First Into Nagasaki (30 page)

The fifth day out of Takau, Commander Maurice Joses—the regular Navy doctor in nominal command of the entire party but who had been failing ever since the Subic Bay bombing—called to his side Boatswain Clarence Taylor. Joses had been placed in an upper bay in the hospital zone and Taylor, who had worked with him at Bilibid, got in the next bay to be sort of nearby.

Joses was suffering from extreme diarrhea or dysentery. Even for its own commanding officer, the party could do nothing; the last of the hoarded handful of sulfaguanadine tablets from the Red Cross at San Fernando, Pampanga, had been finished days ago. “I’d like to talk to you a little, Ty,” said Joses. “I don’t think I’ll be able to make it through the night.” Taylor gave him the usual reassuring encouragement. But the doctor was right. When first light came through the hatch, their commander was gone.

Even in this filth, thirst and starvation, however, decency would send up occasional timid shoots. The Shirk brothers, Robert and Jack, had been mining engineers in Manila when the Army crooked its finger and gave them commissions. Jack fell sick first, grew worse, and finally the corpsmen saw that he would not live. They removed him from the sick bay and laid him out on the hatch, where he soon expired. Having stripped his body, they were about to tug it roughly from the dying to the dead side of the hatch, when a corpsman looked up and whispered: “Hey, handle this one with a little extra care. His brother is watching us from that upper bay.” When they had laid Jack Shirk with the others, Bob Shirk climbed painfully out of his bay. He went and stood a little while looking at his brother, his matted head bowed. Perhaps he prayed. At length he shook his head slowly and went back to his own bay, where he too died.

Captain John G. Hudgins, an Army dental officer, had received at Takau four shrapnel wounds in the back and three in the legs, each the size of a silver dollar. His friend the corpsman Pat Hilton struck up an attachment with the Japanese cook, who occasionally gave him scraps of food. Hudgins’ unattended wounds were weeping constantly, causing him to dehydrate rapidly. Hilton would bring him the food scraps which the dentist would trade for water. The pit’s market rate was six tablespoons of water for one ration of rice. In this way Hudgins would build up as much as a quarter canteen cup of water in reserve. Then the corpsman would come around an hour later and find the canteen cup empty. “What became of your water, doc?” The dentist would look contrite. “Pat, I’m sorry, I simply had to drink it.”

Hudgins had a second friend in another dentist, Major Arthur Irons; over and over he repeated to Irons and Hilton, “I firmly believe that when I leave this place I shall go to a better world.” On Christmas afternoon on the Lingayen beach Hudgins and Hilton had agreed that their chances were getting thinner and each pledged to inform the other’s family if one came through. A night came when the dentist passed away. Irons and Hilton stood over Hudgins—clad still in his Philippine army trousers and shirt, barefooted—and Irons said: “This man will be a bond between us.”

When snow fell, the prisoners caught what they could in their unwashed mess kits, waving them back and forth like magic swords under the hatchway to entrap individual snowflakes. So as not to miss any flakes, they sometimes had to pull the dying out of the way. They licked cloth that had been wetted by rain or snow. The half-naked, barefooted men would pretend to have to go on deck to empty a toilet
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On the way back to the hatch they would furtively reach down and scoop a handful of snow from the deck and stuff it into their mouths. Of course, only one man in a hundred could get water this way, because more than six were rarely allowed on deck at a time.

What saved a few lives was a steam winch which stood on the deck near the hatch. The winch had a small petcock which dripped. For an adroit man, it was possible to pretend to be relieving himself over the side, and at the same time to catch three or four droplets, or even as much as a spoonful, in his extended hand. “One day,” says Major Berry, “I got pretty near a canteenful out of that winch. I kept going up the ladder and approaching the sentry with my hands on my stomach, saying ‘
toxan bioki
’, which means ‘very sick’. When he allowed me to go to the side, I would maneuver so that the winch was between us, open my flask and hang it under the steam petcock. Then I would make sick noises until the guard began to act restless. I’d go down again and come back in a half-hour. I worked this ten or twelve times.”

