Category Archives: war

by | 3 April 2007 · 8:53 am

POWs Not Quite Ready for Liberation, 1945

[Robert J.] Body finally got the picture—his planned escape had been trumped by a full-scale rescue. The American Army had beaten him to the draw by no more than a half hour. Yet like many of the other prisoners, Body wasn’t sure where he was supposed to go. Some Rangers were yelling, “Head for the cut fence!” while others were saying, “Head for the main gate!” Not only that, the prisoners were thoroughly confused about what the Rangers meant by the “main gate.” It was a basic orientation problem. For the past three years, the main gate had always meant the gate to the American compound, not the central exit of the entire prison. This ultimate portal to the outside world was generally viewed as a forbidden concept, something one didn’t talk about because it was depressing and futile and could all too easily lead to subversive thoughts that might get a prisoner shot. The area around the main gate was strictly out of bounds, a dangerous piece of real estate, a dangerous idea….

As the precious minutes ticked by, the Rangers became more and more irritated by the strange stubbornness of the POWs. They didn’t seem to understand the urgency of the situation. “I was getting annoyed,” recalled Alvie Robbins. “I’d say to them, ‘Listen, I’ve got a job to do here. I can’t spend a lot of time arguing with you. There’s thousands of Japanese just up the road. We gotta get out of here in a hurry.’ ” In some cases, the Rangers actually had to use physical force. “We just turned them around and booted ’em,” said Lester Malone. “We couldn’t fool around and explain nothing. They just didn’t want to believe we were Americans.” One of the prisoners Malone “booted” was Herbert Ott, the camp veterinarian. “I told him, get the hell out of here. I just turned him toward the gate and kicked him on out.”

Dr. Ralph Hibbs was another prisoner who needed a little physical convincing. “What the hell is going on?” Hibbs shouted at three Rangers who came bounding down the path toward him “with their tommy guns blazing” from their hips. “Where’d you come from? Are you guerrillas?”

“We’re Rangers—General Krueger’s boys.”

“What are Rangers?” Hibbs demanded. He was taxing their patience. Finally, one of them picked up the doctor, muscled him around, and gave him “a ten-foot kick squarely in the ass.”

The most recalcitrant prisoner of all was Hibbs’s immediate superior, Colonel Duckworth, the American commander of Cabanatuan. Duckworth was digging in his heels, refusing to go, even refusing to let the Rangers escort others out. The colonel, who’d been suddenly awakened by the shooting and still seemed perplexed by the whole fracas, was strutting through the compound buttonholing Rangers and shouting in their faces. He seemed unwilling to surrender authority to people whose identities and motives had been inadequately explained to him. Alvie Robbins was almost shocked by Duckworth’s belligerence. “He says, ‘I’m Colonel Duckworth, and I’m in charge here! Who the hell are you!’ I said, ‘We’re Americans. We’ve come for you.’ He said, ‘You can’t do this! You’re going to get us killed. The Japanese told us no escapes! No one leaves here until I say they do.’ I said, ‘You go see Captain Prince,’ and I went on about my business.” Duckworth continued storming about the camp, demanding explanations, imploring the raiders to cease and desist. Finally, another Ranger grabbed him by the arm and said, “With all due respect, you are not in charge here, General MacArthur is. Now I suggest you head to the main gate before we kick your ass there. I’ll apologize in the morning.'” Still grousing about the situation, Duckworth shambled out the American gate. Plagued by night blindness like so many others, he promptly fell into a ditch and fractured his right arm.

SOURCE: Ghost Soldiers: The Epic Account of World War II’s Greatest Rescue Mission, by Hampton Sides (Anchor Books, 2002), pp. 276-278

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by | 2 April 2007 · 8:00 pm

POW Camp Interregnum, Philippines, 1945

For a brief period in early January, the men of Cabanatuan camp ate quite well, principally as a result of their having robbed the Japanese stores [after most of the Japanese garrison moved out]. And eating well, they found, could work miracles. The sap of life was returning. Astonishing things began to happen to their bodies. For some, the sharp throbbing aches of beriberi diminished. Their night blindness improved. With stronger immune systems, the men recovered from all sorts of miscellaneous low-grade infections that had persistently tormented them. Tropical ulcers shrank, rheumy eyes cleared up. Odd sounds—whistling, humming, laughter—were heard around camp. Here and there, one could see small instances of wasted motion, the superfluous dips and gesticulations of a spirit that abides in vitamins and calories. Atrophied interests revived. The men began to think about sex, and in the mornings they noticed with some curiosity that they were occasionally waking up with erections again.

Mainly, though, they put on weight, as much as a pound a day. It seemed impossible that a body could accrue mass and girth so quickly, but nursed on a steady diet of canned fish and syrupy Pet milk, everyone in camp experienced almost miraculous gains. Ralph Rodriguez, who ordinarily weighed 150 pounds but had plummeted to 90, was back to 120 in the two short weeks following the storehouse raids.

With new stamina, the prisoners grew bolder. One day a few of the men spotted a Brahma cow grazing in the fields outside the fence. Its Filipino owner was nowhere in evidence, and the Japanese, cloistered in their barracks, didn’t seem to be paying attention. All the guard towers were empty. The large-humped cow quietly cropped what little grass it could find in the dry field, its hide spasmodically twitching to shoo off the flies. With the peculiar malice of the protein-starved, the men strode out the gate, slipped a rope around the animal’s neck, and pulled it into camp. This first step seemed like a move of Promethean audacity: No one had set foot outside the Cabanatuan fence on his own before and lived to tell of it.

