The Leper Spy (7 page)

“If you are correct,” MacArthur told him, “then never in history was so large and gallant an army written off so callously!”

MacArthur was a brave son of a bitch, and he faced the reality that he might die upon Corregidor. He tried to send his wife, Jean, and young son to safety on a submarine or with the Quezon family, which was preparing a daring escape through enemy waters to Australia, but Jean would have none of it. “Jean is my first soldier,” the general told an aide. Another asked about his son. “He is a soldier's son,” MacArthur said.

As the days ticked by, President Roosevelt had second thoughts about leaving the new war's only hero to die unprotected. Getting
him out alive would be a huge challenge. He kept his thoughts private.

MacArthur said good-bye to his friend Manuel Quezon, who was boarding a submarine called the
Swordfish
for Australia. The Philippines' first president gave MacArthur his ring. “When they find your body,” he said, “I want them to know that you fought for my country.”

On February 23, MacArthur's orders came from the commander in chief. He was directed to a southern island to assess whether a Bataan defense could be sustained. But then he was to go to Melbourne to take command of all US troops. MacArthur wrestled with his decision for days. At a staff meeting in Malinta Tunnel, he told his comrades he'd made a decision. He was going to refuse the president's orders, give up his position, and join the troops fighting on Bataan as a volunteer, but he acquiesced after his staff protested. He told Gen. Jonathan Wainright to tell his men on Bataan that he had protested many times but had to follow orders. “If I get through to Australia you know I'll come back as soon as I can with as much as I can,” the general said.

“I'll be on Bataan if I'm alive,” Wainright replied.

On March 6, a Filipino gave Harbor Defense Headquarters a message sent by the Japanese. “Our invincible artillery will pound Corregidor into submission, batter it, weaken it,” the message said, “preparatory to a final assault by crack Japanese landing troops. Be wise, surrender now and receive preferential Japanese treatment.” But the skies were quiet on March 7, 8, 9, and 10.

As he prepared to leave the island, MacArthur told Maj. Gen. George Moore to reduce rations on Corregidor to last four months, until June 1942. He cautioned Moore that in case of the ultimate fall of Corregidor, Moore was to make sure that the armament was destroyed to such an extent that it could not be used against an American effort to recapture the Philippines.

On March 11, after dark, General MacArthur, along with his wife, son, and staff, headed to the pier, where four patrol torpedo
boats idled, waiting to whisk them south to Mindanao, where a bomber would fly them to Melbourne.

MacArthur clasped Moore's hand in a fervent embrace and a tear fell down his cheek.

“Don't give up the fort, George,” he said. “I'll be back.”

The general, dressed in civilian clothes, took one last look at the bombed-to-hell island, then replaced his cap and climbed aboard. Under a moonless sky, they motored south. MacArthur was headed toward his future, toward “Supreme Command of the whole Southwest Pacific,” as Roosevelt would put it. But the general had left his men behind.

J
oey lived near a building that had been converted into a Japanese garrison. Her first assignment was to watch the garrison and report all troop movements in and out. Her friends were afraid she was being reckless.

“If I don't run risks, I won't find out anything worthwhile,” she told them. “All the important things are carefully watched.”

She hid behind the shutters in the windows of her house, scratching notes on a piece of paper. She counted the trucks and the soldiers in the beds of the trucks, noting their appearance, whether their uniforms were soiled or clean when they returned. She noted the men who entered the garrison, what time, when they left, and in which direction. When she had filled a notebook, she hid it and carried it to the address she had been given and handed it to a suspicious-looking man. She gave him her underground name: Billy Ferrer. He thanked her and closed the door.

Not long after that, some clueless Japanese officers living near her home invited her to a party at the Engineering Building. The thought of going was revolting, but she realized it could be an opportunity to get information. The Japanese had been busy fortifying the university campus, and she wanted to know what, specifically, they were doing. She asked two friends to accompany her, and
once on campus, she nonchalantly asked for a tour of the buildings. The hosts agreed. Joey was full of endless questions.

“Why does that woman ask so many questions?” one of the officers asked.

Her friends were worried about the suspicion.

“Did you hear that officer,” one said. “Look out.”

