Belly of the Beast Read online

  By December 19, the Japanese abandoned their organized fighting on Leyte although resistance continued well into 1945. It was the first step toward the American goal of liberating the Philippines from the Japanese. But the enemy still controlled air bases on other islands, and the only facilities that would allow the Allies to wipe out those bases were located on the island of Luzon.

  MacArthur’s forces passed through the Mindanao Sea and northward to Mindoro, where they landed on the southwest shores of the island. There they began work on two airfields from which the all-important next step to Luzon could be taken.

  The American forces were zealous in their desire to liberate the American prisoners of war known to be held in the Philippines. One morning, just off a Philippine shoreline, Army Staff Sergeant Henry Telker tried to force his eyes to penetrate the thick fog enshrouding the island. He noted his compass reading and wrote in his logbook: “Location doubtful, chart little or no help.”

  Telker’s orders had been to deliver caterpillar tractors to the beachhead via landing craft, and he was a man who obeyed orders. Once Telker and his detail had come ashore, they were met by throngs of ecstatic Filipinos. But when Japanese planes strafed them, Telker was confused.

  After asking one of the Filipinos for their location, Telker discovered he had inadvertently invaded Mindanao, a Philippine island still exclusively and thickly held by the enemy. The sergeant and his party abandoned that particular beachhead immediately.

  Myers and his fellow POWs would have been astounded to learn how plentiful the Yanks were in and around the Philippines, and equally astounded at how close they were to liberating them. MacArthur’s plans for the initial invasion of Luzon included landings at Lingayen Gulf, practically on the same spot where the Japanese had landed during their initial invasion in 1941. He set the Lingayen landings for December 20, but a combination of seasonal rains, lack of air cover, and the success of the kamikazes caused the landings to be rescheduled for January 9, 1945.

  The Luzon campaign was to be the longest and most difficult of the entire Pacific war. The Lingayen landings alone were larger in size than the combined invasions of North Africa, Sicily, and southern France; more than two hundred thousand troops had been made available for the offensive.

  Lieutenant General Tomoyuki Yamashita, called the Tiger of Malaya for the success of his invasion of that peninsula and ultimate victory over the British troops there, was the Imperial officer in charge of the defense of the Philippines. But Yamashita was not to have the kind of success he had previously enjoyed. Again the rivalry between the Japanese army and navy came to the forefront. And again, as it had when they begged Wada for food on the tennis court, the rivalry had a crucial impact on Myers and the rest of the POWs.

  The twenty-five thousand Imperial naval troops on the island of Luzon obeyed only their commanders and, from the moment Yamashita arrived, the troops ignored his orders. This, combined with the fact that a significant portion of the Japanese troops had left to defend Leyte, prompted Yamashita to offer only a token defense of Manila when the Allied troops began their December reconnaissance flights, followed by the frequent bombing runs. Had the Japanese been able to muster more protection for their POW transports, Myers’ plight and that of his fellow prisoners might have had a very different outcome.

  Wada and Toshino had taken note that the Allied planes had not bombed the prisoners on the tennis court nor those tied to the top of the train. Using the men to protect the Japanese goods and equipment appeared to have a guaranteed outcome.

  “Be warned,” Wada said, “you are sitting on much gasoline. If planes bomb, well …” He shrugged, leaving the prisoners to use what was left of their imaginations.

  “I think he’s on the level,” Myers told Tex. “I heard a guy from the Two Hundredth Coastal Artillery say he’d spent the night sleeping on top of a gas drum. He’d dug into the sand and there she was.”

  As night fell on December 26, a detachment of Japanese soldiers arrived in trucks, shovels in hand, and dug up the buried drums, loaded them into the trucks, and drove away. More war materials were unloaded from ships at the docks and piled neatly on the nearby shore by Imperial troops.

  Myers fell into a tormented sleep on the cold, wet sand until he was awakened by kicks by a sentry’s hobnailed boots. The prisoners were told to get ready but were never instructed exactly what they were readying themselves for. Word floated among the men that they were going to be taken out to the two freighters they had seen anchored in Lingayen Gulf the day before.

  As a constant among them, the men were only vaguely aware of their hunger and thirst as they huddled together on the cold sand. It didn’t appear as though any preparation was being made to give them anything, and even the commanders were too cold and exhausted to attempt any kind of entreaty with the guards. About 65 prisoners had expired since the train had arrived at San Fernando La Union, bringing their number to about 1,234. Some had died from exposure, some from their myriad injuries and diseases, and a couple at the guards’ hands. The guards hadn’t been any crueler than they had previously been, but blows the prisoners had been able to sustain only weeks earlier were now fatal on their infirm bodies.

  An hour and a half later, the prisoners were ordered to march along the waterfront to the dock loaded with Japanese supplies. They were marched out to a wharf which jutted out from the shore. On the way, they passed inbound Japanese troops who had been told these were prisoners recently captured on Leyte. The POWs stretched out their hands to the Japanese troops begging for a morsel of food. The only response they received was sardonic laughter as the Imperial soldiers made fun of the foul-looking Americans.

