CHAPTER 25 The girl uniformed as a soldier was soaked with sweat. She said her name was Nora May. She picked up her rifle and began walking away. Juanita asked what she was doing. "Ang gusto ko lang," Nora began quickly, which in English meant "What I want..." then explained in rapid Tagalog sentences that she wanted to find her brother who had run toward the fight. For the past year, Nora May explained, her brother had wanted to join the Philippine Scouts, a volunteer Filipino army that had been formed by Philippine President Quezon and the American general Douglas MacArthur. However, he had been needed at home. But, when the invasion began, he had rushed from the family's home in Haganoy to fight the Japanese invaders. Nora had followed him, keeping her distance so he would not see her and insist she return home, then had lost sight of him. "Japanese planes almost killed me," Juanita told Nora. "Oh oh," Nora said, which meant 'Yes', then added, 'and me', or, "At ako." Nora then lifted her men's barong shirt to show Juanita a pistol tucked into a leather belt. "Take it," she said in English, as she was educated in that language. She removed the pistol and held it out. Juanita, who also spoke English, took the gun and looked at it as if an alien object. "It is loaded," Nora told Juanita. "You have six bullets, but if you use them all you will need to find more. This is the safety. It is on, so the gun will not fire. Push it like this to turn the safety off, then you can shoot. Go ahead and push it back to off so you do not shoot yourself. That's right." Nora May took off northward. Juanita watched her for a moment, then hurried to catch up with her. Nora and Juanita continued walking, not talking, for about an hour, all the time moving in the opposite direction of the Filipino civilian carts, both carabao-pulled, and human-propelled, traffic that clogged the road heading southward. As the Sun dropped toward the horizon to their West, Juanita heard what she first thought were firecrackers. Nora May looked at her and then started to run ahead with her rifle raised. For the next few minutes they saw nothing, but heard the rapidity and volume of gunfire incease. Then the two girls rounded a curve in the road. There, they met the battle. A whirlwind of action swept around them, as Philippine Scouts fired at an enemy that neither Nora May nor Juanita could yet see, though they were immediately acutely aware of bullets that sizzled past them. They saw horrendous deaths, yet saw not a single Scout run. Instead, they and the men were pushed back by the intensity of incoming bullets. Nora and Juanita had sought cover behind a low cinder block wall. It was there they caught their first sight of the Japanese soldiers in a wide robust line proceeding toward them, firing. They fired back until their weapons were empty. They picked up weapons of those who fell, ran to the next cover, turned, fired, repeated, irreversibly being pushed southward. Night fell with the same incessant cadence to the fight. Nora May and Juanita stayed side by side, always roughly in line with the scouts and U.S. army soldiers. Nora always searched for the face of her brother but did not see him. Just before dawn, Nora May and Juanita and the men they had been fighting alongside, reached a heavily reinforced line of U.S. and Filipino troops at a bridge demarking the North end of Bataan Peninsula. Behind that U.S. Filipino line to the South they were given food and drink. Shortly after they had finished eating, they lay down beside one another, between exhausted sleeping soldiers who they had been amongst since their discovery of the front line twelve hours earlier. Cuddled, they slept. CHAPTER 26 Mac looked out the window of his Manila Hotel suite at the pair of patrol boats with torpedo launchers. They were PT boats of U.S. Navy Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron Three. Until yesterday, the PT boats had been based at Subic Bay, up the western coast of the big Philippine island of Luzon. The boats had just docked on the bayside of the hotel. Mac also saw two other PT boats maneuvering in Manila Bay beyond. He had planned their arrival time, and they had arrived precisely at it, near sunset. He had seen it was the time of day when the Japanese planes would most likely have returned to their bases.
The girl uniformed as a soldier was soaked with sweat. She said her name was Nora May. She picked up her rifle and began walking away. Juanita asked what she was doing. "Ang gusto ko lang," Nora began quickly, which in English meant "What I want..." then explained in rapid Tagalog sentences that she wanted to find her brother who had run toward the fight. For the past year, Nora May explained, her brother had wanted to join the Philippine Scouts, a volunteer Filipino army that had been formed by Philippine President Quezon and the American general Douglas MacArthur. However, he had been needed at home. But, when the invasion began, he had rushed from the family's home in Haganoy to fight the Japanese invaders. Nora had followed him, keeping her distance so he would not see her and insist she return home, then had lost sight of him.
"Japanese planes almost killed me," Juanita told Nora.
"Oh oh," Nora said, which meant 'Yes', then added, 'and me', or, "At ako."
