Norio was born there. He was six when, just before the war officially ended, the Russians invaded. His father was arrested, one of an estimated 1.3 million Japanese who fell into Soviet hands. He was taken to a Siberian concentration camp and never heard from again, along with three hundred thousand Japanese never accounted for after the war. His mother died in China a year later, during a cholera epidemic. A great-uncle brought Norio back to Japan along with his own children, and another uncle raised him.
Over the past decade, academic conferences and engineering consultations had taken Norio to China on several occasions. On a recent trip, he’d decided to find the apartment where, as he put it, “I lost my mother.” He only had a vague memory of the place where the sick woman bade her son farewell, but with the help of Chinese friends who knew the town, he somehow found it. “Were you flooded with memories?” I asked him. He sighed. “That only happens in novels.”
His success in finding his mother’s last resting place released something in him. He then decided to go to Siberia to find his father’s grave. He’d always assumed his father had died in the camp. “I really didn’t want to go,” he told me, “but I felt I had to.”
In order to find the place where the camp had once been located, Norio first took a train across the Siberian taiga, then a boat ride along the Amur River, then a bus ride along a wooded area to a small village. From that village a small, hired bus took him to a forested hill a few miles away, where he waited for a rendezvous with a logging truck. When it showed up, he clambered aboard and they rolled through the rutted and muddy woods to a murky, deserted lake surrounded by straggly conifers. It was so quiet. This place was generally acknowledged as the site where the prison camp had been in the forties and fifties. The rig pulled off the muddy road and the trucker turned off the motor, lit a cigarette, and grunted, “Over there.” Norio climbed out of the truck and walked into the thicket of pines. There, the son finally saw with his own eyes what passed for his father’s grave: three foot by three foot pits here and there where, fifty years ago, according to the local villagers, the bodies of ninety Japanese prisoners had been unceremoniously dumped.
There was a long awkward silence after Norio had told me this, the kind that comes after someone has revealed something intimate to a stranger. Norio stared at the photo of his parents. I could think of no way to call him back out of his painful reverie. We simply sat there, listening to the clock ticking until we said our goodnights and then went to bed.
In the middle of the night, I woke up and slid open the wooden door to the darkened living room. There on the coffee table was the tattered photo of the young couple and their beautiful infant son. I sat down, picked up the photo and studied it. I wondered if Norio, while standing in that muddy spot in the Siberian woods, had conducted some kind of religious service. Did he pray or did he curse? Or was it enough that he was simply there?
THE MASS AT Malate was over; the warm air was sweet with the smell of incense. The parishioners filed outside and the pink-cheeked priest smiled at each of them as they left. Outside the cathedral, Lloyd hailed a cab and three came screeching to a halt. “For American Cemetery. Fort Bonifacio,” he said.
The driver immediately turned up the volume on his radio and began singing along with the American pop songs about lost love. At breakneck speed, he drove us through the crowded barrios. One slum was adorned with a huge billboard showing the Pope kissing a baby and admonishing everyone to “Honor Life.” Hollow-eyed children hawked strings of white flower blossoms to the honking drivers stalled at intersections. We drove past a statue of Senator Benigno (Ninoy) Aquino, Filipino patriot and opposition leader, who was shown with a dove on his shoulder and his hand extended in a handshake—frozen in the moment he returned to Manila from exile in the United States on August 21, 1983. On that clear Sunday afternoon with thousands of supporters waiting, he was gunned down on the airport tarmac. The dictator Marcos was universally assumed to be the one who ordered his rival’s assassination.
We passed huge department stores and a nearly empty downtown. We skirted a neighborhood of garish mansions behind electric gates. The cab carried us into Fort Bonifacio, the former military camp (where Ninoy Aquino had spent eight years in solitary confinement) that was decommissioned and is now a golf course and country club, and finally through the gates of the American Cemetery.
It was a lush, green world far from the bleak density of Manila’s slums. Here, 17,206 Americans—the largest number of our World War II military dead—rested on 152 acres landscaped with massive carob trees, flame trees, and coral trees from India. Mahogany trees from Madagascar shaded lawns as immaculate as putting greens. Unlike the rest of Manila, the cemetery had its own water purification system; mourners are provided with potable water.
