The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945 (Modern Library War)

by Toland, John

  Forget the attack, said King. He knew Jones was right and that any more fighting at all would mean needless casualties. At midnight King summoned his chief of staff and operations officer. There was no debate; the situation was hopeless. Wainwright was hamstrung by MacArthur’s explicit order to attack until the end, and King decided to take the burden on his own shoulders. He knew full well he would have to disobey orders and that if he ever got back to the States, he would be court-martialed. But the lives of his 78,000 soldiers were more important than his honor. “I have decided to surrender Bataan,” he said. “I have not communicated with General Wainwright because I do not want him to assume any part of the responsibility.”

  Just before two o’clock in the morning his phone rang. It was Jones. Before either could say a word there was a deafening roar. The roof of King’s command post blew off and rubble showered down. The sky lit up fantastically. Then came other explosions, and roaring flames lit the sky.

  “For crying out loud, Ned,” Jones shouted. “What’s going on?”

  “The ammunition dump is blowing up,” King replied calmly above the din.

  “Hell, I can feel the ground shaking all the way up here. It must be an earthquake.”

  “I hate to tell you this, Honus, but I’m surrendering at six A.M.” He told Jones to put white flags all along his line and destroy his artillery and machine guns.

  “I don’t see what else you can do,” said Jones.

  It wasn’t until four hours later that the night duty officer in Malinta Tunnel informed Wainwright of King’s surrender. “Tell him not to do it!” the general shouted. It was too late. “They can’t do it! They can’t do it!” he muttered. Finally he regained control of himself. He radioed MacArthur:

  AT 6 O’CLOCK THIS MORNING GENERAL KING … WITHOUT MY KNOWLEDGE OR APPROVAL SENT A FLAG OF TRUCE TO THE JAPANESE COMMANDER. THE MINUTE I HEARD OF IT I DISAPPROVED OF HIS ACTION AND DIRECTED THAT THERE WOULD BE NO SURRENDER. I WAS INFORMED IT WAS TOO LATE TO MAKE ANY CHANGE, THAT THE ACTION HAD ALREADY BEEN TAKEN….

  At nine o’clock the stocky King, wearing his last clean uniform, headed up front in a jeep with his two aides, Majors Achille Tisdelle and Wade Cothran. As Japanese guides escorted them to the Experimental Farm Station at Lamao, it occurred to King that Lee had surrendered to Grant at Appomatox on that same day, April 9. He remembered what Lee had said just before the ceremony: “Then there is nothing left to do but to go and see General Grant, and I would rather die a thousand deaths.”

  A shiny black Cadillac drove up with Colonel Motoo Nakayama. Through an interpreter, Homma’s senior operations officer asked King if he was General Wainwright.

  “No, I am General King, commander of all forces on Bataan.”

  Puzzled, Nakayama told him to get Wainwright; the Japanese could not accept surrender without him. King said he could not communicate with Wainwright. “My forces are no longer fighting units. I want to stop further bloodshed.”

  “Surrender must be unconditional.”

  “Will our troops be well treated?”

  “We are not barbarians. Will you surrender unconditionally?”

  King nodded. He said he had left his saber in Manila, and instead placed his pistol on the table.

  Americans and Filipino soldiers huddled in disconsolate groups. There were tears of humiliation, but many wept from the relief of knowing their ordeal was over. They waited uneasily for the conquerors.

  The first ones Air Corps Captain Mark Wohlfeld saw were packing a mountain gun. They had big smiles on their faces and spoke in gentle tones. These couldn’t be such bad chaps after all, he thought with relief. Wohlfeld was from a dive-bomber group but had been fighting as an infantryman since January. Next came the Japanese infantry. Grim-faced, they immediately began stripping the prisoners of blankets, watches, jewelry, razor blades, mess equipment, food and even toothbrushes. One also found twenty rounds of .45-caliber pistol ammunition on Wohlfeld and, with shouts, began beating him on the head with his rifle barrel. Someone behind Wohlfeld muttered, “For Christ’s sake, don’t fall down!” Then the guard glimpsed a gold ring on Lieutenant Colonel Jack Sewell’s finger and yanked at it. “It’s my wedding ring,” Sewell protested and withdrew his hand. The Japanese snapped the bayonet off his rifle and was going for the colonel when Wohlfeld came between. He tried to spit on the ring to loosen it but his throat was too dry. So was the colonel’s. Wohlfeld smeared blood from his head on the finger. The ring came off.

