After the brief reunion, Mellnik took his old friends to meet McCoy. The foursome exited the barracks to speak privately, which they did while circling the perimeter.
“Steve and I have learned how to amuse guards and keep them tied to one spot,” said McCoy. “Meanwhile, you two will gather fruit for the whole detail. This way we reduce the number of people roaming the roads and getting caught. How does that sound?”
“That’s okay by us,” replied Spielman, enthusiastically. “You and the major are the old-timers. You call the signals; Paul and I will carry the ball.”
“You can trust Bob and Paul,” Mellnik assured Pop Abrina the following morning. “They’re part of my team.”
“Then now we are five!” whispered Abrina in delighted, conspirational tones.
At the cornfield, the foragers fanned into the tunnels of coconut and banana trees with burlap bags, their appetites serving as divining rods. Then Abrina went to work on the guards. When McCoy entered the act with his own lascivious litany, Mellnik slipped away to check on Marshall and Spielman. During the midday siesta, the two noncoms parceled out the contents of their bulging bag to the other prisoners. “Major,” drawled Spielman, “I think we’re gonna live!”
They practiced their roles to perfection over the next few weeks, benefiting the entire detail’s health. The prisoners gained weight and their sores, depression, and fatigue disappeared. The two sergeants even brought fruit into the compound through an ingenious system in which Spielman played the role of smuggler and Marshall the decoy: the latter was slapped by the guards for moving in ranks, thus drawing attention away from the former as he slipped safely inside. It had been months since their meeting aboard the Casiana, but they still had their touch. Despite their accomplishments, late December brought about an inevitable question.
“Say, Pop,” asked McCoy, “what happens when there’s no more corn to pick? Could you arrange a work detail for us near meat and vegetables?”
“You left out the pie and ice cream,” said Abrina sarcastically. “But for tomodachis like you, I’ll ask Acenas—he’ll have ideas.”
Unlike superintendent Pascual Robin, a Japanese collaborator, Juan Acenas had some credibility with the Americans—it was his radio that supplied the news that Abrina transmitted to McCoy. Acenas, lean, bald, and bespectacled, arrived unexpectedly in the cornfield one day. Though there was enough rice and vegetables to increase the prisoners’ rations, he told Mellnik, Maeda balked at the proposal. But he did have an idea. Maeda had refused to authorize work on the experimental coffee farm, a project close to the agriculturist’s heart.
“Unless we do something soon the heavy undergrowth will kill the trees and our ten years of developmental work,” said Acenas.
“Let’s tell [Maeda] he can sell coffee beans in Davao City and use the money to buy machinery,” said Abrina, continuing Acenas’s train of thought. “The old crook will probably keep the money, but who
cares?”
Back in the compound that evening, the Americans sat around a fire as a pot of tea simmered. Spielman voiced the thought on each of their minds.
“I’m tired of jail. I want to walk out of here and keep on going.”
McCoy agreed. Both their food supply and relative freedom would likely end with the corn detail, he said. Again the voice of reason, Mellnik objected to any rash action.
“We can’t take off blindly. For all we know, Jap troops might be bivouaced around the colony! … What happens to Pop when four of his men don’t show up? What will the Japs do to the corn detail and the men who sleep in our bays? I don’t want their lives on my conscience!”
“Those are all valid objections that we should try to overcome by planning,” said a partially acquiescent McCoy. “The important thing is to decide to escape. Are you with me?”
After several tense seconds, Marshall broke the silence.
“Commander,” he said, “I’m with you on leaving here, and I’ll go along with whatever you and the major decide. But I want a fighting chance, not a way-out gamble, for my life.”
The impossible problem had been placed in front of McCoy. It was up to him to find a solution.
• • •
To celebrate the Christmas season, as well as the first year of what only the Japanese could consider co-prosperity, Major Maeda had declared a rare holiday from work. Maeda also had promised the prisoners additional food and entertainment. That was why Jack Hawkins and Mike Dobervich had dashed through a torrential downpour toward the camp chapel on a miserably wet, bone-chilling Christmas Eve.
