PALAWAN HEROES -World War II
Join us for the 70th aniversary!!!! APRIL 21-23, 2015, PALAWAN , PHILIPPINES
Part 3
Postscript: AfterThe Massacre
The Original Detailed Accounts - as written by V. Dennis Wrynn
Filipino civilian prisoners at the colony, who were interned during the Japanese occupation of their homeland, fed and clothed the American POWs and contacted local guerrilla leaders on their behalf. The guerrillas escorted the Americans down the coast to Brooke's Point, where they were evacuated by a U.S. Navy seaplane to Leyte. There they told their story to U.S. military authorities.
Another U.S. Marine, Pfc Donald Martyn, also swam the bay successfully but was never seen again after reaching land and turning north, in the opposite direction of the path taken by his surviving comrades.
Radioman 1st Class Joseph Barta, who described the Japanese kempeitai as "the meanest bastards that ever walked the face of the earth", wandered the jungle for 10 days after swimming the bay.
At one point, he came within 3 feet of a Japanese sentry on a jungle path before making his escape. Although wounded in that encounter, he managed to reach the Iwahig Colony, where he was hidden in a well. A local witch doctor treated his wounds by spreading a solution of boiled guava leaves over them with a gray chicken feather, accompanied by much dancing and hollering. He was reunited with Bogue and McDole, and they were ultimately evacuated from Brooke's Point.
While there were no civilian witnesses to the massacre of unarmed prisoners at Palawan, after the war several Filipinos reported to American authorities that the Japanese officers from Captain Nagayoshi Kojima's command and personnel from the kempeitai held a celebration to commemorate the event the same night that it occurred.
A POW tangled on a barbed wire that befittingly depicts the atrocities - is one of the commemorative markers at site today.
Civilians who questioned the absence of the prisoners were given divergent replies–in some instances they were told that the POWs were all killed in American air raids, in other instances that the prisoners had been transferred to another camp.
The underground tunnel where the POWs were forced into
The thoughts of one Japanese soldier regarding the atrocity were recorded in a diary left behind at the camp.
"December 15–Due to the sudden change of situation, 150 prisoners of war were executed. Although they were prisoners of war, they truly died a pitiful death. The prisoners who worked in the repair shop really worked hard. From today on I will not hear the familiar greeting, 'Good morning, sergeant major.'
January 9–After a long absence, I visited the motor vehicle repair shop. Today, the shop is a lonely place. The prisoners of war who were assisting in repair work are now just white bones on the beach washed by the waves. Furthermore, there are numerous corpses in the nearby garage and the smell is unbearable. It gives me the creeps."
MacArthur essentially controlled the War Crimes Trials in the Pacific theater. On August 2, 1948, the Palawan Massacre trial began in Yokohama, Japan. On trial were several staff officers who had exhibited criminal liability through their failure to take command responsibility. Thus, most of the accused Japanese had very little direct involvement with the atrocities perpetrated at Puerto Princesa. However, due to the chain of command, they were deemed responsible. Their attitude was described as callous indifference to the fate of the prisoners in their hands.
The Palawan warehouse where the POWs slept anywhere...empty after the massacre
After Palawan was liberated by the 186th Infantry Regiment of the 41st Division, the men of the Army's 601st Quartermaster Company, under Major Charles Simms, excavated the burned and destroyed dugouts to properly inter the dead Americans. The unit reported 79 individual burials during March 1945 and many more partial burials.
Its report stated: 26 skeletons, some still with flesh on the bones, were found piled four and five high in one excavation. The skulls of these skeletons either had bullet holes or had been crushed by some blunt instrument. These were the dead from the compound thrown into the shelters by the Japanese after the massacre.
The report also stated: Most of the bodies were found [in the shelters] huddled together at a spot furthest away from the entrance. This would indicate that they were trying to get as far away from the fire as possible. In two dugouts bodies were found in a prone position, arms extended with small conical holes at the fingertips showing that these men were trying to dig their way to freedom.
Japanese soldiers stood trial in Yokohama for war crimes at Palawan.
Several of the American survivors of the Palawan massacre were willing to testify against their former tormentors and returned to the Far East for the trial. Under questioning, Marine Sergeant Bogue admitted that he had physically struck one of the accused, Superior Private Tomisaburo Sawa, several times while the Japanese soldier was confined in his prison cell after the war. When asked why, Bogue replied, "For the same reason you're going to hang him"! But that was not to be.
