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  On January 5, the Kempei Tai finally released prisoners Walt Ditto and Bob May from the Puerto Princesa brig, where they had been held since November 10. They were soon transferred back to Bilibid Prison with five other prisoners. One bright spot in February 1944 was a second delivery of Red Cross packages to the prisoners. Marine Corporal Charles Norris was disgusted to see Captain Bruni deliver cigarettes, canned milk, chocolate bars, and corned beef to Kinoshita and his interpreters as a goodwill gesture.28

  One starving soldier said to Bruni, “What right do you have giving our supplies to the Japs?” Bruni turned the man over to the Japanese, whereupon interpreters Sumita and Oguri beat him with clubs, then forced him to stand at attention all night and work the next day. Norris and many others were left with a bad disposition toward Bruni, and the ill feelings only further splintered the American officer group.

  The prisoners worked steadily on extending the concrete runways, enduring their ongoing hell in the Puerto Princesa camp as illness and mistreatment continued to take their toll. On March 21, two POWs were beaten for stealing coconuts in the back of the compound. The Japanese appeared content with the number of prisoners assigned to their project, as no fresh workers were delivered in 1944. Five sick men were shipped out to Manila on May 10, followed by another thirty POWs on June 16. By that point, the prisoner population in the camp had dropped to 309 souls—the lowest roster ever since Camp 10-A had first opened in August 1942 with 346 Americans.29

  During the summer of 1944, the prisoners became much more actively involved in communicating with the guerrilla resistance network. The three key points of contact became Navy Yeoman Hubert Hough, a Japanese guard, and Triny Mendoza. Assigned to type reports and keep track of prisoner rosters at the camp headquarters, Hough had more liberty than the average American prisoner and came to realize that “Shorty” Sumida—one of the newer guards—held a friendly and sympathetic disposition toward the POWs.

  Hough learned to trust Shorty enough that he became the main contact point between the POW camp and the outside world. He found that Sumida would transmit messages from camp to Triny Mendoza, who in turn relayed the intelligence to the Philippine guerrillas. Japanese officers allowed Triny, still unaware of her husband’s fate, to stay in town with her children. The officers even offered candies to the youngsters. In the months that followed, the Mendozas and their extended Clark family befriended interpreter Sumida, who said he was particularly close to one prisoner he called “my boy Huff.”30

  Hough soon began receiving care packages from Triny Mendoza through Sumida, each parcel carefully placed where the prisoners would find it, wrapped in Mrs. Mendoza’s red bandana. In short order, the thirty-year-old widow’s trademark packages earned her the underground nickname “Red Hankie.” Hough met with her for the first time on May 29, 1944, to exchange information. During the first of many meetings between the two, he gave her a package containing his collection of Chinese money, personal photos, poems, and short stories he had written while held in various POW camps. He asked her to hang on to his possessions and mail them to his home address in Iowa after the war.31

  Sergeant Frank Leroy accompanied Hough on one rendezvous with Red Hankie. In company with Sumida, the two slipped out of camp on the night of July 7 and made their way to the nearby Mendoza plantation, located one-third of a mile from the new airfield. Banana plants, coconut trees, and other tempting vegetation were growing on the plantation as far as Hough could see, and Triny was happy to have some of the fruits and vegetables smuggled back for the benefit of the American prisoners.32

  By the summer of 1944, the “three month” project at Puerto Princesa had stretched into two long years. The American prisoners had made enough progress on the new airfield for the Japanese to begin bringing in small groups of fighter planes and bombers. The POWs had cleared by hand an area 2,400 yards by 225 yards from raw jungle, laid an eight-inch rock base, and poured a runway stretching 1,530 yards by 75 yards wide. They had paved cement turnarounds at the end of the runway and had hacked turnoff lanes for pilots to taxi their aircraft to revetments under the protective cover of the largest trees. Gene Nielsen and others were even used at times to help push airplanes that became stuck in the mud on the unpaved taxi lanes.33

