Conduct Under Fire

by John A. Glusman

  The Allied chief prosecutor was Joseph Keenan, who declared: “In this very courtroom will be made manifest to the Japanese people themselves the elements of a fair trial which, we dare say, perhaps they may not have enjoyed in the fullness—in all of their past history.” To which Senator Robert A. Taft countered: “The trial of the vanquished by the victors cannot be impartial no matter how it is hedged about with the forms of justice.”

  Twenty-eight of Japan’s political and military leaders designated Class A criminals were named in the fifty-five-count indictment of April 29, 1946, and found guilty of a “criminal conspiracy to wage wars of aggression.” Some 5,100 Japanese were accused of Class B and Class C war crimes.

  General Yamashita Tomoyuki, the “Tiger of Malaya” and commander of all Japanese forces in the Philippines; General Homma Masaharu, whose troops brutalized American and Filipino POWs on the infamous Bataan Death March; and General Kou Shiyoku, commandant of the prisoner of war camps in the Philippines, were swiftly tried by the five-man U.S. Military Commission in Manila and executed. General Curtis LeMay himself admitted to Robert McNamara that “if we’d lost the war, we’d all have been prosecuted as war criminals.”

  Habe Toshitarō of Tsumori POW Camp was sentenced to eight years’ hard labor. Bandō Bunhachi of Ichioka (“All men die, jōtō [good]! All men die!”) was sentenced to six years of hard labor. His sidekick, Katō Masayoshi, faced twenty-five years of hard labor. Nosu Shōichi, the “Mad Butcher,” was never brought to trial, Lieutenant David Hochman believed, for reason of insanity due to tertiary syphilis. Colonel Murata received a lifetime of hard labor. Uchiyama Eitarō, Yamanaka Norio, Ono Buicho, Matsumori Hideo, Ogiya Yorio, Nakamichi Kanji, and Kunitake Michio, all of whom were tried in connection with the execution of Sergeant Algy S. Augunus and 2nd Lieutenant Robert W. Nelson, received sentences ranging from three years to thirty years of hard labor, while death by hanging was the punishment meted out to Ōtahara Kiyotomi, the former head of the Judicial Section of the Fifteenth Area Army. Wada Shsuke, the interpreter aboard the Oryoku Maru, stared at a lifetime of hard labor. His superior, Toshino Junsaburō, was executed on August 18, 1948, as was “Air Raid” Ihara. The charges against Fukuyama Tsuyoshi, commanding officer of the Harukaze, and Ueyanagi Isamu, his executive officer, for refusing to rescue POWs from the sinking Arisan Maru, were dropped “in view of the tactical situation, i.e., the close proximity of hostile forces.” The case was closed.

  Ōhashi Kazuko knew that her father’s incarceration must have something to do with the treatment of Allied prisoners of war. One former POW, Corporal Foster H. Templon of the 24th Pursuit Group, had already given testimony against Ōhashi for purloining Red Cross parcels “for his own use” and that of his staff at the Kōbe POW Hospital.

  Months passed. His cell was small, furnished with a tatami mat, table, electric lamp, and toilet. Inmates were responsible for keeping their quarters clean and were assigned prison duties. There were gardens outside, a library inside, and a doctor available twenty-four hours a day. The practice of religion was encouraged. A Japanese priest, Dr. Hanayama Shinshō, presided over a separate Buddhist altar. But while living conditions at Sugamo had improved from the days when it held political prisoners, security had also been tightened. A ten-foot-high barbed-wire fence was erected around a newly created outer compound, not so much to prevent escapes as to deter cold and hungry Japanese citizens from stealing food and fuel from the Americans.

  Ōhashi lost weight. He grew a thin, scraggly beard. Depressed, he suffered from diarrhea and had trouble sleeping. Yasuko was allowed to bring him books to read, most of which were of a religious nature. In February 1946 Kazuko consulted a Japanese lawyer who told her, “They are very strict.... But if he has done nothing wrong you can only wait and believe that he will be declared innocent.”

  Ohashi met Tōjō in Sugamo, but the former prime minister preferred fraternizing with the guards rather than with his fellow prisoners. The Japanese doctor turned to Buddhist writings for solace. He copied numerous sutras and kept a diary. “To that higher dignity which alone benefits the sacred purpose we are about to serve,” he wrote in English on the first page. He also tried his hand at haiku:The moon is bright

  Brilliant sunset-burned clouds

  Darken its light.

