Escape from Davao

by John D. Lukacs

  The Gripsholm was a merchant ship of neutral Swedish registry that was carrying medical supplies and food for Allied POWs in the Pacific. The U.S. government was worried that publicizing Japanese atrocities might jeopardize the delivery of those supplies. The government was also concerned about the possible reaction of the volatile Japanese to any atrocity claims on Allied POWs. But there were other reasons behind the executive suppression of Dyess’s and any other atrocity stories.

  While civilians, some segments of the press, and certain high-ranking brass clamored for action against the Japanese, the Pacific war remained the stepchild of the global conflict. Stories about the war with Germany dominated front pages, while the Pacific war was relegated to the inside pages.

  Worse, the Pacific theater was working on a shoestring budget. In December 1943, the U.S. Army had slightly more than 900,000 men deployed in the Pacific and China-Burma-India theaters, as opposed to nearly 1.5 million men in the European, Mediterranean, and North African theaters. And only a fraction of supplies was allotted to the Pacific. Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King, an outspoken critic of the Europe First strategy since the Arcadia Conference of late 1941 and early 1942, estimated that in late 1943, despite the fact that most of the noteworthy battles of the war thus far had taken place in the Pacific, only 15 percent of the prodigious amount of supplies rolling off American assembly lines was reaching the Pacific. King believed that American industry was capable of producing enough war matériel for simultaneous offensives against Germany and Japan; he also thought Britain was shirking her responsibilities as an ally in the Pacific struggle.

  No amount of redistribution of aid could pacify Douglas MacArthur. MacArthur believed himself to be fighting a two-front war, one against the Japanese and another against Washington. MacArthur predictably and immediately seized on the revelation of Japanese atrocities as the reason why he must make good on his promise to return to the Philippines with all deliberate haste. In a private letter prepared for FDR not long after his conference with Dyess, McCoy, and Mellnik in July 1943, MacArthur passionately stressed that:

  our quiescent policy with respect to the Philippines … is in no small degree responsible for the unfolding of a drama the stark tragedy of which has no counterpart in American history. Our prisoners of war are being subjected to slow and deliberate extermination through disease, starvation and summary execution. So, have many thousands already perished and few, if any, will ever survive unless we arouse ourselves into a more dynamic Philippine aid policy … Never before in the service of my country have I found it necessary to defend her honor and dignity … before all humanity, by the advocacy of military and moral considerations more elementary than those that should now form the framework of our Philippine policy if we are to redeem ourselves before God, before the shattered remnant of our Army that lies shackled in the stench of Japanese imprisonment and before our wards, the Filipino people.

  MacArthur thought that the Dapecol escapees had not been muzzled merely to ensure safe delivery of the Gripsholm’s cargo. “Perhaps the administration, which was committed to a Europe first effort, feared American public opinion would demand a greater reaction against Japan,” MacArthur would speculate in his memoirs, “but whatever the cause, here was the sinister beginning of the ‘managed news’ concept by those in power.”

  MacArthur’s supposition that the government was deliberately suppressing the atrocity stories should not be dismissed out of hand. War correspondent Raymond Clapper, a veteran of several Pacific battles who was also a supporter of FDR, confirmed MacArthur’s claim, complaining that Roosevelt “was taking the whole technique of a controlled press far beyond anything we have experienced in this country.”

  No matter what their government was—or was not—telling them, Americans had long been aware of the brutal nature of their Pacific enemy, due to atrocity stories emanating from China (Nanking, among others). It was not until 1943, however, when several stories detailing atrocities committed against U.S. prisoners were released that the public’s blood began to boil. In late April, Americans learned of the October 1942 execution of three American fliers who had been captured in occupied China following the Doolittle Raid. Roosevelt condemned the Japanese as “barbarous” and “depraved,” and the public’s reaction, noted historian John Dower, “was comparable to the rage that greeted the news of Pearl Harbor.” Observing the emotional response, the British embassy in Washington reported to London that the uproar was such that it “sharply increased the stimulus of national anger and humiliation which makes of the Pacific front permanently a more burning issue than [the] European front is ever likely to be.”

