As Good As Dead

by Stephen L. Moore

  Now, exactly ten years, one month, and two days to the date since he signed those enlistment papers, Joe Barta was alone in the ocean, and he was ready to die. Halfway across the bay, he passed out from exhaustion. Somehow he had the good fortune to remain floating on his back just enough to avoid drowning. As he bobbed along in a delirious state, he had visions of his mother, and remembered how she had promised him that he was going to make it. He swore he could hear his mother’s voice again, this time saying, “Swim, Joe. Swim!”

  He drifted, semiconscious, for some time. When he finally regained his senses, he found that he was floating on his back out of the mouth of the bay into the Sulu Sea. The edge of the beach was only about fifty yards away, so he pulled himself toward it with renewed hope and made it to dry land just before dawn broke over the Pacific.1

  He dragged himself up onto the shoreline and lay there, completely spent. He had no idea what to do next. For the moment, he was thankful simply to be alive.

  *

  ERNIE KOBLOS HAD given up on his bamboo pole, and after hours of swimming, his arms now felt like lead weights. He couldn’t keep going—he had nothing left. He stopped swimming and decided just to sink. At least it was better to drown here, in the depths of the sea, than to be tortured to death back in Camp 10-A. His kicking ceased, and he allowed his legs to sink down under him. He was shocked when his feet hit solid ground. He had made it!

  He staggered forward on rubbery legs through the shallow water to the shoreline and collapsed. It was dawn, and examining the jagged, jungle-cloaked coast that stretched away and the soft curves of mountains in the distance, he estimated his position to be about ten miles southeast of Iwahig.

  Despite the bullet he carried in his leg, Doug Bogue had completed his swim sometime before dawn, landing not far from where Koblos would soon touch shore. Lying naked in the surf, having long since lost his tattered shorts, he was so exhausted that he could not pull himself out of the shallow water for another hour. He guessed that he had covered about five miles across the bay. Once sufficiently rested, he plunged into a mangrove swamp—with no food, no water, no clothing, and no idea where he was heading.

  With bullet wounds in his arm and leg causing unbearable pain, Beto Pacheco swam near Ed Petry for hours until his body felt ready to give out. Close to three years ago, he had attempted to swim all the way to Corregidor to escape falling prisoner to the Japanese on Bataan. That night, a Navy whaleboat had picked him up and taken him the rest of the way to the Rock. Now, however, no American sailors would come to his rescue.

  But unknown to Pacheco, comrades in arms were indeed looking for him. Filipino residents of the Iwahig Penal Colony were on the alert, aware of the events that had taken place before dark across the bay. Rufino G. Bondad, the executive officer of the penal colony and the Palawan Underground Forces, had ordered a number of his men out in their bancas to monitor the bay for escapees. During the predawn hours on December 15, a banca manned by three Iwahig colonists—Sayadi Moro, Salip Hatai Moro, and Salimada Moro—spotted swimmers in the water. They approached, and from a safe distance determined that the men were Americans making their way onto the beach.2

  Visit bit.ly/2dfqesP for a larger version of this map.

  As Pecheco and Petry reached the shoreline near the Iwahig Penal Colony sometime before 0400, still under the cover of darkness, they had been in the water for nearly seven hours. Both were naked, having kicked off any remaining clothing long ago. When Pacheco, his energy spent, felt his feet touch bottom, he said to Petry, “Stand up and see how you feel.” Petry tried but collapsed from the pain of his shattered ankle. Both men finally floundered up onto the shore and collapsed in sheer exhaustion, unable to move.3

  Eventually, they headed north through waist-high cogongrass in search of help. Still in darkness, they came upon a house and startled the family’s dog. When a man stepped out and spoke to the dog in Tagalog, the escapees scrambled to his door to explain their plight. The man spoke no English and seemed frightened that the two naked men—both darkly tanned and of average height—might be Japanese. His calls for help were answered by six other Filipinos, who approached with deadly bolo knives in hand.

