As Good As Dead

by Stephen L. Moore

  The next step in the prosecution’s process involved the proper identification of Japanese defendants by some of their victims. In 1948, Mac McDole flew to Yokosuka, Japan, where he met up with Doug Bogue. The Marines had promoted Bogue to master sergeant and assigned him to duty with the forces occupying conquered Japan. He was currently serving as provost marshal at Yokosuka Naval Base pending duty as a material witness to the Palawan Massacre.

  Bogue and McDole were called to identify suspects being held in Tokyo’s Sugamo Prison, located six miles from the Imperial Palace in Tokyo. Mac found it difficult to relate once again the story of the massacre to officials, and even harder to control his emotions in a place filled with men who had caused him and his friends such suffering.

  One day, he and Bogue were seated in the Dai-Ichi building in Tokyo, which had survived the devastating late-war B-29 fire bombings well enough for Doug MacArthur to have converted it to his postwar acting headquarters. Japanese suspects were brought before their two former POWs and ordered to face left and front so they could be identified as they stepped off the elevator.5

  The first man off was Manichi Nishitani, the Palawan camp cook who had delivered so much abuse to the American prisoners. Upon sight of the man’s face, Mac felt his pulse race; he was sweating and trembling with anger as he helped question the prisoner. Nishitani denied everything. When the guards started to take the cook back to his prison cell, Bogue moved in quickly and punched Nishitani in the face before the guards pulled him away.

  When asked why he had struck the prisoner, Bogue said, “For the same reason you’re going to hang him!”

  Presented next was Master Sergeant Taichi Deguchi. Again, Mac tried to control his rage in the presence of the man who had viciously taunted and tortured American POWs. Deguchi stared straight ahead through the questioning. With an expressionless face, he answered, “No!” to each question.6

  As other Japanese were brought forth, they continued to deny their guilt. The only one to show any emotion was Kuta Schugota—known at Palawan as “Smiley.” When he spotted Mac, Smiley bowed his head. When he was brought closer, he dropped to his knees and crawled across the floor to Mac. “Oh, Macky Dole, I thought you had been killed,” Smiley said, sobbing.

  Interrogators began questioning the former guard, but he refused to cooperate and denied it all. Furious, Mac screamed at him, reminding him of how he had been the most lenient guard, allowing prisoners to sneak food. “I never saw you raise your hand to hit one of us, but if you don’t tell us what you know, I’ll tell them you were the meanest son of a bitch there was!” said McDole. “Understand?”7

  Regardless, Smiley stuck with his denial until he was led back to Sugamo Prison. One day weeks later, Mac was eating lunch in the Dai-Ichi building’s cafeteria when an MP told him an inmate in Sugamo wanted to speak to him. When he entered the prisoner’s cell, he found Smiley to be haggard and sick, unable to eat due to the guilt that had consumed him. He agreed to tell the truth, and Mac summoned the guards. Smiley was escorted back to the Dai-Ichi building, where he told the prosecutors everything: the beatings, the denial of food, the torture. He gave names and dates before he was returned to his cell.

  Interrogations stretched on for weeks, and Mac was to depart before the trials commenced in Yokohama and Tokyo. Before he left, he requested that the military prosecutors show leniency to Kuta Schugota for providing key evidence. They agreed to set him free and allowed Mac to personally share the news with the kindliest of the former Palawan guards. Smiley looked even more run-down this time, but the news that he was free to return to his family touched his heart. He clasped Mac’s hand through the cell bars and cried like a child. He explained that he had a wife and two daughters whom he supported by painting signs. “When I go home,” he said, “I tell my daughters, Macky Dole, an American prisoner of war, saved my life. Thank you so much!”8

  Pedro Paje, the suspected turncoat who was actually running an underground resistance operation from the Iwahig Penal Colony, was charged with treason by the Philippine government. Falsely named as a Japanese collaborator by one of his own employees whom he had arrested for dealing black market American goods, Paje was detained and held in a concentration camp on Leyte for about eight months, until he was freed on November 5, 1946. During his trial, depositions from both Mac McDole and Smitty helped clear Paje of the false charges made against him. Mac departed Tokyo with high hopes that his three months of testimony would help convict the thirty-three officers and men facing charges and put them to death.9

  The trials began on August 2, 1948, in Yokohama, and would stretch on for many weeks. Doug Bogue, Joe Barta, and Edwin Petry made appearances to give their testimony concerning their experiences on Palawan and their final escapes. Prosecutors introduced written orders sent to all camp commanders in May 1944, which stated that if Allied landings threatened any branch camp where the American POWs might be retaken, decisive actions must be taken to prevent any prisoners from being saved. But only sixteen of the thirty-three Japanese suspects were actually put to trial, and the end results could not have been more lenient.

