For at least an hour, the prisoners squatted and listened to the creek as the sun rose. They watched the convoy roll past, stirring up clouds of dust. The guards drifted away and gathered by the road to enjoy a breakfast of rice cakes and mangoes. As they ate, three Filipino Scouts belly crawled to the creek and buried their faces in the cool water. A guard glanced around, saw them, and alerted the other Japanese. Without a word, they moved to within twenty feet of the creek, formed an impromptu firing line, and murdered the Filipinos.
When the traffic slowed, the prisoners were hurried back into formation and the march continued. “Soon there will be food,” a guard said to Pete, who almost thanked him. As badly as his stomach ached, his thirst was far worse. By midmorning, his mouth and throat were so dry he could no longer talk. No one could, and a grim silence fell over the prisoners. They were halted near a swamp and told to squat in the sun. A guard allowed them to walk to the edge of a stagnant wallow and fill their canteens with a brown brackish liquid that had been contaminated with seawater. If not lethal it would certainly cause dysentery or worse, but the men drank it nonetheless.
At midday, they stopped near a compound and were ordered to sit in the sun. The unmistakable aroma of something cooking wafted over the prisoners, most of whom had eaten only one rice ball in the past thirty hours. Under a makeshift tent, cooks were boiling rice in cauldrons over fires. The prisoners watched as the cooks added pounds of sausage links and fresh chickens to the rice and stirred their mix with long wooden spatulas. Beyond the tent was a makeshift pen secured by barbed wire, and inside it there were about a hundred bedraggled and starving Philippine citizens, support staff who had worked for the army. More guards arrived and it became apparent that this would be a lunch site. When it was served, the Japanese ate from their mess kits and enjoyed a nice meal. One walked to the pen, held up a thick link sausage, and tossed it through the barbed wire. A mob descended upon it, squealing, scratching, clawing, fighting. The guard bent double laughing, as did his buddies. It was too much fun to pass up, so several of them walked to the barbed wire and held up chicken legs and sausages. The prisoners reached and begged and then fought viciously when the food hit the ground.
Nothing was tossed to the Americans. There was no lunch, only the putrid water and an hour in the sun. The march continued through the long afternoon with more men falling and being left behind.
Around midnight on April 12, the second day of the march, the men arrived at the town of Orani, some thirty miles from where they had started. Such a hike would have been challenging for healthy soldiers. For the survivors, it was a miracle they had made it so far. Near the center of town they were led off the highway and into a barbed-wire compound hastily built to house five hundred prisoners. There were at least a thousand already there when Pete’s column arrived. There was no food or water and no latrines. Many of the men suffered from dysentery, and human waste, blood, mucus, and urine covered the ground and stuck to their boots. Maggots were everywhere. There was no room to lie down, so the men tried to sleep sitting back to back, but their cramped muscles made it impossible. The screams of the deranged did not help. Sick, dehydrated, exhausted, and starving, many of the men lost all sense of where they were and what they were doing. Many were delirious, half or fully crazed, and others were catatonic and stood about in a stupor, zombielike.
And they were dying. Many lapsed into comas and did not wake up. By sunrise, the camp was filled with dead bodies. When the Japanese officers realized this, they did not order food and water. Instead, they ordered shovels and instructed the “healthier” prisoners to start digging shallow graves along the edges of the fencing. Pete, Sal, and Ewing were still functioning and thus chosen as gravediggers.
Those who were merely delirious were stuck in a wooden shed and told to be quiet. A few of the comatose were buried alive, not that it made much difference. Death was only hours away. Instead of resting, those with shovels labored through the night as the casualties mounted and bodies were piled next to the barbed wire.
At dawn, the gates opened and guards dragged in sacks of boiled rice. The prisoners were told to sit in neat rows and hold out their cupped hands. Each received a ladleful of sticky rice, their first “meal” in days. After breakfast, they were walked in small groups to an artesian well and allowed to fill their canteens. The food and water calmed the men for a few hours, but the sun was back. By midmorning, the crazed shouting and shrieking was at full chorus. Half the prisoners were ordered out of the compound and back onto the road. The march continued.
Chapter 26
Anticipating the fall of Bataan, the Japanese planned to use the peninsula as a staging area to attack the nearby island of Corregidor, the last American stronghold. To do so, it was necessary to quickly clear the area of American and Filipino prisoners. The plan was to march them sixty-six miles along the Old National Road to the rail yards at San Fernando, and from there they would be taken by train to their destinations at various prisons, including Camp O’Donnell, an old Philippine fort the Japanese had converted into a POW camp. The plans called for the quick removal of about fifty thousand.
However, within hours of the surrender, the Japanese realized that they had grossly underestimated. There were seventy-six thousand American and Filipino soldiers, along with twenty-six thousand civilians. Everywhere the Japanese looked there were prisoners, all hungry and in need of food and water. How could the enemy surrender with so many soldiers? Where was their will to fight? They could not contain their contempt and hatred for their captives.
As the march dragged on, and the ranks of the prisoners continued to rise, the Japanese guards were pressured to speed it along. There was no time to eat or drink, no time to rest, no time to stop and assist those who had fallen. There was no time to bury the dead, and no time to worry about stragglers. The generals were yelling at the officers to hurry. The officers were physically abusing the privates, and they in turn released their frustrations on their prisoners. As the columns swelled and slowed, the pressure wound even tighter and the march became even more chaotic. Dead bodies littered the ditches and fields and decomposed in the blistering sun. Black clouds of flies swarmed the rotting flesh and were joined by hungry pigs and dogs. Packs of black crows waited patiently on fences, and some began following the columns, tormenting the prisoners.
Pete had lost track of the men of the Twenty-Sixth. He, Sal, and Ewing were still together, but it was impossible to keep up with anyone else. Groups of emaciated prisoners were added to one column one day and left behind at the camps the next day. Men were falling, dying, and being killed by the hundreds. He stopped thinking about anyone but himself.
On the fourth day, they entered the city of Lubao. The once busy town of thirty thousand was deserted, or at least the streets were. But from the windows upstairs, the residents were watching. When the column stopped, the windows were raised and the people began tossing bread and fruits to the prisoners. The Japanese went into a frenzy and ordered them to ignore the food. When a teenage boy darted from behind a tree and tossed a loaf of bread, a guard shot him on the spot. Prisoners who had managed to eat a bite or two were pulled from the column and beaten. One was bayoneted in the stomach and hung from a lamppost as a warning.
They marched on, somehow mustering the will to take another step, notch another mile. So many men were dying from dehydration and exhaustion that the Japanese relented somewhat and allowed them to fill their canteens, usually at a roadside ditch or a pond used by livestock.