Straightaway, Dr. Ott was summoned. The veterinarian looked the animal over to make sure it wasn’t obviously diseased. The cow was stunned with a large hammer and then Ott slit its throat. A bucket was placed under the dying animal to collect every ounce of blood. A large group of prisoners looked on as the Brahma cow was cut open, and some of the men wept with joy as they joined in the butchering. Dr. Ott inspected the condition of the organs to look for infections or other abnormalities. When he sliced open the liver, trematode worms boiled out by the hundreds. These writhing parasites were better known as liver flukes, common in the Philippines and harmless when ingested as long as the meat was thoroughly cooked.

Dr. Ott gave the cow his seal of approval and a feast was planned on the spot. Standing in a circle around the fire, the men cooked and ate the flesh within a few hours. They prepared an immense vat of beef stew. They fried up the clotted blood or simmered it to make a consomme. They sucked the marrow from the bones, and boiled the hooves to make a broth. By the day’s end, every part had been eaten. “We couldn’t imagine it, a whole animal for five hundred people,” Dr. Hibbs wrote. “The soup even had fat floating on top of it.”

Savoring the foreign sensation of full bellies, some of the men spontaneously threw a party. They sang songs and passed around bottles of confiscated sake. Conversation turned appreciatively to women, their shapes and smells and other attributes. Someone brought out a radio that had been swiped from the Japanese side of the camp and they listened to KGEI out of San Francisco. In the glow of good food and drink, the men of Cabanatuan caught glimpses of a life with grace notes. They were surrounded by Japanese who seemed to wish them no harm. The war was radically tilting in their favor. Even as they listened to a radio signal from home, the vast American armies were coming, after long delay, to fetch them. They were drinking a wine made from a grain they hated, the distillate of a culture they hated even more, and yet somehow they found pleasure in it.

Then a news bulletin on the radio confirmed a rumor they’d been hearing for two days—that General Krueger’s Sixth Army had landed on Luzon and was driving south toward Manila. Liberation could be any day. “There were prayers and tears of rejoicing,” recalled Abie Abraham. “Many people danced, or at least they tried to. It was quite a startling sight to see those skeletons stand up and make brave attempts at clogging and Highland flings as the Japanese radio blared through the night.”

The morning after the party, life at Cabanatuan continued more or less as usual. As welcome as it was, the new dispensation left the prisoners acutely suspicious. They sensed that the favorable situation in camp, the seeming beneficence or at least indifference of the several dozen Japanese in residence, was but a temporary aberration to be enjoyed while it lasted.

And they were right: In mid-January, the picture began to change abruptly. The population on the Japanese side dramatically swelled.

SOURCE: Ghost Soldiers: The Epic Account of World War II’s Greatest Rescue Mission, by Hampton Sides (Anchor Books, 2002), pp. 243-245

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by | 31 March 2007 · 10:17 am

The Bataan "Hike": Premeditated or Negligent?

Yet for all its horrors, the march was not a premeditated atrocity. For the most part, the brutalities occurred in a piecemeal fashion against a backdrop of escalating confusion and seething racial hatred. Miscues, bad intelligence, cultural misunderstandings, sweltering heat, and a devolution of Imperial Army discipline all conspired to create an environment of tragic drift. The Bataan Death March, as the event later came to be called by the American media (most prisoners at the time simply called it, with characteristic understatement, “the Hike”), took place not according to plan, but rather as a result of the chaos that flourished under a plan that was fatally flawed. Once it became apparent that the original evacuation scheme was radically out of step with the circumstances on the ground, the Japanese failed to alter the plan to accommodate new facts. Their estimate of the number of prisoners was off, incredibly, by as many as 60,000 people, and their assessment of the health and stamina of the Fil-American forces was equally off base.

Realizing this, the Japanese should have instantly begun a wholesale rethinking of the logistics. Arrangements would have to be made for more vehicles, more food, more hospitals. Most obvious of all, more time would be needed to complete the move. But the Japanese Army, for all its many strengths, had rarely demonstrated a talent for reversing course in midstream once an error was recognized. Steeped in a rigid Confucian-influenced culture in which an order was considered final and any attempt to change it impugned the wisdom of the superior who conceived and issued it, the Japanese war planners were bold in action but often deficient in the improvisational skills needed for quick and supple reaction. Instead of alerting General Homma to the new exigencies on Bataan, the planners forcibly tried to make the old provisions—and timetables—work. The results were catastrophic.

