After So Long by Emily Duncan

After So Long ONE FAMILY'S STORY OF FAITH, RESILIENCE, AND ENDURING LOVE

Emily Duncan

For my grandmother, Helen Huntley Brown

To best capture the authentic voices telling this story, all errors in grammar and spelling are true to their original form as written or spoken in letters, documents, and interviews.

07 | PART ONE

43 | PART TWO

Families Unite

Building a New Life

73 | PART THREE

131 | PART FOUR

143 | PART FIVE

War Divides

Impossible Reunion

A New Home

PA RT O N E

Families Unite

John P. Huntley

B O R N I N C L IO, A R KA N S A S J A N U A RY 2 0 , 1 8 9 8

Biography of John P. Huntley School report written by his niece, Marguerite Rhodes Brown

â&#x20AC;&#x153;First I shall give you an idea as to his personal appearance so that you may have a clearer picture of him in your mind as you follow him in his adventures.

He is five feet ten inches tall and weighs about one hundred and fifty pounds. He has fair complexion and light brown wavy hair. His eyes are very blue and they seem to twinkle as if they were amused at something all the time. He has a straight nose and a firm, generous mouth and a rather square chin. He is built up well and is altogether a rather handsome young man. An interesting feature in Mr. Huntleyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s life is his hobbies, and although no doubt he has many of them, I shall only state the three which are most outstanding and which I know the most about. I think I am right in saying that his main hobby is taking and developing Kodak pictures. He carries a Kodak with him nearly every where he goes and anything interesting that he see, he takes a picture of it. He has nearly enough pictures to fill a small room and as they were taken in various parts of the world they are very interesting. He develops his own films. Another of his hobbies is hunting and fishing. All he needs to make a day complete is a gun or a fishing pole and an opportunity for using one of them. His third hobby is his fondness of athletic sports. He is especially fond of basket ball and although he does not play himself, he has been coach of the navy team in China for six years.

CLIO, ARKANSAS | 1898 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; 1917

CHILDHOOD IN ARKANSAS Mr. Huntley was born on January 20, 1898 in Clio, Arkansas. From childhood on up he had the very best of training as he was brought up in a religious home. Both of his parents were members of the Baptist church and his mother especially, was very stern and conscientious. His father was a good natured man and was a pal as well as a father to John Phillip.

John P. Huntley's enlistment records stating his “Honest and Faithful” service at the time of his discharge from the National Guard to the U.S. Navy.

When he was six years old he started to school at Clio, Arkansas. I am not going to write much about his schooling because, in the first place, I know little about it and in the second place, I consider that part of his life uninteresting as compared to the rest of it. He went through the fourth grade at Clio and then moved to Rison where he finished the eleventh grade. He never finished high school because when the U.S. entered the war he joined the navy. After the war, by taking an examination, he was one of the fifty out of nearly four hundred men that was sent to a mechanical school in Charleston, South Carolina. Soon after joining the navy, he made several trips to France. On one of these trips his ship was sunk by a German submarine but they were fortunate enough to escape in life boats until another ship picked them up. After the war was over he attended the mechanical school which I have mentioned and then he was stationed for a year in San Diego California.

CLIO, ARKANSAS | 1898 — 1917

LIFE ABROAD After leaving California he was sent to the Hawaiian Islands for three years. While he was there he visited the Bird Islands, a group of islands that are so thick with birds that you can hardly walk about for them getting in your way. The island is just absolutely covered with them. His headquarters were at Honolulu and there they had their club house, their own race track and many other things for amusement. After leaving Hawaii, he went to India and I know nothing about his life there. When the United States were having trouble with China and it was thought necessary to send part of our navy over there, he was sent and he stayed there three and one-half years without coming home. It was while he was there that he had some of his most interesting experiences. It was the custom of the ruler of the province to send for the officers and have them pay him a visit and as he was an officer, he was sent for one day and a body guard of 250 soldiers came to escort him to the palace. The Emperor took quite a fancy to him for some reason and before he left he had given him a beautiful Chinese vase which he said was over two thousand years old and it must be for it is covered with little tiny cracks which at a distance appear to be a fine network. Later on during his stay in China he gave him a Chinese silk quilt with the names of the generals of the Chinese army embroidered on it. These things are in the possession of Mrs. S.F. Huntley who lives at Hope, Arkansas. 16

FAMILIES UNITE | 17

â&#x20AC;&#x153; The Emperor took quite a fancy to himâ&#x20AC;?

John P. acquired these hand-stitched silk garments and tapestries during his time in China and sent them home to his mother in America.

All of his life in China wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t so pleasant tho. He had many horrible experiences and the conditions over there were terrible. The Chinese would just kill each other by the hundreds and many times the navy men had to bury them as the Chinese do not believe in burying their dead. One time he nearly lost his life when he and three other men went up the river to investigate the conditions there and they fell in the hands of some Chinese Bandits. They had already decided to behead them and one of the members of the party recognized John Phillip and helped them to escape. When he returned home, he only got to stay a few months before he was sent to Cuba and from there he was sent to China again where he has been ever since. He plans to retire from the Navy when he has served twenty years and that will only be three more years, and live the rest of his life in California. Of all the countries that he has seen he thinks California is the prettiest and most desirable place to live.â&#x20AC;?

Vera Rachok

B O R N IN H A RBIN , C H IN A J A N U A RY 2 4 , 1 9 1 0

â&#x20AC;&#x153;My name is Nadia McCutcheon. My maiden name was Nadia Rachok. I was born September 14, 1912 in Harbin, Manchuria (China). I came to the States in February 1939 and became an American citizen. My parents by birth were Russian. In 1903 many Russians came to Harbin, Manchuria (China) to assist in building railroad between Russia and China. My parents had 3 children born during their marriage: 1 son and 2 daughters: son Fred Rachok, daughter Vera Rachok, and daughter Nadia Rachok.

Interview with Nadia McCutcheon RECORDED JULY 30, 1993

ESCAPING THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION “During the last Tzar, the Russian Government in Manchuria at that time decided to build train transportation that is much faster to get to Manchuria than going by ship. The Russian people started coming from Russia to lay the track for the train, ‘til they came to Harbin, Manchuria. The Chinese government gave the special land for Russian people. So they not going to be mixed with Chinese people. The Russian government built the homes, the road, the schools, the hospitals, theatre, churches for all the Russian who were—at that time—that the Russians come to Manchuria that they were connected with the government railroad. First, only men came to Manchuria except maybe they had one or two nurses and the doctors. So when they build the homes, like my father, he was already married, but he left his wife back in Ukraine. All of them who had fiancé or wife, they went back to bring their wife, or fiancé, to Harbin.

Mother and father of Vera, Nadia, and Fred Rachok, who left their life in Ukraine to move to China during the Russian Revolution.

But then, after the revolution, like I say, many of them escape, and it was pretty good population of Russian people. And some of them had a very, very rough time to get there. It was during the wintertime, it was deep snow. I met one Russian lady and she had brother accuse her of marrying the Russian officer. And her very good friend came to her and said you have to escape tomorrow or you’re going to be killed.

So she had to leave. In fact, not tomorrow, he said that night she had to leave. So she left with just a little package she could carry with her. And she said they walked sometimes deep to their knee in snow, it was so much. So finally, they lost their way. She said about a mile to Harbin, she told the rest of the group, ‘I can’t go anymore. You people go. I can’t do it anymore.’ So they tried to drag them, and of course all of them are very tired. So they left her. Well, fortunately, about the same mile, they came up on a hill and they saw Harbin. So they yelled to her, ‘We’re here!’ So they run back. She said, ‘They picked me up and carried me to Harbin.’ All of us got our education in Russian school. Therefore, some of the Chinese people that want to have trade with us, have to learn how to speak Russian. We were too stupid to learn how to speak Chinese so we said let the Chinese speak Russian. We used to go to church because at that time, it wasn’t communist country. When the communists actually arrived a few years later to Manchuria, then the government forbid all the children who went to the government school to attend the churches or to have the priest at school that they used to have. But my father said that ‘as long as you want to go to church, I’m not going to stop you.’ So Vera and I used to go to church quite often. HARBIN, CHINA | RUSSIAN REVOLUTION

RACHOK CHILDHOOD IN HARBIN So, my parents have five children. Two boys died in infancy. The oldest one was Fred, Vera, and I was the youngest one. And the meanest one. My brother and my sister were smart people, not like me. They were always A students. So therefore, when they were ready to go to high school, they were able to go to the school that only the children who were the relatives of like the doctors, the lawyers, the high-ranking in government. But since my father was a regular—his job was as a carpenter, they allow my sister and brother to go to the school as in our—for the regular working man children to be so highly promoted in the education. When my brother Fred finished high school, he wanted to come to United States. At that time, they have to apply as an immigrant. He and his friend applied for the immigrant and they were accepted so they went as soon as he finished high school to United States. My parents didn’t have money enough to send him so they borrowed the money to send him to the United States. And then, when my brother was able to get a good job, he repaid to my parents every penny. 28

Above and left: Vera with her siblings, Fred and Nadia Rachok.

