War Stories II (61 page)

Ironically, if the 3rd Fleet had stayed to protect the San Bernardino Strait, Halsey would have had the great battle he'd wished for and Kurita wouldn't have done nearly the damage to Sprague's ships. Or, if he'd have stayed in the area east of Cape Engaño, the Northern Force might well have
come farther south and Halsey would have been able to finish off Ozawa's fleet. Either one of the two actions would have been the great victory he sought. He got neither.

Despite Halsey's decision to chase the decoy Ozawa had set for him, the four-day Battle of Leyte Gulf was a profound American victory. In the largest naval engagement in history, the Japanese lost almost half their naval forces in the Philippine waters—twenty-eight of sixty-four ships—including four aircraft carriers, three battleships, six heavy cruisers, four light cruisers, and eleven destroyers. More than 10,500 Japanese sailors and airmen were also killed.

The Americans lost just six ships, including two escort aircraft carriers, a heavy cruiser, two destroyers, and a destroyer escort.

When it was all over on 27 October, the Imperial Navy was all but finished. It would never again be able to mount a significant challenge to the U.S. fleet.

The sea battles of Leyte Gulf lasted four days. Taking Leyte, the steppingstone to the rest of the Philippines, would take four more months. It had begun with a “feasibility raid” against the Philippines by carrier aircraft in September, followed by the decisive sea battles in the surrounding waters. It continued on the ground as foot soldiers pushed across Leyte. In early November, the Japanese were able to get 13,000 reinforcements and hold the American soldiers at bay.

The ten days of brutal combat on Leyte that took place between 7 and 17 November turned out to be some of the bloodiest of the entire war. Soldiers from the 24th Infantry Division had to use rifles, machine guns, hand grenades, satchel charges, and flame-throwers on entrenched enemy emplacements. At a hill dubbed “Breakneck Ridge,” the troops of the 24th Infantry Division had to fight for every inch of ground. When the fighting there was over, some 2,000 Japanese soldiers were dead but the Americans had progressed only a mile closer to their objective.

A few weeks later, in desperation, more than 1,000 Japanese troops carried out a banzai charge on three captured American airfields. It was a nightmare of automatic weapons, swords, and grenades. Japanese infiltrators destroyed a dozen American aircraft, burned down buildings, and caused heavy American casualties in a forward hospital. However, by early December nearly all of the enemy soldiers had been killed and the island of Leyte was finally secured by U.S. troops.

The invasion of Leyte cost the Japanese more than 70,000 lives. But more than 15,500 Americans were killed or wounded trying to ensure that General Douglas MacArthur kept his promise to return to the Philippines.

M
acArthur had landed at Leyte following the great Battle of Leyte Gulf, and it was as if only he had landed: His photograph and “I have returned” was front-page news around the world. Yet lost in the shadow of that headline was the fact that the 6th Army had also landed. General Walter Krueger commanded the 6th Army, tasked with engaging the 250,000 Japanese on the island of Luzon. But first, General Krueger needed a plan to liberate the POW camps on the Bataan Peninsula, where American prisoners—those who had somehow survived the Bataan Death March and the slave labor details—had been kept since 1942.

Krueger had been told about the existence of Camp Cabanatuan as the 6th Army planned their invasion of the Philippines and subsequent push across Luzon toward Manila. He realized that when they marched through the region there was a likelihood that the Japanese would execute the last 500 surviving American POWs.

When Bataan had surrendered in 1942, the Imperial Army took at least 76,000 prisoners. Most of the U.S. and Filipino troops had fought valiantly. Having already suffered defeat by jungle diseases, abandoned by their leaders, and without supplies, rations, ammunition, or fuel, in the end they had no choice but to surrender.

