In due course, Bob’s own name was called and he again scaled the ladder to the deck. But when he reached for his clothing issue, Mr. Wada squinted hard at him, then whipped into a fury. Believing he had caught Granston attempting to hoard clothing, Wada barked an unintelligible order, prompting the nearby guard to pummel and punch Bob until he stumbled backward into the hold, where he lay stunned and bleeding as the clothing muster droned on.
On January 30, 500 survivors of the original 1,619 prisoner draft that had departed Manila forty-nine days earlier queued up to debark onto Japanese soil. After the final indignities of head-to-toe disinfectant dousing and the insertion of glass rods up their rectums to test for dysentery, they exited the ship.
Scores of incapacitated were carried off first and laid on the dock. It will never be known if Barton was aware that, in his case, the task was performed by Charles Armour. Stooped and grunting under the weight, a determined Charles gently placed Barton on the dock and then crumbled to a seated position next to him.
Japanese medical examiners, visibly shocked by the group’s condition, began their assessments, moving with their clipboards quietly among the men on the cold wooden platform. Their superiors, meanwhile, deliberated over what to do with these diseased and emaciated prisoners of war.
Charles sat glum and silent next to his incognizant friend, waiting his turn to be examined. He had aged dramatically over his imprisonment. The distinctive lope had turned to a halting gait, thanks to beriberi and other assaults on Charles’s body. A receding veil of thin blond strands bared a pate dark with freckles, and his once-strong Saxonesque face was hollow, lined, and expressionless. All fierceness and resistance were gone. Back when there was energy and cause for laughter, Charles would joke that for every hair he lost, Barton seemed to gain ten; even now, Barton’s resting head was an unruly mass of brown waves.
Remorse rolled over Charles, or perhaps it was regret that he had taken this good and true friend too much for granted for too long. He watched his friend’s chest rise and fall, rise and fall, grateful now for every breath Barton drew. He closed the top button on the Japanese overcoat that Bob Granston had put on him, and pulled the collar up around Barton’s ears.
How Barton would have laughed at the sight of himself wearing a Japanese uniform, Charles thought. “Over my dead body!” He would have laughed that big, ironic, endearing laugh and thrown his head back the way he always did. As if in response to Charles’s musings, Barton inhaled deeply and released an encouraging sigh. But following that exhale, there were no more.
Charles looked on in disbelief, choking back tears. Here was Charles Armour—so willing to take his own life three years earlier, placing others’ lives at risk in the process—still alive. And here lay Barton Cross, who had protected him at every turn—not only from the Japanese, but also from himself—dead.
With a spark of the old Charles, he gritted his teeth at the approaching Japanese medical technician. But he did not resist when the gloved examiner crouched down to feel for Barton’s pulse, first on his wrist, then on his neck. Detecting none, the examiner unbuttoned the overcoat and turned Barton’s body over for a closer look, showing particular interest in the back of his head. After scrawling a few notes on a pad, he moved on to the next case.
It would be fifty-four years before that Japanese medical examiner’s findings—slipped untranslated into Barton Cross’s long-archived naval personnel file—would be discovered, translated, and the dual causes of his demise revealed.
Beside the date January 30, 1945, was written: “Acute enteritis and death from bomb wound to the head.”
EPILOGUE
IN 2009 I REOPENED the long-closed inquiry into my Uncle Barton’s death. I requested all documents bearing his name from the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva—still the reigning global authority on prisonniers de guerre. A year later and after a payment of 100 Swiss francs, the documents arrived. I also procured Barton’s naval personnel file from the military records archive in St. Louis.
Both sets of records contained an official copy of Barton’s death certificate. It was dated September 14, 1945, curiously, nearly two weeks after the formal Japanese surrender and more than seven months after his passing. The given cause of death was “acute enteritis” (dysentery). But this same ailment, I discovered, was cited as the killer of hundreds of other expired prisoners pulled from Brazil Maru on its January 30, 1945, arrival at Moji, Japan. How did they know how these men died so long after the fact? Virtually all their death certificates were created that September, seven months later, and most by the same bilingual Japanese scribe. His name was “Huryojohokyoku,” a very recent hire at General MacArthur’s occupation headquarters in Tokyo.
