Belly of the Beast Read online

  Neither did the enemy show any concern for the Christian holiday of Christmas. They doubled their bombing runs on that day, planes roaring overhead, hitting, among other targets, the old Santo Domingo Church. Mass was in progress, and many of the worshipers were killed.

  By the day after Christmas, the entire Canacao Hospital staff and their remaining one hundred and fifty patients had been ordered to Santa Escolastica in central Manila. Myers and Tarpy’s reunion with men and women they hadn’t seen since the start of the war was brief, given the workload. But it had an extremely positive effect on them all. Despite the panic and terror of Manila’s citizenry, despite witnessing death and carnage nearly every waking moment, and despite a rapidly diminishing store of supplies, morale among the medical corps was indescribably high. Cooperation and teamwork sustained their efforts.

  At the onset of hostilities, before they had all been reassigned to the annexes, District Commandant Admiral Rockwell had issued his last instructions to the Canacao group: “Maintain a hospital in the naval tradition in the Manila area.” And by God, that’s what they intended to do.

  On December 28, the chief medical officers decided that Sternberg Hospital, a wooden building sitting dangerously close to Japanese targets on the river, was unsafe. The few patients there, mostly from Cavite, were also transferred to Santa Escolastica. Some would be further evacuated. But the doctors determined that others just couldn’t be moved any farther. At that point, all hospital staff members were then given a choice—they could either relocate to field hospitals on Bataan or Corregidor, or remain in the city with the most critical patients and await the arrival of the Japanese.

  Myers, Tarpy, and Tex had decided to stay in Manila with the patients. A week had passed since any of them had had a real shower or a full night’s sleep on a bona fide bed. They slept on gurneys and cots when available, the floor when not. Bathing meant splashing themselves with water from buckets or sinks. They had discovered early on in the war that the heat and humidity, coupled with the strenuous workload, made their uniform shirts feel like wool body bags. Without access to laundry facilities, spending their days bare-chested made the most sense.

  Some of the army nurses who remained in Manila were transferred to Corregidor on December 29. The final evacuation to Australia of nurses and patients who could be moved was accomplished on December 31 under the cover of night.

  All the while, parts of Manila were blazing infernos, roaring flames mocking the city’s strict blackout orders. The gas and oil storage areas at Pandacan had been burning since the initial bombing runs. In the port area, buildings and ships caught fire from one another like firecrackers on a string. No effort was made to put the fires out, the theory being that the fewer buildings the Japanese found in usable condition, the better.

  The doctors who volunteered to remain at the hospital were now the ranking officers. They traveled from ward to ward, instructing patients and corpsmen alike how to behave when the enemy arrived.

  “If you have weapons of any sort—guns, knives, grenades—turn them all in now, boys,” a weary captain ordered. In response, an impressive collection appeared on the floor of the main ward.

  “Keep your mouths shut, no wisecracks, speak only when spoken to,” the captain continued. “These Nips aren’t fooling around. If you do, it could have tragic consequences.”

  Patients and medical personnel alike sat apprehensively in wait for the Japanese to arrive. All wondered if they might toss the Americans out of the hospital to make room for their own wounded. Or might the enemy take the easy road and kill them all?

  “All I can say is bahala na,” Tarpy announced.

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Tex growled at him.

  “The Filipinos say it. It’s Tagalog and it means whatever happens is gonna happen and there’s nothing we can do about it anyway. So we might as well just quit worrying.”

  Myers spoke up. “He’s got a point. There’s not much we can do about it right now. How long can the war last, a week? A couple at the most? You know help’s on the way; Roosevelt isn’t just gonna leave us here.”

  “Just the same,” Tex continued, “I got a bad feelin’ about this. I never been good at takin’ orders.”

  “You’re in the Navy, you idiot,” Tarpy challenged him. “You been takin’ orders since you enlisted.”

  “Yeah, but I want to do what the Navy tells me. I’m damn sure I ain’t gonna want to do what the Japs tell me.”

