by Toland, John
The chattering of birds wakened Kamiko before dawn. For a moment he thought he was back in the mountains of Chiba. Through the dense foliage he saw something red. Was it some gaudy tropic blossom? No, it was a huge plumed bird that belonged in a zoo. But it was also food. He crawled to his commander’s dugout and whispered that he wanted to shoot the bird for food. Lieutenant Yasuda shook his head; one shot would reveal their position. They might as well have fired. The bird, flapping its great ungainly wings, rose noisily like a loaded transport plane and instantly attracted mortar shells that continued spasmodically.
All day Yasuda Company huddled silently in their holes; their food ration was one rice ball for eight men. After dark Yasuda and his three squad leaders crept up to the ridge line. Halfway down the other side a group of Americans was eating out in the open as if it were a picnic grounds. The lieutenant suggested sending down two men to scavenge. Hunger gnawed at them more than fear, and the three squad leaders nodded approval.
Two privates were sent on the suicide mission and all night the company waited anxiously. Once they heard the crump of grenades and the rattle of machine-gun fire; they were certain their comrades had been killed. But at daybreak the two men returned, leaping into Yasuda’s dugout with a poncho full of booty, as excited as schoolboys. They had ambushed an American machine-gun position in the dark and scooped up everything they could find. Their plunder turned out to be a few tins of cigarettes and boxes of ammunition that didn’t fit their own weapons.
Aoki lit one of the American cigarettes. “Ah, I’ve forgotten the taste of tobacco,” he said after a deep drag. “It makes me dizzy.”
That day while enlarging his takotsubo, Kamiko caught a lizard. Skinned, it was light pink and reminded him of megochi, a fish he used to catch in the sea near his home. Aoki chopped it up with his dagger, boiled the parts in his hango until they were white. Kamiko found its taste a cross between fish and chicken. He finished full of vigor, almost as if he had been injected with adrenalin.
At noon Yasuda ordered Kamiko’s squad to ascend a strategic knob a hundred yards to the right and relieve the squad holding it. The knob dominated the area and was constantly under fire. Its capture would compromise the regimental position. All through the afternoon the 3rd Squad kept the enemy at a distance, but the next morning the Americans pressed in close enough to lob grenades. At the height of the attack, the grenade barrage inexplicably stopped.
It was so quiet that Kamiko could hear birds singing—then a strange noise like a blow torch. A cloud of thick black smoke boiled up in front of him. “Flamethrower!” he shouted. He began heaving grenades as far and as fast as possible. At last the flame extinguished. He flopped back exhausted, puzzled about the American withdrawal. A shell landed yards ahead but did not detonate; it buried itself deep into the ground. Kamiko thought it was a dud until the earth erupted in front of him like a volcano. It was the most terrifying thing he had ever experienced; it shattered him as had the earthquake of 1923. He turned to Aoki, his face pale. “They’re using some new weapon.” (It was actually a delayed fuse.) The earth rumbled time and again, throwing up tons of dirt. To the left, where two men had been hiding in their takotsubo, there was now only level ground with three legs protruding. Kamiko felt a hot sting on his arm, then on the foot. They were minor wounds, the only wounds he had suffered in seven full days of suicidal combat. Under protest he was sent to the rear.
His regiment, reduced to less than four hundred men, had disintegrated against relentless American pressure. On November 23, GI’s of the 128th Infantry Regiment of the 32nd Division broke through the mountain barrier and into Limon. The Battle of Breakneck Ridge was over. Little remained but pockets of resistance. Two days later General Kataoka ordered the remnants of Gem Division to regroup below Limon near Highway 2.
Kamiko and Aoki hobbled south along the highway. They came to a ravine that stank of death. Thousands of swollen, decomposed bodies were scattered all over the road and in both ditches. At first glance the bodies looked as if they were being attacked by snakes—they were tubes from gas masks. This was “Death Valley.” Here, with deadly accuracy, American artillery had caught Japanese troops moving up to the front.
