THE EDGE

CHAPTER THREE - We Were Captured

Back to the Philippines

Our trip from Shanghai to the Philippines was uneventful except for coming close to a huge Japanese cruiser. It was an eerie feeling seeing that meatball flag waving in the breeze. We all thought the war talk was Just that and somehow we didn’t regard those little brown men scurrying around the deck as our enemies. Boy, were we wrong!

We went ashore in an attractive seaport town named Olongapo. It was a beautiful tropical setting reminding me of the Dorothy Lamour movies although I didn’t see any sarongs. The jungles of Bataan were nearby and I was to see a lot of them later.

Nearby was a very attractive naval base with a large two-story Marine barracks that many said was one of the best duty stations anywhere.

On our first night we were treated to a gigantic beer bust. We sang war songs and speculated about the chances of going to war with Japan. Many of the guys bragged about how we could take them on and never miss a beer call.

We didn’t have much to do there except take part in work parties. Our band instruments were packed away so we couldn’t practice and thank God there were no parades.

War Declared

One morning it was December 8 (December 7 in Pearl Harbor) — I woke up at the sound of somebody shooting off a .45 He was yelling “War has been declared!” “War has been declared!”

We got confirmation from a car radio someone had tuned to a station in Manila. The announcer talked about the terrible destruction in Pearl Harbor and we knew we would be seeing action damn soon.

Actually, the very next day a flight of Mitsubishi bombers flew over Olongapo and dropped some bombs in the city that killed and wounded several civilians as well as some Marines who were on patrol there.

The band become a rifle platoon in “E” company of the regiment’s Second Battalion. Like Marines anywhere you’re a fighting man first.

We hadn’t unpacked our instruments in any event and we all had regular issue Springfield rifles, of course. Later, the instruments would be blown up by Marine engineers along with everything else we thought might be of use to the Japanese. I really hated to lose my trumpet. It was a Bach Stradivarius trumpet I had bought back in the States even before I joined the Corps. It cost $300 and I could hit a high “C” on it that sounded as sweet as any that Gabriel had ever blown.

We were issued extra ammunition and gas masks. Most of us tossed away the mask and used the canister to hold hand grenades. About two days after the first attack, we went out on the road in full marching order—that means full knapsacks with everything you might need in the field. We didn’t think we’d be coming back to those nice, comfortable sacks in the barracks.

We hadn’t gone very far when we heard this big rumbling sound that kept getting closer and closer. When we saw about 50 Japanese bombers heading our way we ran into a farm yard and hid by some hay stacks. I was pretty sure they couldn’t see us but those airplanes looked awfully big and ugly and I was sure there were some excited bombardiers up there anxious to cream some gyrenes. Fortunately, they didn’t see us because they kept on going.

The brass finally decided to move us down toward the beach but there was still a lot of jungle around us. The idea was to establish lanes of fire so that we could repel the expected invasion. Once we heard some firing and got ready to shoot our first Japanese soldiers. But, it turned out to be a fellow shooting a pig.

We were dug in fairly close to the town of Olongapo and it didn’t take us long to find out that the ice house was still working. We had some big bamboo tubs and there was plenty of beer. We iced down the beer in the tubs and soon had a lot of visitors. Even the colonels and majors came down for a cold one. We were pretty popular guys for awhile. We left Olongapo on Christmas Eve in trucks headed, as it turned out, for the lower part of Bataan and then the fortress island of Corregidor.

Along the road that later would become infamous for the Bataan Death March, we saw hundreds of Army troops digging in and apparently capable of stopping the Japanese who had landed further north at Lingayen Gulf.

Corregidor

Someone said that Corregidor was a heavily fortified island every bit as well defended as the British base at Gibralter. Corregidor is the largest of four small islands in the mouth of Manila Bay and just a couple of miles offshore. Actually, it was a combination of military installations Fort Hood, Fort Drum - which was a sunken battleship—and Fort Mills, the main island fortress.

When we were brought to Corregidor we were impressed by the Army guys who appeared to be well groomed in pressed khakis. We Marines looked like someone who dropped in from the moon.

After looking at all the guns and apparently well trained troops, we wondered how the Japanese could ever conquer this base. It didn’t take very long to find out how!

We bandsmen, now an infantry platoon, a part of the Fourth Marine Regiment, were assigned to a shiny new barracks building called “Middleside” I guess because there was another barracks above us called, naturally: “Topside”.

We were assigned to the second floor which was really barren—no cots, no lockers—just a cold, concrete floor. But it did beat the jungle with the bugs and occasional snake.

The next morning I talked a buddy, Francis Hooker, into going with me to a Post Exchange that supposedly had a good supply of wrist watches. I had lost mine in the jungle and wanted a new one. Why keeping time was important I’ll never know.

Much to our surprise we found an ice cream bar in the Exchange selling honest-to-god ice cream bars. We were munching our bars that really tasted good when someone came running down the aisle yelling, “Air Raid!”

The first wave of Mitsubishi bombers dropped their bombs just outside the Post Exchange breaking up the asphalt like it was chalk. Several of us ventured outside to take a look but hurried back inside When we saw the bombers turning back for another run.

A young Army corporal opened what looked like a trap door in the floor and told all of to get in. “You’ll be safe in here,” I recall his saying.

Well, I took one look and knew it would be a death trap to stay inside. Fortunately, everyone listened to me and spread out on the floor of the exchange. I guess they thought I was an experienced combat guy because of the ragtag uniform I was wearing.

A bomb from the second wave did hit a few minutes later taking out the floor and the “safe hole” we fortunately had vacated. After the explosion we noticed a smell that wasn’t a familiar one. An Army guy decided it was gas so all the soldiers put on their gas masks peering at us through their big goggles like we were nuts. Hooker and I, had tossed away our gas masks so we could carry extra grenades in the canisters and we were really worried for awhile.