  Lieutenant General Seiichi Terada’s trial began in Tokyo. He had been the commanding general of the 2nd Air Division on Negros Island, but he claimed that he was never provided written orders placing him in control of the Palawan battalion. He believed that control remained with the 4th Air Division headquarters in Manila. Terada denied giving direct orders on December 13, 1944, to have the POWs massacred. Thirteen charges were eventually levied against him, and the court found him guilty of all but four. On November 8, 1948, General Terada was sentenced to a life term in Tokyo’s Sugamo Prison.10

  One who did not escape the death sentence was Lieutenant General Homma, commanding general of the Japanese 14th Army, which had invaded the Philippines. Charged with being responsible for the Bataan Death March and other atrocities, Homma was executed by a firing squad on April 3, 1946, in the city of Los Baños. Lieutenant General Tomoyuki Yamashita, charged with numerous war crimes in the Philippines, and in the Thai and Malay peninsulas, was hanged to death in Manila on February 23, 1946.

  Of the Palawan Massacre suspects, Master Sergeant Deguchi was charged with six items. Among the charges against him were beating and killing POWs Seldon White and Earl Vance Wilson; beating, abusing, and holding Walt Ditto and Robert May in the brig for three months; giving orders for his men to beat two other POWs to death; and his involvement in the December 14 massacre. Deguchi pleaded not guilty to all counts, but the evidence against him was overwhelming. On November 8, he was sentenced to be hanged to death, with the final execution order to be confirmed by General MacArthur.

  Superior Private Tomisaburo Sawa was more cooperative. During his stay in the Sugamo Prison, he gave written confessions to all sorts of atrocities carried out on Palawan, including personally killing at least three of the one hundred thirty-nine victims on December 14. He received a five-year prison term, but it was reduced to three and a half years for time already served.

  Manichi Nishitani, the head cook at the Palawan barracks, was sentenced to five years in prison for the beatings he had administered. Lieutenant General Kizo Mikama, commanding general of the 4th Air Division, 4th Air Army, received a twelve-year prison term for his part in the massacre. Lieutenant Colonel Mamoru Fushimi, who headed the 11th Air Sector Unit of the 4th Air Army, was given ten years in prison. Four others were given prison terms ranging from two to five years, but six of the sixteen charged in the Palawan Massacre were acquitted.

  Shortly after Deguchi’s death verdict was pronounced, General MacArthur signed an order commuting his sentence to thirty years in prison. Neither Deguchi nor Terada would serve the full term. In 1958, a general amnesty was granted to all Japanese war crimes prisoners, and they were allowed to walk free from Tokyo’s Sugamo Prison.

  *

  THE ELEVEN PALAWAN Massacre survivors could do nothing to change the outcome of the Japanese war crimes trials. Like many veterans of t
heir generation, they simply moved on with their lives.

  Master Sergeant Doug Bogue tried to leave the memories of Palawan in his past. He simply did not wish to talk about his time of captivity, even with his wife and children, though in his later years he was open to reminiscing about his service during the Korean War. Bogue had been awarded the Legion of Merit for his escape from Camp 10-A, during which he killed three Japanese guards. Following the war crimes trials in Japan in 1948, he served with the 6th Marine Division in Tientsin, China, until being evacuated in 1949 when the Communists under Mao Zedung defeated Chiang Kaishek’s Chinese Nationalist forces. Bogue was assigned to Korea with the 11th Marines, 1st Marine Division in 1951, where he received a battlefield commission of captain. He participated in such actions as the seizure of Inchon, the securing of Seoul, and the Chosin Campaign. He later served in Japan and was well respected for his leadership abilities. He retired as a major in 1959.

