Death on the Hellships by Gregory F. Michno

Author:Gregory F. Michno
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781682470251
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
Published: 2016-06-21T16:00:00+00:00

THE SUMMER SHIPS

The threat of the approaching Americans made the tropical Philippine atmosphere even more feverish in the summer of 1944. Prisoners were shifted among the islands and from camp to camp with abandon. As is true with most military operations, however, it was a case of hurry up and wait. The GI term “snafu” certainly applied to Japanese military planning. Of the more than eleven hundred men who arrived from Mindanao on Yashu Maru and Singoto Maru, about six hundred in poor health were taken north to Cabanatuan, while five hundred of both the sickest and healthiest men made the short march to Bilibid Prison in Manila. There, the sickest would remain behind and the healthiest would form up for Japan. Meanwhile, another five hundred relatively healthy men were brought from Cabanatuan down to Bilibid. Somewhere along the road passed two parties of five hundred, heading in opposite directions. Carl Nordin, waiting in Bilibid after getting off the Singoto Maru, thought it was great to get a bath, to be able to stretch out, to get three meals a day, plus be issued cigarettes and be allowed to buy coconuts and peanuts. On the other hand, Sgt. James D. Gautier Jr. of the 27th Bomb Group, who had been in a camp in Baguio for many months, thought Bilibid was “a hellhole of filth and disease.” He only got one cup of rice and water, while cockroaches and other vermin filled the cells, and, he complained, “the whole place smelled of excreta.”

On 2 July, the five hundred from Cabanatuan and the five hundred healthiest from Mindanao were placed aboard what Nordin called “an ailing and miserable old tug” and what Sgt. Neal Harrington of the 200th Coast Artillery called “an old freighter of dubious seaworthiness.” The Canadian Inventor was a captured freighter, but this time she would be laden with nothing but prisoners. About six hundred went into the forward hold and four hundred into the aft hold. Conditions varied according to point of view. Gautier said it was so crowded that a man couldn’t sit down unless he put his legs over someone else, and that a few men were trampled in the crush. The holds smelled of manure and urine, and rats and lice abounded. To Nordin, however, the two meals a day of rice and vegetables on the first day were pleasing, and compared to the previous voyage, there was more room.

The Canadian Inventor sailed from Manila on 4 July, and everyone was forced to go below while passing Corregidor, ostensibly to prevent them from seeing the island’s defenses. The next day the old freighter developed boiler trouble and returned to Manila for repairs. There it sat for eleven days, and there it took on the characteristics of a true hellship from all points of view. Sanitary facilities consisted of buckets placed in the hold and hauled up by ropes when full. At times the “honey buckets” and rice buckets made the trip side by side.

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