Belly of the Beast

by Judith L. Pearson

  Word was passed that a small contingency of Japanese troops was seen moving up Pennsylvania Avenue toward Santa Escolastica. The doctors had made sure that both red crosses and white flags were visible from all sides of the building. Once the Japanese troops had assembled in the front, the American doctor serving as commanding officer of the hospital went out to meet them, holding his hands high above his head. A brief discussion ensued and the doctor turned around and walked back into the building, followed by a portion of the Japanese contingency with their guns drawn. The moment in time that everyone had nervously contemplated had arrived.

  The first thing Myers thought when the Japanese entered the ward where he, Tarpy, and Tex waited was that these much-hated enemies looked more like kids playing soldier in grown-up uniforms. They were short, wiry men with stubby legs and shaved heads. Their pants were baggy, their leggings drooped, and their kits were askew. Contrary to the popular description bantered about throughout the military, not one of them wore glasses. Despite their appearance, Myers knew that these badly wrapped, little brown packages had been taught from birth the glory of dying for the Emperor. They would think nothing of killing, even if it meant they would be killed in the process. Such was the price of glory.

  The first group of soldiers who entered carried .25-caliber rifles with bayonets affixed to them. Following them was the American C.O. of the hospital and a group of three Japanese officers who strode in and surveyed the room with a haughty glare. Finally, one of them spoke.

  “Doctors?” He waved his hand toward the middle of the ward where Myers, Tarpy, and Tex stood with their hands on their heads.

  “Corpsmen,” the C.O. answered. The Japanese officer who had spoken English looked confused. “Helpers,” the C.O. tried again. The officer nodded his head in understanding and said something to his fellow officers. One of them barked out orders, and the soldiers began looking everywhere, rummaging through everything.

  “Keep calm, everybody,” the C.O. said. “They’ve done this in every room. Let them take whatever they want. Just be agreeable.”

  “No more talk,” the officer said sharply. He slapped the C.O. hard across the face.

  The Japanese moved systematically through the ward. They yanked open drawers and peered in cabinets, stuffing the medical supplies they found into duffel bags. They pulled cots apart and searched the patients, taking watches, rings, and anything else that appealed to them. A couple of times, they picked up pictures of wives and girlfriends and made comments in Japanese that caused their comrades to laugh vulgarly. The American to whom the picture belonged might bristle but would restrain himself when the C.O. said calmly, “Steady, man.”

  Finally, one of the soldiers got to the man clutching his newfound Bible. The soldier grabbed it, looked through it, and called to the English-speaking officer for advice. The officer walked up and thumbed through the book before speaking to the patient.

  “There are pictures?”

  “No, no pictures. It’s a Bible. Stories about our Buddha.” The patient pointed toward the ceiling.

  The officer grunted and said something to the soldier. After a bow of acknowledgment, the Bible was tossed back to the American patient. Once they had finished pulling things apart, the Japanese contingent left the ward, leaving a stunned silence in their wake.

  “That’s it?” Tex asked in disbelief. “Jesus Christ, what do we do now?”

  No answer came. After so many long days up to their elbows in blood and guts, after so much trepidation at who and what the enemy was, the scene was almost anti-climactic. Myers wiped the beads of sweat off his upper lip, and in an effort to ease the tension he announced, “Well, fellas, today’s my birthday. I guess maybe we could use this time to plan a party.”

  There were a few deep sighs and feeble chuckles. Tarpy looked at Myers and slapped him on the back. “Well, if that don’t beat all. Myers, I’ll bet you’re the first captured American to have a birthday. Maybe we should invite the Emperor and General Homma to your party, too.”

  “Only if I can have first crack at ’em, me being the honored guest and all.”

  As his troops officially installed themselves at Santa Escolastica and other facilities in Manila, General Homma had fulfilled the main mission that Imperial Japanese Headquarters had assigned him. He had even halted his troops ten miles outside of the city and ordered them to clean up and rest before officially taking Manila. It was Homma’s belief that clean and well rested troops also bore greater self-respect and self-restraint. This proved to be true, as the Japanese had entered the city in an orderly fashion with no looting or wanton destruction.