Despite the chorus harmonizing well-known carols, the tension inside was palpable to the crowd, remembered Fely Campo. “The Japanese told us, ‘You can talk, you can mix with [the Americans], but no foolish ideas.’ ” The tension was alleviated somewhat when the Japanese choice for master of ceremonies, 2nd Lt. Kempei Yuki, ascended a stage bedecked with shiny tinsel and opened the unforgettable Dapecol Christmas show of 1942.
Diminutive and decidedly unmilitary in his appearance and demeanor, with kind, almond eyes and a boyish face, the thirty-five-year-old Yuki appeared the antithesis of his superior, Hozumi. The English-speaking enemy officer had done his best to make their voyage on the Erie Maru as tolerable as possible, ordering that they receive cookies, candy, and cigarettes on a Japanese holiday. He also attended a POW funeral, bringing a bugler and some flowers he had purchased in Cebu City. When the chaplain concluded the ceremony, Yuki stood at attention with the Americans and saluted. Deemed trustworthy, Yuki would be the closest thing to a friend in a Japanese uniform the prisoners would know.
The first performance was a traditional harvest dance performed by several teenage girls and boys from the families of the colony’s administrators. The prisoners were mesmerized not only by the graceful movements, but by the costumes, too; the radiant rainbow woke them from the drudgery of their dreary khaki, green, and brown existence.
As the Filipinos cleared the stage, a prisoners orchestra launched into a set of familiar pieces such as “Stardust” and “Apple Blossom Time.” To the homesick POWs, the nostalgic sounds were indistinguishable from those of the big bands of Artie Shaw or Glenn Miller. “It was like a dream there in the dimly-lighted chapel,” wrote Hawkins, “listening to the harmony of American dance music.” One prisoner noted that the band’s theme, played several times throughout the evening, must have been “consciously chosen.” It was “Outside of Paradise.”
After the musical interlude, there was a murmur of astonishment when the curtain was raised to reveal none other than Mr. Nishamura, the despised interpreter. But Nishamura’s skillful rendition of the Charleston amended the prisoners’ opinion of their loathsome adversary, if only temporarily. Next, a samurai sword dance and a frighteningly realistic depiction of hara-kiri, Japanese ritual suicide, caused the audience to shudder.
As the American portion of the program began, a wave of communal laughter, starting with the Japanese officers and guards seated in the front rows, washed over the audience. There was wild applause for the Jewish private from the Bronx and an Italian corpsman from Philadelphia who jitterbugged across the stage, for an accordion-playing officer; and, finally, for prisoners from New Mexico who donned face paint and feathers for a traditional Native American dance and contributed an uproarious impersonation of Carmen Miranda.
“The difference between friend and foe [was] forgotten, and everybody in the audience united by a common feeling of enjoyment and laughter,” wrote Fely Campo’s father, Anastacio. “Cigarettes and presents were passed around in the friendly atmosphere of peace and goodwill among all of us.” The entire audience had just barely finished singing “Auld Lang Syne,” recalled Fely Campo, when a gong abruptly ended the convivial atmosphere. “Everybody out,” ordered the Japanese. “Go back to barracks.”
Upon exiting, each prisoner collected a rice stick fried in coconut oil from the altruistic Filipinos. As they filed back to their barracks or to midnight mass, the music, dan
cing children, and laughter conjured memories of their loved ones and better times which had long been relegated to the cobwebbed corners of their minds. Misty-eyed, they did not need the sign that had been erected near the chapel—“Los Angeles City Limits. City Hall 11936 kilometers”—to remind them that they were far from home on this holiest of nights.
In Barracks Five, Jack Hawkins was lying beneath his mosquito net, wide awake. “Suddenly I was overcome by a surging desire to burst out of the nightmare life had become,” he related. Impulsively, he reached under the net, tapped Dobervich, and inquired if he was awake.
“Yeah,” grunted Dobervich, woozily.
“I was just thinking,” said Hawkins. “I don’t know how it will be, but we’re not going to spend another Christmas like this.”
CHAPTER 10
A Big Crowd
I probed the whirling darkness while the rain
Played on the nipa with a rhythmic stamp …
FRIDAY, JANUARY 29–SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 1943
Davao Penal Colony
Crankcase oil and powdered lime kept the flies in check, yet nothing could stop the latrine rumors from proliferating. Some wiseacre had tacked up an appropriate sign over the latrines that read, “KGEI.”
