No one came to Gingoog Bay that night, or during the day, or during the next night. And Weston went to sleep about midnight wondering if the ultimate disaster had happened, that everyone had been killed, or, worse for him and the men with him, captured. Given a few hours, the Japanese could force any information a prisoner had out of him. At that moment, the Japanese could be staging an operation to surround him and to make sure that no one slipped out to sea.
At daylight, after Weston decided no one was going to come at first light either, he tried to decide whether to lead a second reconnaissance patrol, leaving Chief Miller in command, or to send Chief Miller on the patrol. The Chief might be a marvelous pharmacist, but he was not a great leader of men. The only thing the Chief would probably be worse at than commanding “the unit” would be leading a reconnaissance patrol.
On top of all that, Sergeant Allan F. Taylor, of the Army Air Corps, was a special problem. Without any justification that Weston could see, he believed himself to be a professional military man on a level with Sergeant Everly. Taylor had been some sort of technician, something between a surveyor and a draftsman. Those skills were not very useful to Weston’s Weary Would-Be Warriors.
Weston could not leave Taylor behind to command “the unit,” because it was clear that neither the Chief nor the remaining Marine would take orders from him—even if Taylor decided, in his own best interests, to assume command. The same consideration applied to sending Sergeant Taylor to lead the reconnaissance. He knew a little less—which was to say, almost nothing—about how to run a reconnaissance than Weston himself. And it was likely that if he got out of sight (and, as important, out of range) of Weston’s Springfield, he would decide that his best interests dictated taking off on his own and getting to Australia.
At that point, Sergeant Everly returned, bringing with him not only everyone he had taken with him, but a Filipino. The Filipino was dressed in dirty, baggy, white cotton trousers and shirt, a U.S. Army campaign hat, and he was carrying an Enfield and a web belt slung around his neck. He looked, Weston thought, like a Mexican bandit.
“Where the hell have you been?” Weston greeted Everly.
“Look at this, Mr. Weston,” Everly said, and handed him a sheet of paper.
It was a delinquent tax notice, dated November 8, 1941, from the Misamis-Occidental Provincial Government to a farmer named Almendres Gerardo.
“What the hell?” Weston asked.
“Turn it over, Mr. Weston,” Everly said. Weston did so.
OFFICE OF THE COMMANDING GENERAL UNITED STATES FORCES IN THE PHILIPPINES. MINDANAO-VISAYAN FORCE IN THE FIELD 1 OCTOBER 1942
PROCLAMATION
1. By virtue of the power invested in me, the undersigned, as senior representative of the United States Government and the Philippine Commonwealth, herewith assumes command.
2. A state of martial law is declared for the duration of the war.
BY ORDER OF THE COMMANDING GENERAL
Wendell W. Fertig
Brigadier General, USA
Commanding
DISTRIBUTION:1. To all commanding officers, USFIP
2. To all Provincial Governors
3. To all Provincial Officials
4. To all Justice of the Peace Courts
5. File
“What the hell is this?”
“I found it nailed to a telephone pole.”
“You think it’s for real?”
Everly pointed to the Mexican bandit.
“He says he can take us there.”
“And you believe him? This thing isn’t even printed, mimeographed. It’s typed. On the back of a tax-due bill.”
“Our luck has got to turn sometime,” Everly said. “What have we got to lose?”
[TWO]
Cagayan de Oro
Misamis-Oriental Province
Mindanao, Commonwealth of the Philippines
1225 Hours 10 October 1942
The headquarters of the Military Governor of Mindanao had been established in the prewar combined City Hall of Cagayan de Oro and the Provincial Capitol of Oriental Province.
It was a three-story redbrick building of a vaguely Colonial style, and it was relatively new, built from plans first drawn for the Works Progress Administration in the United States. (The WPA was instituted during the early years of F. D. Roosevelt’s presidency, in the belief that government building projects—roads, post office buildings, etc.—would provide employment for the unemployed and “prime the pump” of the depressed American economy.)
