Tears in the Darkness (69 page)

11
. Stewart, “Give Us This Day,” 120.

12
. Ibid.

13
. Espy, “Cruise of Death,” 6.

14
. Beecher, “A Survivor's Account,” 72.

15
. Espy, “Cruise of Death,” 8.

16
. Hobbes,
Leviathan,
70.

17
. Beecher, “A Survivor's Account,” 73.

18
. The accounts of drinking blood on the
Oryoku Maru
come from, among others, Beecher, “A Survivor's Account”; O. Wilson, “After Bataan”; Smith, “Memoir”; an interview with Ernie Bale; and Wolf,
Thirst,
250, 340, 378, 402, 406.

19
. Beecher, “A Survivor's Account,” 72.

20
. Ibid., 73–74.

21
. Ibid., 77.

22
. Ibid., 87.

23
. The most detailed account of Father Cummings's work on the
Oryoku Maru
comes from Stewart,
Give Us This Day,
120–71. He is also mentioned in Beecher, “A Survivor's Account.” Roper,
Brothers of Paul,
87–94, pulls together material from a number of sources, including Louis Kolger, whom we interviewed. It was our general impression from scores of interviews that every man who'd met “Father Bill” remembered him.

24
. Stewart,
Give Us This Day,
152.

25
. Ibid., 150.

CHAPTER TWELVE

1
. Interviews with Ben Steele; Gibbs, “Omine”; McClain,
Japan,
507; ATIS,
Interrogation Report No. 0447,
25–26.

2
. We take our Omine-machi numbers from Gibbs, “Omine,” and from interviews with Dan Pinkston Irwin, who supplied valuable data and documents, including a detailed roster of Americans at the camp and a number of mug shots of the prisoners.

3
. Scott, interview, 1999.

4
. Nobuyasu Sugiyama, interview, 2000; Military Commission, “Trial and Appeal of . . . Nobuyasu Sugiyama,” 1, 31–32, 36, 41, 46–47, 49, 52, 69.

5
. Crane, “In the Depths of a Coal Mine.”

6
. Waterford,
Prisoners of the Japanese,
144.

7
. Military Commission, “Trial and Appeal of . . . Nobuyasu Sugiyama,” 1–3; Sugiyama, interview, 2000.

8
. In 1947, Nobuyasu Sugiyama was tried as a Class-C war criminal (crimes against humanity) by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, the Allied war crimes court, meeting in Yokohama. He was charged with violating the laws and customs of war and convicted of seven counts of mistreating prisoners of war. In November 1948, after appeals, he began a sentence of twenty years at hard labor. He served six years and eleven months of that sentence at Sugamo Prison in Tokyo before his sentence was reduced, a common practice for many of those convicted of war crimes.

9
. No one can say how much war news reached the prisoners of war working in the slave labor camps. Likely very little, unless they had hidden radios. The Japanese people knew the war was going badly, but their news was heavily censored. Most men had no idea that the Philippines, and the former places of confinement, had been liberated.

10
. Rhodes,
Making of the Atomic Bomb,
598–600.

11
. The Berlin (Potsdam) Conference, “Project, Protocol of the Proceedings of the Potsdam Conference.”

12
. A number of writers have attempted discover whether Imperial Army Headquarters issued so-called Kill-All orders—directives to exterminate all POWs—in the late spring or early summer of 1945. No such orders were found. However, as United Press correspondent Arnold Brackman points out in
The Other Nuremberg,
40, in the weeks between the emperor's announcement of surrender and the appearance of American forces in the streets of Tokyo, “bonfires glowed day and night” at the War Ministry offices of Ichigaya Hill “as tons of records were burned.” Fragments of orders issued by field commanders in the territories outside Japan, as well as war crimes testimony and diaries and other documents introduced into evidence at the Tokyo war crimes trials, suggest that at least some prison camp commanders, and perhaps some high-ranking officers at headquarters in Tokyo, either acting on their own or perhaps on what they thought were the wishes of superiors, made preparations for a “final disposition” of the prisoner problem, as one order put it (IMTFE, “Prosecution Exhibit 2701”). The International Military Tribunal for the Far East
(
Judgment
, chap. 8, 1001) concluded that across the course of the war there were a “vast” number of such “atrocities” and that the pattern of butchery was so common “in all theaters” of the Pacific war, it was clear that such acts “were either secretly ordered or willfully permitted by the Japanese Government or individual members thereof and by the leaders of the armed forces.”

