Vanished (19 page)

Throughout the spring and summer, the Criminal Section had been arresting dozens of new prisoners, including Palauans who stole bread or
failed to avert their eyes, Indian Muslims working on the islands as indentured servants, and the Jesuit missionaries who were suspected of having sympathy for the United States. But as the conditions of the kempei camp devolved, the Criminal Section began making more arrests than ever—patrolling the islands to provoke confrontations and hauling in multiple prisoners each day. “
There is no kempei-tai in the whole world
,” Miyazaki bragged, “that makes as many arrests as we do.”

—

T
HE BRUTALITY OF
Japanese prison camps in World War II is legendary. Like the Nazi machinery of death, it was so dehumanizing that it can be difficult to comprehend. Captured troops were routinely starved, bludgeoned, mutilated, decapitated, and used for bayoneting practice. A US prisoner in the Pacific was
ten times as likely to be killed
as his counterpart in Europe.

But what makes the Japanese prison camps of World War II even more shocking is the ruthless speed with which they arose. Just a few years earlier, the camps had been the opposite: a model of civility and respect for captured soldiers. In the years leading up to World War I, Japan was allied with Britain, and when the war broke out in 1914, Japanese leaders honored their alliance by seizing German territories throughout the Pacific Rim. The German soldiers stationed in those territories were rounded up and shipped to Japan, where they spent the next several years in large prison camps. Yet as the war crept by, the camps saw little of the abuse that would come to characterize Japanese prisons in the next world war. In fact, many of the camps were so comfortable and accommodating as to seem like small towns.

One of the most famous camps was the Bando facility, spread across fourteen acres on the small southern island of Shikoku. Bando provided spacious housing for its prisoners in a residential district, along with a commercial zone in which they were free to open businesses. Over time,
a collection of about forty German shops rose up in the district, which the prisoners called Tapatau, and Japanese citizens would often visit the prison to shop for German wares.

As Charles Burdick and Ursula Moessner recounted in
The German Prisoners of War in Japan, 1914–1920
, “
Tapatau had many specialists
. Among the craftsmen were several carpenters, painters, mechanics, draftsmen, photographers, watchmakers, instrument makers, bookbinders, locksmiths, blacksmiths, printers, and more. For those individuals interested in their personal appearance, Tapatau provided a barber, a tailor, and a masseur. To please the palate after a long day’s work, Tapatau’s inhabitants could rush to the ‘Sanitas,’ a spa-like establishment, open day and night, with a restaurant that served wonderful coffee cake. The coffee cake was obtained from the Geba, Tapatau’s bakery, known to everybody as ‘delicious, delicious.’”

Some of the German prisoners at Bando also took jobs in town. Each morning, they would walk through the front gates of the prison to spend the day working for pay in Japanese shops. Afterward, they would return to the prison for dinner, which was typically made from the camp’s abundant livestock, including some two thousand chickens, thirty pigs, and countless ducks that bobbled freely through the vegetable gardens and onto the game fields, where prisoners passed the evening playing soccer, hockey, and stickball, or else holding gymnastics competitions. There was a prison newspaper at Bando, an orchestra that performed more than one hundred concerts, and two theater companies.

Not all Japanese prison camps in World War I were as lenient as Bando, but many of them tried. In the towns of Asakusa and Hijemi, the camps offered prisoners a similar level of trust, with the option to take long walks outside the prison and to work in local stores. Even the more restrictive camps, like those at Osaka, Matsuyama, and Kurume, were benevolent by any normal standard. According to Burdick and Moessner, after the 1915 crowning of Japanese emperor Taisho, the commander of Kurume announced that “
every prisoner should receive a gift
of apples
and beer to celebrate the joyous occasion.” When a handful of German officers declined to celebrate the coronation of their captors’ king, the prison commander briefly lost his temper and hit one of the men. The incident led to a formal investigation, and the Japanese commander was forced to apologize to the prisoner.