  Taken aback, Petry pointed to the large American eagle head and stars tattooed on his upper chest. Pacheco spoke in a mix of Spanish and English until he was finally able to convey their friendly intentions. He related the horrific details of the previous afternoon’s slaughter at Puerto Princesa and described how they had remained hidden until darkness. The colonists fed them, provided them with fresh clothing, and in short order moved them to a thatched palm hut in the forest about one and a quarter miles away, where they were allowed to rest for a few hours.

  Before the two escapees drifted off to sleep, Iwahig colonist Jose Miranda tended to their various wounds. He even managed to dig out the bullet embedded in Beto’s leg. Shortly after daybreak, they were told they must wake up and begin moving, as it was not safe to remain long with Japanese guards hunting them. They were warned that they would not be safe until they could reach the guerrilla outpost near Brooke’s Point, so Miranda was detailed to remain with them to serve as their guide.4

  Petry and Pacheco were a long way from true freedom, but for the moment, at least they were out of the hands of the Japanese.

  *

  OUT IN THE waters of Puerto Princesa Bay, Smitty had rested awhile, clinging to the old fish trap, before he set out again, his curious porpoise friends still following along. Sometime later, he spotted Japanese patrol boats cruising the bay, no doubt looking for survivors. One boat turned and headed right toward him, with its yellow light waving directly over his position, no more than fifty yards away. He inhaled, went deep, and remained down as long as he could. When he resurfaced, the boat was slowly rumbling on past. He waited until it was well away before he resumed swimming in the eerily phosphorescent water, trailed by the school of porpoises.5

  Smitty swam for what seemed an eternity. When he finally turned over on his back to rest and survey the horizon, he made out trees on a distant mountain ahead of him. With renewed hope, he rolled back over and began swimming again. When he felt he could not swim another stroke, he decided to see how deep it was. He held his nose and drove himself down feet first. He struck bottom immediately. The water was only up to his armpits.

  The porpoises that had saved him from the shark and followed him for hours now headed back out to sea. Smitty attempted to walk, but his legs buckled and he fell forward into the ocean, accidentally swallowing a large gulp of muddy salt water as he struggled. Retching and convulsing, he struggled to his feet, stumbled awkwardly forward, then crawled the rest of the way up onto the shore. His muscles ached and his back would not allow him to sit up, so he flopped onto the shore in the darkness and closed his eyes, too exhausted to even swat at the black clouds of hungry mosquitoes that assailed his body.

  *

  THERE WERE NO direct Filipino witnesses to the massacre. From the Iwahig Penal Colony, Jose Miranda had heard machine-gun bursts and had seen the fires blazing in Puerto Princesa from a distance, but Pedro Paje, the assistant director of prisons at Iwahig, soon learned of how the Japanese had celebrated following the disposal of their prisoners.6

  The air reeking of smoke and death within the compound, Captain Kojima gathered his men and commended them on their work. The air-raid trenches had been filled in with soil to cover the mass graves. In the morning, Kojima’s men would continue to hunt down survivors, but for now they would celebrate their success.

  On the evening of December 14, Paje conducted an inspection of the Inagawan Penal Colony, located about twenty-five miles from the Kempei Tai’s new Irawan headquarters. Long believed by the American POWs to be a Japanese sympathizer, Paje was in fact part of Palawan’s secret underground and was a key communications link to the island’s vast guerrilla network. He had lived more than a dozen years within the Iwahig colony, which housed approximately seventeen hundred prisoners at the start of
the war with forty-five supervising guards and employees. When the Japanese occupied the Philippines, President Manuel Quezon had granted Paje special authority to use his inmates to act on sabotage and intelligence.7

  Paje had started organizing his Palawan Underground Force in 1942 and further refined it into special units in late 1943. He and other officer employees of the Iwahig colony who were reserve officers of the Filipino army took charge of a combat company, an intelligence corps, a quartermaster unit, a transportation corps, and a bolo battalion—the men of each selected from the most loyal, trusted prisoners of his penal colony. About two hundred of Paje’s prisoners were Bataan veterans shipped to his colony in late 1943 due to overcrowded conditions at the central prison of Muntinlupa, Rizal.

