The Jersey Brothers

by Sally Mott Freeman

  The combination of the edibles and relief at finding one another revived both Charles and Barton, whose crisis-born friendship seemed to strengthen by the day. In fact Charles seemed to be improving, perhaps because of it; he was unusually resilient after the train ordeal. And while captivity seemed to bring out the worst in him, it also had given him a reason to live. “Not gonna let a bunch of goddamn Japs decide whether I live or die,” he declared, and not for the last time.

  No food or water had been issued the prisoners since morning, and little then, but none was offered by their captors after they exited the boxcars. Instead, the guards ordered the men to reassemble in four-abreast columns. Minutes later, the prisoners set out again, first dragging through the heart of Cabanatuan City and then turning east onto a rutted dirt road.

  It was near the end of the dry season in the Philippines, the hot and windless stretch of months that precede the drenching monsoons. While acacia, papaya, and banana trees lushed the distant landscape, the shadeless road was inches deep in dust. The powdery soot exacerbated the men’s thirst, settling onto their swollen tongues, between their teeth, and in the rims and corners of their eyes. Several prisoners staggered out of the columns from heat prostration and were loaded onto trucks trailing the marchers. Others passed out completely and were tossed like cordwood onto the truck beds.

  While these horrors demoralized many of the prisoners, it had the reverse effect on others, including Barton. It tapped in him a wellspring of desire to live. In fact, this difference marked an early divide in the burgeoning prisoner population. Mistreatment and deprivation destroyed the wills of some, eventually killing them. But it strengthened the resolve of others. Strong religious faith and a positive personality were predictors, but the galvanizing power of anger can also be credited. Whatever their motivating muse, Barton and these others seemed to intuit that making the simple mental choice to live could make all the difference in their survival.

  At dusk, the marchers came to a halt in front of a squarish barbed wire stockade. The entrance faced the road on one side; the other three abutted open land. The prison camp’s interior was flat, barren, and chalk dry. Bamboo barracks with roofs of thatched nipa palm leaves were its only adornments other than the manned, forty-foot-high machine gun emplacements marking each corner of the compound.

  Ordered to stand at attention, the exhausted prisoners waited forty-five minutes for their “welcome” instructions from the camp commandant. Their legs trembled, and they swayed almost drunkenly in the searing heat. Finally, a dwarfish man in an immaculate uniform emerged from his makeshift headquarters. Lieutenant Commander Masao Mori had a coiffed, bristling moustache and was wearing knee-high boots polished to a high shine. He puffed out his chest, folded his arms, and gave his new charges a long, contemptuous look. He then addressed the prisoners through an interpreter.

  The Cavite-based ensigns were in collective dismay. Like Takeo Yoshikawa in Pearl Harbor, “Lieutenant Commander” Mori’s prewar occupation—running a bicycle shop in Cavite City—had been an apparent cover for a higher calling: assessing the layout of Cavite Navy Yard for its incipient attackers.

  It was a reminder of the unflattering saying the Filipinos had for the thousands of Japanese domiciled in the islands, disliked for their arrogance and airs of superiority over them. In Tagalog, their native tongue, the phrase was “Pasukab kung tumingin, parang Hapon,” meaning, “He eyes you in a treacherous manner, like a Jap.”

  The Cabanatuan commandant’s manner had changed since his tip-seeking bicycle repair days. Mori’s speech was terse and harsh. Punishment for violation of any of the camp rules was death. Prisoners would be put in groups of ten. If there was an escape by one in the group, the remaining nine would be executed. He then reversed direction with a flourish and returned to his headquarters.

  At Mori’s exit, the ravenous and desperately thirsty men were each given a ball of rice and a canteen cup of water, after which they were assigned to barracks according to rank and branch of service. Work orders would be issued in the morning after tenko. Barton and Charles were familiar with that drill and knew exactly how they would handle it.