They struck off into the jungle east of the highway. At every stream they found clusters of wounded men lying like corpses, their will to live gone. Kamiko and Aoki pushed on but were obsessed by thoughts of suicide. They met seven other stragglers, led by a Sergeant Hirano, and learned that the Americans had driven a wedge below Breakneck Ridge almost to Highway 2. They would have to fight through the enemy line to rejoin their division. Hunger drove them to raid the first American position they came upon. They fled, arms loaded with GI rations, chased by a volley of rifle fire. What a difference a little food makes! Kamiko thought as he finished a piece of chocolate. They could tolerate their wounds but the lack of food had sapped their morale. If we could eat as much as the Americans, we’d still be up on the ridge fighting, he mused. Victory in battle was simply a case of supply. How could Japan win against such a rich and powerful foe?
They found an American supply parachute and were themselves almost discovered by a column of Negro soldiers carrying boxes. As Kamiko raised his rifle, he was checked by Hirano, who jerked his head. Another column was coming.
“How black they are!” Kamiko whispered; he had never before seen a Negro.
“We’re all human beings, but I wonder why they’re so different.”
“I wonder if they think like Americans?”
“They’re Americans too,” said Hirano.
They worked their way over a mountain, force-marched all night through a chilling rain; by morning they approached Highway 2, directly behind the enemy front. Kamiko halted the little group. He assured them they would break through; they had food and the Japanese soldier could not be beaten at hand-to-hand combat. “If you have the bad luck to get shot, commit suicide like a man.”
They started down toward the highway.
24
Debacle
1.
Organized resistance on Leyte was at the point of collapse but Yamashita in Manila directed General Sosaku Suzuki to concentrate his remaining striking power into a desperation attack (Operation WA) on American airfields. These nearly established bases were a threat to the entire Philippines as well as the supply route between the homeland and the south—Java, Malaya, Sumatra and Borneo.
There were three major forces on the island. Gem Division had lost more than three quarters of its effectives and at best could only delay the American advance down Highway 2. Makino’s 16th Division, after being pushed across the coastal plain, was splintered. Some units were holding ground in the mountains west of Dagami, but the rest were scattered deep inland with the search of food their main occupation; they had been subsisting on raw insects, snails, frogs, lizards, centipedes, roots, grass—and their own sweaty belts.
The third force, the 26th Division, would have to provide the main thrust of Operation WA. Already the division, except for a battalion detached to protect Ormoc, was moving across the mountain range below Limon in a general attack toward Leyte Gulf. Suzuki ordered them to keep moving southeast, and together with the remnants of the 16th and paratroopers flown in from Luzon, attack three airfields near Burauen, a strategic village ten miles west of Dulag, at dawn on December 6.
The hastily conceived plan was compromised from the beginning. First the men of the 26th Division found it difficult to maintain the time schedule set up by Manila; Suzuki asked for a delay of two days, which was denied. Then the operation itself was vitiated by a breakdown in communications.
On December 3 meteorologists predicted an inclement weather front and Suzuki was ordered to postpone the attack for one day. But the message never reached the survivors of the 16th Division, who descended on the airstrip a mile above Burauen as scheduled, just after dawn on December 6. There were now only three hundred of them, their meager force having been further reduced by desertions. They came u
pon a group of sleeping American engineers bivouacked in the open, and began bayoneting them. The engineers, most of whom had never fired at an enemy, fled except for one of their cooks who killed five Japanese trying to steal food from his kitchen. The raiders held part of the field for several hours, but with no support they were driven back to the woods in the north where they dug in, cursing the paratroopers who had failed to appear.
These seven hundred ’troopers—they came from the 3rd Parachute Regiment commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Tsunehiro Shirai—were still on Luzon, preparing to board two-engine transports. The first wave of twenty-six transports, with 365 paratroopers aboard, began taking off in midafternoon. They grouped and headed south, escorted by fighters. They continued west of Leyte to avoid detection, before circling south of the island and starting up toward Leyte Gulf. The sun was setting as they turned sharply west just below Dulag and followed the Marabang River inland toward Burauen.