A Japanese execution order was issued in Manila, which caused many of the atrocities suffered by American and Filipino prisoners in the Bataan Death March and their subsequent imprisonment. The execution order read:

One out of every six of those who were part of the Death March died in those first weeks following the surrender, either from sickness or Japanese brutality or a combination of the two. Atrocities took place before and after they arrived at Camp O'Donnell, a processing center where the Japanese decided what to do with their prisoners—whether to keep them there, move them to other POW camps, or ship them out on “hell ships” to Japan, where they would work them as slave laborers until the end of the war.

Initially, more than 54,000 souls started out on the Death March, and the road to their POW internment was littered with American and Filipino corpses—
one dead body every ten to fi fteen feet along the way
. The prisoners who survived the sixty-five-mile trek from Mariveles to San Fernando suffered from heat and disease. Many survived only to be tortured and killed at Camp O'Donnell, Camp Cabanatuan, and other prison camps.

At Camp O'Donnell, 54,000 POWs were crammed into an area smaller than one square mile. When Corregidor fell a month after Bataan, Imperial Army general Masaharu Homma had an additional 26,000 POWs to deal with after General Jonathan Wainwright surrendered his troops.

Without medical attention, the POWs were left to fend for themselves or die. The prisoners got no bedding and sanitation was almost nonexistent—a single water spigot served thousands. Medical attention, medicine, and supplies were also lacking. The Japanese usually confiscated whatever
supplies were sent through the Red Cross before the packages reached the POWs.

By May 1942, six months after Pearl Harbor, Camp O'Donnell was overwhelmed. On 1 June transfers began from Camp O'Donnell to Cabanatuan, Palawan, or other Japanese POW camps. Camp Palawan was the most notorious place for atrocities. Prisoners there were often beaten unconscious with clubs for trying to steal a tiny amount of rice. Any POWs with compassion who tried to alleviate the pain and suffering of their comrades by bringing them a few morsels of their own meager rations were severely punished, often beaten senseless by the guards.

The prisoners were forced to work in every camp. They were assigned to bury their dead, carry water, collect firewood, and work in the kitchen or on farm detail. The Japanese told them, “No work, no food.” If they could move, they worked, usually at burial detail.

This detail was quite toxic and hazardous. The decaying corpses piled up faster than the weakened prisoners could bury them. As a consequence, a number of diseases spread throughout the POW camps. There was another terrible consequence of the backlog of the burial details: The rotting bodies made the camps reek of death twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Not even the light evening breezes or a drenching tropical rain could take that smell away.

In June 1942, a POW known simply as “Captain Wilson” somehow finagled a bag of cement from a prison guard and built a cross inside Camp O'Donnell, near the mass graves, to commemorate the heroes on Bataan. The words he etched into the cross were:

Wilson later died when he was transferred to a prison “hell ship” headed for Japan.

The Americans who survived the Bataan Death March often said that the ones who died along the way were the lucky ones. The “survivors” were already half-dead by the time they arrived at Camp O'Donnell, and hundreds
more died in the following weeks. Every one of the men who arrived at O'Donnell had at least one serious health problem, and most had two or three: malaria, malnutrition, dysentery, beriberi, or diphtheria.

Over the next three years, the American POWs suffered and died under the iron fist of the Japanese army. More than 8,000 Americans passed through the barbed-wire gates of Camp Cabanatuan. One-third of them died there, most of beriberi, a terrible and painful thiamine deficiency disease that causes swelling in the arms and legs. The victim eventually drowns in his own pus.

Each day that dawned over the jungles of Bataan was agonizingly similar. The Japanese anthem was played over a loudspeaker and the prisoners were forced to stand at attention and salute their captors. The men struggled to survive on 200 grains of worm-infested rice each day, and to cope with the harsh work details assigned to them. Beatings were random and frequent.

The only thing that kept the POWs alive on the Death March and through the additional horrors was hope. They hoped they wouldn't starve, hoped they wouldn't die of disease, and hoped that they'd have the strength to put one foot in front of the other and live one day after the other.

But three horrific years is a long time to hope. And after three years in a Japanese prison camp, even some of their loved ones back home had lost hope. And now the question was: Could these surviving POWs manage to cling to their hope for a little while longer?