Poor Specht screamed in agony and had to be held down for the procedure. Afterward, the surgeon wrapped the bloody stump in a dirty towel, and, mercifully, the patient fell asleep. The next day, Specht was buried by the seawall alongside the accumulating prisoner dead.
On the fifth day, a convoy drew up to the tennis courts and we were ordered to load.
Kenneth Wheeler to Helen Cross
THE NINETEEN TRUCKS THAT lumbered up on December 20 felt like a celestial vision. The prisoners had begun to wonder how much longer they could endure brutal exposure and a diet of 55 calories a day. After Lieutenant Toshino loaded the trucks to overcapacity, the convoy snaked out of sight. The six hundred prisoners that remained on the tennis court—Barton and Charles among them—were left to mull their fates.
There were benefits for those left behind, however. That night, they received a triple ration of rice from their unpredictable captors—six level spoonfuls of dry grain instead of two, plus a spoonful each of salt and dried fish. There was also more room to spread out on the court. With that and the extra food in their bellies, they slept a little better that night.
They were nonetheless relieved when told to prepare for their own move. Following a generous breakfast of ten spoonfuls of raw rice and more dried fish, Mr. Wada ordered the ensigns to clean the tennis court. Barton’s mordant quips over the absurdity of this task elicited laughter—good and ancient medicine—even as the men labored to comply. Humor was their sole remaining antidote for misery, and it could not be taken away.
While the ensigns swabbed the blood- and feces-splattered tennis court, guards drew their swords and cut large tree branches to camouflage the trucks. A familiar mix of dread and anticipation returned when the prisoners learned why. The truck drivers reported that American pilots were actively patrolling above the main roads.
The truck ride was an uncomfortable zigzag over roadbeds rutted by weather, neglect, and war. At the intermittent buzz of approaching planes, the convoy lurched into ravines or under roadside tree canopies for cover. But when the trucks pressed northeast across the Zambales Mountains and away from the sea, the prisoners found cause for encouragement.
Could there be no more enemy ships to remove them from Luzon? With every hairpin turn, morale rose again with the prospect they might be liberated. But ominous signs mixed with positive ones. A steady stream of Japanese soldiers passed their convoy, variously hauling weapons, food, large guns, and ammunition. Recalled Colonel Beecher, “We felt . . . that the Japs were moving into position somewhere . . . We hoped . . . we would still be in the Philippines when [the final battle] took place.”
The thirty-seven-mile truck ride ended at San Fernando, Pampanga, a town deep in Luzon’s central plains. The last tennis court draft was marched along the town’s vacant main street to a deserted cinema. After entering under the bullet-ridden marquee, the men groped in the dark. When their eyes finally adjusted, they saw that the theater’s seats had been pulled up and tossed into an orchestra pit. Its singular water source was a spigot outside a barbed wire fence surrounding the theater. That spigot, and the latrines—slit trenches dug behind the rear of the building—could be accessed only by climbing through a small window. Still, the abandoned cinema was protected from the sun by day and from biting wind and insects by night.
They felt a spark of jealousy, however, when they learned that the earlier prisoner draft was being held at the town jail, which had plumbing and cooking facilities—even cots. But when their first cooked meal in a week appeared shortly after their arrival, all was forgiven. It had been prepared—unbidden—by their colleagues at the jail. The meal of steaming rice, seaweed, and camotes arrived on a sheet of corrugated roofing, and the men gratefully wolfed it down.
On the second evening in San Fernando, Mr. Wada called Colonel Beecher to the entrance of the cinema. Eventually they would resume their trip to Japan, Wada told a disappointed Beecher. He then directed the colonel to select fifteen sick and wounded—those least able to make a sea journey—so they could be sent to a hospital. Beecher was elated but also conflicted, for hundreds of prisoners easily met the criteria.
Fifteen men were finally culled from among the most extreme cases at the jail and theater. When the patients were loaded onto the two truck beds, Beecher recalled thinking, Well, there go at least fifteen prisoners who in spite of their wounds are pretty lucky. They’ll get back to Bilibid and probably pull through; certainly better off than us left behind.