Fred, at first, he had to work to earn the money as a dishwasher in one of the restaurants. But at night he went to school. And he became—I think you call it—bookkeeper... Accountant. He became accountant. And I’m actually very proud of him because by the time he retired he retired on a higher pension in San Francisco. Our mother, each morning, before each of us went to school, she would bless us, cross us, which is a Russian custom, and she would say, ‘Go with God.’ One morning, I don’t know what my brother did, but my mother was kind of mad, and she seldom would get mad. So he was standing in front of her, waiting for her to bless him and say, ‘Go with God.’ And she got quiet. And she said, ‘Well, what you waiting for? You’re going to be late to catch the train.’ And he said, ‘Mother, you didn’t bless me and tell me ‘Go with God.’’ And she said, ‘No, you just go.’ So, he went to school, he come back very much upset. And he said, ‘Mom, please forgive me what I did, but don’t do that no more. I had a bad grade, you see, you didn’t bless me!’

HARBIN, CHINA | 1910–1938

Vera was always in bad health. When she was a child, she was paralyzed, one side of her whole body was paralyzed. The doctors gave up and said, ‘We can do nothing.’ But there was an old-time Russian remedy. They old ladies said that if you have cows and when they finished eating, whatever is left, boil them and bathe your child every day. And mother did it faithfully for a whole year. Then one day, mother had to go to milk the cow, and she told Fred to watch Vera. And all of the sudden Vera said ‘I want water.’ He got so excited that he said to mother ‘Mama! Mama! Vera said a word!’ And scared her. But not for long, and after that she recovered. 30

HARBIN, CHINA | 1910â&#x20AC;&#x201C;1938

And then we had a little dog, and he picked Vera as her boss. And when Vera and Fred used to go to high school, they had to go about seven miles or more. And the railroad was supplying the train to all the children that had to go that far to school. Well, that little dog used to follow Vera to the train. And when the dog see that Vera that she’s already on the train, the dog come back to let us know that Vera got on train safe. And when just about time that train to come, the dog would come by the door and start telling us ‘let me out.’ So we would let her out, she would dash to the train, come back to us, tell us that the train was here. Then she’d dash back to the train, then tell us Vera is getting off the train, and she’d dash again and then walk back with Vera.

HARBIN, CHINA | 1910â&#x20AC;&#x201C;1938

я люблю тебя “I love you”

Моя дорогая жена “My dear wife”

One day I went to the store or something and I came home and my first husband said, ‘я люблю тебя’. I looked at him and I said, ‘What did you say?’ So he looked at Vera and he said, ‘You see, I told you she wouldn’t know what I’m saying!’ So then I realized he was saying something in Russian! And I said, ‘Well, repeat it.’ And he said, ‘люблю тебя.’ That means ‘I love you.’ So Vera was teaching him to say a few words in Russian. Finally he also learned how to say ‘Моя дорогая жена’ which meant ‘My dear wife.’

HARBIN, CHINA | 1910–1938

WORLDS COLLIDE IN CHEFOO Well, she like it in Chefoo so much, she decided—she had got acquainted with the family, they had their own family, see, and she decided that— she corresponded with them, and they asked her, ‘Vera, why don’t you come here and work for us in the pharmacy, and maybe you’ll meet some American man, Navy man.’ And so she went, and she met Jimmy through those people. John P. Huntley, but in China, for some reason, they called him Jimmy. When he retired in the 20s, he, with another Chinese man, opened up restaurant. So Jimmy was in charge of restaurant, while the Chinese man was in charge of the bar.”

In March of 1938, Vera and John P. were married in Chefoo by a Southern Baptist missionary from Greenville, South Carolina.

CHEFOO, CHINA | 1910â&#x20AC;&#x201C;1938

PA RT T WO

Building a New Life

Helen

B O R N I N C H E F OO, C H IN A J A N U A RY 2 7 , 1 9 3 9

Interview with Nadia McCutcheon RECORDED JULY 30, 1993

“When she become pregnant, she wants to be again with her parents. So Jimmy and she went to Harbin. Well, of course, with my parents, they have—by that time, my father was retired, and the Chinese government give again some of the land free the people wanted some portion, they can have it. And my father took one of the section and built himself—first he build while he was still working, he built one house, and they were renting it. But then, while he was still working, he built another house, and that’s when they retired. So when Vera and Jimmy came to Harbin, they already were living in the house that my father built. Well the houses that my father built, they didn’t have the bathroom attached, so it was outhouse. So Jimmy, of course, was accustomed to having bathroom in the house so when they came to Harbin, Vera stayed with my parents, and Jimmy stayed in hotel so he can have shower. When Vera got pregnant, Jimmy said he’s definitely going to have a boy, and when he grows up he gonna be one of the presidents of the United States. Well, the boy didn’t come, but the sweet little girl came along. Soon after that, they went back to Chefoo.”

Baby Helen meets her grandparents in Chefoo, China.

CHEFOO, CHINA | 1939

Letter from Vera and John P. to John's mother, Lilla Huntley CHEFOO, MAY 2, 1939

“Dear Mother, We received your letter May 1. Am glad that you received your coat and that you liked it. We sent it by my sister in law, they went to the States in January am sorry we did not get to go too but as soon as I can finish my business here we will be there which I hope will be within six months. I am sure you didn’t get my last letter before Xmas. We put some money in it and guess someone opened it. Things are very quiet here now altho the war is still going on we don’t see much of it so don’t worry about us. Am sending you a picture of our little Daughter. She is just three months old but very sweet. Name Helen Lily Huntley Lily for you has blue eyes and light hair and she is a darling. We listen to the radio every day about the fair in San Francisco also New York it must be wonderful and I would like to see it. I am tired of China and am leaving just as soon as I can. Too much war and it don’t seem like it will be finished for several years to come so am getting out just as soon as I can get my business cleared up. Will close now and let Vera my wife write a few lines.

Dear Mother Huntley! From the beginning of the letter I make my excuse for all my mistakes I will have in it, as I am a Russian girl and started only to speak Anglish, and donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t do it good, but to write is much harder still, but I hope that you will understend all that I like to write about. We are very sorry that you didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t get the letter in which Jimmy said about our marriage. We have been waiting for an answer, but didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t received it till last letter, but that letter was so nice about me like a bride of your son Jimmy, so I feel much better and like to write you more, as I hope that you will like me now as his wife and your daughter. Dear mother Huntley we are very happy together and more now with our little daughter. We are so proud of her as she is the sweetest little girl in the world, so nice and beautiful. You should hear Jimmy bragging, when he is looking about her to his friends. She looks like him and for this he is more happy as everyones say she is wonderful and Jimmy says, that is because she took everything from him. Here are the picture and you can see that she is really a darling.

â&#x20AC;&#x153; Dear mother Huntley we are very happy together and more now with our little daughter. We are so proud of her as she is the sweetest little girl in the world, so nice and beautiful.â&#x20AC;?

I believe you would like to see Jimmy as I am mother now too, and hope, mother dear, that next winter we can be together with you. I want to see you and see Jimmy country and home, as he used to tell me plenty about all. My sister is now there and she likes the States very much and I think I will do the same. We did send that coat for you with her and so glad to hear that you like it. We have nice home here and Chefoo is very nice, wonderful climate, specially in summer time. We have a very good beach, and plenty people come for the season but winter is so quiit, and as Jimmy has his business, only for summer and nothing to do for winder and he being so long time here, that he says he taired of China and like go home, so as soon as he finish the season, we hope to be able to come to the States.â&#x20AC;?

Please write us a long letter.

Love and kisses for you from me and your grandchild, With best wishes to you, Your daughter Vera Huntley.

Letter from Vera to Lilla Huntley SHANGHAI, 1940

“Dearest Mother! I think you had hear about calling the fleet reserve back, so Jimmy had to go back to the navy again and at the present time his is on his way to Manila, but me and Helen at Shanghai and we may be sending to States any time, so darling mother you may have a telegram about our coming from San Francisco. This letter I write to you ahead to let you know before, that it may happen very soon that we be with you. We don’t know for sure yet about anything. May be I will stay here, may be Jimmy will get his duty down Manila and then of course I will go there, but may be we will have to go to the States. Mother dear, you don’t answer me here down China, but write on my brother address to San Francisco and I will get that letter there, or if I will star here my brother send it to me. I will write his address below. Of course we have to give up our house at Chefoo and I feel very sorry for that. I never like Shanghai. It is very big, noise and very dirty town I don’t like big town. We are feeling alright, only very lonesome and don’t know about what we may have to do at the next day Jimmy is on his way to Manila and only there he will know more about everything, so I am only waiting for his letter now to know more about, and as soon as I will know, I will let you know too mother.”

SHANGHAI, CHINA | 1940

“... it may happen very soon that we be with you.”

In 1941, Vera and Helen joined John P. in the Philippines, where he was stationed in the Cavite naval yard, near Manila.

Letter to Helen from Mrs. Ham Family friends of John P. and Vera in Manila SEPTEMBER 6, 1972

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Dearest Helen, Now this picture was taken 1941. We all went out for a picnic, outside Cavite, my family, and Jim Huntley family, and have a good time with them. Vera, and I bring most everythings we could eat, fry chicken, potatoes salad, pies and all the trimming. But before this picnic, my husband and I have been invited them to our house, to eat dinner with us, and after dinner, we all went out for a drive, and we end up to stop, and let the kids play on the play grown. Your mother Helen, is a very nice woman and we, your mother and I, came into two different world, and became friends. Now the youngest little girl in this picture is you Helen, your mother next to you, my daughter, my son, and another daughter of mine, at the back row, just show my face. Here is Helen playing with my son, and my daughter. Helen you are pretty and sweet little girl, at one time you are one of my childrens. Now both of you are will come to my home, please do, and let me know in advance so I come prepared somethings to eat, I am not an expert cook, but I can cook. Sincerely yours, L. Ham.â&#x20AC;?

