Not that American soldiers were immune to the savage impulse. War exacts a price from all men, and many of the American troops who slogged across bloody battlefields like Tarawa and Guadalcanal devolved to a level of grotesque barbarism—mutilating the fallen Japanese to collect scalps, stringing together their ears on necklaces, and digging into their yawning mouths to pry out gold teeth. Even Charles Lindbergh, who denounced the “Asiatic intruder” so vehemently that he called for “a Western wall of race and arms which can hold back either a Genghis Khan or the infiltration of inferior blood,” had been horrified during his visit to the Pacific by the brutality of American troops.
“Their desire is to exterminate the Jap ruthlessly, even cruelly,” Lindbergh wrote in his journal. “We hold his examples of atrocity screamingly to the heavens, while we cover up our own and condone them as just retribution for his acts. A Japanese soldier who cuts off an American soldier’s head is an Oriental barbarian, ‘lower than a rat.’ An American soldier who slits a Japanese throat ‘did it only because he knew the Japs had done it to his buddies.’ I do not question that Oriental atrocities are often worse than ours. But, after all, we are constantly telling ourselves, and everyone else who will listen to us, that we are the upholders of all that is ‘good’ and ‘right’ and civilized. . . . I would have more respect for the character of our people if we could give them a decent burial, instead of kicking in the teeth of their corpses.”
For the Japanese kempei huddling in their jungle camp on Babeldaob—sick and wet and hungry and demoralized under the roar of US bombers overhead—the rage and frustration were rising to explosive heights. Unlike the soldiers of the Fourteenth Division, they had no anti-aircraft cannons to fire at the passing planes, no fighters to scramble, and no phosphorus bombs to unload. All they had was a miserable, muddy hideaway, and a prison full of hungry, desperate islanders. They were adding more prisoners to their collection every day, for infractions that were increasingly slight, but one prize loomed over the rest. One day, the kempei told themselves, one of those American planes would come down.
TWELVE
LAST DAYS
Wakde was a wasteland, but the boys made do. Under the tatter of gunfire, the blinding sun, the bursts of rain, and the stench of rotting corpses, they found small joys on the ruined island.
After a few days of settling in, Jimmie and Johnny set about exploring the wide beach just east of the Long Rangers’ camp, splashing into the water to wash away the grime. In a report to Thirteenth Air Force headquarters that month, Jack Vanderpoel wrote, “Many discarded P-47 belly tanks were found on the island. Soon a small fleet of boats made from them began appearing off the coral reefs. Some were merely propelled by paddles, others had crude sails, a few had elaborate and expertly rigged sails, and one appeared with a small motor. These boats are very popular and many hours are spent cruising around nearby waters and swimming from them. . . . In spite of the crowded, uncomfortable living conditions, poor food, hot weather, and length of duty overseas of a large portion of the personnel, the morale remains good. Griping and grousing are prevalent, but efficiency and accomplishment are high.”
On August 23, Vanderpoel led the unit’s first mission to Palau. It would be a photographic survey to identify targets for the coming bombardment. Just after dawn, Vanderpoel climbed into the cockpit of a Liberator called the Dina Might with an eleven-man crew that included two photographers, and bounced down the Wakde runway.
The journey north crossed an endless expanse of open ocean. As Vanderpoel streaked forward, he stayed beneath a heavy blanket of cumuli, surveying the water. Following protocol, he pulled up as he drew close to the islands, topping out at twenty-three thousand feet—but when he looked down, he couldn’t see the target he’d come to surveil. All he could see were the tops of clouds. Vanderpoel pushed down. Bursting through the bottom of the clouds, he saw the islands stretched out before him. Even in the muted light, they made a breathtaking sight, swaddled in soft green foliage against a wavering expanse of aquamarine, like some half-imagined mélange of tropical color.
The photographers on board were shuttering photos as Vanderpoel sped across Koror. He circled twice over downtown to give them a clear shot. There was a nest of government buildings on the western side of the islands, between a hospital and a long pier. The guns of Battery Hill were silent, but as he turned south to retrace his route, he saw the hillsides erupt. Shells punched into the air and a fighter plane tore down a runway. Vanderpoel watched it race toward him and soar overhead, dropping a pair of phosphorus bombs directly above. Vanderpoel yanked the control yoke to steer away from the white-hot fire, but the Zero was already coming back for another pass. It sprayed the air with bullets, then looped around for a third approach. Eventually, Vanderpoel knew, the fighter would connect. There was only one option, and it wasn’t by the book.
