Conduct Under Fire

by John A. Glusman

  Action recommended: None.

  There was an obvious lag time between the observation of land and ship movements and the transmission of information to SWPA. The delays back and forth, Fertig confessed to MacArthur, could be “heart-breaking.” To save time, ship information sometimes went straight to Naval Intelligence in Perth, which passed it along to Operations, which in turn notified only the commanders of American submarines in the area. According to Lloyd Waters, one of Fertig’s radio operators, “we’d send all the messages . . . to MacArthur.” The control station of the 10th Military District even tried communicating directly with a submarine commander in the vicinity on a prearranged schedule in addition to sending regular dispatches to SWPA. If the intelligence that guerrilla units provided to SWPA helped it track and target enemy vessels, presumably it could have been used to prevent Japanese merchant ships carrying Allied POWs from being attacked by U.S. Navy planes and submarines. As early as 1943, MacArthur was aware of such a possibility.

  On February 19, 1943, Praeger had radioed the general:UNCONFIRMED REPORT AMERICAN OFFICERS FIELD GRADE AND ABOVE TAKEN MANILA OCT 1ST SHIPMENT JAPAN.

  On March 4, 1944, Lieutenant Colonel Andrews, a mestizo who had been a ranking officer in the Philippine Army Air Corps and who worked hand in hand with Salipada Pendatun, radioed MacArthur that a German seaman who escaped from a blockade runner seized by the JapaneseSAW AMERICAN WAR PRISONERS FORCED TO STEVEDORE NIP SHIPS, WHILE IN TRANSIT THEY ARE LOCKED IN HOLDS TO PREVENT ESCAPE IF TORPEDOED.

  On June 10, 1944, Fertig contacted MacArthur:DAVAO PROVINCE, 6 JUNE: 39 TRUCKLOADS OF MEN (POW) EMBARKED AT BUNAWAN WHARF ON TRANSPORT BELIEVED FOR MANILA. BLINDFOLDED AND BOUND DURING TRIP TO SHIP.

  At the bottom of the message was a comment from G-2:IT IS POSSIBLE THAT ALL [POW] WERE EVACUATED FROM MINDANAO--MAY SUGGEST A MOVEMENT OF PRISONERS TO JAPAN ITSELF. ACTION: FERTIG INSTRUCTED TO SECURE MORE INFO ON POW EVACUATION.

  Five weeks later, on July 18, MacArthur heard from Major Bernard L. Anderson, commanding officer of a guerrilla band in Tayabas Province, northeast of Manila:LARGE GROUP OF AMERICAN AIR CORPS POW LEFT MANILA 02 JULY FOR JAPAN.

  The removal of Air Corps prisoners to Japan, the G-2 comment read this time, is a “significant development.”

  On August 18 a Japanese naval message was intercepted from Manila to Tōkyō that divulged the route of a Japanese cargo ship, the Shinyō Maru:SHINYO MARU IS TO PROCEED FROM ZAMBOANGA TO CEBU AND THEN TRANSPORT SOMETHING ON TO MANILA."

  A message of September 6 referred to the “something” as “750 troops for Manila via Cebu.” The “troops” were really POWs from Davao.

  Meanwhile Tom Mitsos, a cryptographer who was in charge of the code room at Fertig’s 10th Military District Radio Station in Waloe, Mindanao, received a message from Davao coast watchers that a Japanese freighter loaded with POWs had departed from Davao City in a small convoy. According to Mitsos, the message was relayed to SWPA, which in turn notified the U.S. Navy. A “do not attack this convoy” order was issued to all submarines in the area as the ship steamed toward Zamboanga City, a passage known to cryptographers as “Torpedo Alley.”

  The unknown ship arrived in Zamboanga late in the afternoon of August 24. Don LeCouvre, who led an American guerrilla group in the Zamboanga area under Fertig, reported its safe arrival to Waloe. But unbeknownst to LeCouvre, the POWs were transferred on September 4 to a second ship, the Manila-bound Shinyō Maru. The original prison ship left Zamboanga City unmolested. When the Shinyō Maru sailed from Zamboanga, LeCouvre dutifully radioed the information. Not until the morning of September 7, however, did LeCouvre learn that the POWs had been moved to the Shinyō Maru. He immediately sent a priority message to Waloe, which in turn transmitted it to Australia, but it was too late. At 1647 on September 7 a submarine off of Sindangan Point, the USS Paddle, deftly zeroed in on the Shinyō Maru and blew it apart. Six hundred sixty-seven POWs out of 750 men died—the bulk of whom were from the Mindanao-Visayan Force that had reluctantly surrendered under Generals Fort and Sharp in May 1942. Many of the POWs who survived the blast were machine-gunned in the water by the Japanese. Fertig kept MacArthur apprised of the entire incident.