It was impossible to discern on what medical basis this postmortem diagnosis was made. But after reviewing volumes of archives, it appears to have been generic shorthand for a presumptive mix of dysentery, starvation, dehydration, exposure, and unimaginable cruelty. Barton’s personnel file, however, contained an additional clue; there was one Japanese document that, unlike every other in his file, had no companion translation. Locating a bilingual Japanese national willing to translate that wartime document was challenging. But I succeeded thanks to the assistance of a family member who works with a team of young Japanese professionals at Patagonia.
The document was a routine prisoner tracking record maintained by Barton’s captors. Its first entry was the date Barton was seized from Sternberg Hospital in Manila. The last entry was dated January 30, 1945; the place, Moji, Japan. Between the two, every ailment, medical treatment, and prison camp relocation had been dated and entered with chilling Japanese efficiency. So startling was the translation’s final entry, however, that I sought a second translation from an independent source: this time by linguists at the Tokyo office of a prominent US law firm.
The second translation corroborated the first. Entitled “Other Information,” the ailment acute enteritis was indeed cited, presumably by the Japanese medic examining prisoners on the Moji dock—both dead and alive. But it was written in a sequence that altered its import entirely: “Acute enteritis, and death from bomb wound to head.” Helen Cross had been right all along.
Was this significant omission simply a military snafu, or was it a case of intentional deception intended to hide a friendly fire incident? How is it that this never-translated prisoner record had not been discovered until now? Why hadn’t my father, who had pursued the case for four years after the war, found it?
First of all, postwar mishandling of prisoner records and other wartime documents, both by the Japanese in the weeks before their surrender and by Allied occupiers in the months and years afterward, has been uniformly described as deplorable. Thousands of records were destroyed, misfiled, or lost by one party or the other. Secondly, it was not until after 1952, which marked the end of the Allied occupation of Japan, that thousands of war-record-stuffed file cabinets began to be repatriated to the United States. My own conclusion is that Bill Mott’s search, which lasted until 1949, ended before the document surfaced in Barton’s long-archived personnel file—which probably occurred sometime in the 1950s.
That scenario notwithstanding, the following statistic has never been formally acknowledged by the US government: of the 21,039 POW deaths that occurred aboard Japanese transports during World War II, most were the result of unwitting attacks by either Allied submarines or war planes.
FOR MORE THAN THREE years after the war ended, my grandmother Helen continued to fire off inquiries to political and military powers in Washington, demanding more information about Barton’s death. Over time, however, responses to her letters ebbed. Just as fighter aircraft were dumped into the sea, tanks were left to rust on distant Pacific islands, and warships were cut up for scrap, Helen’s fierce salvos were quietly filed away.
While waiting for answers that never came, she traveled to Barton’s alma mater, Christ School in Arden, North Carolina, to establish the Barton Cross Mem
orial Scholarship. Deprived of her son’s adult years, she chose to memorialize Barton’s adolescence by honoring individuals who “best exemplified his qualities of character, citizenship, and leadership.” Barton had developed these attributes during his time at Christ School, and it helped him—and helped him help others—endure a long and harsh imprisonment.
Every spring thereafter, until her passing in 1967, Helen made the 750-mile drive to Arden to announce the scholarship winner at the commencement-eve banquet. The recipient was always a member of the junior class whose senior year tuition was to be paid with the award. Helen was known to approach the lectern quietly and make eye contact with each boy as she recalled her son before the hushed assembly.
