Just after two in the morning the three of us took our leave from the makeshift Japanese O-club. The kitchen staff gave us some rice balls and water. There was a partial moon and the dirt streets smelled of recent rain, which was a great improvement over the usual stink of fresh manure. The two Filipino policemen led us on foot through a warren of back alleys and unlit, unpaved streets. Twice we had to jump into the shadows when Japanese military police vehicles appeared, creeping through the town in first gear. One was an army truck, complete with a squad of soldiers sitting in two rows facing each other under the canvas tarp covering the cargo bed, their bayonets glittering in the dim moonlight. The other was a boxy, green sedan with two men inside, both of them wearing those round spectacles featured in so many of our propaganda posters. The patrols explained why, wherever we were going, we weren’t taking a straight line to it. There was no conversation but even at that hour of the morning, I had a sense that we were being watched from behind closed shutters the whole time. Scruffy-looking dogs would skulk along the street behind us, but they didn’t bark. Abriol explained that barking dogs ended up on the menu in Orotai.
We finally arrived at the riverbank just outside the town, almost completely hidden in dense vegetation. One policeman lit a cigarette with a flourish of his lighter. Moments later three of what the Filipinos called banca boats appeared out of the gloom and came alongside the muddy banks, each with a single paddler at the back. Father Abriol had told us that banca boats were hollowed-out tree trunks. If the boat was intended for seagoing use, it would be equipped with outriggers. Otherwise it was just a really heavy canoe. Each of us climbed carefully into a boat, and moments later we were being paddled upstream and away from Orotai. The river water near the town smelled brackish, with more than just a hint of sewage. There didn’t seem to be any opposing current or else the guys paddling at the back were really strong, because we seemed to be making good headway.
We went upstream into the forest for about fifteen minutes and then crossed over to the opposite bank, where the paddlers nosed into the reeds along the shore. Father Abriol gestured for us to get out. He put a finger to his lips for silence, and then indicated we were to follow him into the dense bamboo thicket growing along the riverbank. It was hard to tell in the darkness, but we seemed to be going back towards the town we’d just left. I was careful about where I placed my feet. At one point he stopped and just listened as something thrashed its way through the bamboo and into the river. Then he turned and explained what we were doing.
“There’s a creek that joins the river up ahead,” he whispered. “The prison camp is just across the creek. We must be very quiet and move slowly. They have three guard towers with spotlights into the camp and searchlights pointing out over the river and the creek. The camp has one high barbed-wire fence all around it. The prisoners are apparently much too weak to climb it and they’d be shot if they even tried. Let’s go.”
We smelled it before we ever saw it. The latrines for the camp were plank stages hanging over the creek but it was obvious that not everybody was able to make it to a latrine. The air was filled with the reek of raw sewage, contaminated mud, unwashed bodies, and maybe even some unburied bodies. We got down on our hands and knees to make the final ten-yard crawl to the edge of the bamboo, where the spotlights pointing into the compound shone with a fitful yellow glow. The only sound we could hear was a diesel generator running somewhere in the camp. Based on the way the lights were flickering, it wasn’t a very good generator, but we still took great care not to show our faces. The prisoners were barely visible. The Japs had made them build long bamboo shelters with frond roofs and no sides. The captives were visible as gray shadows lying on the ground under the roofs, with a few in low cots. No one was standing or walking and they looked mostly like a collection of shockingly thin, pale ghosts.
“How many?” I asked the padre.
“There were a couple hundred when they first came. Now? Maybe half that. The Japs are starving them. They take the garbage that’s left after they’ve eaten and boil it in a trash can. They throw in a couple of handfuls of rice and that’s what they feed the prisoners. Nothing fresh. Everyone has scurvy. I think they’ll all just die off if this goes on; they’re almost skeletons as it is.”
“Any way the resistance could get food in there?” I asked.
He frowned. “It would be really difficult—each tower has three guards. And machine guns. Certainly not in daylight, and they do random searchlight sweeps at night.”
“I saw lots of fresh fruit for sale in the town,” Rooster said. “We could creep up to the wire and just throw it in there.”
“First we would have to make contact with the prisoners,” Father Abriol said. “Let them know we’re out here and that we’re going to try to smuggle in some food. It would be very dangerous, for us, and for them. Any of them caught with smuggled food would be sent to one of Tachibana’s sword demonstrations.”
“Does anyone know if the Japs have mined the perimeter of that camp?” I asked.
The padre shook his head. “My people don’t think so. The prisoners are made to go outside the wire twice a month and clear away brush.”
