Escape From Davao (57 page)

Claro Laureta ended the war with the rank of lieutenant colonel.

Col. Ernest McClish passed away in 1993.

After retiring from the Navy Reserve in 1948 with the rank of commander, two Navy Crosses, a Distinguished Service Cross, the Bronze Star, and the Philippine Medal of Valor, Charles “Chick”

Parsons set about rebuilding his businesses and his adopted homeland of the Philippines. Parsons passed away in 1988 and is buried in the Metro Manila Memorial Park.

Jose Tuvil a would receive the Bronze Star in 1947 for escorting the American POWs to Medina.

Retiring as a captain, Tuvil a became a farmer. He lives in Davao City.

Fely Yap (née Campo), the nurse known as the “Florence Nightingale of Dapecol,” married a doctor and continued fighting the Japanese after the penal colony was closed. Much like the escapees, she owed a debt of gratitude to Casiano de Juan and his guerril as for spiriting her and her husband into the hil s during the war’s latter stages. She lives in Davao City.

With victory came the justice that an outraged America had demanded and that American diplomats, politicians, and military leaders had promised in early 1944. After research conducted by the office of the Supreme Commander of the Al ied Powers—MacArthur’s occupation command would be known as SCAP—the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE) convened in Tokyo in May 1946 to try the leaders and functionaries of the defeated Japanese empire. A panel of judges was selected to include representatives from each of the victorious Al ied powers and a classification system was used to identify, group, and prosecute different varieties of war criminals. Those charged with crimes against peace, mostly politicians, war ministers, and other government officials, were designated Class A defendants, while those facing charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity were assigned B and C designations. Most military officers charged with committing war crimes in the field were classified as C criminals. As Japanese atrocities were widespread, there were trials held in several cities throughout the Far East in addition to Tokyo.

When the tribunal wrapped up proceedings in November 1948, twenty-three Class A war criminals had been convicted. Seven—including former Prime Minister General Hideki Tojo—were put to death and sixteen given life sentences. Elsewhere in Asia, more than 5,700 Class B and C criminals were brought to trial. Of that number, 3,000 were convicted and sentenced; 920 were executed. Most notably, Emperor Hirohito and al other members of the royal family were given immunity from prosecution on the order of MacArthur. Those Japanese military personnel and civilians specifical y linked to atrocities committed against American prisoners of war in the Philippines received a variety of sentences ranging from satisfactory to shocking.

Masanobu Tsuji, the man perhaps responsible for the most excessive displays of brutality on the Death March, was never indicted for war crimes and reportedly passed away in 1968.

Yoshio Tsuneyoshi, the sadistic commandant of Camp O’Donnel , received life imprisonment. Though he was undoubtedly responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans and Filipinos, Tsuneyoshi would reportedly serve only ten years of that sentence.

The commandant of Cabanatuan, Shigeji Mori, was also reportedly sentenced to life at hard labor.

Kazuo Maeda was relieved as commandant of the Davao Penal Colony on March 1, 1944, and served in Korea until the end of the war. He was taken into custody by U.S. forces on February 15, 1946, and tried by the IMTFE. Though there were no executions or widespread atrocities committed during the period of his command, the tribunal did find Maeda guilty of starving the Dapecol prisoners and permitting an environment of mistreatment and general brutality to exist in the camp. The fifty-eight-year-old officer was sentenced to twenty-five years at hard labor.

Yoshimasa Hozumi reportedly returned to Japan in September 1943. Hozumi was interrogated by SCAP personnel in November 1947, but was never charged with any war crimes.

After the war, Kempei Yuki lived with his family in Ibaraki Prefecture on Honshu where he was employed as a clerk in the prefecture Crop Reporting Office of the Forestry Bureau.

Shusuke Wada, the diminuitive and despicable civilian interpreter known as Running Wada, was sentenced to life in prison for his role in the deaths of several hundred American POWs who perished when the hel ship transporting them to Formosa, the
Oryoku Maru
, was sunk by U.S. Navy dive bombers off Subic Bay in December 1944.