Fortunately, a refrigeration pipe had been broken and the smell was Freon or some coolant. Hooker and I had about enough of the “shopping tour” and decided to head back to our barracks. We were still inside the building when we saw this soldier crawling along the ground like he was stalking Indians. “Come on in here,” we shouted. “At least you wont get hit by shrapnel.”

Turned out he was the Post Exchange Officer and when I asked him if I could buy a watch he said, “Be my guest!” I picked out a good one and kept it until a Japanese guard “liberated it” some months later.

Digging In

Soon after that we were deployed along the sea. We dug foxholes and attempted to fortify the area as best we could, which wasn’t much. That’s where we stayed until the Japanese decided to bomb us out.

It was really a grim period. Toward the end we were getting just one meal a day—usually oatmeal, coffee and sometimes some bread. We tried eating iguana—a big lizard that the Filipinos and people in Central America think is a delicacy. We tried to kid ourselves that it tasted like chicken but I could always see its beady little eyes and long, thrashing tail. We also killed all the mules and they tasted a lot better than the iguana but that didn’t last very long.
Once in awhile we would find some chocolate bars that came from the Red Cross. One bar could last some of the guys a week although it never did for me.

We all were undernourished and getting pretty skinny. No one had a “gunny belly” that good beer drinking over the years had produced for many of the old hands.

Face to Face with the Enemy

One day I was on patrol in the jungle with a four-man patrol when I heard a pop then a small explosion. I felt a sharp pain in my calf and saw that the Marine in front of me had been badly hit - apparently by a grenade. I saw this little khaki-clad figure off to one side of the path. Without really thinking I snapped off a shot with my Springfield and hit him right in the chest. He was a Japanese private who apparently had got lost from his outfit and had stumbled on our patrol by accident. He looked awfully young and not the ferocious enemy we had been expecting to encounter. I didn’t think much of my wound - it looked like a small puncture from a grenade fragment. But, later it caused me a lot of misery. Wounds don’t heal very fast in the tropics and this one was no exception. Some weeks after I became a prisoner and just when it was beginning to heal a guard jabbed at it with his bayonet - why I’ll never know and opened it up again. It took several more weeks to heal but by that time I had other things to worry about.

We had air raids every day but no big invasion except for a few landing barges that we creamed pretty good. The Japanese had landed their main force on the opposite side of the island —to the east of us.

Under a White Flag

The landing proved to be successful and the enemy soon was in the center of the fortress area. And, on May 8, 1942 the order came down to destroy everything of value.

Maj. James Bradley, our company commander, called us together and told us we had nothing to be ashamed about. He said we had done our duty like good Marines but not to expect much as prisoners of war. He then led us under a white flag to the center of the island where we were met by some Japanese soldiers.

We soon came to Manila where large crowds of Filipinos had assembled, watching us—some with tears in their eyes— as we straggled by looking like pretty sad sacks I’m sure. Some of the Filipinos threw us some peanuts and other small items of food which we greatly appreciated.

We finally arrived at an ancient Spanish prison and were marched underground to some really moldy dungeons. Two days later they marched us to a railroad station where we were jammed into boxcars that normally carried livestock. You can imagine the smell.

After about a six hour, hotter-than-hell ride with almost no air and, of course, no water, we arrived at a school yard that seemed to be in the middle of nowhere.

Some of us talked about trying to make a break for it because it seemed like the only opportunity we might have. But where were we going to go? We had no idea where we were so we decided we might as well stick around and see what was going to happen. I often thought later that it might have been better to have taken our chances in the boondocks.

Because soon we were making what later was called the second of the infamous “Death Marches”. Already in miserable shape, we walked about 6o miles, helping the sicker guys as best we could, all day. And, the next day.

The Japanese followed us in trucks shooting any body who fell by the way. Most of us were in some kind of trance. My goal was to just keep moving and not think about what was happening.

It seemed like forever, but we finally arrived at what someone said was called Camp 3. It already was full, mostly with Marines and Navy.

Received by George's Mother on September 8, 1943 - another similar card was received on December 16, 1943, two months after George was sent to Japan.

But, actually that trip to Japan wasn’t that bad after we cleared the typhoon. We ate the best chow we’d had since becoming POWs. We even got some kind of meat once in awhile. The Japanese crew left us alone for the most part— no beatings, no work parties.

One day we heard some pinging sounds that seemed to come from the hull. We guessed it might have been sonar from an American submarine bouncing off the ship. I’m glad they didn’t decide to send a torpedo our way if that really was what we were hearing.

We landed someplace in Japan and were loaded immediately into a train that wasn’t quite as bad as the ones in the Philippines. We were headed for Niigata, a good-sized city about 6o miles north of Tokyo on the main island of Honshu. It was to be my home for 22 months and I didn’t know at the time that it would surely put me and my fellow prisoners on the “Edge of Death”

The front of the column stopped and the prisoners immediately put down the knapsacks and blanket rolls they carried. “Cyclone Pete” came down the column yelling at the prisoners and guards alike. Jay started to laugh. “Where,” he said aloud, “would anyone escape to? Swim to China? Were there Communist guerilla bands loose in Japan, eh?” Cyclone coming back down the column bumped him hard in the middle of his back. “Domi da na,” he said, “Toske”. Jay was slow coming to attention and Cyclone brought his fist up in a swift chop across his mouth. Blood slowly trickled down across his chin. Jay knew this would be a losing fight. He wanted to survive Cyclone and Camp 5-B Niigata, Japan.