The Jersey Brothers

by Sally Mott Freeman

  Careers, family, and Cousin Barton’s move to the West Coast in his twenties resulted in our losing touch for decades. But after another determined search, and with the help of my sister Diane Mott Davidson, I located him. He had moved back to New Jersey and lived within minutes of where this story began. I made that eerily familiar drive from Washington, DC up to Monmouth County a week later. It was a long-deferred and happy reunion.

  On some level, we all knew that Rosemary had started the row on the porch, but we knew nothing of the unresolved sadness at the heart of it. The impact that confusing and painful experience had on me did not diminish with time. I couldn’t solve it as an eight-year-old, but in researching and writing this account as an adult—and connecting with the characters who had shaped it—I found a measure of peace and a way to honor my uncle’s surprising legacy. His was the big heart that had bestowed on fellow prisoners a will to get to the next day, a love born in the twilight games of three Jersey brothers. From Barton came the brotherhood that, even after his death, helped forge our family and its deeds.

  On that unforgettable return to New Jersey, my cousin produced a dust-covered cardboard box with no markings on the outside. We sat cross-legged on the floor and opened it together. Inside were the numerous letters from fellow prisoners, Uncle Barton’s posthumously awarded Purple Heart, and a cache of old family photographs, letters, and other archives crucial to this story. Cousin Barton had stored that box for nearly twenty years before my visit. He had never opened it.

  Afterword

  I thought it would take a year or two to excavate and reconstruct this story. It took me ten years. I started by sorting through documents at my dining room table, which back then fit into a single box. I now rent an office, and my archival cache has expanded to fill two file cabinets and the surfaces of two large tables. They are crammed and stacked with timelines, maps, documents, letters, and unpublished and privately published recollections, memoirs, and letters from men imprisoned with Barton in the Philippines; men who served on the USS Enterprise, the USS Rocky Mount, and the USS Eldorado; and men who served in the White House Map Room from 1942 to 1945. I have two ceiling-height bookcases as well, filled with volumes on the above subjects, many long-out-of-print primary sources procured from antique booksellers after lengthy waits.

  My inquiry took me from the National Prisoner of War Museum and Archives on the grounds of the notorious Confederate prison camp in Andersonville, Georgia, to navy bases, hospitals, and former prison camps in the Philippines, to the homes of onetime war prisoners and colleagues of Barton Cross and to that of my father’s first White House Map Room hire, the late George Elsey. Interlibrary loans allowed me access to reels of microfiched articles from long-defunct New Jersey newspapers. I interviewed dozens of individuals who collectively knew the three brothers, both in peace and in war.

  My interviews with these old colleagues, as well as Helen’s diary entries, penned recollections, and letters to the Cross family, helped me flesh out their actions and comprehend the depth of their relationships, particularly those formed among the ensigns and other prisoners. I was surprised at the number of human details—the gestures, the mannerisms, the dialogue and expressions—that these men recalled, and how vivid the moments remained. For my immediate family members, I also drew from my own memories of their habits—Benny pinching his nose constantly, and my father always clearing his throat before speaking, or raising his finger to make a point.

  Other key resources were the Roosevelt Presidential Library in Hyde Park, New York; the MacArthur Memorial Archives in Norfolk, Virginia; the Truman Presidential Library in Independence, Missouri; the Naval Historical Center at the Washington Navy Yard; the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis; the National Archives; the International Red Cross in Geneva; Ateneo University in Manila; the US Naval Institute in Annapolis, Maryland; and student archives at the US Naval Academy, Wellesley College, Christ School for Boys, the Citadel, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

  In the digitized Japanese war crime tribunal records located online, I discovered that Charles Armour’s nearly lifelong home was the house of his parents, built at 501 Holly Street, Little Rock, Arkansas. I learned that long after the Armour clan departed, it was purchased by nonfiction author and editor James Morgan, who wrote a fascinating book about the unique home and all its prior occupants. Jim provided incredibly valuable insight on Charles Armour, and later, excellent input on this entire story. I am proud to call him my friend.

  I wrote hundreds of letters over the course of my research, and to my delight and surprise, I received a number of long and informative replies, many of which led to unforgettable meetings and telephone calls.

  In January 2005 I traveled to the Philippines with a group of former veterans and prisoners who had fought there, and their families. Our group was feted by Filipino dignitaries throughout Manila—all the way up to Malacanang Palace—in celebration of the sixtieth anniversary of that city’s liberation from the Japanese. We stayed at the Manila Hotel, across from the Army and Navy Club of Manila, and from there traveled to every prison camp on Luzon.

  The trip to the Philippines took place very early in my quest. At the time, I understood that Barton had been wounded and was treated at Sternberg Hospital, but I still did not know where he was taken after January 1, 1942. He was not rostered at Cabanatuan until late spring of that year. While the Philippines trip filled critical blanks, it did not solve that mystery. Where were the hospital patients in that intervening period? While inquiries wended their way to one possible source after another, I delved into other parts of the story.