The Huntley and Ham families on a picnic together in Manila.

“your mother and I, came into two different world, and became friends.”

MANILA, PHILIPPINES | 1941

PA RT T HRE E

War Divides

DECEMBER 7, 1941

DECEMBER 8, 1941

DECEMBER 22, 1941

The Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service executes a surprise military strike against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor. The attack damaged all eight U.S. Navy battleships, and led to the United States' entry into WWII.

Japanese forces invade the Philippines, starting on the island of Luzon (home to the capital city of Manila). The Battle of the Philippines begins.

The Lingayen Gulf on the western coast of Luzon receives the most significant blow of the campaign. Over 40,000 troops, supported with tanks and artillery, invade the ill-defended beaches. With backup forces destroyed in Pearl Harbor, U.S. troops withdraw into Bataan.

APRIL 9, 1942 After months of starvation and disease with no hope of retaliation, U.S. Major General Edward King officially surrenders to the Japanese. The defeat would prove to be the largest in American military history, leaving behind approximately 78,000 American and Filipino soldiers at the hands of Japanese forces as prisoners of war. John P. Huntley was one of them.

Letter to Helen from Mr. Ham Family friends in Manila NOVEMBER 1, 1945

â&#x20AC;&#x153;First I will tell you who I am and something of my history since first meeting Jim. I am a chief Radioman having spent a total of 33 years in the Navy and am now retired. I first met Jim in Chumking China (1926) Where we were together on the old Gunboat Monocacy. Later we were together at different times on other ships and at Cavite. Jim wen out of the service sometime around 1931 or 32 going into the Fleet Naval Reserve after 20 service. He located in Chefoo and Tsingtao China where he ran a good business and made considerable money. He married a Russian girl in Chefoo, as fine a lady as ever lived. In October 1941, the Navy called back most of the men in N.F.R. to active duty. Jim, with others who were living in China, were transferred to Navy Yard Cavite for duty. I was called back in 1940 and was on duty at the Radio Control in the yard. Jim had had trouble with his left lung and was told by doctors in China that he had a positive T.B. While on duty at the yard, this trouble came back and he went to the Naval Hospital at Canacao (at Cavite). Where upon examination they found this trouble and discharged him from active service back into the N.F.R. a few days after release he was employed in the inside machine shop on the second shift (4pm to mid) working for the Master Mr. Carter. He was rated as a quarterman. Now I do not remember, if I ever knew, if he went into Civil service or not but I think not.

MANILA, PHILIPPINES | 1942

“Jim was in love with Helen and nothing was ever too good for her.”

While we were in Cavite together his family and mine, I have three children, two girls and a boy, were very chummy going on picnics and outings together. Helen and our children enjoyed them very much. Jim was in love with Helen and nothing was ever too good for her. On Dec 10th 1941 when the Japs came over with 54 planes and bombed the yard, Jim was living just one block outside the gate. One bomb fell on the house they were in. Jim had taken his wife and Helen in the basement and they had laid down alongside their car and Jim threw a mattress over them. Their house was an almost total wreck but none of them were hurt except Jim who had a few scratches and bruises. I had taken my family out of Cavite the same morning after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and tried to get Jim to take his family out. After the bombing he got Ginsburg’s car (a chief Torpedoman, Jim’s car was a total wreck) and took them up in the mountains back of Cavite to JaigiJaigi Ridge. Now I do not know if he left them up there or not up to the time he went to Corregidor on Dec 26–41 – but think he did. He was on Corregidor from that time until the surrender. I was on Bataan all this time from Dec 23 til it surrendered then caught a boat and went over to Corregidor where I met Jim and a bunch of the fellows from the yard. After the surrender we were all taken to Cabanatuan Prison Camp #1. (about 70 miles, 120 kilometers) north of Manila.”

MANILA, PHILIPPINES | 1942

In April of 1942, following the U.S. surrender to Japan, John P. is one of 75,000 soldiers taken as a prisoner of war in the Bataan Death March. Vera and little Helen are left behind in Manila.

MANILA, PHILIPPINES | 1942

Interview with Helen JULY 2016

LIFE IN MANILA WITHOUT JOHN P. “And so when he left, the earliest memory I have is living in this nightclub upstairs. And I must have been four probably at that point. And we lived upstairs, my mother and I had a room upstairs and the nightclub was downstairs. And she, every night, would entertain. She was a dancer. I know they had a Filipino maid, and I do remember that her name was June. Anyway, so I was there, and I know it had to have been like two weeks I was kept in there. And then I remember that my mother would go downstairs, I must have been four, three, but my mother would go downstairs at night. She’d get me ready for bed in my pajamas, and then she’d go down and I sat up on top of the stairs, some of the time, and watched. During this time too is when we had raids, but also when the Japanese would march through singing at night. And, marching. But they started coming into the nightclub. And it was Japanese people that did this, Japanese soldiers. And so my mother entertained them. She danced, they had a bar. She had the dresses. But then, I specifically remember when I’d sit up there, and that the Japanese soldiers would motion for me to come down. And I guess my mother, well she had to, she would come get me and bring me down. And they would pick me up, put me on their lap. And they would give me coins.

Vera worked and performed in a night club in Manila where she and Helen lived upstairs.

MANILA, PHILIPPINES | 1942â&#x20AC;&#x201C;45

RUSSIAN COMMUNITY IN MANILA But then, somewhere along the line, there were a lot of Russian people, my mother had Russian friends there that we would go see. She had one that, her name was also Vera, and I just remember that she was my Auntie Vera or whatever you say in Russian. And then one day, this big cart came, pulled by a horse, loaded up everything we had, which wasn’t a whole lot, but it was some furniture that was in the bedroom, but we went across town and they let me ride in the cart. I just remember that, holding on in the back of it as they trotted along. And then we went to this area where there were quite a few Russian people. Russian children, Russian women. I don’t remember any Russian men there at all. The women kind of stayed and did things together, and we had tea in the afternoons, and little cookies, I remember that. And my mother and I lived with a grandmother and her daughter and their two children and the boy’s name was Frank, and I don’t remember the little girl’s name. And I was the youngest one. But we played together, we had a room in that house, a bedroom, and I remember at one time, that we had Filipino maids who did the cooking and marketing. I would go with them to market, and market was fun. I just remember one thing they had, a big open water, and they had fish in there and they would pull out a fish that you want. But the main thing that I like was the sugar cane, that was candy. And they cut off a stalk of sugar cane. But it was during that time we were there, that the Japanese came and we would have those night raids. Because there was an underground, that lot

“We always had a picture of my dad and a Virgin Mary in blue. And every night we would pray to the Virgin Mary for my dad.”

of times, I was in bed, and the thing would go off and my mother would grab me. And we’d go down with the other people in the house, and we’d go underground to the shelter, and we’d all be in there and I hated it because there were spiders. And it was when we were there that we played with Filipino children. I picked up their language, like children do. They were probably children of the maids, I don’t know. And we just did a lot of playing, we’d go to trees that were rubber trees, and strip them and make rubber balls, and play like that. And then we would go to watch the men climb the trees and cut down coconuts, and I loved coconuts and sometimes one would drop and it would break, and so they’d give it to us, and we got to eat it. But also my mother would take me down to the ocean wall, there was a wall around. To just sit down there, we sat on the wall and watched the water, and that was walking distance. Another thing I remember about living there, it’s not a compound but there were several houses with Russians, tea in the afternoon. In one of the houses down the street, but still in the area, was, I just remember they talked about them being richer, but there was a girl that was studying voice, I may have told you this, a young woman. And you know it’s not air conditioned so windows always open, but she did the ‘dah dah’ vocals, and we would laugh, the kids and I would laugh.

MANILA, PHILIPPINES | 1942–45

But we played together, but then there was always a cook that cooked. We had rice every day, and that’s where we had lobster. But I would go, and I think that the other kids, the two, I went with her to market to pick out things, and of course everything was fresh, you took your bag, I loved going to market with the maid. And that was living there during that time, and you know memories are… I think I can remember something then… something during that time, my mother got really sick, and see I had to have been five or four. And… oh another thing I remember, meat guys would come guy, a meat truck or meat cart, and you’d go out and select your meat. And this grandmother had a scale, and she would, they would say the price or something, I remember she argues with them. But she’d weight the meat and then buy it. Of course I guess we had some sort of refrigerator. 92

MANILA, PHILIPPINES | 1942â&#x20AC;&#x201C;45

But then my mother became sick, she was always sickly. They took my mother to a catholic hospital that was out from town. I of course went with her. And that’s where we were from then on. And I really don’t know the length of time of that, but I know it was quite a while. I was able to stay in her room sometimes. But when she had a bad night, the nurses took me to their dormitory. But during the day I had free run of the hospital, it was a beautiful hospital, beautiful grounds. They had fountains with goldfish, I used to go and just watch the goldfish. And then I remember that it was two-story, and all around the top was open, I mean it was like a balcony, so that you could look down. And so I was there, the nurses took me in, the Filipino doctor, at least one of them had children and a family and I sometimes went to stay at his house. And the mother made me dresses, and she made me dolls. Also on the grounds was a school. And so I went to kindergarten there, which I could just walk there or somebody would walk me there. At this catholic school, then I learned the American alphabet. Because when I started first grade in West Frankfurt, I could read.