13
. Rhodes,
Making of the Atomic Bomb,
685.

14
. Courtesy of Ben Steele.

15
. Ship's log, USS
Consolation.

16
. Schwartz, “My Three Months,” 84–85.

17
. Grinker and Spiegel,
Men Under Stress,
184–88, 443–57.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

1
. Lael,
Yamashita Precedent,
56–60; “MacArthur ‘Wanted' List,” 1; “Atrocities?” 5.

2
. The material on Ed Dyess and the release of the death march material that follows is drawn from Dyess,
Dyess Story;
Dyess, “Tells Jap Torture”; Leahy, Memorandum for the President; Dyess's “Statement”; Leavelle, “Tribune's Fight”; Marshall, Memorandum for the President: (Gripsholm); Marshall, Memorandum for the President: Major Dyess's Report; Dyess, Statement of Maj. William E. Dyess; “The Story Behind the Story,” 3, 6.

3
. Letters to FDR.

4
. Trohan, “Call For New Blows,” 1–2.

5
. All of Masaharu Homma's diary entries and poems are from General Homma's Prison Diary; Sugamo Isho Hensankai,
Last Letters of the Century;
Tsunoda,
Once There Was a Dream.
All other material on Homma is from Okada, “The Tragic General”; Imamura,
Memoirs;
Swinson,
Four Samurai;
Tatsumi, “About General Homma”; interview and correspondence with Masahiko Homma, as well as photographs and family documents supplied by Mr. Homma; interviews with Robert Pelz, 1999, as well as trial notes, documents, and correspondence supplied by Pelz.

6
. Tsunoda,
Once There Was a Dream,
52.

7
. “Homma, Kuroda Placed in Prison at Yokohama,” 1.

8
. “Yamashita to Face Trial,” 1.

9
. Material on the life, career, and trial of General Tomoyuki Yamashita is from Kenworthy,
Tiger of Malaya;
Lael,
Yamashita Precedent;
Piccigallo,
Japanese on Trial;
Stratton, “Tiger of Malaya”; Swinson,
Four Samurai.

10
. Kishimoto, “Some Japanese Cultural Traits,” 119.

11
. Drummond, “Britain and the United States,” 1.

12
. Hull quoted in Lael,
Yamashita Precedent,
45; Brook, “Cabinet Secretaries' Notebooks,” December 14, 1942.

13
. Fitch, “Regulations,” 4.

14
. Truman quoted in Lael,
Yamashita Precedent,
67.

15
. “Yamashita Trial Starts,” 2.

16
. Lael,
Yamashita Precedent,
80; United Nations War Crimes Commission,
Law Reports,
vol. 4, 3.

17
. Guy, “In Defense of Yamashita,” 158.

18
. For the particulars of the Yamashita proceedings, see United Nations War Crimes Commission,
Law Reports,
vol. 4, case 21.

19
. Lael,
Yamashita Precedent,
90–91, 138–39; Reel,
Case of General Yamashita,
39, 85–86, 241; United Nations War Crimes Commission,
Law Reports,
vol. 4, 17.

20
. The material on Robert Pelz is from Pelz, correspondence; Pelz, Journal, vol. 4; Pelz, Scrapbook; Robert L. Pelz, interviews; Mary Jane Pelz, interview, 1999; photographs, trial notes, and private memoranda supplied by Mr. Pelz.

21
. Piccigallo,
Japanese on Trial,
67.

22
. Lael,
Yamashita Precedent,
101–102.

