Escape From Davao (19 page)

The bet and the corresponding discourse lightened a tension-racked moment, but Shofner, competitive even in captivity, kept track of his wagers for a reason—he planned one day to col ect.

The
Erie Maru
certainly was no American President liner, but compared to the conditions they had endured throughout the previous half-year, remarked Steve Mel nik, “life aboard ship was sheer luxury.”

Hoses provided saltwater showers and fresh sea breezes carried off much of the odor emanating from the crude trough latrine, as wel as the al -pervading gasoline reek. They were fed clean rice, squash, spinach, dried fish, pork, and chunks of corned beef from cans labeled “Cavite Navy Yard.” Some prisoners belowdecks broke into a storeroom and gorged themselves on sardines, pork and beans, and condensed milk.

The generous portions and their captors’ relative kindness proved a long-standing theory of Jack Hawkins’s: “The reason for this lavish treatment, we learned, was that for the duration of the voyage we were being fed by the Japanese Navy and not by the Army. This confirmed the belief that I had maintained since Shanghai days, that the Japanese Navy was a superior organization in every way to the Japanese Army.”

Other than the guards arrayed around the deck, Hozumi’s men stayed out of sight, making the actions of the ship’s crew more conspicuous. One example was the compassion shown a POW who had been stricken with a strange paralysis. He was carried up from the fetid hold and placed beneath a veranda outside the captain’s quarters. He received frequent visits from the captain and gifts of fruit, cigarettes, and vitamin pil s from concerned crew members. One shy sailor placed a vase of flowers next to the il American.

This officer regained use of his legs and would be able to walk off the ship in Mindanao, but two others who had fal en il in mid-voyage would not be so fortunate. Yet they, too, were shown extreme courtesy and buried with military honors—one at sea and one on land—by the Japanese. This first burial took place after the ship had emerged from the Sibuyan Sea and stopped at the port of Iloilo on the island of Panay to unload some cargo. Dyess and the rest of the prisoners watched solemnly from the deck as the body was lowered into a seaside grave. “The burial scene reminded us that we too probably were destined to fil nameless graves, far from home,” said Dyess. Dyess was then suddenly distracted by the sight of two planes on the flight line of an airfield near the dock area. The engines were idling and there were no pilots or ground crewmen within sight. “
If only I could reach one of the planes,
” he thought. His mind shifted gears from the funeral and the forecasted finite ending to the potential, indeed the possibility, that their temporarily improved position afforded. He wasn’t the only one entertaining such a notion.

The three Marines had little to do but talk—to prevent trespassers from seizing their nest atop the rice sacks, they rarely descended to the deck or left their perch unguarded—so escape became a frequent topic of conversation. Emboldened by their ful stomachs and beset with boredom, they first considered jumping overboard and simply swimming for the shore. None, however, was wil ing to put their beliefs in the poor marksmanship of their enemies to the test. That left only one remaining option. That was what Shofner and his new friend wanted to discuss when they climbed up onto the Marines’ pal et of rice sacks late one morning.

“I want you to meet Ed Dyess,” Shofner said to Hawkins and Dobervich.

“I’m glad to know you both,” said Dyess, offering his right hand.

Hawkins could tel Dyess was a fel ow Texan by the drawl from his bloody, blistered lips.

“Ed is the one who made that bombing raid with the P-40 on the Japs in Subic Bay,” added Shofner.

Hawkins had figured that out, too. The rusty wings pinned on the pilot’s tattered shirt had given away his identity; he was
that
Dyess, a semi-celebrity among the POWs.

“That was real y a fine piece of work,” said Hawkins.

As the four prisoners leaned in their heads, Dyess told the Marines in hushed tones that he was considering launching a mutiny and sailing the ship to Australia. Dyess planned to simultaneously strike the engine room, the radio room, and the bridge. He had already organized a contingent of pilots and airmen and he needed to bring more conspirators into the fold.

“There ought to be enough Naval people on board to run the ship, if we could take her over,” said Dyess. “The question is whether or not we could get this gang organized wel enough to overpower the Japs on board.”

Though the prisoners outnumbered the Japanese nearly five to one, the Marines were skeptical. “They were armed and we were not. We were sick and weak and they were not,” said Hawkins. Stil , the plan was intriguing enough that they decided to consult with a Navy officer.

“How about McCoy?” suggested Shofner. “He’s one of the smartest navigators I know.”

Later that afternoon, Dyess pul ed the Navy commander aside. McCoy advised Dyess to scuttle the idea immediately. Even if the prisoners were successful in taking control of the ship, he argued, the crew would likely get off a message to the Japanese base at Davao City, ensuring that planes and patrol ships would scramble to intercept the prison barge. The ship was an 8-knotter, he added, too slow to evade any pursuers.

The reality that the timing was simply not right was difficult for Dyess to swal ow, but he deferred to McCoy’s experience and aborted the plan. “There was always something convincing and compel ing in McCoy’s advice,” Hawkins would note. “It was easy to trust his judgment.” Giving up on the concept of escape, however, would not be easy for Dyess. Or the Marines. Nor would it be any easier for McCoy.

Unable to forecast their immediate future, they hoped that the rare opportunity provided by the
Erie Maru
would not be their last.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 6–SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 1942

Davao, Davao Province, Mindanao

Much to the prisoners’ dismay, the
Erie Maru
had not been built for speed. Leaving idyl ic islets and a gurgling, foamy wake in the receding distance, the ship had sauntered out of the lower Visayas and through the Surigao Strait into the Pacific, sluggishly skirting the famed Mindanao Deep before its agonizingly slow stretch run down the east coast of Mindanao into Davao Gulf.