  Why was Dyess encountering so much resistance? Perhaps because his story was unlike anything America had known before, a story that described not a handful of heinous acts committed against a few downed airmen, but the systemized torture and extermination of thousands of abandoned American troops. The story possessed so much emotional and political dynamite that it was no wonder Colonel Robert McCormick, owner of the Chicago Tribune and other papers, was heavily invested. The maverick publishing baron had long been an enemy of FDR and the Democratic Party. The Dyess story was only the latest in a series of tangles that the Tribune had had with censorship and the White House. Months earlier, the paper had been accused of compromising national security by publishing a story about the Navy’s successful breaking of Japanese codes, which helped lead to the Midway victory. A grand jury was convened, but the case was dropped because the Japanese never changed their codes as a result of the Tribune’s story, thus exonerating the paper. Dyess’s story of widespread atrocities and the sensational story of the only mass escape of American POWs seemed tailor-made for McCormick and the Tribune.

  The fact that it was the Chicago Tribune sitting atop this ticking media time bomb was beginning to light up switchboards throughout Washington. Upon his return from a meeting with Tribune editors in Chicago, Capt. Leland P. Lovett, head of the Navy’s Office of Public Relations, alerted Surles that it seemed as though the paper was preparing to take an aggressive stance. McCormick’s likely impatience presaged a censorship showdown. “The thing I’m a little doubtful about,” Military Intelligence Service chief Gen. George V. Strong told Surles in a phone conversation on September 13, “is to whether the Chicago Tribune wants to play the game.” In anticipation of an attempt by the Tribune to circumvent established channels, Strong and Surles were prepared to invoke the Espionage Act, if necessary, to ensure the paper’s cooperation. (Passed shortly after America’s entry into World War I in 1917, the Espionage Act prohibited the transmission of national defense and security information, interference with military operations, and other treasonous and/or subversive activities. It was amended in 1940.)

  Meanwhile, Dyess was not the only one being muzzled. Both McCoy and Mellnik had undergone extensive debriefings and submitted reports, only to encounter the same mysterious roadblocks. As in Dyess’s case, their silence had reportedly also been secured under the threat of the loss of their commissions and careers. McCoy’s situation had not been made any easier by Wendell Fertig, who had sent a letter to an old friend, Gen. Hugh J. Casey, in a bundle of papers taken out on the Trout in July. Fertig’s warning to Casey, likely circulated among the elite levels of command, undoubtedly raised red flags for McCoy’s superiors:

  In general personalities have not been as serious as anticipated. However, the escape of ten prisoners from Davao has complicated the situation somewhat, since the escape was led by Lieut. Comdr. Melvyn H. McCoy, who, to put it as pleasantly as possible, is a bit “stir-crazy.” He must be watched upon his arrival in Australia, because he may do some injudicious talking.

  McCoy had had enough. First he had to fight the Japanese. Then Wendell Fertig—twice. And now his own Navy, as well as the bureaucratic machinations of the U.S. government? The memories of those comrades he had left behind, both the escapees still on Mindanao and the POWs still behind barbed wire, would not allow him to remain quie
scent.

  “In view of what’s happening to the prisoners out there—they’ve died by the thousands, they’re continuing to die and they’re probably all going to die if something isn’t done about it—I cannot accept the order to remain silent,” he told his superiors. “One reason we escaped was to let the world know what is happening to the prisoners. I will reveal this and … will sacrifice my career if necessary. This must be told and I will tell it.”

  With that brazen pronouncement, McCoy waited to see if the Navy would call his bluff. In the meantime, he entered into negotiations with several publications for the rights to his version of the escape story.

  Mellnik, too, was obsessed by thoughts of those left behind, but he remained more reserved than McCoy. He followed orders to the letter, telling his astonished family very little, if anything, about how he had found his way home. At the same time, Mellnik seemed equally confused by the general lack of knowledge about or passion for the Pacific war, not to mention his ordeal. “It seemed hard for him to realize we in America didn’t know of the Japanese cruelty to our men,” his wife would tell a newspaper reporter.

