Battle Field Angels (24 page)

On October 1, 1943, Hayes replaced Lea Sartin as Bilibid’s senior medical officer, and imposed greater military discipline in the prison hospital. He also ran a network of spies. His informants included prisoners in work parties that were assigned duties outside the prison.

Shortly after taking command, Hayes determined which sick prisoners would receive rations of medicines or vitamins. “Light sick” patients who were mildly ill had priority for treatment. If a patient received vitamins at the onset of his condition, he stood a better chance of keeping his eyesight or surviving. There simply weren’t enough medical provisions to treat the hundreds of modestly sick and seriously ill patients.

In early 1944, Bilibid prisoners faced the prospect of being shipped to work camps in Japan. They viewed transfer as a death sentence. Rumors of the brutal conditions aboard the Japanese “hell ships” rivaled those that awaited prisoners once they reached Japan. A patient’s only real chance for survival depended on whether the Bilibid medical staff deemed him too sick for transport. But a reprieve might last only a few weeks. Weak, shrunken, and half-blind men were marched out of Bilibid, down to the wharf, and onto unmarked Japanese ships at anchor.

On September 21, 1944, Bilibid prisoners saw two Japanese planes overhead, towing targets for antiaircraft gunnery practice. More planes appeared in the distance, converging on Manila from three directions. They watched as American fighter aircraft rolled out of formation and attacked Nichols Airfield and the target-towing planes. As a Japanese aircraft nosedived into a Manila suburb, Bilibid prisoners cheered at the echoes of bombs destroying the airfield. Air-raid sirens shrieked across Manila for the next two days. Prisoner spirits soared at the prospect of rescue before being shipped to Japan.

Two months later, the American raids stopped. The halt was welcomed by more than one thousand prisoners who were bound for Japan on the next cargo ship. American aircraft had been attacking Japanese shipping. Some of the ships sunk had been unmarked vessels filled with American prisoners of war who had survived more than a year of captivity in Bilibid.

On December 12, when Bilibid’s medical staff lined up for the daily roll call at 1800 hours, the dreaded order was issued: Commander Thomas Hayes and the majority of his two hundred fifty-man medical unit would leave the next day on Japanese transport ships. That night, prisoners ignored the 2000 hours curfew. No one slept, as prisoners cooked the last of their hoarded caches of food.

The next morning, more than sixteen hundred American prisoners, patients, chaplains, and medical staff marched to the waterfront. Guards divided the prisoners into three groups and took them aboard the
Oryoku Maru
, an aging cargo-passenger ship. It bore no markings designating it as a POW transport. Hayes and his medical unit were pushed into Hold Number Two, which had carried horses on a recent voyage. The stench and heat sucked the breath out of the men. At 1700, the
Oryoku Maru
hoisted anchor and joined a four-ship convoy headed for Formosa.

Panic swept the prisoners during their first night at sea. They were crowded so densely that few could sit down. On the verge of dehydration, men gagged at the smell of putrid horse urine. Japanese guards handed out a few canteens of muddy water. The water ration amounted to one canteen per forty-five men, about three teaspoons apiece. Prisoners passed food pails of watery rice and slop buckets around for men to relieve themselves in the dark. Men couldn’t tell one bucket from the other until they ladled their share with a spoon. Soon the deck was covered with human excrement. Men who had been on the verge of death for months snapped. Fights broke out for space to breathe more easily. Paranoia followed. By morning, fifty men had died. The survivors stacked them in a corner like kindling.

As guards handed morning rations of watery rice to the prisoners, American aircraft suddenly appeared in the sky and dove toward the convoy. The prisoner transport shuddered with each hit. The Americans completed their bombing runs, turned around, and strafed each ship lengthwise. They left the convoy almost dead in the water. Hayes and his medical team climbed topside to treat the wounded Japanese crew. When they were finished, Japanese guards beat the prisoners as revenge for the attack that had badly damaged the
Oryoku Maru
. That night, the transport headed toward Subic Bay, which was only about sixty miles northwest of Manila Bay. Just before midnight, it ran aground three hundred yards offshore.

The following day, the Japanese crew abandoned ship, leaving the medical personnel to help injured and sick prisoners out of the holds and into the water. To their horror, American aircraft appeared as the prisoners paddled for shore. The water churned white from the initial strafing runs, killing corpsmen and their patients. When the American pilots saw white-skinned swimmers in the water, they pulled out of their strafing runs. As the exhausted swimmers reached the beach and a nearby seawall, sand erupted with gunfire. Hidden Japanese machine gunners pummeled the shore, pinning the POWs against the seawall to keep them from escaping inland. Hayes and a few corpsmen established a first-aid station. Over the next two hours, doctors and corpsmen used filthy shirts and beach flotsam to slow the blood from fresh wounds.

Finally, when all the prisoners who had not been shot dead in the water reached the beach, the Japanese herded two hundred fifty of them inland to a fenced tennis court. Hayes and his corpsmen set up another aid station in one section of the court. Under a baking sun, the prisoners went without food that day. By sunset, several had died of heatstroke.

On the second day ashore, each man received two tablespoons of rice. Corpsmen made their rounds. On the third day, still locked in the tennis court, more prisoners died. Equipped only with small knives and razor blades, Hayes and other doctors performed emergency operations on the wounded. They performed amputations without anesthesia. Corpsmen encircled them, trying to provide shade.

