Target: Rabaul: The Allied Siege of Japan's Most Infamous Stronghold, March 1943 - August 1945

by Bruce Gamble

  One of the strongest men among them had been a prisoner for less than three weeks. Lieutenant Junior Grade James L. Miller, a big, strapping fighter pilot in VF-17, had been flying over Lakunai airdrome on February 17 when a heavy antiaircraft shell blew off the outer five feet of his starboard wing. The Corsair spun out of control, but Miller managed to jump at five thousand feet. With enemy gunners shooting at him the whole way down, he parachuted unharmed onto the runway and waved to a squadron mate before the Japanese surrounded him.

  Ensign James “Jimmy” Warren was also brawny. A pilot in VF-33, he had been credited with the first Hellcat victory in the South Pacific in early September. Shot down by Zeros on December 23 (along with two of the Black Sheep), Warren had played college football as a fullback and was described as “almost indestructible.”

  Yet another fighter pilot still in good condition was Al Quinones, who had bailed out of his burning P-38 on November 7. Raised in New York City by Puerto Rican parents, Quinones joined the Civilian Conservation Corps after high school and was accustomed to hard physical work.*

  Marched each day to a nearby gully, the work gang scooped out a large, level terrace and then tunneled into the hillside, creating a cave that would shelter up to thirty individuals “packed closely together.” When the groundwork was finished, soldiers brought in loads of salvaged lumber and corrugated metal. Within about five days, the Japanese built a spacious, three-sided enclosure covered with a tin roof. The sheer side of the gully formed the fourth wall, enabling easy access to the excavated dugout, which served as an air raid shelter. On or about March 15, the whole cadre of prisoners walked and hobbled over a steep hill and down the other side to the new POW camp. Compared to the unventilated cave where they had been held for the past two weeks, the new site was a vast improvement. The wooden walls, made with vertical boards, had plenty of gaps for ventilation; there was ample water; and best of all, a proper benjo “where a man could sit down.”

  Another development in the POW camp was the emergence of Murphy as the unofficial leader. Transferred from the navy prison camp in January, he was an army captain and thus senior in rank to the other captives (after Unruh’s departure for Japan). But his tenure lasted only a short time before Squadron Leader John Evelyn Todd and several of his crewmen from a Catalina of RAAF No. 11 Squadron arrived at the camp. They were neither victims of enemy gunfire nor even combat; instead, their predicament had resulted from an inflight mishap.

  Returning from a night raid against Kavieng on February 7, the Aussies were flying parallel to the south coast of New Britain when Todd gave the order to “defuse and make safe all flares.” A crewman inadvertently set off a magnesium parachute flare, which immediately started an uncontrollable fire aboard the big flying boat. Todd set the Catalina down in Jacquinot Bay and the crew jumped clear before the fuel tanks exploded. All ten reached shore, where four managed to evade capture. The others were rounded up, including Todd, who had a large piece of foreign matter from the flare embedded in his hip. After the captives arrived at Rabaul, the copilot, Flt. Lt. Brian P. Stacy, was sent to Japan with Nisei interpreter Chikaki Honda. The Catalina’s navigator, a side gunner, and two flight engineers were among the prisoners executed on March 5.

  Described by Nason as “a courteous, quiet-spoken Australian of much experience,” Todd was now the senior POW at the Tunnel Hill camp. “He was one rank higher than Murphy,” recalled Nason, “but that didn’t matter for Murphy still ruled us.” Because of the serious wound in his hip, Todd was at reduced strength, whereas Murphy was comparatively healthy. He had an overwhelming hatred of the Japanese, which he channeled into an absolute refusal to be dominated—no easy mindset for a prisoner of the Japanese to maintain. Murphy was also fiercely independent, as were many Australians who chose the life of a patrol officer among the indigent tribes of the mandated territory. Full of self-confidence, refusing to give in to his captors, he was determined to survive at all costs. With his forceful personality, he emerged as a natural leader.

  Some saw Murphy as a bully. One night, during those first miserable days in the Tunnel Hill cave, Tom Doyle stumbled over some prisoners and inadvertently stepped on Murphy’s hand. This elicited a curse from Murphy, followed by a smack on Doyle’s head. Gentle-minded Jose Holguin became angry, wondering how one ally could strike another. Thereafter he began to scrutinize and criticize Murphy’s actions.

