|
At
times I would look out the window. This was probably about six stories
up. The view was of Manila Bay (we were in the Bay View Hotel - get it?)
The first time I looked out I saw a Filipino with his hands up on the
beach approaching Japanese soldiers. When he got into range they shot
him. He dropped instantly. I recognized the man as a guerrilla. Before
all hell broke loose, during the quiet part of the occupation, he used
to have me and my friends bury Molotov cocktails by designated coconut
trees. . Had we been caught with these we would have been shot on the
spot, well maybe after a little torture to tell the
Kempei,
where we had obtained them. Another fun thing we did was to walk by the
ammunition dump with a perambulator, steal gunnery shells and hide them.
We had no basement so I kept them in an areaway beneath our house. Being
boys we thought we were great spies. Maybe the Japs didn't want to stop
boys in drag. At any rate we were never stopped. What a dumb thing to
do.
No
food either. I scrounged around. Found a couple of crates of hard
biscuits (I think that this is what is referred to as hardtack). That
was our bread and water for about a week.
Ere long the Japanese started taking the young girls out of the rooms to
rape them. The older women would cross themselves and lament "She is
such an innocent girl. she has never missed a day of mass." The girls
were usually shoved back into the same room by these gentlemanly
escorts. The process was unrelenting. I did not witness these atrocities
of course. In time some of the people, who had been scrounging for food
said they saw a soldier raping the corpse of a dead girl. By then having
accepted these Japs as animals, this bestiality did not surprise me.
Earlier looking for the hardtack, I opened a door and saw several lances
leaning in a corner. I recall thinking, the Americans have such superior
weapons, these people have confiscated my bicycle, people's pushcarts,
now they are going to fight tanks with spears. I never told anyone until
now about those lances.
My
sister, Nan hid laying down behind my mother, my seven year old brother,
Mike and myself. With my mother acting crazy the Japanese did not near
us and did not see her. This comes to mind because after what seemed
like days hiding her I remembered the lances. By now I was no longer
frightened. Once I accepted as fact that I would die all that mattered
was that I die quickly. Given the choices of being burned alive, shot
with a rifle or bayoneted, I wanted a mortar shell explosion in the back
-- not a dud. This would be final. No shell, no Joe in an instant. I
will never know if I would have gotten the lance and tried to kill a
ravaging Jap at that time. Today I would not, not because my act would
ensure my death, but also that of everyone else in that room. I even
recollect figuring if I should hide him in a closet or throw him out of
a window. (Wouldn't have been feasible anyway, they entered the rooms in
pairs.)
After about a week, the building was burned. I am certain that this was
set off by the Japanese, since mortar and howitzer fire could not put a
dent in the walls of this building, built to withstand earthquakes.
Smoke coming up the halls. The building was designed so if you took a
cross section there could be a square within a square. The center square
was empty. If round it would be the hole in a doughnut. Smoke was coming
up this hole.
The Japanese would not let us leave. I remember the next sequence
vividly. My mother, who was in her 30s at the time had some knowledge of
Japanese psychology. Perhaps acquired during the frequent interrogations
by the Kempei at Fort Santiago. She spotted the Japanese office in
charge. Said to him "Number one man say no can go." Whatever his reason,
I presume it was to "save face", this officer said "I number one man,
go!". And without any further ado we started streaming out of the
building into the shelling outside. The entire Ermita section was now
rubble. Although we said that the incoming shells were "trench mortars,"
using WW I terminology an American veteran recently told me that if we
heard the whistle of incoming fire these had to be howitzers, that
mortars were silent.
I
mention this because this was the closest I came to realizing my option
of an exploded shell in the back. By now instinctively we hit the ground
when we heard the whistle of incoming fire. During our run through the
debris ridden city (streets were no longer identifiable} I heard
incoming. Flattened face down to the earth on one side of the bole of a
fallen tree. The shell exploded on the other side. I would guess the
impact was not more than five to ten yards from me. Had either the shell
or I been located any differently we would have proved that "two objects
cannot occupy the same space at the same time." Oddly I didn't think it
was a big deal or a close call at that time.
We
looked for any structure that would give us cover. There were some
buildings standing albeit lacking much of their walls. The first place
we went to had housed a beauty shop. The wall facing the Bay View Hotel
was gone. I sat under a sink, with an inverted pot over my head (my
sister laughed at the sight of me) facing the Bay View. Suddenly a
terrific explosion shook that building. Plaster and smoke coming out of
every window. Then a second blast. The building withstood both events, I
am certain that had we been in that building we would not have. I
understand that after the war the building was repaired and resumed
function as a hotel. In retrospect the explosions must have put our the
fire a la Red Adair.
We
ran from ruin to ruin, hoping to get nearer the American lines. By now I
believed I brought bad luck to everyone I spoke to. They all died. I
remember sitting in a room in which also sat a friend of mine, Eddie
Lubert. We looked at each other but neither of us spoke. I last saw
Eddie when we were running out of a ruined building, to which we had
attached a sheet with a large red cross. We poor souls thought this
would save us from friendly fire. The Americans opened up on our feeble
ruin. Eddie's mother laid against a fallen sheet of corrugated
galvanized roofing with a red spot in the center of her white top. Just
that, no blood pouring elsewhere. She probably was dead. Later my father
told me he ran into Eddie and Eddie told him he saw me and I looked
scared. Hey! Eddie if you read this please understand that I didn't
speak to you to save your life. Weird how kids think under such
circumstances.
Now there was no food or water. Went to a different edifice, laying on
the floor of a room at ground level. A shell hit a room on the other
side of the wall. The wall fell. On the other side were a group of
refugees. Smoke, fires, death, dying people. The survivors bleeding
groaning. No way for us to help. Found out that here were other small
groups in other rooms. Then a surprising thing happened. A couple of
Caucasian men in civilian clothes, speaking unaccented English
approached our group. One guy said "watch out for the boots, they are
hobnailed," They came back with a soupy pot of boiled rice of which we
gratefully ate our portion. Never saw the guardian angels again.