He waited for the Zero to pass again, and leaned hard into a turn, banking until his nose was pointed directly at the fighter. He surged forward, chasing it down as fast as the Liberator could travel. The Zero was a lighter and more nimble plane—it swooped and swerved, but Vanderpoel dodged to keep it in front of him. Finally, the Zero raced away in a straight line, shrinking to a small dot on the horizon. Vanderpoel grinned. He turned the Liberator toward Wakde. It was a moment he would relish and retell for the rest of his life.
As Vanderpoel touched down that evening, Jimmie and Johnny were returning to their tent from another afternoon on the beach. As evening fell, rain arrived, and they huddled inside. Jimmie balanced a candle inside his helmet and wrote to Myrle, “Johnny and I went swimming, and we sure had a lot of fun. Have a nice good place, good sandy beach, and the water is really clean.” A few feet away, Johnny wrote to Mary, “Sis, if you can send me some camera film, I’ll take some pictures and send them to you.”
In the morning, a massive cargo ship docked in the deepwater port just west of the Long Rangers’ camp. The hulking Liberty Ships took their name from the Patrick Henry dictum “Give me liberty or give me death,” but any US organization that raised $2 million in war bonds could name a ship of their own. There was an SS Jefferson Davis to honor the Confederate South, and an SS Wendell Willkie named for Roosevelt’s opponent in the last election. Like the B-24, the ships were tall, boxy, and widely ridiculed. Roosevelt called them “dreadful looking,” while Time magazine dubbed them “ugly ducklings.” But to the Big Stoop boys, the SS Stanley Matthews pulling into Wakde that day was a thing of beauty. It carried most of the gear they had been forced to leave behind on Los Negros.
As the ship unloaded, the boys wandered up a dusty road to a makeshift stage. Bob Hope was scheduled to land at any moment for an afternoon performance. A month had passed since his arrival in the South Pacific, and he’d been performing as many as four shows a day, for which he would eventually receive the Congressional Gold Medal in a White House ceremony. According to Hope’s biographer, William Robert Faith, after the ceremony Jack Kennedy remarked, “Bob, I was one of those lucky guys who sat in the rain on a Woendi island, watching you and your troupe perform.”
Hope’s flight landed on Wakde three hours late, and Jimmie and Johnny waited in a crowd of agitated airmen. In film footage taken from the stage that day, the men can be seen clambering for position as bombers rise from the adjoining airstrip. But when Hope appeared, all eyes turned to the stage, and for a few short moments, the war was forgotten. The men swayed to Frances Langford’s crooning ballads, wilted at the sight of Patty Thomas prancing across the stage in a blue swimsuit, and laughed uproariously at Jerry Colonna twirling the ends of a muskrat mustache, while Hope himself cracked wise in baggy fatigues and a tilted safari hat, jabbing the air with the tip of a long cane. “I love this beautiful island,” he called out, “with its magnificent palms—two of them with tops!” In his next column for American newspapers, he wrote, “We did a show on Wakde the other day. They had a stage set up right near the runway—so we could escape if
we laid an egg, I guess. And the show was almost ruined by the planes taking off. Every time you read a straight line, you have to wait until the plane took off before delivering the punch line. It plays havoc with one’s timing.”
As the show drew down in late afternoon, Hope and his troupe bowed to thundering applause, then marched back toward the airfield to climb aboard a transit plane, lurching down the Wakde runway for the next stop on their tour.
The Long Rangers drifted back to camp. Their gear was unloaded. Their move was complete. Their short reprieve was over. In the morning they would begin their assault on Palau.