  In a practical sense, Murphy was a bully. Whenever a prisoner showed signs of withdrawing or giving up, Murphy would tease, threaten, or otherwise cajole him until he got an angry response. Once he saw that spark, Murphy would back off. If his methods seemed callous—Holguin despised such behavior—at least Murphy’s intentions were good. The psychology of his actions was, in fact, brilliant. Knowing that depression could spread like a virus, Murphy browbeat his fellow POWs to maintain the will to live; otherwise they might have all been wiped out.

  One helpful remedy was entertainment. Naturally the captives talked at length about the thing they cherished most—food. They began to invent elaborate recipes, but were careful not to get too authentic, knowing it would only drive them mad with cravings. Instead they had fun creating the wildest, most unlikely dishes their minds could concoct, such as “roast possum.”

  Other entertainment was more conventional. Most of the prisoners had attended college for two years or more, and quite a few were graduates in an era when songfests, sing-alongs, and glee clubs were popular. And so they dusted off their repertoires and sang. Jim McMurria had a fine voice and a good memory for lyrics. His variety ran the gamut from Irish ballads to Broadway soft-shoe, which he could replicate admirably in his bare feet. He enlisted Charlie Lanphier, a Stanford graduate, into harmonizing with him on popular songs.

  The music lifted their spirits and opened the door to all sorts of poetry recitals. John Murphy proved to be a popular orator, narrating one of his country’s best-known poems, “The Man from Snowy River” by Banjo Paterson. With dramatic gestures, he told the story about the prized colt of Old Regret and the stockmen’s wild ride to recapture it from the brumbies (wild horses). “It was very exciting,” remembered McMurria, “and relieved the boredom.”

  After exhausting the list of songs and poems they knew, the prisoners turned to recitations of their favorite movies. Heretofore one of the newest prisoners had kept to himself, but now he blossomed. Captured on March 13, Sgt. Escoe E. Palmer had been physically blown out of a B-24 that exploded over Rabaul on March 5 after taking two direct hits. A native of White County, Georgia, he was a cowboy movie junkie and could recite dozens of plotlines in detail. “Many an evening I was lulled to sleep,” recalled Joe Nason, “as Escoe droned on in his slightly nasal drawl about ranchers’ daughters, rustlers, sidewinders, and solid, good two-gun heroes. Often I had to ask the others the next day for the conclusion to Escoe’s tale.”

  The prisoners even put on a circus, much to the delight of the Japanese guards. Jimmy Warren flexed his muscular legs and walked around in a crouch with a prisoner on each shoulder; the gifted crooners presented several songs; and for the grand finale, Murphy, as the Maestro of Mesmerism, intoned a combination of Latin and Pidgin English over McMurria. The gangly American suddenly stiffened, arms straight at his sides, and stood as rigid as a board. When Murphy snapped his fingers, McMurria fell backwards, still perfectly stiff, but at the last instant two “bystanders” caught him. The guards jumped up in alarm, their concern a total puzzlement to the prisoners. If the Japanese were so worried that skinny McMurria might have been hurt, how could they watch passively as two dozen men slowly starved before their eyes?

  DAY BY DAY, even hour by hour, the prisoners struggled to maintain a positive attitude. No one, during the first months of 1944, thought the war would end in the near future. The campaign in the Central Pacific had just gotten underway, Rabaul had not yet fallen, and the Japanese-held Philippines blocked the path to Tokyo. Then there was the prospect of invading Japan itself. The probability that the wa
r would drag on for years was the basis of a popular rhyme: “The Golden Gate in ’48.”

  Most of the men had been POWs for only a few months. If they objectively assessed how rapidly their health had already declined, it became obvious that their chances of surviving for another four years were virtually zero.

  Their appearance alone was appalling. The prisoners’ diet consisted of a handful of white rice, molded into a ball, served morning, noon, and night. The only supplements were some occasional bits of vegetables or watery soup, yielding a daily intake of perhaps 1,500 calories, less than half of what they needed just to maintain their weight. All were in their prime. The youngest, John Kepchia, was only nineteen; the oldest, John Todd, had just turned thirty. Yet the prisoners’ health deteriorated quickly, their malnourishment exacerbated by debilitating illnesses.