23
. Reel,
Case of General Yamashita,
27–28.

24
.
USA v. Homma,
844, 876–78.

25
. “The Last Word.”

26
.
USA v. Homma,
1016–18.

27
. “The Wives.”

28
. Fujiko Homma, “Why Did Homma Masaharu Die?” See also Homma, Prison Diary, January 24, 1946.

29
. Homma, Letters. Additional letters in Sugamo Isho Hensankai,
Last Letters of the Century.

30
.
USA v. Homma,
2439–43.

31
. Trumball, “Lines of Defense,” 10;
USA v. Homma,
2464, 2484.

32
.
USA v. Homma,
2509–11.

33
. Ibid., 2737.

34
. The information on Tsuji and on his activities on Bataan comes from Tsuji,
Underground Escape
and
Japan's Greatest Victory;
Ward,
Killer They Called a God;
Toland,
Rising Sun;
Toland, interview with Nobuhiko Jimbo; Yamamoto, “Information on Lt. Col Tsuji.” In November 2000, attempting to verify some of the information about Tsuji, we received the following from G. L. Moulton, executive secretary, Agency Release Panel, Central Intelligence Agency, Washington, D.C.: “In response to your . . . request for information pertaining to ‘Masanobu Tsuji, former officer in the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II' . . . we are neither confirming nor denying that such documents exist. It has been determined that such information—that is, whether or not any responsive records exist—would be classified for reasons of national security.”

35
.
USA v. Homma,
2478–80, 2548.

36
. Imai, “A Strange Order.”

37
.
In re Yamashita,
327 U.S. 16.

38
. Ibid., 42, 45, 79, 80.

39
. Ibid., 27–29, 41.

40
.
USA v. Homma,
3029–32, 3036–37.

41
. Coox,
Year of the Tiger,
40.

42
.
USA v. Homma,
3072–80.

43
. Ibid., 3166–68, 3199–200.

44
. Ibid., 3210–11.

45
. F. Homma, “Why Did Homma Masaharu Die?”

46
.
USA v. Homma,
3281–82.

47
. F. Homma, “Why Did Homma Masaharu Die?”

48
.
USA v. Homma,
3330–63.

49
. Ibid., 3333.

50
. Ibid., 3334.

51
. Ibid., 3342.

52
. Ibid., 3352–56.

53
. Ibid., 3364–65.

54
.
In re Yamashita,
327 U.S. 759.

55
. “Homma's Wife Makes Appeal”; F. Homma, correspondence to MacArthur; “MacArthur Begins Final Review,” 2; “Mrs. Homma Today.”

56
. MacArthur,
Reminiscences,
296–98.

57
. Sugamo Isho Hensankai,
Last Letters of the Century,
579.

58
. Ibid., 580.

59
. Homma, Letters.

60
. Ibid.

61
. Ibid.

62
. Sugamo Isho Hensankai,
Last Letters of the Century,
578–80.

63
. Ivan Birrer, interview, 2000.

64
. Fonvielle, “Payment.”

65
. MacArthur,
Reminiscences,
296–97.

IMAGINE, AFTER EVERYTHING, THIS

1
. This chapter is drawn from interviews with Ben Steele, Shirley Steele, Bobbie (Mellis) Miller, Rosemarie Steele, Julie (Steele) Jorgenson, Lois Bent, Elizabeth McNamer, Scott Millikan, Michelle Motherway, and Julia Johnson; Ben Steele's medical records; as well as various reports and emergency department medical/nursing records, Deaconess Hospital, Billings, Montana, 1999. Bess Steele died in 1972; the Old Man followed her six years later.

 

 

 

 

 

These citations represent only those sources in the Notes.

Agoncillo, Teodoro A.
The Fateful Years.
2 vols. Quezon City, Philippines: R. P. Garcia, 1965.

Alabado, Corban.
Bataan, Death March, Capas: A Tale of Japanese Cruelty and American Injustice.
San Francisco: Sulu Books, 1995.