Nora then lifted her men's barong shirt to show Juanita a pistol tucked into a leather belt. "Take it," she said in English, as she was educated in that language. She removed the pistol and held it out. Juanita, who also spoke English, took the gun and looked at it as if an alien object.
"It is loaded," Nora told Juanita. "You have six bullets, but if you use them all you will need to find more. This is the safety. It is on, so the gun will not fire. Push it like this to turn the safety off, then you can shoot. Go ahead and push it back to off so you do not shoot yourself. That's right."
Nora May took off northward. Juanita watched her for a moment, then hurried to catch up with her.
Nora and Juanita continued walking, not talking, for about an hour, all the time moving in the opposite direction of the Filipino civilian carts, both carabao-pulled, and human-propelled, traffic that clogged the road heading southward. As the Sun dropped toward the horizon to their West, Juanita heard what she first thought were firecrackers. Nora May looked at her and then started to run ahead with her rifle raised. For the next few minutes they saw nothing, but heard the rapidity and volume of gunfire incease. Then the two girls rounded a curve in the road.
There, they met the battle. A whirlwind of action swept around them, as Philippine Scouts fired at an enemy that neither Nora May nor Juanita could yet see, though they were immediately acutely aware of bullets that sizzled past them. They saw horrendous deaths, yet saw not a single Scout run. Instead, they and the men were pushed back by the intensity of incoming bullets. Nora and Juanita had sought cover behind a low cinder block wall. It was there they caught their first sight of the Japanese soldiers in a wide robust line proceeding toward them, firing. They fired back until their weapons were empty. They picked up weapons of those who fell, ran to the next cover, turned, fired, repeated, irreversibly being pushed southward. Night fell with the same incessant cadence to the fight. Nora May and Juanita stayed side by side, always roughly in line with the scouts and U.S. army soldiers. Nora always searched for the face of her brother but did not see him.
Just before dawn, Nora May and Juanita and the men they had been fighting alongside, reached a heavily reinforced line of U.S. and Filipino troops at a bridge demarking the North end of Bataan Peninsula. Behind that U.S. Filipino line to the South they were given food and drink. Shortly after they had finished eating, they lay down beside one another, between exhausted sleeping soldiers who they had been amongst since their discovery of the front line twelve hours earlier. Cuddled, they slept.
CHAPTER 26
Mac looked out the window of his Manila Hotel suite at the pair of patrol boats with torpedo launchers.
Mac smoked a puff of the corncob pipe he had become famous smoking, a part of his iconic commanding image. His orderly brought him a white undershirt and starched khaki shirt. He looked at his slacks to assure himself they were still starch crisp. Mac set his pipe in a pewter ash tray against a winged victory statuette pipe rest, then pulled his sweat soaked undershirt and shirt off together over his head. He accepted a cold towel that his orderly offered and gave his torso a quick invigorating toweling, then pulled on the clean white undershirt and the khaki shirt, his third shirt change that day.
Mac opened a door of his suite that led to one adjoining it. His shoulder epaulettes had two stars each. His khaki tie was neatly tied. He had put on his khaki cap with black leather braiding and visor over which was an American flag shield and eagle. Mac was followed by his orderly, who carried two suitcases. The commander of U.S. military in the Philippines walked to the side of his aide, Brigadier General Richard Sutherland, who had one star on each of his shoulder epaulettes.
The year before, Sutherland had replaced Dwight David Eisenhower as number two to MacArthur. Up until the moment the Japanese invasion of the Philippines began, Sutherland, like Eisenhower before him, had been entirely consumed by building up Philippine defenses in the face of looming possibility of an attack by the Japanese.
The Philippine U.S. Far East Army force had been made marginally more robust. On December 8th General Wainwright had four infantry divisions and a cavalry regiments positioned in northern Luzon North of Manila. And General Parker had two infantry divisions to the south of the city. Each had been executing controlled retreats toward Manila before Japanese troops.
Last week, Mac had reassigned Parker to execute the evac from the city. Thereafter, a frenetic flow of barge traffic had left docks from the Manila side of the bay with supplies and retreating troops, as well as Philippine government officials and their families, and U.S. citizens, to the Bataan Peninsula and Corregidor.