The vessel had unloaded some cargo at Davao City the previous day, but the ship then steamed back along the palm-fringed coastline for approximately fifty miles before dropping anchor. Increasingly restless, the prisoners began to wonder if they were ever going to disembark the steamy, rusty tub.

Merciful y, at 0800 hours, the ship’s public address system crackled to life. “Now hear this, hear this,”

announced an American voice. “We are at Barrio Lasang on Davao Gulf. We’l disembark and march to Davao Penal Colony twenty-seven kilometers away. Supper wil be served at the end of the gangplank.

When you leave the ship, form a column at the far end of the pier. That is al .”

The announcement came not a moment too soon. Despite the surfeit of food and humane treatment, eleven days had proven the threshold of their endurance. The vessel had become a floating pigsty, a fact not solely attributable to the sow the Japanese had penned on the deck. Motorboats shuttled the prisoners to the pier of the Lasang Lumber Company, where a session of the sun treatment awaited them. “There were trees nearby where we could have waited more comfortably in the shade,” said Hawkins, “but this was not Hozumi’s way of doing

things.”

After several hours, they took their lunch of cold, glutinous rice bal s and pickled cherries and were ordered to their feet. Waiting at the end of a jungle road was the place about which they had heard so much, yet knew so very little. “As we marched, there was a single question in our minds,” said McCoy.

“Wil this be better than Cabanatuan, where starvation, brutality and death had been our ever-present companions?”

The light of civilization dimmed behind them as they marched deeper into the heart of the jungle, a murky labyrinth of stagnant swamps, decaying vegetation, thickets of bamboo and thick cogon. Their arrival was heralded by a concert of chattering monkeys and cawing green parrots. Immense black pil ars of mahogany yawned up through dangling vines to the sky; fat banana leaves and the green, feathery fronds of squat nipa palms formed a canopy that obscured the sun. Night fel quickly, amplifying the cacophony. “Mile after mile the corridor wound on, its wal s unbroken by crossroads or clearings,” said Dyess. “They real y were putting us away this time.”

A brief pelting of raindrops soaked their ragged garments and dampened their spirits. The march, difficult in daylight, became nearly impossible in the pitch black darkness. They groped along, tripping over boulders and stumbling into the potholes that marred the slippery road. Though several rest breaks had been staggered along the route, men began to fal out. Yet surprisingly, there were no “buzzard”

squads waiting to bayonet stragglers. Instead, these men were picked up by trucks and driven the rest of the way. Somewhere between the main gate at Cabanatuan and the pilings of the Lasang pier, their miserable lives had accumulated

value.

Hawkins and Dobervich hobbled as far as they could until cramps and blistered feet forced them to ride. Only 300 prisoners would finish the hike on foot, but Shofner was one of them—the bul headed Marine was not giving the Japanese the satisfaction of picking him up.

The trucks rol ed beneath an arch made of gargantuan mahogany logs—on which the words “Davao Penal Colony, Established 1932” had been carved, visible in the moonlight—and into a barbed wire compound. It was around 0200 when the prisoners drowsily disembarked and joined the mil ing throng assembled before a row of long, low-slung buildings wrapped in gray, weathered clapboard surrounded by barbed

wire.

Locked into a half-crouch with cramps in his legs, Hawkins saw a stumpy, black-bearded Japanese standing next to Lieutenant Hozumi. Judging by his clothing, a uniform similar to those worn by Japanese soldiers sans insignia, Hawkins presumed that he was a civilian interpreter.

“Wel , what are you standing there for?” the man screamed in near-perfect English. “God damn! Crazy Americans! Get inside the buildings.”

He then strode over and slapped the nearest prisoner, Dobervich, for emphasis.

“Who the hel does he think he is, Simon Legree?” said Dobervich, rol ing his sore jaw.

This behavior was too much for Hozumi, likely exasperated from supervising the movement. He pounced upon the interpreter and delivered a powerful blow that sent the little man staggering backward into a whispering apology. Evidently, slapping prisoners was a prerogative exclusive to Hozumi. Hawkins nudged Dobervich.

“C’mon,” he whispered, “let’s get in there before somebody gets cracked again.”

Il uminated by the weak glow from low-wattage, insect-covered electric bulbs, they staggered along a narrow, sunken aisle of wooden planks before crashing onto the floor in a heap of sodden clothing and sore muscles.

Hawkins soon heard Dobervich’s snores, as wel as the faint hum of hordes of mosquitoes descending upon them. Soon these sounds were replaced by hacking coughs and shuffling feet, signals that the building was steadily fil ing with occupants. With dozy eyes, Hawkins saw a large, hungry-looking rat scramble along the rafters and disappear under the eaves of the rusty, corrugated iron roof. He stayed awake just long enough to see Shofner crumple to the floor beside him. And then the faint light radiating from the dim bulbs swinging above them in the cool, whistling night wind flickered out.

Across one brutal, endless year

We with our battle done,

Send you our hearts through time and space

A Christmas gift—our war cleansed souls—

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 7–THURSDAY, DECEMBER 24, 1942

Davao Penal Colony

Though more than six months and 600 miles removed from the battlefield, embattled bastards they remained. “Nobody was glad to see us,” said Sam Grashio.

Not Maj. Kazuo Maeda, the commandant of “Dapecol,” the abbreviated name for the Davao Penal Colony. “He stormed about, declaring that he had asked for prisoners capable of doing hard labor,” said Steve Mel nik. “Instead, he shouted, he had been sent a batch of walking corpses.” Maeda announced that they would receive food to strengthen their weak bodies—but there was, of course, the requisite catch. “Here you wil learn about hard labor,” Maeda thundered through an interpreter. “Every prisoner wil work until he is actual y hospitalized. Punishment for malingerers wil be severe.”