Death on the Hellships. Gregory F. Michno
thought it would be impossible to work, until they were “immediately introduced to the ‘Vitamin stick,’” which was “adequate incentive to work.” They cut down mahogany and coconut trees, and in no time their hands were bloody pulps from using the juji (pick ax) and impi (shovel). “We worked almost naked in this boiling hot sun for the next twenty-seven months,” Henderson said.
They lived at Camp 10-A in unused, dilapidated constabulary buildings. Fourth Marine corporal George Burlage actually thought the site was pretty. It was built in a hollow square, each building had a veranda, and the central plaza was filled with coconut trees. Their building was on a slope, with a first floor galley and storeroom. More than three hundred men were expected to live in the barracks. “We were allotted a space of about six feet long, three feet wide,” said Burlage, “a burial plot!”
For two years they built an airfield. Clearing the jungle, crushing coral with hammers, and mixing and pouring acres of concrete, they constructed a strip more than fifteen hundred yards long and seventy-five yards wide. During the ordeal, about fifty prisoners died from overwork, starvation, and lack of medical care. Back in Manila, prisoners who worked on the docks, among them J. D. Merritt, hauled supplies for those on Palawan whose “lot was much harder than ours.” Merritt worked the old-fashioned hand winches that loaded the small interisland steamers, the Naga and Isla Princesa, which occasionally ferried supplies to Palawan. Merritt had “some real donnybrooks” with several of the “miscreants” among them who tried to steal precious Red Cross parcels meant for “our little brothers” in Palawan.35
On 15 August at Camp Casising, near Malabalay, Mindanao, all the generals, colonels, and their orderlies, about one hundred men in all, were gathered for shipment north on a small freighter, the Maru San (three). Among them were Brig. Gens. William Sharp, Guy O. Fort, Joseph P. Vachon, and Manuel A. Roxas. The latter would become the first president of the Philippines after the war. They were sent to various camps in Formosa and Korea.
At the same time, a larger party was being assembled on Luzon. General Wainwright, who had been in Manila since the surrender, was taken to Tarlac Camp on 9 June, along with other senior officers from O’Donnell and Bilibid. On 11 August, they were fed an early breakfast and shuffled along the road to the train station. Fifteen generals, 106 colonels, and a number of orderlies rode the rails south. They were then trucked back to the Manila docks, where they found a “good-sized” ship that they called the “Stinko Maru.”
The Nagara Maru was a 7,149-ton passenger-cargo ship built in 1934 by Yokohama Dock Company and owned by the NYK Line. After standing on the pier for more than an hour watching the ship being loaded, the prisoners were abruptly ordered to about-face. Wainwright peered over his shoulder to see why. A long line of Japanese soldiers, like men in an old fire-bucket brigade, stood on the pier. For the next two hours they passed hundreds of small, labeled cardboard boxes onto the ship. Each box contained the ashes of a Japanese soldier being sent to the home shrines, and they did not want the POWs to know about their casualties.
Nagara Maru. U.S. Naval Historical Center
While waiting, Wainwright was engaged by an English-speaking Japanese officer. They were being sent to Karenko, Formosa, he said, not to Japan. Wainwright would love Karenko, said the officer; there was plenty of fish, fruit, meat, and sugar, and even a fine bathing beach. Wainwright wanly smiled, having heard similar promises before.
There were only about 180 prisoners making the two-day voyage. Even so, all but Wainwright and General King were stuffed in a hold like cattle. They made their beds on two long, wooden shelves that extended six feet out from the bulkheads. Each man had about two and a half feet of space. Wainwright and King shared a cabin on the boat deck. They were ordered not to leave the room. Even so, it was perhaps the most comfortable accommodations any POWs ever had.
On 14 August, Nagara Maru pulled in to the nearly landlocked harbor of Takao, on Formosa’s southwest coast. She anchored astern of a large liner. They recognized her as the SS President Harrison, which had been captured early in the war and renamed the Kakko Maru, and was later to be named the Kachidoki Maru. She too would become a hellship.
The POWs were lined up on deck and subjected to another distressing physical exam, which, Wainwright explained, “centered around the rectum.” This time all of them were sent back into the hold, which was alive with millions of bedbugs, and battened down in temperatures exceeding 100 degrees. The next morning they were released. Wainwright, the big prize, was forced to pose for photographers and a Japanese artist. His group then boarded an “evil little steamer” for the trip up the east coast to Karenko.
They were the first to reach their new home. Arriving in the next few weeks were contingents from Southeast Asia, the East Indies, and Philippines, including Sir Arthur Percival and British generals Ian McRae, L. M. Heath, and Merton Beckwith-Smith, along with General Sharp and the rest of the Mindanao contingent. Karenko was loaded with 405 of the top officers and administrators from the southwestern Pacific theater.36
The first group of prisoners from the Philippines to reach Japan assembled in Manila in early September. As usual, the rumor mill was pumping. Talk was that the Red Cross had negotiated a prisoner exchange. One of five hundred men selected from the Cabanatuan camp, Lester I. Tenney of Company B, 192d Tank Battalion, was trucked to Manila in an exultant mood. He was going to board a ship to freedom.
In Manila Bay, Tenney’s hopes were dashed. Their destination was Japan, and they were traveling there on a small, dilapidated freighter that appeared to be at least thirty years old. Said Tenney, “It needed a paint job just to keep the steel from rusting out.” Tenney walked up the gangplank to the Toko Maru, watching as a contingent of American prisoners working on the docks flashed them the “V” sign. The boat did not look seaworthy, even to a landlubber like Tenney.37
Although he knew nothing about the job, Tenney volunteered to be a cook so he would have more hours on deck. The Toko Maru sailed on 5 September, but it did not take long for Tenney to realize he had chosen the wrong job; a seasick cook was not needed. An old salt soon realized why Lester was spending so much time hanging over the railing. He baited him, telling him how a real sailor could swallow a piece of salt pork tied to a string, then slowly pull it back out without vomiting. That was all Lester needed; he was quickly back at the rail, heaving his guts out. A Japanese officer saw him, and that was the end of his days as a cook. Back he went into the hold with 496 other men.
Without fresh air and a horizon to look at, Tenney only got sicker, and the trip north was pure hell. The box was fifty by fifty feet; about five square feet per man. It was twenty feet to the top, where the only light and air came from the occasionally open hatch. A single ladder led to the deck. They disposed of their waste matter by carrying pails up the ladder and heaving the contents overboard. Wooden planks covered the lower metal deck, for on a previous trip, the ship transported horses. They slept on the wooden planks, which had soaked up all the horse urine. Their clothes and bodies were permeated with the smell of horses. Tenney would have given anything for a hot bath and to be rid of the horrible stench.
Japanese officers suggested that they exercise in the hold to keep fit, which was laughable for men starving on a daily ration of a couple of rice balls and a cup of watery soup. They were all between 30 and 40 percent underweight. Every night someone would have a malaria attack, crying for blankets because he was freezing or screaming that his body was burning up. Tenney hated the noises in the darkness. Every minute was everlasting. The sounds of men breathing could tear through him like fingernails scratching on a blackboard. Men broke down and cried because they could not take it any more.
To keep sane, Tenney managed to join up with a corporal from New Mexico, Jesus Silva of the 200th Coast Artillery. Silva had a pair of dice, and after negotiating a deal, they began to run a craps game. Over the days they won a good sum of money, before another soldier with a hot hand eventually broke them. At any rate, it distracted them from their worries for a time.
Badly in need of repair, Toko