Death on the Hellships. Gregory F. Michno
new home was a shock, yet all things considered, Zentsuji would prove to be one of the “better” Japanese POW camps in the empire.5
WAKE
Making a much better fight of it, the defenders of Wake Island actually repulsed the first Japanese invasion attempt on 11 December 1941. The small invasion force under Rear Adm. Kajioka Sadamichi,6 commanding Destroyer Squadron Six from the light cruiser Yubari, approached too close to the island and was surprised by still-operable shore batteries and planes. Down went the destroyer Hayate, the first Japanese warship to be lost in World War II, and the destroyer Kisaragi. Kajioka retreated. On 23 December he was back with reinforcements, but before surrender, the stubborn defenders inflicted nearly five hundred casualties on the attackers while losing only fourteen Marines and fourteen civilians. The Japanese had been roughly handled, and curses, kicks, and rifle butts emphasized their orders as they rounded up the Americans. Their valuables and clothes were stripped from them, and their hands were wired behind their backs with loops around their necks. “They stripped us down balls and ass naked and hog-tied us,” complained one Yank. Then they were lined up and covered by three machine guns. As they waited to be shot, a landing craft rammed onto the beach and out stepped Rear Admiral Kajioka, resplendent in a spotless white uniform. He ordered the machine gunners to remove their ammunition belts, and the prisoners realized they had been saved—for the moment.7
Almost sixteen hundred Americans, counting servicemen and civilian employees, were taken to the airfield. Kajioka had won his argument with the commanding Army officer. The interpreter passed along the gist of the exchange: “The emperor has gracefully presented you with your lives.” Out of the mass of hog-tied bodies, where civilian construction workers Oklahoma Atkinson and Harry Jeffries surveyed the scene, came the sarcastic response, “Well thank the son of a bitch.”
Eventually the prisoners were housed in the contractor’s barracks. They stayed until 11 January, when all but 388 of them were ordered down to the beach. Word was that they were going to Japan. Before they were lightered out to the waiting ship, they were sprayed with what Cpl. George W. McDaniel called a “smelly insecticide,” and the Japanese guards shook them down one more time. They clawed their way up rope ladders in heavy seas, and once aboard, new guards kicked and cursed them for being devoid of loot. After they were beaten with bamboo clubs while running through a gauntlet, all 1,187 of them were shoved into the forward cargo holds.
The 17,163-ton Nitta Maru, built as a luxury liner in 1939, sailed for Yokohama on 12 January 1942. Capable of making twenty-two knots, it was the holder of a transpacific speed record. It could accommodate 278 passengers, but there was no luxury for its current guests. Down in the holds, the POWs were packed in, body upon body, and ordered to sit still. Anyone who moved was beaten. Corporal McDaniel said he wasn’t allowed to stand up for fifteen days. Their toilets consisted of five-gallon pails. They were refused water, and some men tried to lick the condensation off the steel bulkheads. They were fed a thin rice gruel, so watery that many men went more than two weeks without a bowel movement. Others were plagued with dysentery. Civilians Jeffries and Atkinson said the gruel sometimes came with a few slivers of smelly pickled radish, other times with rotting fish heads or guts. Men couldn’t even make it to the slop buckets to relieve themselves. Not in such dire straits was Capt. Bryghte D. Godbold. He and a small group of men were placed in what appeared to be a mail room. There were even a few bunks for the older officers, while the younger ones slept on deck mats. Godbold ate rice, soup, pickles, and tea a couple of times a day. It was not pleasant, but there was no brutality shown. It was about what you’d expect on a prisoner ship, he said. Not so for the great majority, who would describe their trip on the Nitta Maru as the worst time of their captivity.8