“And nobody’s tried to escape?” Rooster asked, as we backed away from the creek.
“They’re much too weak. One time one of them slipped in the mud and fell into the creek. He grabbed onto the bank and tried to crawl back out as the guards came running up. He simply couldn’t do it, so a guard bayoneted his hands and then watched him slide back into the water without so much as a bubble.”
“One less mouth to feed,” Rooster muttered.
“Exactly,” Father Abriol said. By then we’d reached our banca boats. “If we’re going to help them, we’d have to do everything for them. Let’s head back.”
“Then you’d need to kill every Jap on the island,” I said, as we pressed our way through all the greenery. “Then you could go into the camp, get them fit to be moved, and your people could disperse them up-country before the Japs could send in reinforcements.”
“Maybe,” he said. “Killing all the Japs—that’s a tall order.”
We came back out onto the main riverbank and got into our bancas. The paddlers pushed back and then turned to continue upstream, away from Orotai, while we swatted mosquitos in the hot, wet night and tried to maintain our balance in the bancas.
We went upriver for at least an hour before they finally turned into the left bank of the river, which by now was no more than 30 or so feet across. My eyes were fully night-adapted by now, which was good because no one was showing any form of light. Abriol got out and then helped us out of our bancas. They immediately backed out into the stream and disappeared downriver. Three Filipinos were standing nearby, one of whom was much older than the other two. Father Abriol greeted him quietly and then all of us started off into the jungle down a well-worn path. The two younger men were carrying bolos, the Filipino name for what I’d been calling a machete. The jungle soon gave way to scrub forest as we began to climb. I had no idea of where we were, but our guides surely did; we struggled to keep up with them. Finally we came out of the woods and onto the edge of a long, shallow valley that led up to what looked like yet another truncated cinder cone. Father Abriol explained to us that the entire island of Talawan was the top of one really big volcano which rose from the ocean floor from a depth of about three miles.
We trooped down to where a vigorous stream cut its way along the bottom of the valley and sat down on its banks with some large boulders at our backs. I estimated that we were five miles or so outside of Orotai, but I wouldn’t have bet my ass on that. Father Abriol sat next to our guide and cooled his feet in the stream, so we did likewise. The water was surprisingly cold and smelled faintly of sulfur, but it felt wonderful on our sore feet. The two of them talked in Tagalog for about five minutes, while Rooster and I sat there wondering why we’d come to this particular spot.
They finished up their conversation and then Father Abriol asked the old man something while pointing to the bolos the other two were wearing. They promptly handed them over to the priest along with their bamboo-section canteens, and then they left, headed back towards the woods. Father Abriol handed each of us a bolo and a canteen and then showed us how to attach the sheaths to our belts. The bolos were about 16 inches long with wooden handles covered in some kind of hide. They were surprisingly heavy and clearly very sharp.
“Better than nothing,” he said. “Sometimes better than guns. They can kill without a sound.”
With that lovely thought we asked him why we’d come out here instead of heading for the lava tunnel hideout.
His face turned grim. “Because I received word last night that the Japs in Orotai do know about you two. When I went on the air last night I got an immediate reply, as if they’d been waiting for me to contact them. Apparently someone told the Kempeitai in Manila that you two were here on Talawan. Probably under torture. Then they said that rescue now was not possible. And third, they want me and my people to execute stage two.”
“Rescue referring to Rooster and me?”
“Yes.”
“And stage two?”
He sighed. “The Philippine resistance envisions three stages: stage one, form networks of trusted people, collect arms and other supplies, and create safe places to hide. Watch and report what the Japs are doing. In our case stage one meant mostly watching the harbor and reporting what ships came and went. Stage two means we’re to begin active resistance. The Japs have to live off the land here. Food and water. We can make those supplies dry up.”
“What happens when the Japs figure out what’s going on?” Rooster asked.
“Yes, that’s the rub,” he said ruefully. “There will be reprisals, and if what we’ve heard about up in Luzon and Manila, they will react like the barbarians they are. Many people will die, I’m afraid.”
“And when that starts happening, how strong will your network be?”
He shook his head. “I can’t answer that,” he said. “The Japs will start rounding people up in Orotai and torturing them to find out who’s operating against them and where we hide. The people on this island are simple fishermen and rice farmers. I don’t think they’re ready for what the Japs are capable of, especially this Tachibana monster. He’s killed kids in front of their mothers.”
“Jesus,” Rooster said.
