According to Hans Whitney, 234 prisoners, some from Wake, perished during the war’s last year at a Kawasaki camp near Osaka, where J. O. Young almost broke his leg. Up to five men died each day at the Yawata Iron Works Camp No. 3, and Joe Goicoechea had to eat his meals for two days in Osaka with the body of a dead American prisoner lying next to him.
“I still have nightmares over what happened in Japan,” wrote Goicoechea. He claimed rats, lice, and fleas were constant companions, and that “all kinds of bugs eating on you was terrible.” He added that “the damned rats running [across] our face at night, while you was trying to sleep” kept waking the tired men. Goicoechea harbored no ill will toward the rats, though, because “The rats were just as hungry as we were.”21
Escape
When people today meet Wake Islanders, one question that usually arises is, “Did you try to escape?” Most readily admit they did not, for practical reasons. Incarcerated in a foreign land among people that looked dramatically different and spoke an alien language, any prisoner outside camp would quickly draw notice. Americans escaping from European camps could more readily blend into the general populace, but the men in China and Japan lacked that opportunity. The Wake Islanders languishing in Japan proper abandoned all hopes for escape; only in China did Americans consider such an adventure.
Commander Cunningham, Dan Teters, and three other men made the first escape attempt. On the night of March 11, 1942, the group burrowed under the electrified fence and dashed into the surrounding countryside outside Woosung, hoping to reach friendly Chinese forces. Within twenty-four hours, though, Japanese soldiers captured all five and took them to a local jail, where the Japanese secret police interrogated them. The Japanese eventually returned the men to Woosung, placed them on trial, and sentenced them to lengthy jail terms in Shanghai’s notorious Ward Road Jail.
Cunningham tried again on October 6, 1944, this time by sawing through the bars in his cell window, sliding down a rope into a garden below, and fleeing through Shanghai’s busy streets. In less than ten hours, though, the Japanese recaptured him and returned him to his cell. They later sentenced Cunningham to life in prison for this second attempt.
One escape involving Wake Island personnel succeeded. On May 9, 1945, Lieutenant Kinney and Lt. John McAlister, joined by two other non-Wake Marines, jumped off a train transporting them to another Chinese prison camp. That same night two Wake civilians, Bill Taylor and Jack Hernandez, followed suit. The men, separated from one another during the leap from the train, hid in fields by day and moved by night, hoping to meet friendly Chinese forces before the Japanese caught up to them. Kinney encountered a helpful Chinese guide, who took him to pro-American Chinese troops. They escorted Kinney to another location, where he was reunited with the other three Marines. After being flown to American forces in China, Kinney and his group boarded a plane bound for the United States, which they reached on July 9. Bill Taylor also fled to friendly forces and returned home, but Jack Hernandez broke a leg jumping from the train and was recaptured.
Other men mounted escape attempts, but none succeeded. Major Devereux believed that as the individual in charge of the Marines, he had a duty to remain and fight for their welfare, to keep as many men alive as possible, so he never considered escaping. Eventually, the Japanese forced every American to sign a pledge stating they would not try to escape, an action the Americans grudgingly carried out after making clear they signed under coercion and gave no legal credence to the document.
Beginning in the latter half of 1944, and especially as 1945 dawned, escape receded in the prisoners’ minds, for the evidence of war’s end became clearer. In fact, the weary prisoners from Wake Island received visual proof that forces from their homeland were drawing nearer.
“That Reassuring Sound”
Just when the Wake Island defenders seemed to be losing hope, events pointed to an end to their misery. For three years, captivity had kept the men from the active portion of the war, but now the war came to their doorsteps. Every prisoner remembered when he first sighted American bombers and fighters overhead in late 1944 and early 1945, a landmark episode that instantly reestablished the connection to their military brethren fighting the war. Corporal Marvin and his Marine buddies so enthusiastically cheered the event that angry Japanese guards beat them afterwards. This was one punishment they did not mind, however, for the appearance of aircraft meant the United States military could not be too far away.