Helen and Vera lived in the Catholic hospital outside of Manila, where Helen attended school while Vera was ill.

MANILA, PHILIPPINES | 1942–45

And then this one day, I was there, and all of a sudden, it was just chaos.

And they started running and getting patients out of rooms and this Filipino doctor and nurse got my mother in a wheelchair and me, and they rushed us down the hall I can remember I didn’t know what we were doing. Because we stood on the balcony and we could see the city burning, and see the bombing going on there. And so they knew it was coming our way. That’s when, see we were out, as I said, from Manila. We could see the bombing going on in the city. But it hadn’t come out that far yet. So they took us down underneath, and it was just a hole in the wall in the foundation, and took us under there, and boarded it up with boards, and doors or something. I don’t know how many of us were there, there were several. And we were there I know more than two or three days, the Filipino doctors and I don’t know how many nurses, whether there were seven of us or twelve or whatever. But we had to stay under there, we couldn’t leave. But at night, we had no food, at night, two or three men would sneak out and try to go find some food. Where they got it, I don’t know, but they brought food back to us. And I know my mother, being a mother, would have me eat her part to, so I wouldn’t be hungry. And the other thing I remember, it was just underground because the concrete was up here and there was sand up in this part, and that’s where we went to the bathroom. We did have, one day, this banging on the door. And yelling. And when they opened it, it was a Japanese soldier standing there. And he came in, and looked at all of us, looked around the room. Whether they gave him a cigarette lighter or whether he had matches or what, but because it was dark down there, we didn’t have any lights, but he went around the room and looked, and he saw my mother and me, we were the only white people there. And my mother tried to sort of hide me. But he looked and then he left. And, of course there was talking, fear and all, if he was gonna come back and bring others their, but he never came back. So we were safe. Now there was one day, that I don’t know why this was, although someone sometime told me, another time why this was kind of a strategy to do, but we all walked out and just lined up against a wall outside, and whether they thought is was because the bombs would drop right there on us, but I never did know why we had to just stand there outside.

Because we stood on the balcony and we could see the city burning, and see the bombing going on there. And so they knew it was coming our way.

And so, I don’t know how many days we were under there but it was at least two or three, maybe longer, thinking back it could have been four or five. But we could hear, and this is why I don’t like loud noises and lightning and all, we could hear the hospital being bombed around us. Shelled I mean, not bombed. And you could hear all this. And I had no idea what was being hit or whatever. And it went on and on and on. And then it stopped. Totally stopped, silence. And one of the men went out to look what was going on, and the hospital was just in rubbles. It had just been bombed, stripped and everything else. But he came back and he came back and got us. And there were American soldiers just all over the grounds. And of course my mother being white, and I was white, and she just hugged them all. She was still very sick. I don’t know how we made this with her condition now, other than just sheer fortitude, but we walked out of there and walked to the street. There were Japanese bodies there and she made me not look. We didn’t see any American soldiers. But as we walked out, there were soldiers everywhere. Jeeps and cars, there were tanks, and so this one doctor said that we would go with him to his house, if it were standing. And I told you that. So we started walking and soldiers all along the way, and of course we were white and they made a big deal about me, and I remember one of them saying ‘Little miss blue eyes.’

“I don’t know how we made this with her condition now, other than just sheer fortitude”

So we went to his house, and I don’t know how far we had to walk. It was standing, and the house next to it was standing. Everything else around was on the ground. His family was there still, and so they took us, my mother and me, in. They had at least two children, maybe three, but I just remember playing with the children. The mother would make soap suds and give them to us to play. And would pretend like we were in market. And, you know, just like this. My mother and I would sit on the porch and pull lice out of each other’s hair and snap it in your fingers like this. I had hair that was long, she had very long hair. And you can see how she wound it around. So that’s what we did. Well, and then you start walking around, trying to see what was left. And we walked to, you know you’d see several houses that were, where they had been they were gone. But they had made, erected bamboo houses quickly for people to live in. But my mother knew where she lived, and we walked, and walking along would see the ruins of houses, would see furniture left in there, and things that people had left, fled. And we went, and her name was Vera too, Aunt Vera. So we went to her place and found her.”

MANILA, PHILIPPINES | 1942–45

101

GHOST SOLDIERS THE FORGOTTEN EPIC STORY OF WORLD WAR II'S MOST DRAMATIC MISSION

Excerpts from the novel by Hampton Sides

APRIL 1942 Defeat had come slowly, steadily, over a period of four months. As in all great sieges, the fall of Bataan was not so much an emphatic decision of arms as it was an epic drawdown marked by increments of physical, spiritual, and material depletion. As John Hersey wrote at the time, the truth had come to the men of Bataan “in mean little doses.”

A few minutes after nine o’clock on the following morning, April 9, Major General Edward King crawled into a jeep and rode north from his command post toward Japanese lines to confer with representatives of General Masaharu Homma. King planned to lay down his arms in what would prove to be a surrender larger than any other in American history except for Appomattox. Approximately 78,000 American and Filipino soldiers were fighting on Bataan under his command; in addition, some 20,000 Filipino civilians had been drawn into the conflict.

With surrender imminent, the men had been given the order to ruin their weapons and sabotage any hardware that might prove valuable to the enemy. Men were firing their last rounds of ammunition into the air, detonating their grenades, covering their gun emplacements with brush, dismantling their rifles and mortars and artillery pieces part by part and scattering the miscellaneous components into the jungle. Troops were pouring sand into the gas tanks of jeeps and armored vehicles, or pulling the drain plugs from the oil pans while the engines were left running. On the labyrinthine network of tiny trails that spread like capillaries over the southern tip of Bataan, the soldiers were not so much casting down their weapons as they were obliterating them, in preparation for General King’s expected announcement of capitulation.

The War Department in Washington briefly weighed more ambitious schemes to relieve the Americans on a large scale before it was too late. But by Christmas on 1941, Washington had already come to regard Bataan as a lost cause. President Roosevelt had decided to concentrate American resources primarily in the European theater rather than attempt to fight an all-out war on two distant fronts.

It is an axiom of Euclidean geometry that two points cannot occupy the same space, and therein lay Homma’s problem. Before he could move

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BATAAN HAD FALLEN. GENERAL EDWARD KING WAS A CAPTIVE OF THE IMPERIAL ARMY. 105

APRIL 1942

American and Filipino troops surrender to the Japanese at Bataan. (National Archives)

address it. The officers had presented their ideas to Homma on March 28. On paper, their plan appeared decent and humane. The prisoners were to be incarcerated at a place called Camp Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Donnell, a former training installation for the Philippine Army that lay approximately seventy five miles north of Bataanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s tip. The prisoners of war would be brought up the East Road of Bataan, passing through the towns of Cabcaben, Lamao, Limay, Orion, Pilar, Balanga, Orani, Lubao, and finally San Fernando, where they would then take a twenty-five mile train ride to Capas, which

his forces into southern Bataan, the surrendered Americans and Filipinos would have to be moved out. In their crippled thousands, they were underfoot, directly in the line of fire, like so much human debris. They were concentrated along the southeastern rim of the peninsula, precisely the area that afforded Homma the best vantage point for attacking Corregidor. General Homma had foreseen this enormous evacuation problem a month earlier and had commissioned some of his ablest officers to

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was located near the camp. Those soldiers who were physically able would be expected to march, but the distances would be reasonable—on average, no more than ten miles a day. Food and shelter would be provided. Hundreds of vehicles would be furnished to transport the sick. Two field hospitals would be set up, each one capable of treating as many as 1,000 patients.

lilt, Homma told one captured American officer whom he met near his headquarters in Balanga, “Your worries are over. Japan treats her prisoners well. You may even see my country in cherry blossom time, and that is a beautiful sight.” For the most part, the guards were not gratuitously cruel, at least not at first. In fact, most showed notable courtesy and restraint. The battle of Bataan had not been easy for them. They too were exhausted, diseased, and half starved. Most of them were kids, seventeen- or eighteen-yearold peasants fresh from the misty rice paddies and terraced valleys of Nippon. Many of them seemed scared. Although they had the guns, they were outnumbered and surrounded by a spiteful foe. Accepting the surrender of a foreign enemy, on foreign soil, they found themselves in the midst of a cast and unpredictable drama for which there was no script.

The plan had two fatal flaws, however, flaws which would not become fully apparent until several days after the surrender. The first was that his officers grossly underestimated the number of prisoners who would offer themselves up. Based on wildly inaccurate intelligence reports of enemy troop strengths made earlier in the siege, Homma’s planners projected that only about 25,000 Filipino and American troops would surrender. That actual number, counting civilians, was closer to 100,000. The second major mistake made by Homma’s planners was that they grossly overrated the health and strength of the prisoners. They had no scale of the starvation and disease that racked the Fil-American troops.