What caused such a dramatic change in Japanese prison camps over the next thirty years is a matter of some debate. It’s a question that invites lazy generalization about the psychology of empire and “
the Japanese mind
.” Certainly, by the onset of World War II, Japanese troops had been at war for an additional three decades, and the drastic expansion of the Japanese empire placed them farther from home than ever, while their training had become a grueling process that sometimes involved physical assault by senior men. These and other factors may have contributed to a shifting attitude toward prisoners, foreigners, and the native population of their territory islands.

However one accounts for the change, it was clearly evident before Pearl Harbor. The Japanese troops raiding the Chinese city of Nanking in 1937 were already committing atrocities that would have been unthinkable to the prison guards at Bando, Asakusa, and Kurume a few years earlier. In her treatise on the Nanking massacre, Iris Chang described the capture of one shoemaker’s apprentice, Tang Shunsan, who was found in a trash bin and herded with hundreds of other prisoners toward an open pit. There, Chang wrote, “
the Japanese ordered Tang
and the other prisoners to line up in rows. . . . Then, to Tang’s horror, a competition began among the soldiers—a competition to determine who could kill the fastest. As one soldier stood sentinel with a machine gun, ready to mow down anyone who tried to bolt, the eight other soldiers split up into pairs to form four separate teams. In each team, one soldier beheaded prisoners with a sword while the other picked up heads and tossed them aside in a pile.”

As the war with China morphed into a war with the United States, Japanese soldiers turned their attention to Allied prisoners of war, marching
some seventy-eight thousand soldiers, including
twelve thousand Americans
, up the Bataan Peninsula, while beating them, stabbing them, running over them with trucks, and denying them food or clean water. Another sixty thousand Allied troops were forced to construct a railway between Burma and Siam under hellish conditions, later immortalized in the novel
The Bridge Over the River Kwai
.
A quarter of those men died
.

In many cases, the abuse of Allied prisoners was either tacitly or explicitly condoned by Japanese leaders. Prime Minister Tojo himself had set the terms for prisoner abuse by announcing early in the war that “
the present condition of affairs
in this country does not permit anyone to lie idle, doing nothing, but eating freely. . . . In dealing with prisoners I hope you will see that they are usefully employed.” Tojo was well aware that this was widely interpreted as a “no work, no food” injunction.

Not that American soldiers were immune to the savage impulse. War exacts a price from all men, and many of the American troops who slogged across bloody battlefields like Tarawa and Guadalcanal devolved to a level of grotesque barbarism—mutilating the fallen Japanese to collect scalps, stringing together their ears on necklaces, and digging into their yawning mouths to pry out gold teeth. Even Charles Lindbergh, who denounced the “Asiatic intruder” so vehemently that he called for “
a Western wall of race and arms
which can hold back either a Genghis Khan or the infiltration of inferior blood,” had been horrified during his visit to the Pacific by the brutality of American troops.

“
Their desire is to exterminate the Jap
ruthlessly, even cruelly,” Lindbergh wrote in his journal. “We hold his examples of atrocity screamingly to the heavens, while we cover up our own and condone them as just retribution for his acts. A Japanese soldier who cuts off an American soldier’s head is an Oriental barbarian, ‘lower than a rat.’ An American soldier who slits a Japanese throat ‘did it only because he knew the Japs had done it to his buddies.’ I do not question that Oriental atrocities are often worse than ours. But, after all, we are constantly telling ourselves, and everyone else who will listen to us, that we are the upholders of all
that is ‘good’ and ‘right’ and civilized. . . . I would have more respect for the character of our people if we could give them a decent burial, instead of kicking in the teeth of their corpses.”

For the Japanese kempei huddling in their jungle camp on Babeldaob—sick and wet and hungry and demoralized under the roar of US bombers overhead—the rage and frustration were rising to explosive heights. Unlike the soldiers of the Fourteenth Division, they had no anti-aircraft cannons to fire at the passing planes, no fighters to scramble, and no phosphorus bombs to unload. All they had was a miserable, muddy hideaway, and a prison full of hungry, desperate islanders. They were adding more prisoners to their collection every day, for infractions that were increasingly slight, but one prize loomed over the rest. One day, the kempei told themselves, one of those American planes would come down.