  Another Japanese enlisted man stole a ring just as his commanding officer passed by. The officer noticed that the ring bore the University of Notre Dame insignia. He hit the looter in the face and returned the ring to its owner. “When did you graduate?”

  “1935.”

  A faraway look came over the Japanese officer’s face when he said, “I graduated from Southern California in ’35.”

  Wainwright’s intolerable burden was somewhat lightened by a message from Roosevelt:

  AM KEENLY AWARE OF THE TREMENDOUS DIFFICULTIES UNDER WHICH YOU ARE WAGING YOUR GREAT BATTLE. THE PHYSICAL EXHAUSTION OF YOUR TROOPS OBVIOUSLY PRECLUDES THE POSSIBILITY OF A MAJOR COUNTERATTACK UNLESS OUR EFFORTS TO RUSH FOOD TO YOU SHOULD QUICKLY PROVE SUCCESSFUL. BECAUSE OF THE STATE [over] WHICH YOUR FORCES HAVE NO CONTROL I AM MODIFYING MY ORDERS TO YOU.… MY PURPOSE IS TO LEAVE TO YOUR BEST JUDGMENT ANY DECISIONS AFFECTING THE FUTURE OF THE BATAAN GARRISON.… I FEEL IT PROPER AND NECESSARY THAT YOU SHOULD BE ASSURED OF COMPLETE FREEDOM OF ACTION AND OF MY FULL CONFIDENCE IN THE WISDOM OF WHATEVER DECISION YOU MAY BE FORCED TO MAKE.

  And in Australia, MacArthur was reading a prepared statement to reporters: “The Bataan Force went out as it would have wished, fighting to the end its flickering, forlorn hope. No army has done so much with so little, and nothing became it more than its last hour of trial and agony. To the weeping mothers of its dead, I can only say that the sacrifice and halo of Jesus of Nazareth has descended upon their sons, and that God will take them unto Himself.”

  3.

  Estimating that he would capture twenty-five thousand prisoners, Homma had turned over the logistics planning to his transportation officer, Major General Yoshikata Kawane. Kawane had divided the operation into two phases, and ten days before the final attack, presented the plan to Homma for approval. Colonel Toshimitsu Takatsu would be responsible for the first phase—bringing all the prisoners to Balanga, halfway up the peninsula. The distance for those who were at Mariveles, at the southern tip, would be nineteen miles—an easy day’s march to any Japanese soldier—so there would be no need for transportation; nor would there be any need to issue food that day, since the prisoners could use their own rations. Kawane would personally supervise the second phase: the trip from Balanga to the prison camp. No more than two hundred trucks could be spared for the operation, but these would surely be sufficient to shuttle the prisoners the thirty-three miles from Balanga to the rail center of San Fernando. Freight trains would take the men north for thirty miles to Capas, a village just above Clark Field. From there they would be marched eight miles to their new home, Camp O’Donnell.

  Kawane explained to Homma that the prisoners would eat the same rations as Japanese troops, and field hospitals were being established at Balanga and San Fernando; there would also be medical units, aid stations and “resting places” set up every few miles along the route.

  Homma approved the plan. Tragically, it was based on fallacies. Wainwright’s men were already starving and weak with malaria. And there would be seventy-six thousand prisoners, not twenty-five thousand.

  At Mariveles, groups of three hundred were started up the road. Some had no guards; others had as many as four. The ditches along the zigzag route leading north were littered with abandoned equipment: burned trucks, self-propelled mounts and rifles. The prisoners trudged by King’s former headquarters, where a side road led to Hospital No. 2. There a rumor had just spread through the sprawling open-air wards that the Japanese were freeing all Filipinos. The chief of surgery
went from ward to ward trying to convince the wounded Filipinos it was a hoax. But Japanese hospital guards, apparently eager to rid themselves of responsibility, encouraged the patients to join the line of prisoners. Infected by mass hysteria, five thousand of them scrambled along the dusty trail; amputees, using tree limbs for crutches, hobbled off, their dressings unraveling. Within a mile the hysteria dissipated but by then the ditches were lined with dead and dying.

