The Leper Spy (17 page)

A Japanese army of nearly half a million soldiers had been vanquished. Yamashita signed the surrender documents, officially ending the fighting in the Philippines. Once word spread, other commanders followed suit. Four thousand troops in Davao Province capitulated, then twenty-nine hundred on Cebu, fourteen hundred on Negros, two thousand in the Agusan Valley. Yamashita was flown directly to Manila, then to New Bilibid Prison, and placed in whitewashed cell no. 1, where he was held until he was tried by a military commission for failing to prevent war crimes. He meekly argued through an interpreter that he was nothing more than a soldier at war with the task of killing those trying to kill him.

At his trial, a woman testified to seeing a Japanese soldier hold a fifteen-year-old girl's head up by her hair and hack at her neck with a sword as she prayed for mercy. Others told the commission that Japanese soldiers put candy and whiskey in the center of a college dining hall where eight hundred people were imprisoned, and as the curious crowd drew near, they set off explosives, killing hundreds. Witnesses said troops rounded up thousands of women and girls, chose the prettiest, and led them off to Manila hotels to be raped. Some were only twelve years old.

Eleven-year-old Rosalinda Andoy, who parted her straight black hair on the side and wore a pink dress and sandals, spoke in Tagalog about the day Japanese soldiers began setting fire to homes in Intramuros, and told how her parents had fled with her down smoke-choked streets to the safety of a cathedral. But the soldiers came there, too, she said, and snatched her father away to Fort Santiago, where he was killed. As Yamashita stared blankly at the table before him, the girl in the pink dress told the court how more soldiers came and lobbed grenades amid the women and children in the church,
then began stabbing survivors with their bayonets. She showed the five US generals on the commission ten scars on her left arm, four more on her right. She lifted her pink dress to show them five scars on her legs, eighteen on her chest and stomach, one on her back. She told them her mother's last words were “Always to be good.” She said she stayed with her mother's body until dawn; then the war's newest orphan crawled away, her intestine bulging from one of the wounds, to some nuns in a convent.

Despite the stirring testimony, there was little justice in his trial. The tribunal consisted of regular army officers who were answerable to MacArthur. They entertained much hearsay and conjecture, and the court itself determined the credibility of the witnesses. Twelve reporters who had sat through the entire trial polled each other and found Yamashita innocent, twelve to zero. One of Yamashita's lawyers said that “no American who loves his country can read the record of the prosecution's efforts in this respect without an abiding and painful sense of shame.” The US Supreme Court upheld the conviction, but writing for the dissent, Justice Frank Murphy said that the “spirit of revenge and retribution, masked in formal legal procedure for purposes of dealing with a fallen enemy commander, can do more lasting harm than all of the atrocities giving rise to that spirit…. Today the lives of Yamashita and Homma, leaders of enemy forces vanquished on the field of battle, are taken without regard to the due process of law.”

It mattered not.

Now the stocky general, six feet tall and two hundred pounds, stood on the black gallows in a sugarcane field outside Los Baños with a noose around his neck. He had offered a statement before his sentencing, and some of those present wondered if the calm and stoic man before them felt now how he had then.

“I wish to state that I stand here today with clear conscience,” he had said. “I want to thank the United States of America for a fair trial. I swear before my Creator that I am innocent of the charges brought against me.”

Lt. Charles Rexroad readied the lever to spring the trapdoor beneath Yamashita's feet. Yamashita asked for permission to bow to the emperor. Permission was granted, but he couldn't orient himself, so he asked the guard which direction Tokyo was. The GI indicated, and the general bowed. The GI would tell his buddies later that he didn't know whether he pointed north, south, or toward China.

“I will pray for the emperor's long life,” Yamashita said quietly, “and his prosperity forever.”

The Tiger of Malaya fell through the floor, a sudden heave of gravity, and dangled there in the floodlights under a blanket of tropical stars, a few hours short of another sunrise.

