Authors: Larry Colton
Barbara fought back tears. It wasn’t just that her parents didn’t think having a baby was a good idea, it was the furious “how could you let this happen” tone of the letter.
After twenty-four hours on the ocean floor under steady depth-charge bombardment, the
Tuna
finally escaped, heading east toward deeper, safer waters. Soon the crew began pursuit of a 4,000-ton freighter.
Defying orders again, DeTar deactivated the magnetic exploder on his remaining torpedoes. Bob was no torpedo expert, but it made sense to him. The torpedoes they’d fired earlier hadn’t sunk anything, so something needed to be done.
DeTar moved in for the attack. At 2,000 yards, he fired. Bob heard the explosion; this time they scored a direct hit. After a few minutes, DeTar brought the
Tuna
to the surface to observe the damage. The freighter was splitting in two.
Standing on the deck, Bob watched the freighter going down, but instead of a sense of vindication, he had a sick feeling in his stomach. In the oily, fiery ocean, men, women, children, and dogs struggled to stay afloat;
the freighter had been carrying civilian passengers. He heard screams and saw desperate, outstretched hands disappear under the water. He knew that the freighter was probably carrying supplies to be used against American troops and ships, but later that night he could still see the images of the outstretched hands.
After receiving the letter from her mother, Barbara had confided her situation to Estelle, a woman with whom she worked. Estelle was twenty-nine, and to Barbara she seemed worldly wise. Estelle told her about a clinic, reassuring her that it wasn’t some back-alley place but a clean facility, with a receptionist, nurses in white uniforms, and a doctor who was known as the safest and most experienced abortionist in the city. Patients received printed instructions for follow-up care.
Although she didn’t know anyone who’d had an abortion, or at least anyone who admitted it, Barbara had heard tales of “coat hanger” abortions and hospitals having “abortion wards” filled with women suffering from botched procedures. She knew it was illegal, and risky. She’d made the decision to tell people, including Bob and her parents, that she’d had a miscarriage.
Her whole life Barbara had pretty much done what her parents told her; going against their advice seemed wrong. While her mother had not directly told her to have an abortion—she would never do that—the letter made it seem that having a baby at this point in her life would be a huge mistake.
As badly as Barbara wanted a child, she saw her parents’ point. A few days earlier, she’d seen a newspaper headline declaring
JAPS SINK TWO MORE AMERICAN SUBS
. Manila was about to fall, the Germans were sweeping through Europe, and military leaders were forecasting a long and bloody war. As much as she didn’t like to think about it, there was a good chance that Bob could get killed. She didn’t know any single mothers.
She was also persuaded by her mother’s point about the financial difficulty she would have in raising a child, especially if Bob didn’t return.
She would have to quit her job to raise the child, and that would mean she would have to move back home with her parents in Central Point. She definitely didn’t want to do that.
But what if Bob wanted her to have the baby? She’d written and told him she was pregnant, but she wasn’t sure if he’d even gotten the letter. They’d talked about having children, but it was something they figured would happen later, after the war, after their lives were more settled.
As she wrestled with her options, half a world away Bob’s submarine sailed through the debris and bodies from the sinking Japanese freighter.
S
tripped to the waist, seventeen-year-old Tim wiped the sweat off his freckled shoulders, his lean frame glistening in the tropical sunshine. Along with the rest of his new crewmates on the submarine USS
Trout
in Pearl Harbor, he was helping to load 3,517 rounds of artillery shells on board for a special mission. The fact that most of the ship’s torpedoes had been unloaded signified something was up. Why would a submarine about to head off toward enemy waters be without a full load of torpedoes? They were due to leave tomorrow, January 12, 1942.
Tim had been a submariner for only two days. After only five weeks of basic training in San Diego, his entire company of new recruits had been rushed off to Pearl Harbor just days after December 7.
Tim had arrived in San Diego by train from Dallas, and for him, boot camp seemed easy enough, mostly just marching and learning Navy terminology. He liked getting to sleep in a hammock and living in a big barracks with other recruits. His company had taken a bus to the harbor once and boarded an anchored training ship for an orientation session. But that was the extent of his training before shipping out.