Joey assumed a new tact: flighty ignorance. She started asking silly questions to throw them off. After a few minutes, she noticed a large entrance dug into the ground behind the Engineering Building and saw soldiers going in and out.

“What is that?” she asked.

“That is an air-raid shelter,” the officer said.

“May we go inside?” Joey asked.

“There is nothing inside worth looking at,” the man said.

The tour continued until Joey again noticed a similar opening near the corner of Isaac Peral Street and Taft Avenue and again asked what it was.

“That is another air-raid shelter,” the man said.

She watched a man walk out of the hole and recognized him. She had seen the same man entering the hole behind the Engineering Building. These weren't air-raid shelters; it was one long, secret tunnel. That evening she drew the tunnel on a map.

M
ore leaflets fell over Bataan as the men, down to three-eighths rations, wasted away, dropping weight and dropping dead in the sand, from bullets or beriberi. They fell like a blizzard of white-winged butterflies.

“Your U.S. Convoy is due in the Philippines on April 15th but you won't be alive to see it. Ha! Ha!”

The soldiers used the leaflets as toilet paper.

Still, they fought, as Japanese soldiers pushed them into a smaller and smaller area. Four-fifths of them struggled with malaria, and three-quarters had dysentery. A third of the soldiers suffered from beriberi. The boys joked that God had seen fit to create two kinds of mosquitoes for the Philippines: the big ones that bit in the daytime and caused dengue fever and the small ones that bit you at night and gave you malaria.

The rations were down to fifteen ounces per man per day, and half of that was rice. Digging a foxhole, which typically took an hour, now took all day. The two open-air hospitals were stuffed with ten thousand men, and seven hundred more men came down with malaria every day. The grunts were so starved that the decision was made to butcher the Twenty-Sixth Cavalry's horses, the same beasts that had led the charge at the village of Marong, the last
mounted cavalry charge in US military history. The horses were the first real meat the soldiers had eaten in weeks.

One Thursday afternoon in the middle of March, Japanese planes dropped thousands of beer cans on Bataan. They were empty but for a letter.

To His Excellency Major-General Jonathon Wain-wright, Commander-in-Chief of the United States in the Philippines.

We have the honor to address you in accordance with the humanitarian principles of “Bushido,” the code of the Japanese warrior.

It will be recalled that, some time ago, a note advising honorable surrender was sent to the Commanderin-Chief of your fighting forces. To this, no reply, as yet, has been received….

Your Excellency, you have fought to the best of your ability. What dishonor is there in avoiding needless bloodshed? What disgrace is there in following the defenders of Hong Kong, Singapore, and the Netherlands East Indies in the acceptance of honorable defeat? Your Excellency, your duty has been performed. Accept our sincere advice and save the lives of those officers and men under your command. The International Law will be strictly adhered to by the Imperial Japanese Forces and Your Excellency and those under your command will be treated accordingly. The joy and happiness of those whose lives will be saved and the delight and relief of their dear ones and families would be beyond the expression of words. We call upon you to reconsider this proposition with due thought.

If a reply to this advisory note is not received from Your Excellency through a special messenger by noon of
March 22nd, 1942, we shall consider ourselves at liberty to take any action whatsoever.

The letters were signed by General Homma. When Wainwright read it, he said, “The bastards could at least have sent a few full cans of beer.”

As April neared, the soldiers were urged to write their last letters to loved ones. They were also asked if they wished to take out $10,000 life insurance policies. Wainwright ordered radio operations to cease so they could transmit thirty thousand applications to the United States.

On April 3, General Homma sent a request that the commanders surrender. When he got no response, he ordered the most violent strike in the war thus far. The air and land assault on the Second Corps thundered across Bataan for two days as the men retreated, leaving behind the dead and injured, the moaning and cursing men who were missing limbs or had been smeared into trees or were staring into pulsing open holes at their own gut sacks. On April 8, most of the soldiers retreated to Mariveles Bay, dismantled their weapons, and waited for the island's new rulers to appear. Some commanders gave their men the option of surrendering or scampering off into the jungle. Several detachments, finding themselves surrounded by the enemy, disappeared into the thickets, refugees in a strange land.

Among these detachments were Edwin Ramsey and Joe Barker, the latter so emaciated he now wore his West Point ring on his thumb. The two had been cut off from their unit and found themselves surrounded, hiding in the thick jungle. But the concussions had stopped. The woods had fallen silent. Perhaps Bataan had fallen.