On December 27, trucks carried the survivors down to the wharf to another Japanese transport that reeked of livestock dung. Guards shoved and kicked those too weak to walk aboard the
Enoura Maru
. Clouds of horse flies greeted the prisoners as they were pushed into dank, steaming cargo holds.

On the first day of 1945, the
Enoura Maru
docked at Takao, Formosa. Despite crowding so severe that few men could sit, another two hundred American POWs were loaded into the cargo holds on January 6. It had been twenty-four days since the Bilibid POWs had left Manila Bay. Corpsmen and doctors fought to maintain a semblance of order and to stem raging infections from old and new wounds. On January 9, 1945, a squadron of American aircraft attacked the
Enoura Maru
and a Japanese destroyer that was tied up alongside.

More than one thousand POWs listened to the battle above them. Machine-gun fire ricocheted off metal and through portholes. Shrapnel spun through the air and sliced into Japanese sailors. Concussive waves from bombs exploding nearby rolled through the hull. Some prisoners cheered each detonation. Others prayed. Trapped in the hold, none knew when or whether the next bomb would spell their end.

It didn’t take long for one of the American fighter planes to hit the
Enoura Maru
. The first bomb exploded just outside the rear cargo hold, tearing through the hull and the bodies below. It obliterated the eye of a man standing to one side of a corpsman and decapitated a prisoner on his other side. The second bomb detonated directly above the forward cargo hold, which held most of Bilibid’s two hundred fifty-man hospital unit. Shrapnel and shredded pieces of the hull struck nearly every man, including commander Thomas Hayes.

After treating thousands of American POWs during the course of more than two years, while living on the edge of starvation, dozens of young corpsmen died in a darkened hole that reeked of manure. They died at the hands of unknowing American aviators they had once prayed would bomb the gates of Bilibid into oblivion.

Three days later, a crane lifted their mangled, bloated bodies out of the hold. Stiff, bloodied arms and legs protruded through the netting at grotesque angles. The corpses were dumped in a heap on a barge. Once the barge reached shore, many of the surviving nine hundred POWs tied ropes to the bodies’ feet and dragged them inland for incineration.

William Silliphant and a few corpsmen remained in what had become a ghost town. Only a few hundred prisoners remained at Bilibid on January 10, 1945. They found a Japanese newspaper in a garbage can reporting that an American invasion force was approaching Manila. The article did not mention the bombing of the
Enoura Maru
the day before. Silliphant and the others waited. With food supplies almost gone, they wondered if they could keep their patients alive until help arrived.

On Sunday, February 4, 1945, a small American plane circled the prison several times; the pilot waved to the prisoners below. Shortly after it left, the Japanese guards lined up in formation near the gate. None looked at the American POWs. A Japanese officer stepped forward and handed a piece of paper to the prisoners. The crumpled paper was dated almost a month earlier. In part, it read:

Without ceremony, the Japanese guards marched out of Bilibid, closing the gate behind them. The American prisoners remained inside, waiting and wondering. At sunset, a corpsman flinched at the sound of a rifle butt slamming against a shuttered window in the prison wall. He heard American voices outside the wall. Another jab, then another, as the wood splintered and fell away. The nose of a machine gun slowly protruded into the prison as American soldiers gathered outside the Bilibid Prison wall, only a few feet from prisoners.

“Hey, you guys, where are the Japs?”

“There are no Japs in here,” answered a prisoner. “Who are you?”

“We’re Yanks. We’ve come to rescue you. I’m Sergeant Anderson. I’m here with American soldiers. They are all around you. You’ve got nothing to worry about.”
⁶¹

A door in the wall came crashing down. Horribly emaciated men, most of them weighing around ninety pounds, started crying. American soldiers walked into the compound as prisoners slumped to the ground in disbelieving relief. Shocked at the grotesque condition of the POWs, the rescuers opened cans of pork and beans for the prisoners. Many took a single spoonful and passed the cans around, making sure that everyone got some. The first Americans to reach Bilibid were the 148th Regiment of the 37th Buckeye Division from Ohio.

The prisoners and medical staff remained in Bilibid for another week, as fires sparked by battle raged in downtown Manila. As one fire approached, the last American prisoners were evacuated. Those who were still ambulatory insisted on walking out of the prison. For William Silliphant and many corpsmen, it was the first time they had been outside Bilibid’s walls in more than three years.

Although advances in medical science during World War II were unprecedented, battlefield medicine often was hampered by a lack of available medical provisions. Dynamic combat situations, inconsistent shipments of supplies, and insufficient coordination made the practice of battlefield medicine reliant on ingenuity and resourcefulness. Sometimes doctors and corpsmen had only the most basic supplies with which to treat the wounded. In many cases, kindness and compassion were all that they could offer. Some medical personnel accepted capture by the enemy so they could treat their fellow soldiers.

More than three hundred members of the Navy’s hospital corps became prisoners during World War II. Many had refused to leave their patients’ sides as the Japanese army closed in. Some were fortunate to survive. Among them was William Silliphant, who later was promoted to rear admiral. He passed away in 1967.

All told, the Navy lost 1,170 corpsmen in World War II. One hundred thirty-two died from disease as well as enemy and friendly fire in jungle camps, prisons, and prisoner transport ships.

Seven corpsmen earned the Medal of Honor for their courage under fire during World War II. Nearly half of all Medals of Honor awarded to Navy personnel were received by corpsmen. In addition, Navy corpsmen earned 1,513 Navy Crosses, Silver Stars, and Bronze Stars for valor.

—Navy commendation excerpt
by James Forrestal, Secretary of the Navy
1944–47