—
THE KEMPEI ON BABELDAOB hated the jungle. The dark hot air bloomed with humidity, the orange clay stuck to their skin, the shrieks of birds flooded the air with a cacophonous din, and each time the American planes came over the horizon, they were forced further into disgrace, racing across the muddy camp through narrow shafts of sunlight to dive headlong into the tunnels they had carved in the wet earth—sergeants and lieutenants and privates and even Colonel Miyazaki himself, all pressed together in the darkness, gasping for air and bracing against the concussive blasts of bombs.
Sometimes they scurried into the tunnels and the bombs never fell. Most of the Allied targets were farther south, and by the time the planes reached Babeldaob their bomb bay doors were open and empty. Then the kempei would crawl from their caves, humiliated and relieved. Other times, the Liberators would swoop down from the north in a surprise attack, raining down munitions that rattled the hills and the men.
After a raid on August 26, Miyazaki gazed over the splattered campsite at the bodies of two men. “23 B-24s attacked,” he recorded in his journal. “Sergeant Ikushima and leading private Umasaka were killed.” He made a note to send a letter of condolence to the senior man’s wife, Tamiko, at their home near Toyama Bay. For Chihiro Kokubo, the loss was more personal. Rikiso Ikushima had been his only friend. Since leaving his parents at the age of eight, Kokubo had struggled to make personal connections. But in the space of only a few months, he and Ikushima had grown close. They traded stories, confided their fears, and even shared supplies. Just a few weeks earlier, Ikushima had given Kokubo a large white handkerchief that he’d stolen from one of the Jesuit missionaries in the prison.
As the rest of the kempei cleaned up from the August 26 attack, Kokubo wandered the parade grounds overcome with grief. He collected Ikushima’s remains and burned them over a campfire. Then he scooped up the ashes and placed them in a small wooden box, which he wrapped inside the white handkerchief and began to carry with him, promising that, someday, he would avenge his friend.
Seven hundred miles south, the Liberators were landing. As the airmen stepped onto the tarmac, the Big Stoop boys were not among them. Under the new combat schedule, they had not been assigned to the mission. It was the second day in a row they had been forced to wait on Wakde while other airmen hit Palau. Waiting wasn’t easy. No man looked forward to combat, but a wasted day was worse. Each evening the planes came back from Palau shredded by artillery, some of them so badly damaged that it was hard to believe they’d flown. One returned with no hydraulic system and two holes in the wing “as big as a hat,” one man recalled. Others didn’t return at all. In the fog of anti-aircraft fire, two of the Liberators collided. A third, from the Fifth Bombardment Group, simply disappeared. Every man who had been to Palau said the guns were the worst he’d ever seen. At times, they said, the shells were so thick that it seemed you could step outside and walk across the sky.
After a noisy dinner, the men wandered down to the southern tip of Wakde. A firefight was unfolding on New Guinea and they gazed across the water. Allied tanks were pummeling a Japanese position, and US gunboats had just arrived to pour in a second layer of fire. The horizon glowed yellow against a darkening sky and the Long Rangers cheered. “Watched tanks and boats shell the coast,” one man wrote in his journal, adding, “Good show!”
Dawn broke clear on August 28 as the Big Stoop boys gathered at the airstrip for their first mission to Palau. They climbed aboard a shiny new Liberator and rattled down the runway into flight. Speeding north, each man settled into a familiar position. The target was new, but the journey was not. After weeks of flying the long route to Yap, the hours of waiting were automatic and reflexive. As the miles trailed by, they chatted, argued, laughed, and stared forward in silence.
Three hours in, they hit a storm. Lightning cracked and turbulence shook the boxy plane. In the cockpit, Norman Coorssen pulled back on the yoke, climbing into the clouds. He could see the rest of the squadron rising with him as he disappeared into the fog, and a cascade of rain and erratic wind rattled the B-24. Norman held fast. At 11,500 feet, the air began to clear. He leveled the plane and watched through the window as the squadron materialized around him. They were no longer in a tight formation, but at least they were still together. That was more than he could say for the other two squadrons. They were nowhere in sight.
