Belly of the Beast

by Judith L. Pearson

  “Probably nothing as wild as you’re used to in Shanghai. There’s usually a cockfight somewhere. Sabong, they call it here. It’s the national sport. I go to Duff’s just about every night—that’s a cabaret downtown owned by a Marine and his Filipino wife. The Rainbow Hotel and Garden’s pretty nice, too. They bill themselves as the only place in town with real entertainment.”

  So far, it sounded pretty good to Myers.

  “There’s a smoker held about once a month. Sometimes they’re stag and sometimes girls are invited.”

  “Smoker?” Myers knew all about cigarettes and smoking; after all, one of the crops they’d raised on the farm was tobacco. But how that related to whether or not women were involved was a mystery.

  “Yeah,” Tarpy answered him. “It’s a bunch of boxing matches between the ships. If you pay attention to the scuttlebutt about the guys fighting and you place your bets right, it’s a great way to pick up a couple bucks. And there’s always a good picture showing at the receiving station here at the hospital, or over at the Marine barracks. I think right now something with Abbott and Costello is playing at one of them.”

  Tarpy tipped back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. “Yep, most of the time life’s pretty good around here.”

  Myers had to agree that it did indeed sound like the good life. And the grounds of Canacao hospital couldn’t have been more beautiful. Set on Canacao Bay, the thirty-six-acre grounds were filled with stately shade trees, flowering shrubs, and colorful plants. Running along the sea wall adjacent to the bay, lamps resembling Japanese stone temple lanterns provided lighting at night.

  Tarpy told Myers that the buildings were fireproof and earthquake-proof. The wards were broad, airy, and cool as they were amply shaded and ventilated. Besides the administration offices, there were treatment rooms for different specialties, laboratories, clinics, and x-ray and dental offices. The third floor of the main building was devoted entirely to surgery, with a modern elevator conveying patients to the floor.

  “The hospital’s equipped to handle about three hundred patients. We got ten doctors and two dentists and, counting you and me, there’s about a hundred corpsmen. Guess that’s about it.”

  Not bad duty at all, Myers thought.

  As had been the case when Myers arrived in Hawaii and China, he had very little advance knowledge about the Philippine Islands. The seven thousand islands cover an area slightly larger than the state of Arizona, with the majority of the population on the eleven largest islands. The capital city, Manila, was five thousand miles from Pearl Harbor in Hawaii and seven thousand from San Francisco. But it was only eighteen hundred miles from Tokyo.

  The Philippines have been described as the rainbow’s end for weary travelers, a mecca of ocean breezes, luscious fruits, and glorious sunsets. The countryside was rich with pastoral beauty and peasant charm, while Manila was a blend of cosmopolitan metropolis and country life rooted in centuries past. Manila boasted an air-cooled, luxury resort, the Manila Hotel, and the Santo Tomas University, an institution of higher learning older than Harvard. These landmarks lived alongside the Intramuros, or Walled City, one of the most graceful and extensive samples of medieval architecture in the Far East.

  The Pasig River ran through the heart of Manila, where it wasn’t unusual to see liners and freighters cruising next to local cascos, bangkas, and other fishing boats. Poor Filipino women beat clothing on rocks at the dirty river’s edge. Running along the oceanfront, mansion-lined, tree-shaded Dewey Avenue could easily be mistaken for a similar street on Miami’s or Chicago’s Gold Coasts. There was, however, one difference: Dewey Avenue, just like all the other streets in Manila, was shared between motorcars and horse-drawn carromata carts.

  Until the United States occupied the Philippines, Manila’s coastal area was a low-tide mud flat. Beginning in the early 1900s, the Army Corps of Engineers created land where none had been. Jutting out from the new land, they built Pier 7, which became the most noticeable landmark on the Manila Bay waterfront. Cruise ships from ports of call around the world arrived daily at the pier, delivering wealthy passengers eager to soak up everything the alluring tropical city had to offer. Manila was clearly the Far East’s most American-like city.

