Escape From Davao (53 page)

Stanley Grogan that the personnel commands desired a “delay in the implementation” of the presidential order to release the atrocities’ story.

Some saw through the government’s transparent attempt at channeling the nation’s hatred of its Pacific enemy, as wel as capitalizing on the misery of its captive POWs. New Mexico senator Dennis Chavez told

the AP that the only plausible explanation he had heard “for the release of the account last week was Secretary Morgenthau’s assertion it would mean the sale of more war bonds.”

Dr. V. H. Spensley of the Bataan Relief Organization concurred: “I can’t understand why such information should be brought out now … except to sel bonds. For that purpose it’s absolutely rotten. If the morality of America has sunk so low it required this kind of propaganda to sel bonds, we wonder what the boys are fighting for.” The Port Clinton (Ohio) Bataan Clan sent telegrams to FDR and Stimson echoing Spensley’s sentiments: “It has been a grievous error to wait for a ‘psychological moment’ before unloosening the screws on the lid of censorship. We gave our boys and we had a right to know what was happening to them then, not 21 months later. We are tired of red tape and promises—we want action.”

The U.S. State Department had issued a stern, strongly worded promise to both the American people and the Japanese leadership: “The American Government wil hold personal y and official y responsible al officers of the Japanese Government who have participated [in these crimes], and with the inevitable and inexorable conclusion of the war wil visit upon such Japanese officers the punishment they deserve for their uncivilized and inhuman acts.” In an appending statement, a representative of the Judge Advocate General’s division suggested that those Japanese deemed responsible would be liable to postwar punishment handed down from an American military commission, including the death penalty, thus foreshadowing the probability of war crimes trials in a conquered Japan. But a seething American public wanted more than promises of postwar justice.

On the 10th of February, representatives from the Pacific theater and POW relief clubs convened in Washington, D.C., to decide on a unified course of action. “We intend to make our feelings known—and those are to get the necessary ships, men and material to General MacArthur as soon as possible to get our sons and husbands back,” announced Spensley. But would MacArthur, as wel as Nimitz and other Pacific commanders, be provided with the resources needed to sate America’s thirst for vengeance?

Would the Pacific war be elevated by Al ied war planners to equal status with the European war? Hanson W. Baldwin, the military correspondent of the
New York Times
, whose dispatches from the Pacific had won him the Pulitzer Prize in 1943, predicted that the atrocities revelation would certainly “have an effect on the Pacific war.” However, that effect on the military prosecution of the war would not be immediately nor completely quantifiable.

The president had added during his February 1 press conference that the atrocity revelations had only steeled America’s resolve to punish the perpetrators. “We are moving against them as rapidly as humanly possible,” he had declared. Shortly thereafter, Admiral King announced: “1944, our year of attack, has just begun. Plans have been made and are being made for the most extensive and important naval operations ever undertaken.” News from the forward areas certainly seemed to back up that statement. During the first week of February, a long-anticipated Pacific offensive, one centered around an invasion of the Japanese-held Marshal Islands, commenced. The two-pronged attack, which cal ed for the forces of MacArthur and Nimitz to advance simultaneously in the Central and Southwest Pacific areas, respectively, was a fol ow-up to the Gilbert Islands operation that had resulted in the capture of Tarawa the previous fal .

Baldwin also believed that the revelation would arouse Britons, as wel as “serve rather definite notice to those Americans who have doubted Britain’s official interest in the Pacific war that Britain is in it until the end.” And there were positive signs that progress was being made in terms of the Al ied prosecution of the Pacific war: fresh British operations in Burma; the buildup of forces in India; the “recent tour of the so-cal ed ‘Lethbridge Mission’ of twenty-six Al ied officers, who have been studying Pacific warfare with a view to recommending industrial, technical and tactical adjustments in Britain’s war machine to fit the needs of the Pacific.”

Despite the highly agitated state of the American public, it nevertheless remained unlikely that there would be any comprehensive overhaul of Al ied grand strategy, especial y with the invasion of Europe looming. But when one takes into consideration these developments, as wel as the fact that Admiral King would eventual y succeed in securing a larger percentage of America’s war production output and troops for the Pacific conflict, there is evidence that the release of the atrocities story was the catalyst responsible for altering, however slightly, the course of the war during this critical time period.

Only time would tel , though, whether these developments and operations were only political feints, limited thrusts undertaken to satisfy the demands of irate Americans. In the meantime, however, Americans would have to be satisfied with the Central Pacific offensive and a steady increase in the number of so-cal ed revenge operations. “Angry Airmen Hit Jap Bases: Anger over Jap Atrocities Against Prisoners Is Credited with Increase” was the headline of a story describing one such operation on enemy instal ations on Rabaul, New Britain, New Guinea, and the Marshal Islands that appeared in the January 30 edition of the
Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

The fact that the release of the Dyess story had coincided with the commencement of a Pacific offensive had not gone unnoticed, either. “On the day that Washington revealed details of the sickening Japanese treatment of captured troops in the Philippines and in lost British bastions of the China Sea,”

wrote longtime Washington AP staffer Kirke Simpson in his column, “Wide World War,” “there were strong hints that the double-thrust from the south and east to clear a thousand-mile-wide pathway through Japanese central and South Pacific island outposts is gaining momentum.” Just as the timing of the release with the Fourth War Loan Drive hardly seemed a chance occurrence, it would not be out of the realm of possibility to suggest that the release was also deliberately fol owed by a new offensive in order to provide immediate proof that the retaliatory blow that America was demanding had been in some way delivered.

There were, however, several absolute certainties concerning the stories’ effect on America’s prosecution of the war. For one, there was no chance now that Americans would settle for anything but Japan’s unconditional surrender. “You can answer every sleazy item of the ‘Peace Now’ program with one word,” wrote columnist Walter Winchel : “Bataan.”