Lloyd and I walked across the vast arrangement of graves. There was an immaculate order to the place, the headstones arranged in concentric circular rows. The guidebook said that of the total, “13,434 headstones marked the graves of single identified remains; 6 marked the graves of 28 identified remains that could not be separated individually; 3,644 marked the graves of single unidentified remains (Unknowns) and 16 marked the graves of 100 unidentified remains that could not be separated individually.” Remains. All that was left of humans who were sons and brothers, fathers and grandfathers, uncles and nephews, friends and neighbors. Every hour the carillon tolled, followed by two military songs—familiar but unidentifiable.
In my knapsack were several photographs my father had taken on that September day in 1945, when he visited the cemetery in the barrio of Santa Barbara, where his friends had been hastily buried. Before we’d left L.A., Lloyd had printed and enlarged some of the negatives so that we could read the names on the headstones. In the photos, the graves looked achingly raw.
We walked through the acres of grave markers, examining as many with Stars of David on them as we could, hoping against hope to find the grave of one of the buddies my father had mentioned in his letters or whose name was in one of the headstone photos.
We passed headstones with Stars of David that belonged to Milton Tepper; Harry Fineman; Sol Margolis; Max Biederman, but no one whose name my father had mentioned. We walked by many blank markers that said, simply, “Here Rests in Honored Glory / A Comrade in Arms / Known but to God.”
At the visitors’ center, a groundskeeper noticed us and asked if he could help. He pulled out a huge three-ring binder and asked us what names we were hoping to find. He ran his callused finger down a long list and stopped in the W section. “I will take you there,” he offered. He motioned to a motorcycle with a sidecar. We motored through the cemetery, agog at the sheer size of the place. There were headstones as far as the eye could see.
Mr. Rocaberte stopped the motorcycle and pointed. Lloyd and I stepped out of the sidecar and walked toward the Jewish star with “Sam Wengrow” carved on it. I was surprised at the amount of emotion this grave brought up in me. I’d never known Sam Wengrow.
When he returned home from the war, my father wanted to “bury” his memories. But when he stood in front Sam’s grave, as an expression of respect, he vowed to keep that visit “always with him.” His desires were irreconcilable: He wanted to never forget and he needed to never remember.
I’d asked my war veteran mentor Baldwin Eckel why he never talked about his war experiences to his family, or to anyone:
You talk to any veteran who has been in real combat, and see how much he talks about it. It’s so painful, so much anguish. It’s not the enemy dying. That’s nothing. It’s your buddies. And it leaves scars that you just can’t talk about.
In one skirmish I was next to a lieutenant, who was killed. He was a good buddy of mine. We were real close. That was such a painful experience for me. After that, I never called anybody by their name. It was always by their rank. Colonel. Captain. General. Soldier. Private. Sergeant. That was my way of protecting myself. I know nobody’s name.
Had my father been able to share his
grief for Sam? Had he ever been able to weep? His closest buddies in combat were like family. He had lost family before. The pain of his childhood loss reverberated with each friend’s death in combat.
Mr. Rocaberte stepped back by his motorcycle to wait while I pulled out a prayer book and murmured the kaddish. Lloyd said out loud, “Sam, I don’t think anyone has visited you in a long time, but we’re here now.” I wondered if Sam Wengrow’s family had been to Manila. I thought of my aunt Ruth’s grave somewhere in Queens, and vowed to make a visit there. Lloyd bent down and ran his hands over the marble headstone, “See ya later, Sam,” he whispered.
The gently sloping lawns led to a memorial hall at the top of the hill. In each room of the hall was a mural map of the various campaigns of the Pacific War, and a list of those who died in each. In the room that included the map of the Luzon Campaign, I examined the guest book. I read the following entries, made that same day:
“We are the world.”
“No more wars.”
“My dad would be proud.”
“Very impressive.”
“This place makes me feel sad.”
“Make love not war.”
