prisoners at Cabanatuan after their prison ship had been bombed, this one in Manila Bay by US carrier planes. That had come right out of the Brits’ mouths, he said. The grim sum of facts shared by these survivors had Benny reeling.
He could tell none of this to his family, he decided—at least not now. News of the Shinyo Maru alone had undone Helen Cross. Were she to learn of this apparent cascade of prison ship sinkings off the Philippines, he feared it would finish her.
In any case, Benny would have to get official corroboration of these terrible reports. Yes, that’s what he would do: more research was needed before he could assume they were accurate. In the meantime, Benny was determined to rescue his family life.
He was focused on getting his modest new house in suburban Maryland ready for a very special holiday visit from his wife and daughter; they were coming all the way from California. Jeannette was accompanying young Jeanne Marie on a custodial visit to see him, but Benny’s fondest wish was that maybe, just maybe, he and Jeannette could put their marriage back together. No better time to do it than Christmas, and lonely Benny had made special plans for the three of them.
When mother and child arrived, however, both were feverish and unwell, probably with the flu. After they opened the Christmas gifts that Benny had lovingly purchased and wrapped, he insisted they take to bed while he went to the store in search of juice, soup, and aspirin. His disappointment was acute, but there was nothing else to be done. After mother and daughter settled into their room, Benny threw the Christmas wrappings into the fireplace and left for the store.
His Packard taillights had barely disappeared around the corner when the discarded wrapping paper went up in a giant whoosh of flames, sending errant sparks onto the carpet. Within minutes, the carpet, drapes, and furniture were consumed in flames. When Benny turned back onto Sleaford Place, three fire trucks blocked the road and fat canvas hoses snaked across his front yard. Firemen trained high arcs of water onto the flames lapping at his roof, a scene that likely reminded him of the devastating fires that killed so many of his gunnery crew at the Battle of Santa Cruz.
Benny threw the car into park and raced toward the house, panicked that his wife and little girl were still inside. But then he saw poor little Jeanne Marie huddled in a blanket next to one of the firemen, shaking and crying. Jeannette was talking to the fire captain; when she spied Benny, she cast an icy glance his way. It was a look he knew too well.
WHILE THE MATTER OF his burned-down house—and divorce—was sorted out, Benny resumed his research on Barton’s whereabouts. Bill had been exhorting Benny to check with this officer or that Pentagon branch for updated POW intelligence. MacArthur had claimed to be making great strides in liberating the Philippines. “What of the war prisoners?” Bill wrote Benny.
Benny’s last letter to Bill had noted one promising development. Another prisoner, a navy ensign and, he suspected, a prison colleague of Barton’s, had just escaped and was being flown from the Philippines to Washington. His name was George Petritz. He had escaped from another Japan-bound ship that was sunk, this one in Subic Bay. All Benny knew so far was that he was being evacuated to Washington from the Leyte beachhead. The man needed immediate medical care and would be going to Bethesda Naval Hospital upon his arrival. Benny promised Bill he would visit Petritz as soon as they would let him.
But when Benny finally had his visit with George Petritz, he was so disconsolate over the doomed scenario Petritz described, he could not bring himself to write Bill about it—or at all—for months. This must have been difficult for Benny, but given the choices, reticence seemed preferable to the truth.
36
THE ORYOKO MARU
FOR THE PRISONERS
QUARTERED at Bilibid Prison after the Allies landed at Leyte, the final months of 1944 were an emotional seesaw. Days-long American air raids over Manila in late October seemed to signal imminent liberation; but when the raids paused, prison guards insisted they were going to be shipped to Japan at the next opportunity.
The agony was in knowing that even if they survived a voyage to Japan, it would be months or years before they might be freed, instead of possibly days or weeks. Optimists like Barton Cross believed they would be rescued. Pessimists like Charles Armour believed this was just another case of his being the “fuckee.”