  SECRET

  17 SEPTEMBER 1944

  TO: GENERAL MACARTHUR

  FROM: FERTIG

  NR 855 17 SEPTEMBER

  PRISONER OF WAR MCGEE REPORTS: 750 AMERICANS ON PRISON BOAT TORPEDOED OFF LILOY 07 SEPTEMBER. 83 SURVIVORS, 26 OF WHOM ARE OFFICERS. ALL NOW IN SIMDANGAN [sic]. 30 WOUNDED AND TWO HAVE GANGRENE. DO YOU WISH NAMES OF SURVIVORS BY RADIO OR ALL OF FACTS BY PICK UP/ INFORMATION STILL INCOMPLETE.

  HAVE INSTRUCTED BOWLER TO RUSH MEDICINE AND DOCTORS THERE.

  Once Fertig debriefed two of the survivors, he contacted Australia:05 OCTOBER 1944

  SECRET

  TO: GENERAL MACARTHUR

  FROM: FERTIG

  NR 5 05 OCTOBER

  POW LT RICHARD COOK AND STAFF SGT JOSEPH COE, SERIAL 7000444, HAVE REMAINED WITH CORPS. THEY DELIVERED FULL DETAILS OF ATROCITIES PRACTICED ON PRISONERS BEFORE AND DURING SINKING.

  MacArthur professed a particular interest in escaped POWs. By June 1943 the general realized that the officers to whom Major Praeger had in all likelihood referred in his message of February 19, 1943, had actually been transported even earlier from the Philippines—in the summer of 1942—and arrived safely in either Formosa or Japan. When he met Dyess, Mellnik, and McCoy in July 1943 and heard Dyess’s account of Japanese atrocities on the march from Mariveles to San Fernando, MacArthur assured him: “Captain, I’m afraid the people back home will find it hard to believe you. I believe you because I know the Japs.”

  But many POWs who suffered under the Japanese would suffer still more at the hands of the Americans. In the early morning hours of September 12, 1944, the Rakuyō Maru was traveling in a convoy from Singapore to Japan with 1,318 POWs aboard. Armed with intelligence from FRUPAC, the USS Sealion II opened fire with three Mark XIV steam torpedoes and sank the ship. Later that night the USS Pampanito took aim at another vessel in the same convoy carrying 900 POWs. The ship was the former President Harrison, which had been captured two years earlier and renamed the Kachidoki Maru. The “kill” occurred at 3,800 yards, nearly the maximum range of the Mark XVIII electric torpedo. Three days later, while surface patrolling the waters southeast of Hainan Island, the Pampanito picked up 73 survivors, and the Sealion rescued 54 men. The Sealion radioed ComSubPac, and the submarines were granted permission to evacuate to the closest Allied base, which was some 1,800 miles away on Saipan. In the space of two attacks, 1,635 POWs died. Among them were British and Australian POWs who had slaved on the infamous Siam-Burma “Railway of Death” along the River Kwae Noi in Thailand. They had survived one nightmare, only to perish in another.

  From guerrilla messages based on eyewitness reports transmitted to SWPA, from radio traffic that FRUPAC and FRUMEL intercepted from Japanese vessels such as the Kenwa Maru (which counted Fred, John, and Murray among its passengers in March 1944), and from firsthand testimony of POWs who braved torpedo attacks by U.S. Navy submarines, MacArthur and the War Department gained ample evidence that the Japanese were using unmarked merchant ships to transport POWs to Japan and that Allied POWs were at grave risk. If the navy could target enemy vessels with deadly accuracy, why couldn’t they pinpoint those ships that cried out for safe passage?

  To be sure, the logistical challenges of relaying information to SWPA, FRUPAC, and FRUMEL quickly and acting on it effectively were formidable. The same ships that transported POWs also transported Japanese troops. The vessels traveled in convoys of warships, and their ship numbers were changed regularly. In September 1944 the Kenwa Maru was sunk by American planes in the Visayan Sea carrying not POWs but the 353rd Independent Infantry Battalion of the Japanese Army, an ULTRA intercept revealed. Moreover, withholding fire from POW transports might tip off the Japanese that the Americans had cracked their codes.