It remains unknown if the other civilian interpreter employed by the Japanese at Dapecol, the hated Mr.

Nishamura, Simon Legree, was ever brought to justice.

For Americans, the name of one man, General Masaharu Homma, would become synonymous with the most notorious war crime in U.S. military history, the Bataan Death March. The controversy surrounding that perception, as wel as the circumstances of Homma’s death, continues to this day.

Forced into retirement in 1943, the “Poet General” returned to Japan and lived out the rest of the war in virtual seclusion. After the surrender, he was taken into custody and extradited to the Philippines for the Manila war crimes trials. Unlike the other trials, which were coordinated under the auspices of the IMTFE, the Manila proceedings were coordinated by the U.S. Army, creating controversy and claims that the verdict was al but preordained. “As the Al ied Commander of the Pacific Theater, Douglas MacArthur was responsible for selecting the venue, the defense, the prosecution, the jury, and the rules of evidence in the trial of a man who beaten him on the battlefield,” wrote author Hampton Sides.

Nevertheless, someone had to be held responsible. Though Homma pled not guilty to the charges levied against him, he was doomed by testimony from Death March survivors. According to Sides, Homma was sentenced to death on the “slippery concept of command responsibility.” It was Homma’s duty as commander of the Japanese 14th Army to know what his officers and men were doing. Ignorance was not a believable or acceptable plea. “The death penalty does not mean I’m guilty,” a defiant Homma wrote his children in a final letter, “it means, rather, that the United States had avenged itself to its satisfaction.”

Shortly before 1 a.m. on April 3, 1946, in the town of Los Banos, Homma was executed by firing squad.

Unlike Camp O’Donnel or Cabanatuan, the Davao Penal Colony was not a death camp in the sense that substantial numbers of American prisoners of war perished within its barbed wire boundaries. In fact, only sixteen American POWs are believed to have died in Dapecol. But the effects of one’s incarceration at Dapecol would be revealed by time. Cal it the curse of Dapecol: of the 2,009 estimated total number of POWs held in Dapecol during the period of its existence from October 1942 to June 1944, only 805

would survive the war, a mortality rate almost 25 percent higher than the total average of Al ied POWs thought to have died in Japanese hands. Before the official surrender ceremony on September 2, 1945, nearly 60 percent of Dapecol prisoners were destined to die—most when the hel ships they were traveling on were bombed or sunk by friendly fire, but many in subsequent Japanese prison camps due to their debilitated conditions.

After the war, Dapecol reverted to the control of the Philippine Bureau of Prisons. Today, the rechristened Davao Penal Farm continues to serve as a rehabilitation complex for violent criminal offenders. The notorious swamp that once bordered the camp, however, has long since been drained and the land transformed. Banana trees now stretch as far as the eye can see. Although none of the original structures remains, the camp layout remains virtual y unchanged from its wartime configuration; when a building rotted away or col apsed, a replacement was constructed on nearly the same spot.

Preservation, in al regards, seems both a chal enging and worthy task. Just as the seemingly insignificant wartime date of April 4, 1943, and the escape that took place on that day are only dim memories, like a curio box in a trunk left in the cobwebbed attic of American military history, there is little at the penal farm to indicate the historical significance of the location. The only tangible evidence that American prisoners of war had once been incarcerated there is a smal , weather-beaten bronze memorial plaque affixed to a petrified kapok tree stump anchored near the basebal field.

Tel ing an epic World War II escape story, like attempting to break out from an escape-proof prison camp, requires meticulous planning, patience, dedication, a bit of luck, and, most important, a team effort.

Accordingly, I am indebted to dozens of individuals and organizations without whose assistance this book would not have been possible.

I am grateful to the late Mario Tonel i, because it al started with Motts. If not for him, I would not have known of the Dapecol escape, nor commenced an amazing journey in search of the ful story of that adventure.