The men craned to watch navy carrier planes carry out their attacks on Manila through barred windows on Bilibid’s second story. They hooted and cheered every time a plane swooped down at enemy targets all around them; even the weakest hospital cases rose from their cots to thrill at the sight. Another source of satisfaction was the sight of their guards dashing for freshly dug foxholes at the sound of air raid sirens. “The demoralizing effect of inadequate rations is balanced by US Navy bombings [over Manila and Manila Bay],” confided navy prisoner Lieutenant David Nash to his diary. “The raids are spectacular and we watch them regularly . . . They gradually assure us that the Japanese are going to be unable to evacuate us to Japan.”
The reigning emotions at Bilibid at that time—hope and apprehension—were perhaps best expressed in a letter to his family written by Ensign Shields Goodman:
We are presumably awaiting transportation to Japan . . . [If so] I shall leave this letter with one of the hospital patients because the prisoners here will undoubtedly be back in American hands before those sent north to Japan. I have great hopes that our forces will come in before the Nips can get us out. We hear that Americans have landed 350 miles to the south of us . . . Our planes have been overhead nearly every day since we arrived here. They have bombed the airfields and the port area and we hear that there are no Nip freighters or any other ships in the harbor . . . We feel that our insurance against being sent north becomes more concrete with each air raid . . . Happy day it’s going to be when we are all reunited again. These last . . . years will fall away from us like leaves from a tree in fall, and it will seem . . . that we have never been apart.
Bilibid was spared any harm thanks to the large “PW” markings on its roof and exterior walls; clearly, the Yanks knew where they were. The prisoners might not have known when their troops would storm the gates, but even the worst skeptics believed it would be soon. Excitement and tensions ran high as they listened to contraband radio broadcasts confirming MacArthur’s landing at Leyte. And they knew that MacArthur’s troops were going to press north and west toward Luzon, compounding their hopes.
What they did not know was that the Leyte campaign had gotten bogged down, a factor that would alter their fate in ways that could not have been comprehended at the time. Unexpected Japanese reinforcements landing on Leyte’s west coast were delivering fierce resistance to the Sixth Army approaching from the east—giving MacArthur his first taste of a fanatical, suicidal defense.
Another factor that helped slow the Leyte campaign was deployment of the enemy’s first organized kamikaze force. The term “kamikaze,” meaning “divine wind,” had evolved into an enduring symbol of Japanese homeland protection after a sudden sea storm thwarted Mongol Kublai Khan’s twelfth-century invasion of Japan. In Leyte Gulf, divine wind took the form of squadrons of fuel-bloated, explosive-laden planes flown on one-way suicide missions into Allied ships.
A steady onslaught of kamikazes rained down death on Leyte Gulf. The speed of their descent so confounded antiaircraft defenses that thirty-four ships were sunk and 288 others suffered serious damage. Hundreds of sailors died hideous deaths. The airborne attacks also suspended troopship unloading, which further exacerbated delays ashore.
It would take sixty-seven days to secure Leyte Island, double what MacArthur had confidently predicted for the entire campaign to retake the Philippines. The November 20 invasion of his next objective, Mindoro Island—which would also seal off Manila Bay to all Japanese shipping—had to be pushed back. In fact, the Mindoro landings were postponed and postponed again until definitively rescheduled for December 15. Advance carrier air strikes to clear enemy ships of all kinds from local waters would begin at dawn, December 14.
ON NOVEMBER 25 A fierce wind blew over Bilibid Prison, and the skies grew dark and ominous. A seaborne typhoon then roared across Manila and southern Luzon, bringing whipping rain and low, heavy clouds—and an abrupt end to six weeks of almost continuous US air raids. After so many weeks of being buoyed by them, the prisoners were dismayed by their sudden halt. Worse, when the storm passed, the planes did not return.
The men fretted and cursed and debated endlessly the possible reasons, even as they strained their eyes and ears for renewed activity. More discouraging was fresh chatter among the guards about the possibility of getting a transport into Manila Bay to ship the prisoners north. “What has happened?” wrote Marine Lieutenant Colonel Curtis Beecher in his journal. “Are we to find out that some serious setback has occurred just when our prospects seem so bright?”
Unaware of the complex revision of the Philippine invasion timeline, the prisoners knew only that the long, reassuring buzz of American aircraft had stopped as abruptly as it had begun. The calendar turned to December under silent skies, and the men grappled with newfound despair. They filled the hours as best they could—trading yet more recipes even as their rations grew impossibly smaller.
