Escape from Davao
Page 56
Wyoming, University of, 51
Wyoming, USS, 47
Yap, Fely, see Campo, Fely
Yashu Maru, 343
YMCA, 335
Yuki, Kempei, 141, 179, 222, 352
Zambales Mountains, 27, 73
Zamboanga Province, 261, 263–70, 343
Zanuck, Darryl, 340, 374n
Zapanta, Vicente, 241, 247, 248
Zeros, 19, 20
The island of Corregidor in Manila Bay was home to nearly 15,000 American and Filipino troops before its surrender to Japanese forces on May 6, 1942.
This cartoon appeared in the Chicago Tribune in late January 1944, upon the long-awaited release of the Dyess Story.
MacArthur Memorial Archives
Kyle Richards
Dr. Stewart Shofner
First Lt. Austin “Shifty” Shofner on Corregidor in early 1942.
Thirty-six-year-old Lt. Commander Melvyn H. McCoy was the oldest as well as the highest-ranking member of the escape party.
Then-Major William Edwin Dyess just months before his tragic death on December 23, 1943.
Dyess Air force Base
Kyle Richards
Nearly 1,000 American prisoners of war were crammed aboard the Erie Maru, a decrepit, coal-burning 7,000-ton merchant vessel, for the voyage from Manila to Mindanao.
The main gate at the Davao Penal Colony, through which nearly 2,000 American prisoners of war entered the camp in the fall of 1942, would be the escapees’ first barrier to freedom.
Australian War Memorial
Carl Nordin
The American POWs in Dapecol were housed according to rank in these long, poorly maintained, barnlike barracks.
MacArthur Memorial Archives
The escapees’ Filipino allies: (from left to right) Juan Acenas, assistant superintendent of the Davao Penal Colony; Mrs. Candido Abrina; Candido “Pop” Abrina, raconteur and Dapecol agricultural supervisor, 1946.
Claro Laureta, the diminutive, yet dynamic commander of the 107th Infantry Division, as well as all guerrilla forces in the Davao area, provided aid and assistance to the escapees following their breakout from Dapecol.
National Archives
Kyle Richards
Lt. Commander Charles “Chick” Parsons (left), the man described by General Douglas MacArthur as “the bravest man I know,” and Colonel Wendell Fertig, leader of the Mindanao guerrillas.
The USS Trout, the submarine that extracted the first group of escaped POWs from Mindanao on July 9, 1943, had a unique history of special missions.
MacArthur Memorial Archives
U.S. Navy Submarine Force Museum
From left to right, Major Ed Dyess, Lt. Cmdr. Melvyn McCoy, General Douglas MacArthur, and Major Stephen Mellnik conversing in MacArthur’s office in the A.M.P. Building in Brisbane, Australia, on July 30, 1943.
On August 12, 1943, Ed Dyess sent a cryptic telegram alerting his wife, Marajen, that he would be returning home to the United States.
Texas Tech University
MacArthur Memorial Archives
The Marshall Family
Five members of the escape party are reunited at the Marine Corps Barracks in Quantico, Virginia, in the summer of 1944: (from left to right) Major Michiel Dobervich, Lt. Col. Austin Shofner, Commander Melvyn McCoy, Major Jack Hawkins, and Major Samuel Grashio.
After the war, Robert Spielman returned to his home state of Texas with a lieutenant colonel’s oak leaves on his collar, and a wife and family, too.
The Spielman Family
Paul Marshall, an erstwhile enlisted man, returned to the United States at war’s end a decorated guerrilla commander and Army lieutenant colonel.
The Leatherneck Magazine, Pacific Edition
Mrs. Thelma Kost
U.S. Air Force Historical Research Agency, Maxwell Air force Base
Ed Dyess’s deposition would form the foundation of what the War Department would later call “the greatest story of the war in the Pacific.”
Lt. Leo Boelens, the master mechanic and the only escapee not to return to the United States, was killed on Mindanao in early 1944.