  The United States had maintained military forces on the Philippines since 1898, when Commodore George Dewey ended Spanish domination of the islands by sinking the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay. When the Washington Naval Treaty was signed in 1922, the Japanese agreed to limit its shipbuilding if the U.S. would agree to stop construction of any new fortifications in its Pacific possessions, which included the Philippines. Therefore, only the islands near the entrance to Manila Bay, most notably Corregidor, were well protected. The same act granted the islands commonwealth status in 1935, with independence scheduled for 1946.

  As soon as it received commonwealth status, the National Assembly passed the Philippines National Defense Act, a plan for self-defense that included a small, ten-thousand-man force, supplemented by a four hundred thousand reserve. This reserve was thought to be large enough to discourage any invasion plans by foreign nations.

  General Douglas MacArthur summed up the importance of the islands’ defense in a 1935 speech: “I believe the future security of the Philippines is of major importance to the interests of the United States in the Far East…. Let us be prepared lest we, too, perish.”

  MacArthur had been advising the commonwealth on defense matters and came out of retirement in 1937 to help them organize their forces. But creating an army and training the reserves was an undertaking of enormous proportions. Due to his minuscule budget, he faced chronic shortages in weapons, transportation, communications, housing, and uniforms. On top of that, the islands’ linguistic diversity created serious communication problems within the units as officers, soldiers, and new recruits often did not speak the same language. In addition to the new force, the United States Army also maintained regular units on the islands. About half of the 22,532 regulars included Philippine scouts.

  MacArthur was nearly alone in the belief that losing the Philippines would deal a critical blow to the U.S. on many fronts. Finally tiring of the uphill battle, MacArthur retired from the service. But when the Japanese announced their plan for a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere in mid-1941, Roosevelt called MacArthur back to active duty.

  Some months previously, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff had devised a basic defense for the Philippines, which they presented to MacArthur upon his return. If the islands were attacked, War Plan ORANGE, as it was called, proposed limited defense of Manila Bay and other critical adjacent areas, those already reinforced. Meanwhile, the Army garrison was expected to withdraw to the Bataan Peninsula to the west of Manila and to the tiny island of Corregidor off its shore, which measured only seven thousand yards long by twenty-five hundred yards wide at its widest point. There, they would hold out as long as they could until reinforcements could be dispatched. American naval officials believed that it would take at least two years to build up a sufficient relief force.

  The bottom line, the U.S. military concluded, was that in the event of a declaration of war, America should commit the majority of her resources where they would do the most good. A “defeat Germany first” strategy was adopted, because it was assumed that Europe was a more threatened theater. Even if it meant sacrificing the Philippine Islands and the Americans living there.

  For his part, MacArthur strongly opposed War Plan ORANGE, suggesting the U.S. instead commit itself to building a powerful force in the Philippines. When Chief of Staff George C. Marshall finally gave his stamp of approval to MacArthur’s plan for reinforcing and equipping the Philippine forces, the latter estimated that it could all be in place by April of 1942. Even as early as December 1, 1941, things had begun to improve in the islands, militarily speaking. The fighting force stood at 31,095 men, the most recent arrivals bringing with them 108 M3 tanks.

  To their discredit, however, the War Depart
ment did not even consider the difficulty in maintaining such a large force in the Pacific. And the logistics of transporting War Plan ORANGE reinforcements were not feasible given the ships’ current schedules and limited space. But no one thought to make any changes.

  Meanwhile, MacArthur continued to organize his command into four separate forces. The North Luzon Force, the most strategically important, included the Bataan peninsula and all of northern Luzon. This he placed under the leadership of General Jonathan Wainwright. A second force called South Luzon was commanded by Brigadier General George Parker, Jr., and stretched east and south of Manila. The Visayan-Mindanao Force was led by Brigadier General William Sharp and covered the two islands of the same names. The last group, the Reserve Force, was stationed just north of Manila and was under MacArthur’s direct command.

  Ironically, the Philippines now had the largest concentration of aircraft outside of the continental United States, the only fact making a prolonged defense of the islands even remotely thinkable. One hundred and seven P-40 fighters and thirty-five B-17 Flying Fortress bombers stood ready for action. Yet missing from the equation were maintenance and repair facilities and enough space to spread the aircraft out to protect them from sabotage or attack.