  Captain Bruni, as senior officer, traded out being in charge of the work details every other day with the senior U.S. Navy officer still in camp, Ensign Bob Russell. Bruni did not get along well with Russell, whose closest officer friend was Army doctor Harry Hickman. By mid-1944, Russell and Bruni rarely spoke to each other. Some enlisted men had lost respect for their captain for his loud language, giving of Red Cross gifts to the Japanese guards, and for allowing other Americans to be reported to the guards for their infractions. On July 11, the tensions boiled over into a heated argument involving Hickman, Russell, and Mango. Russell ended up in a fistfight with Mango that left the doctor with a black eye.34

  Yeoman Hough continued to have secret meetings with Red Hankie between June and August 1944, often accompanied by Frank Leroy, Churchill Vaughan, or Tom Paddock. During that time, Hough passed along various documents, including names of Americans known to be held by the Japanese. On July 23, Hough became concerned for Triny Mendoza’s safety, as he found that there was too much talk going on among the officers and in camp, both about her and the guerrilla force. Hough asked Sumida to meet with her that day, telling him to “notify Mrs. Mendoza to hit the road and leave.”35

  Mendoza did not immediately flee her family plantation. By early August, Shorty Sumida had fallen under the suspicion of Sergeant Deguchi, the acting head of the Palawan Kempei Tai, and his military police unit began investigating Sumida to determine whether he had been double-dealing with the Americans. Sumida was able to sneak out of camp that night after his interrogation to the Mendoza home to warn Red Hankie on what to say before she was investigated by Deguchi’s men. The two somehow were convincing enough in their stories to avoid any direct punishment from the Kempei Tai, but they realized their days were numbered.

  By the summer of 1944, the Kempei Tai had moved its main headquarters north and west of the Puerto Princesa prisoner camp to the colony of Irawan. The senior commander of the unit, Lieutenant Tsuneji Shoji, had arrived in February, but his presence was minimal as he soon fell ill and was rarely seen. His subordinate, Deguchi, would also transfer to the Irawan police station in late 1944, leaving Sergeant Susumu Kato as the acting commander of the remaining Kempei Tai force serving at Puerto Princesa.36

  Hough knew that it was simply too dangerous for the trio to continue meeting, so he sent word to Mrs. Mendoza again, urging her to get out of the area, as her life was now in danger. During her last information exchange with Sumida and Paddock on August 15, Triny asked Paddock to offer her good-byes to her friends Hough, Leroy, and Vaughan.37

  She sailed away at dawn four days later. She took her four children, her housekeepers, and her field laborers with her, in a sailboat that docked thirty-one miles from Puerto Princesa. The Japanese officials had granted her only a two-week absence to help harvest rice with her family, but Mendoza moved all of her possessions with her, with no intention of returning after the two weeks. Her goal was to continue moving north until she could contact the island’s guerrilla force. By late August 1944, she was gone from Puerto Princesa, but her involvement in aiding American POWs on Palawan was not finished.

  10

  SUB SURVIVORS AND COASTWATCHERS

  PALAWEÑO GUERRILLAS AND informants like Red Hankie were but a part of the underground movement working to support any Americans who might escape the Puerto Princesa POW camp. Also vital were U.S. submarines operating from Australia and the two small teams of coastwatchers they inserted onto Palawan Island during the summer of 1944.

  On June 8, the first group of six specialists was landed by Commander Marshall H. “Red” Austin’s submarine Redfin, nine days after departing from Fremantle, Australia. The commandos disembarked on the eastern side of Ramos Island, a small patch
of land that hugged the northern coast of mountainous Balabac Island, off the southern tip of Palawan. Master Sergeant Amando Corpus, Sergeant Carlos A. Placido, and their four comrades paddled provisions and equipment ashore in rubber rafts before Redfin disappeared under the inky surface of the Sulu Sea as silently as it had emerged.1

  Corpus and his team were Americans of Filipino ancestry, part of a covert specialty division, the 978th Signal Corps. They were spies, directed by General MacArthur to send regular radio reports to Australia on the movement of Japanese ships, airplanes, troops, and supplies. By mid-July, the coastwatchers had been convinced by Captain Nazario Mayor to move their operation onto southern Palawan for protection by his guerrillas at Brooke’s Point. The Corpus unit set up its radio gear at Macagua, the mountain escape home of American-born Harry Edwards, where they enjoyed the company of three other American soldiers—George Marquez, Red Wigfield, and Puerto Princesa camp escapee Charlie Watkins—who were evading the Japanese.2