  Paje had managed to keep arms and ammunition for his prison—and, covertly, his Palawan Underground Force—only by maintaining peaceful relations with the Kempei Tai at Puerto Princesa. His spies had monitored the construction of the dual airstrips, noting when the first fighter and bomber planes landed in late 1943, and kept a close watch on the seaplane base that operated near the POW camp. Paje personally visited the new airfield in 1944, counting fighters on the ground and other warplanes hidden under camouflage in the nearby jungle, and recorded the maximum strength of the seaplane base to be eight aircraft.

  Paje felt a personal connection to the American prisoners massacred at Camp 10-A. He had met Doc Mango in 1943, when the Japanese had allowed the appendectomy of Mac McDole to take place in the Iwahig hospital unit, and had witnessed the man’s devotion to his patients firsthand. Beginning in September 1944, American bombers had dropped leaflets over Paje’s colony bearing warnings concerning the treatment of American prisoners of war. Paje had dutifully delivered the leaflets to the Kempei Tai headquarters to show his allegiance, but meanwhile his underground force planted spies in the prison camp, one serving as an interpreter and another as a driver.8

  When he departed the Inagawan colony on the morning of December 15 to return to his office at Iwahig, Paje did not yet know what had transpired at Camp 10-A, or that some survivors had taken to the bay in hopes of reaching his penal colony. Nor did he know that four Americans were still hiding beneath the bluff at the Puerto Princesa compound, tucked away in the rocks and undergrowth.

  *

  MO DEAL, SHOT twice, bayoneted numerous times, and thrown off the cliff when his assailants considered him dead, was still alive. He had tumbled down into the heavy brush, where he lay throughout the night, fading in and out of consciousness. His right arm was nearly useless, slashed through by a bayonet, and the rest of his body was a mass of open wounds, but despite the pain and blood loss, he gradually collected his senses as dawn approached.

  Dehydrated, starving, and bleeding heavily, he slowly pulled himself up and began to crawl. He carefully inched through the brush and up over the top of the bluff, determined to work his way past the compound and into the town of Puerto Princesa. A merciful hard rain set in, helping to mask any noises he made as he crept along. At one point, he spotted a guard patrol continuing its sweep for survivors, and he concealed himself in the brush and lay still. The Japanese passed within a hundred feet of him, but they failed to notice the wounded American in the pounding storm.9

  After hundreds of agonizing yards, he reached the local Roman Catholic church. Still crawling, he found a priestly robe inside to help cover and protect his numerous lacerations. He was careful not to linger too long in the church. The rainstorm made for a perfect diversion, so he continued crawling his way out of the town and into the edge of the jungle. There, he pulled himself painfully to his feet, staggered into the lush, green canopy, and began wandering away from Puerto Princesa.10

  Pop Daniels awoke before dawn, thirsty, hungry, and in great pain. Hours before, he and Bill Williams had encountered Deal and Balchus on the shoreline, but the four had gone their separate ways. Daniels and Williams opted to move along the beach, where they ran afoul of Japanese guards and a heavy shootout ensued. Both men were wounded, Pop in the legs. He stumbled into the brush and concealed himself as the guards continued after Williams. He never saw the marine again.

  His survival instincts told him to keep moving, so as rain poured down, he slowly inched his way from the coastline back into the jungles north of the Puerto Princesa camp. He was alone, facing an uncertain future, as he crawled into the rough terrain of Palawan and its four thousand square miles of jungles and mountains.

  *

  GENE NIELSEN HAD been swimming for more than nine hours when he finally kicked sand. Though shot three times, he had survived. In the darkness, he soon realized he had not actually reached the main shore, but had instead bumped up on a small island in the bay that sat about a hundred yards offshore from the Iwahig colony. He tried to stand to walk the rest of the way, but his body was simply too weak. His speck of land was tiny enough that it was likely submerged at high tide, but for now it offered him a place to rest.11

  He crawled forward on his hands and knees into the thick brush covering the sandbar and collapsed. Curled up in the undergrowth, he drifted off to sleep. Sometime later, a strange humming, slowly growing louder, awoke him. It was still dark, but peeking through the brush, Nielsen spotted a Japanese patrol barge easing through the bay a short distance away. Soldiers were scanning the water, apparently looking for any American escapees. Nielsen lay still as the barge moved past his islet less than two hundred yards away. Once it had moved on, he decided it was time to find safer ground, and he eased off the sandbar and struggled to shore.12