  But the problems were not insurmountable. In spite of MacArt
hur’s avowed sympathy for the plight of Allied POWs, the military objective of destroying the Japanese Navy and merchant fleet took precedence over their fate. “Absolutely there were people in the Port Area,” said Ramsey, “and if they saw POW transport activities, this information would have been forwarded.” But that wasn’t the primary objective of guerrilla intelligence, which was to collect information on Japanese troops, armaments, and ship movements. As Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal later acknowledged: “Even though our intelligence began to establish the fact that the Japanese were transporting American prisoners in their ships, the great necessity for destroying Japan’s vital lifeline of shipping gave us no choice but to sink all Japanese ships encountered.”

  The POWs leaving the Philippines for Japan in early October 1944 were staring down a gauntlet. On one side, U.S. Navy bombers from Admiral Halsey’s Task Force 38 were aiming to reduce Japanese air power in the Philippines, Formosa, and Okinawa in preparation for the Leyte landings. On the other, Rear Admiral Lockwood’s submarines were on the prowl for major Japanese fleet movements between Tōkyō Bay and Luzon Strait.

  On October 11, 1944, the Military Intelligence Service in Manila sent its daily dispatch to GHQ in Australia:STREETCAR USED TO TRANSPORT CARGOES FROM PORT AREA AT 2100 H. AMERICAN PRISONERS AND INTERNEES BOARDED A 9,000-TON SHIP (NAME CONCEALED) OUT OF BREAKWATER.

  MIS overestimated the ship’s tonnage, but the report of its human cargo was right on target.

  Action taken: none.

  21

  The Arisan Maru

  AT 1600 ON THE AFTERNOON of October 11, 1944, George Ferguson was among 1,800 Allied POWs and civilian internees waiting to board a Japanese merchant ship at Manila’s bomb-damaged Pier 7. The men were divided into six drafts of 300 apiece and represented all ranks and service branches—the army and navy, the 4th Marines and Far East Air Force. There were officers and enlisted men, doctors and corpsmen, and survivors from Bataan and the siege of Corregidor. The 100 or so civilians were British, Dutch, and American. Tired, hungry, and sick, they came from camps all over the Philippines—Cabanatuan, Palawan Barracks—and the Davao Penal Colony on Mindanao. They had filtered through Bilibid Prison prior to their departure, but only the woolen shirts and trousers issued by the Japanese hinted at their destination: Manchuria, Korea, or Japan. Wherever they were headed, George and his former Bilibid patient Corporal Donald E. Meyer agreed, it was bound to turn out okay.

  An air raid siren sounded in the Port Area, and the POWs were hustled belowdecks into the upper half of No. 2 hold, a compartment fifty feet wide by seventy-five feet long that could reasonably accommodate 200 to 300 people. When they complained that there wasn’t enough room, Japanese guards entered swinging their rifle butts. Men were pressed so tightly together, they couldn’t breathe. Knees buckled; bodies remained upright only by the crush of flesh. Sweat streaming, they stripped off their woolens, gasped for air, and begged for water. Japanese guards kept their machine guns trained on the entrance to the hold. By 1630 the ship was under way, heading south for the Palawan Islands in a convoy led by the KokuryMaru.

  Captain Sugino Minemaru commanded the crew. First Lieutenant Funatsu Toshio was transportation officer. Second Lieutenant Yamaji Kiyoshi, a former English professor at the University of Tōkyō, served as the POW guard officer.

  The 6,886-ton vessel, which had first sailed out of the Mitsui Tamanao shipyards in Okayama Prefecture in June 1944, was known as the Arisan Maru, named after a mountain in Formosa. A Type 2A freighter, the ship had three large holds, and was used primarily to carry coal along the Japan Sea coast. The No. 3 hold contained tons of nickel ingots and boxes of airplane parts. There was still a mound of coal in the No. 1 hold.

  Before being pressed into service to transport prisoners of war from Manila, the Arisan Maru had ferried 6,000 troops from the Guandon Army in Pusan, Korea, to Okinawa. The inside of the ship was fitted with three tiers of bunks, each a little more than three feet high. Many of the men were doubled over with dysentery. Almost all of them suffered from diarrhea. The Japanese handed the POWs eight five-gallon oil cans with the tops removed, but they quickly overflowed with waste. There was a constant drip of urine and fecal matter from the upper to the lower bunks. Soon the deck was slick with excrement. The temperature soared to 120 degrees. “The filth and stench,” said Staff Sergeant Philip Brodsky, an army corpsman, were “indescribable.” In some places the sides of the hold were literally “too hot to touch,” remarked 2nd Lieutenant Robert S. Overbeck, a civilian engineer who had been captured on Corregidor.