U.S. military personnel in the Pacific were fil ed with a new resolve, too. Those close to the fighting fronts, having read and heard of the atrocities committed against their comrades in the Philippines, would not dream of surrendering. “Like the Indian fighters of the West, each planned to save a bul et for himself,” declared
Newsweek
. They were also equal y against the taking of prisoners. As a result of the revelation, the Pacific war—already a conflict fil ed with more base barbarism than perhaps any other modern clash—had taken a darker, more sinister turn. The dehumanization of the enemy by both sides would result in a virulent escalation of unparal eled carnage. With the January 28 release, the Pacific war had become, in the words of one Navy Department observer, “a knockdown, drag-out, no-quarter war.”

Though there would be instances of atrocities committed against the Japanese by American military personnel during the war, an overwhelming majority of American troops would continue to adhere to the rules of engagement of the era. The demarcation line between soldier and surrendered prisoner was observed in the majority of situations, even by the first U.S. troops to enter combat with knowledge of the atrocities. According to one correspondent with the 7th Infantry Division during the invasion of the Marshal Islands, “the troops were enraged. There were ominous predictions as to the fate of any little yel ow men who might survive to fal into our hands at Kwajalein.” The correspondent fol owed a smal group of rare Japanese prisoners, some of whom were wounded, taken on that atol and seemed almost surprised to report that “there was no long march in choking dust, harried by bayonet-wielding guards,”

for these men. Instead, the enemy POWs were given clothes and K rations. “The worst thing that befel them was a series of verbal reflections, delivered in a language they did not understand anyway, upon the legitimacy of their honorable ancestors.” Enemy combatants, on the other hand, remained fair game.

“We see a lot of soldiers who have come back from Europe and the Pacific,” one War Department observer told the
New York Times
. “The boys from Europe speak impersonal y of the enemy. Those from the Pacific do not. They al want to go back and kil more Japs.”

With an understanding of that prevailing mind-set, it is useful to consider the role played by the atrocities story in influencing the way in which the Pacific war was concluded. The revelation in late January 1944 had been only the beginning of the bad news. Throughout the war’s final eighteen months and even beyond, Americans would receive a steady diet of stomach-wrenching stories. There were tales of Al ied POWs being forced to build the Burma–Siam Railroad and toil in Japanese factories, mines, and docks as slave laborers. The U.S. military discovered that downed American airmen were beheaded, chained naked in cages in Japanese zoos, and vivisected by sadists masquerading as doctors. America thirsted for revenge, to settle a blood debt for Pearl Harbor, Bataan and other events.

Even as late as December 1945, three months after the formal cessation of hostilities, a
Fortune
magazine survey reported that a surprising number of Americans, 22.7 percent, lamented that more atomic bombs had not been employed against Japan.

It was no surprise then that FDR’s successor, Harry Truman, understood that the atomic bomb presented a double opportunity for ending the war and exacting some amount of revenge. But the closest glimpse one has into Truman’s mind is his diary, in the pages of which he cal ed the Japanese “savages, ruthless, merciless and fanatic,” so any supposition that Truman al owed personal or national malice to factor into his decision wil remain forever a subject of historical speculation.

Some high-ranking brass and officials, on the other hand, openly shared the sentiments of regular Americans. After hearing news of the successful completion on August 6, 1945, of the mission of the
Enola Gay
—the B-29 Superfortress that dropped the first atomic bomb, Little Boy, on the Japanese city of Hiroshima—Maj. Gen. Leslie Groves, the Army officer who had supervised the top secret Manhattan Project that developed the bomb, was jubilant. Even in this pre–political y correct era, General Marshal cautioned Groves about rejoicing in the large loss of civilian life. “I was not thinking about those casualties,” Groves would say. “I was thinking about al of our boys who were murdered by the Japs on the Bataan Death March!”

Perhaps the most important consequence of the escape and the resulting revelations was the effect on the home front. Columnist Samuel Grafton believed that the revelation would serve as a wake-up cal , “a kind of second Pearl Harbor” for America. It did.

Editorial cartoons lamented the Pacific Theater’s stepchild status. “I guess the European Front is the most important,” sighed a weary, disheveled POW in a cartoon drawn by the
Chicago Tribune
’s Carey Orr entitled “The Heroes of Bataan.” Columns noted that Dyess’s account mentioned that the Battle of Bataan began with only nine planes and urged al Americans, from citizens to lawmakers, to atone for that sin. “Our force in the Philippines was the victim of ‘too little, too late,’ before it was exposed to Japanese barbarity,” editorialized the
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
. “Certainly our people are outraged by the revelation of Japanese atrocity [sic] against war prisoners, but indignation cannot be confined to the Japs alone. We should be angry at ourselves for having betrayed our fighting men into the hands of a ruthless enemy. Indignation aroused by Japanese atrocities should steel our people into an al -out war effort. The home front has an obligation to do justice toward our men now on the war fronts and to make amends for our betrayal of those on Bataan.”

“We’ve got to have the nature of this war dril ed in on us day after day before we sense the ful horror of it, the demands of it, the danger of it. We haven’t won it by a long shot, and we don’t know it,” wrote Palmer Hoyt in an
American
magazine article published one week after the release. “This war has not yet become personal with us at home. It can never be personal without the searing flame of battle and the cry of wounded in our ears. But if we hear the truth day by day, by radio, read it in our newspapers and magazines, hear it from the rostrum and the housetops, we’l silence the babble, sober the feather-minded, and fight like hel .”

From January 28 forward, the nature of the war would be dril ed into the minds of al Americans. A wel -

devised propaganda campaign—one that tapped into America’s hatred and employed racial undertones