  By July 24, Placido was in radio contact with Australia, sending regular weather and Japanese shipping reports. On August 8, the submarine Seawolf landed another team of radio operators on the northern end of Palawan at Pirata Point, near the coastal town of Tinitian. Master Sergeant Eutiquio B. Cabais and five American guerrillas came ashore in rubber boats, set up their radio equipment, and were transmitting effectively by August 27.3

  The successful landing of the radio teams under Corpus, Cabais, and other coastwatcher units was made possible by the deployment of U.S. submarines operating from Australia. Palawan escapees Bruce Elliott, Bill Swift, and Joe Little had already been whisked away to freedom by the submarine Narwhal, and they would not be the last American fugitives to be pulled from Palawan. Such special operations by the “Silent Service” came at high cost in terms of human lives, as evidenced by the number of sailors who perished when two U.S. subs were lost near Palawan during the summer of 1944.

  *

  ED PETRY WAS passing near the two-story Kempei Tai brig on August 2 when one of its prisoners caught his attention. A battered arm waved through the black steel bars of a cell window on the concrete-and-brick structure’s first floor as a weak voice summoned him.

  Petry cautiously approached the window, snatched the folded paper being waved toward him, and slipped away unnoticed. The note listed the names, ranks, home addresses, and serial numbers of four American sailors, all claiming they were being held in the brig for guerrilla activities rather than as POWs. The paper said they were the sole survivors of the submarine USS Robalo, which had sunk quickly after an apparent explosion of its after battery. Petry took the note to camp clerk Hubert Hough, who passed the Robalo intelligence to Triny Mendoza in one of his final meetings with her. Red Hankie in turn had the new coastwatcher group relay the intelligence and names of the American survivors via radio to General MacArthur and Admiral Ralph Christie in Australia.4

  Robalo had been lost on the night of July 2, 1944, after striking a mine while transiting Balabac Passage. The violent explosion flung ten officers and men from its conning tower, but seventy-nine others perished as the boat was swallowed up by the Sulu Sea in less than two minutes. Three of the ten drowned quickly, leaving seven survivors to swim toward distant Comiran Island. Robalo’s skipper, Lieutenant Commander Manning Kimmel, was the son of Admiral Husband Kimmel and a nephew of Admiral Thomas Kinkaid. Four men floundered onto the beach of Comiran before midday on July 3, but they believed their skipper had drowned.5

  Ensign Samuel Tucker and three enlisted men—Floyd Laughlin, Wallace Martin, and Mason Poston—drank rainwater and ate coconuts for two days while building a raft. The four Robalo castaways sailed for Balabac Island and beached their crude vessel around 0900 on July 7. They were captured the next day by a Japanese patrol tipped off to the presence of American sailors by two Filipinos. Sergeant Taichi Deguchi, Sergeant Takeo Kawamura, and four other noncommissioned officers of Palawan’s Kempei Tai went to Balabac by boat to haul the submariners back to Puerto Princesa for interrogation. The Robalo survivors were beaten and tortured for two weeks in the Kempei Tai brig, kept from the view of any other American POWs until one of them managed to slip the note of their plight to Petry.6

  In mid-August, a warrant officer from Luzon arrived with orders for the Palawan military police to ship the Robalo men to Manila for further handling. On August 19, Tucker, Martin, Laughlin, and Poston were herded on board Captain Sakutaro Aida’s transport ship Takao Maru, accompanied by Deguchi and Sergeant Kawamura, the latter going along to draw pay for the Kempei Tai. Takao Maru transported the Robalo men to the Japanese cruiser Kinu on August 22, and Kinu reached Manila on August 25. From that point, nothing is known as to the fate of these four American sailors. They simply disappeared after being examined in Manila. It is possible that the four were executed, and also plausible that they did not survive some future voyage to Japan on board a hellship.7

  After the war was over, American war crimes investigators would follow various leads concerning the fate of the four survivors. “We have heard stories that a public execution was held in Manila in August or September 1944 and that four submarine men were killed,” they documented. “We suspect that these were the Robalo men.”8

  *

  THE WATERS NEAR Palawan proved particularly deadly for U.S. submariners during the summer of 1944.