  The interior of their barrack, where they were quartered with other naval officers, consisted of two long, wooden planks divided by a dirt aisle. Each platform was split into five sleeping bays. Prisoner discouragement over their new home was palpable, but on that first night at Cabanatuan they could only collapse on the hard wooden bays. Some drifted to sleep mulling escape, others contemplating how they would survive, and others, their souls already crushed beyond repair, hoping only for death’s merciful release.

  SOON AFTER BARTON’S GROUP arrived at Cabanatuan came the defeated Corregidor defenders, and soon after that the defenders of Bataan—all prisoners now. The state of the Bataan prisoners shocked the Cabanatuan residents, even in the context of their drastically altered living standards. They horrified all who heard their tale of a brutal hundred-kilometer (sixty-two mile) march from the Bataan Peninsula to their first prison hold, a place called Camp O’Donnell, where thousands, they learned, had died already.

  One Bataan survivor told of not only impossible thirst, starvation, and beatings, but of Japanese guards driving American trucks over fallen prisoners and then sticking out rifle bayonets to slit the throats of lines of marching men. Others that fell out of the marching columns were shot by rear-guard “buzzard squads.” But the horrors of Cabanatuan were plentiful, too.

  Without sanitation, clean water, and adequate food, an average of thirty men a day died during Barton’s first months there, not counting executions. The most common causes were malaria, beriberi, diphtheria, and dysentery—and despair, too, though despair was not formally listed as a cause of death. The Japanese kept their distance from the prisoner hordes, wearing masks when near them and throwing food into their barbed wire enclosures.

  With the majority of prisoners weakened or sick, their dependence on one another became primal. It was in this context that Barton began to see a role for himself. He started small by organizing groups on work details while they chopped wood or buried their dead. His idea—and that of a growing number of prisoners—was to pool their resources and restore the weakest among them to at least a functional state. This would be accomplished by giving the most infirm larger rations and, if they could get their hands on them, medicines such as quinine. Such supplements could be obtained through Cabanatuan’s emerging black market, where medicines and food could be purchased from Japanese guards who had procured them to sell to their captives at a fat profit or as barter for gold watches or rings. That such a market existed at all, however, infused a measure of hope among the prisoners, a precious commodity at Cabanatuan. Even the strongest among them knew they could become the next needy patient.

  Such brotherly acts forged powerful bonds among the men and spawned a determination to pull one another through. Barton understood, either consciously or unconsciously, that he had been mostly a recipient in his life, and that this one-way generosity had diminished him. That he had the physical and emotional capacity at Cabanatuan to help others survive was more satisfying than all the times in his life he’d been singled out for special treatment. He couldn’t help but reflect whether his family might recognize him less and less as his imprisonment lengthened, and not just because he was dirty, unshaven, and underweight.

  6

  WHITE HOUSE MAP ROOM, APRIL 1942

  WITH WAR EXPLODING ON every ocean and continent, Bill Mott worked late again on April 17. At seven o’clock, the Map Room was in a rare lull. The radiator under the blacked-out window hissed and clanked as Bill examined the pins and grease pencil markings on the Pacific-plotting map. At thirty years old, Bill stood nearly six feet and was fighting trim. He had the bearing of a military man: high cheekbones, a thicket of jet-black hair combed straight back, gilt collar leaves reflecting his recent promotion, uniform crisp, and shoes shining like mirrors. But anxiety roiled under that polished exterior.

>   Crossing parabolas of tacks plotting Allied and Axis movements across a seventy-million-square-mile Pacific war front were measured in degrees and centimeters. To the middle left was Cavite, where Barton had been wounded during the Japanese air attacks in December.

  A few centimeters to its right was the Bataan Peninsula, where the largest-ever defeat of American forces had occurred the previous week. A thumbnail beyond it was Corregidor, which, Bill knew, would also be forced to capitulate. Somewhere between those three hot spots, Barton had disappeared without a trace.

  Long before it was public, Bill knew of the decision not to reinforce the flagging garrisons in the Philippines. The die had been cast in December 1941 during Winston Churchill’s emotional Christmas visit to the White House. The prime minister made the lengthy trip shortly after the US declaration of war on Japan to ensure Roosevelt’s commitment to a “Europe First” strategy. Churchill understood the rage the American public felt toward the Japanese and wanted to prevent emotional diversion of American resources from Britain’s defense against the Nazis to the Pacific.