The helpless was the most dreadful part of it, the feeling of absolute impotence in the face of evil. For them, the shock of the gore was not unmanageable. For four months they’d been close to death. They’d seen killing, and many themselves had killed. But the emotional texture of warfare was vastly different from that or prisonerhood. Fighting, even fighting a losing battle, was mercifully busy work. There was always something to do, and having something to do could be a godsend. It kept one’s mind off the brutal panorama, it kept the focus on martial craft and the necessities of personal survival.

On April 9, as untold thousands of Americans and Filipinos stumbled out of the jungle sucking stalks of sugarcane and waving towels and bedsheets, Homma had buoyant confidence in the Fourteenth Army’s evacuation plan. Speaking in crystalline English that was accented with a certain Oxonian

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APRIL 1942

American prisoners use improvised litters to carry fallen comrades on the Bataan Death March (National Archives)

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Not being able to take action to save oneself or one’s comrades, not being able to pick up a weapon and strike back, was a terrible, unnatural feeling. Prostration and inactivity violated everything they had learned as soldiers.

marching—and a man who could not march was as good as gone. Had the deaths been apportioned evenly over the entire seventy-five mile route, one would have encountered a corpse every twenty yards.

For the average soldier, the trek north to Camp O’Donnell took about a week. Yet because there were so many tens of thousands of prisoners in such varying states of health and mobility who began marching at different times from many starting places, the Japanese needed more than three weeks to accomplish the ungainly evacuation.

Before the war, camp O’Donnell had been a training facility for the Philippine Army. It was designed to accommodate no more than 9,000 people. Camp O’Donnell was a temporary holding station, a brief detainment in the Americans’ long passage to other circles of hell. Most prisoners were kept there for only about fifty days.

“I WAS WELL BEYOND WHAT THEY THOUGHT OUR ENDURANCE WAS. WAY, WAY, WAY BEYOND. I WAS SO TIRED I COULDN’T MOVE, COULDN’T EVEN WIGGLE. YET I’D TAKE ANOTHER STEP, AND TAKE ANOTHER, AND ANOTHER. SOMETHING WAS DRIVING ME, SOMETHING OUTSIDE MYSELF.” —Tommie Thomas, P.O.W.

The staggering logistics were surpassed only by the staggering carnage. Estimates vary wildly, but a median guess is that 750 Americans and as many as 5,000 Filipinos died from exhaustion, disease, gross neglect, or outright murder.

Yet O’Donnell was, for many, the most horrific experience of the war. It was the place where all the seeds of hunger and disease sown on Bataan came to full fruition. Americans had not seen derivational grotesqueries on such a vast scale since the days of Andersonville, the infamous Civil War death camp for Union soldiers in Georgia. One prisoner later wrote,

Prisoners along the route were given little water, and fed only an occasional dollop of sticky rice the size of a baseball. For all too many men, the provisions were insufficient to keep them

“Hell is only a state of mind; O’Donnell is a place.”

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JUNE 1942 After 1,500 Americans had perished at O’Donnell, it had become obvious to the Japanese that they needed another cantonment—a place that was less crudely equipped and geographically better suited to accommodate large numbers of long-term prisoners. They chose Cabanatuan, a prewar Philippine Army installation which the Japanese considerably expanded. The camp was named after nearby Cabanatuan City, a bustling regional capital of 50,000 people that was set in the province of Nueva Ecija, some sixty miles east of Camp O’Donnell.

would end up buried beneath the ashen clay just beyond the camp fence. For reasons that were never apparent, basic medicines that could have readily saved legions of lives, medicines like quinine, emetine, and sulfa tablets, were never made available. Five hundred and three men died at Cabanatuan in June, another 786 in July. As summer dragged into fall, the toll began to level off. The graveyard details buried tens instead of fifties each week. Finally on December 15, 1942, Cabanatuan reached a gratifying benchmark: its first “zero-death day.”

Cabanatuan was the centerpiece; all other camps in the Philippines served as satellites. The Japanese used it as a reservoir, a holding station for slave labor. They were constantly shuffling prisoners around. Whenever they conjured up a new work project—a bridge or an airfield that needed repair— they’d draft men from Cabanatuan. Some details were shipped off to Taiwan or Mindano, Manchuria or Palawan. In the end, Cabanatuan would become the largest continuously running prisoner-of-war camp in the Philippines, and the largest American POW camp ever established on foreign soil. As many as 9,000 Americans would pass through Cabanatuan’s gates. Nearly one-third of those

As bleak as the circumstances were, any hope of survival dictated that there be some semblance of a society at Cabanatuan, and as in all societies, there was a discernible structure, with elaborate grapevines for disseminating goods and information. Cabanatuan became, in many ways, a tropical enclave of America. A baseball diamond was laid out. The main thoroughfares took on familiar names—Broadway, Fifth Avenue, Main Street. The camp’s prime meeting ground became known as Times Square. A “morale program” was instituted, which included Bible studies, horseshoes, and ping-pong matches. The prisoners

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Prisoners of the Bataan Death March, resting. (National Archives)

formed a camp library and filled it with 3,000 titles that were assembled from God only knew where—dog-eared copies of Twain, Dickens, Poe, and Pearl S. Buck. The books, which first had to pass the Japanese censors, were kept in states of partial repair with strips of canvas, old rags, and rice paste.

“ON DECEMBER 15, 1942, CABANATUAN REACHED A GRATIFYING BENCHMARK: ITS FIRST ‘ZERO-DEATH DAY.’”

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WEâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;RE THE BATTLING BASTARDS OF BATAAN, NO MAMA, NO PAPA, NO UNCLE SAM, NO AUNTS, NO UNCLES, NO NEPHEWS, NO NIECES, NO PILLS, NO PLANES, NO ARTILLERY PIECES, AND NOBODY GIVES A DAMN

Left: Poem by Frank Hewlett, American journalist and war correspondent in Manila during World War II; Right: Map of the Bataan Death March

113

AUGUST 1944 Near the city of Cabanatuan, which lay some sixty miles to the east of Calasio, there were approximately 500 American soldiers living in a squalid prison camp. These prisoners, he said, had been captured by the Japanese after the fall of Bataan and Corregidor, the largest surrender in American military history. Many of them were survivors of the Bataan Death March. For three years they had slaved and starved. Their fellow prisoners had died by the thousands because the camp commandant refused to give them even the most rudimentary of medicines. At one time Cabanatuan camp had been the largest POW compound in all of the Philippines and one of the largest in all of Asia, housing as many as 8,000 Americans. It was the mother camp around which all the others had served as satellites. Nearly every American who’s been captured by the Japanese had passed through its sordid gates at some point. The population had fluctuated over the years, with prisoners constantly coming and going and coming back again depending on the whims and changing needs of the Japanese Army. But in recent months, Lapham said, the camp census had dwindled dramatically. The Imperial Army had been sending all the able-bodied prisoners on ships to work as stevedores and coal miners in Japan. Now all that was left at Cabanatuan were the

dregs, the sickest and the weakest. The ghosts of Bataan, they called themselves, with a mixture of black humor and the peculiar proud toughness of the orphaned. When General MacArthur had abandoned the Philippines in March of 1942, these were the men he abandoned—or, rather, what was left of them. They were a special lot, a subset of a subset of bad fortune, an elite of the damned. After the war, it would be calculated that the death rate of all Allied POWs held in German and Italian camps was approximately 4 percent. In Japanese-run camps, the death rate was 27 percent. One out of every four captives of the Japanese perished. The training and culture of the Imperial Army encouraged them to regard the POWs in the narrowest possible terms, as contemptible men who could nonetheless be useful in the war effort; once their usefulness stopped, however, so did their existential lease. In August 1944, the War Ministry in Tokyo had issued a directive to the commandants of various POW camps, outlining a policy for what it called the “final disposition” of prisoners. A copy of this documents, which came to be known as the “August 1 Kill-All Order,” would surface in the war crimes investigations in Tokyo.

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THE DIRECTIVE STATED:

â&#x20AC;&#x153;When the battle situation becomes urgent, the POWs will be concentrated and confined in their location and kept under heavy guard until preparations for the final disposition will be made. Although the basic aim is to act under superior orders, individual disposition may be made in [certain] circumstances. Whether they are destroyed individually or in groups, and whether it is accomplished by means of mass bombing, poisonous smoke, poisons, drowning, or decapitation, dispose of them as the situation dictates. It is the aim not to allow the escape of a single one, to annihilate them all, and not to leave any traces.â&#x20AC;?

115

JANUARY 1945 General Walter Krueger needed no further convincing from Horton White. By all means, by any means, a force must be immediately dispatched ahead of the lines to attempt a rescue of Cabanatuan. It was an eleventh-hour mission of mercy that Krueger knew would be near to General MacArthur’s heart. “Sounds risky,” Krueger said, “but it’s a wonderful enterprise.”

any inkling of it they would probably massacre all the prisoners.” Then came the question of who would carry out such a mission. Krueger would need a group of men trained in stealth techniques and the tactics of lightning assault. The expeditioners must be in exceptional physical condition, as they would have to cover some thirty miles on foot in each direction, marching around the clock. They would have to be versatile, self-reliant, and extremely proficient with light arms, as the odds were better than got that they would encounter major enemy resistance somewhere along the trek.