A Japanese flag—ared ball on a white background—flew from a flagpole mounted on top of the building. And the flags of the Imperial Japanese Army and the personal flag of a brigadier general, in stands, stood at either side of the main double-door entrance to the building.
A slate-gray 1940 Lincoln V-12 sedan came down what was still MacArthur (after the first General MacArthur) Boulevard and pulled into one of the four reserved parking places in front of the building.
Captain Matsuo Saikaku stepped out of the Lincoln and walked briskly up the shallow flight of stairs to the doors, returned the salute of the somewhat rumpled guard, and entered the building.
Captain Saikaku was twenty-four; and, at nearly six feet and 180 pounds, he was somewhat larger than the average Japanese officer. He was wearing neatly starched and pressed khakis, a tieless blouse and trousers, and well-shined shoes (rather than boots and puttees). A Sam Browne belt held a captured U.S. Army Model 1911A1 Colt .45 ACP pistol in a U.S. Army holster. A large, highly polished chrysanthemum, symbol of Imperial Japan, was attached to the flap of the holster, almost entirely concealing the letters “U.S.”
Captain Saikaku was less than pleased with the performance of the Lincoln. It ran roughly at slow speeds and often stalled, but he blamed such things more on the low-quality gasoline he had to use than any design failure of the car. Though Saikaku detested Americans, and most things American, he was willing to acknowledge they produced some fine products—in his view the Colt was a much better weapon than the Japanese Nambu pistol. And they made the finest automobiles in the world. He considered the slate-gray V-12 Lincoln to be one of the best of the best.
He clearly remembered his first encounter with a Lincoln V-12 sedan. It was a 1939 model, but essentially identical to the one he had impressed for his official use from an official—now a detainee—of the First National City Bank of New York office in Cagayan de Oro. It was parked in front of the Foster Waikiki Beach Hotel in Honolulu, where Saikaku was employed as a gardener.
His opinion then and now was that it was both pleasing aesthetically and a mechanical masterpiece. And, he believed, it was a car in keeping with his status. He would have to do something about the way it ran—he had been wondering if aviation gasoline, or a mixture of regular and aviation gasolines, would improve performance—but he was determined to keep the car.
He was aware that Lieutenant Colonel Tange Kisho, who had impressed a Buick Super for his official use, was somewhat annoyed to learn that a Lincoln was a more prestigious car than a Buick Super. Lieutenant Colonel Tange was the senior of the seven Kempeitai officers attached to the Office of the Military Governor of Mindanao, and Captain Saikaku’s superior officer. (The Kempeitai—Secret Police—was roughly the Japanese equivalent of the German Gestapo. Although members of the Kempeitai were, in a sense, soldiers, as they came under the jurisdiction of the War Ministry and bore military ranks, they were essentially autonomous and were not directly subordinate to the local military commander.)
Brigadier General Kurokawa Kenzo, the Military Governor, was chauffeured about in a 1940 Cadillac sedan Saikaku had impressed for him from an official of the Dole Pineapple Corporation.
General Kenzo was pleased not only with his Cadillac but with Captain Saikaku’s thoughtfulness in finding it for him. It was not the sort of behavior General Kenzo expected from any Kempeitai officer, and especially not from one he knew to be the son of the first cousin of General Tojo Hideki.
&nbs
p; Lieutenant Colonel Tange had come into the Kempeitai from the Nagasaki Police Prefecture, and was a reserve officer. Captain Saikaku believed that it didn’t hurt at all to remind Lieutenant Colonel Tange that he himself was a regular officer of the Imperial Japanese Army, seconded to the Kempeitai, and a first cousin, once removed, of General Tojo, who was second in power in Japan only to his Imperial Majesty Emperor Hirohito.
Captain Saikaku thought it not unlikely that when his assignment to the Kempeitai Detachment to the Military Governor of Mindanao was over, Lieutenant Colonel Tange would write an enthusiastic efficiency report on him, suggesting that he was highly deserving of promotion.