For whatever reason, the Japanese elected not to honor General King’s request that American vehicles be used to transport his men to prison camp. In truth, some of the trucks had been irreparably sabotaged by Americans who mistakenly thought they were supposed to destroy everything of potential value the day before the surrender. Many of the American vehicles were confiscated for military purposes, and were later seen towing Japanese artillery pieces toward southern Bataan. The Japanese Army was not heavily motorized; it remained, to a great extent, a foot army. This was partly a matter of choice and partly a matter of necessity, for Japan suffered from a desperate shortage of oil and enjoyed access to few outside sources of petroleum. Japan’s extreme oil scarcity, exacerbated by the oil embargo that had been put in place by the United States and other Western powers before the war, had been one of the major factors that precipitated the outbreak of hostilities. Capturing the oil wells of the Dutch East Indies became Japan’s paramount goal upon initiating the war. Because every drop of gasoline was considered virtually sacred, the Japanese Army chose to invest little in troop-carrying trucks, jeeps, and other modes of ground transport. What little gasoline existed was reserved primarily for planes, ships, and tanks. Soldiers were expected to hike long distances—twenty-five or thirty miles a day—as a matter of course. Marching represented a much more significant part of theJapanese training regimen than it did for the American foot soldier. Japanese troops generally marched more often, for longer duration, and at a faster pace than did the Americans, who relied heavily on vehicles in large part due to the U.S. Army’s ready access to cheap and plentiful gas. This major difference in the two armies contributed to a gulf in the perception of what constituted a reasonable distance for a day’s march. The Japanese unrealistically expected the starved and diseased Filipino-American forces to meet the Imperial Army’s norms for marching—again, with tragic consequences.

There was another major cultural difference that influenced many encounters between the Japanese and their new captives: The two armies entertained radically different views on the matter of corporal punishment. Beating had long been an acceptable and routine method of discipline within the Japanese Army. Soldiers could strike subordinates with no questions asked and no explanation warranted. The slightest distinction between ranks was of critical importance because it meant the difference between who could inflict blows, and who could expect to receive them. This sort of institutionalized brutality had a tendency to work its way down the ranks to the lowliest private. One can imagine what would happen when an enlisted man, hardened by this psychology of top-down violence, found himself suddenly thrown into a foreign and not altogether distasteful situation in which he was the superior, in charge of a group of helpless prisoners. For some, the temptation to beat proved irresistible. For others, beating was only the beginning.

It was also true that many of the Imperial Army soldiers were themselves desperately hungry and ravaged by the same diseases that ravaged their captives. Although they hadn’t deteriorated as far as the Americans had, many Japanese soldiers were showing signs of emaciation and battle fatigue. “We were all starving,” recalled Shiro Asada, a Fourteenth Army soldier on Bataan. “We had dried fish paste and pickles to eat, that was all. Canned goods like the Americans had were a luxury to us. It seemed to us that some of the Americans were better fed than we were.” As a matter of official policy, the Imperial Army showed a remarkable reluctance to provision its own troops. Army quartermasters provided only a bare minimurn of such staples as miso and rice, but soldiers were expected to forage and steal to make up the caloric deficit. Thus, swiping rations or canteens from American prisoners wasn’t merely a matter of the strong taking advantage of the weak—it was practically an Imperial Army imperative. The Americans, already living so close to the bone, would have to make do with even less, for how could an army that barely fed its own be expected to provide adequate meals for 78,000 enemy prisoners?

SOURCE: Ghost Soldiers: The Epic Account of World War II’s Greatest Rescue Mission, by Hampton Sides (Anchor Books, 2002), pp. 91-93

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by | 28 March 2007 · 6:09 pm

Shall I Confess to Being a Capitalist or a Prostitute?

In front of a crowd full of sleepy faces, my mother was directed to speak about herself, not as a form of self-introduction, but in a confession of her past sins against the Communist party and the new government. Standing alone onstage with a microphone in her hand, my mother rushed through the major events of her life, trying to convey enough sincerity to keep herself out of trouble. She acknowledged her guilt and ignorance during the Republican era, and praised the enlightened attitudes she had since learned. Her Communist vocabulary had improved a great deal through her encounters with Mr. Tran, and she incorporated his words into her speech, maintaining her eye contact with everyone except Lam. He sat among a group of men, acting as inconspicuous as possible.

When my mother had finished, the community leader stepped up to the podium. Unlike Mr. Tran, who had earned his position through spying, the new leader was a high-ranking officer in the Vietcong’s military. He was in his early fifties, with thin silver hair and a catchy smile. He had spent the past ten years of his life in the Truong Son Mountains, trekking the Ho Chi Minh trail. Rumors had it that he was now waiting to be reunited with his wife and children.

Taking the microphone in his hand, he said, “Thank you, Miss Khuon. What a story! Does anyone care to give any feedback? It is time for some constructive criticism, so without further ado, let’s start. May I remind you that each time anyone among you makes a statement, he or she will earn a point toward community work.”

A man stood up. My mother recognized him as one of her regular customers at her bank during her pre-Revolutionary days. A chill shot through her, since his appearance conjured up in her mind the hundreds of angry customers who had confronted her only a short time ago. As for the man, earning up to thirty points would exempt him from a day of volunteer work in the jungle; however, he also understood my mother’s capacity to hurt him, through her knowledge of his past business affairs.

He cleared his throat and said, “It was a sincere story, told from the heart. But are you leaving out any details? I want to know more about your personal life. Do you have any children? And how many? Have you been married?”

The Communist leader looked at my mother, waiting for her reply. “Well, to tell the truth,” my mother began, mechanically touching her stomach through her blouse, “I have never been married. I have two sons, and a new child on the way.”

“Tell us about your sons,” a voice said. It belonged to a woman who lived in a farm a few blocks away from my house. She was the wife of the town butcher.

“What do you want to know about my sons?” my mother said. “They are still very young.”

The butcher’s wife stood, looking up and down at my mother. Then she blurted out, “I’ve been watching you since you moved into this neighborhood. I don’t need you to tell me how old your children are. What I want to know is the nature of their ethnicity. Are they half-breeds or not? Because if they are, it is an issue to us.”

“Yes, they are.” My mother swallowed.