“Shortly before leaving for the Philippines,” she would begin, “Barton spoke lovingly of Christ School, saying that his most cherished ideals were forged through his training and associations there. He also asked that, if he did not return, a cross bearing his name be placed in the school’s chapel yard.” While that final request has not been fulfilled, a granite memorial was erected in 2011 near the campus chapel bearing his name, along with other alumni killed in foreign wars.
BENNY—OR UNCLE BERT, our own affectionate name for him—met and married Helen Lacey after the war. Over five decades of marital bliss followed. But Benny had another postwar love: preservation of the USS Enterprise, both the ship itself and its historic and heroic naval legacy. While most soldiers and sailors who fought in World War II wanted nothing more than to bury those memories and get on with their lives, Benny wanted just the opposite.
He published numerous postwar essays on Pacific naval warfare and firsthand accounts of iconic Enterprise battles, both critical sources for this book. He was also instrumental in setting up the USS Enterprise (CV-6) Association and helped lead the effort to establish the carrier as a floating museum. It was to be located on the Potomac River near the Washington Monument.
The vision had an auspicious beginning. The most decorated warship in American naval history received a celebrity homecoming in October 1945. One hundred and one fighter planes kicked off the biggest Navy Day celebration on record as they escorted Enterprise up the Hudson River at sunrise and into New York Harbor. The thundering flyover had awakened an entire city by the time she tied up at Pier 26.
New York headlines competed to memorialize the occasion: “The Pride of the Navy Comes Home in Dawn’s Early Light”; “The Unsinkable Enterprise Enters Harbor as Bands Play”; “Hunter, Home from the Kill”; and “The Big E, Fightin-est Carrier—In!”
Fireboats sprayed gushers, bands played, military units marched down the avenues, and huge crowds of navy Waves and Red Cross girls gathered to cheer the Enterprise crew—who obligingly lined the rails and cheered back. Long queues of patriots and their children snaked up her gangplank in good and bad weather, all wanting to board the famous carrier they had been reading about since 1941. They climbed into her turrets, ran their hands along her gun barrels, and toured her cavernous hangars, messes, and wardrooms. Before exiting the ship, they invariably crouched down to touch the grooved Douglas fir planking of her revered flight deck.
On Navy Day proper, the crew traded grateful salutes with President Harry Truman. I can only imagine Benny’s pride when Enterprise’s night fighter group growled up the Hudson at dusk and put on a show for some four to six million spectators, including an estimated 1.5 million from New Jersey, who lined the opposite banks for miles. The planes roared over the anchored ships in salute formation and then circled back with lights blazing in a V-for-victory formation. Their finale was greeted with deafening cheers—a third and final flyover was in a glorious “E” formation in honor of their mother ship.
Following Navy Day festivities, Truman promptly approved Navy Secretary James Forrestal’s request that the Enterprise be “permanently enshrined in an appropriate location as a visible symbol of American valor and tenacity in war, and of our will to fight all enemies who assail us.”
The president’s approval seemed to ensure the carrier’s preservation, but over time, budget concerns grew and private fundraising foundered. In 1958, after languishing twelve years at a Bayonne, New Jersey, shipyard, the Enterprise was slated for the scrap heap. Benny was devastated.
Several symbolic features of the ship, however, were preserved for posterity. The Enterprise bell rests at the entrance to the Naval Academy’s Bancroft Hall and is rung only after midshipmen victories over West Point. The battle flag flown from her tripod mast during the harrowing Battle of Santa Cruz is on permanent display at the Aviation Museum in Pensacola, Florida. Her sixteen-foot-long stern plate, a massive steel work bearing the ship’s name in raised letters, greets visitors to Veterans’ Memorial Park in River Vale, New Jersey, and her two-story-high anchor marks the entrance to the Washington Navy Yard.
Unfortunately, the plan to crown the new Annapolis football stadium with Enterprise’s Sky Control tower was cancelled due to maintenance estimates on its outdated steel construction. But happily, the promised honor was upheld. A cement replica, named Enterprise Tower, was erected there instead.
