Belly of the Beast

by Judith L. Pearson

  By the summer of 1943, the island hopping in the Pacific was in full force. In June, amphibious landings were taking place in New Guinea, the other offensive prong of Operation Cartwheel. In October, the Japanese increased their fortification of Rabaul on New Britain in an effort to stop the Allies from taking the island. One of the operation’s directives, however, was that if an island wasn’t integral in the grand scheme, the Allied forces would simply go around it. Such was the case with New Britain.

  The next islands to be reclaimed by the Allies were the Gilberts. One of the islands in the chain, Tarawa, was an atoll of islets and coral reefs. The enemy had built a network of hundreds of pillboxes, reinforced with concrete, steel beams, and coconut palm logs. Three thousand crack Imperial Marines were holed up in the pillboxes, which Tokyo claimed would prevent the island from being taken by assault.

  On the first day, the Americans bombed and shelled the atoll in order to establish a beachhead. When the U.S. Marines stormed ashore, it was through a tempest of Japanese firepower. Landing crafts became grounded on reefs as far out as five hundred yards. From there the Marines had to wade ashore, often finding little safe cover. Some companies lost half their men on that first day but still managed to gain a single toehold on the beach.

  By late in the second day a commander of the 2nd Marine Regiment on Tarawa’s beach was able to report to a ship standing offshore: “Our casualties are heavy. Enemy casualties unknown. Situation: we are winning.” Despite the Allied victory, the battle for Tarawa was one of the bloodiest fights in the entire Pacific campaign. American losses were staggeringly high: 837 Marines dead and another 2,500 wounded or missing in action. The single compensation was that the lessons learned from the battle for Tarawa saved lives in every other amphibious operation for the rest of the war.

  In December of 1943 the stage was set for the final phase of the Operation Cartwheel. The two Allied military forces would continue their westward push until they converged on the Philippine Islands. When MacArthur left Corregidor, he had said, “I shall return.” Now he could make good on his promise.

  When February 1944 arrived at Bilibid Prison, many of the men were detached, dejected, and dying. Although news of Allied victories throughout the Pacific filtered into the camp via the hidden radio, some of the men couldn’t see the point of carrying on their fight for life. They felt as though their comrades and their country had abandoned them.

  Others, like Myers, Tex, and Tarpy simply refused to quit living. They routinely set goals of when they expected the Allies to return. Their goals were set up in three-month time blocks, and since a calendar was maintained in the camp hospital, they could mark off the days there. When a three-month block expired without liberation, they set another goal of the same length. They never stopped believing that their country would come back for them.

  The imprisonment had taken its toll on all of them. Most of the men had lost nearly a quarter of their weight. When they were struck with one of the debilitating diseases floating around camp, their weight further plummeted at an accelerated rate. Myers calculated that nearly half of all the deaths he’d witnessed during his twenty-six months of imprisonment were caused by men who simply said, “I can’t eat any more rice.”

  It was during February that the POWs in Bilibid were allowed to send communications home for the first time. None of them knew why the Japanese had suddenly become so benevolent, although there were rumors that the International Red Cross might be exerting pressure on them to grant their prisoners more rights. On one side of the postcard provided, a camp pencil pusher typed the address of the recipient. Above that was a line for the prisoner to sign his name. The reverse side had five fill-in-the-blank statements. This not only cut down on the length of time to complete the cards, it also limited their ability to convey what was actually occurring in the camp.

  Myers and Tarpy were standing next to each other in line waiting to complete their cards. They looked at the questions on the cards they were handed.

  I am interned at….

  Myers’ answer: “Headquarters of Military Prison Camps of the Philippine Islands.”

  My health is….

  Four choices here: excellent, good, fair, or poor.

  “The Japs find out you think you’re in excellent health’ and you’re gonna be shipped to some camp to run the entire medical facility,” Tarpy told him.

  Myers checked excellent anyway, not wanting to alarm his family.

  I am….

