Escape from Davao

by John D. Lukacs

  They might not have had a complete plan, but they had a powerful purpose. As the meeting adjourned, there was one last important order of business to discuss.

  “Don’t forget the ball game,” said Dyess, “I’m depending on you to play tomorrow, Shof, and you too, Hawk. We’ve got to beat those Japs if it’s the last thing we ever do.”

  The Japanese had challenged the prisoners to a baseball game, and though few Americans were capable of strenuous activity, the challenge had been accepted. Baseball was, after all, the American national pastime. More important, the game was an opportunity for redemption. “This was another Bataan,” noted Hawkins, “but this time we were going to be on the winning team.”

  By Sunday afternoon, excitement had reached a fever pitch. Punctuated by the sounds of balls popping leather, chatter rippled the standing-room-only crowd at the ball field. Hundreds of POWs, civilians, and guards milled along the crowded baselines as a five-piece Filipino prisoners band blared “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” Hawkins, scratched from the lineup due to an upset stomach, watched with Dobervich from the rickety grandstand as Hozumi and Maeda took their seats in the

  front row.

  Calling the teams together, the umpire, Lieutenant Yuki, tossed a silver peso into the air. Ed Dyess won the toss and elected to bat last. Dyess trotted out to left field and Yuki, his sword dangling from his side, hunched behind Lt. Col. Charles “Polly” Humber, Jr., a former West Point letterman, who sizzled warm-up pitches into Shofner’s catcher’s mitt. As soon as Yuki commenced the game in accented English—“Batter Up!”—the pro-American crowd launched into a fusillade of applause and throaty cheers, turning the hardscrabble field into Yankee Stadium. “Geeve eet to heem, Colonel,” yelled a New Mexican POW.

  Humber did. Out of an elongated wind-up, he rifled a pitch past the ear of the first batter that sent the Japanese diving to the dirt. The crowd roared in approval. “Ball one,” said Yuki, waving a finger. No sooner had the batter returned to his feet than Humber’s next offering struck him in the head. Exploding with pent-up emotion, the crowd cheered lustily as Shofner, feigning concern, helped the woozy Japanese off the field. Adding to the surreal scene, the band spontaneously struck up “Stars and Stripes Forever.” “Hozumi’s countenance, always forbidding, darkened like a threatening thundercloud,” recalled Hawkins. Despite the overwhelming crowd support, the Americans finished the first inning down 4–0.

  A few innings later, the Americans’ lead-off hitter, Austin Shofner, hustled to beat out an infield hit. He attempted to steal second base on the next pitch, but malnutrition had siphoned his speed. Seeing the ball arrive before him, he lowered his shoulder and barreled into the second baseman like a freight train. When the dust settled, Shofner was standing proudly atop the base amid of cascade of “hurrays” from the raucous crowd. The Japanese fielder, having dropped the ball in the collision, was covered in dirt and bleeding profusely from the mouth.

  The Japanese held a 14–10 advantage heading into the final inning. Humber beaned another enemy batter and then proceeded to strike out the next three. In the bottom half of the inning, a rally knocked in two runs and loaded the bases with just one out, launching the crowd into a frenzy. But consecutive strike outs ended the game for the Americans. “We’ll get ’em next time,” promised one dejected prisoner as the crowd filed back to the barracks. There would be no rematch; the Americans had come too close to winning.

  The conspirators could not dwell on the most recent Japanese conquest. As Shofner told those gathered at the barber’s shed at nightfall for his report, he had spoken to McCoy and more serious matters needed their attention.

  “He wants to go all right,” explained Shofner, “but he has three other fellows to take along. He says the four of them have already been planning to escape for quite a while.”

  “Too dangerous with such a big crowd,” said Grashio.

  They nodded in agreement. Ten would make the group too unwieldy, their plans too vulnerable to discovery. Fast travel, too, would be difficult. Shofner was dispatched to Barracks Eight with a message: the invitation had been extended to McCoy only. He returned with McCoy minutes later.