IN 2012, I TRAVELED to England to meet Benny’s daughter, Jeanne Marie. I had never met my cousin (who had taken on the nickname Mara) because she moved to England when I was very young. Over scones and a pot of Earl Grey tea, Mara shared difficult wartime memories that still pained, even in her late seventies. She remembered Benny’s long absences, and then his homecoming, shortly after which their home in Bethesda burned down. “Sleaford Place,” she shuddered. “Terrible.”
An accomplished equestrian, Mara said she left home in her late teens and made a living exercising horses owned by a series of wealthy patrons. One of these, a British doctor, became her husband. Dr. and Mrs. Hodgson had no children, but instead dedicated their lives to British dressage and their beloved thoroughbreds. Benny visited Mara and Dr. Hodgson often at their home in Surrey, renewing their bond and healing old scars. Their visits were long, warm, and conversation filled. This, of course, was the joyful and hoped-for outcome that had populated Benny’s dreams aboard the wartime Enterprise.
Last Christmas, I received a package bearing a British postmark. Inside was a small wrapped gift: Benny’s 1930 Annapolis class ring. Mara’s enclosed note thanked me again for my visit, saying it had been an important catharsis. Now widowed, she had sold her home in Surrey, she said, and was planning to travel abroad for an indefinite period. She asked that the ring remain in our family forever.
MY FATHER WAS IN Manila in September 1945 when he learned that Barton would not be returning. He contacted the Navy Casualty Branch at the Pentagon to notify them that he would travel immediately to Lilac Hedges to break the difficult news himself—per his 1942 instructions to that office. When he learned that the Casualty Branch had already notified the family by letter, he cancelled his travel plan. Instead of returning home to crushing sadness and certain anger, Bill stayed put and began the long and complicated investigation into Barton’s death and the search for his remains.
Four years later, the search yielded results. An army recovery team had discovered a mass grave near Moji Harbor in 1946. These unknowns had been removed to another site, and then to a third location in 1949, at which point they were positively identified. The long-awaited news reached Bill via a cryptic memorandum from the US Army quartermaster at Tokyo after a lengthy stopover at the Bureau of Naval Personnel in Washington.
Subject: Cross, Arthur B., Jr., Ens., Identification of remains
The remains of Unknowns X-385 through X-444, cremated in a communal urn, British Commonwealth War Cemetery, Yokohama, Japan, formerly interred at the USAF Mausoleum #1, Honshu, Japan, have been identified as the recoverable remains of 302 Allied personnel, one of whom is the subject named decedent.
It is unclear how X-385 through X-444—which would seem to denote 59 Unknowns—came to equal 302 individuals, but at least after four years of searching, Barton’s final resting place had been confirmed. Helen and Ar
thur declined to travel to Japan to view the site; this was left to my father, who promised to take photographs, in what must have been an awkward exchange. In May 1949, he boarded a military transport for the long trans-Pacific flight.
There were a number of familiar stops along the way, likely in connection with his official duties at the time. The itinerary included Midway, Guam, Saipan, Okinawa, and Manila, all postwar American military bases. I frequently imagine him on this somber mission—reflecting back on the amphibians’ tear across the Pacific—as his plane lowered through the clouds toward those once hotly contested atolls.
In Tokyo, MacArthur’s SCAP headquarters provided a car and driver that took him the twenty-five miles to Yokohama, a journey replete with scenes of a rebuilding country and a populace bent on erasing its belligerent war personality from national memory. When he arrived at the cherry-blossom-adorned British Commonwealth Cemetery of the Allied War Dead, Bill retrieved his camera and looped the brown leather strap around his neck.
The dreaded destination was visible from hundreds of yards away: a large, square, marble columbarium flanked by fields of graves on three sides and topped with a towering white cross. He walked past saluting sentries and line after line of headstones bearing familiar American, English, and Australian surnames. Inside the shrine, he faced a single interior adornment: a polished metal urn anchored in a rectangular marble pedestal.
Above it was etched:
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