  December 1, 1941, felt no more like autumn than barbed wire feels like lamb’s wool. Although the monsoon season was drawing to a close, the sticky tropical heat made morning drills highly unpleasant. Later that day, when Myers and Tarpy arrived at the hospital, the patients grumbled about the same thing, saying that if the mosquitoes didn’t kill them, the heat surely would.

  “I heard through the grapevine that the powers in Washington have ordered everybody in Shanghai to ship out,” Tarpy announced one morning as he and Myers were making their rounds, checking on patients.

  “Yeah, I heard the same thing,” Myers answered him. “You must have been talking to Simpson up at the mess. So what d’ya think that means?”

  “I’ll tell you what it means,” the guy with the broken leg in bed sixteen piped up. “It means that we better get our asses in gear and prepare for an attack. Nothin’ works right around here and everything’s covered with an inch of mildew. Have you seen the weapons? Enfield and Springfield 1903 rifles, hand-me-downs from the last war, maybe the Civil War. And there’s not enough ammunition to hold any kind of decent training. Hell, even the rations are old. I once bit into a D ration full of worms.”

  “You’re nuts!” This came from Charles, a cook who had nearly sliced off his thumb butchering a chicken the night before. “There ain’t gonna be a war with Japan. Take a look at your basic Jap. He’s scrawny, can’t see worth a damn, and too busy bowing all over the place to pull a trigger. If you’re scared of somebody like that, you’re just plain yellow!”

  “Who’s yellow?” the man with the broken leg challenged.

  “You are, you chicken shit,” the cook shot back.

  “Why, I oughta—”

  “Knock it off, you guys,” Myers told them. Neither of them was in any condition to fight the other, let alone the Japs.

  “Yeah, well, just the same,” the broken leg continued, “those little bastards have something up their sleeve. I’ve heard talk from guys in the Signal Corps. Something’s brewing.”

  The cook snorted.

  The quiet voice of a warrant officer from several beds down spoke up. “Any you guys ever hear of a rear admiral by the name of Yarnell?” Nobody answered out loud, but all of the men within earshot thought a minute and then shook their heads.

  “Well, one Sunday morning about eight or nine years ago, he wanted to test the idea of a surprise attack using aircraft carriers. He sent planes from his ship, the Saratoga, and planes from the Lexington flying into Pearl Harbor on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, just as neat as you please. Nobody paid any attention. Half the men were still in their bunks. He could have wiped out the entire Pacific Fleet if he’d been an enemy.

  “Now, don’t you think if I heard that story, some Jap probably heard it, too? We lose the Pacific Fleet and we lose the Philippines. That means you and me and everybody else on these islands are left here hanging out to dry. Don’t count the Japs out, gentlemen. The biggest disservice we can do to ourselves is not be prepared.”

  The words hung in the hospital ward like a heavy cloud. Some of the patients waved the warrant officer off, going back to whatever had occupied their minds previously. Myers fell quiet, thinking about what he’d just heard. A little while later, he called down to the other end of the ward.

  “Hey, Tarpy. We got forty-eight comin’ to us in a couple days. How about we get out of this heat and head up north to that place you’re always talking about? If the Japs are gonna attack soon, I want to get as much sightseeing done as I can.”

  All around him, the patients in the ward protested the unfairness of the healthy guys getting all the breaks.

  About a hundred and fifty miles north of Manila lay the Philippines’ summer capital, Baguio. Nestled on a small plateau, a mile high in cloud-capped mountains, it was the kind of place where a fire felt good after sundown even in the summertime. The well-to-do made the trip by plane, train, or used their own motorcars. Most servicemen like Myers and Tarpy made the trip by bus, jostling along with the native Filipinos: families, farmers, and the elderly.

  The bus zigzagged its way up into the mountains, past green rice fields, primitive palm-leaf huts, and sugar mills. One might mistake the trip for a journey through the Alps or the mountains of Colorado, except for the fact that the vegetation was punctuated with brilliant bougainvillea vines, while carabao, the local beasts of burden, wallowed in every mud puddle large enough to hold them.