“You thinking what I'm thinking?” Ramsey asked.

“I don't see how it could be anything else,” Barker said. “We'll find out soon enough.”

“What'll you do?” Ramsey asked.

“Don't suppose I'd last long in a prison camp,” Barker said. “Surrendering doesn't appeal to me.”

On April 9, Gen. Edward King, a Georgia native whose grandfather fought for the Confederacy, was thinking of Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House as he rode to meet General Homma. Four months of warfare had killed some six thousand Americans and thirty thousand Filipinos. Of the remaining soldiers, only 25 percent were considered combat ready. One general had sent headquarters a handwritten note from the field saying only half his command was even capable of fighting and the rest were so sick or tired they could not launch even a mild attack. King felt he had no other choice. The commander of the US and Philippine troops on Luzon finally gave up. But the orders never reached Ramsey and Barker.

They divided the few supplies they had left and shook hands.

“No matter what happens, we stick together,” Barker said.

“Agreed,” said Ramsey.

The remaining seventy-five thousand soldiers who did not flee into the jungle bent their rifle barrels in the crooks of
dao
trees, disposed of any Japanese money or photographs that might make it appear they'd looted a dead imperial soldier, and sat in the shade, white flags hanging limp from gun stocks, waiting. When the enemy finally arrived, they tried to follow orders. One infantryman watched as a Japanese soldier with two stars over his pocket screamed something at a Filipino fighter and the man saluted. That must've been the wrong move, because the officer brought his knee up and slammed it into the testicles of the Filipino, who fell to the ground writhing. The soldier then emptied his pistol into the prostrate Filipino. The Americans, rooted by their fear, could only watch.

Those who could stand on their own two feet were herded like cows down a hill, then divided into groups of one hundred, stripped of their rings and watches and pens, and forced into two columns, Americans on the right side of the road, Filipinos on the
left. They still didn't understand the guttural shouts of their captors, but they'd learn soon enough.

Along the Bataan Death March, on which these prisoners were photographed, their hands were tied behind their backs. The march was from Bataan to the prison camp at Cabanatuan.
National Archives and Records Administration

“Kurah!”
the Japanese soldiers shouted.
“Speedo!”

Get moving, now.
They had no idea where they were going, how long the march would be, what would happen once they arrived. They just marched, bearded and bedraggled prisoners as far as the eye could see down the rural Old National Road, stone and coral and ankle-deep sand, afraid they'd get their heads pounded if they didn't. They marched up the bayside highway, daydreaming of pot roast and rib-eye steak smothered with gravy, past their own bombed-out jeeps and smoldering tanks, through blinding dust and oppressive heat that soared above ninety degrees. The humidity was so thick it felt like walking through cellophane. They had no food or water, and many pairs of them carried their wounded comrades
suspended in bedsheets hanging from bamboo poles, like pigs at a barbecue. Those who fell on the roadside from exhaustion were bayoneted and left where they fell. The Filipinos and Americans tried to bury their friends, but their new captors soon tired of waiting. The highway was littered with bodies. Word spread of a Japanese cleanup squad taking up the rear, bayoneting those too sick or tired to keep walking. Right foot, left foot, mile after mile, days into nights into days, four then five then six. They sucked sweat off their dirty fingers and filled their canteens in a slough occupied by a dead and bloated caribou. They marched through barrios where Filipinos wept at the sight, offered rice and coconut and whatever they had, and were driven back by the soldiers. They stopped to spend the night at a schoolyard ringed by barbed wire and slept on fly-covered human feces and bloody entrails left by the preceding groups the night before. They stopped sweating and then stopped producing saliva. The sun made blisters on their skin, and the cloud of dust hanging over the road caked their ears and beards. They stole the socks off dead patriots to protect their own feet from more blisters. Some with dysentery soiled themselves, then dealt with the dreaded chafing. Some grew deranged from dehydration and made the mistake of asking their captors for water, receiving instead a rifle butt to the mouth or ribs. Japanese soldiers in trucks would sometimes drive by the columns, randomly lancing soldiers with their twenty-inch bayonets, which were more like swords, or whipping them with lengths of rope. Men died with prayers on their lips.