Men who had dysentery were placed on the hatch earlier than others. The weakened corpsmen grew weary of circulating to all the bays with the
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buckets and were forced to centralize matters on the hatch, windy and exposed though it was. The corpsmen who worked all night were perhaps the most unqualifiedly admired of the hardworking medicos. “You not only had to hustle those buckets for the men on the hatch,” says pharmacist Frank Maxwell of Birmingham, “but you also had to stop fights in the bays for the clothing of others who had gone.” Deas Coburn of Charleston, John Istock of Pittsburgh, and Estel Myers of Louisville worked hard at saving lives, as did a husky New Mexican, Oscar Otero of Los Lunas. “The noise and nervous tension at night,” says Myers, “were such that you could never lie down and rest. You tried to nap by day, when some patients could take care of themselves.” The sergeant major, James J. Jordan, at fifty-three as tough as a bantam after thirty-three years in the rough world of the Marine Corps, says, “For the first time in my life, I was beyond knowing or caring what happened.”

The hatch, lying barely eight feet below the wind-swept deck, became known as “the zero ward”. When a man knew that his strength was ebbing, he would say quite openly, “Well, boys, I’ve had enough. I’m going out onto the zero ward tonight.” Almost all who lay there ended in the sea, but Gene Ortega of Albuquerque slept there through all the voyage and is alive today.

Mr. Wada was fairly often seen, but Lieutenant Toshino came to the top of the hatch hardly at all. “I saw Toshino only twice in the whole voyage,” says one prisoner. Once the Americans began calling for him, Mr. Wada came to the edge of the pit. “If you do that, I shall order the guards to shoot into the hold,” he said. From the bays came a rumble: “To hell with him. We’re going to die anyway, aren’t we?”

Mr. Wada’s rules were the most senseless tyranny. The pure sea was running past the bulkheads outside; it needed only a rope and a few bucketfuls of sea water to make the hold at least clean. But Mr. Wada would allow only one bucket a day to be used by the whole dead squad, to wash part of the grime of bodies from their hands. Mess kits and canteen cups were never cleaned.

Once Ted Lewin, the Los Angeles reporter and promoter, approached Joses’ successor as commanding officer, the Marine Lieutenant Colonel Curtis Beecher, as he sat in his bay. “What are you thinking about, colonel?” Lewin asked. “I was remembering,” said the gray-haired Beecher, “a fellow I heard talk at the Explorers’ Club in Chicago after the last war. He described how the Armenians made their march of death with the Turks driving them along. I was just wondering whether it could have been any worse than this.”

For a new infraction of his rules, the theft of sugar, Mr. Wada threatened to cut off all provender. “It doesn’t matter,” said Beecher wearily, “because if you don’t give us some water and food, we’re all going to pass out anyway.” By this time Beecher looked, in the words of an aide, “gaunt, matted, gray and weak.”

As the voyage drew into its second week the prisoners lost all discretion and robbed sugar from the hold at will. In the pit the price of sugar fell, to six spoonfuls for one spoonful of water. The Formosan rice they were not eating was rough and full of hulls; it aggravated bowel action and increased diarrhea, while brown sugar seemed to make the diarrhea chronic.

The violent rages, the bloodsuckings and murders of the Manila–Olongapo trip were no longer possible. The men were too weak. They were broken or at least submissive. For them it was no longer their affair; they belonged to God or fate.

Father Cummings still carried on his evening service. His Protestant colleagues—the redheaded Episcopalian Navy chaplain, Lieutenant Quinn, and the Army chaplain Lieutenant Tiffany—were both gone. Gone too was the spectacled Jesuit missionary, Captain Joseph G. Van der Heiden, whose suede jacket had fallen to someone else. Lieutenant Zerphas, a priest from the 26th Cavalry who had given many last blessings, was now able to help little, and Lieutenant John E. Duffy of Notre Dame was in a condition where he insisted on being brought ham and eggs.

Major F. Langwith Berry, an 86th Cavalry officer, remembers these services thus: “Often at evening the call ‘at ease’ would be given. The hubbub of talking would diminish but still continue. Then we would hear above the noise, ‘It’s the chaplain, boys, it’s the chaplain.’ The clear, penetrating voice of Father Cummings was unmistakable. Immediately complete silence would fall in the blackness of the hold. First he would give a few words of encouragement, and next he would say the Lord’s Prayer. During those few seconds, we thought of home, of our mothers, of gardens, lakes and mountains in America. And then—‘that’s all, boys’—our vespers were over.”