  The marchers from Mariveles continued straight up the coast of Bataan. On the left was towering Mount Bataan, its peaks shrouded by clouds as usual. On the right were the blue-green waters of Manila Bay. Ordinarily it was a scene of lush tropical beauty—banana trees, nipa palms with long leaves, coconut trees gracefully bent. Today there was no beauty. The foliage was covered with a heavy coat of chalk from months of heavy American traffic, and the road itself was hardly visible through the choking dust clouds churned up by the Japanese howitzers, tanks, ammunition and supply vehicles and trailers loaded with strange-looking boats. They were streaming south in preparation for the assault on Corregidor. Infantrymen in trucks jeered at the marchers, and a few knocked off their hats and helmets with long bamboo poles. Occasionally a Japanese would stop the sport, apologize to the captives. Once a Japanese officer rushed up to an American tank commander and embraced him. They had been classmates at UCLA.

  There was no consistency to the actions of the Japanese. One truckload of troops would toss down canteens to the prisoners, while the next swung “liberated” golf clubs at their heads. One thing, however, was becoming clear to the marchers: the situation grew worse as they moved up the peninsula.

  The brutalities of that first day were spontaneous but they would not remain so. Colonel Tsuji had arrived in Manila several days earlier from Singapore, where five thousand Chinese had been murdered largely at his instigation for “supporting” British colonialism. He had already—unknown to Homma—convinced several admiring officers on the general’s staff that this was a racial war and that all prisoners in the Philippines should be executed: Americans because they were white colonialists and Filipinos because they had betrayed their fellow Asians.

  A division staff officer phoned Colonel Imai, conqueror of Mount Limay, and told him, “Kill all prisoners and those offering to surrender.”

  “How can I possibly obey such an order?” asked Imai. He demanded a copy in writing.

  The staff officer informed him that it was an order “from Imperial Headquarters” and had to be obeyed.† Imai said he would not comply unless he received a written order, and hung up. He refused to carry out the decree and, incensed at this violation of the samurai code, ordered his staff to set all the prisoners free with directions on the best way to escape from Bataan.

  His staff stared at him. Imai yelled at them to execute his command and not stand around “like so many wooden-headed dolls.” More than a thousand prisoners were released. As Imai watched them go into the jungle he argued with himself that no Japanese general would have issued such an inhuman order. But if it was true, he would have to pretend that the prisoners had escaped on their own.

  A similar order to kill prisoners was relayed verbally to Major General Torao Ikuta, commander of a recently arrived garrison unit, by a staff officer of a neighboring division. Like Imai, Ikuta and his chief of staff, Lieutenant Colonel Nobuhiko Jimbo, doubted that the order came from Imperial Headquarters. The staff officer said that his own division was already executing prisoners and advised Ikuta to do the same. The general refused to act without a written order.

  Even in repose the marchers from Mariveles suffered all through the sultry night. They were so jammed together in enclosures that it was difficult to turn over. Captain Mark Wohlfeld finally got to sleep despite the drone of mosquitoes in his ears. He was wakened by spasmodic kicks from the soldier behind him and muttered to him to lie still. The usual stench grew worse and Wohlfeld opened his eyes inquisitively. His face was lying on filthy rags. He jumped up, and in the bright tropical moonlight examined the rags. They were the trousers of the man behind him and were dripping with feces and blood. “That rotten son of a bitch!” Wohlfeld shouted. He crammed the trousers in the soldier’s face. “Get up!” When the man didn’t move, Wohlfeld dragged him to a narrow aisle. He was dead.

  Suddenly Wohlfeld felt himself flung head over heels by Japanese guards. This was repeated several times, and whenever he fell among the prisoners they would curse and throw him back to the Japanese. Finally Wohlfeld landed on his feet, and waving his arms in abject surrender, pointed to the dead American. He pantomimed for permission to carry him back to the “sick-rows.” He didn’t have the strength to pick up the emaciated corpse. When neither the guards nor his fellow prisoners offered to help, he grasped the dead soldier under the arms and hauled him off.

  He was allowed to rinse himself in a creek. He crawled back to his place and told his neighbors exactly what had happened and how terrible he felt about having abused a fellow American soldier who had shit himself to death. He didn’t know how he would be able to live with himself and said he would remember the incident ever after with remorse. He warned them to be quiet lest they get another visit from the Japanese MP’s.

  4.

