As Good As Dead Read online

  Mac and his friends chatted and smiled at the guards as they phonily tried to display pleasure at the news. Few believed their treatment would be any better on Palawan.

  PART TWO

  PALAWAN

  4

  CAMP 10-A

  MEDIC PHIL BRODSKY was impressed with what he saw as his prison ship reached the harbor at Palawan. The island was beautiful. Lush and green, it was surrounded by sparkling turquoise waters, and a light, warm breeze wafted the pleasant aroma of tropical flowers. The surrounding coastline appeared clean and even clear of flies and mosquitoes. This would be an ideal place to vacation if there was not a war going on, he thought.1

  Sanko Maru and its companion merchant ship arrived off Palawan Island around noon on August 1, 1942, and anchored in Puerto Princesa Bay by midafternoon, having completed the 334-mile voyage from Manila. The American prisoners of war spent the next day and a half transferring stores from the ships to barges and to the dock. Upon completion on August 3, the men were ushered from the port along a dirt road toward their new camp adjacent to the bay. They were strangers on a strange island, still wondering what destiny awaited them on Palawan.2

  Sanko Maru had arrived in the harbor of Puerto Princesa, the capital city of Palawan, the fifth largest of the 7,100 islands in the Philippine group. The island stretched two hundred seventy miles north to south, with a mountain range that ran down its center like a spinal cord. It averaged only fifteen miles wide, bordered on the east by the Sulu Sea and by the South China Sea on the west. This time, the ragged POWs were not greeted by cheering Filipinos throwing food as they hiked from the dock area. Most locals had long since disappeared into the mountains to escape the Japanese, leaving behind a town now largely deserted. Palawan had a long history, dating to the original aboriginal tribes such as the Tagbanua and Batak, whose men, who wore nothing more than a loincloth, hunted with bow and arrow and the cerbatana, a blowpipe for poisoned darts. Europeans arrived in the seventeenth century, with the Spanish establishing missions before erecting the first military post in 1861. The jungles of Palawan contained numerous animal species found nowhere else in the Philippines: the Malay civet cat (musang), porcupines (durians), stink badgers, armadillos, and the Palawan bearcat (binturong).3

  Puerto Princesa Bay, situated on the east coast of Palawan, had currents flowing through its deep waters that moved south to north, and its banks were indented by secondary bays into which numerous rivers emptied. The capital city of Puerto Princesa had been established in 1872 in a virgin forest that sheltered the clear blue bay from the eastern winds. From the town, several mountains were visible. Northwest of town, two peaks were prominent: Mount Pulgar at 4,250 feet, and Mount Beaufort, which rose almost as high.4

  By 1890, the population of Puerto Princesa was about fifteen hundred. Spanish rule over the area persisted for some twenty years, but the province of Puerto Princesa was placed under military government after the cession of the Philippines to the United States on December 10, 1898, when the Treaty of Paris was signed. In 1904, an abandoned Spanish royal farm at Iwahig was founded as the Iwahig Prison and Penal Colony. Originally planned as a prison labor camp to help clear forested areas of Palawan for settlement, the Iwahig colony was redesignated in 1907 as a settlement for the rehabilitation of reformed criminals—prisoners that included soldiers and civilians convicted of crimes and deportees charged with offenses against civil or religious authorities. Located roughly fourteen miles south of Puerto Princesa City, Iwahig was developed as a sugar estate or plantation where prison labor was used.5

  The forests of Iwahig—bountiful with birds and wild animals—were composed of camagong, ipil, and other hardwoods prized for shipbuilding and cabinetry. Officers, employees, and ranking inmates supervised the work conducted by those living within the penal colony, which became known as a “prison without bars.” Its citizens enjoyed freedoms similar to those experienced outside the colony, with families allowed to live in groups.

