Death on the Hellships. Gregory F. Michno
already docked in the harbor. An officer spoke to him. “I am sorry we could not make you more comfortable aboard this ship. When you go ashore you will learn true Japanese hospitality.”
Once ashore, however, they were all thrown in a prison. The cells contained a few buckets—some for drinking water, others for toilets. The farther from the ship they got, Michel thought, the worse their situation grew. Soon, Pope’s sailors discovered that other cells held men from the Exeter. Two weeks later they were all marched to the outskirts of Makassar to a prison camp that held captured Dutch troops. To their surprise, they also saw men from the Perch. Michel met a classmate from the Naval Academy, Jake Vandegrift, and his old instructor, Commander Hurt. They were allowed to move in together. It might have been cause for celebration, were it not for the fact that they were all POWs.19
After a few weeks of incarceration they received notice that a number of men would be sent to Japan. Thirty-two senior British and American officers were rounded up, including all five from Perch, four from Pope, and nine from Exeter. All the commanding officers went, along with communications and gunnery officers, plus some enlisted radiomen. Apparently the Japanese were selecting those most likely to have knowledge of war plans and codes. Perch sailor Sam Simpson recalled that Commander Hurt kindly divided all his remaining money among his crew; each man received sixty cents.
The departing prisoners looked like hobos, bearded and dressed in ill-fitting, cast-off civilian clothing perhaps looted from the Dutch. The Maru Ichi (one) left Makassar about 2 April 1942, northbound for Japan.20 The ship sailed to Yokohama, via Takao, and everyone was taken to Ofuna Camp for interrogation. The Perch’s Jake Vandegrift was questioned about his submarine’s sonar gear. He pretended not to know what they were talking about. When pressed, he admitted that sonar was used for detection of ships, something they already knew. When asked how it worked, Vandegrift again pleaded ignorance. They asked what he did when it needed repair; he answered that it was sent to the sub tender to be fixed. They asked him why, if he was in charge of this equipment, he didn’t he even want to know how it worked. Vandegrift replied that he never liked his job and he was always off relaxing in Manila. At this, the interrogator stood up and shouted, “Get out. You are a disgrace to the American Navy.” Blinn’s and Hurt’s ignorance was not so readily accepted, and they were roughed up. Finally, after the Japanese had extracted all the information they could, the shaken prisoners were sent to their new home in Zentsuji. Nine of Perch’s crew would die as POWs.21
JAPANESE STRATEGY
The ABDA fleet was unsuccessful in keeping the Japanese off Java. Troops landed on opposite ends of the island and fought their way inland. The Perth and Houston had gone down in the Battle of Sunda Strait, after making a good fight against numerous destroyers and cruisers of the invasion’s covering force. Perth lost half her crew, but 320 men finally made it to land. Houston sank twenty minutes later. More than 600 went down with her, but 368 of her crew made the Java shore. Many of those who reached land were captured by the Javanese and turned over to the Japanese invaders.
Finding resistance hopeless, the Dutch governor and Gen. Hein ter Poorten surrendered their forces, about 25,000 men, along with a mediocre Indonesian Home Guard force of 40,000, on 8 March. The 7,000 British, Australian, and American troops on Java were forced to follow suit. Commonwealth units included two veteran Australian battalions that had fought in the Middle East and a squadron of British 3d Hussars. Most of the Americans, about 550 of them, belonged to the 2d Battalion, 131st Field Artillery Regiment, 36th Division—the “Lost Battalion.”