  Bogue and his wife, Betty, moved to San Diego, where he worked for the next twenty years for the San Diego and Arizona Eastern Railway. After retirement, he settled in Lompoc, California, where he became a civilian pilot and certified flight instructor. Doug Bogue passed away on March 7, 2004, at his home at the age of eighty-five. He was survived by his wife of fifty-nine years and their three daughters. According to his final wishes, a memorial service was held at Moffett Field by his Marine comrades, and his ashes were scattered at sea.11

  Edwin Petry lived in Santa Monica, California, after his honorable discharge from the military on August 30, 1946, with the rank of staff sergeant. He became a stepfather to his wife Priscilla’s children from a previous marriage, and the couple added two more of their own, Robert and Darlene. Ed was first employed as a truck driver, then spent his final eighteen years of work with the U.S. Postal Service in Reseda as a maintenance man. Petry passed away at the age of sixty-six on May 7, 1987, and was buried in the Los Angeles National Cemetery.

  Alberto Pacheco and his wife, Katie, drove their rumble seat sport coupe to California after the war and settled in Monterey Park. Soft-spoken and kind-natured, Pacheco worked hard to overcome the abuse he had suffered. Even looking someone in the eyes took time to relearn, since direct eye contact between Pacheco and a Japanese guard had resulted in a rifle butt or fist to his face. As he and Katie raised five daughters, Pacheco worked a variety of jobs, including stints with the Alameda Pottery Company and Western Lighting in California. He still suffered sporadic attacks of malaria but enjoyed hunting, picnics at the beach, and playing baseball with community leagues in his free time. Beto was not one to linger on the terrible experiences of Palawan, but he did keep in touch with Joe Barta, with whom he exchanged annual holiday greetings. Beto’s family learned the value of deep patriotism from a father who was not ashamed to bow his head with misty eyes each time he stood for the National Anthem at a Dodgers ball game. Beto Pacheco passed away in 1997 and was buried in the Desert View Memorial Park Cemetery in Victorville, in San Bernardino County.

  Ernie Koblos with his wife, Irene, and son, Jack, about 1948.

  COURTESY OF JACK AND FELICE KOBLOS

  Ernie Koblos—married to Irene Blanche Auld on August 3, 1945—moved from Chicago to the San Francisco area in the early 1950s. They settled in Tracy, California, and later retired in Klamath Falls, Oregon. Their sons, Jack and William, would provide the Koblos family with seven grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren. Koblos retired from the Alameda Naval Air Station in 1972 and also worked for National Ignition and United Airlines. He died in 1992 after complications from surgery.

  Joe Barta with his wife, Jean.

  COURTESY OF LINDA JO YALE

  Joe Barta was married to Jean Vaughn Koopman on September 25, 1945. He met her in San Diego, where she was working for the Navy, sending teletypes when the scraggly former POW was brought in. Barta was soon assigned to Fort Ward, near Bainbridge Island, Washington, where the two resided until he retired from the Navy. In civilian life, Barta worked for the U.S. Postal Service while attending Seattle Community College to study carpentry. His children found him to be a kind, gentle man who did not dwell on the morbid details of the horrors he had endured as a prisoner. He remained in contact with Doug Bogue, with whom he swam from Puerto Princesa toward safety in 1944. Joe Barta passed away at the age of eighty-eight on September 27, 2003, and was buried in the West Tennessee Veterans Cemetery in Memphis.

  His grandson, Joseph P. Barta, later became engaged to a girl of Filipino birth named Christina Firme. He was shocked to find that his future wife’s parents and grandparents lived on Palawan Island and had met his grandfather Joe in the wake of the Palawan Massacre when he was attempting to escape from the Japanese.

  Elmo “Mo” Deal with his wife, Alta, and daughter Sharon in 1947.