  Available Allied resources to wage global war were stretched to the limit and had to be prioritized. Churchill’s Yuletide mission and persuasive charms ensured that helping Britain defeat Nazi Germany would take precedence. War Secretary Stimson’s reluctant entry regarding the Philippines, which he confided to his diary during Churchill’s visit—“There are times when men have to die”—was the cruel verdict.

  Within the context of other threatened Pacific bases, the consensus that the Philippines could not be won back quickly or easily—and that Allied troops there would be abandoned—had been reached thanks to cold military math. By that same calculation, Australia, still in Allied hands, had to be held. Otherwise supply-and-communication lines would be severed and Allied access to the entire Southwest Pacific lost. Australia was also the only Allied base left in the region for staging countermoves against Japan.

  It was an open secret that Roosevelt had little affection for Douglas MacArthur—and was wary of the Republican general’s presidential aspirations. But he agreed well before the fall of Bataan that MacArthur should be evacuated to Australia both to protect it from Japanese seizure and to prepare counteroffensives against Japan. The decision took a number of factors into account. There were no other generals in the region to put in charge, and Roosevelt could not afford the political fallout of General MacArthur falling into enemy hands. Home front public opinion played a role in the president’s decision.

  MacArthur and his public relations team had released more than a hundred press communiqués from besieged Corregidor, which were picked up by every newspaper in the country. They touted the general’s bravery, genius, and leadership in the face of a scurrilous enemy. Reeling from serial reversals on the world stage, the American public gobbled up the flowing heroic narrative; babies were named after MacArthur and streets renamed after him.

  So there would be no outcry or even a congressional inquiry into why all the general’s planes in the Philippines were destroyed on the ground, wingtip to wingtip, despite repeated pre-attack directives ordering him to launch them. Nor would there be an investigation into his inexplicable nonresponse to the War Department’s advance war warnings. Bill had been at the War Department that entire night, waiting tensely with others far senior to him for MacArthur to acknowledge receipt of the warnings and to confirm that defensive air measures had been taken.

  The first cablegram, sent seven minutes after the bombs began dropping on Pearl Harbor, warned specifically that Manila and greater Luzon were Japan’s next likely targets. MacArthur neither replied nor commenced air operations, with tragic results. With American airpower destroyed, Cavite Navy Yard was the obvious next target—easy pickings without air protection. Bill was not the only naval officer to question MacArthur’s reckless military judgment in the Philippines.

  He then ordered over seventy-five thousand American and Filipino soldiers to the Bataan Peninsula in compliance with a pre-war defense contingency plan. Yet inexplicably, all but minimal stocks of food, ammunition, and medicine were left behind. These errors appeared grossly shortsighted to navy brass, who were further incensed that MacArthur blamed the navy for defeat in the Philippines by not heeding his demand to send ships to rescue the very men he put in harm’s way.

  The two-inch circle on the Pacific plotting map marked the widening Japanese-controlled perimeter around everything north of Australia, making it increasingly difficult to get reliable information on those men left behind. Thus far the Japanese, not a signatory of the 1929 Geneva Convention, had refused to discuss adherence to its provisions on prisoners of war. Requests for updated casualty lists were also proving futile. Unconfirmed reports indicated that quiet exchanges of noncombatants, mostly Filipinos, had taken place, but not military men.

  Barton’s whereabouts was not Bill’s only concern in the Map Room that evening. A quick calculation of speed, distance, and a glance at the clock meant that the top secret convoy stealing across the Pacific to bomb Tokyo had reached its rendezvous point. With Enterprise leading the covert task force, no doubt Benny was on high alert up in Sky Control at the moment. Backed by steely determination and burning revenge, the covert plan had been approved unanimously by top brass, despite the severely handicapped state of the US Navy.