LAST DAYS

W
akde was a wasteland, but the boys made do. Under the tatter of gunfire, the blinding sun, the bursts of rain, and the stench of rotting corpses, they found small joys on the ruined island.

After a few days of settling in, Jimmie and Johnny set about exploring the wide beach just east of the Long Rangers’ camp, splashing into the water to wash away the grime. In a report to Thirteenth Air Force headquarters that month, Jack Vanderpoel wrote, “Many discarded P-47 belly tanks were found on the island. Soon a small fleet of boats made from them began appearing off the coral reefs. Some were merely propelled by paddles, others had crude sails, a few had elaborate and expertly rigged sails, and one appeared with a small motor. These boats are very popular and many hours are spent cruising around nearby waters and swimming from them. . . . In spite of the crowded, uncomfortable living conditions,
poor food, hot weather, and length of duty overseas of a large portion of the personnel, the morale remains good.
Griping and grousing are prevalent
, but efficiency and accomplishment are high.”

On August 23,
Vanderpoel led the unit’s first mission
to Palau. It would be a photographic survey to identify targets for the coming bombardment. Just after dawn, Vanderpoel climbed into the cockpit of a Liberator called the
Dina Might
with an eleven-man crew that included two photographers, and bounced down the Wakde runway.

The journey north crossed an endless expanse of open ocean. As Vanderpoel streaked forward, he stayed beneath a heavy blanket of cumuli, surveying the water. Following protocol, he pulled up as he drew close to the islands, topping out at twenty-three thousand feet—but when he looked down, he couldn’t see the target he’d come to surveil. All he could see were the tops of clouds. Vanderpoel pushed down. Bursting through the bottom of the clouds, he saw the islands stretched out before him. Even in the muted light, they made a breathtaking sight, swaddled in soft green foliage against a wavering expanse of aquamarine, like some half-imagined mélange of tropical color.

The photographers on board were shuttering photos as Vanderpoel sped across Koror. He circled twice over downtown to give them a clear shot. There was a nest of government buildings on the western side of the islands, between a hospital and a long pier. The guns of Battery Hill were silent, but as he turned south to retrace his route, he saw the hillsides erupt. Shells punched into the air and a fighter plane tore down a runway. Vanderpoel watched it race toward him and soar overhead, dropping a pair of phosphorus bombs directly above. Vanderpoel yanked the control yoke to steer away from the white-hot fire, but the Zero was already coming back for another pass. It sprayed the air with bullets, then looped around for a third approach. Eventually, Vanderpoel knew, the fighter would connect. There was only one option, and it wasn’t by the book.

He waited for the Zero to pass again, and leaned hard into a turn, banking until his nose was pointed directly at the fighter. He surged
forward, chasing it down as fast as the Liberator could travel. The Zero was a lighter and more nimble plane—it swooped and swerved, but Vanderpoel dodged to keep it in front of him. Finally, the Zero raced away in a straight line, shrinking to a small dot on the horizon. Vanderpoel grinned. He turned the Liberator toward Wakde. It was a moment he would relish and retell for the rest of his life.

As Vanderpoel touched down that evening, Jimmie and Johnny were returning to their tent from another afternoon on the beach. As evening fell, rain arrived, and they huddled inside. Jimmie balanced a candle inside his helmet and wrote to Myrle, “
Johnny and I went swimming
, and we sure had a lot of fun. Have a nice good place, good sandy beach, and the water is really clean.” A few feet away, Johnny wrote to Mary, “
Sis, if you can send me some camera film
, I’ll take some pictures and send them to you.”