A Japanese family, two young parents and their sons, were visiting the memorial hall at the same time. I wondered if they felt as strange here as I’d felt at the Peace Memorial in Hiroshima.
I opened the guest book to a blank page and wrote, “We are here to honor my father and his comrades from the 25th Infantry ‘Tropic Lightning’ Division, 27th Regiment, who fought in the battle for Balete Pass.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Journey to Balete Pass
BALETE PASS IS the lowest point (3,000 feet) in the long, jumbled complex of ridges that make up the Caraballo Mountains in northern Luzon. The highest point of this rugged range, Mount Imugan, crests at 5,580 feet. It is through narrow (75 feet across) Balete Pass that Luzon’s main artery, National Highway 5, passes over the Caraballos. “Balete Pass is located at the northern exits of the most tortuous terrain Route 5 traverses on its way north,” states the War in the Pacific volume of the official U.S. Army chronicle on World War II. The pass is the gateway to the fertile rice fields of the Cagayan Valley, and during the war, as one salty vet put it, “it was the dividing line, real estatewise.”
In 1944, it was General MacArthur’s unalterable belief that the Allies should secure Luzon before moving any closer to an invasion of Japan. This belief put General MacArthur at odds with the Navy High Command, who advocated bypassing Luzon for an assault on Formosa.
MacArthur had political as well as military motives. In 1942, American troops had suffered a historic defeat in the Philippines at the hands of the Japanese. MacArthur’s famous vow—“I shall return,” made on March 11, 1942, when he left Corregidor and evacuated to Australia on FDR’s orders—was viewed by Filipinos, under Japanese occupation, with quasi-mystical status. MacArthur considered the reoccupation of the entire Philippine archipelago a “national obligation.”
MacArthur’s argument eventually won the debate among the Joint Chiefs of Staff. U.S. forces would bypass Formosa and recapture the Philippines in a consecutive series of advances, just as MacArthur had been planning since March 1942.
As part of MacArthur’s overall strategy, Lieutenant General Walter Krueger, the United States Sixth Army commander on Luzon, ordered the Twenty-fifth “Tropic Lightning” Division to launch the drive to secure Balete Pass from the Japanese. From General Krueger to General Mullins, Commander of the Twenty-fifth Division; from General Mullins to General Dalton, Assistant Commander of the Twenty-fifth; from General Dalton to innumerable colonels, majors, captains, and so on down the chain of command—MacArthur’s strategy ultimately brought infantrymen like my father and his comrades, as well as vets like Sylvan Katz and Peter Lomenzo and Baldwin Eckel, to northern Luzon to put their lives on the line to stop the Japanese.
The objective was to cut off General Yamashita’s forces from rice fields in the Cagayan Valley. Since rice was the mainstay of the Imperial Army during the war, the objective was clear: Deprive the enemy of access to the “rice bowl,” and the campaign would be won.
Known as the Tiger of Malaya for capturing Singapore, General Tomoyuki Yamashita was both brilliant and realistic as a military strategist. He did not anticipate winning any major battles, or even driving the Americans away. By ceding Manila and the Central Plains and withdrawing the bulk of his Fourteenth Area Army, a force of more than 150,000 men, into the nearly impregnable Caraballos, he aimed to make the Americans pay dearly for their victory. Yamashita was determined to delay the conquest of Luzon as long as possible in order to pin down as many U.S. divisions as he could, to slow the Allied advance toward Japan. The longer he could keep the American infantry and its air support tied up in combat, the longer the home islands would have to prepare for the inevitable Allied invasion. (Ironically, this strategy also gave the Americans more time to ready the atomic bomb.)
The Luzon Campaign was the largest of the Pacific War, employing the use of more United States Army ground combat and service forces than those used in operations in North Africa, Italy, or southern France. The victory at Balete Pass severed Yamashita’s troops from their food supplies, the fatal blow to Japanese resistance on Luzon. The battle itself set a record for consecutive days of combat in the Pacific War. Radio reports in 1945 termed it a “second Cassino,” in reference to the brutal, decisive land battle in Italy that claimed so many Allied lives in the European theater. Yet, the battle for Balete Pass, vital to victory in the Philippines, is seldom mentioned in most histories of the Pacific War.