  “I can’t let them down,” stated McCoy. “Besides, we need more men for mutual protection in the wild country and to handle the sailboat when we put to sea.”

  McCoy provided some background information on Mellnik, Marshall, and Spielman, but Dyess’s group told him they would need more time before they could give him a final answer. The cardsharp, his skills of evaluating and bluffing his opposition having been perfected by thousands of hands of bridge and poker, smiled as he rose to take leave of his suitors.

  “Here is one point to consider,” said McCoy. “Now that we have betrayed our plans to each other, it will be best to stick together. If we separate, the first group to escape would be the only one to escape. The Japs would take measures after one break to prevent another.”

  The Dyess group acceded to McCoy’s demand. Ten it was.

  McCoy, the ranking officer, was appointed their leader through mutual consent. They also decided that each individual, regardless of rank, would have a voice in planning the operation. McCoy’s, at least early on, was the loudest.

  “All prisoners think a good deal about escape,” he said, “mostly because they have little else to do. Hundreds make some plans, but only a few make an effort. That is because the most important factor in an escape is the will to try. One has to want freedom more than anything else in the world. Only then will he calculate all the risks and still be willing to accept them.”

  McCoy had commenced those calculations, yet all ten men, an extraordinary fraternity united by fate and circumstance, would repeatedly have to demonstrate their determination as they entered into pursuit of their goal. The will to try would be only the first small step, in a manner of speaking, out of the Davao Penal Colony.

  CHAPTER 11

  The Plan

  All night in endless circles that return

  Each to the same beginning that I discern

  The deep-grooved wheel ruts of the captive’s mind

  Obliterate the path I search to find.

  MONDAY, FEBRUARY 15–SUNDAY, MARCH 14, 1943

  Davao Penal Colony

  In spite of their iron resolve, the would-be escapees were immediately overwhelmed with the magnitude of their mission. “It was one thing to decide to escape,” recalled Sam Grashio, “quite another to determine when, where and how.”

  They soon realized the necessity of planning their large-scale escape through small-scale strategy: one move, one issue, one day at a time. The high stakes—their lives and the lives of their fellow POWs—demanded such an approach. Ghastly visions of those tortured escapees at Cabanatuan haunted their every thought and move. “We knew that a most careful escape plan, thought out to the last detail, would be required,” said Jack Hawkins. “There would have to be an absolute minimum chance of failure.”

  They began formulating their plan in nightly, lightly attended conferences at the barber’s shed (in fact, since any extended association of enlisted men with officers typically raised eyebrows, Paul Marshall and Bob Spielman did not attend a single meeting). During these clandestine gatherings, they addressed an evolving string of problems.

  The first move was perhaps the biggest. Before they could think of traversing the notorious swamp or navigating the enemy-controlled Pacific, they had to find a way out of the main compound. One by one, ideas were nixed. And then, finally, it hit them: instead of cutting barbed wire fences and eluding searchlights, why not just walk right through the main gate in broad daylight? Thinking conventionally, after all, was not going to enable them to achieve the impossible. The solution lay in their forced labor. An authorized morning exit on a work detail would be doubly advantageous, not only giving them a way out, but also a significant head start. Details were required to return to the compound by five in the afternoon and chances were good that the Japanese, wary of the jungle
and its rumored cannibal inhabitants, would not launch a search party until the following morning. Their plan, however, was entirely predicated on being unchaperoned. No guards could be killed or injured in the course of their flight, in order to lessen the risk of reprisals for the POWs left behind. Compounding matters, rumors were rife that reinforcements would soon be arriving to bolster Major Maeda’s garrison. As if they did not have enough considerations, an imaginary hourglass had been flipped.

