Conduct Under Fire

by John A. Glusman

  The navy corpsmen got to work quickly, tearing their undershirts into washrags, cleaning, scrubbing, and disinfecting. Electricity was installed, commodes with flush tanks were built, and showers were erected. They covered the cesspool, drained it into the city sewer system, and fabricated a Japanese-style straddle trench as a benjo (toilet). They constructed a wood-fired incinerator as diagrammed in the Handbook of the Hospital Corps so they could dispose of waste and reduce the swarms of flies. They even concocted a primitive refrigeration device they called a “coolator”—a wooden frame draped in gunny sacking that was kept wet to help preserve meat for the camp soup. With materials from existing structures, they built examination and dressing tables, benches, and wooden platforms for beds.

  The hospital was located in the lower half of Bilibid. Separate facilities were designated for a surgical ward, a dispensary and outpatient service, a pharmacy, as well as a dental ward, a dressing room, and an X-ray room. The infectious diseases unit was situated in the upper-right corner of the compound, near the cemetery. Officers had quarters distinct from hospital corpsmen; there was even a separate Sick Officers’ Quarters. A commissary was set up behind Building 4 under the supervision of Navy Pay Clerk C. A. Hanson. Coffee, sugar, peanuts, tobacco, canned salmon, sardines, bananas, and mongo beans were made available by a Japanese merchant named Uemura. Prisoners could draw against accounts, and a 10 percent “profit” was charged to all sales for the benefit of the Indigent Sick Fund. Bilibid’s patient census would average 700.

  Sartin now had his hospital organization in place, but it was like a house without furniture, a medicine chest minus pills. The army medical officers and corpsmen who arrived from Hospital No. 1 on Bataan on June 19 had been told by the Japanese that they were being transferred to “a first-class, well-equipped” medical center. They left a modestly stocked facility behind, only to walk into the shell of one with hundreds of patients suffering from malaria, dysentery, and diarrhea or recovering from wounds, fractures, and amputations. They had little in the way of medicine or supplies.

  The second wave of navy doctors and corpsmen who arrived from Corregidor on July 2 were a blessing. George, Fred, and John brought urgently needed drugs and dressings. The equipment they assiduously loaded onto the Lisbon Maru was stacked outside Bilibid’s gates, awaiting inspection. But some of the most important medicines—quinine sulfate for malaria, emetine hydrochloride, carbarsone, and bismuth for dysentery—remained in short supply. And there was one crucial item that was absent entirely: a microscope.

  In spite of the hard work Sartin’s men had put into Bilibid over the previous month, it was a shock to the new arrivals from Corregidor. “Here are piled and crowded into dingy barred prison barracks all the wrecks and human flotsam and jetsam of Bataan and Corregidor,” wrote Hayes. But sanitation was greatly improved, the hospital galley functioned smoothly, and once the operating room was outfitted with equipment from Corregidor, the navy doctors were ready for their assignments.

  Hayes was made chief of surgery. Fred was assigned to the Sick Officers’ Quarters, George fit right in with orthopedics, and John worked in the infectious diseases ward. What amazed the men was the comparatively small number of casualties resulting from the defense of Corregidor. The incidence of medical cases was another matter. The responsibilities that the navy doctors had assumed were daunting, but unlike other POWs who were assigned to work details, they had the chance to practice the profession for which they had been trained, a goal toward which they could work, a purpose to their days. Sartin requested scrolls of supplies on a weekly basis, and on a weekly basis his requests were denied. But you couldn’t focus on what was missing. You made do with what you had, even if what you had was rarely enough. The one thing you couldn’t afford to lose was hope.

  Bilibid became the primary POW hospital in the Philippines and a transit facility for prisoners en route to other camps in the archipelago or in the Japanese Home Islands. There were a total of 30 POW camps in the Philippines and 170 in Japan. Officially, it was known as the United States Naval Hospital Unit, Bilibid Prison, P.I., until the Japanese decided that the reference to the United States was inappropriate and renamed it the Bilibid Hospital for Military Prison Camps of the P.I. Senior medical officers acted as camp administrators, and the chief medical officer served as the liaison with the Japanese. That was Sartin, the “Old Man,” the moniker traditionally given the commanding officer of navy ships and stations.