Krueger consulted the map and considered the date. It was January 26. In five days he expected that his forces would reach Cabanatuan City. With that in mind, Krueger asked White when he thought the rescue should be attempted. White’s reply was grave. “I would say that after the twenty-ninth, our odds of finding prisoners alive are quite remote.” They had a few days of latitude.

As Krueger and White mulled it over, the answer suggested itself. “There’s Mucci,” White said. Lieutenant Colonel Henry Mucci was the commanding officer of a remarkable outfit known as the 6th Ranger Battalion. The Rangers were a new, relatively untested unit of elite infantry that had been loosely patterned after the British Commandos. Colonel Mucci, a West Pointer and second-generation Italian-American, was the son of a Bridgeport, Connecticut, horse salesman. Mucci had personally overseen every minute of the Rangers’ training during the past

The mission, they decided, would unfold as a unilateral operation, discrete from all other movements and actions being undertaken by the Sixth Army. No one else within the army would be told about it. “It was obvious that any rescue attempt would have to be kept absolutely secret,” Krueger would write in his memoirs. “Success depended upon surprise. If Japanese received

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year in the jungles of New Guinea. They hadn’t started out as Rangers, however. Originally they had been Army mule skinners. They were large men, recruited mostly from farms and ranches, who had been assigned to pack artillery unit trained to work in the remote mountains carrying howitzers that broke down into parts for transport on the backs of mules.

would walk thirty miles through enemy territory in a stealth operation considered so important and yet held in such tight secrecy that no one else besides General Krueger himself would know about it. There was a prison camp, he said, full of the last ill and stick-figured American survivors from Bataan and Corregidor. The task before the Rangers was to liberate these prisoners before the Japanese slaughtered them all. “You’re going to bring our every last man,” he said, “even if you have to carry them on your backs.”

When Colonel Mucci returned from Sixth Army headquarters on the afternoon of Saturday, January 27, he conferred with Captain Prince, and then the two officers It was a plum assigncalled a meeting of C ment, but the risks Company. The Ranger were immense, As “IT’S GOING TO BE EXTREMELY camp was keen with Mucci put it, they’d DANGEROUS,” HE SAID. “SOME OF anticipation. Mucci’s be “behind the eight men had seen him ball” for the duration YOU MIGHT NOT MAKE IT BACK.” leave from Army of the raid. The area headquarters in a staff around the camp was car that morning, and infested with enemy they were dying to know what he was coming troops, he said. He urged anyone who had back with. Now Mucci stood before them with doubts to drop out then and there. He especially an assignment finally in hand.“It’s going to be recommended that married men withdraw extremely dangerous,” he said. “Some of you from the mission. Such was the difficulty of the might not make it back.” operation that he wanted every last member of the expedition to be a volunteer. Mucci said, “I only He explained only the essence of it—the details want men who feel lucky.” would come later. The following morning at dawn, the men of C Company, along with one platoon The assembled Rangers studied each other in from F Company, were to head east in a convoy mute amazement. They all felt lucky. No one of trucks to a little place on the brink of the dropped out. American lines called Guimba. From there, they

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“One other things,” Mucci said. “There’ll be no atheists on this trip.” Upon adjourning the meeting, he said he wanted every last one of them to meet with the chaplains and pray on their knees. Services would be held in a half hour. “I want you to swear an oath before God,” he told them. “Swear that you’ll die fighting rather than let any harm come to those prisoners.” The men from Bataan and Corregidor had already suffered hardships that seemed beyond comprehension. A small number of them had escaped from Philippine prison camps and had managed to reach Australia. Eventually, American newspapers carried harrowing tales of their ordeal, including depictions of the Death March and the camps, so the Rangers, like most Americans, were generally aware of the prisoners’ travails. When Colonel Mucci suggested that in all likelihood the Japanese planned to sweep these guys in a ditch and slaughter them, the Rangers were thus fired with zealous outrage. “It made us so damn mad,” Prince said, “we couldn’t see straight.”

hoc. What if the intelligence was wrong and the Japanese weren’t planning to massacre the POWs after all? In a full-on war, many armies wouldn’t think of gabling so much on an emotional rescue—certainly not the Japanese Army, with its famous contempt for its own countrymen who fell into enemy hands. Some commanders might resort to a stone-hearted calculus: The Cabanatuan POWs were all casualties, weren’t they? What could those spent and stick-figured soldiers contribute toward the war effort against Yamashita? Probably nothing, but that was a reckoning not one of the Rangers cared to make. The force of Mucci’s argument was irresistible: These men had to be rescued. The colonel made the endeavor sound so grand that to be part of it felt like the honor of a lifetime, a glorious entrustment. Captain Prince’s master plan was intricate. As he elaborated the details, he clutched a stick and scratched out diagrams in the soft dirt. At Mucci’s signal, the Rangers would clear out of Platero and march south toward the camp, flanked by Pajota’s 200 men on one side and Joson’s 80 men on the other. Just before reaching the Pampanga River, the two guerrilla groups would break off from the Rangers. Pajota’s forces would bear sharply to the left. Their task would be to set up a massive roadblock on the highway, about a mile northeast of the camp, near the Cabu River bridge. Precisely at 7:40, they were to destroy the bridge with land mines which

With this mission the Army was operating on something like emotions, if the U.S. Army could be said to have emotion. The Rangers had to recognize that the sentimental allure of raiding Cabanatuan outweighed its strategic value. In the narrowest battle analysis, one could legitimately ask whether it was worth risking the lives of these elite young men in a romantic action that might be viewed as desperately ad

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THESE MEN HAD TO BE RESCUED Captain Robert Prince (Ghost Soldiers)

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Pajota’s explosives experts would have already set among the span’s log pylons. Just across the river, more than 1,000 Imperial Army soldiers would still be bivouacked down in the bamboo thickets. Should they charge toward the POW camp upon hearing the Ranger fire, Pajota’s 200 guerrillas would be there, waiting in ambush, reinforced with a bazooka to hold any Japanese tanks at bay. Lining themselves across the road and facing the bridge in a classic open “V,” Pajota’s guerrillas would proceed to cut down the enemy with enfilading fire.

over, melting safely into the rice paddies in the deepening night. The two Filipino forces were to function as a synchronized pair of shutoff valves in a great water main, temporarily blocking the flow in both directions so the Rangers could go in and do their extraction work with little worry of a surprise surge in the pipe. For the Rangers, reaching the camp would pose a much more immediate problem. For the last mile beyond the Pampanga, on the bald plain, they had to crawl on their stomachs in the hope of escaping detection. As they approached the highway, the thirty members of F Company would then break left from Prince’s larger group, sneak around to the back of the camp, and creep along a dry ravine that was, they hoped, deep enough to conceal them from Japanese sentinels. The F Company men would position themselves to fire on the rearguard towers and pillboxes, as well as on the Japanese barracks, which were believed to house several hundred transient soldiers. F Company would fire first, just as the sun was setting—at about 7:30. This opening salvo would serve as the cue for Prince’s C Company to leap across the road and kill the guards in the towers while simultaneously storming the main gate.

Captain Joson’s job would be the mirror opposite of Pajota’s. He and his forces would peel off toward the right and erect another roadblock on the highway, this one just south of the camp, to stop any Japanese troops that might hasten from Cabanatuan City. Here, the Japanese threat was less imminent (since Cabanatuan was four miles away) but potentially far greater than for Pajota’s men at the Cabu River bridge, as there were said to be as many as 8,000 of Yamashita’s best soldiers stationed in the city. Joson, too, would have bazookas and land mines at his disposal, but if Japanese forces were to get early notice of the raid and attack en masse, his men might soon be overwhelmed.

Once the gate was breached, a first wave of men would race down the camp’s central thoroughfare, pivot right, and then riddle the Japanese side with a merciless barrage of automatic fire from tommy guns and BARs. Then the bazooka team would penetrate deeper into the compound, destroying

This part of the plan was exceedingly risky, but Pajota and Joson, working in tandem, had to seal off a solid mile of the road and hold it long enough for the Rangers to attack the camp, remove the prisoners, and then cross back

120

GHOST SOLDIERS

6th Army Rangers en route to Cabanatuan camp (Ghost Soldiers)

the metal shed where the Scouts believed the tanks were parked. Japanese resistance quelled, a final wave of men would push in with wire cutters and free the prisoners, with a reserve of Rangers and Alamo Scouts waiting at the front gate to escort the escapees to the Papanga River, where carabao and civilian-driven oxcarts would be waiting.

Then the hardest part: At the river, the Rangers and POWs would embark on their thirty-mile trudge toward American lines, passing through Platero on the way, with the guerrillas serving as rear guard. It promised to be a long, slow trek of moonlight marching, but by dawn they should be scot-free, in the Sixth Army’s embrace. This was the essence of Prince’s design for the raid. In the pitch dark, with so much thunderous gunfire and scurrying back and forth, it might appear to be a melee, but every moment would be carefully choreographed, with the major action of the raid taking no more than thirty minutes. “Organized confusion” was how Prince described it. “We wanted all hell to break loose,” he said, “but to break loose precisely on our terms.”