  This one was easy to fill in. The choices were injured, sick in the hospital, under treatment, and not under treatment. Myers had never been injured, and although he suffered from the same diseases as everyone around him, he had refused to be hospitalized or treated except for the time he was out of his mind with a malaria-induced fever.

  I am….

  “I have to think about this one,” Myers told Tarpy. “If I say ‘not improving,’ ‘improving’ or ‘better,’ the family’ll think there was something wrong with me. If I say I’m well, it sounds like this is a cakewalk. And that’s not the truth, either.”

  “I don’t think it’s something you’re gonna have to answer for on Judgment Day,” Tarpy told him. “We all feel shitty. God knows it and I expect our families do, too.”

  The last part of the card had space for a more personalized, fifty-word message, although it, too, had to be typewritten. The messages were carefully censored by the prisoners’ commanding officer. Any effort to sneak references about their condition or treatment meant severe punishment from the Japanese, both for the writer and the C.O. Consequently, nothing but the most mundane drivel was sent home.

  Myers’ message read like many of the others. “Dear Mother: I am on regular duty status. Think much of Orville and rest. Send my regards to friends, give my love to all. Explain Norma’s card to her. Write to me through Geneva Red Cross. Hope to see you all before long. Love, Estel B. Myers.”

  One of the hardest things for Myers was wondering what was going through his girl’s mind. Norma and he had known each other since they were kids. He had always been sure they’d be married one day, but of course he’d never counted on something like a war interrupting their lives. Up until this point, just like his folks, Norma would have no way of knowing whether he was alive or dead. Myers was afraid that expecting a woman to keep her promise to a dead man was more than he could hope for.

  It was a stretch for the POWs to believe that these postcards would ever truly make it home. They had seen an occasional Red Cross box, evidence of valiant efforts to get supplies and mail to them. But the agency’s success was highly dependent upon Japanese cooperation. The packages contained things that their army lacked, too. Food and medicine were in short supply everywhere in the Philippines, regardless of whether one was a captive or a captor.

  The routine was always the same when a shipment of Red Cross packages arrived. Upon the shipment’s arrival, the Japanese MPs at the Manila port area went through them. They removed anything that pertained to American war activities, such as cigarette packs displaying Victory labels. To maintain psychological control, the Japanese wanted the POWs to be kept completely ignorant about the status of the war and who might be winning.

  The MPs next took out whatever items they wanted for themselves or thought might bring a good price on the black market. Only then was the shipment sent on to Bilibid. The same process of confiscation was conducted at the prison by the officers and guards, often including brisk games of gambling for the most valuable items like cigarettes. By the time the packages finally reached their intended recipients, they were practically barren. Still, for those who hovered at the brink of death, whatever edibles remained were more valuable than gold and revived them, at least for the time being.

  As their requirement for labor in and around Manila continued to rise, the Japanese began demanding that the sick, as well as the corpsmen, go on work detail. The Allied C.O. protested, saying the sick would become sicker
and the corpsmen were needed at the hospital and should not be forced to risk injury. He was told by a Japanese officer that there was “an emergency,” and the men were taken without further ado. One day, Tarpy was selected to go out on a work detail. When he got back to camp that night, he described his activities with the most animation any of them had mustered for months.

  “The Japs had some of the guys digging foxholes. I was with a group who moved barrels of gas and oil down to the docks. I get the feeling they want to be able to get it out of here in a hurry if they need to. Or else they’re gonna use it to blow up what’s left of the port area. I’ll bet the Yanks and tanks are gettin’ close. We just gotta keep alive ’til forty-five. And that’s only six months away!”

  Japanese home life was completely altered by the war. Yet from the beginning, the Emperor’s subjects were led to believe that they would ultimately be victorious. They had been told that the war was being waged by two power-mad villains, Churchill and Roosevelt. They were told that Allied fighting men were cannibals, and that they even bombed Japanese hospital ships.