  His family didn’t know what they could do to help him, but Ōhashi thought of one thing: the letter the POW doctors had written on June 17, 1945, expressing “nothing but praise and thanks for the sincere and untiring efforts which were made by the Nipponese Hospital and Medical Authorities to feed and house us, and to make the sick and injured comfortable.”

  On April 27, 1946, a guard approached Ōhashi and spoke the words he had been waiting months to hear: “You may go home.”

  The good doctor bowed, palms pressed together.

  “Is it true?” he asked. “I cannot believe it.”

  The guard showed him his discharge papers. Ōhashi Hyōjirō was no longer a suspected war criminal. He was to be released and returned to his former status. He was free.

  Nogi Naraji, the former director of the hospital at Bilibid Prison, was not so lucky. He was also far from blameless. Technically Nogi had been in charge of all medical units in the prisoner of war camps throughout the Philippines from November 11, 1942, until the Japanese surrendered the archipelago. He had watched 100 men die of diphtheria at Bilibid before administering antitoxin. At Santo Tomás he had once insisted that the internee medical staff delete the words “malnutrition” and “starvation” from eight death certificates because they reflected unfairly on the Japanese administration. “World conditions,” he had asserted, “were such that everybody was suffering from a shortage of food.” He had authorized the dispatch of POWs on the Oryoku Maru when many of them were clearly unfit for the voyage and had selected the drugs and medical supplies that were to accompany them, even though this was the responsibility of the shipping transport unit.

  But Nogi’s sentence of twenty-five years at hard labor for failing to provide proper food, clothing, housing, and medical care to POWs, when food and housing were the responsibility of the supply officer, struck dozens of ex-POWs as unfair. Lieutenant Colonel Walter Waterous was a key witness against him. Lieutenant Colonel Jack Schwartz, an Oryoku Maru survivor, “chided” Waterous for his testimony and hoped he would recant. Nogi’s defense attorney, Ellis Filene, launched a campaign to free him and collected statements and affidavits on his behalf from Schwartz, Manila schoolteacher Nancy Belle Norton, 4th Marine Ted Williams, and Chaplain Perry O. Wilcox of Bilibid, among others, which he submitted to GHQ. Nogi was freed after serving nine years of his twenty-five-year sentence.

  Meanwhile, U.S. Army sergeant John David Provoo was tried and found guilty of four acts of treason, which included contributing to the death of Captain Burton C. Thompson on Corregidor. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the conviction on the grounds that Provoo—also known as Nichijo Shaka—had been denied the right to a speedy trial.

  In January 1957, four years after Provoo’s conviction, Ohashi Hyōjirō died of cancer. He never had a chance to entertain Fred Berley in Wakayama, and he never had a chance to visit America. By December 1958 all of Japan’s convicted war criminals were pardoned by the United States, and the gates of Sugamo Prison were closed forever. But the doors of Juganji Temple, where the remains of Allied POWs are kept along with hundreds of family letters, photographs, and mementos, are still open.

  “Each day,” Konishi Yukio said to me from the peaceful shrine on Mt. Ikoma that overlooks Ōsaka, “I pray that this tragedy is not repeated.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Conduct Under Fire originated as an essay I wrote for the late Staige Blackford at the Virginia Quarterly Review. An article on Corregidor for Sheila Glaser, then at Travel + Leisure, enabled me to visit the Philippines with my father in 2001. My agent, David Black, encouraged me to extend my journey into a book, for which I will always be thankful.

  Michael and Beth Norman
, coauthors of the forthcoming history of the Bataan Death March, Tears in the Darkness, were selfless supporters of this project from the beginning and provided essential advice for research both in the United States and in the Philippines. Frank Gibney of the Pacific Basin Institute kindly put me in touch, via Hijino Shigeki, with Ishii Shinpei, who handled my Japanese research. Shinpei tracked down original documents, key interview subjects, and the locations of many of the Japanese POW camps described herein, and he introduced me to a team of sleuths dedicated to documenting the experience of Allied POWs in the Pacific War, the POW Research Network in Japan. John Dower was an early advocate and rightly recommended John Junkerman as a translator of Japanese texts.

