He wondered what Juana was doing at that moment, whether she was also thinking of him, or if she had already forgotten about him. Deke smiled to himself and shook his head. Maybe Philly was right — when it came to Juana, he’d gotten it bad. It would take a while for that missing piece of him to grow back.
He glanced over at Thor, who seemed to have the right idea. The dog was stretched out in the sunshine, taking a nap. Lieutenant Steele had added that they had more than a thousand miles of ocean to cross before they reached Ie Shima, so they were settling in for a long voyage. Men had taken up whatever space they could find on deck, some of them reading like Yoshio, his nose already buried in a Western, or they smoked cigarettes, or wrote letters home.
Philly had gotten a card game together, and he tried to wave Deke over, but Deke just shook his head, not interested.
Instead, Deke lay down next to Thor, feeling the sun warm him and the tropical breeze brush his hair. He was normally on high alert, but here on the ocean he had no choice but to put his trust in the ship’s crew. Realizing that, it was like a weight had lifted, and he felt more relaxed than he had in weeks.
He closed his eyes and felt his mind drift. That was all right; there would be more fighting, and when it came, he would be ready.
Captain Jim Oatmire had returned to headquarters. He had not thought that he would ever look forward to mess hall cooking or his bunk, but they were far superior to C rations and sleeping on the ground. He didn’t miss any part of that. However, he did find himself missing the soldiers and guerrillas of Patrol Easy. They had an easy camaraderie that did not exist among the headquarters staff, where there were many egos to navigate and toes to step on. Although he was an officer, the soldiers had accepted him once he had proved his worth.
His original assignment to negotiate the release of hostages from the Japanese had taken some twists and turns, not going at all the way he had expected, but ultimately the hostages had survived. He knew well enough that Patrol Easy had saved the hostages, though, not him.
He didn’t feel that he deserved it, but back at HQ the outcome had earned him an attaboy — and something more. None other than General MacArthur’s chief of staff had some news for him. He had summoned Oatmire to a meeting.
“You’ve done such a good job, son, that the Old Man is sending you to Okinawa for the big show.”
“What the hell am I supposed to do there?” He waited a beat and added “sir,” realizing that Patrol Easy had rubbed off on him in more ways than one.
“I guess you could say you’re going to be a troubleshooter. Get some sleep and some chow. You’ll head out tomorrow.”
“Yes, sir. That’s great,” Oatmire said, realizing with a sinking feeling that his hopes of a few days of rest had just evaporated like the morning mist in the rays of the rising sun. “That’s really great.”
The ripples left by the fighting in the Philippines kept flowing months and even years after the war. On July 4, 1946, the Philippines was recognized by the United States as an independent democratic nation. For the first time in centuries, the people of the Philippines could determine their own destiny. More than seventeen thousand Americans would stay behind as permanent residents, men and women who gave their lives fighting Imperial Japan, forever sleeping in the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial.
There was also unfinished business from the war. Early one morning in 1946, General Tomoyuki Yamashita put on his dress uniform that had been stripped of any rank or insignia. Slowly and with dignity, he climbed thirteen steps to a platform where a rope with a hangman’s noose waited.
It had taken him less than a minute to climb the stairs, but his journey to this fateful moment had taken months, if not years.
After the defeat in Manila, there had been no good end for the Japanese forces that remained in the Philippines. As the overall Japanese commanding general, Yamashita had remained behind with his troops, fighting as best they could despite running out of food, medical supplies, and ammunition. They had been abandoned by Japan. In the end, his forces became little more than a nuisance rather than a military presence. Finally, Yamashita had seen no choice but to surrender.
He lingered during the next few months as one of the highest-ranking Japanese officers held prisoner. After the war, he was put on trial for war crimes. There had to be some justice for so many civilian deaths. Some might even have called it revenge. The military trial had been a matter of going through the motions. It was a foregone conclusion that Yamashita would be found guilty of the killing spree that his troops had undertaken, although the actions of his desperate men appeared to be counter to the orders he had given.
