Escape From Davao (46 page)

No amount of redistribution of aid could pacify Douglas MacArthur. MacArthur believed himself to be fighting a two-front war, one against the Japanese and another against Washington. MacArthur predictably and immediately seized on the revelation of Japanese atrocities as the reason why he must make good on his promise to return to the Philippines with al deliberate haste. In a private letter prepared for FDR not long after his conference with Dyess, McCoy, and Mel nik in July 1943, MacArthur passionately stressed that:

our quiescent policy with respect to the Philippines … is in no smal degree responsible for the unfolding of a drama the stark tragedy of which has no counterpart in American history. Our prisoners of war are being subjected to slow and deliberate extermination through disease, starvation and summary execution. So, have many thousands already perished and few, if any, wil ever survive unless we arouse ourselves into a more dynamic Philippine aid policy … Never before in the service of my country have I found it necessary to defend her honor and dignity …

before al humanity, by the advocacy of military and moral considerations more elementary than those that should now form the framework of our Philippine policy if we are to redeem ourselves before God, before the shattered remnant of our Army that lies shackled in the stench of Japanese imprisonment and before our wards, the Filipino people.

MacArthur thought that the Dapecol escapees had not been muzzled merely to ensure safe delivery of the
Gripsholm
’s cargo. “Perhaps the administration, which was committed to a Europe first effort, feared American public opinion would demand a greater reaction against Japan,” MacArthur would speculate in his memoirs, “but whatever the cause, here was the sinister beginning of the ‘managed news’ concept by those in power.”

MacArthur’s supposition that the government was deliberately suppressing the atrocity stories should not be dismissed out of hand. War correspondent Raymond Clapper, a veteran of several Pacific battles who was also a supporter of FDR, confirmed MacArthur’s claim, complaining that Roosevelt “was taking the whole technique of a control ed press far beyond anything we have experienced in this country.”

No matter what their government was—or was not—tel ing them, Americans had long been aware of the brutal nature of their Pacific enemy, due to atrocity stories emanating from China (Nanking, among others). It was not until 1943, however, when several stories detailing atrocities committed against U.S.

prisoners were released that the public’s blood began to boil. In late April, Americans learned of the October 1942 execution of three American fliers who had been captured in occupied China fol owing the Doolittle Raid. Roosevelt condemned the Japanese as “barbarous” and “depraved,” and the public’s reaction, noted historian John Dower, “was comparable to the rage that greeted the news of Pearl Harbor.” Observing the emotional response, the British embassy in Washington reported to London that the uproar was such that it “sharply increased the stimulus of national anger and humiliation which makes of the Pacific front permanently a more burning issue than [the] European front is ever likely to be.”

Why was Dyess encountering so much resistance? Perhaps because his story was unlike anything America had known before, a story that described not a handful of heinous acts committed against a few downed airmen, but the systemized torture and extermination of thousands of abandoned American troops. The story possessed so much emotional and political dynamite that it was no wonder Colonel Robert McCormick, owner of the
Chicago Tribune
and other papers, was heavily invested. The maverick publishing baron had long been an enemy of FDR and the Democratic Party. The Dyess story was only the latest in a series of tangles that the
Tribune
had had with censorship and the White House. Months earlier, the paper had been accused of compromising national security by publishing a story about the Navy’s successful breaking of Japanese codes, which helped lead to the Midway victory. A grand jury was convened, but the case was dropped because the Japanese never changed their codes as a result of the
Tribune
’s story, thus exonerating the paper. Dyess’s story of widespread atrocities and the sensational story of the only mass escape of American POWs seemed tailor-made for McCormick and the
Tribune
.

The fact that it was the
Chicago Tribune
sitting atop this ticking media time bomb was beginning to light up switchboards throughout Washington. Upon his return from a meeting with
Tribune
editors in Chicago, Capt. Leland P. Lovett, head of the Navy’s Office of Public Relations, alerted Surles that it seemed as though the paper was preparing to take an aggressive stance. McCormick’s likely impatience presaged a censorship showdown. “The thing I’m a little doubtful about,” Military Intel igence Service chief Gen.