  The American doctors and corpsmen tried to set up a makeshift hospital in the rear of the hold, where they administered whatever medicine remained in their pouches. “If only we could get some medical supplies,” said one doctor, “we would be able to relieve the suffering of our men.” The Japanese had Red Cross medical supplies on board. First Sergeant Calvin Graef of the 515th Coast Artillery had seen them being loaded at Pier 7. But in only one instance did he see a doctor, Lieutenant Colonel Dwight Deter, gain access to them. The Japanese offered no further assistance.

  By evening, the Arisan Maru had lost contact with its flagship and headed in a southwesterly direction. The next day, carrier planes from Admiral Halsey’s Task Force 38 swept over Formosa in 1,378 sorties, and Rear Admiral Lockwood dispatched two wolf packs—Sawfish, Icefish, Drum, and Snook and Shark, Blackfish, and Seadragon—to blockade Luzon Strait. The Arisan Maru sneaked into a cove in one of the Palawan Islands to the south. Philip Brodsky, who had been imprisoned in Palawan Barracks, thought it was Coron, a small island southwest of Mindoro. By then, nearly a hundred men had collapsed from heat exhaustion and dehydration. Hundreds of others, according to Sergeant Avery E. Wilber, went insane.

  On October 13, the Japanese agreed to move 600 men from the middle No. 2 hold to the forward No. 1 hold, which served as a coal bunker and had been used for the transportation of tanks and ordnance from Korea to the Philippines. George Ferguson remained in the No. 2 hold. Don Meyer went into the forward hold, where the POWs were so crazed with thirst that they drank the dirty bilge water, “which had run off the coal into the scuppers of the hold.” Lack of space forced them to take turns sleeping. The vessel stayed put for several days “hiding from the U.S. Air Force,” as Private 3rd Class Glenn Oliver put it.

  In the early morning hours of October 15, Major Robert B. Lothrop, a former post engineer on Fort Mills, asked to go to the latrine. A West Point gymnast, Lothrop wriggled out of a porthole and landed in the water. A sentry sounded the alarm, and Lothrop was killed as he swam away from the Arisan Maru, after taking four direct hits. The Japanese sent a launch to retrieve his body and gave the thirty-seven-year-old major—the father of an eight-year-old daughter back home—a formal burial at sea.

  Within the first forty-eight hours, five men—not including Lothrop—had died. The first three were taken topside and dispatched without ceremony. The other two corpses remained in the hold for an entire day. Later, one dead man sat next to Sergeant Avery Wilber for two days before the Japanese removed him. The death toll increased until “there were dead all over,” said Private Anton E. Cichy. “I had seen so many dead every morning—thirty, thirty-five every morning—I figured, well, maybe next morning I’d be dead.” The POWs were allowed to dispose of their dead only at night.

  On October 19, the Arisan Maru circled back to Manila, where it was loaded with rice, green bananas, papayas, and sugar. Initially the prisoners were given dry rice to eat—a quarter canteen cup twice a day—and a few ounces of stale, rusty water. Calvin Graef had worked in the kitchen at Davao and was allowed topside with the other POW cooks, where they were permitted to steam rice in 85-gallon vats. Half canteen cups were served three or four times a day for a total daily ration of 250 grams. Men passed their mess kits as the rice ration was lowered down into the hold by rope, but there was no guarantee that they would get them back. They were given no salt, no sugar, no dry rations, and no legumes. Occasionall
y rotten vegetables were doled out for the sick.

  By contrast, the crew of the Arisan Maru was fed 600 grams of rice a day, in addition to 100 grams of pumpkin, some sugar, biscuits, 2.5 pints of water, and plenty of tea with their meals. Sometimes they couldn’t resist a little bonbon of the chocolate they had stolen from the POWs’ Red Cross supplies. The hatches were kept closed during the day, though the Japanese finally relented and allowed some of the sick to come up on deck for fresh air.

  At midnight on October 20, the eve of MacArthur’s landing on Leyte, the Arisan Maru resumed her journey. The ship was now part of MATA-30, a twelve-vessel convoy bound for Formosa, escorted by three destroyers. The largest of them was the flagship Harukaze, which Fred Berley and Butch Parker had been invited aboard four years earlier as Japan celebrated its mythical 2,600th anniversary.

  MATA-30 labored up the west coast of Luzon, hoping to reach Takao on October 24, but the convoy was widely dispersed in four rows. The Arisan Maru and the Kimikawa Maru, which had earlier been damaged by an enemy torpedo, were the two slowest vessels, their top speed a mere seven knots. Around October 23, Matsuo Chuneji, the chief steward, ordered the chief mate to offer the POWs as much water and food as was available. They could resupply in Takao. At noon the Japanese supplied the POWs with cotton life preservers. There were no markings to indicate that the Arisan Maru was a prisoner of war transport ship. The reason, according to the captain, was “a security matter.”