  Small, thin, in his early fifties, with a paternal manner that some mistook as meekness, Sartin lost no time in presenting Nogi Naraji with a copy of the 1929 Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War.

  Nogi was a captain in the Medical Corps of the Imperial Japanese Army. Broad shouldered and smooth complexioned, he was more Mandarin-looking than Japanese. He was just thirty years old in August 1942, when he assumed the position of staff medical officer of the War Prisoner Headquarters, located in Manila’s University Club.

  Nogi was ultimately responsible for medical supply and medical care at Bilibid, Cabanatuan, Pasay Elementary School, Baguio, Los Baños, and later Davao and Santo Tomás. He took his orders first from Major General Morimoto Iichirō of the 14th Army, commandant of the prisoner of war camps in the Philippines, and then from Lieutenant General Kou Shiyoku. His colleague, 1st Lieutenant Momota, was in charge of food, clothing, and daily necessities.

  Immaculately dressed in an open-necked white shirt beneath a tropical-weight khaki jacket and matching khaki pants tucked into high black boots, Nogi had an obvious fondness for Western culture. He was nearly fluent in English and had read Marx, Tolstoy, Ibsen, and Gorky. Several of the POW doctors with whom Nogi interacted, army as well as navy, found him initially compassionate and responsive to their needs.

  Captain Kusamoto, whom Nogi relieved as director of the hospital at Bilibid Prison, had been anything but. On an inspection tour, Kusamoto asked Chief Machinist George B. Gooding, the American camp warden, if Commander Sartin was the senior American officer. Indeed he was, said Gooding of Cañacao’s former chief of medicine. Whereupon Kusamoto turned to Sartin and said: “All right, you are responsible for the prison, and if anyone escapes, your head comes off.”

  The 1929 Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War was derived from the Geneva Convention of 1864 for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick of Armies in the Field. The Geneva Convention was revised in the aftermath of World War I as an international covenant to guarantee food, clothing, shelter, proper sanitation, and humane treatment for prisoners of war. Most countries and their dependencies signed the Geneva Convention; not all of them ratified it.

  According to the Geneva Convention, a belligerent power’s first obligation was to create a prisoner of war bureau that could quickly advise families of the whereabouts and addresses of their relatives. In Japan, this was known as the Horyo Jōhōkyoku, or Prisoner of War Information Bureau, which was established between December 1941 and March 1942 under General Uemura Seitaro as part of the Military Affairs Bureau of the Ministry of War in Tōkyō. For the approximately 324,000 Allied POWs and civilian internees held in Japan and Japanese-occupied territories, the Horyo Jōhōkyoku had a staff of twenty-six, including office boys. The Horyo Jōhōkyoku was in charge of maintaining records of individual POWs. Imperial GHQ was ultimately responsible for POW camp operations.

  The Geneva Convention stipulated that prisoners were “subject to the laws, regulations, and orders in force in the armies of the detaining power.” But the “detaining power” was expressly forbidden to use prisoners in work that was directly related to “war operations” or that was “unhealthful or dangerous.” Attempted escape—even if repeated—was considered a disciplinary crime, and as such, the most severe punishment could not exceed thirty days. In the event of a judicial proceeding, the “detaining power” was obligated to inform the representative of the “protecting power” immediately. Should a trial result in a death pena
lty sentence, the “protecting power” was to be notified of the charges and the “circumstances of the offense” at least three months in advance of the execution of the sentence. Switzerland became the protecting power for the United States in Japan. The International Committee of the Red Cross functioned as “a service agency” that acted “for the benefit of prisoners.”

  Japan had its own regulations for the treatment of prisoners of war dating back to February 1904, when Army Instruction No. 22 was issued during the Russo-Japanese War. This was to accommodate terms of the Laws and Customs of War on Land of 1899, a precursor to the Hague Convention. Article 2 unequivocally stated that “prisoners of war shall be treated with a spirit of goodwill and shall never be subjected to cruelties or humiliation.” The rules were revised in 1905, 1909, 1914, and on December 23, 1941, “to meet the requirements of the present war.”

  By and large Japan’s treatment of some 79,367 POWs during the Russo-Japanese War was humane, efficient, and with the help of the Japan Red Cross Society, particularly responsive to the sick and wounded. This stood in marked contrast to the brutality exercised by the Americans toward Filipino civilians during the Philippine-American War and to the fate of Boer refugees under the British, who were consigned by Lord Milner, high commissioner for South Africa, to the world’s first concentration camps during the Boer War.

