Death Cruise - - - and Horse Flies

"Speedo, Speedo!" Flashing Jap Swords Drive Americans onto Two "Fresh" Ships

This is the tenth in a series by George Weller of the Chicago Daily News Foreign Service on the "Cruise of Death" taken by some 1600 American prisoners from Manila to Southern Japan. Approximately 300 men survived the ordeal. Their stories were gathered in prison camps, rest camps, on hospital ships and at U.S. bases in the Pacific.

BY GEORGE WELLER
Chicago Daily News Foreign Service

Lieutenant Toshino, the Jap officer in charge of the captives, and the humpbacked Mr. Wada had seen how the American planes spared the prisoners in the tennis court at Olongapo Point and on the train. At Lingayen they put this immunity to use. "We want you to he warned," said Mr. Wada. "You are sitting on a gasoline dump. If we are bombed – well --"

All that day (Christmas day, 1944) they did not believe him. But toward nightfall a detachment of soldiers drove up, unlimbered shovels, and began to dig.

Mr. Wada, for once, had been telling the truth. Drum after drum of gasoline was uncovered from directly under them, loaded and driven away.

Again they lay down in the cold sand, shivering, thinking of Christmas at home, too hungry, thirsty and cold to sleep. Somewhere between midnight and dawn the hunchback again stirred up the sentries, and the sentries ordered the Americans on their feet. They marched along the waterfront to a dock, loaded with Japanese supplies. It was still dark and the guards could not watch all the 1300 men as they moved between the high piles of boxes. Hungry, the prisoners plundered some of the boxes. They found some aerial film, pulled it out and exposed it. The New Mexican artillery officers found some bran and a little dried fish, which they parceled out among those who had shirts to conceal it.

Fearful Haste

The Japanese were suddenly in fearful haste. Lieutenant Toshino would scold Mr. Wada in Japanese, and the hunchback would say, "Get in the barge quickly, quickly! You must hurry, hurry!" Some of the prisoners were literally pushed off the dock and fell in the barge’s bottom. "Speedo, speedo!" With rifle butts and flats of their swords they pushed back the fallen in the barge. "Back, back! Speedo, speedo!"

The sun was just coming up as the prisoners climbed, on sunburned feet, the iron slide ladder of their new vessel, whose propellers were already impatiently turning over.

All this haste was for a good reason. Ordinarily, in wars hitherto, ships have considered themselves in danger from air or submarine attack only by day. If armed, they have felt themselves fairly safe against submarines except at the weak visibility hours of sunrise and sunset, when the low profile of a submarine gives it an advantage.

The American submarines, however, became specialists in night attacks. Thus the Japanese shipping controls were always in a dilemma, whether to face the subs by night or the bombers by day. Where they were within range of both, as at Manila, there was simply no answer but to take advantage of any bad weather and hope for stormy cover, which makes either torpedo or bomb sighting difficult.

Submarine Attack

At Lingayen, however, more than a hundred miles to the north, they were out of range of scourging air attacks by day -- though a long range raid was always possible -- and if the ships sailed by day and lay up by night, they had at least a fighting chance to beat the American submarines, whose deadliest strikes were made by darkness.

What the Japanese now wanted to do was to get out at dawn and widen the aircraft range as much as possible the first day, thus halving their possible antagonists.

Two freighters were leaving, a big one of about 8000 tons marked "No. 1" (Enoura Maru) on its superstructure, and another of about 5500 tons marked "No.2" (Brazil Maru) on its funnel. The first barge full of men were crowded aboard the "No. 2" in the midships hold, which had two levels. But the nervous Captain lost patience, as he watched the rapidly rising sun and the slow crawl of tired prisoners up his ladder. As the 1000-man mark was reached he lifted anchor and the last handfuls of this batch climbed up as the freighter moved down the harbor -- the reminder, some 234 men and a few Japanese wounded and sick were hustled aboard the "No.2".

On the morning of the 27th both vessels set forth along the coast of Northern Luzon. That same evening a submarine fired two torpedoes at "No.2" Both missed, and exploded on the Luzon shore.

The last cargo "No.2" had carried was horses. "The hold where we were," says a prisoner, "was like a big floating barn, full of horse manure and the biggest, hungriest horse flies I ever saw. They immediately set to work biting our backs and legs. Then more flies came and they covered our mouths, ears and eyes. We smelled already and the smell drew them."

Ventilation Shut Off

It was the Japanese practice to save the urine of the horses for some chemical use, bringing it back to Japan in the bilges of the ship. "An overpowering smell like ammonia came up from the bilges." There was a ventilating system installed to keep the horses alive, but with Americans in the hold the Japanese shut it off.

The prisoners placed their wounded on the upper of the two decks in the hold, where the odor was less. The two Army doctors, Lieutenant Colonel William D. North and Lieutenant Colonel Jack Schwartz, were in charge of the sick level. Several fell or rolled off into the hold below in delirium at night. Below them, in the stench of the hold, Commander Bridget, almost indistinguishably hoarse now, was in charge. Lieutenant Colonel Beecher handled negotiations with Toshino and Wada.

The pit on "No.2" was about 60 feet square, with bays 10 feet deep on two sides and bays about four feet deep on the other two sides. The horses had left scattered feed in the crevices of these stalls. The prisoners scraped up the remnants, mixed them with the bran stolen on the dock, and ate the mixture.

The Japanese crew of this vessel seemed willing to give the prisoners rice and water. But Mr. Wada and Lieutenant Toshino and the Formosan guards were afraid to let the prisoners on deck.

Lieutenant Colonel Kenneth "Swede" Olson, a regular Army finance officer, who had been camp commandant at Mindanao, climbed up boldly and faced the hunchback. "These men are hungry and thirsty, Mr. Wada," he said. "They are dying. Sick men won’t be any good to you. Mr. Wada. Dead men won’t help you. Give us a chance. We’re not afraid to work for our lives. All we want is a chance."

Fed Like Animals

Finally Toshino and Wada relented and allowed the crew to send down food, and eventually the prisoners to send six-man chow details on deck to the galley. The prisoners had rice and a quarter canteen cup full of hot soup. But the Japanese would not allow them to keep the rice buckets long enough to pass around. They had to send them up again immediately. So they dumped out the rice on dirty raincoats and on the manure-scattered pit.

‘The lineup was something to see," says one prisoner. "We were barefooted, bearded, dirty and full of diarrhea. We ate from our hats, from pieces of cloth, from our hands. You would see and officer who once commanded a battalion with a handful of rice clutched against his sweaty, naked chest so the flies could not get it, eating it like an animal with his befouled hands."

(Tomorrow: Death Continues its Quiet Pace)