Generally, the reports just smelled funny: the Navy was operating near the Celebes Islands, just south of Mindanao; actress Deanna Durbin was dead; a new Ford awaited each prisoner at home. Other rumors, such as that yarn about the Red Cross packages, were more offensive to the ear. Most of the POWs thought the story that they would be receiving
relief parcels was a cruel hoax similar to the rumors about the repatriation ships. The matter was settled on the unforgettable afternoon of
January 29.
“It’s Christmas, Commander McCoy!” shouted a sailor. “It’s Christmas!”
McCoy, aware that the holiday had passed—and that some prisoners were going stir-crazy in captivity—requested an explanation.
“Stuff from home,” came the reply. “Boxes from the States. Red Cross boxes.”
Throughout the compound, prisoners could not believe their eyes—nor their fingers. “Hands trembled as they tore the boxes open,” one of McCoy’s POW peers would write. “Eyes sparkled as edible treasures were pulled forth and held up to public view, while hardbitten, battle-scarred soldiers and sailors, exactly like children on Christmas morning, shouted excitedly: “Look what I’ve got!”
Each POW received approximately two boxes, fifteen-pound cardboard cornucopias containing cans of corned beef and salmon, sardines, coffee, instant cocoa, jam, and chocolate bars, as well as butter, cheese, and powdered milk. There was even clothing and toiletries. Vitamin tablets, sulfa drugs, anesthetics, and quinine, too. From a morale standpoint, most important were the labels: Kraft cheese, Welch’s Grapelade, Domino sugar, Swan Pure White Floating soap. The name brands served as familiar symbols of home, thoughtfully packed, canned, and vacuum-sealed evidence that they had not been forgotten. “As each prisoner ripped open a box, I suspect that there were many besides myself who worked with a catch in the throat,” recalled McCoy.
The rejuvenating effect was almost instantaneous. Within days, bedridden men walked; mangy beards, unsightly ulcers, and rashes disappeared; spirits soared. Savoring the bliss of their sated appetites with after-dinner smokes—though the Japanese had rifled the boxes, plenty of packs of Camels and Chesterfields remained—they even began talking about sex again. And at least one of them began again to entertain thoughts of another taboo subject.
The belated Christmas gifts had arrived not a moment too soon for Ed Dyess. His legs were scarred with tropical ulcers; an infected finger had almost been amputated; and the mass of scurvy blisters in his mouth had at one time been so painful that he could hardly eat. Smuggled fruit cured his scurvy, but for every step forward Dyess invariably took two back: at Christmas, he was besieged with malaria and a nasty skin infection. “Ailments always went in pairs for me,” he lamented. Fortunately for Dyess, Sam Grashio had landed a regular assignment in the Japanese kitchen, the most coveted of camp jobs. It was there that he met Abes-san, the mess sergeant, a Tokyo tailor in civilian life who had sized up Grashio and taken a liking to him. Abes-san stood up to other Japanese on his behalf and let him snitch scraps, which essentially kept Dyess alive until the timely arrival of the Red Cross packages.
On the heels of that seminal event was another surprising development: the Japanese distributed a series of postcards to the prisoners, for most the first opportunity they had had to communicate with their loved ones since before the fall of the Philippines. They were not postcards in the traditional sense, but formulaic comment cards by which a POW could complete an unfinished sentence or underscore given words—the second item, for example, “My health is—,” provided four choices: “excellent; good; fair; poor”—and communicate his condition.
Predictably, the Japanese sought to censor the cards, lest a prisoner’s statements cast an unfavorable light on Imperial hospitality. For the most part, the POWs were equal to the task. Some sought to communicate through codes and Bible verses. Of the latter, Second Corinthians, first chapter, eighth verse, was a favorite: “For we would not, brethren, have you ignorant of the affliction which came upon us in Asia. We were crushed beyond measure—beyond our strength, so that we were weary even of life.” One POW, however, attempted to divulge his whereabouts by stating that his new home would be “built seven yards north and one-hundred and twenty-five yards east of the old one.” The Japanese, recognizing the latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates for Dapecol, sentenced the offender to one month of solitary confinement.
