PALAWAN HEROES -World War II
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Continued: Part 2
The Massacre
The Original Detailed Accounts - as written by V. Dennis Wrynn
On December 14, Japanese aircraft reported the presence of an American convoy, which was actually headed for Mindoro, but which the Japanese thought was destined for Palawan. All prisoner work details were recalled to the camp at noon. Two American Lockheed P-38 Lightning fighter aircraft were sighted, and the POWs were ordered into the air raid shelters. After a short time the prisoners re-emerged from their shelters, but Japanese 1st Lt. Yoshikazu Sato, whom the prisoners called the Buzzard, ordered them to stay in the area. A second alarm at 2 p.m. sent the prisoners back into the shelters, where they remained, closely guarded.
Suddenly, in an orchestrated and obviously planned move, 50 to 60 Japanese soldiers under Sato's leadership doused the wooden shelters with buckets of gasoline and set them afire with flaming torches, followed by hand grenades. The screams of the trapped and doomed prisoners mingled with the cheers of the Japanese soldiers and the laughter of their officer, Sato.
As men engulfed in flames broke out of their fiery deathtraps, the Japanese guards machine gunned, bayoneted and clubbed them to death. Most of the Americans never made it out of the trenches and the compound before they were barbarically murdered, but several closed in on their tormentors in hand-to-hand combat and succeeded in killing a few of the Japanese attackers.
Marine survivor Corporal Rufus Smith described escaping from his shelter as coming up a ladder into Hell. The four American officers in the camp, Lt. Cmdr. Henry Carlisle Knight (U.S. Navy Dental Corps), Captain Fred Brunie, Lieutenant Carl Mango (U.S. Army Medical Corps) and Warrant Officer Glen C. Turner, had their own dugout, which the Japanese also doused with gasoline and torched. Mango, his clothes on fire, ran toward the Japanese and pleaded with them to use some sense but was machine-gunned to death.
About 30 to 40 Americans escaped from the massacre area, either through the double-woven, 61ž2-foot-high barbed-wire fence or under it, where some secret escape routes had been concealed for use in an emergency. They fell and/or jumped down the cliff above the beach area, seeking hiding places among the rocks and foliage.
The American forces return under Gen. MacArthur
The search for the many POW camps begins
Marine Sergeant Douglas Bogue recalled: "Maybe 30 or 40 were successful in getting through the fence down to the water's edge. Of these, several attempted to swim across Puerto Princesa's bay immediately, but were shot in the water. I took refuge in a small crack among the rocks, where I remained, all the time hearing the butchery going on above. They even resorted to using dynamite in forcing some of the men from their shelters. I knew [that] as soon as it was over up above they would be down probing among the rocks, spotting us and shooting us".
"The stench of burning flesh was strong. Shortly after this they were moving in groups among the rocks dragging the Americans out and murdering them as they found them. By the grace of God I was overlooked".
The hole where the american prisoners of war were forced to get into before they were dowsed in gasoline and burned alive inside the narrow tunnel
Eugene Nielsen of the 59th Coast Artillery observed, from his hiding place on the beach, "a group of Americans trapped at the base of the cliff. He saw them run up to the Japs and ask to be shot in the head. The Japs would laugh and shoot or bayonet them in the stomach. When the men cried out for another bullet to end their misery, the Japs continued to make merry of it all and left them there to suffer. Twelve men were killed in this fashion". Nielson hid for three hours.
As the Japanese were kicking American corpses into a hole, Nielson's partially hidden body was uncovered by an enemy soldier, who yelled to his companions that he had found another dead American. Just then the Japanese soldiers heard the dinner call and abandoned their murderous pursuit in favor of hot food. Later, as enemy soldiers began to close in on his hiding place, Nielson dived into the bay and swam underwater for some distance. When he surfaced, approximately 20 Japanese were shooting at him. He was hit in the leg, and his head and ribs were grazed by bullets. Even though he was pushed out to sea by the current, Nielson finally managed to reach the southern shore of the bay.
Radioman 1st Class Joseph Barta, who had worked in his family's poultry business before joining the Navy in 1934, later testified: "At first I did not get into my shelter. But a Jap officer drew his saber and forced me to get under cover".
About five minutes later, I heard rifle and machine-gun fire. Not knowing what was happening, I looked out and saw several men on fire and being shot down by the Japs. One of them was my friend Ron Hubbard. So I and several other fellows in the hole went under the fence.
"Just as I got outside the fence, I looked back and saw a Jap throw a torch in the other end of our hole, and another one threw in a bucket of gasoline".
Rescued refugees and guerrilla fighters
The barracks at the prison camp
GIs chow down before another mission
The Americans arrive to liberate the islands
"McDole's trench" where he hid from his captors
The slaughter continued until dark. Some of the wounded Americans were buried alive by the Japanese. Men who attempted to swim to safety across the bay were shot by soldiers on the shore or on a Japanese landing barge commanded by Master Sgt. Toru Ogawa.
Glen McDole, the Marine who had survived the appendectomy without anesthesia, hid in the camp garbage dump with two other men. One of them, a military policeman named Charles Street, made a run for the bay as the Japanese closed in and was shot dead.
The second Erving August Evans of the 59th Coast Artillery, stood up and said,
"All right, you Jap bastards, here I am and don't miss me"! He was shot and his body set afire.
Somehow the enemy missed McDole, who later witnessed a party of five or six Japs with an American who had been wounded, poking him along with bayonets. I could see the bayonets draw blood when they poked him.
Another Jap came up with some gasoline and a torch, and I heard the American beg them to shoot him and not to burn him.
The Jap threw some gasoline on his foot and lit it, and the other Japs laughed and poked him with their bayonets. Then they did the same thing to his other foot and to his hand. When the man collapsed, the Japs then threw the whole bucket of gasoline over him, and he burst into flames.
When the Japanese ended their search for the surviving prisoners, there were still a few undiscovered Americans alive. Several prisoners hid in a sewer outlet. When the Japanese shone lights into the pipe, the POWs ducked under the water and were not discovered. After nightfall, they attempted to swim the bay, which was 5 miles across at that point.
Several of them were successful, including Rufus Smith, who was badly bitten on his left arm and shoulder by a shark but managed to reach the opposite shore.
Of the 146 enlisted men and four officers held in the Palawan prison camp, only 11 men survived the massacre on December 14, 1944. Most of the survivors swam across the bay and were rescued by the inmates of Palawan's Iwahig Penal Colony, where several of the officials in charge were involved with the local resistance movement.