Authors: John D. Lukacs
Tags: #History, #General, #Military, #Biological & Chemical Warfare, #United States
While their minds struggled to process the macabre, waking nightmare, Japanese soldiers leaned from trucks to spit on them or clobber them with rifles and bamboo poles. Others mockingly threw up their arms in imitation of the surrender motion. For Dyess, the ultimate insult was seeing hundreds of Fords and Chevrolets idling on the congested road. “It is hard to describe what we felt at seeing these familiar American machines, fil ed with jeering, snarling Japs,” he wrote. “It was a sort of super-sinking feeling.
We had become accustomed to having American iron thrown at us by the Japs, but this was a little too much.”
The demoralized, dehydrated prisoners, further weakened by hunger and disease—each prisoner was estimated to have carried between one and four diseases on the march—predictably began to stumble.
Temperatures soared and discipline al but evaporated. Men slipped from the columns and lunged for the artesian wel s, others for roadside carabao wal ows, the scum-covered puddles of brackish, bacteria-laden water in which floated the carcasses of dead animals and bloated corpses. Few reached either.
Fusil ades of gunfire reverberated, and, with measured proficiency, guards slashed stomachs with a sequence of Z-shaped cuts. After jerking their dripping bayonets from the slashed bowels, the guards wiped the instruments clean of the fresh blood.
As morning melted into afternoon and the fabric of reality unraveled before his eyes, Dyess could not shake the story of the beheaded Air Corps captain—he had known the man personal y. Dyess’s own head whirled in delirium and throbbed with splitting headaches. With each step, the normal y cool, col ected Texan grew dangerously more flammable. He longed to strike out against his captors, but quickly pul ed himself out of the emotional nosedive. “By going berserk now,” he understood, “I would only lose my own life without hope of ever helping to even the score.” Until the situation improved, Dyess could only bal his fists and continue along the East Road, al the while making a vow to live—and fight—another day.
In either direction, as far as Sam Grashio could see, the sad columns of shadows stretched along the East Road and vanished into the coppery twilight. Grashio prayed that one of those shadows was Dyess; they had been separated hours earlier when Dyess was beaten into a ditch by a hysterical Japanese soldier. Now he had only the charismatic officer’s words to sustain him. “Dyess … told me we had to survive if only to someday gain revenge on our torturers. As always when I was around Ed, some of his spirit rubbed off onto me.”
Though there was no logical explanation for the madness Grashio had witnessed, some predictable patterns and concrete constants were revealed. The earliest lesson involved the frequent inspections: the tremulous chorus of whispers that floated through the ranks—“Get rid of your Jap stuff, quick!”—would have to be acted upon immediately. And Grashio’s separation from Dyess revealed the guards’
penchant for committing acts of violence against tal prisoners. Insignias of rank also made inviting targets for torment: officers were forced to bow before Japanese privates. And Americans were often humiliated in front of Filipinos.
Grashio could see that in the eyes of the Japanese, stragglers were viewed not as sick, starving men who needed assistance, but as noncompliants and weaklings. Because of a scarcity of oil (most fuel was usurped by the Imperial Navy for its ships and planes), Japanese soldiers were conditioned to march long distances, and therefore few had sympathy for an enemy they regarded as lazy and decadent.
Since it certainly seemed as though the Japanese had no intention of providing food or water, the POWs would have to fend for themselves. Jack Donohoe of the 21st Pursuit, for instance, found a moldy, weevil-infested sack of horse feed that he and another POW devoured. They would attempt to eat at their own risk. Grashio remembered seeing a case of PET evaporated milk fal off a passing truck.
“Prisoners swarmed over it like ants,” he said. “The Japanese leaped in among them, swinging their fists, kicking and flailing with rifle butts until al the parched and famished wretches had been pounded back into line.”