  My gratitude to the following archivists and academics, writers and researchers: Jan K. Herman, historian of the Navy Medical Department at the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery in Washington, D.C., was generous with BUMED’s historical materials, read the manuscript, and made many useful suggestions; Kenneth Schlesinger and Barry Zerby of the Modern Military Records Branch of the National Archives conscientiously pursued arcane document requests; Richard Long, the retired curator and historian of the Marine Corps History and Museums Division, unearthed useful records of the 4th Marines; Dr. Richard J. Sommers of the Military History Institute steered me to fascinating U.S. Army and ATIS reports; Ricardo Trota Jose, historian at the University of the Philippines, was a gracious host in Quezon City, and an invaluable reader of the manuscript, which benefited greatly from his review; Andrew Miller, historian of the American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor, kindly vetted sections on Bataan, Corregidor, and Cabanatuan; Roger Mansell proved a valuable critic and a fount of information on POWs in the Far East with a Web site (www.mansell.com) as impressive as Sallyann Wagoner’s for the 73rd Bomb Wing (home.att.net/~sallyann2/ 73bomb-wing-data.html); Robert J. Hanyok, senior historian at the National Security Agency Center for Cryptologic History, hunted down guerrilla messages between the Philippines and Australia and explained the intricacies of their radio networks on Luzon and Mindanao; Rear Admiral Donald Showers patiently described for me the daily activities of FRUPAC, FRUMEL, and the role of ULTRA intelligence; Gregory F. Michno, author of the definitive Death on the Hellships, shared radio intercepts and notes from the Submarine Force Library in Groton, Connecticut; Colonel Rafael Estrada of the Filipino Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor was our distinguished guide to the old Cavite Navy Yard and Bilibid Prison; Edna Binkowski helped locate the old navy tunnels in Mariveles and Hospital No. 1 on Bataan; and Ibuki Yuka, Nagasawa Nori, Hirata Noriko, and Miyazaki Shunya found original documents, oral testimony, and photographs pertaining to wartime Kōbe and Ōsaka. Toru Fukubayashi, a founding member of the POW Research Network in Japan, along with Utsumi Aiko and Sasamoto Takeo, uncovered crucial GHQ/SCAP documents on Ichioka, Tsumori, and Wakayama.

  My appreciation extends to Kathy Lloyd of the Washington Navy Yard; Archie Difante of Maxwell Air Force Base; James Zobel of the MacArthur Memorial Archive; Fabrizio Bensi of the Historical Archives Unit of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva; Tsunemoto Hajime of the Ōsaka International Peace Center; Dr. Claire Panosian, professor of medicine and infectious diseases at the UCLA Medical Center; Dr. Andrew Spielman, professor of tropical public health at Harvard University’s School of Public Health; Dr. Harvey N. Himel of the William Randolph Hearst Burn Center at New York Presbyterian Hospital; and Linda Goetz Holmes, author of Unjust Enrichment.

  Karen Broderick performed valuable photo research. Anne Fadiman kindly granted permission on behalf of the estate of Annalee Jacoby Fadiman for the use of Melville Jacoby’s haunting wartime photographs of Bataan and Corregidor in the Time, Inc., Picture Collection. Michael Emmerich was a conscientious second reader for Japanese style, usage, and consistency. Karen Coeman graciously translated Dutch military records for me, and Deanna Heikkinen, correspondence in Spanish.

  Joe Vater welcomed me into the veterans’ organization, the American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor, whose valiant members could not have been more forthcoming with their stories, as were the 4th Marines, thanks to Martin Christie. Especial thanks to Ted Williams for his detailed recollections of Cavite and Mariveles; Jimmy Carrington for his descriptions of ELGFA guerrilla activities; Philip Brodsky for his remarkable account of the Arisan Maru sinking; and John Cook, John Kidd, Dr. David Hochman, and Duane Heisinger for sharing unique manuscript and research materials. Ed Keyser invited me to the annual reunion of the 73rd Bomb Wing Association, where I was introduced to the world of the B-29 bomber and the men who flew their missions over Japan. June Faubion of the Defenders of Wake, Guam, and Cavite directed me to important sources of information on Tsumori POW Camp.