“Then how did you get these children—through a catalogue?”

“I got them the same way you got your children, through intercourse, of course.” My mother’s answer stirred up a round of laughter in the crowd.

The community leader warned my mother, “Behave yourself, lady. This isn’t a nightclub.”

The butcher’s wife turned bright red but was not giving up. “Under the Imperialist government,” she said fervently, “there are two possible ways for a person to have had mixed-blood children: through prostitution or through adoption. You have admitted earlier that fucking was how you got them, so you must be a hooker.” She ended triumphantly, looking around the audience for affirmation.

My mother swallowed again. She knew at that moment she had to make up her mind about her past status before these strangers. They wanted to label her so that later, they could justify any action taken against her. What was the lesser of the two evils she could admit to being a lowly prostitute or an arrogant capitalist? To the new regime, capitalism was considered the higher crime. Fifteen seconds dragged by before she could speak. Finally, with the crowd’s full attention, my mother nodded in agreement. “Yes, I was,” she said. “A prostitute is exactly what I was. And I am utterly ashamed of it.”

SOURCE: The Unwanted: A Memoir of Childhood, by Kien Nguyen (Back Bay, 2002), pp. 109-111

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by | 25 March 2007 · 10:05 am

Trying to Leave Saigon, April 1975

SAIGON WAS IN its last free hours. The smell of chaos filled the air, and confusion was written all over the faces of the people on the street. Groups of armed convicts were breaking into houses, screaming up and down the streets, and shooting into the sky. Furniture flew onto the street, blocking the traffic. Discarded items were set on fire, either by accident or purposely; the smoke and flames added to the terror. Soldiers ran in all directions, tossing their rifles into trash bins, and stripping off their uniforms as if they were on fire. Some children who had lost their parents huddled on a street corner, crying. Above their heads, fire was consuming a coconut tree, and sparks of flame rained down on them. From the car window, they looked as if they were being burned alive in some sacrificial ritual.

We did not get far. The streets were blocked by hordes of desperate people, all with the same futile intention of getting to the airport. Just as we reached the freeway, a painful truth dawned on us: we weren’t going anywhere. As far as we could see, the highway was clogged with civilian vehicles and military tanks. The hellish shriek of panic was dreadful in the hot air. People were abandoning their cars, running over each other, jumping on top of one another, climbing onto anything within their reach in order to move forward. Dead bodies lay in contorted positions, grinning horribly at the living. A few steps away from our van, a pregnant woman lay dead near the sidewalk. Her stomach had been ripped open by many hasty footsteps, and next to her lay her dying fetus, moving weakly under a dark mob of curious flies. A pool of dark blood beneath her dried slowly under the harsh sun. My mother quivered and recoiled in her seat, pulling us closer to her.

All along the freeway, people flowed like water down a stream. The crying of lost children looking for their parents, the screams of people being robbed, the songs blaring from the radio, the gunshots, the wailing of the wounded victims all blended into an incoherent symphony of grief. And like the humidity evaporating in the air, this collective keening lifted higher and higher, mixing with the noxious tear gas in a dark cloud of suffering.

Inside the car, my brother and I were too afraid to make a sound. Lam no longer looked relaxed. His long hair fell over his forehead, which was slick with sweat. His fingers, which held to the wheel tightly, were white at the knuckles. His head shook uncontrollably with each breath he took, and his eyes were opened wide, exaggerating the whiteness of his eyeballs.

Lam let out a loud, frustrated scream, as he pounded the horn in a fury. He turned to face my mother. “We have to get the fuck out of the car,” he spat. “This is not going to work just sitting here. You take the children and move.”

My mother’s lips tightened into a straight line. She grasped my arm, and I felt her fingernails dig deeply into my flesh.

“Are you insane?” she replied. “Look at these people! I am not leaving this car.”

Lam leaned within an inch of my mother’s face. I could see his jugular veins, engorged with blood like two swollen earthworms, as they stared at each other. At last Lam broke the silence.

“Then give me my damned ticket and my passport. I am sick of listening to you, wretched woman. I am leaving with or without you.”

My mother did not respond. “Now!” he cried.

The scream startled my mother. She shook her head as if to clear it, then reached for her purse.

Lam’s eyes followed her hands. “Give me your ticket and passport as well,” he blurted. “I am taking Loan with me.”

“Why her?” my mother asked. Lam focused on something invisible on the floor. “She is having my baby.”

Loan let out a small cry. My mother ignored her. After exhaling a deep breath, she gazed at Lam calmly.

“So am I. How do you explain this to me? Can’t you see that I am also pregnant with your child? ” she asked.

“So what? You don’t need me. You never did,” he said bitterly. “Trust me, you will do just fine.”

He yanked the purse out of my mother’s hand, searching intensely until he found what he was looking for. In addition to the papers, he grabbed a thick bundle of cash. Waving them teasingly in front of my mother, Lam said, “You just consider this payment for my devoted services.”

Behind my mother, Loan finally spoke up. “I am not leaving with you, Lam. I am staying here with the mistress.”

He turned to look at her as if she were deranged. Then, his lips pulled back in a distorted smile. “Fine, you stupid servant. Stay. Be my guest.”

He picked out my mother’s passport and ticket and threw them together with her purse back in her lap. Keeping the money and his own passport, Lam rammed them into the front pocket of his pants. Then, the smile returned to his face. He sank back in his seat, adjusting his clothing, before opening the door to let himself out. Oddly, he turned back one last time to look at us.