In the subsequent weeks, Forrest Read felt like a newborn baby being lulled to sleep by the guttural, rhythmic drone of the B-29 bombers on their nightly bombing runs. “I can still hear that reassuring sound. It made us feel good that we were that close to something from home.”22 For the first time since they had left the United States, Marines, Navy, Army, and civilian personnel sensed the presence of friendly forces, especially when short-range American fighters sped into view. Since the smaller aircraft could not fly much farther than a few hundred miles, the prisoners knew rescue might be only weeks away.
The aviators piloting those aircraft purposely flew at lower altitudes for the prisoners’ benefit. An officer aboard the aircraft carrier USS Bennington, briefing Marine aviators about their next mission over Japan, mentioned the presence of prisoner of war camps in the vicinity of the target area and reminded his men what their arrival meant. “In these camps are members of the Marine Corps, including undoubtedly some of the survivors of the garrison of Wake Island. They have been prisoners of the Japs for more than three years. When these men look up and see us we must be sure to be flying at a low enough altitude so that they will know who we are.”23
The prisoners reacted like schoolchildren starting their first day of summer vacation. They jumped and hugged each other, yelled and cheered as tears coursed down their cheeks. Devereux waved excitedly to the pilots in a squadron of Army fighters that buzzed the camp, and when he turned back to look at the other Marines, he noticed that for the first time in three years, they whistled in glee. When American fighters shot down three Japanese planes, the men in Lieutenant Kessler’s camp hollered as if their favorite team had just scored the winning touchdown in a college football game. “No gift in the world could have made us so happy as to know that our prison camp had been found, our dreams of relief from past hardships had come true,”24 wrote Hans Whitney.
As soon as the jubilation subsided, a more appalling reality gripped the men. They now engaged in a life-or-death race that would be determined by events outside their control—what would arrive first, death at the hands of the Japanese, or liberation by fellow Americans? Freedom lay enticingly close, but would the Japanese simply hand them over to victorious troops, or would they massacre the prisoners beforehand? Logic dictated that the Japanese would not kindly accept defeat.
“Some Japanese told us the Americans were going to invade right where we were,” said Murray Kidd. “They told us if that happened, we would be the first to go. That wasn’t too good a thing to hear. We wanted the Americans to get there, but then that [the massacre] would happen.”25
Their fears were not unfounded. A document unearthed after the war yielded evidence that the Japanese intended to institute a mass program of extermination. The document stated that if an American invasion attempt appeared likely and any camp seemed about to fall into American hands, a “final disposition” of the prisoners would be carried out. The document added in chilling words, “Whether they [prisoners] are destroyed individually or in groups, or however it is done, with mass bombing, poisonous smoke, poisons, drowning, decapitation, or what, dispose of them as the situation dictates.” The order ended, “In any case it is the aim not to allow the escape of a single one, to annihilate them all, and not to leave any traces.”26
The prisoners faced other dilemmas, as well. Since some of the camps existed in areas being bombed by American aircraft, the men could easily be harmed or killed by their own forces. The steel mill in which Private First Class Gatewood worked proved to be a popular
target for American bombers. During one raid Gatewood heard the sickening screech of a bomb falling, hid behind a stack of wheels, then was rattled from the impact of a huge “Thud!” A five-hundred-pound bomb landed twenty feet from him without exploding. Had the bomb not been a dud, Gatewood would have been blown to pieces.
A loud crash startled Murray Kidd early one morning. When he and the others ran into the kitchen, an enormous unexploded bomb that had crashed through the ceiling protruded from the floor. During another raid, a huge boulder smashed directly onto a spot Joe Goicoechea had only moments before vacated.