  Prisoners of the Japanese were required “to conform to the discipline and regulations of the Imperial Army.” The Japanese, in turn, were expected to respect the dignity of the captured officer, his health, and his well-being. Individual army commanders had considerable discretionary powers. POWs were allowed to keep their personal belongings, or they could be “held in deposit” and returned on the cessation of hostilities. Enemy officers were even permitted “to carry their own swords.” Article 11 was unusually accommodating. The sick and wounded could be returned or exchanged so long as they swore on oath “not to take part in combat during the remainder of the same war.”

  While POWs were never to be subjected to “cruelties or humiliation,” punishments were harsh. Article 6 stipulated that escapees could be stopped “by armed force and if necessary killed or wounded.” The Japanese prescribed a separate standard of court-martial for POWs, whereas the Geneva Convention insisted that the process conform to the prevailing military practice. There was no due process, just as in the Meiji constitution there was no guarantee of basic human rights.

  During World War I Japan captured 4,269 Germans in Tsingtao, China; they may have been treated well, but Japan’s policy toward prisoners of war was about to undergo a profound change. In March 1920 Russian partisans demanded that the Japanese garrison in Nikolaevsk, at the mouth of the Amur River, disarm. The Japanese attacked instead. On orders from their brigade, the Japanese then laid down their weapons, only to be imprisoned and massacred within months. This marked a turning point in Japanese attitudes toward surrender. By 1941 the doctrine of “no surrender” was codified in the Senjinkun. If a Japanese soldier would choose death over capture, how could he be expected to respect enemy prisoners of war? Human life, as Japan made clear in its neocolonial exploits in Korea, Formosa, and China—indeed, within the ranks of its own military—was cheap.

  Japan was a party to the Fourth Hague Convention of 1907, the Versailles Treaty (whose Article 171 prohibited the use of poison gas), and the Red Cross Convention of 1929. Although it signed the 1929 Geneva Convention, it refused to ratify it. Whether this was because the “no surrender” doctrine prevented the Japanese from becoming POWs themselves and therefore placed a unilateral obligation on Japan; or because the Geneva Convention called for unmonitored meetings between POWs and representatives of a neutral power, which were considered potential security risks; or because Japan recognized that its standard of living was so far below that of the United States and England that there would be an unbridgeable gap between the subsistence provided to POWs by the “detaining power” compared to that of the “protecting power,” remains unclear.

  But disdain for international law and the humane treatment of prisoners of war emanated from no less an authority than the emperor himself. Japan was in gross violation of both the Fourth Hague Convention and the Versailles Treaty before World War II even began. Hirohito failed to condemn the barbarities committed by the Imperial Japanese Army in the Rape of Nanking. He authorized the use of poison gas in July 1937 for mopping-up operations in the Peking-Tientsin area, and he approved the North China Area Army’s annihilation tactics referred to as sankō sakusen (“burn all, kill all, steal all”) against Chinese Communist guerrillas. He stood by as the Japanese Navy Air Force indiscriminately bombed Chungking in May 1938, causing 5,000 noncombatant deaths, and he sanctioned the use of bacteriological weapons by Unit 731 of the Kwantung Army against China in 1940.

  In December 1941 the Swiss legation in Tōkyō representing the United States, the Argentine chargé d’affaires speaking for the British Commonwealth, and the Swiss legation on behalf of South Africa began to pressure the Japanese government to abide by the articles of the Geneva Convention. On February 4, 1942, Foreign Minister Tōgō Shigenori advised the Allies that “first: Japan is strictly observing the Geneva Red Cross Convention as a signatory state; second: although not bound by the Convention relative [to the] treatment of prisoners of war, Japan will apply mutatis mutandis provisions of that Convention to American prisoners of war in its power.” Less than a month later, the POW Maintenance Regulation was issued, which stated that prisoners of the Japanese were to receive rations comparable to those given Japanese officers and enlisted men, which amounted to 420 grams of rice per day and 640 grams for heavy labor. Supply and enforcement were separate matters.