  Tokyo and other major cities were evacuated during the summer of 1944 of all residents but essential workers. In addition to taking their furniture and personal belongings, many of the evacuees insisted on taking their prized gardens, including the rocks and trees, to reassemble them when they arrived at their new homes. This slowed down the evacuation process, and eventually the government was forced to step in, ordering that all gardens must be left behind.

  In July, the infrastructure of Japan’s military was severely shaken. Confessing his many failures, General Hideki Tojo, who had commanded the country’s war efforts thus far, resigned, as did his entire Cabinet. Filling Tojo’s shoes would be General Kuniaki Koiso, who nicknamed himself the Singing Frog, in reference to his sake-induced singing efforts. Koiso insisted that he would attain Japan’s objectives in close collaboration with their Axis cohorts.

  Meanwhile, the country’s trains had all but stopped running. Tokyo was reported to be “a city of troglodytes: holes everywhere. The hospitals are full of broken limbs, as during the nights zealous patriots dig holes into which other zealous patriots fall at dawn…. Bandages are scarce (doctors have the right to own five).”

  Corruption was everywhere and the black market flourished. There was a shortage of food, fuel, and clothing. Japanese women were, however, encouraged to continue producing sons for Japan’s future armies.

  Through all of this, Japanese radio continued to broadcast news of the military’s victories. The soldiers, peasants, and workers all expected that they would eventually win the war. They had the essential element, yamato damashii, the unquenchable spiritual force. It was this force that they expected would match and eventually overcome the United States’ material powers: heavier ships, bigger guns, and faster planes. Indeed, since the bombing of Pearl Harbor, American industrial might had produced an incomparable fleet of ships and planes, much to the astonishment of the Japanese.

  During the summer of 1944, the Americans put that fleet to use against the Japanese. The Allied storm rolled on to take Guam, Saipan, and Tinian. By September, the fighting had moved to the tiny island of Peleliu in the Palau Islands. The battle there lasted a month, with the Japanese raising the price of every inch of land taken back by the Allied forces. The Americans lost eight thousand men, the Japanese more than eleven thousand.

  After Peleliu had been secured, a lone Japanese sniper continued his assault on the Allies setting up a base on the island. Nicknamed the Gopher by the Marines, he would pop out from the honeycomb of caves called Bloody Nose Ridge, fire on them, and then disappear. During a three-week time period, he shot eighty-seven Marines through the head. Revenge finally occurred when a Marine marksman killed the Gopher, fittingly with a bullet through the temple.

  Tokyo correctly assumed that MacArthur had meant what he said about returning to the Philippines. So in October of 1944, the Japanese launched what they called Sho-Go, Operation Victory. They felt certain it would be a decisive triumph for them. It had to be, as men and supplies were rapidly running out. The battle would be fought in the Leyte Gulf, whose waters lap against the Philippine island of Leyte only one hundred miles from Manila.

  For this significant battle, the Japanese had a new weapon of war: the kamikaze, Japanese for “divine wind.” The name was taken from the pages of Japanese history, when a typhoon staved off a Mongol attack by destroying their fleet off of Japan’s shores. The people believed that their salvation had come from divine intervention.

  It was an honor and privilege to volunteer for the kamikaze flights. All during their military training, Japanese pilots had been taught: “Duty is mightier than a mountain, death is as light as a feather. To die for the Emperor is to live forever.” In the same vein, just before leaving on his suicide flight, one young pilot made a last entry in his diary. “Like cherry blossoms/In the spring/Let us fall/Clean and radiant.”

  For the Battle for Leyte Gulf, which became the largest naval battle of all time, the Japanese pitted 70 warships and 716 planes against the Americans’ 166 warships and 1,280 planes, including the gigantic 3rd Fleet. In cruising formation, the fleet covered an area forty miles long and nine miles wide.

