Death on the Hellships. Gregory F. Michno
by Allied intelligence. Because Japanese codes had been broken, it was possible to know of convoys’ cargoes, destinations, and daily positions, facilitating interception. Japanese ships sailed unaware that Allied intelligence knew of their moves and had vectored submarines to attack them. Of the approximately twenty-one thousand prisoner deaths at sea, about nineteen thousand were caused by “friendly fire” from either Allied submarines or planes. Although Allied death rates under the Japanese were much worse than Allied death rates under the Germans, when one subtracts all of those killed by their own countrymen, the percentages become almost equal.
Can a story of the hellships be written? No, according to Preston Hubbard, former prisoner and retired history professor at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tennessee. Hubbard believes the unrelenting horror of the hellships does not lend itself to a book. Novels or movies need points of contrast, moments of relief, different viewpoints. The hellships, says Hubbard, have no contrasts. Their damned, dark world lies buried beyond the reach of imagination or memory. It was a world unrelieved by humor, light, setting, or routine. Such a story, he claims, would collapse into itself like a black hole, shedding no light and yielding no understanding. Indeed, the hellships may represent a kind of depravity, a supreme form of evil beyond the scope of history (Hubbard, Apocalypse Undone, 164). Although Hubbard’s observation may be valid when it comes to the creation of a painting, movie, or novel, fortunately (or unfortunately, as the case may be), this is not a novel. Truth does not always follow the dictums of art.
Many people helped me with the preparation of this book. I would like to thank John D. Alden, submariner and author, for his critique of the manuscript and his unselfish sharing of rare English translations of Japanese source material; John Taylor at the National Archives for helping to locate many of the radio intercepts and Ultra information; the late Clay Blair Jr. for permission to use his taped interviews; the folks at the Submarine Force Library in Groton, Connecticut, for locating all the patrol reports; the Quan, the magazine of the American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor, for printing my requests for assistance; the Polaris, magazine of the Subvets of WWII, for printing more assistance requests; and the National Maritime Museum in San Francisco for its support of the project.
I consulted many published books and articles; however, this book would not have been complete without the help of so many individuals who saw merit in this undertaking. Those men and women, former prisoners, submariners, and civilians, more than fifty of them, are cited in detail in the bibliography. Their correspondence, interviews, and tapes were of utmost importance in adding a personal touch to these proceedings. Although it was sometimes difficult for them to reveal their thoughts, they assisted me to the best of their ability. I hope this story will illuminate a fraction of what they experienced to a world today in which patriotism and sacrifice are often considered archaic.
In the opening months of the war, the Imperial Japanese Navy and Army stormed through China, Southeast Asia, the Philippines, and the western Pacific. They gobbled up millions of square miles and affected the lives of hundreds of millions of people. Within weeks of Pearl Harbor, the Japanese captured Guam, Wake, and Hong Kong. They landed in the Philippines, Malaya, Borneo, and various islands of the Dutch East Indies. By February 1942, Singapore, Britain’s supposedly impregnable bastion, had fallen. Sumatra and Java were attacked. In six months, the Japanese had extended their conquests to Burma, north to the Aleutians, and south to New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, threatening the American lifeline to Australia.
In the course of these conquests, the Japanese killed, wounded, or captured more than 300,000 Allied troops. The most significant surrenders were at Hong Kong, where nearly 14,000 Britons, Canadians, and Indians defended the island; on Java, with 25,000 Dutch and 7,000 British, Australian, and American troops; and in the Philippines, where 75,000 Americans and Filipinos surrendered. The worst single instance was the fall of Singapore, an event Prime Minister Winston Churchill called “the greatest disaster and capitulation in British history.” In one swoop, 130,000 British, Australian, and Indian troops surrendered to fewer than that number of Japanese soldiers. It was the greatest land victory in Japan’s history.1
The Imperial Army was unprepared for this influx of prisoners. What would they do with them? After a time they released the native prisoners—Indonesians who fought with the Dutch and Filipinos who fought with the Americans—and instituted a marginally successful campaign to enlist the Indians against their former British masters. All these actions were logistically sensible and calculated to earn propaganda points for them as racial liberators of Asia. Yet this still left 140,000 or more white prisoners of war.2
GUAM
Before the Japanese could make long-term plans for housing POWs, prisoners would have to be moved out of the forward battle zones. The first such move occurred on Guam. On the morning of 10 December 1941, about six thousand men of the Japanese 144th Regiment came ashore, quickly overrunning the island’s pitifully small number of American defenders. Cdr. Donald T. Giles, vice governor of Guam and executive officer of its naval station, was bitterly disappointed at what he called a shameful sacrifice by the U.S. government. Facing the Japanese with only a few hundred men armed with pistols and Springfield rifles, the Americans resisted for only twenty minutes. Even so, seventeen men had been killed and thirty-eight wounded before they gave up.
One month later, on 10 January 1942, they received an unusually hearty breakfast of lunch meat, a cold potato, and a sip of coffee. They were told that they would be heading south by ship, so they only needed to take their tropical clothing. From Piti Navy Yard in Apra Harbor they boarded what Giles called a beautiful passenger ship, the Argentina Maru. A twenty-knot luxury liner of 12,755 tons, capable of accommodating eight hundred passengers, the ship had traveled the Far East-South America route prior to being recalled for use as a troop transport. There would be no first-class accommodations for the prisoners, however. On deck, the governor of Guam tried to explain to the Japanese commander why they had surrendered. The officer slapped him in the face.
“You and your men are all cowards for surrendering,” he snapped, “and we will treat you accordingly. We will give you all the punishment that the human body can withstand!” Thus the Americans quickly learned what the Japanese thought about prisoners. They were sent four decks down and crammed into six-tiered shelves, with eight men lying side by side. There was little space between one’s face and the shelf above, and there was no ventilation or sanitation. As luxurious as the ship was, said Giles, she was never intended to carry prisoners: “Except for the lack of chains, we were there as galley slaves.”3
As the prisoners speculated as to which “tropical” destination they were bound, the Argentina Maru sailed north, unescorted and without zigzagging, causing Giles to worry about submarine attack. The temperature grew colder. The food served was described as “buckets of slop,” lowered on lines from the boat deck above. Marine private John B. Garrison complained about being forced to stay right above the engines and only being allowed on deck once a day for exercise. He thought there were about three hundred servicemen and four hundred civilians in the hold, all sleeping on steel shelves, side by side. Garrison weighed 140 pounds when he surrendered, only 110 by the time he got to Japan. Unaccustomed to the meager meals of rice spiced with daikons (pickled white radishes), he found it very hard to eat, even as hungry as he was. No one, said Commander Giles, who was ever a prisoner of the Japanese will ever complain about food again.4
On the morning of 15 January, as snow fell, the Argentina Maru sailed into the Inland Sea and anchored off Tadotsu on the island of Shikoku. The prisoners were ill prepared for the frigid cold. Giles remembered 420 of them being taken to Zentsuji Camp, about five miles southeast of Tadotsu. Zentsuji, the first POW camp established in Japan, was administered by reserve personnel,