T
he rebuilding of Manila came slow but steady, and soon the bridges and roads were being repaired, and soon, on hot afternoons, Renato Guerrero was loading Cynthia in his car for the long drive to Tala, Novaliches, where Joey was doing her best to care for her fellow inmates. The drive was only twenty or so miles from Manila, through the guava trees and saw-grass fields, but the roads were horrible and the village felt so far removed from the city, so isolated.

Cynthia was still in elementary school, but she was slim and her mother thought she was destined to be tall. During their infrequent visits, Joey could tell their relationship had already grown strained. Cynthia was quiet, uncommunicative, aloof even. She always seemed to be deep in thought, but she would sometimes open up as she would with a friend and the two would talk about her other friends at school, what they liked to do and what their latest hobbies were.

Joey noticed that Cynthia was full of unpredictable humor. The daughter commonly called her mother “my pinup girl.”

When another patient asked Cynthia if Joey was her mother, she responded, “Who? This girl? She is my sister.” On another occasion, after Joey's name and photograph were in the newspaper several days in a row, Cynthia said, “See this? The girl of the headlines!”

Cynthia would remember the visits for the rest of her life, remember how her mother was always in good spirits, even if Cynthia could tell she was physically sick. Her mother had managed to get a room of her own, and it was by then filling with books. Joey loved to read and shelved any book she could get her hands on. She helped other inmates at Tala Leprosarium as well, including a leprosy victim who had given birth. The baby girl was healthy and did not have the disease. Joey became so attached that she pulled her husband aside one day and made a bold suggestion. He should adopt the child.

Renato eventually agreed, and they took the baby into their home. Cynthia, who was being raised in large part by her father and grandmother, now had a sister, Jennifer.

Renato did not explain much to Cynthia about her mother's illness, just that she was sick and had to be isolated. The ignorance didn't assuage the sadness Cynthia felt. She missed her mother. The visits were never long enough. Her father cried for her. He wasn't expecting a miracle, but he was aware of the recent success of new drugs, still elusive in postwar Manila.

Joey, meanwhile, was trying to bring attention to the abysmal conditions at the leprosarium. “There was no medicine. The cottages were filthy,” she would later say. “I was sick in my stomach. But I couldn't sit around and do nothing about it.”

Joey won the confidence of the other patients at Tala. Then she started cleaning. She scrubbed the floors and disinfected the sinks. She enlisted the aid of women she knew on the outside. She wrote more letters to new friends in the United States. The patients at Carville sent as much as they could.

She appealed to the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, which promised to set up running water and electricity.

She was shocked to learn that when patients died, they weren't buried in coffins. The other patients didn't have the spirit or energy
to build a coffin, so Joey did it herself. It was a crude thing and not well constructed, but it was a solid box.

Rev. Calvert Alexander, editor of a publication called
Jesuit Missions,
was on an around-the-world trip to visit all Jesuit establishments when he stopped at Tala. He found Joey acting as sacristan of the colony's chapel. She also served as bell ringer and catechist, and when priests were unable to come in time, she baptized the dying and read the burial prayers at their graves. Alexander sent a dispatch to the National Catholic Welfare Council news service, describing Joey as “the most colorful and unforgettable character in post-war Philippines.” He wrote that she lived by a simple doctrine: “Our Lord suffered, so did Our Lady and all the saints; we must do the same, gaily and joyfully, if we want to make a worthwhile contribution to our fellow men and to our peace and happiness.”

She appealed to a friend and former schoolmate, Maria Aurora “Baby” Quezon, daughter of the former president Manuel Quezon. The two leaned on friends at the
Manila Times,
and eventually a newspaperman agreed to take a trip with Quezon to Tala, to see for himself. It wasn't long before the whole country would know Tala's secret.

I
n May 1946, Gertrude Hornbostel, who had been held captive at the Santo Tomas Internment Camp for three long years, began to notice slight numbness of the hands and strange blemishes on her arms, legs, and body. She learned she had Hansen's disease in San Francisco. She was placed in an isolation ward at Letterman General Hospital but had one constant visitor, her husband, Maj. Hans Hornbostel.