  Believing that he could do more for his comrades in the Pacific than in the Pentagon, Mellnik arranged for a transfer to MacArthur’s GHQ in Brisbane. But before his departure, he traveled to Saranac Lake, New York, to fulfill a promise. It was there, the Western Hemisphere’s foremost location for the treatment of pulmonary tuberculosis, that Mellnik found a frail, sickly Manuel Quezon racked with coughing spasms and entering the last months of his life. Mellnik told Quezon of the invaluable assistance that Ben de la Cruz and Victor Jumarong had provided the escapees and asked that the Philippine president-in-exile grant pardons to both men.

  “If you’ll give their names to my secretary,” said Quezon, “she’ll prepare the papers, and I’ll sign them, before you leave.”

  By mid-September, the powers-that-be decided to buy time, presumably for the Gripsholm, perhaps to explore other methods for resolving the pending showdown involving the Chicago Tribune, Dyess, McCoy, and the government, and maybe for “other things,” as Surles had stated. Charles Leavelle was granted permission to take down Dyess’s story—but nothing more. An awed Leavelle spent several days at Ashford before Dyess was discharged. “At first it was difficult to believe he held the Legion of Merit, the DSC with Oak Leaf Cluster, the Silver Star, and the two cluster group citation,” he would write. “He was a thin, blond youngster, slow of speech. But after a couple of minutes in his presence you recognized the qualities of leadership that made him great.”

  Usually, Dyess reclined in his bed and dictated his story to Leavelle. Humble, Dyess seemed to consciously avoid any inclusion of himself in the story. On occasion, the pilot would hover over Leavelle’s shoulder, reading as the latter typed. “Tst, tst,” Dyess would say, shaking his head. “You must have a strong ‘I’ key on this typewriter. It’s a wonder to me it didn’t break somewhere along here.”

  Dyess eventually relented to being the centerpiece of the story, conditionally. “If you triple my troubles and multiply the result by several thousand, you’ll get a rough idea of what went on,” Dyess remarked, putting his experiences into perspective. “And when you do that, you must bear in mind that I got out alive. Thousands of the boys didn’t—and won’t.”

  In early fall, Leavelle and Maxwell traveled to Washington for a conference with General Surles, having brought five completed chapters for the latter’s review. Surles, however, declined, stating that a blanket ban had been placed on all atrocity stories from the highest authorities and, recalled Leavelle, that “there would be no point in his reading the

  story.”

  Despite all of the obstacles they had overcome, Dyess, McCoy, and Mellnik had arrived home only to face another lengthy battle. This time, wrote Leavelle, they would be fighting their own government, “official reluctance, indecision, resistance and actual hostility in high places.”

  THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 1943

  At sea aboard the USS Bowfin

  At last, Sam Grashio’s hands had stopped trembling. Calmly, as the submarine Bowfin ran safely and silently in the depths of the Mindanao Sea, Grashio pulled out the envelope on which was written, in the handwriting of Leo Boelens, the following instructions: “Sam—Not to be opened until after shove’n.” Earlier in the evening, Grashio’s hands had quivered so much that he could not pick up a cup of coffee in the officers wardroom. But now, as he had steadied to the realization that the submarine truly existed, that he was indeed going home, he opened the parcel to find two parting gifts: a letter and a poem.

  Taking a leave from his duties as guerrilla quartermaster, Grashio had spent several weeks with Boelens on the site of Farm Project No. 1 about four kilometers south of Lala, Lanao. Boelens, though, had not returned to his roots; Farm Project No. 1 was the code name for a secret, 1.4-million-square-foot airfield that Wendell Fertig had ordered Boelens to carve out of the Mindanao wilderness. The name was a disguise—should

  the Japanese capture Fertig’s papers or a spy overhear a conversation, there would be little to indicate the true nature of the project. Boelens supervised a small team of three officers and five enlisted men, as well as a number of civilian laborers. In typical Boelens fashion, it had become an all-consuming task.