  On October 20, 1944, the Americans landed four divisions against surprisingly feeble Japanese resistance. When they waded ashore onto Philippine soil on the Leyte beach of Palo, the troops were astonished to hear the Filipinos shouting to them in English and the schoolchildren singing “God Bless America.” It was the fulfillment of General MacArthur’s departing promise to return to the Philippines. Missing from all radar screens at this point was the Japanese navy. The first ships were spotted by a submarine just after midnight on October 23. Planes from the 3rd Fleet were alerted and flew in to sink one battleship and damage several others before the Imperial fleet sailed away.

  A second Japanese naval force was then spotted. In four hours time a battle was waged, and again the Americans were victorious, but they had little time to celebrate. The first fleet was headed at them once again. Again a furious naval battle was waged, and three hours later the Japanese retreated. The Americans had wreaked havoc upon the Japanese navy, sinking twenty-six warships.

  Simultaneously with the Battle for Leyte Gulf, the Allies began their attacks on Tokyo. During the month of November alone, one hundred and eleven B-29s dropped 278 tons of bombs. The Imperial capital city, built largely of wood, went up in flames like kindling in the ensuing firestorm. The attacks shook the Japanese but did not defeat them.

  The Japanese army was strong, with two hundred fifty thousand soldiers on the island of Luzon and another forty-five thousand reinforcements disembarking on the west coast of Leyte. To have any hope of advancing through the Philippines, the Allies would have to win the land battle for Leyte. The fighting continued all through the month of November. By December, although the Japanese knew they had been bested, they continued firing on the Americans, in hopes of killing as many as possible.

  A letter written by an unknown Japanese soldier during the fighting on Leyte had a tone of despair that was startlingly familiar to the radio message sent by an American soldier during the fall of Corregidor. The Imperial warrior wrote:

  I am exhausted. We have no food. The enemy are now within 500 meters of us. Mother, my dear wife and son, I am writing this letter to you by dim candlelight. Our end is near. What will be the future of Japan if this island should fall into enemy hands? Our air force has not arrived…. Hundreds of pale soldiers of Japan are awaiting our glorious end and nothing else. This is a repetition of what occurred in the Solomons, New Georgia and other islands. How well are the people of Japan prepared to fight the decisive battle with the will to win …?

  When the last gun barrel cooled on Leyte, the Japanese death toll was 56,263. American losses stood at 2,888. But the fate of the remaining Japanese troops and that of the American POWs held in the Philippines was still to be determined. />
  Chapter Ten

  Into the Beast

  One thousand sixty-nine.

  Myers, Tarpy, and the rest of the Canacao staff had been tenants of Bilibid Prison Camp for 1,069 days. There had always been a man assigned to keeping up the camp calendar. If he lost interest or died, someone else took over. That was how, on December 7, 1944, Myers knew exactly how long they had been there.

  They had survived the blows, the hunger, and the diseases indigenous to the tropics. They ate the stinking food, occasionally embellished with whatever cats, dogs, iguanas, or insects they could secretly catch. They saluted every enemy soldier regardless of age or rank and obeyed a thousand irritating regulations cunningly contrived to humiliate them. But they would not break, nor would they give what their Japanese captors wanted most—acknowledgment of defeat.

  The prisoners were used as much as was humanly possible to effect defenses in and around Manila. Tarpy had gone on just such a work detail, and when he returned, once they were out of earshot of the guards, he related to Myers that he had seen U.S. planes.

  “What makes you so sure they were ours?” Myers asked him.

  “At first I thought they were ours because of the way they were flying—in perfect formation, weaving in and out. I never saw a Jap plane fly that way. Ten minutes later I was really sure,” Tarpy said, nodding.

  “How come?”

  “A guard asked a guy near me, ‘Who those planes?’ and the guy told him they were probably Japanese. He gave the eye, like he knew they were American. A little while later another formation appeared. Guard asked the same question, got the same answer. Just a few minutes later we saw a plane with a red circle. Had an American fighter on its tail. The fighter hit ’em and the Jap plane exploded. The guard comes over to the guy near me and was he hot! He starts screaming, ‘Oh, you sons of bish! You lie like hell!’”