  On August 13, just five weeks after the loss of the Robalo, Commander John Daniel Crowley’s USS Flier also struck a mine while running surfaced through Balabac Strait, less than fifty miles from where Robalo went down. The Flier was gone in less than a minute, leaving just fourteen officers and men fighting for survival. Only Crowley and seven others managed to swim some twelve miles in eighteen hours to the nearest land, tiny Byan Island.9

  Crowley’s men constructed a crude raft and sailed from island to island until taking shelter in the abandoned former home of Nazario Mayor on Bugsuk Island. Members of the local Bolo Battalion—coastalwatchers armed only with bolos who had organized in Puerto Princesa in 1942—moved the submariners on August 21 to Buliluyan Point on Palawan’s southernmost coast. John Crowley and his men were introduced to Sergeant Pasqual de la Cruz, the commanding officer of the local guerrillas and a member of Captain Mayor’s company. De la Cruz informed Crowley that he had recently made a reconnaissance trip to Balabac Island to verify a rumor that some Americans had been captured there. He related that four American submariners had been captured on the beach of Comiran Island. Interestingly, he gave their identities as being Ensign Tucker, Signalman Third Class Wallace Martin, a third sailor whose identity was unknown, and the commanding officer of the submarine. Crowley quickly realized that another U.S. submarine must have been lost shortly before his Flier.10

  Cruz’s sources on Balabac told him that the Japanese had shot and killed the submarine skipper and the unknown fourth sailor. Since Tucker, Martin, and two other sailors were taken alive to Puerto Princesa, Cruz’s information would indicate that two other Robalo survivors were captured separately. It is thus plausible that Kimmel and one other man, either Lieutenant Commander Charlie Fell or radarman Holley Ivey, were shot at some point. Cruz was unable to ascertain whether the two Americans were murdered while attempting to escape or whether they were shot at a later date.

  Fortunately, fate and the Palawan guerrilla network proved to be kinder to the eight USS Flier survivors. Crowley’s Flier men remained at Cape Buliluyan overnight before beginning their journey up the Palawan coast in a kumpit, a native banca about sixteen feet in length with a large sail atop one mast. They arrived at the southern tip of Ipolote Bay on August 23. Captain Mayor greeted them and invited the Navy men to his home several hundred yards deep in the jungle. They also met Harry Edwards, Mary Mayor, and the Mayor children, who would care for the Flier survivors for the next few days. Mayor moved the men to the Harry and Rosario Edwards home in Macagua, where Sergeant Amando Corpus was operating his coastwatcher radio unit.11

  The Flier men were welcomed by the Corp
us coastwatchers and three other American refugees: Watkins, Marquez, and Wigfield. Radio operator Teodoro “Butch” Rallojay tapped out coded messages to Australia, detailing the loss of the submarine and the names of its survivors. The Australian headquarters staff sent word that they would coordinate a submarine rescue near the beach off Brooke’s Point in Ipolote Bay. Admiral Christie sent an Ultra dispatch to Commander Red Austin’s submarine Redfin on August 23 to proceed immediately to this point off the eastern coast of Palawan.12

  Sergeant Corpus and his coastwatchers took the loss of Flier hard, based on the replies received over the radio from MacArthur’s headquarters. “We were reprimanded for not reporting the presence of mines in that area where the unfortunate sub sank,” Carlos Placido wrote in his diary. “We felt downhearted. The survivors themselves admitted they knew the place might have been mined, but they had chanced it, nonetheless.” Three days later, on August 26, Corpus was so depressed over the Flier loss that he shot himself through the heart with a .45.13

  The submarine detailed to recover the Flier men, Red Austin’s Redfin, was the same boat that had deposited the Corpus coastwatchers on Ramos Island in June 1944. The departure group moved from the mountains on August 30 down to Nazario Mayor’s home near the beach to wait for sunset. The seventeen-person party included the eight Flier survivors, Palawan escapee Watkins, Bataan escapees Wigfield and Marquez, and six civilians who had been taken in by the guerrilla network.14

  Sergeant Placido and his radiomen helped direct Redfin in to rendezvous with two small boats carrying the seventeen evacuees, and shortly before 0100 on August 31, the pickup was made. Commander Austin sent a hoard of arms and supplies back on the boats for the use of the coastwatchers and Captain Mayor’s guerrillas.15