  Beto Pacheco noticed the absence of civilians as he and the other 345 Americans were marched through Puerto Princesa. They would soon learn that most of the women and children had fled for their own safety after the Japanese military landed on Palawan in early May 1942, when Vicente M. Palanca was still serving his second term as the municipal president of Puerto Princesa. Attorney Iñigo Racela Peña was captured and forced to serve as the governor and later congressman of Palawan. Peña walked a fine line between pleasing the occupying Japanese military and trying to protect his compatriots from cruelty and abuse. By May 18, the Imperial Japanese Army had established a garrison at Puerto Princesa, with more than twelve hundred soldiers billeted in houses within the city. Many Palaweños, subjected to air raids and wide-ranging abuses from the Japanese, fled into the hills to build primitive homes near the native Batak tribesmen.6

  The newly arrived POWs were marched into an abandoned Philippine Constabulary barracks at Puerto Princesa, through a pair of soaring stone pillars that marked the entrance. About a dozen coconut trees lined a road that began at the front gate and ran through the courtyard of the constabulary. The U-shaped barracks within had metal roofs and wooden floors, an improvement over the huts at Cabanatuan, though they were in some disarray.

  Captain Ted Pulos and the small group of officers were assigned to one room in the two-story brick-and-stucco building. The enlisted men were divided into four smaller companies that occupied two large rooms in the old barracks, where they were ordered to bed down for the night. Many opted to sleep on the wooden floor, while others improvised bedding. Ensign Bob Russell built a crude bed with two-by-fours, a half-inch wire mesh screen, and a straw mat. He found it only slightly more comfortable than sleeping on the floor.7

  *

  CAPTAIN KISHIMOTO, THE senior officer who had accompanied the prisoners from Manila, soon took the opportunity to address his prisoners. He spoke in Japanese, pausing long enough for his interpreter to relay his message. He announced that he was now their camp commandant. “My commander says if you work hard and do as you’re told, someday you’ll get back home to be with your family,” the interpreter related. Those who did not cooperate would be punished and denied food.8

  Kishimoto was short, about five foot two, with an athletic build and closely cropped hair. He wore an army summer uniform and thick-rimmed glasses. Standing atop a small stepladder so he could look down upon the Americans he was addressing, he said that if they worked hard as ordered, they could have Sundays off and even hold athletic contests during their downtime.9

  The first order of business for the prisoners was to establish latrines and repair their new base, officially designated as Japanese POW Camp 10-A. They were divided into groups of ten, with one guard assigned to each work group. The old constabulary was located near the shores of Puerto Princesa Bay, perched atop a sixty-foot cliff above a narrow coral rock beach below. The southern boundary of the camp that ran along the bluffs was still exposed, but the men were put to work in the first week erecting an eight-foot double row of barbed wire to discourage any attempts at fleeing to the beach. Another party of Americans began building a proper guard tower that could accommodate two guards and a machine gun.

  Bruce Elliott’s party was assigned to pull weeds and clear brush around the immediate camp area. Once the men had piles gathered, they loaded them into wheelbarrows and dumped them over the edge of the cliff to the coral rocks below. Elliott, determined to sabotage any effort of the Japanese he could, allowed his wheelbarrow to “slip” from his hands and plummet over the edge. Japanese guards beat the living hell out of him for the stunt, which only fueled Elliott’s desire to escape.10

  Mac McDole, Smitty, and Roy Henderson were sent under armed guard to scavenge the deserted village for tools and building materials. During their first week on Palawan, the Americans improved their barracks by scrubbing the floors, strengthening the sagging veranda, and rebuilding the wood steps. Marine George Burlage, a twenty-four-year-old Californian who had weighed in
at one hundred ninety pounds when the war started, had already dropped forty pounds in his first months as a POW. He was quick to scour anything of value when he and other prisoners were allowed into abandoned buildings to secure supplies. He grabbed a stack of books, including a geography text, from an empty schoolhouse and soon had to do some quick explaining to convince the guards he would not be using it to help plan an escape route from the island.11

  The men dug their latrine a short distance from the veranda of their barracks for easy access. This time, they laid boards across the trenches to form seats and even added a lower board to serve as a toilet footrest to prevent them from slipping into the waste below on rainy days. The prisoner galley consisted of a large black pot resting on a brick base. They had a tea barrel covered with a thatched roof, which provided some shade for those assigned to cook in the hot galley area.