  A medley of languages floated through the bus: English, Spanish, and Tagalog, the Philippines’ unofficial language. The bus continued past the military academy, a Pacific West Point where the Philippine Scouts trained. Finally, the town of Baguio sprawled before them, with homes and businesses tucked among the fragrant pines. It wasn’t hard to understand why even the president of the Philippine Commonwealth had a summer home in this cool oasis.

  Unlike the hustle and bustle of Manila, life in Baguio moved at a more leisurely pace. But that wasn’t to say it had nothing to offer. Quite the contrary: Baguio had every modern convenience desired by tourists, including good hotels, natural hot springs, golf courses, and many social opportunities.

  It was Sunday when Myers and Tarpy made the trip, and that meant market day. Since the town was the gateway to the Mountain Province, the province’s native tribes brought in their goods to sell. This included a former headhunting tribe, the Igorots, who had recently become famous for their woodcarving. Locally grown fruits and vegetables were abundant, as were livestock and baked goods.

  Several venders were selling the Filipino delicacy balot. Myers could see that it was an egg of some sort, but refused Tarpy’s enticement to try one until he knew what kind of egg it was. Tarpy finally explained that it was a duck egg. Myers had eaten duck eggs before. Not like this, Tarpy assured him. Just before the duck is ready to hatch, the Filipinos hard-boil the egg, cooking the baby duck inside. The big joke among American servicemen was that one could never be sure which end to begin eating so as to avoid biting into the duck’s ass.

  The two men spent the evening hours in a little cabaret, downing San Miguel beer. When the bar closed, they found a protected spot underneath a small grove of pine trees and slept off the beers’ effect. They awoke the next morning, ate a hearty breakfast, and caught a bus back to Manila. By 0800 hours the next morning, they were back on duty at the hospital.

  On December 5, Tarpy got word that he’d been promoted to pharmacist’s mate third class. Myers’ promotion to the same rank had come through four days earlier. The two men celebrated the next night in Manila at their favorite cabaret, Duff’s. They discussed profound issues with great sincerity.

  “How come if it’s December 6 in Manila, it’s only December 5 in Hawaii?” Tarpy asked Myers.r />
  “Because we crossed the International Date Line coming over here,” Myers answered him.

  “What did it look like? Did you see it?” A trickle of beer ran down Tarpy’s chin from his last swig.

  “I’m not sure,” Myers said thoughtfully. “But I’m pretty sure I saw a sign on a buoy that said ‘Welcome to tomorrow!’”

  They both broke into guffaws and moved to a new topic: air raids.

  “You got any idea what we’re supposed to do if the Japs attack?” Myers asked.

  “Yeah, I saw something a couple months back,” Tarpy answered. “I think we’re supposed to stay with whatever patients we’re assigned to and then head for shelter under the building.”

  “How do we get the patients out of the wards?”

  “I dunno,” Tarpy said with a shrug. “I think we’re supposed to carry them on their mattresses and get the ambulatory patients to help.”

  Myers shook his head. “Doesn’t sound like a great plan. And it sure won’t work very quick.”

  Tarpy shrugged again. “I guess it’s the best idea they’ve got.”

  The following morning, Sunday, December 7, Tarpy awoke with a toothache. He said he didn’t think he needed anything more than a warm compress. Myers told him he was crazy and that a bad tooth could really mess a guy up, but Tarpy ignored him and spent the day in pain. The morning sun rose resplendently over the Philippines on December 8. Tarpy was in real misery. He hadn’t slept much and his face was swollen to such an extreme that it looked as though he had stuffed a tomato in his cheek. He had been granted sick leave and was still lying in his cot when a petty officer rushed in, grabbed the guy sleeping on the cot next to Tarpy, and shook him roughly.

  “What, honey?” the guy slurred. “I didn’t do nothin’.”

  “Wake up, you stupid fool! The Japs have just bombed Pearl Harbor. Get up, grab a weapon. Get ready.”