But Beecher was tragically mistaken, unaware that Lieutenant Urabe at Manila POW headquarters had ordered Toshino to exterminate any POWs unable to withstand further movement. A shallow grave had been prepared before the trucks arrived at a cemetery south of town. When Lieutenant Toshino and Sergeant Tanoue Suketoshi reached the darkened site, the patients were bound and dragged to the grave’s long border. Sergeant Tanoue then drew his sword and decapitated the first seven men. When their heads and bodies failed to fall cleanly into the grave, an irritated Toshino ordered the guard detail to bayonet the remaining patients.
ON THE FOLLOWING DAY, Christmas Eve, the prisoners’ stooped and thinning frames converged on San Fernando’s vacant main street for a dubious yuletide march. Their destination was the San Fernando train station. The men were upbeat, buoyed by rumors that they were heading back to Bilibid. But at the bomb-cratered train platform, a short line of hot, windowless boxcars awaited. The prisoners grew quiet with dread when Mr. Wada announced that 185 men must board each car.
Even the sadistic Wada could not overcome simple physics: there was not enough space on the train for all the prisoners, crammed in or not. Only when air raid sirens signaled the approach of American bombers did Wada order the remaining prisoners on the platform to mount the cars’ rickety ladders and take seats on the rooftops. Two guards were posted with each group of roof riders; they numbered twenty and thirty a car. Bandaged prisoners were instructed to wave their arms and shout if the planes zeroed in on the train.
Despite obvious danger and discomfort, Charles, Barton, and Jack Ferguson felt nothing but gratitude to have won spots on top. Engine smoke and soot blew on them throughout, and it was a cold, hazardous ride, but that was far preferable to another long trip inside the suffocating boxcars.
There were other upsides, too. One was the excellent view of dogfights between American and Japanese planes as the train pulled out of San Fernando, and of the bombing of Clark Field against a magnificent sunset. Smoke plumes from downed Japanese planes wafted skyward in the distance.
The train chugged deep into the night, passing through one darkened barrio after another. Despite the advancing hour on Christmas Eve, local Filipinos gathered and called to them from each train platform: “Merry Chrees-mass, Joe!” As the train rolled through, they tossed bananas, eggs, sugarcane, and mangoes up to the ragged roof riders, and groups of children broke into spontaneous caroling. The prisoners waved and wept, grateful beyond words for the moral support and life-saving offerings.
His body was cold, dirty, and depleted, but his fellow prisoners all recalled that Barton’s spirits soared on this particular night. He felt free as air, and his mass of curly, unkempt hair whipped in the wind just as it had when he stuck his head out the Packard window on family drives to the Jersey Shore. His quick, glancing green eyes took in every detail. My God, he said to Charles and Jack, what stories they would have to tell when they got home! This Christmas train, their long camaraderie, the big-hearted Filipinos—still defiant, loyal, and generous to the Americans despite their own privations and long struggle—would make for grand tales in their old age. Tales of faith, sacrifice, generosity, and persistence in the face of seemingly hopeless odds.
This night threw the qualities of a transformed Barton Cross into high relief. His eager fellowship and routine sacrifices had earned him deep respect among his prisoner peers. But Barton believed he had survived the long ordeal only because of those sacrifices, not in spite of them—and that’s if he ever admitted to sa
crificing at all.
His strongest conviction had been the most infectious: that their ironclad fellowship was their best defense against the worst the Japanese could throw at them. It fortified them all, mentally, physically, and emotionally. The strength of this indivisible bond had become religion for Barton the prisoner. On this Christmas Eve, the shallow vanities of Barton’s former self—that insulated youth of 1941—had long since faded away.
THE ENGINE LURCHED NORTH at the first track switch, away from Manila. If not to Bilibid, then where? They were desperate enough to pray for the despised Cabanatuan, as the train approached the last possible switch that could take them there.
But when the conductor did not oblige at that final split, a new apprehension seized the prisoners. They all knew their Luzon geography by now. Lingayen Gulf, the last remaining Luzon port still in enemy hands, had suddenly become the only possible terminus, which almost certainly meant shipment to Japan.
