Death on the Hellships. Gregory F. Michno
on the north Sumatra coast the ship blundered into an area where a Japanese convoy was unloading under the protection of the carrier Ryujo. The Vyner Brooke was bombed and sunk. Survivors headed to the nearest land. One group, with twenty-two nurses and a number of wounded men, made it ashore on Bangka Island. They were joined by about twenty-five surviving men from another sunken vessel. All were intercepted by a party of Japanese soldiers, who separated them into two groups. The men were marched out of sight behind a headland. Rifle shots were heard, and shortly thereafter the soldiers returned, cleaning their rifles and bayonets. The twenty-two nurses and one civilian were ordered to walk waist deep into the sea, when the Japanese opened fire on them. Nurse Vivien Bullwinkel took a bullet through her back. She fell and floated with the waves for ten minutes before being washed ashore. The Japanese were gone. Bullwinkel, the only survivor, dragged herself across the beach and into the jungle to hide. Another group of nurses who made it to shore were also captured. Although not executed, eight of them would later die in prison camps. Both the military and civilian population were rapidly discovering what it was like to fall into Japanese hands.12
PRISONERS FROM THE JAVA SEA
On 15 February 1942, the same day Singapore surrendered, Japanese forces landed on Sumatra. On the nineteenth they landed on Bali, while Vice Adm. Kondo Nobutake led his carrier armada into the Timor Sea to launch an attack on the harbor of Darwin, Australia, damaging eleven ships and sinking nine, including the U.S. Army transport Meigs and destroyer Peary. On the twenty-seventh, an invasion force including fifty-six transports approached western Java, and a second force including forty-one transports neared eastern Java. The proximity of all those juicy transports was more than enough to entice the American-British-Dutch-Australian (ABDA) fleet out from Surabaya to do battle. Rear Adm. Karel Doorman, in charge of the combined forces, charged out to fight but succeeded only in destroying his fleet. On 27 February, in the Battle of the Java Sea, he lost the Dutch destroyer Kortenaer, the British destroyers Electra and Jupiter, Dutch light cruisers Java and De Ruyter (his flagship), and his life. Meanwhile, south of Java, the seaplane tender Langley was sunk by aircraft. Damaged ships fled the scene, only to succumb on the bloody first of March. Destroyers Edsall and Pillsbury were caught south of Christmas Island by Kondo’s carrier planes and sunk. The U.S. heavy cruiser Houston and Australian light cruiser Perth blundered into the western Java invasion force and were sunk in Sunda Strait after a hard fight. Trying to escape the Java Sea, which had become a ship trap, the British heavy cruiser Exeter, which had figured in the destruction of the German pocket battleship Graf Spee, the British destroyer Encounter, and the U.S. destroyer Pope, were all sent to the bottom by Japanese planes and surface ships.13
These appalling losses resulted in the Japanese reaping more prisoners from the sea. In the Indian Ocean south of Java, the Edsall, which had rescued 177 men from the Langley, transferred them to the tanker Pecos. Returning to Java, Edsall was sunk by Japanese heavy cruisers Tone and Chikuma. Only 5 survivors reached land, all of whom later died as POWs. Meanwhile the Pecos, fleeing to Fremantle with 670 people on board, was sunk by aircraft from the carrier Soryu. This time the destroyer Whipple rescued 232 men and finally got them safely to Australia. In the same area on 2 March, the British destroyer Stronghold was intercepted by the heavy cruiser Maya. The battered DD went down, and 50 survivors were picked up by what appeared to be the Dutch steamer Duymaer van Twist. The ship, however, had been captured by the Japanese, and the luckless prisoners were transferred to the Maya.
Floating survivors of the Java Sea battle met various fates, depending solely on where they happened to drift, and which, if any, ship’s captain happened to discover them. The U.S. submarine S-38, under Lt. Henry G. Munson, was patrolling near Bawean Island, unaware of the great sea battle that was being fought. Late on the twenty-eighth, a call brought Munson to the bridge. The low, dark silhouette on the water could be either wreckage or sampans. Munson wasn’t sure, so the gun crew came topside and S-38 sped in for a look. As she neared the object, a voice cried out in the darkness, “My God, they’re not finished with us yet!”