They ran into heavy flak, and four planes were destroyed. The others lowered to 750 feet. At six-forty the ’troopers jumped. They were supposed to concentrate at the north field, but because of darkness only Colonel Shirai and sixty others landed at the objective. The main body came down on San Pablo, the strip a mile and a half east of Burauen. They charged, shouting demoniacally in English, “Hello, where are your machine guns?” and “Surrender! Everything is resistless!” Stupefied, Americans watched as the Japanese burned parked planes and ignited gasoline and ammunition dumps.
At the north field, Shirai’s force was too small to be effective. It joined the 16th Division infantrymen still hiding in the woods and waited for the second wave of paratroopers. But there would be no second wave; bad weather closed in Leyte again. Nor would there be any help from the 26th Division. A single battalion was within striking range of Burauen, and these exhausted men were intercepted and repulsed by a battalion of the U. S. 11th Airborne Division.
The paratroopers at San Pablo had discovered their mistake, however, and after ravaging that field, struck northwest to join up with Shirai at dawn. Now that he had a respectable force, almost five hundred men, Shirai regrouped. By midmorning he had seized the entire airstrip, and for three days his tenacious men held out against four American battalions. Finally overwhelmed by sheer numbers, the handful of survivors fled into the hills.
While Shirai was mounting his dawn assault on the airstrip at Burauen, an armada of destroyer-transports loaded with an entire American division, the 77th, unexpectedly appeared in Ormoc Bay. The gamble of WA had not only failed but had diverted Suzuki’s best troops, the 26th Division, away from the area which was now the target for MacArthur’s next strike.
Around six-forty a dozen U. S. destroyers began bombarding the beaches four miles below Ormoc. Landing craft pushed off from the destroyer-transports, and shortly after seven o’clock the first wave of men from “New York’s Own” landed unopposed. It was a day of 7’s—to the south the 7th Division had already crossed the waist of the island over a supposedly impassable mountain road and was coming up the coast toward Ormoc. The infantrymen were opposed only by the single battalion detached from the 26th Division to protect the city.
Suzuki had erected no obstacles on the beaches—he felt the west coast was protected by the Japanese naval base in Cebu across the narrow Camotes Sea—and was now surrounded. There was little the Japanese could do to cope with the situation. Suzuki instructed the 26th Division, and what was left of the 16th, to about-face and join him at Ormoc. Yamashita expedited the convoys already scheduled for Leyte and in addition ordered five hundred paratroopers of the 4th Parachute Regiment sent to an airfield eight miles above Ormoc near Highway 2. But they didn’t arrive until dawn of December 8 and were dropped in the jungle almost five miles north of the target.
Corporal Kiyoshi Kamiko, whose group had just fought its way through the American lines to reach Highway 2, encountered half a dozen of these paratroopers, young, well equipped and eager for battle. Kamiko warned them that they would be outnumbered 10 to 1, but one youngster exclaimed, “My goal is to kill ten before I die!” and then blushed.
His naïveté appalled Kamiko. What right had Imperial Headquarters to send such children out on suicide missions? All the frustrations and doubts of the past few weeks crystallized into a decision that would have seemed treasonable on Yahiro Hill: he would escape to another island. Why die uselessly? He allowed himself to think of Japan, of its beautiful hills and rivers. He would work his way to the west coast with a few trusted companions and steal a native boat. Perhaps they could escape to Borneo. A deep roll of thunder came from the direction of Ormoc. It sounded like enemy artillery. How had the Americans got down there so fast?
Major General Andrew D. Bruce’s 77th Division was driving steadily up the west coast toward Ormoc against a congeries of assorted, poorly armed service units commanded by a transportation officer, Colonel Mitsui. His force was dug in on the high ground a few miles below the city and he hoped he could hold out until the 26th Division returned. Other reinforcements were on the way by sea, and on December 9 a battalion of the 30th Division landed at Palompon, a port on the west side of the little peninsula forming Ormoc Bay. It was only fifteen air miles to Ormoc, but thirty-five miles by a winding mountain road, and Bruce’s men were already on the outskirts of the city.