In the morning, a massive cargo ship docked in the deepwater port just west of the Long Rangers’ camp. The hulking Liberty Ships took their name from the Patrick Henry dictum “Give me liberty or give me death,” but any US organization that raised $2 million in war bonds could name a ship of their own. There was an SS
Jefferson Davis
to honor the Confederate South, and an SS
Wendell Willkie
named for Roosevelt’s opponent in the last election. Like the B-24, the ships were tall, boxy, and widely ridiculed. Roosevelt called them “
dreadful looking
,” while
Time
magazine dubbed them “ugly ducklings.” But to the Big Stoop boys, the SS
Stanley Matthews
pulling into Wakde that day was a thing of beauty. It carried most of the gear they had been forced to leave behind on Los Negros.

As the ship unloaded, the boys wandered up a dusty road to a makeshift stage. Bob Hope was scheduled to land at any moment for an afternoon performance. A month had passed since his arrival in the South Pacific, and he’d been performing as many as four shows a day, for which he would eventually receive the Congressional Gold Medal in a White House ceremony. According to Hope’s biographer, William Robert Faith,
after the ceremony Jack Kennedy remarked, “
Bob, I was one of those lucky guys
who sat in the rain on a Woendi island, watching you and your troupe perform.”

Hope’s flight landed on Wakde three hours late, and Jimmie and Johnny waited in a crowd of agitated airmen. In film footage taken from the stage that day, the men can be seen clambering for position as bombers rise from the adjoining airstrip. But when Hope appeared, all eyes turned to the stage, and for a few short moments, the war was forgotten. The men swayed to Frances Langford’s crooning ballads, wilted at the sight of Patty Thomas prancing across the stage in a blue swimsuit, and laughed uproariously at Jerry Colonna twirling the ends of a muskrat mustache, while
Hope himself cracked wise in baggy fatigues
and a tilted safari hat, jabbing the air with the tip of a long cane. “I love this beautiful island,” he called out, “with its magnificent palms—two of them with tops!” In his next column for American newspapers, he wrote, “We did a show on Wakde the other day. They had a stage set up right near the runway—so we could escape if we laid an egg, I guess. And the show was almost ruined by the planes taking off. Every time you read a straight line, you have to wait until the plane took off before delivering the punch line. It plays havoc with one’s timing.”

As the show drew down in late afternoon, Hope and his troupe bowed to thundering applause, then marched back toward the airfield to climb aboard a transit plane, lurching down the Wakde runway for the next stop on their tour.

The Long Rangers drifted back to camp. Their gear was unloaded. Their move was complete. Their short reprieve was over. In the morning they would begin their assault on Palau.

—

T
HE KEMPEI ON
B
ABELDAOB
hated the jungle. The dark hot air bloomed with humidity, the orange clay stuck to their skin, the shrieks of birds
flooded the air with a cacophonous din, and each time the American planes came over the horizon, they were forced further into disgrace, racing across the muddy camp through narrow shafts of sunlight to dive headlong into the tunnels they had carved in the wet earth—sergeants and lieutenants and privates and even Colonel Miyazaki himself, all pressed together in the darkness, gasping for air and bracing against the concussive blasts of bombs.

Sometimes they scurried into the tunnels and the bombs never fell. Most of the Allied targets were farther south, and by the time the planes reached Babeldaob their bomb bay doors were open and empty. Then the kempei would crawl from their caves, humiliated and relieved. Other times, the Liberators would swoop down from the north in a surprise attack, raining down munitions that rattled the hills and the men.

After a raid on August 26, Miyazaki gazed over the splattered campsite at the bodies of two men. “
23 B-24s attacked
,” he recorded in his journal. “Sergeant Ikushima and leading private Umasaka were killed.” He made a note to send a letter of condolence to the senior man’s wife, Tamiko, at their home near Toyama Bay. For Chihiro Kokubo, the loss was more personal. Rikiso Ikushima had been his only friend. Since leaving his parents at the age of eight, Kokubo had struggled to make personal connections. But in the space of only a few months, he and Ikushima had grown close. They traded stories, confided their fears, and even shared supplies. Just a few weeks earlier, Ikushima had given Kokubo a large white handkerchief that he’d stolen from one of the Jesuit missionaries in the prison.