“Have a nice life, all of you,” was all he said before he disappeared into the crowd.

SOURCE: The Unwanted: A Memoir of Childhood, by Kien Nguyen (Back Bay, 2002), pp. 25-27

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by | 16 March 2007 · 5:43 pm

Peleliu D-Day + 1, 16 September 1944

Bloody Nose Ridge dominated the entire airfield. The Japanese had concentrated their heavy weapons on high ground; these were directed from observation posts at elevations as high as three hundred feet from which they could look down on us as we advanced. I could see men moving ahead of my squad, but I didn’t know whether our battalion, 3/5 [3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment], was moving across behind 2/5 and then wheeling to the right. There were also men about twenty yards to our rear.

We moved rapidly in the open, amid craters and coral rubble, through ever increasing enemy fire. I saw men to my right and left running bent as low as possible. The shells screeched and whistled, exploding all around us. In many respects it was more terrifying than the landing, because there were no vehicles to carry us along, not even the thin steel sides of an amtrac for protection. We were exposed, running on our own power through a veritable shower of deadly metal and the constant crash of explosions.

For me the attack resembled World War I movies I had seen of suicidal Allied infantry attacks through shell fire on the Western Front. I clenched my teeth, squeezed my carbine stock, and recited over and over to myself, “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff comfort me….”

The sun bore down unmercifully, and the heat was exhausting. Smoke and dust from the barrage limited my vision. The ground seemed to sway back and forth under the concussions. I felt as though I were floating along in the vortex of some unreal thunderstorm. Japanese bullets snapped and cracked, and tracers went by me on both sides at waist height. This deadly small-arms fire seemed almost insignificant amid the erupting shells. Explosions and the hum and the growl of shell fragments shredded the air. Chunks of blasted coral stung my face and hands while steel fragments spattered down on the hard rock like hail on a city street. Everywhere shells flashed like giant firecrackers.

Through the haze I saw Marines stumble and pitch forward as they got hit. I then looked neither right nor left but just straight to my front. The farther we went, the worse it got. The noise and concussion pressed in on my ears like a vise. I gritted my teeth and braced myself in anticipation of the shock of being struck down at any moment. It seemed impossible that any of us could make it across. We passed several craters that offered shelter, but I remembered the order to keep moving. Because of the superb discipline and excellent esprit of the Marines, it had never occurred to us that the attack might fail.

About halfway across, I stumbled and fell forward. At that instant a large shell exploded to my left with a flash and a roar. A fragment ricocheted off the deck and growled over my head as I went down. On my right, Snafu let out a grunt and fell as the fragment struck him. As he went down, he grabbed his left side. I crawled quickly to him. Fortunately the fragment had spent much of its force, and luckily hit against Snafu’s heavy web pistol belt. The threads on the broad belt were frayed in about an inch-square area.

I knelt beside him, and we checked his side. He had only a bruise to show for his incredible luck. On the deck I saw the chunk of steel that had hit him. It was about an inch square and a half inch thick. I picked up the fragment and showed it to him. Snafu motioned toward his pack. Terrified though I was amid the hellish chaos, I calmly juggled the fragment around in my hands—it was still hot—and dropped it into his pack. He yelled something that sounded dimly like, “Let’s go.” I reached for the carrying strap of the mortar, but he pushed my hand away and lifted the gun to his shoulder. We got up and moved on as fast as we could. Finally we got across and caught up with other members of our company who lay panting and sweating amid low bushes on the northeastern side of the airfield.

How far we had come in the open I never knew, but it must have been several hundred yards. Everyone was visibly shaken by the thunderous barrage we had just come through. When I looked into the eyes of those fine Guadalcanal and Cape Gloucester veterans, some of America’s best, I no longer felt ashamed of my trembling hands and almost laughed at myself with relief.

To be shelled by massed artillery and mortars is absolutely terrifying, but to be shelled in the open is terror compounded beyond the belief of anyone who hasn’t experienced it. The attack across Peleliu’s airfield was the worst combat experience I had during the entire war. It surpassed, by the intensity of the blast and shock of the bursting shells, all the subsequent horrifying ordeals on Peleliu and Okinawa.

SOURCE: With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa, by E. B. Sledge (Oxford U. Press, 1990), pp. 79-80 (reviewed here: “A biology professor after the war at the University of Montevallo in Alabama, Sledge brings an academic style to the text that flows easily from chapter to chapter.”)

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by | 16 March 2007 · 5:18 pm

Souvenir Hunting on Peleliu, September 1944

During this lull the men stripped the packs and pockets of the enemy dead for souvenirs. This was a gruesome business, but Marines executed it in a most methodical manner. Helmet headbands were checked for flags, packs and pockets were emptied, and gold teeth were extracted. Sabers, pistols, and hari-kari knives were highly prized and carefully care for until they could be sent to the folks back home or sold to some pilot or sailor for a fat price. Rifles and other larger weapons usually were rendered useless and thrown aside. They were too heavy to carry in addition to our own equipment. They would be picked up later as fine souvenirs by the rear-echelon troops. The men in the rifle companies had a lot of fun joking about the hair-raising stories these people, who had never seen a live Japanese or been shot at, would probably tell after the war.