There were, however, no absolute certainties when it came to the mercurial Japanese. No two guards seemed or acted alike. An incident that might drive one into a rage could simply amuse another. To Grashio, there seemed to be only one plan of action: “Realists learned early … that it was essential to be obedient and submissive…. Any captive who was undisciplined, uncooperative or rebel ious rarely survived to boast about it.”
The POWs themselves were even less predictable. Out of the fiery Philippine blast furnace came the worst by-products of humanity. Before the Japanese segregated the prisoners, they marched together, Yank and Filipino, officer and enlisted man, dogface and bluejacket, pilot and Philippine Scout. When permitted, stronger prisoners bore wounded on their shoulders or on litters. Water and food were shared.
But as the hours and days dragged on, an “every man for himself” attitude gradual y prevailed. The command structure—the cornerstone of military discipline—
crumbled. In some cases, it took days. Others, merely hours. Homogeneous groups fared best; individuals separated from their units and friends struggled to survive. As the mercury rose, the situation worsened. Some officers shirked their leadership responsibilities. Enlisted men, blaming officers for their current predicament, refused to obey orders. Canteens were stolen. Food was hoarded. Tempers flared.
Pickpockets prospered.
At least they could count on the Filipino civilians, most of whom were Catholic and for whom the march seemed a horrifical y real
senakulo
, a passion play depicting the Stations of the Cross, the sufferings endured by Christ before Crucifixion. Civilians hid cans of water in clumps of cogon and flung rice bal s, cookies, and cigarettes into the columns. Children bounded alongside, pressing fruit, sugarcane, and cassava cakes, as wel as bottles of water, into prisoners’ hands. Women shuttled fish, chicken, and rice wrapped in banana leaves and merchants opened their
carinderias
, refusing payment. Others discreetly cal ed to the prisoners—“Hey, Joe”—and flashed their index and middle fingers in the universal “V for Victory” sign.
Often, the aid came with consequences. At Limay, a farmer and his wife were burned at the stake for aiding the POWs. Elsewhere, a pregnant Filipina who had thrown food to the Americans was bayoneted through her womb. Though Homma had advocated a policy of rapprochement with the estimated seventeen mil ion Filipinos, there were some members of the Japanese military who felt that the Filipinos should be punished for their desertion of the Asian cause and their loyalty to the United States. As those sentiments became reality, the Filipinos saw that for them, Japan’s Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere meant anything but prosperity. They had heard stories of Japanese brutality in Manila and now saw their fathers, sons, and brothers bayoneted and left to slow deaths writhing in the Bataan dust. Until the day MacArthur made good on his promise—and they believed firmly that he would—they were determined to share with their al ies the burdens of occupation and captivity in the best spirit of
balikatan,
a Tagalog word meaning “shoulder to shoulder.”
But for men hoping and praying just to survive another minute, or another hour, to make it to the next rest stop, the next town, even the next palm tree, that day seemed hopelessly distant. At midnight, after an exhausting, circuitous march, Grashio’s group was herded back into a rice paddy not far from Cabcaben Field. He col apsed onto the ground and fel asleep. If he was lucky, another day—and more survival lessons—would greet him in the morning.
• • •
As a military plan, the Bataan Death March was conceived in 14th Army operations tents in March at the order of Gen. Masaharu Homma. On paper, the plan to evacuate the prisoners from Bataan to a prison camp in central Luzon appeared humane and logistical y sound. The majority of the prisoners would march up the East Road, but vehicles would convey sick and wounded incapable of making the roughly sixty-five-mile journey on foot. Food was to be distributed and medical aid stations would be set up along the route. At the town of San Fernando, the prisoners would board railcars for a twenty-four mile train ride to Capas, in Tarlac. Homma even requested that his men treat the POWs with a “friendly spirit,”
in loose accordance with the Geneva Convention articles that Japan never official y agreed to observe.
(Japanese delegates to the Geneva conference had signed the document standardizing the treatment of prisoners of war in 1929, but Tokyo never ratified the pact.) The directive was no surprise, considering that at the outbreak of hostilities, the emperor himself had decreed that enemy POWs were to be handled
“with utmost kindness and benevolence.”