  Army Minister Tōjō Hideki was far less sympathetic to the plight of POWs even though he knew of the atrocities committed against Fil-American captives after the fall of Bataan. In late April 1942 Tōjō chaired a meeting of War Department section chiefs to address the POW issue. Lieutenant General Murakami Mikio, head of the Prisoner of War Information Bureau, urged that the Geneva Convention be observed. Tōjō disagreed. If the Greater East Asian War was intended to liberate Asia, he argued, Japan’s superiority must also be impressed upon the newly emancipated. Not only were “all prisoners of war to engage in forced labor”—officers and enlisted men alike—but their humiliation would be carried out in full public view. Insubordination or attempted escapes were punishable by death. Instructions to this effect were formulated in early May 1942 and emphasized repeatedly by Tōjō in his discussions with camp officers in Japan, Korea, Formosa, and Southeast Asia.

  In early August 1942, the very month that Homma Masaharu was relieved of his command of the 14th Army and recalled to Tōkyō, it was General Murakami’s turn to chair a conference on the POW question. Some fifty camp commandants were in attendance. The fair treatment of prisoners of war, he countered, would enhance Japan’s reputation abroad. POWs were to be separated by nationality, they would be paid, they would be able to wear insignia designating rank, and they would work once they swore their obedience. These instructions were issued on August 15, but they didn’t go into effect until a full year later. Many commandants felt no obligation to comply.

  Meanwhile, alarmed at the number of POW deaths during the building of the Siam-Burma Railway (which began in July 1942), Murakami sent an order to all commandants to ensure improved treatment of prisoners of war. Murakami’s jurisdiction extended to Japan, Korea, Manchuria, Formosa, and occupied China, which were considered war zones, not Southeast Asia. Compliance remained a problem. Elsewhere, camp commanders were required to submit detailed monthly reports. But in some cases an entire year elapsed before the Horyo Jōhōkyoku in Tōkyō finally received them.

  In the Philippines, however, captives of the Japanese were officially granted POW status as of August 1942. Under the terms of the Geneva Convention, this entitled them to monthly pay commensurate with their rank—minus a few deductions. A first lieutenant received 85 pesos in Japanese occ
upation currency—printed in English—less 60 pesos for room and board, minus 5 pesos for “compulsory savings deposit” for a net total of 20 pesos in cash each month. Perhaps Nogi said it best when he told Sartin that Bilibid Prison would indeed operate in accordance with the articles of the Geneva Convention—“as interpreted by the Imperial Japanese Army.”

  Captivity did not put an end to interservice rivalry. The army proposed that Bilibid have a joint army-navy command. Sartin rejected the idea. Five army medical officers, two army chaplains, and two enlisted men were already on Bilibid’s staff. The old Cañacao group numbered more than 100, they’d worked well together as a unit for six months, and Sartin felt that navy corpsmen were in general better trained than their army counterparts. “The best possible care,” he believed, was assured by “continuity of team work.” Besides, there were disturbing reports that the army corpsmen who had arrived at Bilibid from Hospital No. 2 on May 27 were selling medicine at black market prices. “The Army doctors condone this action,” Carter Simpson noted in his diary entry of that date. “In a case like this a court martial is too good.”

  The army, Hayes bitterly recalled, had treated the navy men like dirt on the Rock: “We will never forget we were denied quarters with Army officers and were made to sleep in the toilet.” Colonel James Duckworth was the embodiment of Hayes’s grievance. He arrived at Bilibid like an English viceroy in India, with a valet, an administrative assistant, and twenty pieces of luggage in tow. The navy doctors from Bataan and Corregidor would also never forget that the old Cañacao group had—Rockwell’s order notwithstanding—sat out the war and were in far better physical condition as a result. Still, it was good to be back in the navy fold.

  A partition ran down the center of Cell Block No. 3, which separated the junior from the senior officers, and it was there that George, Fred, and John had their quarters. Gordon Lambert, who had come to Bilibid from Pasay with the Cañacao unit on May 30, 1942, was already at home there and had built a wooden bunk for Fred about a foot or so off the ground, on top of which lay a thin mattress that could be rolled back so the bed could double as a table. Gordon briefed Fred on life at Bilibid, which was as different from the situation on Corregidor as Santa Scholastica College was from Pasay Elementary School. George was delighted that Father Cummings was in the same cell block with him.