Fortunately, MacArthur mused, he had been a big booster of the Philippine Scouts. His father had been also. These were not Boy Scouts. They were Filipinos who, since 1901, had been trained to fight and were commanded by American officers. Philippine Scout units, or PSUs in Mac-talk, had in the prior decade seen combat in Mindanao and Palawan, where they put down the Moro rebellion. As crisis had mounted in the Pacific, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt created in the Philippines the United States Army Forces in the Far East (USAFFE) that integrated the U.S. Army and Philippine Scout regiments under command of MacArthur. When the attack began, the Scouts numbered twelve thousand and U.S. Army personnel under Mac, including the paltry air corps, numbered ten thousand.
Sutherland was flanked by a pair of his leading officers. They stood with four cases into which they had already packed up the MacArthur mobile command center.
Mac led his men into the dining room of the suite, where President of the Philippines, Manuel Quezon, stood waiting for them, he and his four man Philippine leadership team, dressed in white suites and white shirt with blue, red, and gold striped ties, with white hats in hand. With them was a Filipina in white dress hemmed just below her knees, who Mac knew was President Quezon brilliant political advisor and policy strategist, his wife.
Mac and the president both knew that the small group present was gathered for imminent evacuation, so a minimum of pleasantry passed between them before Mac simply asked if the president was ready.
President Quezon nodded. The group went down a back stairway and exited the hotel from its side that faced the bay. Tropical air offered no respite of a breeze as Mac and his command team proceeded with Quezon to the docked PT boats. Mac began to sweat but his fresh undershirt began doing its job of keeping his sweat from staining his shirt. On the dock, Mac shook hands with President Quezon, and Sutherland showed the president and his entourage aboard one of the PT boats. Mac boarded the other. The United States commander put on his aviator sunglasses, another component of his signature look, and he pressed his cap more firmly onto his head.
Mac and President Quezon had previously jointly managed the evacuation of U.S. and Filipino forces from Manila to the Bataan Peninsula by rail and road around the top of Manila Bay to San Fernando, then south to the peninsula, but that route was now threatened by advancing Japanese and to where they were heading, Corregidor Island at the mouth of below Bataan. Now, three weeks after the start of the invasion, the Japanese had advanced to the outskirts of Manila and were in control of Subic Bay and Clark Airfield. They were advancing on Forth McKinley to the southeast of Manila. Cut off any further chance of withdraw around the North end of Manila Bay, Mac had ordered an orderly evacuation. The perimeter held by the Scouts and U.S. Far East Army forces was collapsing as planned toward the very docks where they would be ferried by PT boats to Corregidor.
Mac sat on a seat on the bridge of boat, illuminated by the magical lighting of the hour and nodded to Sutherland, who nodded to the PT boat commander. The patrol torpedo boat roared away from the dock, throwing the generals back in their seats. Mac loved the power of the PT boats. He had made sure to hold onto his hat. He looked back to see the boat with the Philippine president as it roared away from the dock. Out in the waters of Manila Bay the two other patrol boats maneuvered before them and aimed directly across the middle of Manila Bay toward Corregidor Island. Mac enjoyed the cooling wind caused by his momentum across the water.
The sunset sky glowed above two dormant volcanos that dominated the Bataan Peninsula and over the island that was his destination to the South of the peninsula, still far ahead thus tiny. Mac recalled the story of Admiral Dewey and the U.S. Asiatic Squadron of ships that had sailed by night from Hong Kong into Spanish held Manila Bay, after passing by Corregidor Island without a Spanish shot being fired at them. The U.S. fleet had launched a surprise attack on the Spanish fleet at anchor that succeeded in seven hours in destroying all of the Spanish warships.
The Japanese certainly took note. Mac mused.
Mac closed his eyes and recalled that Dewey had sent his fastest ship, the U.S.S. McCulloch, back to Hong Kong to cable news of the victory to Washington and to bring out of exile in Hong Kong the Philippine rebel leader Emilio Aguinaldo. He and the other rebels who had been in exile with him, set up their headquarters in Cavite, the province where he had been born, and where Arthur MacArthur, father of Douglas MacArthur, who was a part of an entire American brigade, had docked and joined Aguinaldo in common cause. They pressed the strategic opportunity the Dewey surprise attack had given the United States during the Spanish American War. Emilio Aguinaldo's Philippine rebel forces, side by side with the U.S. brigade, began a military campaign that resulted in the treaty that ended the Spanish American War, wherein Spain ceded control of the nation of seven thousand islands.
The repetitive motion and sounds of the PT boat soothed Mac. When he saw that the docks of Corregidor Island were just ahead of them, he realized he must have dozed off. Because the boat had slowed, he stood, adjusted his uniform, and took off the aviator sunglasses he suddenly realized he was still wearing.