One glacial day after another passed this way. To distract from the gathering gloom, detailed instruction in Italian, Greek, French, German, and Polish recipes was added to the usual American gourmandizing. Incipient sommeliers lectured on wine pairings. One memorable presentation was given by Warwick Potter Scott, a navy lieutenant whose pedigreed name and bearing conferred enhanced authority on the subject: the proper sequencing of wine service at a thirteen-course dinner party, such as might be thrown at his home on Philadelphia’s Main Line. The room was filled with attentive note takers, and there were a number of earnest follow-up questions. There was little else to do but pace the prison yard, talk longingly of home, and speculate endlessly on what would happen to them next.
On December 12 the uncertainty came to an end in the form of a breathless runner from Manila’s Japanese military headquarters. His urgent message was for Bilibid’s commandant. Time was of the essence, he told Commandant Nogi Naraji. During the bombing break, a transport ship had made it into Manila Bay. He must prepare a prisoner draft for immediate departure for Japan. Nogi ordered the navy doctors to prepare a manifest of all prisoners capable of travel.
“Our worst fears,” wrote Curtis Beecher, “are finally realized.”
In a hastily drafted protest letter, a group of senior officers and navy doctors formally objected. The letter forcefully asserted that moving war prisoners through active combat zones was a violation of the Geneva Convention. It also cited recent prison-ship sinkings, indicating that the specific dangers they faced were well understood. But Lieutenant Nogi had the power only to carry out orders, not alter them.
The ensigns shook their heads in dismay as they walked in a circle while coerced medical officers nodded grimly that one after another of them was fit for travel. Charles Armour—who by this time was suffering from beriberi, a painful thiamine deficiency—observed that if you were fit enough to cast a shadow, you were well enough to go.
At tenko that evening, a final manifest of 1,619 men was announced—two-thirds of Bilibid’s remaining population. The group was primarily composed of officers, chaplains, navy doctors, and corpsmen; they would depart for Japan the following morning. Lieutenant Nogi, a former Seattle physician who had been relatively kind to the prisoners, tried to reassure them in his remarks that evening. There had been no air raids for eighteen days, he said to the sullen assembly; the waters were again safe for travel. David Nash confided in disgust to his diary, “He knew as well as we did it meant suicide.�
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After nearly three years to the day of hoping and waiting, the indefatigable band of ensigns—Charles Armour, Barton Cross, Earl Ferguson, Bob Glatt, Shields Goodman, Bob Granston, Andrew Long, Ken Wheeler, Chuck Wilkins, Bob Wuest, and George Petritz—scanned the list and gave one another a somber, knowing nod. Every single one of them was on it. They listened numbly to their instructions. They would be mustered at 0400, divided into three boarding groups, and embark on the familiar march to the waterfront. Their destination, once again, was Pier 7, the onetime “Million Dollar Pier.”
None of them slept that night. They talked, collected scant possessions, and ate whatever saved Red Cross rations they had set aside.
Some wrote wills and farewell letters to next of kin should they not make it home. These were buried in sealed jars or entrusted to the few hospital corpsmen or patients not designated to depart. Still, throughout the night, a chorus of silent prayer drifted heavenward: Please, God, let an American air raid cancel the voyage.
Despite the supplications, they were rousted by the clangorous guardhouse bell at 0400. After a final meal—a teacup of lugao—the men organized into their boarding groups. Serial roll calls ensued. Then, inexplicably, the prisoners were ordered back to their quarters, reigniting hope. “Well, we haven’t gone yet,” said one, bravely. For the next few hours, optimism made a comeback. Bets were placed that their luck would turn, the ever-popular collateral being a steak dinner in Frisco.
At noon, however, the draft was resummoned, recounted, and ordered to fall in. Long columns of four abreast moved out of Bilibid’s forbidding gates one last time. Those left behind looked on mournfully, as if witnessing their departure for the guillotine. The pitiful, heavily guarded procession—to the last man, thin, weak, and barely clothed—stretched a quarter of a mile.
The Jersey Brothers Page 37