  A Sunday, they then decided, would be the best day to escape. The Marines had a built-in excuse to leave the compound: they changed their bulls’ grazing grounds on Sundays. And since Grashio would soon be relieved from his duties in the Japanese kitchen, Shofner said that he could see that Grashio was added to the plowing detail. As for getting the others out, McCoy had presciently addressed the problem before the merger of the escape parties. He and Abrina had devised a plan weeks earlier: the coffee pickers, Abrina told Lieutenant Hozumi, wanted to build a rain shelter because many were getting sick as a result of frequent downpours. The work would take place on Sundays and could only spur production. Short-handed and stressed, Hozumi was quick to say “Ok-ka.” McCoy, Mellnik, Marshall, and Spielman had been the only ones leaving the compound for the halfhearted labor, but the guards at the main gate had grown accustomed to seeing their faces the past few Sunday

  mornings.

  Unfortunately, there was no known way through or around the swamp, nor any way to know what lay on the other side when—or if—they emerged alive. Or so they had thought. Tipped off to the embryonic escape plans by Abrina, Juan Acenas showed up in the coffee patch one day where he mused about his time in the forestry service, days of yore spent dodging poison darts fired by indigenous tribesmen while mapping the wilds of Davao Province. And then, once he was certain that no Japanese were watching, he got to the point of his visit.

  “Pop said you took surveyor training at West Point,” Acenas said, pressing a small package containing surveyor’s tools and a pencil map of the colony area into Steve Mellnik’s hands. He then winked surreptiously before strolling off. “You might find them interesting.”

  The map, which charted the area around Dapecol for approximately forty miles, revealed two possible avenues of escape: the railroad cut heading north from Anibogan, and an abandoned trail that started at Dapecol’s western boundary and meandered northeast before penetrating the swamp. (Due to heavy Japanese traffic, the jungle road that cut south to Davao City was eliminated from consideration.) Though likely heavily overgrown, the old trail intersected with the railroad at its end, near a barrio some twenty miles north of Dapecol called Lungaog where, according to Acenas, friendly guerrillas might render assistance. Following the rail line was the most direct route, but also the most dangerous given the Japanese outpost at Anibogan and the fact that a search party would move rapidly along the rails in pursuit. It was an easy

  decision.

  As plans progressed, a preemptive enlistment of heavenly aid made sense to Grashio. Having a Catholic priest along, he reasoned, might make locals more sympathetic. “Everyone accepted the idea as sound,” said Grashio, “and also agreed that I had the right man in mind.” That man was Father Richard E. Carberry, a thirty-eight-year-old Iowan who had been twice decorated for bravery on Bataan while serving as a chaplain in the 45th Infantry, Philippine Scouts.

  They then decided that after a guide was added, membership in their exclusive group would be closed. It was a heart-wrenching decision. Shofner, for example, would have liked to invite John Winterholler, a friend who had been a star athlete at the University of Wyoming, but the debilitated Marine would likely not survive the arduous journey. And it pained Dyess and Grashio to abandon Bert Bank, but Bank’s poor physical condition precluded his participation. It was equally difficult for Grashio to work with Motts Tonelli in the Japanese kitchen and not be able to tell Tonelli, “a cool, fearless man who had become a fast friend,” about the escape or extend him an invitation. All but necessary accomplices were deliberately kept in the dark. “This was partially for their own protection,” said Dyess. “If, after the escape, the Japs should suspect any remaining prisoner having any advance knowledge of it, that individual’s head would be as good as rolling in the sand.”

  They were also looking out for themselves. The rapid mental deterioration of the prisoners had left them no choice but to use extreme discretion. Stool pigeons potentially lurked behind every palm tree; one careless comment in the latrines might not only result in a miscarriage of their plans, but could conceivably cost them their lives. “PWs on the ragged edge of death would have done anything to improve their lot,” explained Mellnik. “Such men came in all ages and sizes; their common denominator was despair.”

  After compiling a list of essential matériel, they commenced the task of outfitting their exodus. Some key items were already on hand: Dobervich had kept a compass hidden since his capture; McCoy had torn out pages from a navigational table shortly after Corregidor’s surrender; Hawkins had managed to hold on to his Hamilton wristwatch. Most of their gear, however, would have to be bought, bartered for, built, or, if deemed absolutely necessary, stolen. Once acquired, the items were inventoried in Shofner’s notebook. Missing from those pages, for security reasons, were the stories behind each acquisition.