The tall, broad-shouldered man wouldn't leave his wife's side, and when medical authorities decided to ship Gertrude to the nation's leprosarium at Carville for treatment, Hans decided he would go, too. His résumé lent a certain surety to his decision. The major had been serving with an army demolition squad when the Japanese overran the Philippines four years before, and he had been captured on Bataan. He survived the death march and was imprisoned for the remainder of the war in a POW camp in Cabanatuan, sixty-five miles north of where his wife was interned. Finally reunited, he wasn't about to leave her side.

Their story, and his persistence to live the rest of his years with the woman he loved, made national news. The headlines were sensational. Newspapers couldn't resist the shock value of the word
leper,
still in use for the “dread disease.” The San Francisco
Call-Bulletin
broke the story, headlined S.F. W
IFE
L
EPER:
A
RMY
M
ATE
B
EGS TO
S
HARE
I
SOLATION FOR
L
IFE
. Major Hornbostel made no secret of his wife's affliction, which was a rare departure. Most patients at Carville even registered under fake names so their families wouldn't face repercussions from the ignorant. Those at Carville knew that great strides had been made in research and that doctors were finding major success with sulfone drugs, in use for six years by then. They despised the way in which many in the press continued to view leprosy, epitomized by a well-intentioned editorial in the Springfield (MA)
Union
a few days after the Hornbostel story broke on the other coast.

For centuries this loathsome and dreadful disease has rendered its victims outcasts and untouchables. Major Hornbostel is ready to leave the outside world with its accustomed comforts, its safety, its cleanliness behind him to enter that dark place which brings to mind that ominous word “unclean.” To be with his wife, he is ready to run the risk himself becoming a leper. If this man is allowed to join his wife, he will bring the colony of the doomed a luminous spirit of love and sacrifice which will not only help make existence happier for his life's companion, but also give some measure of inspiration to the other victims.

Doomed. Dark. Unclean.

The Hornbostels knew better. Gertrude called the poppycock a “melodramatic mess.” In fifty-two years of the Carville hospital's existence, there had never been a known case of transmission to a doctor or nurse. And doctors were having excellent results with three sulfa drugs: Promin, Diasone, and Promizole. The year before, the leprosarium discharged thirty-seven patients, with plans to discharge forty or more in 1946.

Dr. Guy H. Faget, medical chief at Carville, was reporting that the sulfones had “stopped even the most hopeless cases in their tracks.”

On the strength of the new treatments, the newly created National Advisory Council on Leprosy was preparing recommendations for a more humane policy of treatment for victims. They were planning to encourage the US surgeon general to establish new diagnostic centers and clinics for treatment in the four states where leprosy is endemic—California, Florida, Louisiana, and Texas. They also were planning to recommend segregation as a last resort and to appeal for better facilities and more freedom for patients at Carville. Even though most of Carville's patients were dealing with advanced stages of leprosy, heavy daily injections of Promin were known to clear out the bacilli swiftly. It typically took between eighteen months and five years to suppress the disease.

But culture had been slow to change. Every state but New York required segregation of lepers. Patients at Carville were still called “inmates.” Hospital staff sterilized their outgoing letters. Patients could not leave of their own free will, and family members who weren't afflicted were barred from living on the hospital campus.

Hans Hornbostel felt like his only chance to be with his wife of thirty-three years was blunt talk with reporters. Instead of treating the diagnosis as something to be kept secret, he was unafraid and unashamed. He called a press conference to plea for the right to live with his wife. He tried to correct reporters when they suggested his wife caught the disease at Santo Tomas, suggesting instead that she likely contracted it much earlier and the disease revealed itself due to malnourishment and stress.

“I don't consider myself any martyr by asking to be with her as long as we both shall live,” he said. “I'd be unhappy without her and she'd be unhappy without me, and that's all there is to it.”