  Each man was responsible for his own bunk in the constabulary barracks. Some found old doors to create beds. McDole, Smitty, and Henderson opted to simply sleep on the floor, using their folded blankets as mattresses. The Japanese provided ceiling-to-floor mosquito netting, each section large enough to cover ten men. Each night, they would lower the netting in place and stay in it until morning reveille. Despite this protection, it would be only a matter of time before the men were hit by malaria, as McDole’s pilfered quinine pills had long since run out.12

  McDole was among the men assigned to a ten-man plumbing detail to provide water to the camp. They made their way up the nearby mountainside, dragging twenty-foot sections of three-inch piping, which they connected, one by one, from a mountain stream all the way back to camp. McDole hated the Japanese, with one exception: a short, plump guard in his late thirties who appeared older than most of the young soldiers. His name was Kuta Schugota, but Mac and his plumbing detail came to know him as “Smiley.” Schugota allowed the men to take breaks and looked the other way when McDole and his companions ate coconuts, papayas, and bananas they found in the bush.13

  Smiley was unlike any of the other guards. He did not scream at the Americans and did not strike them, but maintained a pleasant disposition and a ready smile as he escorted POWs to and from their work details. At times, he even encouraged McDole to climb the tall trees and knock down coconuts for the men, as long as they ate the fruit far away from camp where his commandant could not see.

  Once they successfully connected the water pipes down to the camp, the men in the plumbing crew placed a large storage barrel over their latrines. With water pressure from the pipes, they could now flush the waste from the latrine pits down toward the ocean and into the camp’s garbage pile located on the beach below. They did this flushing every three days to help control the smell and the flies that bred disease. Personal hygiene became a priority among the men who had the strongest desires to live. Some even improvised toilet paper by using pieces of heavy brown paper from cement sacks.14

  Each workday began the same way. Reveille was at 0600, when Japanese guards entered their building, kicking and screaming at the Americans to get them moving to the parade ground outside. There, the prisoners were ordered to count off in Japanese to make sure that no one had escaped overnight. Then they had to perform several minutes of calisthenics to loosen them up for the workday ahead. Mac McDole was irritated by having to stand at attention each morning while the Japanese flag was raised atop the camp’s flagpole. He was more agitated by the guards who performed Bushido rituals each morning, saluting their emperor and engaging in mock swordplay.

  The Americans soon created nicknames for each of their Japanese guards, both as a source of amusement and as a way to keep track of the more dangerous ones. Chief Signalman Norval Smith and his buddies began calling Captain Kishimoto “Duck” because of his desire to wear rubber boots on the hottest of days. Smith’s name for the tall, heavyset supply sergeant with large gold teeth was “Smiling Jack.”15

  Sergeant Billy Ballou and his friends came up with other names. A thin guard with thick eyeglasses was called “Harry Night School” and “Joe College.” Another guard who always whistled and gave a hitchhiking salute when hailing an American was known to Ballou as “Whistling Charlie.” The more abusive Japanese soldiers who administered the most frequent beatings were known as the “Bull of the Woods” and “Punchy,” the latter name chosen for a guard who had once been a boxer. First Class Private Oguri, a chubby man with glasses, spoke enough English to become Kishimoto’s interpreter for the Americans. He claimed to have been raised by missionaries, so the prisoners referred to him as “John the Baptist.” As time and abuse wore the men down, Oguri would eventually become known as “John the Bastard.”16

  Morning chow on most days was a mess kit of rice, occasionally mixed with camote vines. The guards devoured the local potatoes, leaving only the vines for the Americans to eat. Phil Brodsky and his buddies soon dubbed the thin, watery green soup “whistle weed.” Joe Barta could hardly stomach the vine soup, and he believed even the prisoners’ daily allotment of rice was the poorest quality possible. Barta was almost amused that such a diet was supplemented by a daily vitamin tablet the Japanese provided to keep the prisoners strong enough to work.17

  Only the men too ill to walk were allowed to stay behind as the work details set out each morning. Smitty and Roy Henderson soon realized that being sick enough to remain behind also meant that they would receive nothing to eat. Food became more important than debilitating rashes or high fevers.

  Mac McDole turned into a pack rat, collecting all the boxes that the prisoners’ pills came in. Since he was not a smoker, he traded his weekly ration of ten cigarettes for other items he and his buddies could use for their own survival.