  When he wasn’t pilfering tools from the machine shop, Boelens crafted a five-gallon gasoline can into a quan can and fashioned a homemade sextant with the help of a picture from a Webster’s dictionary. Mellnik complemented Boelens’s work by locating an astronomy book, which McCoy used to compile data on the principal stars and to compute right ascensions and declinations of the sun for navigational purposes. A formula based on observation of the pointer stars of the Big Dipper found in a yellowed copy of Ripley’s Believe It or Not! enabled McCoy to set the accurate time and determine the variation of Hawkins’s wristwatch.

  While Sam Grashio snatched matches from the Japanese kitchen, Ed Dyess used his bull cart to smuggle fruit into the hospital. The doctor was called away, leaving Dyess alone long enough to grab a quart bottle of quinine pills, some water purification tablets, and a first-aid kit containing sulfa drugs, iodine, and field dressings.

  The going price for tins of Spam and corned beef was five packs of cigarettes, so the conspirators parted with their smokes to augment their stocks of canned food. The procurement of food, however, was primarily charged to McCoy, Mellnik, Marshall, and Spielman. They continued Operation Chicken to build the group’s collective strength and traded surplus meat for other goods. McCoy also collected socks from each POW and then, over the course of several days, slipped into a bodega near the coffee patch and filled the socks with polished rice.

  Claiming that he wanted to draw plans for the home that he was going to build after the war, Hawkins borrowed an engineer’s drawing set from an officer who had been captured on Mindanao. Days later he returned the set, minus the protractor and dividers needed for plotting the course of their flight. Hawkins was also charged with procuring the bolos needed to slash their path to freedom. For this difficult task, he solicited the help of an aging colono who had shown them how to build a trap for the wild pigs that rustled in the undergrowth on the colony’s boundaries. Unfortunately, the foliage-covered pit netted them not a single pig, though they did snare an unwitting Japanese guard, an event that amused the entire camp. But this time the relationship produced results: the colono delivered three shiny bolos with intricately carved wooden scabbards. Hawkins tried to pay with cash, but the silver-haired Filipino would have none of it. “You kill Japs,” he said.

  Hawkins attempted to smuggle the long knives inside the compound wrapped in his shirt, but to his horror saw that the Japanese were searching for contraband fruit. Dobervich, thinking on his feet, snatched the bundle and fell out of line, pretending to fill his canteen at a water tank. Leaving the bolos on the ground, he nonchalantly returned to be searched. When the search was completed, the guard waved the detail through the gate
s, at which time Dobervich hustled over to pick up the bundle, which he carried through the gates unnoticed to several sighs of

  relief.

  After so many other nerve-racking efforts, the list in Shofner’s notebook was nearly complete by the first week of March. The whole painstaking process had proved a cathartic endeavor. “We weren’t dreaming of getting out of that place,” said Shofner. “We were planning it.”

  McCoy and Spielman were anxious to accelerate the plan. Habitually cautious, Mellnik did his best to temper their enthusiasm. After all, they still needed a competent guide and to cache their equipment and supplies outside the compound. McCoy finally erupted one evening: “What the goddamn hell are we waiting for? If we delay until everyone is well and conditions are perfect, we’ll never start.” McCoy was right. Each passing day gave Lieutenant Hozumi more time to bring in reinforcements and increased the chances that their plans would be discovered. “We finally resolved to make our break, guide or no guide, before the end of the month,” said Hawkins. A date was circled: March 28.

  Sam Grashio, always “the most steadfastly enthusiastic member of our little conspiracy,” remembered Hawkins, was even more excited than usual.

  “Boy, we’ve got our guides now,” said Grashio, breathlessly. “Two of them.”

  The thunderstruck trio of Hawkins, McCoy, and Shofner, the only conspirators present for this early March conference, blurted questions in rapid-fire fashion.

  “Two! What do we want with two, Sam?” boomed Shofner. “Isn’t one enough? If we don’t watch out, everyone in camp will be in on this deal, and we’ll get caught for sure.”