He had no regrets about dropping out of high school at the start of his senior year to enlist. It was time for him to get out on his own, and the guarantee of three square meals a day and a regular paycheck made sense. His decision had nothing to do with what Hitler was doing in Europe—it was all about getting out from under his mom’s feet and earning enough
to help her out. It seemed unlikely that his father was ever going to provide his mom with any financial help.
When he first arrived in Hawaii, he felt like he’d reached the edge of his world. But this wasn’t Hawaii the tropical paradise; there would be no hula girls, grass huts, or splashing in the surf. The Hawaiian Islands were now under martial law. Barbed-wire fences lined the beach at Waikiki. Tim and the men in his company would be restricted to base. After docking, they rode a bus straight to the submarine base at Pearl Harbor, the whole company assigned to the submarine tender USS
Pelius
, a huge floating repair shop for subs.
Two days after being assigned to the
Pelius
, Tim answered a call for volunteers for the USS
Trout
, one of twelve new fleet submarines commissioned in 1940 in the hasty prewar Navy buildup. Its skipper, Lieutenant Commander Frank Fenno, had been asked how fast he could get the ship ready for sea. It was urgently required to deliver much-needed antiaircraft ammunition to Corregidor, the small island fortress in Manila Bay nicknamed “the Rock.” Fenno said he needed only a couple of replacements for his crew and could be ready to go in a couple of days. That’s when Tim volunteered and became a submariner.
Tim figured a submarine would be safer than a surface vessel because it could see the enemy while the enemy couldn’t see it. But more than that, there was something daring and adventurous about being a submariner that appealed to his cocky nature. He was assigned as a mess cook, which meant a lot of peeling potatoes and cleaning dishes. There was really nothing else on board he was qualified to do, except help load tons of artillery shells for the “secret mission” the ship was leaving on in the morning.
The Japanese knew the Philippine Islands were essential to controlling the western Pacific and providing a lifeline to Indonesia and its many resources, as well as to Australia. By the time the
Trout
left Pearl Harbor, Japanese forces had created a hopeless situation for the 100,000 U.S. and Philippine troops on the Bataan Peninsula. Manila had been evacuated
and General MacArthur had moved his headquarters to Corregidor, now the final U.S. foothold against the invading forces.
On Corregidor, the main defensive feature was the man-made rock tunnel near the middle of the tadpole-shaped island. It had become an underground storehouse for the Philippine and U.S. forces, as well as for a large portion of the Philippine treasury’s gold and silver. The Japanese were bombarding the island by air and with artillery fire from Cavite on the mainland, pounding it relentlessly day and night, making life on Corregidor unbearable; even the tunnel trembled. It was the
Trout’s
destination.
The antiaircraft gunners on Corregidor urgently needed more long-range, mechanically fused, high-altitude projectiles, the ammunition Tim had worked up a sweat to get onto the
Trout
. For Tim, it had all happened so fast—boot camp, coming to Pearl Harbor, volunteering for submarine duty—that he didn’t have time to sit around and develop a case of war nerves.
As the
Trout
sailed for Corregidor, every inch of its interior space was crammed with the cargo of ammunition, a priority so great that the spare torpedoes had been removed, leaving only eight torpedoes on board. Commander Fenno was under orders not to engage the enemy unless his own safety was in peril. Having seen the destruction at Pearl Harbor and eager to sink Japanese ships, he was unhappy about the assignment, so he engineered a compromise with his commanding officers. After dropping off his load of artillery shells, he would pick up a load of torpedoes and fuel at Corregidor, then patrol the Formosa Strait and the lower reaches of the East China Sea on the way home.
To Tim, everything was new and exciting. He’d been a submariner for less than three days and he was already headed into combat. When the ship made its first dive beneath the surface shortly after leaving Pearl Harbor, he loved it: there was no claustrophobia, no fear of being under the water. In fact, he liked being submerged better than riding on top. “It’s as smooth as glass,” he said, describing the underwater ride.
