War Phantoms Of the Philippines (book review (barrons )
True horror, vividly portrayed
Reviewed by Leslie P. Norton
When I was a child in the Philippines, we
used to drive from Manila to our family
homestead along the MacArthur Highway,
which slashed through northern Luzon, passed
Clark Air Force Base, then cut over to Bataan or the Lingayen Gulf.
Sandwiched between gaudy ads, and grottoes with statues of the Virgin, we
couldn't miss seeing the Bataan death-march markers, memorializing that
ghastly and infamous moment in World War II; they seemed undersized.
After the U.S. surrender of the Bataan Peninsula in May 1942, the Japanese
marched thousands of surviving American GIs, for days, to their POW camps.
Food and water were scarce and brutality was plentiful. A large number of
prisoners died. The march ended at Cabanatuan, where, for two years, as many
as 8,000 prisoners of war languished in conditions of utter privation. The
Japanese Empire had signed but never ratified the Geneva Convention, though it
paid some lip service to its standards. Yet POWs were considered to be less
than honorable foes -- and were treated accordingly.
Thus, while four out of 100 POWs would die in German and Italian camps, the
number was closer to one out of four in the Japanese facilities. War atrocities
were rife in the Pacific Theater, which is why current Japanese Prime Minister
Junichiro Koizumi drew fire from his Asian neighbors for visiting Yasakuni
Shrine -- where some well-known war criminals, such as the notorious Tojo, are
buried.
Hampton Sides' Ghost Soldiers is a well-written account of a daring night
rescue of 500 POWs from Cabanatuan by a troop of Rangers under General
Douglas MacArthur's command in January 1945. U.S. commanders were
almost certain that the Imperial Army would slaughter the POWs as U.S.
troops advanced -- especially the halt and the sick -- and were determined to
act first.
Guided by Army Colonel Henry Mucci, the 6th Ranger Battalion and a group of
Filipino guerrillas stole by moonlight through rice paddies and slipped across
roads choked with Japanese personnel and artillery, finally reaching the
outskirts of Cabanatuan. They stormed the camp (to tell you how would give
too much away), liberated the prisoners, and led them to safety in carts pulled
by oxen -- pursued all the while by the angry Imperial Army. Amazingly, there
were few casualties.
Sides builds suspense effectively. He holds back
nothing about the atrocities, yet includes quite a
few examples of kindnesses by Japanese soldiers
during the march and in the camps. And he tells a
good story, one that covers everything from the
slaughter of POWs in Palawan, to the surrender at
Bataan and the rescue, to the roles played by the
Philippine troops backing the Rangers.
Ghost Soldiers also includes a host of memorable
characters, including the Imperial "Poet General"
Masaharu Homma, the mastermind of the Death
March, who was ultimately executed by American forces for war crimes, and
"High Pockets," an American night club owner and female spy who passed
supplies to the prisoners at Cabanatuan and intelligence to the U.S. command.
My stepfather, an adventure-story buff and an aficionado of Philippine history,
was mad for the book. I had just a couple of quibbles with it: Calasiao, the town
near Lingayen that figures as the place where the Rangers began the mission, is
misspelled throughout. (Calasiao, for anyone who cares, is today a center of the
illegal numbers racket that brought down the government of President Joseph
Estrada.)
And I found it curious that most of the sourcing was American. Presumably,
Sides interviewed some of the guerrilla fighters who played such an important
role during the night of the rescue. Yet the Filipino input wasn't apparent in the
book.
Sides has a terrific ear for detail and atmosphere. I could almost feel the heavy,
dusty heat of the plains of Pangasinan and Nueva Ecija, and could almost see
the wrinkled hills of the Cordillera. During the hours I spent reading Ghost
Soldiers, I felt as if I were there.
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