  The landing boats were having difficulty in coming alongside the wharf due to a choppy sea. Suddenly, the Japanese in charge of the prisoners’ loading became agitated and shouted at the prisoners to get on two barges tied up at the dock.

  “Speedo, speedo!” Wada screamed, running among the POWs.

  Some of the prisoners moved too slowly to suit their captors and were literally shoved off the dock and onto the unstable barges. Fragile bones splintered when the gaunt prisoners landed on the decks below. Nothing deterred the guards on the barges, who immediately began pushing the prisoners back with rifle butts and the flats of swords.

  “Back, speedo! Speedo!”

  The barges sputtered away from the dock with their loads of hollow-eyed and bewildered prisoners. Miserable as they were, the sailors among the POWs knew that ships always considered themselves relatively safe from air and submarine attacks at night, since the visibility is limited. What they did not know was that during the course of this war, the Americans had become adept at night attacks, putting Japanese ships at risk nearly twenty-four hours a day.

  “Something’s got these Nips scared,” Tarpy observed.

  “Maybe it’s MacArthur; I’ll bet MacArthur’s landed somewhere close,” Myers told him.

  Tarpy shook his head sadly, looking across the deck of the barge to the two freighters looming like ghost ships in the dark ahead of them. “Too bad he’s too late.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  The Price of Sugar

  In the predawn gloom of Wednesday, December 27, 1944, it appeared as though Estel Myers would be leaving the Philippines once and for all. A Japanese barge was ferrying him in the dark across a turbulent Lingayen Gulf, approaching the awaiting two freighters. Drawing closer, he could now see a covey of other ships hovering around as well, presumably for protection similar to what the Oryoku Maru had had.

  At exactly the same moment that Myers was being rudely jostled against fellow POWs on the barge, his younger brother Ken was weathering the waves only a few hundred miles to the south aboard the hospital ship the USS Bountiful. The ship had tended to the wounded from the Battle for Leyte Gulf and was now cruising north toward Mindoro and Luzon. Her next destination would be determined by when and where the Allied landings began in the impending fight for the
Philippines. Estel, of course, had no idea that Ken was stationed on a ship so near, or that he was even in the war at all. Ken, on the other hand, had a powerful belief, one of epic proportions, that it wouldn’t be long before he’d be reunited with his brother.

  Ken Myers hadn’t ever been the type of guy easily duped into believing anything contrary to what his own senses told him. Years ago at a state fair, he was the one who had figured out that the side show magician wasn’t really disappearing; he had simply installed a fake floor in his magic trunk. Ken was also the first to inform the kids in the neighborhood and his younger brother, Bert, that there was no Santa Claus and never had been. But as a seaman in the U.S. Navy, something happened that overwhelmed his previous unyielding skepticism.

  While crossing the Pacific months earlier, it was the job of the Bountiful’s crew to ensure that everything was shipshape before they arrived at the battle zone. Ken had been ordered to clean out some lockers, and at the bottom of one of them he came across a placard that read USS Henderson. Ken recognized the name from Estel’s early letters describing his first night at sea aboard the Henderson. Ken took the placard to his petty officer and asked him what connection the two ships had.

  “This ship was the Henderson up until a year ago, seaman,” the petty officer told him. “After the war started she was refitted and became the Bountiful.”

  Ken was positive this news had to be more than just a coincidence. It was a sign. Fate had seen to it that he was assigned to the same ship his brother had been on. To Ken, that was a sure sign that Estel was alive and well, and relatively close.

  It was true that Estel was close, and that he was alive, but he never would have described his condition as completely well. He’d been suffering from a case of diarrhea just like all of the others had. Although he’d long ago become accustomed to ocean swells, this barge trip, brief as it was, made him feel dreadful.

  The freighters weren’t marked with names. Instead, one ship had “No. 1” painted on her funnel and the other had “No. 2” on her superstructure. The prisoners learned later that the ships were officially the Enoura Maru and the Brazil Maru, respectively. They bore no distinction that would alert any pilots who might happen by overhead that they carried human cargo. The ships’ props were running, the engines’ chugging sounding as impatient as the Japanese guards’ shouting voices.

  “Speedo, speedo!”

  The first barge began offloading its prisoners onto the Brazil Maru, the larger of the pair. Then the second barge began to offload onto the same ship; Myers, Tex, and Tarpy were among this group. Myers estimated the vessel was about eight thousand tons and that her little sister was probably two or three thousand tons less. The offloading went slowly, of course, since so many men had to be helped up the gangplank. The impatient captain directed his sailors to move the Americans along faster, but it just couldn’t be done.

  After exasperated jabbering at his guards and anxious glances at the morning sun beginning to rise in the sky, the captain finally ordered that the transfer to his ship be stopped. The guards had counted off one thousand men. The remaining 234 prisoners were to be loaded onto the Enoura Maru.

  For once, the Japanese did not procrastinate in getting underway. They didn’t even take the time for one of their famous bangou. The last man was being pulled over the bulwark railing when the entire convoy weighed anchor and set off along the coast of northern Luzon.