  Conduct Under Fire could not have been written without the cooperation of numerous World War II ex-POWs, veterans, and their families, who opened their lives to me in spite of memories that were at times difficult to share. Foremost among them are Fred and Camille Berley; Lucille Ferguson and Jane Klecan, the widow and sister of George Ferguson, respectively; the late John Bookman and his son, Richard, and daughter, Ann; Gerald Blank, the widower of the late Laura Reade; Ali Arnold-Brown and the late Christopher Page, daughter and son of the late John Allison Page; Margaret Mace, daughter of the late John Akeroyd; Duane A. Smith, son of the late Stanley L. Smith; Jennifer Eastberg, daughter of the late Ralph Hibbs; Dale Wilber, whose father, the late Avery Wilber, was an Arisan Maru survivor; Bill Bowen, whose father perished on the Arisan Maru; Keeney Hayes, granddaughter of Thomas Hirst Hayes, who unhesitatingly offered information that proved essential to my understanding of the medical activities of the 4th Marines on Bataan and Corregidor; Ohashi Yoshihisa and his family for opening up the world of Ohashi Hyōjirō for me and allowing me to touch a piece of history that I assumed had vanished long ago; and of course, my mother, Louise, my father, Murray, and my aunt, Estelle.

  The late Roger Straus, renowned publisher, colleague, inspiration, and friend, never missed an opportunity to remind me that editors are supposed to edit, not write, all the while wholeheartedly endorsing this project. Jonathan Galassi, a brilliant publisher, editor, translator, and poet in his own right, understands what it takes to write a book while working full time, and he couldn’t have been more accommodating. My associate, Aodaoin Ofloinn, ran my office effortlessly in both my absence and my presence and was an unflagging source of encouragement and help. Steve Brown offered book-saving technical support with dead-pan panache. Dear friends Sarah and Avo Reid were warm hosts to numerous research trips of mine to Washington, D.C. Kathryn Court is one of the great editors in the world of publishing, and it is a privilege to be published by her and her talented colleagues in the Penguin Group. Ali Bothwell Mancini was a rigorous editor, offered many valuable suggestions, and smoothly shepherded the book through production.

  Lastly, I would like to thank my wife, Emily, for her unwavering support, for assuming the lion’s share of family responsibilities while I was holed up writing or traveling for research, and for still being able to toss together a gourmet dinner late at night and after a long day at the office, only to rise early the next morning to tackle a job far more demanding than mine.

  To all of you, my deepest thanks.

  NOTES

  Some abbreviations frequently used in the Notes and Bibliography:

  Prologue

  1 With the fall: James H. Belote and William M. Belote, Corregidor: The Saga of a Fortress (New York: Harper and Row, 1967), p. 75.

  2 Fifty million lives: I.C.B. Dear and M.R.D. Foot, eds., The Oxford Companion to World War II (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 291.

  2 2.35 million Japanese: ibid., p. 290.

  2 406,000 Americans: American Battle Monuments Commission, Washington, D.C.

  2 Between September 1940: Mark Jonathan Harris, Franklin D. Mitchell, and Steven J. Schecter, The Home Front: America During World War II (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1984), p. 46.

  2 Nearly 2 million American women: Dav
id M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 778.

  2 59,000 women joined: Judith A. Bellafaire, “The Army Nurse Corps in World War II,” U.S. Army Center of Military History.

  2 Some 56,000 physicians: Albert E. Cowdrey, Fighting for Life: American Military Medicine in World War II (New York: Free Press, 1994), p. 101.

  2 Mobile Army Surgical Hospital: The Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, or MASH, was added to the U.S. Army Medical Service Corps in 1948. See Richard V. N. Ginn, The History of the U.S. Army Medical Service Corps (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Surgeon General and U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1997), p. 200.

  2 “Barbarians of the Pacific”: John H. Crider, “Unity Is Stressed,” New York Times, September 17, 1944, p.1.

  2 Such language bore: John W. Dower, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (New York: Pantheon, 1986), p. 221.

  3 As shidō minzoku: ibid., p. 203.

  3 “Eight Corners of the World Under One Roof ”: ibid., p. 274.

  3 The Pacific POW: E. Bartlett Kerr, Surrender and Survival: The Experience of American POWs in the Pacific, 1941-1945 (New York: William Morrow, 1985), p. 297.

  3 Of the approximately 193,000: Van Waterford, Prisoners of the Japanese in World War II: Statistical History, Personal Narratives and Memorials Concerning POWs in Camps and on Hellships, Civilian Internees, Asian Slave Laborers and Others Captured in the Pacific Theater ( Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1994), p. 146.