The shelling got worse and worse, too many hits and deaths. The upper
floors were infested with Japanese soldiers, the Americans could do no
wrong. The people said "they have to shell because the Japanese are in
the building"
As
I mentioned the area of Manila, we lived in was predominantly Caucasian
inhabited- Spaniards, Italians, German Jews, American women married to
Filipinos, White Russians, American Negroes, which reminds me that even
in hell humans are all the same.
As
we wandered through the battered, burning city a brown haired woman said
to my mother "My dear we musn't mingle with the natives." My mother shot
back "Back home you couldn't walk on the same side of the street with
me." Later I asked my mother "Why not?" . She said because she is "an
American Negro" I still didn't get it until I observed racism in the US.
Shortly after disembarking in San Francisco we were put up in a barracks
in Oakland. I found my first American friend. Would go to his house,
where his mother always made us cookies and other treats. Then "You
shouldn't be playing with that boy", "Why not, what's wrong?" "Because
he is a Negro". Incredible!!
It
was decided that blonde women and children would step outside and wave a
white flag at the Piper Cub spotter planes. Did not work, within a few
minutes the shelling opened up in a saturation mode. Again we excused
this action by saying "They think the Japanese have forced us to wave
the white flag so the Americans will stop shelling." I thought the
spotter pilot was an S.O.B. He killed a lot of us but I doubt that his
judgment accounted for one additional Jap. Probably the same guy who
called fire on our "Red Cross" building. Had to leave this building, all
the while heading for the sounds of small arms fire, which we knew had
to be the American lines.
Ended up in a vacant house. I lay on the floor of the kitchen. There was
a catalog of the 1939 World's Fair, remember a picture of Sally Rand (a
dancer) who some thirty years later was a patient of mine, I read this
cover to cover. No food in that kitchen. Then a terrific explosion in
the building, that occurred in the living room. To the living room.
Dante would have been inspired. Flames, blue smoke, bodies or parts
thereof all over the place. A mother carrying the upper part of her four
or five year old daughter, while another daughter carried the child's
leg. The three of them dazed and wandering, scared, hysterical, crying,
shocked. The little one still alive but unresponsive. The fire getting
hotter and hotter. Left the building for the streets again. Again
"Americans would never do this the Japanese must have planted a bomb."
Any explosive was called a "bomba" whether aerial, howitzer, land mine
or booby trapped dynamite.
We
ran across debris and ruins, as I got several yards away a Japanese
soldier ran by, waving a pistol at us. He seemed to be smiling, but did
not shoot. We had not had face to face contact with any Japanese for
several days, and I was certain that this was it for me. I looked him in
the eye, don't know why, Perhaps I thought this would be my last sight
on earth. Who knows? Maybe human eye contact elicited a touch of pity or
mercy. He did not shoot me.
As
I write this I have lost count of these close calls and I have only
written of the memorable ones. I didn't count starving as one.
By
the time we were about a block from the burning house the heat was so
intense to this day I can feel my body heating up, when I think of it.
Literally felt as if I would fall from the extreme temperature.
Through more rubble. Another burnt out building. The small arms fire was
closer and closer. Someone came and said there were Caucasian soldiers
nearby. Did not know if they were Germans or Americans. Reason: before
the war Americans wore the same helmets as the British "Tommies"
(M-1917) while the new helmets resembled the German helmets we had seen
in pictures (M-1) Now another decision. To run to the American lines or
wait for them to reach us. My mother said without hesitation "We're
going to the lines, whatever they are they can't be any worse than these
Japs." About half of the survivors elected to go with us. I later found
out that those remaining were all killed in the room to room fighting.
Americans had to throw grenades into each room. Of our group about half
lived.
Now the next closest shave for me. As I ran to the American lines the
Japanese in the upper floors were shooting at me. Bullets kicking up
spouts of dirt about me. I was a speedy and by then streetwise eleven
and a half year old and instinctively knew that running in a non-linear
fashion would give them less chance to draw a bead on me. Never slowed
up nor looked back, My speed and broken field running would have won me
the Heismann trophy. I take this business of shooting at me personally,
the other times were generic killings.
Then quiet. A vacant street, with three dead Japs in the middle. Corpses
do not keep well in the tropics. The bodies were black and bloated, the
bloated skin had split in places with yellow fat visible. The eye and
mouth apertures looked like they were full of boiled rice moving
incessantly. These were maggots, feasting. Some would drop off and fall
down a chin or cheek. Some people were kicking the corpses. I didn't. I
thought they were soggy and my foot would go into or through them.
Tired, sat on a curb. Looked behind us on the sidewalk. Five or six more
putrid bloated bodies. "Mom there are some dead men behind us." "They're
just Japs." "No mom they're Filipinos, their hands are tied behind
them." Continued with our rest stop.
Heard English voices. They were the GIs. Holding their guns (O.K. rifles
and BARs to you veterans I don't want to recite "this is my gun this is
my piece") from behind a low cement wall. Someone in our party yelled
"We're Americans." From behind the wall came a "So are we lady, get
back. In about five minutes the artillery is going to open up right
where you stand." Prudently we moved on making no more idle chit chat.
Walked deeper into the ruined city. Several GIs were sitting on the
ground, eating k-rations. I was starved, but too proud to beg. My
emaciated face must have said it all because one of the guys said "Sorry
kid, this is the first food I've had in days." But those K-rations sure
looked good. Later whenever I would hear soldiers and veterans gripe
about army chow, I would remember that episode.
|