As the rest of the kempei cleaned up from the August 26 attack, Kokubo wandered the parade grounds overcome with grief. He collected Ikushima’s remains and burned them over a campfire. Then he scooped up the ashes and placed them in a small wooden box, which he
wrapped inside the white handkerchief
and began to carry with him, promising that, someday, he would avenge his friend.

Seven hundred miles south, the Liberators were landing. As the airmen stepped onto the tarmac, the Big Stoop boys were not among them. Under the new combat schedule, they had not been assigned to the mission. It was the second day in a row they had been forced to wait on Wakde while other airmen hit Palau. Waiting wasn’t easy. No man looked forward to combat, but a wasted day was worse. Each evening the planes came back from Palau shredded by artillery, some of them so badly damaged that it was hard to believe they’d flown. One returned with no hydraulic system and two holes in the wing “
as big as a hat
,” one man recalled. Others didn’t return at all. In the fog of anti-aircraft fire,
two of the Liberators collided
.
A third
, from the Fifth Bombardment Group, simply disappeared. Every man who had been to Palau said the guns were the worst he’d ever seen. At times, they said, the shells were so thick that it seemed you could step outside and walk across the sky.

After a noisy dinner, the men wandered down to the southern tip of Wakde. A firefight was unfolding on New Guinea and they gazed across the water. Allied tanks were pummeling a Japanese position, and US gunboats had just arrived to pour in a second layer of fire. The horizon glowed yellow against a darkening sky and the Long Rangers cheered. “
Watched tanks and boats shell
the coast,” one man wrote in his journal, adding, “Good show!”

Dawn broke clear on August 28 as the Big Stoop boys gathered at the airstrip for their first mission to Palau. They climbed aboard a shiny new Liberator and rattled down the runway into flight. Speeding north, each man settled into a familiar position. The target was new, but the journey was not. After weeks of
flying the long route to Yap
, the hours of waiting were automatic and reflexive. As the miles trailed by, they chatted, argued, laughed, and stared forward in silence.

Three hours in, they hit a storm.
Lightning cracked and turbulence shook
the boxy plane. In the cockpit, Norman Coorssen pulled back on the yoke, climbing into the clouds. He could see the rest of the squadron rising with him as he disappeared into the fog, and a cascade of rain and erratic wind rattled the B-24. Norman held fast. At 11,500 feet, the air
began to clear. He leveled the plane and watched through the window as the squadron materialized around him. They were no longer in a tight formation, but at least they were still together. That was more than he could say for the other two squadrons. They were nowhere in sight.

The target was just minutes away, but the mission plan was shot. Their orders were to follow the other two squadrons over Koror, but there was no way to follow planes you couldn’t see. As Norman steered across the southern islands of Angaur and Peleliu, the clouds below him cleared. This, he knew, was a mixed blessing. It would give the boys a clear view of the target, but it also gave the Japanese a clear view back. He crossed the islands of Eil Malk and Ngeruktabel and saw Koror ahead. The hills were quiet. They were the first to arrive. He drew closer and the foliage of the dark islands flashed with fire. The shells were coming in 250-round bursts, heavy but bearable. In the bombardier’s compartment, Art Schumacher steadied his nerves and counted to bombs away. Three, two, one—he pounded the bomb release button and the payload sailed down. It was a perfect strike on the western end of Koror. Buildings burst into a swirling cloud of black smoke.

Suddenly, the VHF radio crackled. It was a pilot from another squadron. He was just a few miles back and calling his flight leader, William Dixon.

“
How far below base
are you going to bomb?” the pilot asked.

Norman listened for the reply. It was a risky question. The word “base” referred to a secret number, chosen essentially at random. The idea was to give pilots a way to discuss their altitude. If commanders set “base” at eight thousand feet, a pilot could say that he was flying at “base plus five” or “base minus three” without giving away too much. Still, you had to be careful. It was always better to say nothing, especially near the target. The sound of your voice alone was a clarion call to Japanese gunners.