  McMurria, imprisoned the longest, had shown symptoms of beriberi as early as mid-1943; almost a year later, the vitamin-deficiency disease was affecting him severely. The polished white rice they ate contained no thiamine (vitamin B1), important for proper metabolism. Gradually, many prisoners developed symptoms of “wet” beriberi, retaining fluids due to poor circulation. The swelling produced grotesque results, as Holguin recalled:

  Skin and bones was the norm, but the addition of edema to the physique caused a puffiness that gave a 90-pound skeleton the appearance of a flabby welterweight. After a night’s sleep, the edema would accumulate on the side of the body upon which the prisoner was lying. This would create an ungodly appearance. Half the face was swollen, the other half sunken; one leg would be big and round, the other looked like a broomstick. The eye on the swollen side of the face would be shut or a mere slit; the other wide open and staring in expectation of death.

  McMurria’s edema caused not only swollen legs, but blurred vision and blackouts. He gradually lapsed into semiconsciousness for a few days, but then began picking young, green leaves off the branch of a tree that hung down near a gap in the wall. He had no clear idea of what he was eating, but it helped. “My edema left me after a week,” he later wrote, “and I returned to my former skin and bones.”

  Prisoners weakened by acute beriberi lacked the immunity to fight off other diseases, such as dysentery. The real culprit was the handling of the prisoners’ food. Their meals of white rice were delivered from the nearby cookhouse in a bucket. The honors of doling out portions went to the “rice boy” (usually an islander working for the Japanese), who used his bare hands to mold the sticky grain into round shapes about the size of a tennis ball. These were passed down the line from prisoner to prisoner, which meant that everybody was transferring bacteria. The inevitable result, McMurria remembered, was the unfortunate symptoms of dysentery:

  The problem with sanitation was that most everyone had diarrhea. We just couldn’t hold it in, and many times we just had to let go before reaching the bucket.

  We used to kid Joe Nason about that. Once he was able to get up and walk, he’d walk very slowly and serenely, like the King of England, and when he got close to the bucket he’d slip that fundoshi off and WHAM! Right on the bucket. We’d say “Joe, you spun in again!”

  Sometimes we’d make it; sometimes we didn’t. Oh, it was so awful.

  The effects of chronic diarrhea set the prisoners up for a perfect storm of self-perpetuating illness. Weakened by their starvation diet, they lacked essential vitamins and therefore suffered from beriberi. Further weakened by dysentery, they became more susceptible to other diseases such as malaria and dengue fever.

  As they wasted away, their appearance became even more ghastly. Their clothing gradually rotted, after which the prisoners wore nothing more than a traditional Japanese loincloth, a fundoshi, which covered their bony pelvises with a minimum of modesty. After the new camp was completed, the outside work stopped, and only on rare occasions were a few prisoners able to rinse off during a rain shower. Otherwise the captives did not bathe. McMurria once went an entire year without a bath. The prisoners lived like animals in a state of near nakedness, their skeletal bodies caked with dirt, dust, dried sweat, and flecks of feces.

  ComAirSols inadvertently made the abysmal situation worse. A new twist on an ancient method of warfare was instituted in the spring of 1944, when bombers were used to eradicate Japanese food plots. Nicknaming the missions “potato runs,” navy and marine personnel rigged sprayers holding 150 gallons of oil, which fit inside the bomb bay of the TBF Avengers. Flying the big planes as though they were crop dusters, the crews poisoned acres of vegetables. The attacks became a routine part of the overall campaign, although members of Strike Command questioned their effectiveness. “The potato runs comprised an experiment to kill Jap gardens by spraying them with diesel oil,” stated one summary. “Success of the experiment was dubious.”

  Unknown to Strike Command, the prisoners paid dearly. “The same army [sic] that killed thousands of Americans with a sneak attack on Pearl Harbor considered the burning of their gardens as completely inhumane,” wrote McMurria. “Their retribution could only fall on the POWs. As a consequence, orders came down prohibiting any further rice to be served to us.”

  In lieu of rice, prisoners were paired off and shared a coconut, three times a day. The switch proved harmful, as the men were unaccustomed to the oily meat and the roughage. Within a day or two, recalled McMurria, “dysentery set in with a vengeance.”