After seventeen hours and a final belch of choking smoke, the wood-burning engine jerked to a halt at 0400 Christmas morning. For the men on top, the platform sign confirmed their arrival at another town named San Fernando, this one a small coastal village in the La Union Province. The salty report of sea air filled Barton’s nostrils—and his memory. For countless summers, detecting that first briny scent through that open Packard window had stirred anticipation of the Jersey Shore’s many delights. This morning it brought a dread so great it threatened nausea.
Barton followed his comrades down the boxcar ladder to join gasping prisoners pouring out of the interiors. Discouraged, famished, and chilled to the bone, the reassembled ensigns said little. There was no need to parry over the meaning of this destination. Instead, they reflexively huddled together when ordered to lie down on the cold and crowded platform. A prescient few first snapped up scraps of dried coconut littering the landing and crammed them into their mouths. It was a Christmas morning none who survived would ever forget.
They were rousted at dawn and marched a few kilometers to the perimeter grounds of an abandoned trade school outside the town. Memories of savage thirst always present, the search for water began immediately. All they could locate was a muddy, hand-dug well by the latrine pit. One after another prisoner gorged from the fouled supply after “purifying” it with iodine drops. Potable or not, fear of water deprivation overwhelmed even the most cautious by this point. Without pots or a heat source to boil the water, the revised wisdom was that one might just as well die from typhoid or dysentery as thirst.
One rice ball per man was meted out for Christmas dinner, after which the prisoners surrendered to sleep on the trade school grounds. But no sooner had they dozed off than a Japanese sentry appeared with new orders. They must rise and march to the shore of Lingayen Gulf and await their ship. The sudden, unhappy news was met in turns with shock and angry objections, followed by a flash of violence near the rice supplies. A small but determined group of prisoners overpowered their own colleagues guarding the food and clawed what they could, spilling precious supplies before being brought under control. Military discipline within the prisoner ranks had disintegrated once again. It was no match for the primal powers of hunger and fear.
After the melee, the overweary prisoners formed up in customary columns of four and stumbled onto the shore road. It was a breezy, pastoral hike, in stark contrast to their demoralized state. As they walked past moonlit hedges of flowering hibiscus and mango trees, they snatched what they could, gobbling down fruit, flowers, and leaves alike.
Evidence of the looming peril grew with every step.
“The march was about two miles,” Major John Wright recalled, “over a rough road with bare feet . . . Oil storage tanks had been blasted to bits, buildings knocked down, and there were many bomb craters . . . Japanese . . . beach defenses—pillboxes, barbed wire, foxholes—all indicated they expected an invasion any hour. We wondered anew whether it would come soon enough to save us.”
THE PRISONERS WERE HALTED at a windblown spit of sand and ordered to sit. A menacing Lingayen Gulf churned before them. It was just past midnight, and the moon over the water illuminated as many anchored Japanese vessels as it did ruined masts and sunken ship stacks breaking the surface. The men burrowed into the sand to protect from the stiff gulf winds as trucks, horses, ammunition carts, and troops hurried past on the road behind them.
Manny Lawton wrote: “With our bony frames molded into the soft sand . . . it was more comfortable than . . . the cement tennis court. Still, we shivered and shook . . . Two men died that night . . . By midmorning [the heat] was intense. Nothing stood up to the sun but a thin growth of stunted brown grass.”
As on the tennis court, no sooner did the night’s cold give way to daybreak than they were tormented by tropical sun beating down from every angle. There was the added agony of their bare skin on blistering-hot sand, and thirst again reached crisis proportions. Colonel Beecher implored Mr. Wada for water, to no avail.
However, Wada did relent to Beecher’s suggestion that the prisoners be allowed to rotate into the gulf to bathe blisters and allow the salt water to absorb into thirsty pores. The system worked until one water-crazed officer dashed in and began gulping seawater. Just as the guards lifted their rifles and took aim, the man’s fellow POWs dragged him back onto the beach.
When the equatorial sun slipped behind a pink-and-purple reef of clouds on the horizon, its majesty was no doubt lost on the prisoners. To them, sunset meant only one thing: the imminent arrival of the night winds. In this manner—searing by day and freezing by night—the prisoners spent forty-eight hours on the sands of Lingayen Gulf.