Lieutenant Colonel Tange occupied the former office of the Mayor of Cagayan de Oro, to the right of the entrance foyer; and General Kurokawa Kenzo was in the office of the former Provincial Governor, to the left. Saikaku entered Tange’s outer office, ignored Tange’s sergeant, and walked to Tange’s open door.
“Good afternoon, Colonel,” he said, saluting with something less than great precision. Then he walked inside and bowed, quickly, from the waist.
“This, Captain Saikaku, has come to my attention,” Lieutenant Colonel Tange said. “I would be very interested in your opinion of it.”
He handed Saikaku a sheet of paper on which was typewritten Brigadier General Wendell Fertig’s assumption of command and declaration of martial law proclamation.
Lieutenant Colonel Tange spoke English, but not as well as Captain Saikaku, who had studied the language for six years and then perfected it while a young lieutenant working for more than a year as a laborer in Hawaii.
“The name is not familiar to me,” Tange said. “And, I checked, it is not on the roster of prisoner officers.”
“My immediate reaction, Sir, is that it is not what it purports to be,” Saikaku said. “I’m sure the Colonel has noticed that it is typewritten, not mimeographed, and that—more important—it is typed on previously used paper.”
“If it is not what it purports to be, Captain, what, then, is it?”
“I am guessing, of course, Colonel, and I will of course look into the matter. But my immediate reaction is that this was prepared by a former Army clerk familiar with the form of such a letter, and intended to fool us.”
“Why a clerk and not an officer?”
“Officers do not usually know how to typewrite, Sir.”
“I don’t like it,” Tange said. “Could the Americans be setting up some kind of guerrilla force?”
“I respectfully suggest, Sir, that what we should not do is grow excited over this—as whoever prepared this hopes we will do. As the Colonel is well aware, we have had absolutely no indications of guerrilla activity of any kind.”
“I don’t like it,” Tange repeated. “Look into it immediately, if you please, and report what you find. I have not yet discussed this with General Kenzo. When I do, I would like to have something to tell him.”
“I will attend to it immediately, Sir.”
Twenty minutes later, Captain Saikaku pulled the Lincoln up against a wooden gate set in a brick wall that surrounded a one-floor house on the outskirts of town. He sounded the horn, and a moment later, a soldier swung the gates inward.
The house, previously occupied by a Filipino lawyer and his family, had been impressed into the service of the Kempeitai as a special prison.
Shortly after the American surrender, Captain Saikaku had the junior officers and enlisted men of General Sharp’s staff lined up so that he could conduct a personal inspection. Based on his year in Hawaii, he fancied himself a rather good judge of American character.
From these he selected a dozen Americans, four officers and eight enlisted men, on the basis of his judgment that they would turn out to be both knowledgeable and malleable, and then he had them brought to the house behind the wall.
He ordered them stripped and beaten each day for three days. And then, one by one, he examined them again. One of the officers and three of the enlisted men appeared to be properly conditioned, and he ordered their retention. The others were sent back to the POW enclosure.
One of the enlisted men, a somewhat effeminate sergeant from Wisconsin, whom Saikaku suspected of being a sexual deviate, he ordered hung up naked by his heels overnight in the garage of the house behind the wall. In the morning, he ordered an electrical current to be passed through the sergeant’s body by means of alligator clips attached to his scrotum and nostrils.
While this was going on, he appeared in the garage, slapped the Japanese soldier applying the electrical current hard enough to knock him off his feet, and ordered the sergeant to be carried into the house and placed in one of the bedrooms.
The next morning, he went to the bedroom and behaved in a very friendly manner to the sergeant, telling him he would do what he could to protect him from the soldiers, but in return the sergeant would have to cooperate with him.
He then left the bedroom and gave orders that the sergeant was to be beaten with switches, not boards, twice a day until further orders. He was to be beaten painfully but not severely, with attention given to the soles of his feet and to his genitals.
Three days later he returned, professed outrage at the beatings, and otherwise behaved in a friendly manner. He then ordered a young Filipino of known deviant tendencies placed in the sergeant’s bedroom. He also had the beatings stopped, and he had them furnished with food, rice and chicken and bread, and a case of beer.