  Tokyo newspapers boasted that the entry of Japanese forces into Manila “not only finally seals the doom of the United States armed forces in Luzon, but in effect places the entire Philippines under Japanese military dominance.”

  It was true: Homma had taken most of the Philippine Islands away from the Americans. But the victory was incomplete—the Japanese couldn’t use Manila’s port facilities or Manila Bay. As long as Corregidor stood, with its big guns and accurate gunners, the enemy could not make free use of what was considered the most useful harbor in the western Pacific. The Japanese had to defeat the troops on Bataan and Corregidor in order to put those final pieces of the islands in Japanese possession.

  The battle of Bataan continued to rage furiously. The Americans fell back to their second line of defense in mid January and Homma called for MacArthur to surrender. MacArthur ignored him and told Washington he’d reached his final line. There would be no troop withdrawal, he told the President—the Japanese advance would halt there. The general also still believed there was aid coming to the Philippines, a thought that gave him even greater confidence that his troops could hold out.

  The beleaguered Americans on Bataan were hammered by the Japanese Army, their endurance stretched beyond human limits by a merciless blasting from the air and ground artilleries. But bombs and bullets were not the only enemy. They were now down to a thousand calories a day. Hunger became the great leveler and food was all the soldiers thought about. They ate dogs, iguanas, and snakes. When those became scarce, the men turned to carabao, mules, and ponies. They even tried monkey, although it was distressing when a head or a hand appeared on one’s plate.

  By mid February most soldiers suffered symptoms of malnutrition. Their legs felt watery and flashed with pains that would increase and then ebb. Rapid movement brought vertigo and increased heart rates. An hour after they ate breakfast, they suffered from fatigue. By midday, some would double up with intestinal pains. Their reduced stamina invited illnesses that they otherwise might have been able to throw off. Soon, the enemy was everything, everywhere.

  Beriberi, the first nutritional disease to appear, was soon followed by pellagra and scurvy. Mosquitoes carried malaria, which everyone had, some more severely than others. Dysentery, picked up from bacteria in the soil and water, caused them to suffer from diarrhea up to twenty times a day. Gas gangrene, another airborne bacterial disease, hit the injured men at an alarming rate. The bacilli thrived in the jungle soil and would infect penetrating wounds before they could be treated. Inability to detect the gangrene allowed the infected wounds to heal with the bacteria trapped inside. It killed the tissue around the wound and, if left unchecked, was a victim’s death sentence. Once diagnosed, the treatment of choice was to literally fillet the infected body part. The open incision exposed the bacteria to the air, thereby killing it. Later in the fighting, lack of time for the open-air treatment resulted in hasty amputations, often the only way to save a man’s life.

  The Japanese were well aware of the suffering occurring in the American camp. Their soldiers were sick, too, although they were continually resupplied with food, medical items, and ammunition. Homma’s chief of staff suggested that they simply allow disease and hunger to take their toll on the American and Filipino troops, eventually forcing them to surrender. But Homma wanted a definitive military solution
.

  As if armed with superhuman fortitude, the Americans and Filipinos fought on. One group intercepted a Japanese suicide squadron and chased them into dense brush. Some Japanese dug into foxholes while others tied themselves up in trees to serve as snipers. The Americans drew within 125 yards, and the captain gave the Japanese one last ultimatum: “Surrender, you bastards, we’ve got you surrounded!” An answer was shouted back in perfect English: “Nuts to you, Joe!” A short time later, the Americans had eliminated the suicide squadron and returned to their unit unscathed.

  Toward the end of March, Bataan began to die. And Corregidor was beginning to feel the effects of a relentless enemy. Out of the small contingency of aircraft usually on the island, only one P-40, beaten up and wired together, remained. President Roosevelt had ordered that MacArthur leave Corregidor for Australia. There he would reorganize the Allies to go on the offensive against the Japanese. The ship carrying MacArthur also carried mail from the defenders of Corregidor. All troops were ordered to write a letter home, but one man protested saying he had no one to write to. His petty officer told him he better write to someone or his captain would let him have it. So the man wrote a note to President Roosevelt. “Dear Mr. President, Please send us another P-40. The one we’ve got is all worn out.”