It was also a cultural awakening. Other than one trip to Oklahoma,
he’d spent his whole life in Texas. That was his identity, his culture, his accent. Now he was surrounded by guys from New Jersey, Minnesota, California. They all had their different ways of expressing themselves. Not everyone appreciated his cocky manner. Fortunately, there were two other Texans on board, and he immediately gravitated to them, quickly picking up the nickname “Skeeter.” He wasn’t exactly sure why they called him that. Maybe it had to do with him always buzzing around like a pesky mosquito.
The
Trout
reached the entrance to Manila Bay on the afternoon of February 3. But the water around Corregidor was heavily mined, and it would be too risky to proceed to port. With tons of high explosives on board, the sub was a gigantic fireball waiting to happen.
After waiting until nightfall, Captain Fenno, a class of ’25 graduate of the Naval Academy, took off on a zigzag course through the heavily mined harbor. He was following a motorboat guided by a torpedo boat squadron commander, Lieutenant John Bulkeley. As Fenno maneuvered the 307-foot-long, fleet-type submarine in the wake of a fast-moving torpedo boat in the pitch-black night, it was as quiet as a church on board. Halfway to their destination, Tim heard a mine scraping down the port side of the sub.
For forty-five nerve-racking minutes, Tim and the rest of the crew held their breath. Finally, the ship pulled alongside the south dock and darkened its lights. The crew immediately went to work, passing cases of artillery up through the rear hatch and unloading them on the dock. Tim cast a glance toward Cavite across the bay, from where Japanese artillery emplacements could easily blow them to smithereens. In the distance, the sound of artillery fire rumbled through the hills of Bataan. Tim saw explosions; the night sky lit up like someone had waved a giant sparkler through it. Despite his being in great shape, his muscles quickly wearied.
While the ammunition was being unloaded aft, the
Trout
took on ten torpedoes through her forward hatch. Each torpedo weighed 3,000 pounds, and with no crane or hoist to help, the crew, aided by Filipino stevedores, grew even more exhausted. On the port side, the ship took on 27,000 gallons of fuel.
As he continued to work, Tim looked down the dock and spotted dozens of carloads of locals arriving. Because of the constant bombardment that Corregidor had been under, supplies had dwindled and food was scarce; the civilians had come in hopes of a handout. Seeing their desperate and pleading faces, Fenno ordered all possible supplies to be brought to the dock—cigarettes, medical supplies, and food. Tim helped carry up food supplies. When the job was finished, all that was left on board for the rest of the mission was the ingredients for spaghetti—breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Nearing midnight and the end of the unloading of the ammo, Fenno inquired what type of ballast was available to replace the twenty-five tons of shells that had just been removed. Without sufficient ballast, the ship would have trouble diving and be dangerously top-heavy when on the surface. He said he’d take anything—crushed rocks, stone, sandbags. But every sandbag on the island had already been used for protection against the constant bombardment. A new plan was hatched: the ballast would come from the gold bars and silver coins from the Philippine treasury hidden in the tunnel. The amount was staggering for the time: $38 million in U.S. Treasury checks, $31 million in American and Philippine currency, $9 million in silver Philippine pesos, and over six tons of gold worth $9 million. After a call to MacArthur, it was agreed that a portion of the treasure—$20 million—would be transferred to the
Trout
.
Soon tons of gold, securities, and silver were being loaded onto five-ton flatbed Army trucks for the trip to the dock. With the help of locals, Tim and the crew began loading 319 bars of gold, passing them by hand down the hatches into the sub. Each bar weighed forty pounds, a total of almost six and a half tons. It took only minutes to load them. Next came the 630 bags of silver, each bag containing a thousand pesos. Tim wasn’t sure how much each bag weighed, but by now they each felt like a ton. By the time the money was loaded, every available inch of space on the inside deck of the
Trout
was stacked with the bars of gold and the bags of silver.
As Fenno readied the ship for departure, Tim saw one of his crewmates, Doug Graham, furtively untie one of the bags of silver coins, reach
inside, pull out a handful of coins, and stick them in his pocket. Tim had heard Captain Fenno talk about the integrity of delivering their cargo, and stealing ran contrary to Tim’s Baptist upbringing. He debated whether to blow the whistle on Graham but decided to sleep on it for a few days.