The Nitta Maru was heading north to a freezing Japanese midwinter. The prisoners were issued one thin cotton blanket each, but it was not nearly enough. On 18 January, the engines quit vibrating and Nitta Maru docked at Yokohama. To celebrate their homecoming, the guards pulled back the hatches and threw snowballs at the prisoners. The commanders at Wake, Maj. James P. S. Devereaux and Cdr. Winfield S. Cunningham, and a few other officers were ordered to clean up and report to an upper deck room, where they were photographed, smiling for propaganda purposes, their pictures later appearing in English-language magazines. As compensation for their cooperation, they were allowed to send radiograms to their next of kin. About twenty other men, including Maj. George H. Potter Jr., Maj. Paul A. Putnam, and Cdr. Campbell Keene, all involved in aviation or communications intelligence, were removed from the ship for in-depth interrogation. Later in the month, when the Japanese were finished with them, one dozen were sent to Zentsuji prison camp.9
Nitta Maru. U.S. Naval Historical Center
When the voyage resumed on 20 January, the mistreatment turned deadly. A day or two out of Yokohama, five men were brought up from the holds. Seamen Theodore Franklin, John W. Lambert, and Roy J. Gonzales, and Sgts. Earl R. Hannum and Vincent W. Bailey, all with aviation backgrounds, probably thought they were going to be interrogated. Their comrades never saw them again. Blindfolded and bound, they did not know what was happening as they were brought up on deck and surrounded by about 150 guards and crewmen. Lt. Saito Toshio, commander of the guards, stood on a box to read the indictment: “You have killed many Japanese soldiers in battle. For what you have done you are now going to be killed—for revenge. You are here as representatives of your American soldiers and will be killed. You can now pray to be happy in the next world—in heaven.” One by one, each man was forced to kneel on the deck while sword-wielding guards stepped up behind them. A Japanese sailor described what happened: “The sword as brought down on the neck of the first victim made a swishing noise as it cut the air. As the blade hit and pierced the flesh it gave a resounding noise like a wet towel being flipped or shaken out. The body of the first victim lay quietly, half across a mat and half onto the wooden deck.” Four more times the swords flashed while the Japanese applauded. Afterward, some took turns trying to cut the corpses in two with a single sword stroke, like samurais of old. Then Saito had them propped up against barrels for bayonet practice. Finally the crowd dispersed and the bodies were thrown into the ocean. That evening, Saito invited guests to his cabin to celebrate the occasion.
On 23 January, the Nitta Maru made Shanghai, then traveled up the Whangpoo River to Woosung. The prisoners were marched five miles to their new camp—seven unheated, old wooden barracks surrounded by electric fences. Within a week they were joined by captured Marines from Peking and Tientsin, boosting their numbers to about fourteen hundred. Censored reports filtering back to America did not indicate that much was amiss. The wife of Dan Teeters, superintendent of the civilian construction workers on Wake, had a rosy picture painted for her. “We have no reason to think that the men have not received fairly decent treatment,” she told William Bradford Huie, who was writing the story of the construction battalion. Red Cross packages were arriving at the camp, and although there was a lack of warm clothing, she reported, “there have been no atrocities.”10
SINGAPORE
The capture of Guam and Wake were small operations compared to the invasions in the Philippines, Malaya, and the Dutch East Indies. On the day they bombed Pearl Harbor, actually 8 December 1941 for the entire western Pacific, the Japanese also landed at Kota Bharu, on the east coast of the Malayan Peninsula. Throughout December and January they forced the British and Australian defenders back, as they moved inexorably south toward Singapore. The Japanese appeared unstoppable, and the Singapore area verged on chaos. At the same time that troop convoys were arriving in an attempt to shore up the rapidly deteriorating situation, thousands of people began to flee. Japanese planes and warships had field days. On 5 February 1942, dive bombers sank the arriving 16,909-ton transport Empress of Asia carrying units of the 18th Division. Between 13 and 17 February alone, about seventy ships, from small auxiliaries to gunboats, minelayers, and steamers, were lost while fleeing.11
One typical escape attempt had a disastrous dénouement. On 12 February, three days before the fall of Singapore, the small steamer Vyner Brooke was loaded with more than two hundred elderly men and women, children, and