George V. Strong told Surles in a phone conversation on September 13, “is to whether the
Chicago
Tribune
wants to play the game.” In anticipation of an attempt by the
Tribune
to circumvent established channels, Strong and Surles were prepared to invoke the Espionage Act, if necessary, to ensure the paper’s cooperation. (Passed shortly after America’s entry into World War I in 1917, the Espionage Act prohibited the transmission of national defense and security information, interference with military operations, and other treasonous and/or subversive activities. It was amended in 1940.) Meanwhile, Dyess was not the only one being muzzled. Both McCoy and Mel nik had undergone extensive debriefings and submitted reports, only to encounter the same mysterious roadblocks. As in Dyess’s case, their silence had reportedly also been secured under the threat of the loss of their commissions and careers. McCoy’s situation had not been made any easier by Wendel Fertig, who had sent a letter to an old friend, Gen. Hugh J. Casey, in a bundle of papers taken out on the
Trout
in July.

Fertig’s warning to Casey, likely circulated among the elite levels of command, undoubtedly raised red flags for McCoy’s superiors:

In general personalities have not been as serious as anticipated. However, the escape of ten prisoners from Davao has complicated the situation somewhat, since the escape was led by Lieut. Comdr. Melvyn H. McCoy, who, to put it as pleasantly as possible, is a bit “stir-crazy.” He must be watched upon his arrival in Australia, because he may do some injudicious talking.

McCoy had had enough. First he had to fight the Japanese. Then Wendel Fertig—twice. And now his own Navy, as wel as the bureaucratic machinations of the U.S. government? The memories of those comrades he had left behind, both the escapees stil on Mindanao and the POWs stil behind barbed wire, would not al ow him to remain quiescent.

“In view of what’s happening to the prisoners out there—they’ve died by the thousands, they’re continuing to die and they’re probably al going to die if something isn’t done about it—I cannot accept the order to remain silent,” he told his superiors. “One reason we escaped was to let the world know what is happening to the prisoners. I wil reveal this and … wil sacrifice my career if necessary. This must be told and I wil tel it.”

With that brazen pronouncement, McCoy waited to see if the Navy would cal his bluff. In the meantime, he entered into negotiations with several publications for the rights to his version of the escape story.

Mel nik, too, was obsessed by thoughts of those left behind, but he remained more reserved than McCoy. He fol owed orders to the letter, tel ing his astonished family very little, if anything, about how he had found his way home. At the same time, Mel nik seemed equal y confused by the general lack of knowledge about or passion for the Pacific war, not to mention his ordeal. “It seemed hard for him to realize we in America didn’t know of the Japanese cruelty to our men,” his wife would tel a newspaper reporter.

Believing that he could do more for his comrades in the Pacific than in the Pentagon, Mel nik arranged for a transfer to MacArthur’s GHQ in Brisbane. But before his departure, he traveled to Saranac Lake, New York, to fulfil a promise. It was there, the Western Hemisphere’s foremost location for the treatment of pulmonary tuberculosis, that Mel nik found a frail, sickly Manuel Quezon racked with coughing spasms and entering the last months of his life. Mel nik told Quezon of the invaluable assistance that Ben de la Cruz and Victor Jumarong had provided the escapees and asked that the Philippine president-in-exile grant pardons to both men.

“If you’l give their names to my secretary,” said Quezon, “she’l prepare the papers, and I’l sign them, before you leave.”

By mid-September, the powers-that-be decided to buy time, presumably for the
Gripsholm
, perhaps to explore other methods for resolving the pending showdown involving the
Chicago Tribune
, Dyess, McCoy, and the government, and maybe for “other things,” as Surles had stated. Charles Leavel e was granted permission to take down Dyess’s story—but nothing more. An awed Leavel e spent several days at Ashford before Dyess was discharged. “At first it was difficult to believe he held the Legion of Merit, the DSC with Oak Leaf Cluster, the Silver Star, and the two cluster group citation,” he would write. “He was a thin, blond youngster, slow of speech. But after a couple of minutes in his presence you recognized the qualities of leadership that made him great.”