Astonished at hearing English, Munson hailed back, “Who are you?”
Several voices called out, “We’re men of His Majesty’s Ship Electra!”
S-38 hove to and began pulling aboard men from life rafts and floating debris. The job was rushed, for dawn was tinting the sky when the last man was picked up. There were fifty-four of them, thirsty, oily, and burned. Seventeen were badly wounded and one was dying, but they were all carried to safety. It was the first of many rescues to be accomplished by submarines. As an encore, S-37, under Lt. James C. Dempsey, rescued two American sailors who had been on the De Ruyter and left five days’ worth of provisions for a boatload of the Dutch cruiser’s survivors.14
The Japanese destroyer Amatsukaze had been prowling the same area. Cdr. Hara Tameichi’s ship had been one of the escorts covering the eastern Java invasion force, when, on 26 February, he spotted a white-painted vessel. Halting it for inspection, he found it was the Dutch ship Op ten Noort, built in 1927 as a 6,076-ton passenger ship and recently converted to a hospital ship. Hara hustled the ship over to the care of his supply squadron commander, then sped back in time for the Java Sea fight. After the battle, low on fuel, the Amatsukaze was ordered to escort Op ten Noort to Borneo. Passing about sixty miles west of Bawean Island, Hara noticed more than a hundred Caucasians floating on wreckage, all with their hands held in the air and crying, “Water! Water!”
“The sight was pitiable,” said Hara. “I had no personal hatred for the drowning enemy. But what could I do? My small ship could take only forty or fifty of them, at most. How could I discriminate and pick only half of these survivors?” He radioed his superior about the drifting men. As they steamed close by, one of Hara’s lieutenants, who spoke English, called out to them to hang on, for they would soon be rescued. After taking the hospital ship to Bandjarmasin and refueling, the Amatsukaze passed the scene once again. The drifting survivors were nowhere to be found.15
The Exeter, damaged in the Battle of the Java Sea and accompanied by Encounter and Pope, headed along the Borneo coast in an attempt to reach Ceylon. It was hopeless, for they were caught by the Japanese heavy cruisers Nachi, Haguro, Ashigara, and Myoko, accompanying destroyers, and aircraft. Exeter was the first to be smothered with shells, then Encounter.
With the order to abandon the Exeter, Lt. R. Geoffrey Blain calmly removed his shoes, placed them at the rail, and stepped into the water. The cruisers moved away and Blain was left floating in his life vest with hundreds of others. That evening he noted how warm the sea was, though any exposed areas above the surface turned very cold. There were no sharks, but several men were bitten by sea snakes. The next morning two Japanese destroyers appeared. Blain later thought how ironic it was that they were so pleased at the time to climb up on a solid deck.
The destroyer Inazuma, under Lt. Cdr. Takeuchi Hajime, picked up 376 survivors, while Yamakaze, skippered by Lt. Cdr. Hamanaka Shuichi, rescued about 300 British seamen. Said Blain, “The conduct of the Japanese sailors was exemplary, and it was the high point of Japanese behavior during my three and one-half years in captivity.” As they headed for Bandjarmasin, they were cared for and given a meal of condensed milk and biscuits. “This standard of treatment,” said Blain, “was not to last.”16
As Exeter and Encounter succumbed, the old World War I four-stacker Pope seemed to have a chance to escape as she beat her way back to the east. But old age, as much as Japanese near-misses, caught up with her. Ammunition was exhausted. The brick walls of the number three boiler had caved in from repeated concussions. One underwater blast gashed the hull. The port propeller shaft went out of line and was shut down. Bomb blasts had opened up seams in the hull and water rapidly filled the compartments. The aft weather deck was awash before Lt. Cdr. Welford C. Blinn gave the order to abandon ship. Demolition charges were set and Pope was on her way to the bottom when a last shell hit her upturned bow, applying the coup de grâce.
The cruisers pulled