  According to General Kawane’s calculations, it would take the prisoners a single day to march to Balanga, but some of them were on the road for three days. With each mile the guards became more confused and irritated, and consequently more brutal. The sun was blistering and there was little shade for the marchers on the long stretches between towns. Thick dust from the road clung to their sweating bodies, stung their eyes and turned their damp beards to a dirty white. Near Balanga the jungle still smoldered from the cataclysmic Good Friday bombardment. The rolling hills, stripped of trees and foliage, were a bleak desert of blackened stumps. As the long lines of prisoners filed into the outskirts of town they instinctively broke for the cool-looking waters of the Talisay River. Perhaps half made it; the rest were callously driven back to the road.

  By daylight of April 11, Balanga was swollen with milling captives and shouting guards, constantly fed by two streams of humanity, one from Mariveles, one—Jones’s men—from the west. It was already obvious that the estimated total would be drastically exceeded. An attempt was made to feed the prisoners their first meal but the unmanageable numbers led to aggravating inequities. Some were given rice, salt and water; many got nothing.

  From Balanga on, Kawane had planned to transport all the prisoners in trucks to San Fernando, but it was evident that more than half would have to continue marching; for the first time in history, numbers of American generals were walking toward a prison camp.

  General Jones led his column past a burned-out village, its charred ruins still giving off a faint, acrid odor. To the left was the torn battlefield of the Abucay line, and beyond towered Mount Natib. It was past midnight by the time the Jones party reached Orani, eight miles above Balanga. They were shoved into a rice paddy enclosed by barbed wire. The foul odor was overpowering; feces crawling with maggots covered the area. It was, thought Jones, another Andersonville.

  With dark came another nightmare. The air was oppressive; vicious mosquitoes swarmed in. It took an hour to get permission to visit the latrine pits, which were open morasses of excrement. Anyone who slipped in had to be pulled out by a comrade willing to take the risk, and those who lost consciousness after falling in were doomed to drown in the sea of feces. In the morning Mark Wohlfeld noticed several bodies floating in one pit. He gestured to a guard that he was willing to drag out the bodies, and several other Americans offered to help. The guard shouted for two companions, who seized Wohlfeld as if to toss him in the latrine. Instead they flung him to the ground. They kicked him and beat him with truncheons. Wohlfeld struggled to his feet as quickly as possible, and covered with filth from rolling near the latrine, staggered back to his place.

  In an adjoining field a Japanese officer shouted a command; his men clapped hands three times—to simulate the
flapping of a rooster’s wings at dawn—and prayed out loud to the Sun Goddess. The prisoners were fed lugao, a rice mush that tasted like paste. No one left a particle. It was sixteen miles to the next station, Lubao, but it seemed twice that under the tropical sun. Again good treatment was a matter of luck. One set of guards would permit their charges to rest at proper intervals under shade trees and drink from the numerous roadside artesian wells. The next set would kick over cans of water placed on the highway by civilians, and “rest” their groups by forcing them to squat for an hour in the blazing sun.

  Corpses, swollen to monstrous size by the heat, lined the ditches. Crows tore open the cadavers with their beaks; buzzing hordes of fat greenbottle flies clustered at every open wound. Scores of the bodies were beheaded. After counting twenty-seven, Lieutenant Colonel Allen Stowell told himself, “You’ve got to cut this out,” and began marching with eyes fixed straight ahead.

  Lieutenant Tony Aquino, the young Filipino who had swum to Corregidor to see President Quezon, had been walking without rest or water. He had lost more than fifty pounds since he came to Bataan, but his legs were swollen. In front of him an American staggered and crumpled to the road. A guard kept kicking him in the ribs. The American tried painfully to rise and extended a pleading hand to the Japanese. The guard deliberately placed the tip of his bayonet on the prisoner’s neck and drove it home. He yanked it free and plunged it again into the American’s body as Aquino and the other watched helplessly.

  Farther back the pugnacious General Bluemel marched next to Brigadier General Luther Stevens. A Japanese soldier in a passing truck swung viciously at Stevens’ head with a bamboo pole. Bluemel grabbed his staggering colleague and the two stumbled toward the ditch. A guard pointed a revolver at Bluemel, motioning him to move off, but he ignored the order. He helped the dazed Stevens to his feet, but his legs gave way and Bluemel had to drag him to the middle of a rice paddy. Another guard thought they were escaping and charged at them with fixed bayonet. He saw Stevens’ bloody head just in time; he prodded Bluemel back to the highway. Stevens crawled behind some undergrowth and watched motionless as the column disappeared. But for Bluemel’s courage he would probably be dead. His respite didn’t last long, however; he was discovered and taken prisoner by another Japanese unit.