Captain Prince would direct the traffic and oversee the action while standing at the threshold of the main gate. As the stream of exiting POWs tricked off, he would personally go in to inspect each barracks to make sure every last prisoner had been removed. Once satisfied, he would fire a red flare high over the camp—the signal to all participants that the assault was over. After the column of Rangers and POWs had successfully crossed the Pampanga, Prince would fire a second red flare, this one a sign to both guerrilla groups to commence their withdrawals.

All told, the raid would employ a cast of nearly 1,000 characters, every one of whom had to do his job and do it correctly or else the mission hung in jeopardy.

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SWEAR THAT YOUâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;LL DIE FIGHTING RATHER THAN LET ANY HARM COME TO THOSE PRISONERS.

122

GHOST SOLDIERS

JANUARY 28, 5:00 AM 121 Rangers depart from Calasio.

JANUARY 29, DAYBREAK

Rangers and guerrillas stop to rest in the barrio of Balincarin. From Balincarin, the POW camp was only about an hourâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s march south. They were within striking distance.

JANUARY 29, LATE AFTERNOON Arrive in Platero. Because of its proximity to the target, Mucci had decided to make Platero the Ranger staging area and bivouac site. Here he would establish his headquarters and the communications people would set up the field radio equipment. Here Dr. James Fisher, the battalion surgeon, would fashion a triage hospital to perform emergency surgeries in the probably event of injuries. And should the Rangers succeed in springing the POWs, Platero would serve as their first rest stop on the way to freedom.

JANUARY 30, MORNING

The Scouts had a series of complex and difficult tasks to carry out. Within a few hours they absolutely had to supply all the reconnaissance data Mucci and Prince so desperately needed in order to finish planning the raid.

JANUARY 30, 5:15 PM

The Rangers approach the Pampanga river.

123

At first, the prisoners failed to understand. They were too mentally brittle to process the chaos. Fearing the worst, they took refuge in the barest and most pitiful of hiding places. To one Ranger, who had sliced his way through the fence with wire cutters, the inmates of Cabanatuan look like “scared vermin scattering for cover after you switch on the kitchen lights.” They huddled in corners, cowered in black-water ditches, lurked behind frail bamboo posts, praying for a slimness that even they could not affect.

As soon as the captives began pouring out the front, Dr. Jimmy Fisher and his medics sprang up from their trench along the highway and positioned themselves at the gate to assist the sickest ones. Scores of the prisoners, particularly those quartered in the medical wards, were completely immobile. The Rangers had to pick them up in their arms and carry them out the gate.

To the prisoners, the scene didn’t make sense. There were troops running from barracks to barracks, dim forms crouched along the camp’s dirt pathways. They were gesturing wildly, shouting orders. “Buddy, you’re free,” a voice said. “Up quick and get over to the gate! You’re a soldier again!”

124

When the long straggle of inmates left their blazing prison behind and tore out, any of them barefoot, across the stubbed fields, their spirits soared with an optimism they hadn’t known in years. The stunned disbelief they had initially felt had given way to a guarded giddiness that seeped down to their feet and kept them moving at a spry clip. To watch Cabanatuan consumed by fire was unimaginably cathartic for them.

JANUARY 30, 8:15 PM

Thirty minutes after the raid had begun, Capitan Prince returned his flare gun and his .45 to their holsters, strode out the main gate of Cabanatuan, and took off across the rice paddies. Aside from any Japanese survivors, Prince was, he felt sure, the last one out.

JANUARY 30, 8:40 PM

Captain Prince and the last of the prisoners had reached the cattailed banks of the Pampanga River.

125

126

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“Buddy, you're free!”

PA RT FO UR

Impossible Reunion

“ It took perseverance, some of them just gave up, but my dad did not. And he kept going. I think it’s because he just wanted to get back to us. Determined to get back to us.” Helen Huntley Brown

Interview with Helen JULY 2016

“I just remember that my mother called out, ‘Jimmy!’ and then he came in. I don’t remember exactly except that I knew it was my daddy. And I hadn’t seen him in all those years.”

136

Now obviously he looked very different because he was emaciated and in really poor health, but obviously he had to be in poor health when my dad came back and found us. We went this doctor’s house and were staying there and I do remember very specifically and I they had either two or three children. We played together. One day, and I don’t know how long we were there, but one day there was a knock at the door and it was a soldier that had been in prison camp with my dad, and he knew my mother or knew who she was. How he found us I have no idea. Never will know that. But he came in, and he brought some candy and some food. Fresh food. I don’t know where. I just know it all happened. And he told my mother that the next time he came, he would bring my dad. But how he found us was a miracle, and I never will know. Because Manila was bombed, and we were at this doctor’s home, and so he left, and then I don’t know how many days after whether it was two days, a week or something, but I do remember I was specifically dusting in the dining room. My mother was in the kitchen, standing on a step stool, either fixing or cleaning or something the cabinets, and there was a knock on the door. And I was in the other room, and she went to the door, and I heard her say, ‘JIMMY!’ Which is what she always called my dad. Of course, I didn’t remember her, seeing him like that. But he came in, obviously came in, and again, he brought me chocolate. MANILA, PHILIPPINES | 1945

137

In early March of 1945, after surviving the Bataan Death March, three years at the Cabanatuan prison, and the monumental rescue mission, John P. returns home to Helen and Vera in Manila.

On March 20, 1945, within weeks of John's miraculous return, Vera Rachok passes away from heart complications. She clung to life just long enough to see six-year-old Helen safely reunited with her daddy.

My next memory is that we are staying in this house and there are other people there that are military. I remember that they would let me drink coffee, but only put a little tiny bit of coffee and then all milk. So they came, the military came, and I don’t know how many, with the jeep, and the three of us, my mother and Vera and I, got in the jeep and they took us back to the house. I don’t know how far we had walked. And essentially what had happened was my mother had a heart attack, that was during the daytime, and during the night she died. And you know how funny you remember little things, but I remember the next morning before they told me that they said I could have my coffee drink, but I could have more coffee this time. We all walked to the cemetery, and there was a little service, and then she was buried there and then I don’t know in my mind I can’t remember whether we went back to the house and staying there. One thing that Aunt Nadia said was she thought that maybe the shock of seeing him was too much for her. It could have been what weakened her heart.

140

“Your mother was a wonderful person. She was very kind. Very few people like my sister.” Nadia McCutcheon

141

PA RT FIV E

A New Home

“The arrangements were made, and we had to take a flat boat, big boat, out to the big ocean liner. Everything we had was destroyed. All my dolls. Everything. We had nothing at all. So all of us that were getting on the boat were on there. There was a Russian nurse that my dad got somehow. She was going over. And because women had to stay on one side, men on the other, there was no mixing. At mealtime I could eat with my dad although he did very few times. He spent most of the time in sick bay. He was so sick. They said he had a bullet in his neck when he died. But occasionally, I got to eat with him. He did go up on deck with me, and we sat on the deck, and he taught me how to play cards, and he smoked a pipe. But most of the time I didn’t see him because he was so very sick. But the boat was fun, exciting, they had movies at night and so forth, but there was a strafing, we were in a convoy, surely there’s got to be some records of that. And one of the boats was the Red Cross boat and had the white on top of it, and it was strafed, and we were all under you know down below. That’s all I remember, it was a scary thing, there was more than one boat going with us. So then how far out I don’t know it was, but one night we hit a hurricane, I guess it was a hurricane. And during the night, where I was in the women’s quarters, and we had bunk beds, or cots or whatever. And they just slid back and forth, and all of our few belongings that I had. And the next morning they called us all up on deck and issued us all life jackets.

144

And the other memory I have is the two funerals, the two deaths, that were on the boat. One of them was an older man, and one was a teenage girl, or a young woman I would say. And everyone was up on deck for those. And they had some kind of a service, and they put the box, the casket, whatever you want to call it, and just lowered down into the water. With both of them. And I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know if the girl was sick or died or from natural causes, it was not from injury, not from war injury. But, it made a big impression on me because you know... it was there. Then after that we docked at Hawaii, but nobody got off. It was, I guess, to refuel or do something. But passengers did not get off. So we all lined up on the deck and the Hawaiian people came out with flowers and singing, dancing, and so we know watched all that. The trip took 21 days.

JOURNEY TO AMERICA | 1945

145

146

“And I wasn’t scared, because my daddy was with me.”

I remember as we got closer and saw the skyline. And everybody was on deck, and it was America. I don’t remember being scared, I was way more excited. The first time we saw land, everybody got up on the boat. We stopped in Hawaii but didn’t get off the boat. They were playing Hawaiian music and everything as entertainment. So we were docked there for a while, but when we started on and the first glimpse of America, everybody was on deck. And the closer we go, you know you just… it was so exciting. And I wasn’t scared, because my daddy was with me. And I didn’t know what was going to happen. It was very exciting on the boat as we got close to land, as we’d been out in the water all this time. And then the gang plank went down and I just remember my dad and I were going down and there was Aunt Stella, I didn’t know who she was, but she took us and she was living with Uncle Art. They were living together. She was 70 something I guess, like my age. So she didn’t want me to come stay at her house you know, I guess the family thing, because of Art, but I loved Uncle Art. Stella was the black sheep of the family, she smoked like a chimney and was just loads of fun. She was just that kind. I stayed with Aunt Stella’s daughter, a young army or navy wife. And she and her friend whose husband was also in service, lived together for rent, each one had a little child. And so because I couldn’t stay with Aunt Stella and Uncle Art, then I stayed with her. And the first one or two nights—of course I had long hair. And I had the lice still. At night, they gave me a piece of candy when I went to bed. And during the night I got out and it just got all over my hair. And so Aunt Stella took me to a beauty shop and it was just matted everywhere, and of course the lice. And so they cut my hair. So those pictures you see with me upstairs, of all those little other kids, like right here, that’s me, my hair is cut short because of that candy that got stuck all over my hair.