In Sumatra, escapees from Singapore had been streaming to the north and west coasts in the hope of catching ships to Ceylon. However, about 1,200 British escapees were rounded up in Padang and thrown in a Dutch barracks with men of the 18th Division and even sailors off the sunken Prince of Wales and Repulse. Swept up on Sumatra were also civilian escapees from Singapore, New Zealanders, and Royal Air Force (RAF) men without their planes. Farther north, some diehard Dutch troops fought on for three weeks after General ter Poorten surrendered his forces on Java, holding out near Kota Cane before giving up. The Japanese were aided by Indonesian rebels who did not want their land “scorched” by the retreating Dutch.22
How might this new wealth of prisoners fit in with future Japanese plans? The great majority of Japanese divisions had always been kept in China, where they had waged war for several years. Yet the Chinese would not crack. Supplies helping to sustain them came through the “back door,” trucked along the tenuous Burma Road or flown over the “Hump” of the Himalayas in cargo planes. The Japanese could never conquer China while these reinforcement routes were open. Japan took Malaya with relative ease, and her occupation of Thailand was made even easier when the two countries signed a treaty in December 1941, permitting stationing and transit of Japanese troops. Japan was now poised on the Burma border, but crossing over was not easy due to the mountainous spine with four-thousand-foot peaks and steep river chasms separating the countries. Nevertheless, Japanese troops struggled over the mountains, and once in the relatively flat land beyond, hastened their drive across Burma to the Indian border.
Possession of Burma was far from being a panacea; on the contrary, it brought on a host of new problems. At the far end of its empire, Japan was now next door to British and Indian bases and open to counterattack. Poor land connections meant that sea communications were critical. Rangoon, near the mouths of the Irrawaddy and Chindwin Rivers, was the key to land communication in Burma. But to hold Rangoon, one had to control the Andaman Sea and much of the eastern Indian Ocean. It could perhaps be done, but it would take great number of ships and escorts. A round-trip sea journey from Singapore to Rangoon was more than twenty-two hundred miles. Japan started the war with about 6 million tons of shipping. She captured about 800,000 additional tons. Even so, by the end of the initial Burma campaign, in May 1942, Japan had lost about 314,000 tons of shipping. In other words, supplying Burma by sea was potentially a costly endeavor.
The distance from Bangkok to Rangoon by sea is about 2,000 miles; by land it is only 350 miles. Why not connect the two port cities by land? The route would be protected from Allied naval interception, and supplies along it could be moved much more quickly. A good railway already existed between Singapore and Bangkok; in fact, rails stretched west 40 miles from Bangkok to Ban Pong, and from Rangoon east to Moulmein and Thanbuyzayat. The gap between railheads was only about 250 miles. Why not extend the railway over the mountains and connect the railheads? The route had been explored before, by European powers, but the dense, hostile jungle, the engineering problems, and the high costs in dollars and, very likely, in human lives had been more than enough reasons to shelve the idea. Now the war brought a new imperative. There were mountains, jungles, tigers, pythons, kraits, scorpions, monsoons, floods, and diseases to contend with. The human cost, however, would be relatively insignificant: Japan had a great labor pool at its fingertips.23
The contemplated Burma-Thailand Railway was not the only project that could employ prisoner labor. With every Japanese soldier needed at the front, prisoners could be used for scores of other tasks: to build and repair roads, load and unload ships, construct and maintain airfields, and toil in the mines and factories of the empire itself. In April 1942, the Japanese began marshaling their prisoners north for the preparations that would culminate in the great railway project. The move would require an increase in rail and sea voyages.
NORTH TO BURMA AND THAILAND
After the fall of Singapore, British and Australian prisoners were moved to various barracks at Changi, on the northeast tip of the island. The Indians were housed separately and were exhorted to break their allegiance to Britain, change sides, and join the pro-Japanese Indian National Army. About 40,000 out of 45,000 switched, becoming guards of their old masters or fighting directly against the British in Burma. On 4 April 1942, 1,125 British prisoners from Changi, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Hugonin, were sent by rail up the Malay Peninsula to Bangkok and east to Saigon in French Indochina. They worked in the area for a year before half of them were sent back to Thailand to build the railway.
The next party to move north was designated A Force, a group of about 3,000 Australians, mostly from 22 Infantry Brigade, under forty-nine-year-old