The men gloated over, compared, and often swapped their prizes. It was a brutal, ghastly ritual the likes of which have occurred since ancient times on battlefields where the antagonists have possessed a profound mutual hatred. It was uncivilized, as is all war, and was carried out with that particular savagery that characterized the struggle between the Marines and the Japanese. It wasn’t simply souvenir hunting or looting the enemy dead; it was more like Indian warriors taking scalps.

While I was removing a bayonet and scabbard from a dead Japanese, I noticed a Marine near me. He wasn’t in our mortar section but had happened by and wanted to get in on the spoils. He came up to me dragging what I assumed to be a corpse. But the Japanese wasn’t dead. He had been wounded severely in the back and couldn’t move his arms; otherwise he would have resisted to his last breath.

The Japanese’s mouth glowed with huge gold-crowned teeth, and his captor wanted them. He put the point of his kabar [knife] on the base of a tooth and hit the handle with the palm of his hand. Because the Japanese was kicking his feet and thrashing about, the knife point glanced off the tooth and sank deeply into the victim’s mouth. The Marine cursed him and with a slash cut his cheeks open to each ear. He put his foot on the sufferer’s lower jaw and tried again. Blood poured out of the soldier’s mouth. He made a gurgling noise and thrashed wildly. I shouted, “Put the man out of his misery.” All I got for an answer was a cussing out. Another Marine ran up, put a bullet in the enemy soldier’s brain, and ended his agony. The scavenger grumbled and continued extracting his prizes undisturbed.

Such was the incredible cruelty that decent men could commit when reduced to a brutish existence in their fight for survival amid the violent death, terror, tension, fatigue, and filth that was the infantryman’s war. Our code of conduct toward the enemy differed drastically from that prevailing back at the division CP.

SOURCE: With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa, by E. B. Sledge (Oxford U. Press, 1990), pp. 118, 120

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by | 10 March 2007 · 7:15 am

Rev. Sgt. Usaia Sotutu: Fijian missionary, spy, soldier

One of the most intriguing people whose name keeps popping up in accounts of coastwatching in the Solomon Islands during World War II is Usaia Sotutu, a Fijian missionary who volunteered to help the coastwatchers. His name appears (according to the index) in 18 different passages in the book I just finished reading, Coast Watching in WWII: Operations against the Japanese in the Solomon Islands, 1941–43, by A. B. Feuer (Stackpole, 2006).

Nevertheless, I can find no profile of him anywhere on the web—although there is another Usaia Sotutu born on 20 September 1947, a Fijian athlete who participated in the 1972 Olympics and the 1975 South Pacific Games, whom I presume to be among the children of Usaia and Margaret Sotutu. [They were not. See the correction below.—J.] So, in an effort to get a better sense of this remarkable man, I want to compile as much as I can in a blogpost, beginning with several passages from Feuer’s book.

[April 1942, p. 33] Friendly Fijian natives, led by Usaia Sotutu, hid the AIF [Australian Imperial Force] men from Japanese search parties. Usaia knew every inch of Buka Island and guided the soldiers to the western end of the [Buka] Passage. For several days, the Fijians kept the Army lads concealed until Usaia was able to find a few canoes. Then, under cover of night, he sneaked the coast watchers and their teleradio across the Passage to Soraken.

[June 1942, p. 40] While waiting for the air drop at Kunua, I again met with Father Herbert and Usaia Sotutu. Usaia was still keen on taking an active part in our cause and brought with him a half-caste lad—Anton Jossten. Like Usaia, Anton was very intelligent and spoke English fluently. They had an unusual proposition for me that had immediate appeal. Usaia had a following of educated natives who had been employed as teachers at the Methodist Mission. Usaia and Anton, with the assistance of this group, wanted to establish an espionage network to furnish intelligence regarding Japanese activity around the Buka Passage. The scheme had intriguing possibilities. The teachers were not known to be in any way connected with our coast watching activities. They could move about, within or near enemy lines, without suspicion. I gave Usaia the go-ahead to proceed with his plans. And, although both he and Anton were willing to work voluntarily, I gave them both to understand that I would try and have them enlisted—or put on the payroll in some other capacity.

[January 1943, p. 120] On the night of January 10, Usaia Sotutu and Corporal Sali secretly sneaked down the mountain into Soraken and set fire to every building and wharf. At dawn, the enemy arrived in force to view the gutted ruins…. I am convinced that our action delayed the Japanese occupation of Soraken.

[March 1943, p. 191] After reaching Namatoa, our detachment was split into three parties, each consisting of eight soldiers and a number of trusted natives. I also met Usaia Sotutu—a fine stamp of a man, six feet tall or over, whose wife Margaret and young children passed me as our boat, from the U.S.S. Gato, headed for the beach. Mrs. Sotutu, and her children, were on their way to safety aboard the submarine. I was among the first 12 Army personnel that arrived on this trip.

[July 1943, p. 201] On its second trip to Bougainville the [U.S.S.] Guardfish evacuated 23 people. In addition to Jack Read, the rescued personnel included Captain Eric Robinson, Usaia Sotutu, Anton Jossten, Sergeant Yauwika, Corporal Sali, Constables Sanei and Ena, and 15 other natives. The site chosen for the rescue of Jack Read and his party was at a point south of the Kiviki River. At 4 a.m. on July 30, Read and his men were transferred to a subchaser, and at 7 p.m., they reached Guadalcanal.