Homma’s intentions were most likely sincere. The tal , powerful y built fifty-four-year-old officer was considered one of the most principled strategists in the Imperial Army. His foreign postings included duty as an observer with the British Expeditionary Force during World War I and later as a military attaché in London. The pro-Western officer had suppressed a pamphlet accusing America of exploiting the Philippines while head of the army’s propaganda corps in the 1930s.
Even as the ultranationalists swept to power, Homma never embraced their beliefs, reportedly even criticizing Japanese atrocities in China. Cal ed the “Poet General” because of his habit of composing verse to ease the tension of battle, Homma was a “bril iant, passionate, unpredictable, and slightly unstable” fantasist given to flights of whimsy, who, according to British historian Arthur Swinson, was straitjacketed by “the iron discipline of the Japanese army.” Homma’s weaknesses included egotism and acute affections for drink and women, but his tendency to become immersed in strategy and delegate details to subordinates was perhaps his greatest flaw.
That flaw, combined with one fatal miscalculation, a change in Homma’s chronology of conquest and subsequent breakdowns in communications and discipline, would doom the evacuation operation to complete, calamitous failure. Homma’s command had underestimated the number of prisoners it would become responsible for by nearly half. Though Tokyo’s Domei news agency announced the capture of 60,000 Fil-American troops, the actual number was closer to 70,000; Homma’s staff had expected and made provisions for only 40,000 prisoners. Compounding the problem, the 14th Army had these additional prisoners on its hands three weeks earlier than anticipated—Homma had not expected Bataan to fal until late April. Instead of modifying the plan, Homma characteristical y became engrossed with the details of the planned invasion of Corregidor and the conclusion of the Philippines campaign.
And despite the vaunted Japanese notions of Bushido discipline and obedience, most commanders were unable to restrain their men. Consequently, the official orders and instructions, as prescribed by Emperor Hirohito and General Homma, never filtered down to the junior officers and foot soldiers who actual y carried out the evacuation. These men instead resorted to their own brand of discipline to complete the task, a system of corporal punishment unique to the Japanese military hierarchy in which officers and soldiers could strike subordinates. So it was only natural that when the long-abused Japanese foot soldier final y had a chance to inflict blows on disgraceful POWs, the succession of institutionalized violence would continue.
Certainly, beheading and running over men with tanks had nothing to do with disciplinary failures or administrative incompetence. Instead, virulent ultranationalism and racial hatred helped spiral the situation out of control. No doubt a direct malignant influence was the fanatical Col. Masanobu Tsuji, an iniquitous figure who reportedly dined on the liver of a dead Al ied pilot in Burma and was responsible for myriad massacres and war crimes in Singapore and China. Lurking in the shadowy chaos fol owing the surrender, Tsuji commenced a personal terror campaign, issuing false orders for mass executions and reportedly conducting demonstrations on the disposal of enemy POWs for Japanese troops.
A final rationalization for the Death March holds that many Japanese, intoxicated with the speed and scope of their early conquests, believed that it was impossible to lose the war. The “victory disease” was pandemic. And whether by impulse or design, retribution was becoming the victors’ policy. On April 24, a rancorous editorial appeared in the
Japan Times & Advertiser
: “They cannot be treated as ordinary prisoners of war…. To show them mercy is to prolong the war…. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.
The Japanese Forces are crusaders in a holy war. Hesitation is uncal ed for, and the wrongdoers must be wiped out.”
Sunday, April 12, 1942
East Road, Bataan Province, Philippine Islands
For hours, Ed Dyess had stumbled along in the turbid darkness, mechanical y placing one foot in front of the other, step after step, mile after torturous mile, somehow keeping the grueling pace while many, unable to wil another step, dropped around him. Their groans and screams were layered with the ripping sounds of bayonets piercing flesh, a contrast to the peaceful rustling of palm fronds in the night air.