Cpl. Robert M. Brown sat in a prison train heading toward Osaka and its steel mills when American aircraft attacked. “Our guards nearly panicked, but ordered us off the train and down the back side of the embankment,” Brown wrote after the war. “Bombs were exploding on the other side as close as a couple of a hundred yards. I thought: ‘Are we going to end our captivity by being clobbered by our own people?’ Soon the bombs began moving away, and as we got back on top to reboard the train, we could see heavy flames in the near distance. ‘Go get them, guys,’ we said.”27 Brown’s life may have been in danger, but he still wanted his country to mount a relentless attack, even if he had to perish in the process.
The prisoners could hardly believe the incredible devastation caused by American bombers. Having been confined to prison camps for three years, the Wake Islanders had been out of touch with military innovations, so the widespread damage awed them. In July 1945, Major Devereux peeked out the window of the train in which he rode. He viewed nothing but rubble on both sides of the track, caused by previous American raids. Though weary, Devereux and the other men with him grinned widely.
“Good God, the firebombs had just leveled the towns!” exclaimed Private Laporte when he looked out the window. “We were happy, and if the guards had not been around, we would have jumped up and cheered.”28
Joe Goicoechea and George Rosandick witnessed the horrible Tokyo fire raid from their nearby prison camp on April 15, 1945. Women and children ran screaming through the city, while debris swirled upward in immense boiling columns. The massive fires so concerned the two Americans that Rosandick feared they would perish from weapons dropped by U.S. aircraft. “I thought how horrible it would be to survive this long, only to be killed by your own people,”29 stated Rosandick after the war. On the other hand, they also saw the deadly cost of attacking Japan when enemy antiaircraft guns downed eight B-29s.
In retaliation for the bombings, mobs of angry Japanese civilians often attacked prisoners as they were being transported to work or to another camp. Corporal Brown’s train had stopped in Tokyo on July 4, 1945, on its way to Hokkaido, when a mob rushed the prisoners. Japanese guards contained the crowd, but not before the civilians seriously injured one American by beating him with a baseball bat.
“Here’s to That Atom Bomb, Whatever It Is!”
The end to their incarceration came in August 1945, when atom bombs leveled the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and speedily led to the Japanese surrender. Few Wake Islanders knew of the atom bomb or of any other events that terminated the most destructive war in history, but they did not care. Liberation brought everything they desired right back into their lives—home, family, food, freedom.
Lieutenant Hanna awoke one morning to discover the guards had left. Most every day that Lieutenant Kessler and other prisoners marched to the mines, Japanese children lined up to spit and to toss rocks at them. One August morning, however, the children bowed instead.
Hans Whitney’s friend, a man named Mack, understood a little Japanese. As he listened to a Japanese broadcast over a radio, he suddenly leapt and shouted that the war had ended. In plain view of the guards, who did nothing to halt him, Mack ran to every barracks to share the news.
“We were the only company working that day,” stated Corporal Marvin.
We went to lunch and the officers and guards, who usually ate at the end, they all left at 12:30. At 1:00 they usually got us up and back to work, but they never showed up until 1:30. They were very sullen. They just said don’t go to work. I walked to the machine shop where I worked and asked my officer what was wrong, and he said the war was over and “You go home soon.” About an hour later the guards took us back to camp, and we tried to tell the other guys the war was over but nobody would believe us.