The New Zealand Electronic Text Centre‘s Official History of New Zealand in the Second World War 1939–45: The Pacific, chapter 10, section III, Battalions Move to the Solomons offers a glimpse of the Rev. Sgt. Usaia Sotutu’s later exploits.

Almost three years after its formation, 1 Battalion, Fiji Military Forces, sailed for the Solomons on 15 April 1943 in the USS President Hayes. Half the officers and many of the non-commissioned officers were New Zealanders, three of them former instructors lent to Fiji in November 1939. The battalion, commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel J. B. K. Taylor, who had served with the New Zealand Division in Egypt and France during the 1914–18 War and later joined the Fiji administration, reached Guadalcanal on 19 April and occupied a camp at Kukumbona. On 8 May, after the American command had complied with Taylor’s desire not to break up his unit into small groups for action in New Georgia, the battalion moved to a more agreeable camp site in the island of Florida. It remained there for five months, practising jungle tactics and landing exercises and carrying out such routine tasks as beach patrols and coastwatching….

When the Fiji Battalion landed [in Bougainville], American forces had established road blocks on these trails to prevent any surprise attacks from the main Japanese forces occuping the south and north-east coasts of Bougainville, with their principal concentrations round Buin, Kahili, and Kieta. The most disputed of these tracks was the Numa Numa Trail, which led through the mountains from the gorge of the Laruma River. Air observation by aeroplanes based on the Torokina and Piva airstrips, though valuable, was unreliable in country where ground movement could not be accurately discerned, so that all vital intelligence was obtained from patrols working through the rough country beyond the limits of the perimeter. Because of the desire to obtain as much intelligence information as possible without revealing their own strength, patrols were at first instructed not to fight unless they were forced to do so. Enemy patrols, on similar missions, worked down from the forest-clad hills towards the perimeter, so that these alert opposing groups, creeping through the jungle, continually tried to ambush each other and frequently succeeded….

A strong combined patrol from 129 US Infantry Regiment and 1 Fiji Battalion set out from the perimeter, but was driven back soon after it entered the rough hill country towards Sisivie and Tokua, two native villages which gave their names to the forest tracks leading to the garrison area from the rear. Almost simultaneously the Japanese began their attacks on road blocks established along the tracks covering the Ibu post. [Battalion commander Lt. Col.] Upton decided to evacuate the position and withdraw his force down the Ibu-Sisivie trail, which would bring him to the Laruma River and the Numa Numa Trail and so into the perimeter. Early on the morning of 15 February [1944] he despatched [Capt.] Corner from the outpost with the first section of the garrison, which included 120 native carriers with ammunition and radio equipment, and 100 native women and children from mountain villages who feared enemy reprisals….

Corner found his way blocked by determined Japanese attacks on the road posts and retired along the trail he had just traversed, taking up a defensive position at a ravine which offered the only good natural barrier. He was joined there later in the afternoon with the main force under Upton, who was confronted with a disturbing situation. All escape routes were blocked by the Japanese, who greatly outnumbered him, and no help was available from American or Fiji units from the perimeter. He had little time to decide how to get 400-odd men and 200 natives over a mountain range and down to the perimeter unknown to the Japanese, who were now pressing the battalion patrols blocking the tracks along which Upton’s force was extended. A Fijian sergeant, Usaia Sotutu [emphasis added], who had been a missionary on Bougainville for twenty years, saved the day. He remembered an old, disused track near the ravine and led the battalion along it, carefully camouflaging the entrance where it branched off the main trail the force had just used…. On 19 February the force reached the coast intact and with only one man wounded. In those four days, travelling slowly and with the utmost difficulty, the Ibu force climbed 5000 feet through dense forest drenched with rain, and carried arms and equipment, which included Vickers guns, 3-inch mortars, and food for more than 600 people—soldiers and natives.

It’s not clear where he ended up after the war (or even whether he survived it), but a Margaret Sotutu turns up in a photo of teachers at Ratu Kandavulevu School in Fiji in 1962, seated next to a Paula Sotutu, who went on to a distinguished career as a diplomat and public servant. The most recent source I could find on the Rev. Sgt. Usaia Sotutu is a speech on 27 August 2005 by Fijian Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase welcoming Papua New Guinea Prime Minister Michael Somare, whose delegation repatriated the remains of Sefanaia Sukanaivalu, a Fijian soldier who had died on Bougainville in 1944.

In the final decades of the 19th century, Fijian missionaries began to help in taking the Light of Christianity to your islands. We remember those soldiers of God today and give thanks for their service. Many settled, married and became part of village life. This missionary tradition continued until after the last War.

We have with us today Mr Paula Sotutu, a well-known and distinguished citizen of Fiji. Paula has a very personal perspective of the Fijian missionary experience in Bougainville. His father, Reverend Usaia Sotutu, was perhaps the most famous of those pioneering preachers. He spread the Word for 27 years in the Teop and Buin-Siwai areas and had many followers.

Paula, his brother and sisters, were born at the Buka Mission Hospital. He accompanied his father during many pastoral visits to his flock. Paula remembers clearly some of his father’s courageous exploits as a wartime coast watcher and guide to government officials and a small contingent of Australian troops.

Later, when Bougainville was retaken, he made his local knowledge available to Fijian troops, who were part of the invasion force. Mrs Sotutu and the children were smuggled to safety in a submarine in 1943. Reverend Sotutu stayed behind. He still had God’s work to do.

The following year Corporal Sefanaia Sukanaivalu, was awarded the Victoria Cross for giving his life at Bougainville to save his fellow soldiers.