  Years later, Grashio would wistfully recall the period of his visit,

  the memories of feasting on monkey meat with local Moros and he and Boelens reading stories from old Reader’s Digest magazines to each other near a beautiful waterfall. Grashio’s visit was cut short when a runner from Fertig’s headquarters arrived with the news that he had been cleared for evacuation. “I was simultaneously gladdened and saddened,” Grashio would write.

  Grashio had offered to stay behind, but Boelens would hear none of it. Just as he had been with Dyess, Boelens seemed to possess a greater sense of Grashio’s destiny than Grashio himself. On his departure two days earlier, Grashio had awakened at 2 a.m. to find Boelens awake, writing by the meager light of a coconut oil lamp.

  Sam—

  We’ve come a long way together, 10,000 miles or more

  To find the going tough but we’ve much to be thankful for.

  Our friendship was cast into brotherhood amidst the blood and jumble, and bound by mortar made of hardships that time can never crumble. Our paths diverged from time to time common of circumstance, but always joined at happy stands of joyous consequence.

  We have reached another junction; the sign says you must go, until the paths converge at a happy stand where the pickens are good we know.

  Leo

  In the letter, the message was more of the same. Their duty as officers, wrote Boelens, was of paramount importance. Personal loyalties and relationships must be set aside for the good of the nation. “His duty was to stay and complete the airstrip,” Grashio said. “Mine was to go.” But for what reason, Grashio could not immediately understand.

  CHAPTER 19

  Greater Love

  Hath No Man

  I kneel to thee and hail thee as my Lord.

  From such a God as thee I ask not life …

  I ask but strength to ride the wave of fate …

  FRIDAY, OCTOBER 8–THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 1943

  Washington, District of Columbia

  The arrival of autumn brought cooler temperatures, but America’s emotional furnace needed little stoking. In early October, the government released the translation of a diary found on a dead Japanese soldier in New Guinea that poetically described the beheading of an Allied airman. Addressing an inflamed nation, the New York Times editorialized that the diary exposed “the real nature of our Asiatic enemy,” one of “primitive blood lust and brutal butchery.”

  Writing a secret memorandum for Secretary of War Henry Stimson on October 8, General George Marshall sensed the change in the barometer of public opinion. The pressure in Washington was increasing with the release of each atrocity story. Believing that it was only a matter of when, n
ot if, the public heard the Dyess story, Marshall forecast a tempest. He wanted Stimson to be prepared for the worst, but also to prepare to harness and manage the public fury.

  The problem is exceedingly complex and of course requires the most careful handling both in relation to our actions at the present time and as to future developments. The storm of bitterness which will arise, once the public is aware of the brutalities and savagery displayed by the Japanese towards our prisoners, should be directed along carefully thought out lines rather than left to dissipate itself in a lurid press and unpredictable reactions…. I don’t want to burden you unnecessarily in this matter, but you have had it somewhat in hand and it pertains to the highest governmental policy.

  That policy greeted Sam Grashio when he reached Hamilton Field in mid-October. “Here, as in Australia, I was reminded repeatedly that my past was a military secret, that I was not to discuss life in prison camps with anyone,” Grashio remembered. “At the moment I thought this merely silly. Within a few days, the gag was to be exceedingly irksome.”

  Grashio proceeded to Washington, stopping briefly in Chicago at the request of Don Maxwell to sign a waiver that would ensure the Tribune’s monopoly on the Dyess story. For his signature, Grashio was “rewarded with the princely sum of $100.” In Washington, Grashio found the exchange even less lucrative. The functionaries at the Pentagon and State Department were “patronizing” and unsympathetic: “To me, they seemed unreasonable, even inhuman; preoccupied with Europe when American soldiers were starving, rotting and dying in squalid prison camps; far too concerned about the reactions of the Japanese and too little about the fate of Americans abroad and the anxieties of their loved ones at home.” Grashio could not comprehend the foot-dragging in an otherwise bustling capital. “In my opinion,” he said in his official statement, “at this time there is approximately 25% of the original Americans taken in the Philippines still alive and in another six months to a year, if something is not done to improve their diet and medical care, very few will be living to tell their experiences.”