One prisoner mentioned that he was working on a chicken farm, but when the card was returned for his signature, discovered that the words “for the use of the Americans” had been added. Suspicious of Japanese intentions, many did not take the exercise seriously. A dubious Leo Boelens bet a friend that he would arrive home before his card. Another prisoner directed his senator to oppose any attempts at reinstituting Prohibition in his absence. And, sadly, there was one POW with no one to write to. So he addressed his card to Dorothy Lamour.
Though he had no idea whether the cards would reach his wife in Illinois, a resurgent Dyess had been convinced of something else, as evinced in a prophetic postcript: “I will be home.”
Nineteen forty-three, by all early indications, certainly looked to be a year of change. In addition to the arrival of the Red Cross parcels, Major Maeda had abolished the whimsical work assignment system, giving most prisoners regular jobs in an effort to improve efficiency.
While Grashio and Boelens continued in the Japanese kitchen and in the machine shop, respectively, Dyess had spent time on the plowing detail, an exercise in futility, if not hilarity. “We would go tearing around, the Americans swearing at the cattle, the Japs swearing at the Americans and the cattle bellowing at both the Americans and the Japs,” he remembered. “After a day’s plowing, the field looked as if it had been dive-bombed, strafed, and had been fought over by tanks in a major engagement.” Nevertheless, the Japanese thought enough of Dyess’s skills to put him in charge of the driving the camp bull cart. It was a military demotion if there ever was one. Here was the celebrated hero who had attacked enemy ships in Subic Bay at speeds of several hundred miles per hour now creaking around the camp in a rickety cart that resembled a frontier buckboard.
Though initially indignant, Dyess warmed to the assignment. He had a good relationship with the carabao, which he named Betsy. He had no immediate overseer, either, nor did he have to work in the Mactan mud. The cart, which transported produce, tools, and supplies around the camp, was at first inspected at all checkpoints, guardhouses, and gates. Then Dyess noticed that as the guards became accustomed to his face, their attitudes grew more relaxed. Waving him along with a greeting or a light for his cigarette, they thought little of his movements.
It was about this time that the Japanese instituted English classes for the guards and Dyess
became one of the instructors. Since the Japanese wanted to learn only “cursing” words, the classes deprived the prisoners of a favorite pastime—calling their captors unprintable names to their faces—but “it was the nearest we ever came to good-natured kidding with our captors,” he would say.
For Dyess, though, it was all an act. Suppressing his hatred to become, in his own words, “the camp’s No. 1 good will ambassador,” he saw a window of opportunity opened by his new social status and improved health. “I figured it was time,” he said, “to begin cashing in.” He wasn’t the
only one.
As Pop Abrina predicted, the appeal to Major Maeda’s pocketbook had succeeded. Each morning, Abrina’s troupe, the main ensemble of McCoy, Mellnik, Marshall, and Spielman, plus fifteen or twenty supporting cast members, formed up at the main gate. After Abrina barked the name and number of POWs in a hodgepodge of Spanish and Japanese, “Café, ni-ju-ichi!” (Coffee, 21), the sentry then chalked the figure on the blackboard and waved the prisoners on to the coffee fields and, unwittingly, another day of larceny and lavish feasts.
Although highly rewarding, their act had become considerably more complicated, not to mention hazardous. An early reconnaissance had revealed that the coffee patch was bordered by the colony’s chicken farm. “There’s our meat ration,” McCoy had said, licking his lips and looking at the wire coops full of thousands of clucking hens. “All we need now is a bit of luck and guts.”
“And a helluva lot more information!” added an ever-pragmatic Mellnik.
The chicken farm was almost as heavily guarded as the main POW compound. Above the barbed wire perimeter fence that surrounded the henhouses was a thirty-foot watchtower. Dense jungle bounded the pen on two sides and there was about twenty-five yards of open space separating the edge of the coffee patch and the coops, leaving only one logical approach via a foliage-lined cart trail. Additional reconnaissance revealed that the lone guard rarely appeared between noon and one o’clock, when he took his post-lunch nap.
Escape from Davao Page 17