On December 27 the moon and Orion were high in the night sky when the prisoners were rousted and led across a narrow strip of land to a wooden pier. The transition went relatively smoothly until Mr. Wada ordered the men to board two barges alongside the pier, knocking hard against the pilings. Both vessels were fifteen feet below, and there were no ladders. The prisoners hung back in fear.
“Speedo! Speedo!” exhorted Lieutenant Toshino. At this, Wada ordered the guards to employ their rifle butts and push the prisoners off the dock. The result was a fresh round of sprains, broken bones, and bruises. Several missed the barges entirely. One officer was pulled lifeless from the tossing waters. The guards laughed.
At first light, the packed barges finally inched out into Lingayen Gulf toward two Japanese freighters. Enoura Maru was lettered on one, Brazil Maru on the other. The ships’ captains seemed as anxious as Lieutenant Toshino to join the departing convoy before the inevitable return of American planes. “Speedo! Speedo! Speedo!” The guards waved clubs and rifles to expedite boarding. Neither ship bore Red Cross or other protective markings.
Colonel Beecher led the larger draft of 1,070 prisoners—including most of the ensigns—onto Enoura Maru. Barton and Charles were grateful that Beecher had remained in charge of their group and not diverted to the other freighter. If the Japanese respected any of them, they respected Curtis Beecher.
They filed past hundreds of wounded Japanese soldiers on Enoura Maru’s upper decks before the long prisoner queue began another cautious descent into a deep cargo hold. This time a pungent wave of ammonia fumes stopped them in their tracks. The hold was covered in fresh horse manure.
Major John Wright wrote: “[T]he filth was disgusting. The ship had brought cavalry [horses] to Luzon and we loaded into the hold [right after] . . . Scattered in with the manure was millet and oats . . . This was picked out grain by grain and eaten.”
Some men shoveled the manure aside, others, beyond such a task, simply lay down in the dung. Large flies covered their mouths, faces, and eyes. But soon the prisoners were distracted from the present misery by a bigger problem: explosions rocked the ship’s starboard side. One. Two. Three.
“Navy submarine torpedoes,” said Lieutenant David Nash. The seasoned naval officer recognized the tenor of the blasts, which narrowly missed them. The convoy quickly hastened out of harbor and point
ed north, hugging the Philippine coastline for protection for as long as possible.
On Enoura Maru, the prisoners slipped further into degradation. “We were dirty, bearded, and full of diarrhea,” Carl Engelhart wrote. “We ate from our hats, from pieces of cloth, from our hands . . . A handful of rice clutched against a sweaty naked chest, so the flies could not get it, eating like an animal with befouled hands.”
“Starving men forget discipline, forget honor, and forget self-respect,” wrote John Wright.
Manny Lawton put it more bluntly: “Only survival mattered.”
On New Year’s Eve—day five of the voyage—a riot broke out in the hold. Servers were suddenly punched and thrown aside while distributing food in the semidarkness. The mob of hunger-crazed prisoners bit and slapped their way to the buckets, and then clawed at their contents. Tubs of precious soup and tea—the most sustenance offered since departing Leyte—were spilled in the melee. The raiders got their fill, while others got nothing. By the time Enoura Maru made anchor at Takao, Formosa, later that night, twenty-one more prisoners had died.
WITHOUT EXPLANATION, THE PAIR of prison ships lay at anchor for several days in Takao Harbor. Fervent hopes that their arrival at Formosa would mean fresh sustenance from imagined shore supplies faded quickly. Mr. Wada repeatedly denied prisoner pleas for additional food and water. “American submarines sink Japanese supply ships. No food for you,” he replied.
The prisoners wallowed and despaired in the fetid hold; four or five more men died each day. They barely stirred at the intermittent buzz of planes overhead. Would American planes strike this ship, too? More than a few prayed they would. The men’s growing desperation for food and water mattered far more than the rat-a-tat of antiaircraft fire from the deck.
The Jersey Brothers Page 47