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA | 1945

147

Helen and John P. arrive in San Fransisco in early May of 1945, met by John's family.

On May 22nd, about two weeks later, John P. loses his battle with tuberculosis.

150

But then he had to go right to the veteranâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hospital, he was so sick. Although I do remember my dad took me shopping and bought me some bedroom shoes with rabbits, little bunnies that squeaked. But I think we were only together like a day like that, and then they put him in the hospital and he died in the hospital, about six or seven days later. They didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t tell me that he was going to die. But he knew that Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m sure. Because he just wanted to get me over here, which he did. My grandmother, I think, died of a broken heart. Because she wanted so much for him to come back. And to meet my mother. Aunt Aurie told me she thinks she died of a broken heart. She just lost her will, when that happened.

Left: Statement read at John P.'s funeral in Hope, Arkansas Right: Newspaper clipping announcing John P.'s death

151

â&#x20AC;&#x153; I think, you know, my mom lived long enough for my dad to come back. My dad lived long enough to bring me here.â&#x20AC;? 152

Above: Helen's initial citizenship and documentaion papers upon entering the United States Right: Helen (second from right) with her cousins in Hope, AR

154

So Stella took me to Hope on the train, with my dad’s body. It took us probably three days. So they all gathered there and that’s where he’s buried, they had the funeral there. He was the hero. And then, they didn’t know what they were going to do with me. So I stayed with my grandmother. Lilla, instead of Lily, which my dad mixed up. I didn’t know how old granny… I’d have to see on her tombstone but, they just all decided that was not a good thing for a little six-year-old girl to live with a grandmother who couldn’t really, you know, do anything. So I think then it was the problem of who’s gonna take her. And it ended up that Frances was the youngest of them all. And so whether it was by choice, or last resort, I went to live with them. My grandmother wanted me, and it was always her dream that my dad and my mother and I would come live with her, but Aunt Aurie told me once that when that didn’t happen, that brought her death.

So I guess you would have felt pretty

Well it was all so, well you know, landing in California, being there several

alone in the world in this new country. Was it just so busy?

days, and then the train trip to Arkansas and then all the people that were there. I mean there were cousins, aunts, uncles, all there. And so I was kind of the star in that case. They bought me toys.

Were you glad to be there?

Well, I can’t remember. I was... I mean it was good, see I had all new clothes new shoes everything. See how I turned my head? I think I just didn’t know how to smile, so I thought that was the right way to do it I guess.

So how long do you think it was until you no longer understood Russian?

Probably a few months. And you know I can’t blame that on them, there was nobody around West Frankfurt who knew Russian.

HOPE, ARKANSAS | 1945

155

Do you think that they were embarrassed that you werenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t an American? No. I was American.

I think they just thought it wasn’t necessary to make any ado about it. And it was just over and I should just concentrate on being a little girl. And I will have to think that they thought they were doing the best thing for me. Just forget it all. But. But as a six-year-old I went through an awfully lot that could have really affected me. And I also get this idea that they may have thought that I didn’t need to be made a fuss over. And that was probably, they thought probably for my own good. But you know when there’s something like that in your childhood, it needs to be recorded or it needs to be kept for just like for now. I remember things, and probably if I thought about it all the time I would remember some other things, but since I don’t have any reason to talk about it or have to prove anything, going through that when I moved here to, when we moved here to Missouri, going through those four years of trying to prove my citizenship really turned out to be a good thing. Because we had letters from the missionary who knew Grandaddy, who knew my dad, who married my dad and mother in China, he remembered that. He remembered it, a blonde Russian woman and a military soldier. He remembered that. That was a little piece of the puzzle. And of course, Mr. Ham’s letter was probably the most informative. But I had no one who had experience it. Both my parents were gone, and it was just whatever I remembered. I don’t understand why they couldn’t take my word. The problem was there was no one who could say who I was. Everybody was dead.

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160

Frances and Uncle Bill never let me talk about anything. They may have thought it was best if I didn’t think about it, but I wish I could have. When the thunder would come, and wind is another thing, because the sound of wind really scares me, or did, and I still don’t like it. But I would try to get behind a couch or something. They just didn’t… I remember in the first grade, my first grade teacher Olive Bonner, because I was kind of a celebrity in her mind, and she asked me this one day, to talk about it to my class. Well I was a little six-year-old girl and I was telling them, and I was telling them things that happened. And Olive Bonner told my folks and they just had a fit. And they said you’re not to ever do that again. I don’t know why, if they thought maybe I should forget it all, I don’t know whether they thought I tried to be a celebrity, I don’t know what, there’s a lot of things I don’t understand that they did and did not do. And she I think, thought I made up some of the stuff, which I did not. I’ve always regretted, and you know I can’t do anything about it, but I’ve always regretted that Aunt Francis and Uncle Bill never tried to find out anything for me. Because they probably thought it was something I didn’t need to remember. But on the other hand, it’s a piece of my life that I can’t get back.

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA | 1945

161

Epilogue

After the death of her father, Helen went to live with John P.’s youngest sister and her husband, Reverend and Mrs. Theron King. Under the care of her Aunt Frances and Uncle “Bill,” Helen settled into her new American life in West Frankfurt, Illinois. Her cousin Jim, just one year younger, became like a brother to her. Helen grew to love music, taking violin and piano lessons and playing percussion in her high school band. Her uncle was a Baptist preacher, and Helen was raised as a preacher's daughter in their small town. This home, fostering a love of music and faith, profoundly shaped the path of Helen's life. She attended Howard College (now Samford University) in Birmingham, Alabama, majoring in music education with an emphasis in piano. After a year of teaching public school music, she earned a Master’s Degree in Church Music with an emphasis in piano performance at Southwestern Baptist Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. It was in seminary that she met Don Brown, whom she would marry in 1963. Helen remains richly engaged in music and education. She enjoyed a 37-year career teaching piano and music theory as a faculty member at William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri, earning a PhD in piano pedagogy in 1997. She has engaged in a full life of community service and church involvement and continues to teach piano lessons. Though she may have lost her parents in her eventful journey to safety in America, Helen undeniably carries the quick wit and warmth of her mother, Vera, and the enduring resiliency of her father, John P.

Sources

LETTERS & DOCUMENTS

“Biography of John Phillip Huntley”

“Letter to Lila Huntley”

“Letters to Lila Huntley”

School assignment written by

Written by Vera Huntley

From John P. on the day of his liberation.

Marguerite Rhodes Brown

1940. Shanghai, China.

February 1945. Cabanatuan, Philippines.

PG 10–20

PG 63

PG 134–135, INSIDE COVERS

“Enlistment Record and Honorable

“Letter to Don and Helen Brown.”

“Helen's proof of citizenship”

Discharge of John P. Huntley”

Written by L. Ham.

Veteran's Administration

National Guard

6 September 1972. Verona, Missouri.

2 September 1947.

28 March 1917. Arkansas.

PG 68

PG 154

PG 14, 21 “Statement to prove Helen's citizenship”

“Letter to Mr. King” From Ralph E. Ham

Letter from Nadia Rachok McCutcheon

1 November 1945. Verona, Missouri.

18 September 1972. Riverside, California.

PG 82–84

PG 24 “Letter to Lila Huntley”

“Philippine Military Prison Camp No. 1 P.O.W postcard”

Written by John and Vera Huntley

From John. P to Lila Huntley.

2 May 1939. Chefoo, China.

14 July 1944. Cabanatuan, Philippines.

PG 48–57

PG 86

INTERVIEWS

PHOTOGRAPHS

BOOKS

Nadia Rachok McCutcheon

Helen Brown,

Sides, Ham. Ghost Soldiers: The Forgotten

Interviewed by Clayton Brown,

Personal collection of family photos

Epic Story of World War II's Most Dramatic

Don Brown, and Helen Brown

Mission. Doubleday, 2001.

30 July 1993, Hemet, California

Emily Duncan,

PG 26–38, 47

Acquired photography collection of WWII in Manila

Helen Huntley Brown Interviewed by Clayton Brown

National Archives Catalog,

and Don Brown

Bataan Death March and Cabanatuan,

Summer 2016, Liberty, Missouri

archives.gov

PG 88–101, 136–161

PG 103–125

SPECIAL ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Grammy (Helen Brown), for trusting

This book was researched, compiled,

me to piece together your amazing

and designed by Emily Duncan

story, and allowing me the honor of sharing it.

Senior Capstone Project Washington University in St. Louis

Uncle Jeff (Clayton Brown), for

Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts

fueling the idea for this project, and

Spring 2017

for all your work on interviews and documentation. Bobo (Don Brown), for helping Grammy rediscover her past, and helping me recreate it as accurately as possible.

Type set in Lyon Text and Avenir Printed on French Smart White and Old Green Speckletone Text