The following morning GI’s broke through Colonel Mitsui’s lines into Ormoc, a mass of choking rubble and blazing buildings. A pall of dark smoke hooded the area. That afternoon General Bruce reported his victory to Corps Commander John R. Hodge, reminding him of a promise made by the commander of the Fifth Air Force:
… WHERE IS THE CASE OF SCOTCH THAT WAS PROMISED BY GENERAL WHITEHEAD FOR THE CAPTURE OF ORMOC. I DON’T DRINK BUT I HAVE AN ASSISTANT DIVISION COMMANDER AND REGIMENTAL COMMANDERS WHO DO …
A few hours later Bruce sent another message, referring to the 7th Division which was coming up the west coast road.
HAVE ROLLED TWO SEVENS IN ORMOC. COME SEVEN COME ELEVEN.
There were still two Japanese convoys en route to Ormoc Bay. One carried 3,000 men of the 8th Division and 900 tons of ammunition and supplies. As the five transports, three destroyers and two submarine chasers, escorted by about thirty fighters, approached the west coast of Leyte the next morning, they were attacked by Marine Corsairs which sank three transports. The remaining ships tried to pick up survivors as they turned in toward Palompon, but 700 men were drowned. Before the fleeing vessels made port, another transport was sunk by Marine and Army planes.
The final convoy—two destroyers and two transports—carried a 400-man naval detachment under Lieutenant Commander Ito, as well as nine amphibious tanks and twenty mortars. It had escaped detection and was still intact as it approached Ormoc several hours after midnight. At this point it was sighted by the destroyer Coghlan, which opened fire and sank a destroyer. The transports continued; one anchored near the occupied city and attempted to disembark its troops. The first barge was almost swamped by shells from the shore. “Don’t shoot!” the Japanese yelled, unaware that the city was in enemy hands.
The other transport luckily made for the opposite side of the bay, where it unloaded the last reinforcements and supplies that Suzuki would get. Considering that nearly 80 percent of all the vessels dispatched to Leyte had been sunk, it was remarkable that a total of 45,000 troops had made it safely ashore. But their effectiveness was sharply reduced by the fact that little more than 10,000 tons of supplies in all were salvaged.
2.
Although Leyte was not yet lost and Luzon was being fortified for its conclusive battle, Imperial Headquarters ordered preparations expedited for the evacuation of Allied prisoners of war in the Philippines to the homeland. There they could be used as laborers and, possibly, hostages.
Publicly the Japanese had long decried Allied treatment of prisoners while praising their own. Only a few weeks after three of Doolittle’s fliers (Lieutenants Dean Hallmark and William Farrow and Sergeant Harold Spatz) were executed—t
hey had been tortured and then given a peremptory trial—the Nippon Times condemned the British for the inhuman treatment they were meting out to German prisoners of war.
… Needless to say, the Japanese Government, actuated by considerations of humanity, have, up to the present, respected the principles contained in the International Law governing the conduct of war and have done everything in their power with regard to the treatment accorded to the numerous British prisoners of war in their hands.
Americans were depicted as “enjoying life at the various prisoner camps.”
On Luzon, at Cabanatuan, several survivors of the Bataan Death March kept secret notebooks whose disclosure would probably have meant summary execution. Colonel James Gillespie, a medical officer, described a new contingent of men marching into the camp:
… Inching their way along the road came a ragged formation of dirty, unkempt, unshaven, ragged, half naked forms, pale, bloated, lifeless. They staggered and stumbled, some plodded, others uncertain of their balance and strength lay down only to be urged to continue by the attendants who in many instances were only slightly more able than those they were assisting. Limbs grotesquely swollen to double their size. Faces devoid of expression—form or life. Aged incredibly beyond their years. Bare feet on the stony road. Remnants of ragged gunny sacks as loin cloths. Some stark naked. Bloodshot eyes and cracked lips. Smeared with excreta from their bowels. Thus they came … to the “end of the road,” the strong, young, and alert Americans of the 31st Infantry—the Air Corps and the A.A. The saddest sight indeed it was and may I never see it again.