In a 1998 issue of World War Two magazine, one military historian wrote of the Twenty-fifth Division and Balete Pass, “Its accomplishment is obscured by MacArthur’s pronouncement that the Philippines had been secured as early as March. The Twenty-fifth had a victory in a war that trumpeted victories, and yet its dead and wounded remain largely forgotten.”
WE LEFT MANILA on a small, crowded plane and flew north to Baguio, in the mountains of northern Luzon. From Baguio, we figured, we could drive to Balete Pass in a day.
Situated at a mile-high elevation among fragrant pine forests, Baguio was designated the summer capital of the Philippine Archipelago by the American colonial government in 1903. It is at least twenty degrees cooler than Manila, which is why it is always crowded with urbanites who have either moved here or can afford to make it their summer destination.
On December 8, 1941, schoolchildren in Baguio lining up for their morning assembly were surprised to hear the sound of planes overhead, and even more shocked when Japanese bombs rained from the sky. Directly in the path of the Japanese invasion of Luzon, Baguio was the Imperial Army’s next target after Pearl Harbor, and Japanese troops quickly overran the ruined town. They converted Camp John Hay, the once-verdant park containing American officers’ residences, into their garrison and designated part of it as an internment camp for about five hundred Allied citizens—including Americans, Canadians, British nationals, and Australians.
After the Japanese attack in 1941, many Baguio residents escaped into the mountains to join bands of Filipino guerrilla forces, who were later instrumental in helping the Americans liberate the island.
During the short plane ride, we tried to locate Balete Pass on our map. It wasn’t there. We pinpointed the area where it should have been. No such place-name existed. The plane began its descent. “Well,” Lloyd conceded, “it’s not like going to Gettysburg.”
At the little Baguio airport, cabbies vied for our fare. A pockmarked driver named Joey, the most assertive, quickly loaded our backpacks into his trunk, and in minutes we were lurching toward Baguio in his fender-bent ’72 Toyota.
Joey had big plans for our visit. He would be our personal chauffeur and tour guide deluxe. He would take us to special nightclubs and private cockfights. On a lark, Lloyd asked, “Can you take us to Balete Pass?” Joey looked puzzled for a moment, then brightened up. “Ah! You mean Dalton Pass
!” he exclaimed, pulling deeply on a Marlboro. “They changed the name after that general got killed.”
Brigadier General James L. “Rusty” Dalton II, the popular Assistant Division Commander of the Twenty-fifth Infantry, was on a reconnaissance mission at Balete Pass on May 16, 1945, when he was felled by a sniper’s bullet to the back of the head.
Just thirty-six years old when he was killed, Dalton had been one of the army’s youngest generals. In a published interview, General Stanley “Swede” Larsen, Dalton’s fellow officer in the Twenty-fifth, remembered him as “a hell of a nice fellow.” After Dalton’s untimely death, his soldiers, still in their combat garb, honored their general with a Requiem Mass and then buried him in an emotional ceremony at the army cemetery near Santa Barbara, Luzon.
Dalton’s death stunned the entire division, and, according to Peter Lomenzo, it inspired the bone-weary men of the Twenty-fifth to fight even harder. For even with Balete Pass finally secured, the division faced more combat. Not until the last day of June did the Twenty-fifth Division complete their final phase of the Luzon Campaign, “eliminating” (less euphemistic than “mopping up”) the last concentrations of “fanatically resisting” Japanese.
Dalton Pass was not on Joey’s list of hot spots around Baguio, but he was excited at the idea that we might hire him to take us there. At least he tried to convince Lloyd that he was the man for the job. “It’s an all-day trip,” he said. “But I’ll take you to see faith healers, too … for a little extra.”
Neither Joey’s dervishlike driving style nor the absence of shocks in his cab inspired confidence as we careened up the twisting roads to Baguio. The cab shuddered to a halt in front of our hotel, a rustic inn on a side street.
The Souvenir Page 14