At the beginning of the trial, the prosecution announced its intention to show that Lt. Gen. Seiichi Terada, commanding general of the 2nd Air Division headquartered in the Philippines, radioed instructions on the evening of December 13 to the 131st Airfield Battalion at Palawan to annihilate the 150 prisoners. Accordingly, the Japanese soldiers involved were issued 30 rounds of ammunition each, and the battalion commander announced to the men that due to an imminent Allied invasion, the prisoners regretfully were to be killed. Next, Lieutenant Sho Yoshiwara ordered fix bayonets and load five rounds (the magazine capacity of the standard Japanese infantry rifle), after which the massacre ensued.
Unfortunately, Lieutenant Yoshiwara was nowhere to be found after the war ended; nor was Captain Kojima, the prison camp commandant. In fact, it was impossible to find almost anyone from the Palawan garrison. The battle for the Philippines had been costly for both sides, but especially for the Japanese, who lost 80,000 men. There is no doubt that many of the soldiers who participated in the Palawan massacre died in battle or from disease. Many just disappeared in the hostile atmosphere engendered by the Japanese defeat.
Several weeks had passed between Japan's agreement to surrender to the Allies and the actual signing of the surrender document aboard the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945.
Japanese atrocities against Allied military and civilian personnel after capture were well-documented by war's end. Although the famous Nuremberg Trials held in Europe received the lion's share of interest, especially from the world press, the Military Tribunal for the Far East managed to capture the Americans' attention.
However heinous the crimes of the Nazi government, they rarely involved Americans, while the Japanese were brutal and criminal in their treatment of captured Americans and other Allied military personnel.
The Japanese are tried for war crimes and the brutality against the American soldiers and civilians.
The Japanese sign the terms of surrender
During that time, millions of Japanese wartime documents were destroyed, and most certainly many Japanese soldiers and civilians, who knew they would be held accountable for their actions against both soldiers and civilians, disappeared from view. The staff of the Allied War Crimes Tribunal accused the Japanese Demobilization Bureau of protecting these alleged war criminals from prosecution, but if they were, Allied threats had little effect.
The war was over, and Americans wanted to get on with their lives. The Japanese, who to this day do not accept responsibility for the initiation of hostilities in 1941, were reluctant to reveal any damaging information about their citizenry and military that could be concealed. At the same time, the U.S. government was anxious to prepare Japan for its new role as part of the defense system against the expansion of international communism, and the fate of 150 American soldiers caught up in the savagery of war was certainly not a political priority. Only the few survivors remained to beseech their government that justice be done.
In the end, six of the Japanese defendants were acquitted of the charges against them related to the massacre. The other 10 were given sentences ranging from two years' imprisonment to death. The death sentence for kempeitai Sergeant Taichi Deguchi was commuted to confinement and hard labor for 30 years on July 19, 1950, by none other than MacArthur himself.
On March 23, 1949, Toru Ogawa, a company commander in the 131st Airfield Battalion who was charged with abusing 300 POWs and causing the death of 138 prisoners by ordering subordinates to massacre them by surprise assault and treacherous violence, and killing them by various methods, received his sentence of two years' hard labor, reduced by 91ž2 months for time served.
Tomisaburo Sawa, the prisoner struck by Sergeant Bogue while in jail, admitted in sworn testimony that he had participated in the Palawan massacre by killing at least three American POWs. On March 29, 1949, he received a sentence of five years' hard labor, reduced by 131ž2 months due to time served.
For all of the Japanese military personnel still imprisoned for their barbarous treatment of captured and interned Americans during World War II, liberation day was December 31, 1958, barely 13 years after the end of the war. At that time, any war criminals still in custody were released from Tokyo's Sugamo Prison in a general amnesty.
While all was certainly not forgiven, especially by those Americans who had survived brutal captivity at the hands of the Japanese, we cannot forget most of the sacrifices and suffering that our soldiers and the Filipino people that tried to help them and were punished for it, went through.
Forgetting is inexcusable.
For their sacrifice, let us celebrate , their lives and their valor.
Join us at the place that is at present hallowed ground.
Join us on April 21-23 for the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Palawan