That night hardly anyone slept, and we said if we fall out for work the next day the war isn’t over. Well, we fell out for work, and this Jap was giving us a big speech, and this interpreter said there had been a three-day halt in the war. Just about that time a torpedo bomber flew across the barracks and dropped cigarettes in a little parachute that said the war was over. I’m telling you, we really came unglued.30
On August 18, an English-speaking Japanese officer explained the cessation of hostilities to Devereux in a manner that must have made the major grin. “We have decided to stop fighting though our Army has not been beaten in the field,” rationalized the Japanese. The same day Cunningham and five other Americans, all incarcerated for escape attempts, were taken to the commander’s office. “The war is over,” said the Japanese. “We hope the Americans and the Japanese will shake hands and become friends again. You will be taken from here tonight to another place.”31
Corporal Johnson was so delighted with the news that he decided he would not, after all, return to the United States and kill Senator Wheeler. Instead, he joined other prisoners around a keg of beer the Japanese brought in to celebrate the end of fighting. A Japanese officer explained that because of the inhumanity of the atom bomb and because of his desire for peace, the emperor had decided to end the war. When the Japanese officer said that they would all now drink a toast to the future friendship of the United States and Japan, one of the Americans grabbed a container full of beer and shouted, “Take off buster! Here’s to that atom bomb, whatever it is!”32
The men in Hans Whitney’s camp butchered two pigs “liberated” from nearby farms for a camp feast. Corporal Johnson joined others in singing old college songs and other popular tunes, while the Americans in Japan’s Hakodate Prison Camp No. 3, including Gunner Hamas and other Wake Island Marines, held an emotional ceremony. Fifteen men weaved together bits of red, white, and blue cloth into a crude Stars and Stripes, and as one man sounded Morning Colors on a bugle left by Japanese guards, the entire camp assembled. For the first time in almost four years, stilled servicemen watched their country’s flag rise to the top of an improvised flagpole fashioned from a cut young tree. Men who had not lost their composure after the battle or during difficult moments in prison camp unabashedly stood at attention while tears streamed down their faces. The flag for which they had fought and for which some of their friends had died, was at last once again flying proudly over their heads.
On the other hand, some Americans sought vengeance on the men responsible for the cruelties of their prison ordeal. Pfc. Jacob Sanders hunted for a particularly cruel guard who had slashed his face with a cane. Sanders never found the guard, who had already fled, and claimed later that “I really scared myself thinking that I would want to kill someone, but his treatment was so brutal that I felt it was called for.”33
In Pfc. James King’s camp, a group of men created a hangman’s noose out of some rope, stormed to the factory in which they had been forced to toil, and lynched the guard who administered cruel beatings with regularity. When the group threatened to drag out and hang the Japanese for whom Private First Class King worked, a decent man who had given the American extra food, King interceded in his behalf and prevented his death.
Even in weakened condition, many men headed into the nearest town for better food or to enjoy the companionship of women. Lieutenant Hanna’s camp “sort of took over the town adjacent to us. For one thing, they had one of those community baths, and we all took a bath. That felt good. The Japanese citizens made themselves scarce. To get to this little town we had to go on a train. We stopped the train and got on. When we we
re ready to go back we stopped the train and went back.”34
Corporal Marvin and a group of Americans grabbed bicycles from Japanese citizens, and told them to stay where they were until they returned. The Americans headed to town, where they took over the local movie theater and public bath, then returned hours later to find the Japanese still waiting quietly for the bicycles.
Private Laporte ignored advice from a British officer who claimed it might be too dangerous to meander through a city full of Japanese. “We went walking into the town and there was not one soul to be seen nowhere. They was all inside hiding. The Japs were scared to death of us because they had been told we would kill everyone.”35
After being confined in a Shanghai jail for escaping, Commander Cunningham enjoyed the opportunity of taking a leisurely walk on his own. He mentioned later how liberating was this action. “It was something I had not been able to do for three years and eight months, and I reveled in the sight of the stars—not just a few as seen through a barred window, but all of them. For the first time I could walk as long as I liked and stay up as late as I chose. Glorying in this apparently trifling privilege, I found myself realizing at last that I was free.”36
One thought nagged at Cunningham as he breathed fresh air and allowed the wind to caress his cheeks—had the people in the United States considered him a coward all these years for surrendering the garrison at Wake? As commanding officer on Wake, Cunningham took responsibility for the surrender, a fact that deeply bothered him. With plenty of time on his hands to think about it, Cunningham thought of the men who had died fighting, and of the men who faced years of pain and misery in prison camp, and debated whether he could have done something different. He assumed the American public had condemned him for not fighting to the last man. “Even thoughts of home and loved ones brought with them a sense of foreboding. Had they been shamed by my conduct of the defense? Already the thought that I might be court-martialed for surrendering the island haunted me.”37
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