Usual y, Dyess reclined in his bed and dictated his story to Leavel e. Humble, Dyess seemed to consciously avoid any inclusion of himself in the story. On occasion, the pilot would hover over Leavel e’s shoulder, reading as the latter typed. “Tst, tst,” Dyess would say, shaking his head. “You must have a strong ‘I’ key on this typewriter. It’s a wonder to me it didn’t break somewhere along here.”

Dyess eventual y relented to being the centerpiece of the story, conditional y. “If you triple my troubles and multiply the result by several thousand, you’l get a rough idea of what went on,” Dyess remarked, putting his experiences into perspective. “And when you do that, you must bear in mind that I got out alive.

Thousands of the boys didn’t—and won’t.”

In early fal , Leavel e and Maxwel traveled to Washington for a conference with General Surles, having brought five completed chapters for the latter’s review. Surles, however, declined, stating that a blanket ban had been placed on al atrocity stories from the highest authorities and, recal ed Leavel e, that “there would be no point in his reading the

story.”

Despite al of the obstacles they had overcome, Dyess, McCoy, and Mel nik had arrived home only to face another lengthy battle. This time, wrote Leavel e, they would be fighting their own government,

“official reluctance, indecision, resistance and actual hostility in high places.”

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 1943

At sea aboard the USS
Bowfin

At last, Sam Grashio’s hands had stopped trembling. Calmly, as the submarine
Bowfin
ran safely and silently in the depths of the Mindanao Sea, Grashio pul ed out the envelope on which was written, in the handwriting of Leo Boelens, the fol owing instructions: “Sam—Not to be opened until after shove’n.”

Earlier in the evening, Grashio’s hands had quivered so much that he could not pick up a cup of coffee in the officers wardroom. But now, as he had steadied to the realization that the submarine truly existed, that he was indeed going home, he opened the parcel to find two parting gifts: a letter and a poem.

Taking a leave from his duties as guerril a quartermaster, Grashio had spent several weeks with Boelens on the site of Farm Project No. 1 about four kilometers south of Lala, Lanao. Boelens, though, had not returned to his roots; Farm Project No. 1 was the code name for a secret, 1.4-mil ion-square-foot airfield that Wendel Fertig had ordered Boelens to carve out of the Mindanao wilderness. The name was a disguise—should

the Japanese capture Fertig’s papers or a spy overhear a conversation, there would be little to indicate the true nature of the project. Boelens supervised a smal team of three officers and five enlisted men, as wel as a number of civilian laborers. In typical Boelens fashion, it had become an al -consuming task.

Years later, Grashio would wistful y recal the period of his visit, the memories of feasting on monkey meat with local Moros and he and Boelens reading stories from old
Reader’s Digest
magazines to each other near a beautiful waterfal . Grashio’s visit was cut short when a runner from Fertig’s headquarters arrived with the news that he had been cleared for evacuation. “I was simultaneously gladdened and saddened,” Grashio would write.

Grashio had offered to stay behind, but Boelens would hear none of it. Just as he had been with Dyess, Boelens seemed to possess a greater sense of Grashio’s destiny than Grashio himself. On his departure two days earlier, Grashio had awakened at 2 a.m. to find Boelens awake, writing by the meager light of a coconut oil lamp.

Sam—

We’ve come a long way together, 10,000 miles or more

To find the going tough but we’ve much to be thankful for.

Our friendship was cast into brotherhood amidst the blood and jumble, and bound by
mortar made of hardships that time can never crumble. Our paths diverged from time to time
common of circumstance, but always joined at happy stands of joyous consequence.

We have reached another junction; the sign says you must go,
until the paths converge at
a happy stand where the pickens are good we know.