  Shortly after Pearl Harbor was bombed, President Roosevelt asked his military planners to find a way to strike Tokyo. America desperately needed a win to stem sinking public and military morale. FDR understood the importance of bolstering outgunned soldiers on every front, not to mention rationed citizens who were also being asked to build a massive war arsenal.

  The December 7 losses had been staggering: 2,400 killed, another 1,200 wounded, 18 warships and 188 aircraft destroyed, and an additional 159 damaged. And bad news had piled up ever since. Guam, Hong Kong, Singapore, Burma, Sumatra, and the East Indies had all fallen to the Japanese in the following four months. And now the Philippines were lost; Americans were in a vengeful, morose free fall.

  In February 1942, partly in response to the national mood, Roosevelt had ordered the sequestration of more than a hundred thousand Nisei—US residents of Japanese ancestry—at internment camps across the United States (including Pearl Harbor spy Takeo Yoshikawa, to an Arizona camp, though his misdeeds had not yet been discovered). Even this action failed to shake Americans out of their malaise, but Roosevelt knew what would: bombing Tokyo. Such a bold and aggressive initiative, he believed, would unify the country, restore confidence, and offer Japan a taste of US resolve. The logistics, however, were formidable.

  An aircraft carrier would have to get within two hundred to three hundred miles of mainland Japan for its small F6F Hellcat bombers to strike Tokyo and have enough fuel to return to the ship. But it was far too risky to send the few remaining ships in the Pacific Fleet that close to Japan. Only the army’s burly B-25 bomber had the size and range necessary for such a mission. But B-25s had never taken off from an aircraft carrier, and it was physically impossible for them to land on one. So the president ordered the army and navy to work together on a solution to that problem, and fast.

  Bill had known about this mission for months and had been long preoccupied with its high risk and poor odds—the worst so far for Benny. In fact, Bill knew to a footnote the scope and perils of every Enterprise mission well in advance of Benny. Though they wrote each other often, wartime censorship prevented Bill from sharing such classified details, including any mention of this daring operation. Understanding the dangers Benny faced yet unable to warn him was an acute source of anxiety for Bill.

  The state of the floating navy, moreover, was deplorable. To lose the slim surviving strength of the Pacific Fleet would be to virtually relinquish US naval presence in the entire region. The recent dispatch from Admiral Chester Nimitz, CINCPAC (Commander in Chief Pacific Fleet), that Bill had distributed, eyes only, offered no comfort:

  TOP SECRET

  Pacific Fleet markedl
y inferior in all types to enemy. Cannot conduct aggressive action in Pacific except raids of hit and run character which are unlikely to reduce pressure on Southwest Pacific. Logistical problems far surpass peacetime conception and always precarious due to fueling at sea and weather . . . Unless this fleet is strengthened, it is in unprecedented danger and its effectiveness . . . is limited.

  Nimitz

  According to the punctilious Map Room clocks, it was 0700, Saturday, April 18, 1942, on the other side of the international date line. They should have executed by now, if indeed Enterprise, Hornet, and their escorts had made it to the launch point where Colonel Jimmy Doolittle and his B-25 squadron were to take off. All there was to do now was wait. The bank of clocks on the far wall ticked away the seconds in every time zone, and the teletype taunted from the corner, its incessant repetition as ominous as it was monotonous: click, reset; click, reset; click, reset.

  Bill had learned to display grace under pressure at a young age, thanks to tumultuous family circumstances, but that day tested him. The Pacific map’s vast watery expanse off mainland Japan’s coast offered no consolation. Were he to press his whole hand over the convoy’s route, it would touch no land relief at all—only enemy-infested waters; an enemy that was superior in size, strength, and sea power. Another worry roiled also. If the Tokyo bombing mission was successful, would the resulting Japanese rage further endanger Barton, who, under the best of circumstances, had been taken prisoner?

  His mother’s letter, delivered to the White House that same afternoon, throbbed in Bill’s ears. “My mind,” she wrote, “swings like a pendulum, Barton, Benny, Benny, Barton . . .”