The sergeant was thus given a choice. He could choose beatings, starvation, and possibly death, not only for himself but for his newfound friend. Or he could choose confinement under reasonably pleasant conditions. He not surprisingly elected to be cooperative.
“What the hell,” he said, “the war’s over for me anyway, right?”
Captain Saikaku entered the house and went to the sergeant’s bedroom.
The sergeant, as always, looked at him with frightened eyes, not sure if Saikaku was going to be friendly.
“Jerry,” Captain Saikaku said, “tell me about General Fertig.”
The sergeant’s eyes showed fear.
“Sir, I don’t know...”
“lerry, you promised me you would be cooperative.”
“I swear to Christ, I never heard of a General Fertig.”
“I would hate to think you were not telling me the truth.”
“I give you my word of honor.”
“The name means nothing to you at all?”
“Not a thing. I swear it. If it did, I would tell you, you know that.”
Captain Saikaku nodded, turned on his heel, and left the bedroom.
After leaving orders that the Filipino boy deviate was to be beaten in the presence of the sergeant, he returned to Lieutenant Colonel Tange’s office. Although he would continue looking into the matter, he told him, he was at the moment convinced that Brigadier General Fertig was a figment of some Filipino army clerk’s imagination, and there was no cause for concern.
[THREE]
Near Monkayo
Davao Oriental Province
Mindanao, Commonwealth of the Philippines
1615 Hours 11 October 1942
They walked all day, slowly, taking a five-minute break each hour. But the trails through the thick vegetation were steep, in some places slippery, and the heat was debilitating.
And then, all of a sudden, they came out of the jungle, into a clearing.
The Mexican bandit, at whose heels Weston had been walking, stepped aside and pointed at a rather large, thatch-roofed, Filipino house built on stilts.
Sitting in a rattan chair on what could be called the porch of the house sat a tall, sturdy-looking man wearing a khaki uniform. A silver five-pointed star, the rank insignia of a brigadier general, adorned each of his collar points. He was also wearing a red goatee and a wide-brimmed straw hat. A Thompson submachine gun lay at his feet.
“General Fertig,” the Mexican bandit said.
Behind him, Weston heard the Chief, bringing up the rea
r of the column, mutter in disgust or disappointment, “Shit!”
“Wait here,” Weston ordered.
He walked across the clearing, aware of the General’s eyes on him, and climbed the steep stairs—more like a ladder than a flight of stairs—and then walked across the porch to within six feet of the red-goateed man in the chair.
The General met his eyes, but there was no expression on his face.
Weston saluted.
“First Lieutenant Weston, James B., USMC, Sir.”
The General returned his salute.
“Have your men been fed, Lieutenant?”
“No, Sir.”
“Are there other officers in your party?”
“No, Sir.”
“Sergeant!” the General called, raising his voice.
Another Filipino wearing baggy white cotton trousers and a U.S. Army campaign hat came onto the porch from inside the house.
“Sir?”
“See that this officer’s men are fed,” he said.
“Yes, Sir.”
“And when you have done that, please bring us some of the cold pork.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Are you a drinking man, Lieutenant?”
The question surprised Weston.
“Yes, Sir.”
“And a couple of beers, please,” the General said.
“Yes, Sir,” the Filipino said.
Fertig met Weston’s eyes again.
“Welcome to Headquarters, United States Forces in the Philippines, Lieutenant. Weston, you said?”
“Yes, Sir. Thank you, Sir.”
“You will, from this moment, consider yourself and your men under my command.”
That announcement made Weston uncomfortable. His imagination shifted into high gear.
What this guy may be—probably is—is a staff officer who went around the bend. He was unable to accept that the Army got the shit kicked out of it, that the Japanese have won the battle for the Philippines hands down. That must have been even tougher to accept for someone of senior rank, with twenty years or so in the service, than it was for somebody like me.
Behind the Lines Page 8