The Nature of the Enemy

At last, the U.S. people were learning the true nature of the enemy they fight in the Pacific, an enemy that seems to be a beast which sometimes stands erect.

The two-years-belated shock came in a joint Army-Navy release, based on factual, eyewitness, non-hearsay accounts from Lieut. Colonel William E. Dyess and two others who escaped from Jap imprisonment and torture last April. From their reports, the Army & Navy concluded that of the 22,300 Americans taken captive on Bataan and Corregidor, at least 7,700 had been tortured, starved or shot to death in the first year of imprisonment. The number of dead among the 28,000 Filipino captives was incalculable.

Jap cruelty began on the very day of surrender. It flowered in a carnival of sadism on the 85-mile march from Bataan to San Fernando, a trek since known to all the prisoners as the "March of Death." Colonel Dyess, subsequently killed in a U.S. plane crash, described it:

"In groups of 500 to 1,000 men, the prisoners were marched along the national road off Bataan. Those marchers who still had personal belongings were stripped of them; the Japanese slapped and beat them with sticks as they marched along without food or water on a scorching hot day. . . . Those who had Japanese tokens or money were beheaded.

"A Japanese soldier took my canteen, gave the water to a horse, and threw the canteen away. Men recently killed were lying along the roadside; many had been run over and flattened by Japanese trucks. . . . Finally a Japanese officer permitted us to drink water from a dirty carabao wallow. . . .

"Our guards repeatedly promised us food, but never produced it. . . . American and Filipino prisoners fell out frequently and threw themselves moaning beside the roadside. The stronger were not permitted to help the weaker. We would then hear shots behind. . . .

"We were introduced to a form of torture which came to be known as the sun treatment. We were made to sit in the boiling sun all day long without cover. We had very little water; our thirst was intense. . . . The Japanese dragged out the sick and delirious. Three Filipino and three American soldiers were buried while still alive.

"I made the march in six days on one mess kit of rice. Other Americans made the march in twelve days, without any food whatever."

Death by Starvation. At Camp O'Donnell the Jap commanding officer bluntly told the Americans that they would not be treated as prisoners of war, but as captives without any rights or privileges. He carried out his words to the letter. The usual diet was a "watery juice with a little paste and rice." After the first week the death rate was 20 Americans and 150 Filipinos a day; after two weeks it had risen to 50 Americans and 500 Filipinos daily. Said Colonel Dyess:

"Hundreds of men lay naked on the bare floor without covering of any kind. There was no medicine of any kind. Some afflicted with dysentery remained out in the weather near the latrines until they died.

"Men shrank from 200 pounds to 90. They had no buttocks. They were human skeletons."

Death by Overwork. At Cabanatuan Camp, to which most American soldiers were removed after two months, conditions were no better. Prisoners were put to work on roads; those who faltered even for a moment were beaten and clubbed by their guards. Sometimes as many as 75% of a work detail failed to return to camp. Disease touched everyone: beri beri, dysentery, diarrhea, malaria, scurvy, blindness, diphtheria, jaundice and dengue fever. Those who attempted to escape were beaten, kicked and jumped on, then tied to posts in the open sun for two days before being beheaded or shot.

Summed up Colonel Dyess: "The American and Filipino soldiers would not have surrendered had they known the fate in store for them."

Revenge. Reading of the calculated cruelties, remembering the scrupulously fair treatment given to Jap prisoners, the U.S. people veritably groaned for revenge. Kentucky's Representative Andrew J. May, chairman of the House Military Affairs Committee, called on the entire Fleet to steam into Tokyo harbor and blow the city to bits. Cried Sol Bloom, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee: "We'll hold the rats responsible -- from the Emperor down to the lowest ditchdigger -- for a million years."

There was another reaction, almost as immediate as the first. Why had not the Army & Navy disclosed the atrocities earlier? Why had they chosen this particular time to publicize them? White House Secretary Steve Early gave an official reason: the U.S. has given up hope of getting further relief to the remaining prisoners of the Japs. Publication of the atrocities now could do the prisoners no added harm.

But this was a negative argument at best. More sense-making was the statement of Palmer Hoyt, recently resigned as domestic chief of OWI: "If we tell the story of Japanese bestiality frankly and boldly, and as a part of each day's news, as I trust we will begin to do, I think the Japanese will treat their captives better. With the war going against them, they will fear to do otherwise."

Were the atrocity stories supposed to help the sale of war bonds? All over the U.S., plain citizens thought so (bond sales zoomed, even doubled for several days after publication). Said Albuquerque's Dr. V. H. Spensley, a dentist whose son died in a Jap prison camp: "I can't understand why such information should be brought out now . . . except to sell bonds. For that purpose it's absolutely rotten. If the morality of America has sunk so low it required this kind of propaganda to sell bonds, we wonder what the boys are fighting for."

Were it possible, perhaps most Americans would want to see Andy May's recommendation carried out in full. But the New York Times spoke more wisely: "We cannot and must not think that they represent the entire Japanese nation. . . . There have been poets, artists and philosophers in Japan, and may be again. We cannot plan to exterminate a nation without ourselves stooping to the level of the beast. . . . We face an unbelievable horror. If rage shakes us let us take care that it is not futile. We who stay at home cannot take it out in direct action. . . . Let this anger be expressed in work, in sacrifice, in gratitude and in honor toward those who bear the burden. This is how we can beat Japan. This is how we can destroy the beast."

This week the State Department made public in a White Paper a long list of the many and patient protests it had sent Japan. And it promised the American people : "The American Government will hold personally and officially responsible all officers of the Japanese Government who have participated [in these crimes], and with the inevitable and inexorable conclusion of the war will visit upon such Japanese officers the punishment they deserve for their uncivilized and inhuman acts."

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