  The men fell silent and waited. They heard explosions at nearly the same time they felt the concussions. Someone, probably the Army, was blowing up what was left of the oil storage and supply dumps. Myers looked out the windows in the direction of the sounds and saw huge pillars of flames shooting toward the sky. At the stroke of midnight, as a new year was born, Manila was dying. And the future was anybody’s guess.

  The Bataan Peninsula is twenty-five miles long, twenty miles wide at its base, and shaped like a big thumb jutting southward into Manila Bay. American military strategists considered it the perfect place from which to wage a defensive battle. An added plus was that the peninsula was covered with rugged mountains and heavy jungles, and criss-crossed with small streams and deep gullies.

  The defense of Bataan was fairly straightforward: using two forces facing the opposing coastline and using the peninsula’s Mount Natib, a promontory 4,222 feet high, as the dividing line, they could create two lines of resistance. War Plan ORANGE concluded with the assumption that the two lines, together with those forces on Corregidor and the American air power in the Philippines, would be able to stave off any enemy advances until the Pacific Fleet could fight its way over to reinforce them. Never in their wildest dreams did the strategists fathom that, so early on in the war, American air power would be reduced to burning rubble or that the Pacific Fleet would be a ghostly shell of its former strength.

  General Wainwright was charged with holding back the main Japanese assault while keeping the road to Bataan open for the hasty withdrawal of American and Filipino troops. But in their haste, they were forced, in many cases, to leave most of their food, medical supplies, ammunition, and equipment behind. Suddenly, a drastic consequence of MacArthur’s preferred plan of dividing his forces to defend the entire island chain became all too evident. Supplies that had been dispersed from their original depots in Bataan and Corregidor to support the four defense forces set shortly after Japan’s initial attack were now being abandoned. The retreating troops were short on still-functioning trucks, short on roads, and short on time. Everything being left was destroyed. They burned railroad cars and blew up bridges. They put sugar in the gas tanks of abandoned trucks and shot holes in the engines of tanks.

  The assumption made by War Plan ORANGE was that the forty-three thousand troops in Bataan would be resisting for at least six months, and the area was provisioned accordingly. In actuality, on January 1, 1942, there were eighty thousand troops and twenty-six thousand civilians, and enough food to last them just thirty days. All personnel in Bataan were immediately placed on half rations. In an area where a healthy, active man requires thirty-five hundred to four thousand calories a day, the hardworking defenders were rationed to two thousand. At one depot alone, they had had to leave behind enough rice to feed all the soldiers and civilians on the peninsula for five months. Now, the search for food quickly became as urgent a problem as resisting the enemy’s assaults. As the battles raged on, the rations were cut and then cut again.

  The island of Corregidor was the Allies’ other Philippine stronghold. Aptly nicknamed “the Rock,” the tadpole-shaped, volcanic rock outcropping lay two miles from Bataan at the mouth of Manila Bay. Food supplies on Corregidor were more plentiful than on Bataan but by no means abundant. When General MacArthur relocated the headquarters of the United States Army Forces in the Far East, otherwise known as the USAFFE, to the island, the number of personnel increased from the anticipated seven thousand to ten thousand. These individu
als, too, were immediately put on half rations.

  Corregidor had several disadvantages. First, the fortification was built during the days when wars were fought from battleships. Therefore, all of Corregidor’s batteries faced seaward, making them useless against air attacks or ground assaults from across the channel on Bataan. Secondly, Corregidor sat much lower than the surrounding shorelines. This gave the enemy ideal opportunities to observe and fire upon the Allies while being protected from return fire.

  Corregidor’s only advantage as a defensive position was that the island was honeycombed with a series of tunnels, safely located under a rocky shell. The main thoroughfare, Malinta Tunnel, ran straight through the island with lateral tunnels on both sides. The subterranean web had multiple floors, running water, and electricity, and provided space for offices, supplies, hospitals, and berthing quarters for most of the men and women. The remaining troops were located at the island’s various defense positions, assigned to fend off enemy attacks.