  While the prisoners aboard the Enoura Maru were immediately herded down into the holds, Myers and the others aboard the Brazil Maru were surprised to be held in groups on the deck, watched closely by the vulture guards perched overhead. A Japanese officer had singled out a ten-man crew of POWs and explained in broken English that they were to go down into the hold to clean something. It wasn’t clear what the Japanese expected, since the POWs weren’t given any kind of tools to clean with.

  While they waited, a couple of prisoners spied water dripping from one of the steam cylinders that powered the deck winches. The prisoners ran their tongues along the length of the cylinder to lap up every drop of greasy water they could before a guard caught them and beat them back into line.

  Myers watched the scenario as it played out in front of him and was bewildered. Those prisoners hadn’t threatened the guards in any way. They hadn’t done anything to cause any alteration in whatever the next plan of action might be. In fact, there was no obvious reason for the guards to repeatedly refuse these men the food and water. The only conclusion Myers could arrive at was that the Imperial guards just took pure pleasure in the prisoners’ deprivation. Myers had never before known anyone capable of doing that; he had never conceived of the possibility that someone might want to.

  As had happened nearly every step of their arduous journey, the POWs were again obviously moving too slowly for their Japanese captors and were again the subjects of their impatient rage. The officer screamed, “No clean!” and ordered that the prisoners be jammed into the midships hold.

  If a man didn’t move spryly enough to suit the guards, the latter lashed out at him with a rifle, broom, or the broadside of a sword. As some of the POWs began climbing down the ladder into the hold, the guards shoved them. Although the force might not have been enough to make them lose their footing under normal circumstances, in the prisoners’ frail condition it caused them to tumble onto the men below them. Between the beatings and the falls, a number of the prisoners would begin this leg of the journey with open wounds.

  After he’d been shoved down into the hold, Myers forced his eyes to focus in the new dark and fetid surroundings. The hold was constructed with two levels and a repulsive odor assaulted his nostrils. Myers recognized the stench instantly.

  “This place stinks like horse manure,” he told Tarpy. “That must have been what the Japs wanted those guys to come down and shove around. And it smells like there’s gallons of horse pee someplace.”

  “Japs use it for chemical manufacturing,” a major near them offered. “I’ll bet they had cavalry horses in here and saved all the pee. It’s probably down in the bilges.”

  As on the Oryoku Maru, this ship had a ventilation system for the animals’ comfort, but the Japanese shut it off as soon as the prisoners began loading. Unlike their first ship, however, this one at least had adequate space so that each man could lie down.

  Besides the overpowering stench of the place, it was filled with enormous, vicious horseflies. They had been drawn to the animal excrement first but must have taken delight in the load of fetid humans. The flies began biting the men’s bare backs and legs immediately, while the prisoners tried to shoo them away, but finally gave up and settled for keeping their eyes and mouths closed.

  It was not practical for the medical staff to do that, however. They had patients to tend to and went to work right away. The upper deck of the hold was designated as the sick bay, and the deathly sick men were segregated from the rest of the rabble who were less ill. There were far more patients than there were medical staff members; the doctors and corpsmen couldn’t physically be with everyone at all times. Several of those who were afflicted the worst became delirious that first night and rolled off the upper deck into the main hold below, woefully aggravating all their ailments.

  The main bulk of the prisoners divided themselves into groups of twenty, with each group designating one among them to be the food-and-water man. It was this man’s job to secure the sustenance for his group. The plan was that the position would rotate so no one man would be overtaxed. The designates would receive their groups’ rations from the officers, who in turn reported to the hold’s commander.

  The officers chose a lieutenant colonel to continue to act as the entire group’s line of communication with the rancorous Wada and Toshino. The prisoners, though, were ordered to first speak with the two Formosan guards posted in the hold. This arrangement proved intolerable. Anything the Formosans tried to convey to the Japanese was completely ignored since the Japanese viewed the Fo
rmosans as only a small step above the prisoners in order of significance.

  The merchant crew under whom the ship ran had not been forewarned that they would be taking on this large draft of prisoners. The crew had no way to feed the POWs and as had become par for the course, no provisions had been made by the Japanese officers back on Luzon, either.

  For two days the ship made her way northward while the men in her hold languished without food or adequate water. Finally the lieutenant colonel made a bold decision to climb up the hold’s ladder to the deck and speak to Wada man to man about their dire situation.

  “Look,” the American said to the surprised interpreter, “these men are dying from lack of food and water. We won’t be of any use to you sick or dead. We’re not afraid to work for our lives. All we ask for is a chance.”

  A nearby guard overheard the American and sneered back, “We don’t care if you do starve! We hate you! Your submarines are sinking our ships!”

  Wada spat out something harshly in Japanese, and the guard cowered and slunk away. Toshino and Wada conferred and finally gave in to the request. At first they sent food down into the hold, but a short time later, although they had been afraid to let the prisoners up on deck, six-man chow details were allowed to go to the galley for food. There was rice enough for each man in the hold, along with a canteen cupful of hot soup. The Japanese would not, however, let the POWs keep the buckets down in the hold long enough to adequately divide their rations. Some of the prisoners still had raincoats, befouled from having been dragged from ship to ship, so they dumped the rice out on them. When the raincoats overflowed, the rice was dumped directly onto the manure-encrusted floor.