  He entered a mangrove and stumbled through it in search of the river he had seen during previous visits to Iwahig. Hordes of mosquitoes beset his naked body as he staggered barefoot through the smelly water, but he was too exhausted to even brush them away. Desperate for rest, he crawled under a mass of mangrove roots and tucked his arms into the tangle to support himself. He napped there, his body submerged, with only his nose sticking out above the swamp water, allowing his skin a brief respite from the malicious insects.13

  Nielsen encountered many strange animals during the night. Starlight created a fluorescent effect on their eyes, similar to a hunter shining a spotlight across the water at night. He could not tell what they were, but merely saw their eyes shining at times—some red, some green, some yellow. Each pair of glowing eyes was only a quarter inch apart, but a larger pair, set about six inches apart, eased up from the swampy waters without a sound. Nielsen reached out with both hands and slapped the water as hard as he could in an attempt to scare the creature. It smacked the water with its thick tail and disappeared, leaving him fearful that it had been a crocodile.

  He was hungry and worn out, but he pushed on in search of fresh water. He spotted a Filipino fisherman at one point, but he remained hidden, uncertain how the locals would handle him. He splashed through the swamp until morning light, when he found a house with roosters crowing. Nielsen emerged from the swamp and eased into a field that stretched about three hundred yards wide by six hundred yards long with coconut trees along the edge of the clearing. He attempted to climb up one to reach a coconut, but his wounded left leg was too numb. Instead, he found an older nut on the ground, and used a broken stick to pound off the husk. When the coconut finally burst open, he devoured the rich white pulp inside, his first nourishment in almost twenty-four hours.

  He stumbled along, but soon found himself delirious and suffering hallucinations. He could see Japanese lying in the shade, and he moved around them to get away, terrified. Soon he realized the guards were illusions, but other visions tormented his weary brain. He thought he saw Mo Deal at one point. Nielsen knew the man was not really there, but he kept appearing in the undergrowth. He tried to shake off the sight by pushing forward through a field of jungle grass that stood about five feet tall, the sharp blades of grass nicking and slicing his skin.14

  Then he spotted a young Filipino walking down a trail through the field. As Nielsen hid and watched, the youth passed on through.
Nielsen moved closer to the trail and soon saw the man returning. The Filipino sported a large bolo knife hanging from his side, and Nielsen decided he would jump him as he approached, grab the knife, and interrogate him. He crouched down beside the trail under thick grass and waited, but changed his mind. As the Filipino passed, Nielsen called out, “Hey, Joe! Come here! I would like to talk to you.”15

  The man stopped, afraid to move. Nielsen remained hidden, equally afraid to make the first move, but he tried to convince the man to come closer. “Don’t worry,” Nielsen said. “It’s all right. We’re friends. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  The man finally spoke, and Nielsen was relieved to hear English. The Filipino explained that he was an inmate of the Philippine government at the Iwahig colony. His name was Sayadi Moro.

  “Can you get me a drink of water?” Nielsen asked.

  “Yeah!” Sayadi motioned for the naked American to follow him. At a spring a short distance up the trail, Nielsen received his first clean water since the massacre. He asked for food, and Sayadi ran off, quickly returning with two small roots about three-quarters of an inch in diameter and four inches in length. Gene noted the local vegetable tasted much like sweet potato as he wolfed down the roots.16

  As Nielsen finished chewing, the young man suddenly announced, “You have friends.”

  Nielsen did not understand. He asked Sayadi if he could find a pencil and paper so he could compose a statement. The man nodded and told him to remain near the path while he trotted off again. When he returned, Nielsen asked him to take down a letter to be handed over to the American military, including his name, rank, and serial number. He detailed how the American POWs had been slaughtered and explained that he believed he was the only survivor—and that he was sick and wounded and felt he had little chance of escaping the Japanese patrols. He told Sayadi that he wanted somebody besides the government—his family or even other Americans—to understand what had taken place.17