  While the Japanese were leveling the rest of Luzon, they hadn’t touched Corregidor. The USAFFE believed that was due to the threat of the anti-aircraft batteries covering the Rock. In reality, the only reason was that the Japanese just hadn’t gotten around to it yet. Then, on December 29, they sent in fifty-four bombers to unleash hell upon the underground fortifications.

  The top floors of some of the tunnels sustained damage. The number of people, combined with the tunnels’ small size, the dust-clogged air, and the fear experienced by everyone but the unconscious, caused near panic, even among the most seasoned veterans. Additionally, part of the Philippine Army, whose numbers had looked impressive on paper, literally took to the hills. Most of them were just boys with no training. Flying bullets were more than they had bargained for.

  Before the start of hostilities, Japan had intended to complete the occupation of the Philippines before taking on the next offensive in the Dutch East Indies. The ease with which they had made their initial landings prompted them to move up their timetable. At the beginning of January, the Japanese Imperial Headquarters reassigned an entire division of the 14th Army, some of Homma’s best troops, along with air support, to the East Indies. Tokyo replaced these with a brigade of recalled reservists.

  But the revival of War Plan ORANGE threw Homma off his tight schedule. In addition, the reassignment of the 14th Army division left the Japanese outnumbered three to one on Bataan. Suddenly, this eradicated any chance the Japanese may have had to bring the campaign on Luzon to a speedy conclusion.

  Protesting the position he had been put in, Homma contacted Imperial Japanese Headquarters, writing:

  The operations in the Bataan Peninsula and the Corregidor Fortress are not merely a local operation of the Great East Asia War…. As the Anti-Axis powers propagandize about this battle as being a uniquely hopeful battle and the first step toward eventual victory, the rest of the world has concentrated upon the progress of the battle tactics on this small peninsula. Hence, the victories of these operations do not only mean the suppression of the Philippines, but will also have a bearing upon the English and Americans and their attitude toward continuing the war.

  Homma couldn’t have been more accurate. The brief respite given to the Allied defenders while the Japanese repositioned their troops was the chance needed to dig in and prepare to take a stand. Not since the defense of the Alamo did such an uphill battle carry within its waging the source of so much national pride and dedication.

  Also during the Japanese repositioning, PT boats were able to make trips back and forth across Marivales Bay between the southern tip of Bataan and Corregidor. The boats ferried a variety of personnel and a few supplies. Still anchored in the bay was the submarine tender, the USS Canopus, which the Japanese hit during their first bombing run of Corregidor.

  Although damaged, the ship’s machine shops, valuable for repairing other equipment, were operational. The trick was to encourage the Japanese not to bomb her again. To accomplish this, the captain decided to make the Canopus look as though she’d been completely incapacitated. He pumped water into her tanks to give her a list, and released the booms so they could flap in the breeze. During daylight hours, the crew dispersed and the ship appeared abandoned. As soon as night fell, the men returned and worked until dawn, mending the diminishing supply of weapons of war.

  Throughout Santa Escolastica, the men and women waited. Patients barely moved in their cots. Corpsmen and nurses leaned against walls or sat on the floor. Some stood watch at positions near open windows to spread word of the enemy’s arrival the very moment they were spotted.

  As had been the case every day since the Canacao Naval Hospital had first opened its doors, the medical officer of the day kept an official journal outlining the day’s activities, which was then approved by the medical officer in command. It was the opinion of the commander that even if the physical hospital no longer existed, as long as some or all of the staff was together, a journal should still be kept. On Thursday, January 1, 1942, Myers happened to see what the officer of the day had written for the day’s events.

  “Looks like we’re gettin shots today,” he commented to the officer, reading, “‘Cholera and dysentery immunization on staff medical officers, nurses, and hospital corpsmen.’”

  “Yep,” the officer answered him. “Can’t be too careful. We don’t want to catch anything serious when those Nips arrive.”

  On Friday, January 2, the hospital had 163 patients. The hospital commander conducted an inventory of the personal effects belonging to the patients and staff.