  For fifteen days after that, the Japanese struck with everything they had. The filth, disease, and death the Allied troops withstood rapidly turned young men old. The seventy-eight thousand who remained in the steaming jungles were well on their way to starvation long before they even thought about becoming prisoners of war.

  On April 3, Good Friday, Homma attacked the American lines for five consecutive hours with artillery fire and air power. Under MacArthur’s orders, General Wainwright, who, in the wake of MacArthur’s departure, was now in charge of the troops, ordered counterattacks. A general of lesser rank, General King, however, realized that prolonging the fight would do nothing more than increase the casualty rate. He disobeyed Wainwright’s orders and capitulated on April 9. General Homma had secured a victory, but it had cost him three thousand Japanese soldiers’ lives, with another five thousand wounded.

  Homma demanded that General Wainwright now surrender all of the Philippines, including the last stronghold, Corregidor. Wainwright refused and Homma was furious. He was already in disgrace in Japan because he was well past his predicted victory date of February. The Japanese commander was ultimately returned to Tokyo where he sat out the rest of the war. But not before he exacted some revenge.

  His first act was to proclaim that since Wainwright had refused a complete surrender, the Bataan defenders would not be treated as prisoners of war but rather as captives. This differentiation meant that their treatment was brutal at best, and more often ruthless and inhumane. On April 9, with reinforcements newly arrived from Japan, Homma took his second act of revenge. He began a bombardment of Corregidor of staggering proportions.

  For over twenty-seven days straight, one hundred pieces of heavy artillery shelled the Rock with an estimated 1.8 million pounds of shells, turning it into a desolate wasteland. The Japanese then began making landings on the northeast end of the island. They faced heavy resistance but were able to establish a beachhead that was soon reinforced with tanks and artillery.

  A radio operator hidden somewhere on Corregidor tapped out this final message on May 5:

  … Lots of heavy fighting going on. We may have to give up by noon. We don’t know yet. They are throwing men and shells at us and I feel sick at my stomach…. They bring in the wounded every minute. We will be waiting for you guys to help…. The jig is up. Everyone is bawling like a baby. They are piling dead and wounded in our tunnel. I know now how a mouse feels. Caught in a trap waiting for guys to come along and finish it up.

  The same night, a pilot arrived who had volunteered to make the last night flight to Corregidor with badly needed medical supplies. He urged Wainwright to leave with him. But the general replied, “I have been with my men from the start and if captured I will share their lot. We have been through so much together that my conscience would not let me leave before the final curtain….”

  Twenty-four hours later, on May 6, 1942, General Wainwright radioed Homma asking for terms, hoping to surrender only those forces on Corregidor. Homma refused the partial surrender and General Wainwright called for all troops in the Philippine archipelago to lay down their arms.

  While the fight for the Philippines raged on, the Japanese kept Myers and the other Americans at Santa Escolastica in Manila. The American sentries were removed from around the walls of the buildings and replaced with Japanese. All Americans were ordered to remain inside the compound and not loiter near the walls. Piece by piece, the Japanese confiscated radios, automobiles, and eventually every bit of medical equipment the Americans had risked their lives to pluck from the destruction of Canacao. They also took all of the quinine, used for the treatment of malaria.

  As the civilian patients became well enough to be released, the Japanese allowed them to return to their homes. Americans were moved to other locations, although no one within the hospital knew where they were taken. And while the enemy was not particularly friendly, neither was he the devil decked out in khaki that they had expected. Some semblance of military life was allowed to continue, including rank advancements, and Myers was made pharmacist’s mate second class.

  By May 9, the total patient census at Santa Escolastica was twenty, with the staff numbering about thirty. Everyone else had been taken into Japanese custody. At 0945 hours, two Japanese officers and a doctor arrived. They told the Americans that the hospital facility was too good for them and they were ordered to leave quickly.