  With the outbreak, the confluence of terrible conditions in the camp reached a tipping point. The prisoners had already lost Hugh Cornelius, one of the marine pilots on the ill-fated mining mission. He died of pneumonia on April 9, less than two months after his capture. Thereafter the songs and the recipes and the movie recitals kept the specter of death at bay for several weeks, but the middle of the year brought a spate of misery upon the camp. In the second week of May, one of the best-liked captives in the compound took a turn for the worse due to complications from dysentery and malnutrition.

  McMurria, who had become extremely close friends with the good-natured Charlie Lanphier during their months in the prison, sadly recalled the marine pilot’s last hours:

  He was so sick. He crawled over to the benjo bucket, but he fell off, he was so weak. I was right there and held him up, got him straightened out. At that point, he said, “I don’t think I’m going to make it. I could make it, if only I could get some chocolate milk or some candy bars.”

  Then he said, “I have to tell you something. My brother … ” and he told me about Tommy. He said, “Normally I would not have told anybody else, but now that I’m gone, I’ll tell you.”

  Charlie told Jim something he believed wholeheartedly—that his older brother Tom had shot down Admiral Yamamoto more than a year earlier—because that was the story Tom had given him. Tom Lanphier’s boast was eventually disproved, but Charlie was a very proud younger brother when he died on May 15, 1944.

  The next to go was a New Zealander, Flight Officer Leslie McLellan-Symonds, who ditched an SBD and was taken prisoner with a gunshot wound in his left thigh. He had arrived at the camp in April, but was refused medical attention by the Japanese. Delirious during much of his short time in the POW enclosure, McLellan-Symonds died of apparent blood poisoning on May 28.

  Then came a death that hit every captive hard, for it made their collective outlook much gloomier. Jimmy Warren, who could tote two grown men on his shoulders, plummeted from healthy to dead in just a few weeks. That the strongest could fall so quickly—he died on June 5—took the starch out of several others. During the next three months eight more men succumbed to the vicious cycle of disease and neglect. On July 15, prisoners watched helplessly as a triumvirate of Allies—a Yank, an Aussie, and a Kiwi—died in a span of about two hours. A week later, John Todd went into a coma from complications caused by his infected hip wound and possibly a form of malaria known as blackwater fever. He died three days later on July 25.

  The policy of the Japanese toward prisoners was brutally simple: feed them enough to keep them alive, but withhold
all other forms of assistance including medical attention. When a prisoner died, the Japanese put on a show of contrition, which the surviving captives quickly recognized as a lifesaving opportunity. As McMurria recalled, the dead had an unexpected way of providing a parting gift.

  The only example of bushido of any benefit to us came about after a prisoner died. We were asked what type of ceremony, if any, was customary for the dead. We told [the Japanese] that, in addition to saying prayers and recounting the goodness of the deceased, food should be placed at his head, to which the Japs complied, and added an incense punk at his feet. This, we said, was properly done while smoking and reflecting on life’s tribulations. These somewhat callous suggestions netted us a bowl of rice or sometimes a few bananas to be shared, and a few cigarettes:

  Thus, with each death, the dwindling number of prisoners received a bigger portion of the food and cigarettes provided by the Japanese on behalf of the deceased.

  Between early April 1944 and the end of August, at least twelve POWs died, prompting the survivors to name their camp “Death Valley.” The deaths impacted everyone, but Joe Nason displayed a singular coping mechanism. A sympathetic guard had given him an old horse blanket, under which Joe would sit, cut off from the outside, for days at a time.

  It took Murphy’s special brand of badgering, Nason recalled, to escape from the clutches of the reaper:

  At the end of 1944 I weighed only 95 pounds. I had just about given up hope, I think. Even in daylight I sat with my blanket over my head, tent-like. I was always cold because of anemia, but also it was my way of escaping. In the darkness I could shut out everything, and I could slip into euphoria and dream and remember. But Murph would not let me surrender so easily. He derided me, loudly despised me, and threatened to cut off my rice if I did not stop playing the ostrich. I was determined to live, just to flaunt my existence in his hated face. Defiantly, I would uncover and splutter: “I’m going to live, you bastard, and I’m going to thrash you to within an inch of your life as soon as I’m strong enough.”