  “I ain’t givin’ ’em this ring,” Tex announced. “It belonged to my mother. She gave it to me when she died, and I’m givin’ it to my wife when I find one.”

  “Well, not that any woman in her right mind would want to marry you,” Myers told him, grinning, “but if you want to keep the ring, you better hide it.”

  “Where? Like in a mattress or somethin’?”

  “You honestly think we’re gonna ride out the war here at this hospital and then collect our belongings and go home?” another corpsman piped up. “You heard about what the Japs did to the Chinese? They’ll probably kill us as soon as they take what they want. Myers, you were in China. You tell him.”

  “Yeah, it was pretty bad in China. But hell, the Chinese aren’t the same as Americans. They don’t know how to fight. We do! The Japs aren’t gonna kill us.” Quietly, he said to the corpsman, “Shut up, you stupid fool. You wanna scare everybody else just ’cause you are?”

  Myers turned and looked at Tex for a minute. “Okay, here’s what you do. Take a piece of surgical tape and tape the ring in your crack just above your asshole.”

  Tex frowned. “And then what?”

  “The rest is up to you.” Myers shrugged. “But it’s one place the Japs may not look.” He turned and walked down toward the end of the ward to check on a couple of patients.

  “Hey, Doc?” one of them called to Myers. “I found this Bible in a building at Nichols Field. The writing in the front says it belonged to some guy named James Breckenridge from Iowa. He got it from his Sunday School teacher in 1934. I thought maybe when I got back home, I’d write to the address in it and return it to him. You think the Japs’ll let me keep it?”

  “I just don’t know, seaman,” Myers answered. “But I think you stand a better chance if you don’t try to hide it. They don’t believe in God anyway, so unless they think it has some value, maybe they won’t take it away.”

  The man was satisfied and the waiting continued.

  That afternoon a War Department communiqué was released, stating:

  “Advanced elements of Japanese troops entered Manila at 3:00 P.M. American and Philippine troops north and northwest of Manila are continuing to resist stubbornly attacks which are being pressed with increasing intensity.”

  Hearing this news on a hospital radio shook Myers unexpectedly. He wasn’t afraid, exactly; it was more a sense of foreboding.
Listening to the chatter around him, he realized he wasn’t alone in his feelings. This disquietude was made worse when, at 1905 hours, a fire broke out in the galley incinerator pit.

  Someone had stowed live ammunition there, and the exploding shells sounded as though Homma himself was coming through the hospital, shooting everyone in sight. Panic spread but was quickly mitigated when the source of the racket was discovered and the fire was extinguished by the yard watch. Nervously, the hospital’s inhabitants bedded down for the night.

  At 0445 hours, the morning of January 3, a racket again burst through the steamy darkness. Myers awoke and listened, thinking it was more ammunition. He even smiled at the thought that it would be quite a boisterous start to his twenty-second birthday. But the noise had been made by the butt of a rifle pounding on the front gate of the compound and the word spread quickly among the hospital staff. The Japanese had arrived.

  The yard watch opened the gate to find a single Japanese soldier. The soldier made no effort to enter and said nothing. Awakening the watch seemed to be his only purpose as he quietly strode away. Any further sleep on the part of the hospital staff would have been impossible, and to a man, not one of them even tried. Reveille was sounded as usual at 0600 hours, the buildings and grounds were inspected as happened every day, and at 0645 hours, the front gate was opened. About a half hour later, another Japanese soldier arrived. This one carried a rifle with a fixed bayonet. Myers heard that he searched the front gate sentry and examined the man’s personal effects. The soldier returned the items and he, too, went away.

  Apprehension hung in the humid morning air, making it difficult to concentrate on the duties of the day. As Myers made ward rounds, he saw out the window another Japanese soldier speaking to the American gate sentry and motioning toward the gate in big swinging movements with his arm. Finally the sentry seemed to understand and closed the gate, which appeared to satisfy the soldier.