  Fortunately, my father gave several interviews about his time at Naval Intelligence, in the White House, and with Admiral Turner, and his accounts are also found in a number of history books. I found his Naval Intelligence and White House correspondence files, ordered chronologically from 1940 to 1943, after he passed away in 1997. These were a fascinating and potent primary source for this book.

  Benny’s first-person perspective is reflected throughout this story. Fortunately, he wrote eyewitness accounts of many of his Enterprise experiences—including the Wake Island bomber delivery in November 1941, the attack on Pearl Harbor, the carrier’s early hit-and-run raids, the Doolittle Raid, and the seminal sea battles at Midway and Santa Cruz. Some were published in USNA’s Shipmate magazine, but my father also had a complete file of his brother’s letters and war essays, virtually all written from “the perspective of the antiaircraft officer.” Benny’s camaraderie with war correspondents resulted in personal anecdotes recalled in the books they wrote about their experiences on the Enterprise, especially their early coverage of the Pacific Front.

  All the while, I continued to search for clues on what happened to the Sternberg navy patients after the fall of Manila. I regularly checked for new entries in the Veterans History Project database of interviews being conducted around the country. It was here, in 2007, that I got my first big break. In one such interview, a nurse who had served at Sternberg Hospital early in the war described the chaotic New Year’s Eve when the army patients were removed to the Manila docks for evacuation. The interviewer asked, “What happened to the navy patients?” She replied, “I don’t know, I was sent to Corregidor after that. They just stayed there, I guess.”

  That interview had been conducted under the auspices of the navy’s medical branch, the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery (BUMED). I promptly contacted BUMED, and after several referrals around a very large bureaucracy, I was connected to its historian in Washington, DC. The gentleman gave me some useful leads, and almost as an afterthought added an astounding additional piece of information: the Philippines had closed most of its American military facilities (airfields, bases, hospitals) in the mid-1990s, and had been boxing and returning American files to the respective military units stateside over a period of years. It seemed that a large number of medical files from the 1940s had been discovered in a storage area at the former
Cavite Naval Station, since renamed Sangley Point Naval Station. Apparently they had been overlooked in the file repatriation process and were very recently shipped to BUMED, he told me. They were in storage right there, on-site.

  At the time of this discovery, BUMED was headquartered on “Navy Hill,” a historic campus of buildings, including the old naval observatory, located across the street from the State Department in Washington, DC—a thirty-minute drive from my home. When I arrived, the gentleman on the phone led me to an unheated storage area filled with brown file boxes. They were not labeled, much less alphabetized, so I just sat down on the floor and went through each and every one.

  Box after box contained daily records kept by the navy doctors, pharmacist’s mates, and corpsmen of the men they treated after the Japanese bombing of the Cavite Navy Yard. This medical staff moved with and continued to care for these patients at Sternberg Hospital and beyond—until they and their patients together became prisoners of the Japanese. Not only did I now know where Barton Cross had been during that missing period and what his condition was, in astounding detail, I had actually toured these intervening prison holds—Santa Scholastica Women’s College and Pasay School—during my trip to the Philippines, so I knew exactly where they were and what they looked like.

  When my cousin Barton came to my mother’s funeral at Arlington National Cemetery in January 2008, he brought with him our grandmother Helen’s diaries from the 1940s, which had been in another box he saved from Lilac Hedges after the house was sold. Helen’s entries were so powerful, unique, and relevant, I knew I had to incorporate her diarist voice. In this same time frame, I arranged for the translation of an all-important Japanese document in Barton’s personnel file, the only one lacking a companion English translation.

  Slowly, from this accumulating trove, I assembled the story of The Jersey Brothers. It took longer than I had planned, but it was worth the wait.

  —SALLY MOTT FREEMAN

  1 Young Bill and Benny play in a New Jersey alleyway while staying with relatives during Helen and Arthur’s nuptials in England. A network of aunts and grandparents took loving care of the young brothers, despite the apparent paucity of playthings, Bill’s safety-pinned coat, and their general dishevelment.

  2 Bill, in acolyte robes, poses for a photo in 1925 with young Barton and Rosemary on the side lawn of Lilac Hedges. Helen and Arthur indulged Barton and Rosemary, who had a less disciplined upbringing than Bill and Benny.

  3 Arthur and teenage Barton on the Atlantic City boardwalk. Helen and Arthur enjoyed dressing Barton and Rosemary in fine clothes and taking them on indulgent family outings.

  4 Bill and Benny in Annapolis, 1929, before the brigade of midshipmen marched from Bancroft Hall to the football stadium, a tradition that continues to precede every navy home game. Bill and FDR shared a passion for navy football, which they discussed often. When Congress threatened to cancel the 1942 game to conserve rubber and fuel for the war, the Roosevelt White House would not hear of it.

  5 St. Joseph’s Chapel, Christ School for Boys, Arden, North Carolina. Daily homilies here helped shape adolescent Barton’s character. These lessons would later guide him as a prisoner of war. An alumni war memorial stands near the entrance of the chapel.

  6 Bill and Benny pose with Barton after his graduation from Christ School in June of 1934. The older brothers took an active interest in Barton’s academic performance, as they wanted him to follow them to the US Naval Academy.