  Captain Ted Pulos, as the senior American officer, was allowed by the Japanese to deal with any of his own men who got out of line in terms of minor offenses. The prisoners were largely responsible for taking care of their own needs. Marine Private First Class John Warren became the camp barber. One prisoner found a pair of clippers within an abandoned home in Puerto Princesa, and soon Warren was using these to cut hair. He managed to shape other crude barbering tools, including a razor crafted from the steel insole of an old Army boot. The two Army doctors, Captain Harry Hickman and First Lieutenant Carl Mango, were responsible for treating the sick or injured. Mango determined each day whether any man was too sick to perform work details.18

  Mango, thirty-five, hailed from Erie, Pennsylvania. Having first attended the University of Pittsburgh on a basketball scholarship, he graduated from the University of West Virginia. In 1936, he received his medical degree from Temple School of Medicine, where he was on the swim team. After three years of internship, Mango opened his medical practice in Erie in mid-1939. As calls for war intensified throughout the United States, he volunteered to join the Army Air Force in the fall of 1941. Lieutenant Carl Mango had arrived in the Philippines in November, and his wife, Mae, gave birth to their daughter, Frances Marie Mango, back Stateside in February 1942—one month before her father was seized in Manila and forced on the Bataan Death March.19

  By August 8, the American prisoners of Camp 10-A completed the remodeling work on their barracks, but there would be no rest. The next day, after morning roll call and calisthenics, the men were loaded onto captured Filipino trucks and driven out of camp. They bounced along nearly two miles of dusty road until they reached the edge of the jungle, overlooking flat land that stretched for some distance down to Canigaran Beach on the Sulu Sea. Captain Kishimoto had the Americans line up before him. Taking a spade in hand, he formally broke ground on what was to be the new “three-month project” for his POWs. In response, the Japanese guards shouted with approval.20

  Kishimoto addressed the men as Private Oguri—“John the Baptist”—interpreted. The prisoners were to clear the area of all trees and underbrush to make a new road. Many who scanned the rough, relatively flat jungle land near the beach were skeptical about what they were being asked to do. They were disappointed to find almost no modern machiner
y to work with. Each work group was given one ax, one pick, a wheelbarrow, and other hand tools. Removing the island trees proved to be grueling work. Each had to be dug up by the roots, some requiring eight or more men digging and pulling to get the tree down.21

  Joe Dupont’s work party had to cut down some of the larger trees. One group of men would chop the roots with axes while another party used a winch attached to a Japanese army truck to help tug it out of the earth. The fibrous coconut trees were the worst to pull down. Each had hundreds of tough, fibrous roots running through the dirt that the men had to chop before employing the motorized winch. Once the trees were felled, Dupont and dozens of other men hoisted the heavy logs up and hauled them to a pile some distance away. Then they had to fill in the holes. Some of the larger mahogany trees could only be brought down with the use of dynamite.22

  Captain Kishimoto often rode along on the truck with the prisoners and remained at the airfield site throughout the day to observe the progress. On occasion, he would even chop down a tree to show his POWs how efficiently they should be working. Those in Francis Galligan’s detail were putting forth a feeble effort one day when they learned a secret about their camp commandant. Galligan and four men were down in a large hole, standing among the spaghetti-like mass of small roots that had attached a large coconut tree to the soil. The men groaned and pretended to struggle for some time, pushing the stump from the hole. Angry at their halfhearted efforts, Kishimoto removed his waist belt and saber and handed them to a guard. He jumped into the hole, put his shoulder to the stump, and pushed it over.23

  He climbed out and barked, “Okay, you guys, cut the horseshit!”

  One of Galligan’s workmates stammered, “You speak English?”

  “Naturally,” snapped Kishimoto. “And quite well. I graduated from Stanford University.”

  Workdays went on with little relief. Joe Dupont felt like he was working in a zoo filled with beautiful parrots in red and blue colors with long tail feathers. His comrades were less amused by the countless monkeys that ran along and chattered at them. Dupont laughed as some men became unnerved by the endless shrieks and resorted to throwing rocks at the monkeys, screaming at them to shut up. Other men suffered painful encounters with large scorpions that left nasty red welts where their venomous tails struck skin.24