Escape From Davao (23 page)

In Cabanatuan, when a malignant case of malaria had crippled Marshal , Spielman would help his enfeebled buddy outside on clear days, propping his ashen, sickly body against the barracks for some fresh air and sunlight. Twice Marshal was taken to the hospital and because staying meant certain death, twice Spielman personal y discharged his friend. “We were very, very close,” said Marshal . “Like brothers.”

Though no stranger to rackets, Spielman was sickened that some unscrupulous men were profiting from hoarded medicine. One day, the immorality in the camp and his best friend’s approaching mortality moved him to action. He cornered a known operator and requested a dozen quinine pil s. When a price was quoted, Spielman jabbed the tip of his mess kit knife into the man’s gut. “I have a pal who is about to die and you are going to help him live,” said Spielman. The black marketeer, said Spielman, “had a change of heart.”

After the brief reunion, Mel nik took his old friends to meet McCoy. The foursome exited the barracks to speak privately, which they did while circling the perimeter.

“Steve and I have learned how to amuse guards and keep them tied to one spot,” said McCoy.

“Meanwhile, you two wil gather fruit for the whole detail. This way we reduce the number of people roaming the roads and getting caught. How does that sound?”

“That’s okay by us,” replied Spielman, enthusiastical y. “You and the major are the old-timers. You cal the signals; Paul and I wil carry the bal .”

“You can trust Bob and Paul,” Mel nik assured Pop Abrina the fol owing morning. “They’re part of my team.”

“Then now we are five!” whispered Abrina in delighted, conspirational tones.

At the cornfield, the foragers fanned into the tunnels of coconut and banana trees with burlap bags, their appetites serving as divining rods. Then Abrina went to work on the guards. When McCoy entered the act with his own lascivious litany, Mel nik slipped away to check on Marshal and Spielman. During the midday siesta, the two noncoms parceled out the contents of their bulging bag to the other prisoners.

“Major,” drawled Spielman, “I think we’re gonna live!”

They practiced their roles to perfection over the next few weeks, benefiting the entire detail’s health.

The prisoners gained weight and their sores, depression, and fatigue disappeared. The two sergeants even brought fruit into the compound through an ingenious system in which Spielman played the role of smuggler and Marshal the decoy: the latter was slapped by the guards for moving in ranks, thus drawing attention away from the former as he slipped safely inside. It had been months since their meeting aboard the
Casiana
, but they stil had their touch. Despite their accomplishments, late December brought about an inevitable question.

“Say, Pop,” asked McCoy, “what happens when there’s no more corn to pick? Could you arrange a work detail for us near meat and vegetables?”

“You left out the pie and ice cream,” said Abrina sarcastical y. “But for
tomodachis
like you, I’l ask Acenas—he’l have ideas.”

Unlike superintendent Pascual Robin, a Japanese col aborator, Juan Acenas had some credibility with the Americans—it was his radio that supplied the news that Abrina transmitted to McCoy. Acenas, lean, bald, and bespectacled, arrived unexpectedly in the cornfield one day. Though there was enough rice and vegetables to increase the prisoners’ rations, he told Mel nik, Maeda balked at the proposal. But he did have an idea. Maeda had refused to authorize work on the experimental coffee farm, a project close to the agriculturist’s heart.

“Unless we do something soon the heavy undergrowth wil kil the trees and our ten years of developmental work,” said Acenas.

“Let’s tel [Maeda] he can sel coffee beans in Davao City and use the money to buy machinery,” said Abrina, continuing Acenas’s train of thought. “The old crook wil probably keep the money, but who cares?”

Back in the compound that evening, the Americans sat around a fire as a pot of tea simmered.

Spielman voiced the thought on each of their minds.

“I’m tired of jail. I want to walk out of here and keep on going.”

McCoy agreed. Both their food supply and relative freedom would likely end with the corn detail, he said. Again the voice of reason, Mel nik objected to any rash action.

“We can’t take off blindly. For al we know, Jap troops might be bivouaced around the colony! … What happens to Pop when four of his men don’t show up? What wil the Japs do to the corn detail and the men who sleep in our bays? I don’t want their lives on my conscience!”