In keeping with my firm belief that to truly know an individual means to walk the very same earth, I found myself in places such as Albany, Texas, and Shelbyvil e, Tennessee, and later, fol owing an inevitable progression, more distant locales such as Mariveles, Bataan, and Lungaog, Davao del Norte, Philippines. I felt as though I was treading on common ground with my main characters and indeed I was

—in more ways than I immediately understood. I soon sensed that I was both physical y and spiritual y fol owing in their footsteps, that I was being conducted from one town, one phone cal , one e-mail, one handwritten letter, one clue to the next by some inexplicable, guiding force.

At each stop—be it a street address or an e-mail address in cyberspace—I was greeted by archivists both amateur and professional, storytel ers, sons, daughters, spouses, veterans, friends, and researchers who had dutiful y preserved the diaries, letters, telegrams, yel owed newspaper clippings, photographs, yarns, and anecdotes entrusted to them, in some cases for decades, as if in anticipation of my—or someone’s—

long-awaited arrival. These individuals graciously opened their hard drives, attics, address books, and basements to me, fed me, put me up, and put up with me; and then, in ways both direct and indirect, pointed me forward.

My most cherished stateside stops were Fredericksburg, Virginia; Lake Oswego, Oregon, and Austin, Texas, the hometowns of Jack Hawkins, Paul Marshal , and Robert Spielman, the three surviving escapees I had the privilege of befriending throughout the course of my research. Heroes al , these men welcomed me into their their lives and patiently endured what must have seemed like a never-ending interrogation—several years of interviews, questions, phone cal s, and letters—with nary a complaint.

They gave freely of their time, thoughts, emotions, and support, and for that I am eternal y grateful. It was an honor to tel their story.

I am also beholden to the multitude of other World War II veterans, privates and generals alike, many of whose names do not appear in this narrative and who have since mustered out of this world. Al of these men had retired from military service many decades before I commenced my research; many, too, had long since retired their painful memories of that period. And yet they unhesitatingly reenlisted in my cause, dredging up memories, stories, documents, and photographs, as wel as providing me with insight, suggestions, phone numbers, and addresses. They include Abie Abraham, Malcolm Amos, Charles Ankerbery, Bil Azbel , Tony Bilek, Ramon Buhay, Clyde Childress, John Cowgil , Jack Donahoe, I. B. Donalson, Magdaleno Dueñas, Ben Farrens, Dick Francies, Val Gavito, Richard Gordon, Ray Heimbuch, John Kinney, Lou Kolger, Joe Merritt, Joe Moore, Carl Nordin, Robin Olds, John Olson, Father Bob Phil ips, Louis Read, Everett Reamer, Walt Regehr, Jose Tuvil a, Don Versaw, and Edgar Whitcomb.

The late Bert Bank deserves special commendation for his time, his remarkable powers of recol ection, and also for his consummate generosity.

Shortly before his death, Motts Tonel i told me to cal Mrs. Devonia Grashio. I thank her for picking up the phone and giving me Jack Hawkins’s phone number—a pivotal event—but also trusting me with family keepsakes ranging from photographs to phonograph records. I also appreciated the unfettered access to her husband’s personal papers, scrapbooks, and records, the terrific hospitality I received from the Grashio family during my visit to Spokane, and the prompt replies to my numerous queries. The insight and encouragement I received from Grashio’s son, Sam, a Vietnam veteran who fol owed in his father’s footsteps in more ways than one, were deeply appreciated.

I’l never forget the warm welcome I received from the Shofner family during my trips to Tennessee and the generosity and support I continued to receive throughout the duration of my work on this project. In so many ways, Dr. Stewart Shofner helped me see this project and his father with clarity, as did Michael Shofner. Wes Shofner’s basement yielded a treasure trove of documents, including perhaps the last surviving copy of the 400-page film treatment that Jack Hawkins had prepared for 20th Century–Fox in 1944. It was that document—the only raw, uncensored account of the escape story written so shortly after the event, while the memories were stil vivid and fresh—that enabled me to accurately reconstruct dialogue and re-create many of the dramatic events featured in this book.