The target was just minutes away, but the mission plan was shot. Their orders were to follow the other two squadrons over Koror, but there was no way to follow planes you couldn’t see. As Norman steered across the southern islands of Angaur and Peleliu, the clouds below him cleared. This, he knew, was a mixed blessing. It would give the boys a clear view of the target, but it also gave the Japanese a clear view back. He crossed the islands of Eil Malk and Ngeruktabel and saw Koror ahead. The hills were quiet. They were the first to arrive. He drew closer and the foliage of the dark islands flashed with fire. The shells were coming in 250-round bursts, heavy but bearable. In the bombardier’s compartment, Art Schumacher steadied his nerves and counted to bombs away. Three, two, one—he pounded the bomb release button and the payload sailed down. It was a perfect strike on the western end of Koror. Buildings burst into a swirling cloud of black smoke.
Suddenly, the VHF radio crackled. It was a pilot from another squadron. He was just a few miles back and calling his flight leader, William Dixon.
“How far below base are you going to bomb?” the pilot asked.
Norman listened for the reply. It was a risky question. The word “base” referred to a secret number, chosen essentially at random. The idea was to give pilots a way to discuss their altitude. If commanders set “base” at eight thousand feet, a pilot could say that he was flying at “base plus five” or “base minus three” without giving away too much. Still, you had to be careful. It was always better to say nothing, especially near the target. The sound of your voice alone was a clarion call to Japanese gunners.
Many pilots in the unit would have ignored the question, but Dixon was a new arrival. Though he was the most senior man on the mission, he’d spent most of the war in Panama, where the rules of radio discipline were not as strict. After a few seconds, the radio crackled. It was Dixon—not only answering the question, but ignoring the code. “Coming in at 11,500 feet,” he called. Then he added that he was flying 157 miles per hour.
There was a moment of stunned silence before a third voice came on, flat and dry: “I hope the Japs didn’t hear that.”
They did. As the Dixon squadron crossed the southern bay of Koror, they flew into a battery of explosive shells. All six planes reeled in the onslaught, but Dixon took the worst. A large hole opened at the base of his right wing and his fuel tank ruptured, spraying fire into the air. He struggled to control the plane, but it was too late. The wing tore off. The plane corkscrewed down. A man’s body shot into the air, plummeting down without a parachute. The fuselage streaked across Koror, smashing into the north shore, while the lone wing fluttered into shallow water beside a small island.
Back on Wakde, the Big Stoop boys retreated to their bunks. They had watched the crash up close and the sight was sickening. “Commanding officer of 372nd got anti-aircraft right up through bomb bay,” one man wrote in his journal. “Went down in flames. Landed in target area. No one got out. Never had a chance. Terrible
sight.” Johnny opened up a letter from Katherine. She mentioned that an older man was flirting with her at work, and he flew briefly into a rage before Jimmie calmed him down. “That boy still doesn’t realize how much responsibility he has now,” Jimmie wrote to Myrle. “But that is something they will have to work out for themselves.”
—
A LOW MALAISE WAS SETTLING over the camp. As the last days of August crept by, the men began to realize that Palau was unlike any target they had seen. In their first five missions, they lost more than forty men, and privately each man had to confront the shrinking of his own odds—the likelihood that, on missions to come, he would lose good friends, at least.
Increasingly, commanders worried about morale. “This war is beginning to get rough,” the adjutant wrote in his action summary. “It will take a hell of a lot more than Bob Hope to improve their poor morale. It has become a critical situation. . . . The men are true Americans and will see the deal through, but there is no question that they are pretty bitter about the whole situation.”
For the Big Stoop boys, the final night of August passed slowly. They were scheduled for an early-morning flight to Palau, their first mission since the Dixon crash, but as they shuffled into their tent to lay out gear and write letters home, none could mention their previous mission or the one to come. If they knew they were going to fly with a new pilot, they kept it from their letters as well. As ever, they avoided the subject of the war, giving their last letters home an eerie cheer.
“Dear Folks,” Earl Yoh wrote. “How is everyone at home? I am feeling fine. I suppose the boys have started to school and have a grudge against their teachers. How is Dad? Is he still working? How is Grand Pa and Grand Ma? Tell them I said hello. You can also tell George and Anne I said hello. Mom, I increased my allotment yesterday to $75. I don’t know if it will come out of September pay or not. Is that other coming through alright? Well, I guess I had better say Good Night for now. Love, Your Son, Earl.” At the bottom, he added, “God Bless You.”
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