Once, when a man hurled a curse in the middle of the service, a Marine lieutenant felled him with a swipe of his sun helmet. The ex-missionary from San Francisco was, after all, the man who first said, “There are no atheists in foxholes.” His service became an expected part of the day’s routine. Then came an evening when Father Bill was unable to stand up. Forty-three years old, he was weakened by severe dysentery and thirst. He never spoke again, and eventually he lay on the hatch where he had blessed so many others, a body deserted by the spirit. His body was hoisted high, and the Japanese delivered him to the sea.

The only Negro aboard was Sergeant Robert W. Brownlee, a genial, cheerful and diligent soldier who had been much prized as the top mess sergeant of the 26th Cavalry. He had a family of five children awaiting his return to Manila. Having helped many others on the ship, he contracted both dysentery and cerebral malaria and died fourteen days out of Formosa.

An athlete sometimes called West Point’s greatest football center, Lieutenant Colonel Maurice F. “Moe” Daley, wounded in the Takau bombing, passed away from acute dysentery.

A civilian engineer whose wife and children were in the Baguio camp had simple last words: “Take care of them.”

One wounded soldier asked George Curtis, the New Bedford and Manila auto agent, whether he might rest his head in the elder man’s lap. Another gave Curtis a card for his mother. A middle-aged civilian paced around the hatch whispering: “I just can’t take it any more,” then lay down forever. A young soldier was weeping and saying, “If I could only make my life worth four Nips before I go.”

One man kept repeating, “I have such pain in my chest I can’t stand it, I simply can’t.” A companion in the same bay would soothe him with, “Hold out just another two days.” This dialogue went on until the wounded man managed to save a half-canteen of water. Making his complaint with a new note of determination, he held the canteen off at arm’s length and, with all his summoned force, struck himself in the brow. He keeled over, and when his companion felt him the same night, he was already cold. “We could not believe there was any way that a man could commit suicide with a canteen,” said one survivor, “but we saw it done.”

Commander Bridget had been fading rapidly. He had an extreme case of diarrhea, so acute that he sometimes moved in a daze. The last tablets of sulfaguanadine had been given to him days before, but had not eased him. He even ate mouthfuls of straw in the hope of being cured. Once, wandering on the open deck, he must have clashed in the dark with a sentry. He was found at the bottom of one of the forward holds, beaten up but with his clothing still intact. When death came, like many of the prisoners, he probably did not even know that he was going.

Lieutenant Colonel George Hamilton inherited the gray gabardine riding breeches Bridget had worn, washed them up in seawater by especial permission of a guard and the aid of Boatswain Taylor, and drew them on with pride. These famous breeches made Hamilton the best-dressed prisoner after Major Robert V. Nelson, an Army dentist who possessed the warmest wardrobe in the pit. Yet when this prized clothing reached Japan, it was worn by other men, the secondary owners having gone to join the originals.

Frequently an officer would tap a recumbent, shivering man on the shoulder and murmur, “You’d better go over and say goodbye to your friend over there. He’s pretty nearly gone.” And the man’s garments, like those of Christ, would often be parted among his companions before he entered his next world.

As the men scratched brown sugar from the hold, Lieutenant Murray Day, a field artillery officer from New England who had gone to Princeton, told them of his maple sugar business. “When we have a reunion of alumni after the war, we’ll serve my maple sugar,” he said. He never reached Japan.

An Air Corps warrant officer, William Keegan, had gone through bombings and thirst with unbowed head, and been strong enough to help bear the dead ashore at Takau. Suddenly he collapsed of malnutrition and thirst and immediately died.

Lieutenant Arthur Derby, a Harvard graduate from New York City and Virginia, had been suffering amoebic dysentery when he left Bilibid. Often he said, “I’d give $1,000 cash for just two sulfaguanadine pills.” Though unwounded, he drooped away with malnutrition and finally faded out.

A field artillery officer, Lieutenant Dwayne Alder of Salt Lake City, who had become unbalanced after the Takau bombing, recovered his reason but passed away.

Lieutenant Colonel Louis Barnes of Massachusetts, of the Army medical corps, had been able to help his fellow physicians little. “A tough-spirited and charming old man,” a younger officer called him. His 240 lbs. shrank and he died of exhaustion and exposure.

The Navy Senior Lieutenant Douglas, nephew of the famous tree ring historian of the University of Arizona, showed himself particularly unselfish, giving his strength to wash the befouled wounded and cheer them up. He’d say, “God is looking after us—we’ll make Japan safely, I know.” Some of his patients did, but not Douglas.