  Myers heard the officers assure the American doctors that they were being moved to a well-equipped facility, but nothing could have been further from the truth. They were marched about a mile and a half to Pasay Elementary School. The school, filthy and undersized for the number of men, quickly became overcrowded. There was little food and even fewer medical supplies. On May 30, the entire Pasay population was again moved—this time to Bilibid Prison in Manila. On that date, of the 475 hospital corps assigned to the Asiatic Station on December 7, 1941, 265 were dead, missing, or on prisoner lists. This was a disheartening statistic in this tempestuous contest of strength and will.

  Chapter Seven

  Bushido

  Myers had excelled in Hospital Corps School in Norfolk, Virginia. Several years earlier, he had pored over the Hospital Corps handbook, memorizing treatments that would be vital during time of war.

  … Assess wounds quickly and treat the most life-threatening first…. Whenever possible, patients should be stabilized with plasma, a blood-volume expander, to prevent or treat shock…. If a wounded man is in pain, administer morphine…. In the case of a head injury, sulfanilamide crystals should be sprinkled on the wound in lieu of morphine….

  Like other corpsmen, Myers learned how to operate x-ray units, could serve as a preventive medicine or lab technician, act as a dental assistant, and perform tasks usually reserved for nurses. Along with studying, he simultaneously served as acting petty officer of his class. So impressed were his superiors that they recommended he be considered petty officer material upon graduation.

  Sadly, very little of this knowledge was of any use in the hospital at Old Bilibid Prison during the summer of 1942. There were few supplies, even fewer pharmaceuticals, and thousands of sick and dying men. What remained of the original staff at Canacao Naval Hospital had arrived at Bilibid Prison to find twelve thousand defiled, diseased men in a place designed to hold four thousand. The hospital patients’ horror stories about the final days on Corregidor and the Bataan Death March stunned Myers. Caring for them, as well as worrying about his own survival, weighed heavily on his mind.

  Old Bilibid Prison stood like a giant concrete box at the corner of Azcarraga Street and Quezon Boulevard in downtown Manila, about two miles from the port area. It had been b
uilt by the Spanish a century earlier as a penitentiary but was declared unfit for criminals in 1939, when inmates were transferred to New Bilibid at Muntinglup, south of Manila. The Japanese reopened the old prison after the fall of Manila for use as a POW processing facility. From there, prisoners were dispersed to the penal colonies and work camps in the Philippine provinces. Throughout the war, the population of Bilibid varied, but it was always well over its normal occupancy rate.

  The prison compound was square, with 600-foot-long, 15-foot-high side walls topped with 2,300-volt wires. Inside the walls, eleven single-story buildings radiated from a large central building like the spokes of a wheel. The Japanese used only half of these 200-foot-long, 50-foot-wide “spokes” for POW housing and hospital wards. A twelve-foot wall ran through the middle of the compound, dividing it into two sections. The Japanese topped this wall, as well as its perimeter, with high-voltage wire and machine-gun posts, making escape highly unlikely.

  At first, part of the prison compound was used to house Filipino civilians while the Americans were kept in the west sector. The POWs’ barracks had barred windows, resembling a zoo but allowing for light and air circulation. The buildings had little insulation, though, and the roofs of some of them had been damaged in the bombing of Manila. They were partially repaired with whatever was on hand, such as strips of tin and even cardboard. The makeshift roofs were no match for the torrential downpours of the Philippine rainy season. They leaked constantly, adding to the sewer-like feeling and smell of the place. The concrete floors and walls remained damp, making an ideal breeding ground for disease-carrying mosquitoes and roaches.

  In general, sanitary conditions were nonexistent: all of the plumbing, as well as the lighting, had been stripped when the rat-infested hulk of a building was condemned. Straddle trenches, dug to a minimum depth, soon overflowed and were full of maggots. The prisoners’ morale quickly disintegrated and an atmosphere of hopelessness hung thick in the air, along with the latrines’ stench.