  COURTESY OF SHARON (DEAL) SPEARS

  Elmo “Mo” Deal and his wife, Alta, settled in Oakland, California, where he began attending watchmaker’s school. The nerves in his right hand were so damaged that he had no feeling in it, so he taught himself how to assemble the tiny inner workings of the watches with his left hand. Deal worked for a time in a North Sacramento jewelry store before opening his own business. Mo and Alta raised three daughters—Janet, Sharon, and Denise—and enjoyed traveling in their motor home in later years. Mo Deal, awarded two Bronze Stars and the Purple Heart for his World War II service, passed away on February 10, 2004, in Sacramento.

  Tommie “Pop” Daniels returned home to rural Titus County, Texas, after he retired from the service in February 1947. Mac McDole tried to maintain contact with Daniels, but he found that his friend was more content to live the life of a hermit, chasing people from his property at gunpoint. He never worked again, never married, and left no children to carry on his name.12

  Daniels lived in a modest one-room house with an attached kitchen near the community of Sugar Hill, less than thirty miles away as the crow flies from Smitty’s home in Hughes Springs. He assumed the last name Zent in his later years, attributed to his biological father, but he was not the same man he had been before the war. He did not sleep well in his shack, preferring to sleep on a cot in the woods in warmer weather. He built a chain-link fence around his home to keep neighbors away, and when he died of a heart attack on about January 20, 1963, at age fifty-nine, it was days before his body was found sitting in a chair, a rifle across his lap. He was buried in the DeShields Cemetery under a simple granite marker that listed his service as “Cpl 1040 Base Unit AAF World War II.”

  Gene Nielsen settled in South Logan, Utah, where he and his wife, Gwynne, raised four children, Sharlene, Bruce, Janet, and Lorna. He graduated from Utah State University in 1950 with a degree in business management and economics, worked for the U.S. Postal Service, and later spent the majority of his career at Hill Air Force Base in materials management. He retired in 1978 and enjoyed fishing, boating, camping, hunting, and traveling every chance he had.

  Some thirty-five years after Gene left the service, doctors found what appeared to be a blood clot in his leg. The surgeon who opened him up instead discovered a calcium-encrusted .26-caliber Japanese rifle bullet that the Filipinos who had treated him after his escape had missed. Nielsen remained active with World War II reunion groups and shared his story with various historians. He died on February 3, 2011, at age ninety-five.13

  Glenn “Mac” McDole served twenty-nine years as an Iowa highway patrol officer, his service broken only by a recall to duty in 1950 during the Korean War. The Marines put him to work handling classified reports at Camp Pendleton, California, where he and his wife, Betty, lived until he was discharged back to civilian life the following year. Promoted to lieutenant in December 1960, McDole was assigned to head up a patrol office at Storm Lake, Iowa, where he would complete his service while he and Betty raised their daughters, Glenda and Kathy. McDole retired from the Iowa Highway Safety Patrol in 1976 but went on to serve another twelve years with the Polk County Sheriff’s Office.14
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  A Palawan “survival pact” reunion in the 1970s (left to right): Mac McDole, Roy Henderson, Smitty, Clarence Clough, and Evan Bunn.

  COURTESY OF KATHY MCDOLE PARKINS

  In 1985, McDole was finally awarded the Bronze Star Medal with Valor he had earned during World War II. He was called to the Iowa statehouse, where Governor Terry Branstad pinned the medal on him for his service on Corregidor and his ordeal at Palawan. McDole continued to lead an active life, involved in his church and various veterans and civic organizations. He traveled to the annual reunions of the 4th Marine Regiment of World War II and gave speeches to numerous veterans organizations, schools, churches, and civic groups. He enjoyed fishing and hunting and never failed to fly the American flag each day in front of his home in Ankeny, Iowa. He spoke freely of his experiences on Palawan, but for years was troubled with recurring nightmares of what he had endured.

  Willie Smith and his wife, Bess, settled on family land near Hughes Springs, Texas, after he completed his military service. Smitty’s disability pension amounted to only $157 per month, forcing him to survive on a number of odd jobs he was able to maintain during his recurring bouts of sickness. The Smiths raised four children, Glenn, Don, Nita, and Kathy, and later welcomed ten grandchildren. Smitty was able to secure a job as a safety inspector at a new U.S. Steel mill that opened near his farm, and he worked there until 1972, when his health worsened and he was forced to go on full disability.15