For over 60 years, this dear and brave son of Fiji – our greatest war hero – has been buried at Rabaul.

UPDATE: David Sotutu, son of the Olympian Usaia Sotutu, offers a correction.

In your article you mentioned a Usaia Sotutu that was born on September 20, 1947 and participated in the Olympics and South Pacific Games.

He is my father. His parents were not Usaia and Margaret Sotutu. He is only named after Usaia Sotutu. His parents were Tevita Naiteitei and Akisi Buasega. He was born in the village of Tavea in Bua. He now lives in Tacoma, Washington, USA.

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by | 6 March 2007 · 8:16 am

Propaganda Battles in Bougainville, 1943

Early in January, the native situation began to take a turn for the worse. The people of Ruri really believed my propaganda that the death of their chief was caused by his wearing the armband of Nippon. They spread the story far and wide, and consequently many Japanese armbands were thrown away.

The natives of Sorem Village, three miles south of the [Buka] Passage, were very much pro-Japanese. They considered themselves very important people. They fraternized and drank whiskey with the Japs and were gullible to enemy promises of intermarriage after the war was over. Enticements such as these were standard Japanese methods of currying native favor.

The Sorem residents lured several Ruri men to their village, where they were captured and turned over to the Japanese as being pro-British. The prisoners were flogged and interned at the Passage. I quickly realized that unless this sort of thing was stopped, the Japanese sphere of influence would grow too rapidly and would soon interfere with our coast watching activities. I sent a message to Station KEN asking for Sorem Village to be bombed.

Mackenzie arranged for the attack to take place on the night of January 13. The plan called for a team of my boys to make their way under cover of darkness to the outskirts of town where daylight aerial reconnaissance had revealed a certain grass hut near the village. My men were instructed to lie in wait until they heard a plane approaching, then to set fire to the shack as a guide for the aircraft and to run as fast as possible away from the target area. The natives, led by Sergeant Yauwika, showed a lot of courage in volunteering for the mission, and it was executed to perfection.

A Catalina carried out the raid. The pilot made three runs over the village at 1,500 feet, dropping two 500-pound bombs, a cluster of incendiaries, and a couple of depth charges. This probably sounds like a powerful discharge of explosives on a small native settlement, but fortunately only one person was slightly wounded. However, the gesture and resulting shock value served our purpose.

Much to our astonishment, the surprise bombardment even unnerved the enemy. A few days after the attack on Sorem, the Japanese commander at the Passage summoned all the area native chiefs to Sohano where they were addressed by the commandant. He informed the people that U.S. forces were expected to invade northern Bougainville and that his troops might have to retreat for a few days until they could launch a counterattack.

In case of such an eventuality, the natives were ordered to assist and feed the Japanese soldiers. Beach villages were instructed to institute a system of constant vigilance—reporting anything unusual to Sohano immediately. The chieftains were also warned against sending any information to me, and that henceforth the airfield and all fortified positions were off-limits. Finally, the chiefs were advised to protect their people by building air raid shelters.

While the speech did not enhance Japanese prestige in the eyes of the natives, fear of the consequences weighed heavily on the minds of the village leaders. More importantly, however, was the fact that this display of panic on the part of the enemy was the first intimation to the islanders that their conquerors were not the invincible beings they professed to be. The stern lecture and warnings certainly contradicted earlier Japanese assertions that the war was over and they had won it.

Frightened natives, in the vicinity of the Passage, now tended to migrate toward Soraken and away from the threatened danger. For the moment, at least, we were afforded a breathing spell.

SOURCE: Coast Watching in WWII: Operations against the Japanese in the Solomon Islands, 1941–43, by A. B. Feuer (Stackpole, 2006), pp. 120-122

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by | 5 March 2007 · 5:55 pm

Redskins Trapped in Bougainville, 1942–43

The Japanese remained at Tinputz for three days before embarking for Kieta. Apparently their objective had been to carry out a beach reconnaissance for construction materials and anything else that might be of value to them. After the enemy departed, we resumed the journey to Porapora and reached Lumsis the first day. Besides the Aravia natives, the people of Lumsis remained loyal to us until the very end. I decided to set up a base in the mountains behind Lumsis—a place to fall back on in case Porapora became untenable.

While we were at the village, another problem presented itself. Natives living on the island who were foreign to Bougainville—such as people from New Britain and the other islands, were known locally as “Redskins.” The term derives from the fact that their pigmentation is somewhat lighter than that of the average Buka and Bougainville native. There were a hundred or so of them working in northern Bougainville when the Japanese invaded the islands. The subsequent departure of their employers left the Redskins more or less stranded, and the local natives did not want them hanging around the villages. It was a drain on the food supply and invariably became a cause of domestic strife. The people turned to me to solve their dilemma.

The Aravia and Lumsis natives were very amiable. I was able to purchase a block of fertile land from each community and settled the Redskins on the property. However, in return, I asked them to serve me as carriers or laborers whenever called upon. They willingly agreed to the proposal. Incidentally, practically all my police boys were Redskins.

SOURCE: Coast Watching in WWII: Operations against the Japanese in the Solomon Islands, 1941–43, by A. B. Feuer (Stackpole, 2006), p. 119

Some resentful Bougainvilleans like to observe that the Papua New Guinea flag represents their relationship to the rest of PNG, with black on the bottom and red on top.

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