During the trial, the general had tried to explain himself: “My command was as big as MacArthur’s or Lord Louis Mountbatten’s. How could I tell if some of my soldiers misbehaved themselves? It was impossible for any man in my position to control every action of his subordinate commanders, let alone the deeds of individual soldiers. The charges are completely new to me. If they had happened, and I had known about them, I would have punished the wrongdoers severely. But in war someone has to lose. What I am really being charged with is losing the war. It could have happened to General MacArthur, you know.”
But that was not how the war had turned out. Ultimately, Yamashita’s defense seemed to overlook the fact that a commander is ultimately responsible for the actions of his troops, even the lowliest private.
Swiftly, he was found guilty and sentenced to death for the war crimes committed by his troops.
Not being in a forgiving mood, President Harry Truman denied a request for a pardon.
And so Yamashita found himself climbing those steps, finally taking a drop into eternity. Justice had been done.
NOTE TO READERS
Thank you so much for reading and keeping some of our amazing American World War II history alive. I did want to clarify a few places and events in the story, because I have taken some artistic license here with the timeline that involved the 77th Infantry Division, the unit on which many of the adventures of Patrol Easy and Deacon Cole are based. Several of the events are inspired by the unit history Ours to Hold It High: The History of the 77th Infantry Division in World War II, by Max Myers. For example, the attack on the convoy crossing the two bridges in Chapter 1 is loosely based on an incident recounted in that unit history. Another helpful book that brought the hostage situation to life for me was the memoir Manila Memories: Four Boys Remember their Lives Before, During, and After the Japanese Occupation.
I’ve also used some of reporter Ernie Pyle’s words in Chapter 2, where he describes soldiers’ nostalgia for home. In Chapter 11, the article “On the Front Lines in the Pacific” is my attempt to write about Patrol Easy in Pyle’s voice to give a flavor for his reporting (although he did not actually write those words). Please consider it a small tribute to Pyle and his writing style from another old newspaper reporter. Pyle will appear in at least one more story in what I hope is a way to honor how he ultimately gave his life to bring the war home to so many. I often found myself dipping into the collection Ernie’s War: The Best of Ernie Pyle’s World War II Dispatches.
In the first part of the story, the soldiers are involved in wiping out the last of the Japanese on the island of Leyte, where US forces initially landed. According to division records, the unit lost 543 killed and 1,469 wounded during their participation in the fight for Leyte between December 7, 1944, and February 5, 1945. Japanese losses were catastrophic, with an estimated 19,456 killed during actions with the 77th Infantry Division. (It’s worth noting that the overall population of Japan in 1941 was around 72 million, roughly half the population of the United States.)
Many of the defenders on Leyte were hidden inside deep bunkers like the one depicted or had taken refuge in the hills. (On a side note, the actual name for napalm was classified, although it made an appearance in the Pacific long before Vietnam.) It is notable that just 124 Japanese prisoners were taken — still enough to have kept Nisei interpreters like Yoshio busy. The Japanese mostly became prisoners only because they had been wounded or knocked senseless with bombs or rifle butts. There wasn’t a lot of surrendering going on.
From Leyte, the soldiers embarked for Ie Shima and Okinawa, preparing for the big invasion of what was considered one of the Japanese home islands. The division itself apparently was not involved in the fight for Luzon, having already left for Okinawa, but Patrol Easy has been assigned to Manila for the sake of the story. Their skills would have been welcome at what has been called the “Stalingrad of the Pacific” because of its similarity to the street fighting and sniper battles in that Soviet city.
The villains of this story, Major Tanigawa and Sergeant Inaba, are a composite of several Japanese officers who behaved with unusual cruelty that went far beyond any sort of military necessity. Some of these officers took their own lives in the last days of the battle, and others were tried and hanged after the war. As mentioned in the epilogue, the overall Japanese commanding general, Tomoyuki Yamashita, and his chief of staff, Akira Mutō, were executed for the crimes committed in Manila.
In addition to the lives that were lost, it was heartbreaking to read about the destruction of what must have been a beautiful city filled with old Spanish architecture. General MacArthur had urged the Japanese to make Manila an “open city,” as he had done in 1941, and withdraw to avoid this outcome, along with civilian deaths, but that was not to be. As often happened, helpless civilians got caught in the middle of the battle.