“Those are al valid objections that we should try to overcome by planning,” said a partial y acquiescent McCoy. “The important thing is to decide to escape. Are you with me?”

After several tense seconds, Marshal broke the silence.

“Commander,” he said, “I’m with you on leaving here, and I’l go along with whatever you and the major decide. But I want a fighting chance, not a way-out gamble, for my life.”

The impossible problem had been placed in front of McCoy. It was up to him to find a solution.

• • •

To celebrate the Christmas season, as wel as the first year of what only the Japanese could consider co-prosperity, Major Maeda had declared a rare holiday from work. Maeda also had promised the prisoners additional food and entertainment. That was why Jack Hawkins and Mike Dobervich had dashed through a torrential downpour toward the camp chapel on a miserably wet, bone-chil ing Christmas Eve.

Despite the chorus harmonizing wel -known carols, the tension inside was palpable to the crowd, remembered Fely Campo. “The Japanese told us, ‘You can talk, you can mix with [the Americans], but no foolish ideas.’ ” The tension was al eviated somewhat when the Japanese choice for master of ceremonies, 2nd Lt. Kempei Yuki, ascended a stage bedecked with shiny tinsel and opened the unforgettable Dapecol Christmas show of 1942.

Diminutive and decidedly unmilitary in his appearance and demeanor, with kind, almond eyes and a boyish face, the thirty-five-year-old Yuki appeared the antithesis of his superior, Hozumi. The English-speaking enemy officer had done his best to make their voyage on the
Erie Maru
as tolerable as possible, ordering that they receive cookies, candy, and cigarettes on a Japanese holiday. He also attended a POW funeral, bringing a bugler and some flowers he had purchased in Cebu City. When the chaplain concluded the ceremony, Yuki stood at attention with the Americans and saluted. Deemed trustworthy, Yuki would be the closest thing to a friend in a Japanese uniform the prisoners would know.

The first performance was a traditional harvest dance performed by several teenage girls and boys from the families of the colony’s administrators. The prisoners were mesmerized not only by the graceful movements, but by the costumes, too; the radiant rainbow woke them from the drudgery of their dreary khaki, green, and brown existence.

As the Filipinos cleared the stage, a prisoners orchestra launched into a set of familiar pieces such as

“Stardust” and “Apple Blossom Time.” To the homesick POWs, the nostalgic sounds were indistinguishable from those of the big bands of Artie Shaw or Glenn Mil er. “It was like a dream there in the dimly-lighted chapel,” wrote Hawkins, “listening to the harmony of American dance music.” One prisoner noted that the band’s theme, played several times throughout the evening, must have been

“consciously chosen.” It was “Outside of Paradise.”

After the musical interlude, there was a murmur of astonishment when the curtain was raised to reveal none other than Mr. Nishamura, the despised interpreter. But Nishamura’s skil ful rendition of the Charleston amended the prisoners’ opinion of their loathsome adversary, if only temporarily. Next, a samurai sword dance and a frighteningly realistic depiction of hara-kiri, Japanese ritual suicide, caused the audience to shudder.

As the American portion of the program began, a wave of communal laughter, starting with the Japanese officers and guards seated in the front rows, washed over the audience. There was wild applause for the Jewish private from the Bronx and an Italian corpsman from Philadelphia who jitterbugged across the stage, for an accordion-playing officer; and, final y, for prisoners from New Mexico who donned face paint and feathers for a traditional Native American dance and contributed an uproarious impersonation of Carmen Miranda.

“The difference between friend and foe [was] forgotten, and everybody in the audience united by a common feeling of enjoyment and laughter,” wrote Fely Campo’s father, Anastacio. “Cigarettes and presents were passed around in the friendly atmosphere of peace and goodwil among al of us.” The entire audience had just barely finished singing “Auld Lang Syne,” recal ed Fely Campo, when a gong abruptly ended the convivial atmosphere. “Everybody out,” ordered the Japanese. “Go back to barracks.”