  7 Barton poses at Lilac Hedges with proud Helen and Arthur following his graduation from US Naval Supply Corps School at Harvard University and US Navy induction ceremony. Barton would be wounded and taken prisoner barely three months after this photo was taken. September 1941.

  8 Barton at Allenhurst, the Jersey Shore locale where he learned to swim in the Atlantic surf. His strong skills and confidence in the water are credited with his assistance to several prisoners struggling in the water at Subic Bay after their prison ship was bombed.

  9 Barton raises a glass in toast at a bar in New York City prior to his departure for the Philippines. He was always at the center of social activities, at both after-work parties in New York City and as a prisoner of war. November 1941.

  10 Nurses walk the grounds of the lovely and spacious Sternberg Hospital before the war. Barton, Charles, and a number of other navy patients were ferried across Manila Bay to Sternberg after Cavite Naval Base was bombed on December 10, 1941, but when Manila fell, General MacArthur only ordered that the facility’s army patients be moved to safety.

  11 Bill and Romie on their wedding day. Benny (right of groom) was Bill’s best man and only attendant, the custom of the day. Rosemary Cross, standing to the left of the bride, was one of Romie’s attendants. The marriage suffered from Bill’s long hours at the White House after war was declared and subsequent orders to the Pacific. Chevy Chase, Maryland, September 10, 1938.

  12 A naval intelligence officer replots battle lines in an exhibit in Churchill’s subterranean map room, the heart of his secret complex hidden beneath Westminster between Parliament and #10 Downing Street. Churchill’s map room served as the model for the White House Map Room, which was established in the White House basement in 1942 by Bill Mott. That map room was also a closely guarded, twenty-four-hour center, run by rotating shifts of carefully selected watch officers, fielding incoming cables from intelligence sources, war officials, and Allied leaders.

  13 A rendering of the White House Map Room, where Bill spent sixteen months keeping Allied leaders informed and protecting the war’s secrets. The furniture was moved to the room’s center so Roosevelt could observe the updated war activity from his wheelchair. Bill Mott is seated at a teletype table to the far right of Roosevelt. This rendering was created in 1994 based on former watch officer George Elsey’s recollections, as told to artist William Gemmell, head of White House Calligraphy and Graphics. The illustration hangs in the Map Room today.

  14 This three monkeys cartoon was taped to the back of the Map Room door, which was guarded around the clock. The penciled edits were added by Secretary of War Stimson. Bill Mott used the cartoon as a visual aid to train new watch officers on the need for absolute secrecy concerning the room’s activities.

  15 Photo of FDR, a gift to Bill Mott at his departure from the White House. The inscription reads: For Bill Mott from his friend, Franklin Roosevelt. Bill Mott often described his close relationship with the president and FDR’s and Eleanor’s frequent inquiries about his brothers, Benny and Barton.

  16 Benny Mott on the platform outside Sky Control, USS Enterprise, 1942.

  17 Benny’s genial nature, valuable understanding of carrier battle maneuvers, and the vantage point of his Sky Control post attracted the company of war correspondents. Enterprise narrowly escaped the Pearl Harbor sneak attack and was one of the few carriers available to conduct early 1942 hit-and-run raids on Japanese-held islands. Here he is sharing a sandwich with Keith Wheeler, Chicago Sun-Times, and Joe Custer, UPI, while they wait to hear the results of one of the raids.

  18 Benny in civilian clothes visiting with his toddler daughter Jeanne Marie (Mara, later) before the war. Jeanne Marie was always uppermost in Benny’s mind during Enterprise battles; he fought to protect her future liberties and to keep her safe from a scurrilous enemy.

  19 Benny Mott (left) and two unidentified officers try to relax aboard Enterprise at the end of the Marcus Island raid, March 4, 1942.

  20 Bilibid Prison was such a desolate, crumbling facility that the Filipinos had closed it before the war. The Japanese reopened Bilibid to serve as a way station for processing prisoners of war being shipped to Japan. Barton, Charles, and their ensign fraternity were held at Bilibid a number of times during their imprisonment and passed through its forbidding gates one last time on December 13, 1944, to board the Oryoko Maru, the last ship out of Manila Bay before it was sealed off to enemy shipping.

  21 When MIS-X operative Harold Rosenquist was finally allowed to board USS Narwh
al to initiate his belated rescue of the prisoners at Davao Penal Colony, he carried with him several copies of the Life magazine article about the electrifying stateside effect of the atrocity stories told by the ten Davao escapees. The story spread rapidly through Mindanao’s “jungle telegraph.” It was their first confirmation that the home front understood their struggles and successes, and passionately supported them.

  22 Admiral Chester Nimitz signs the Japanese surrender agreement on USS Missouri, September 2, 1945. The inscription reads: To Captain William C. Mott, with best wishes, warm regards, and great appreciation of your contribution to the war effort, which made possible the above scene. C.W. Nimitz, Fleet Admiral, USN.

  23 First group of jubilant ex-POW’s pose for navy photographers as they depart the Pacific for their home countries. Helen Cross scrutinized this photo when it appeared in the New York Times in early September 1945.