Upon exiting, each prisoner col ected a rice stick fried in coconut oil from the altruistic Filipinos. As they filed back to their barracks or to midnight mass, the music, dancing children, and laughter conjured memories of their loved ones and better times which had long been relegated to the cobwebbed corners of their minds. Misty-eyed, they did not need the sign that had been erected near the chapel—“Los Angeles City Limits. City Hal 11936 kilometers”—to remind them that they were far from home on this holiest of nights.

In Barracks Five, Jack Hawkins was lying beneath his mosquito net, wide awake. “Suddenly I was overcome by a surging desire to burst out of the nightmare life had become,” he related. Impulsively, he reached under the net, tapped Dobervich, and inquired if he was awake.

“Yeah,” grunted Dobervich, woozily.

“I was just thinking,” said Hawkins. “I don’t know how it wil be, but we’re not going to spend another Christmas like this.”

CHAPTER 10
A Big Crowd

I probed the whirling darkness while the rain

Played on the nipa with a rhythmic stamp …

FRIDAY, JANUARY 29–SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 1943

Davao Penal Colony

Crankcase oil and powdered lime kept the flies in check, yet nothing could stop the latrine rumors from proliferating. Some wiseacre had tacked up an appropriate sign over the latrines that read, “KGEI.”

General y, the reports just smel ed funny: the Navy was operating near the Celebes Islands, just south of Mindanao; actress Deanna Durbin was dead; a new Ford awaited each prisoner at home. Other rumors, such as that yarn about the Red Cross packages, were more offensive to the ear. Most of the POWs thought the story that they would be receiving

relief parcels was a cruel hoax similar to the rumors about the repatriation ships. The matter was settled on the unforgettable afternoon of

January 29.

“It’s Christmas, Commander McCoy!” shouted a sailor. “It’s Christmas!”

McCoy, aware that the holiday had passed—and that some prisoners were going stir-crazy in captivity

—requested an explanation.

“Stuff from home,” came the reply. “Boxes from the States. Red Cross boxes.”

Throughout the compound, prisoners could not believe their eyes—nor their fingers. “Hands trembled as they tore the boxes open,” one of McCoy’s POW peers would write. “Eyes sparkled as edible treasures were pul ed forth and held up to public view, while hardbitten, battle-scarred soldiers and sailors, exactly like children on Christmas morning, shouted excitedly: “
Look
what
I’ve
got!”

Each POW received approximately two boxes, fifteen-pound cardboard cornucopias containing cans of corned beef and salmon, sardines, coffee, instant cocoa, jam, and chocolate bars, as wel as butter, cheese, and powdered milk. There was even clothing and toiletries. Vitamin tablets, sulfa drugs, anesthetics, and quinine, too. From a morale standpoint, most important were the labels: Kraft cheese, Welch’s Grapelade, Domino sugar, Swan Pure White Floating soap. The name brands served as familiar symbols of home, thoughtful y packed, canned, and vacuum-sealed evidence that they had not been forgotten. “As each prisoner ripped open a box, I suspect that there were many besides myself who worked with a catch in the throat,” recal ed McCoy.

The rejuvenating effect was almost instantaneous. Within days, bedridden men walked; mangy beards, unsightly ulcers, and rashes disappeared; spirits soared. Savoring the bliss of their sated appetites with after-dinner smokes—though the Japanese had rifled the boxes, plenty of packs of Camels and Chesterfields remained—they even began talking about sex again. And at least one of them began again to entertain thoughts of another taboo subject.

The belated Christmas gifts had arrived not a moment too soon for Ed Dyess. His legs were scarred with tropical ulcers; an infected finger had almost been amputated; and the mass of scurvy blisters in his mouth had at one time been so painful that he could hardly eat. Smuggled fruit cured his scurvy, but for every step forward Dyess invariably took two back: at Christmas, he was besieged with malaria and a nasty skin infection. “Ailments always went in pairs for me,” he lamented. Fortunately for Dyess, Sam Grashio had landed a regular assignment in the Japanese kitchen, the most coveted of camp jobs. It was there that he met Abes-san, the mess sergeant, a Tokyo tailor in civilian life who had sized up Grashio and taken a liking to him. Abes-san stood up to other Japanese on his behalf and let him snitch scraps, which essential y kept Dyess alive until the timely arrival of the Red Cross packages.