“I also don’t know whether or not such outrages will lead to mass fury or a mass betrayal. The only advantage we have is that there are only two hundred or so in their garrison. There are perhaps fifteen hundred Filipinos on this half of the island.”
“But mostly unarmed, right?”
“Exactly. To mount a real resistance, we’d need guns, ammunition, training, and medical supplies. The resistance network on Mindanao already went to stage two and now they’ve got their hands full. They’re facing regular Jap army troops, not prison guards.”
I took a deep breath and then exhaled. I was pretty sure I could see where he was going with this. When the bad stuff got rolling, the only solution would be to kill every single Jap on the island. And then what? Evacuate Orotai and then have the entire population run for the hills and the lava fields? Tall order indeed. For one thing, what would they eat?
“You should go back to your bosses and tell them you can’t start stage two until you have all that stuff,” I said. “Delay things and give yourself more time to get your people ready.”
“I’m a Catholic priest,” he protested. “I’m no guerilla fighter. When the Japs first landed here, they immediately rounded up all the rice stores. Went house to house in Orotai and took all useable food—rice, preserved fish, dried fruit and vegetables. They even uprooted the vegetable gardens. We found out later that the garrison had been landed with no food supplies because everything the navy had was being sent to Guadalcanal.”
“So the garrison has had to live off the land right from the beginning?”
“Yes. As I told you, I went underground as soon as they landed. After a while people came to me and told me that the town was starving. I organized a small team of thieves to hit the godowns where the Japs were storing all their loot. They hadn’t really set themselves up as a functional garrison yet, so we managed to steal back some of it and distribute it as best we could. Word got around that I was responsible for that. Suddenly I was chief of guerillas on Talawan.”
“So how are the people getting food now?” I asked.
“The Japs landed in early forty-two. In the year since then the people have managed three rice harvests. Some of it’s grown in the traditional paddies, in full view. A lot more is grown in tiny patches and hidden here and there. The Japs send out foraging parties and take everything they can find, so we’ve learned not to store all the food in the villages. The fishermen have become adept at avoiding that Jap gunboat. But still, it’s hand to mouth here. The people feed and hide me, and now you, because I keep telling them the Americans will one day return to liberate the Philippines.”
“Are we winning on Guadalcanal?” Rooster asked.
“According to my source in the ‘tea house,’ the Japs have started calling it Starvation Island, so you are not losing, at any rate. But the fighting remains fierce.”
“Which means that liberating the Philippines might take another year, or even two.”
“Everyone is hopeful, and now there are not so many Japanese warships stopping here at Orotai. Manila tells us that the Japs might just abandon Talawan, that MacArthur has moved to Port Moresby and is pushing them back.”
I suspected that the resistance in Manila was probably swallowing too much propaganda from MacArthur’s new headquarters in New Guinea. And there was still the unspoken question: Did they want MacArthur back? His father, Arthur MacArthur, had been a governor of the Philippines. His son, the current general, had been senior advisor and a field marshal in the Philippine army before being evicted by the Japanese in the early days of the war. I wondered how the emir would react to seeing Douglas MacArthur back in Manila.
“The liberation of the Philippines still might take a long time, Father,” I said. “It’s not like the Japs are quitters; Rooster and I are living proof of that. We hurt them bad at Midway, and yet they sank our carrier and the sub that rescued us. This is gonna be a long slog, Father. Years, not months, I’m afraid. Right now I see the two of us as an additional burden that you don’t need, so maybe the best thing for us to do is build a boat and try for Australia.”
“Darwin is almost two thousand miles from here, Lieutenant. Are you that good a sailor?”
“If we stay here we’re just gonna be two more mouths to feed. And, like you we’re not guerilla fighters, either. We’re dive bomber pilots.”
“Your navy must have a lot of those these days,” he mused. “Dive bomber pilots, I mean.”
“Hunh?”
“Otherwise they’d send someone to pick you two up.”
I stared at him. “That’s a low blow, Father.”
“Guilty, Lieutenant,” he admitted, sheepishly. “But you must admit there’s a smidgen of truth in what I said. Someone senior has decided that retrieving the two of you isn’t worth the effort, especially if they now know the waters around Talawan have been mined.”
“So it’s up to us to find our way back, then, right?”
“Maybe,” he said. “On the other hand, the two of you could make a huge difference here if you’ll join forces with us. Me, I suppose, is what I’m saying. You are professional fighting men. I’m just a priest. I believe the Americans will win this war and that the Philippines will be liberated, but as you point out, it may be a long time in coming. Having actual Americans here with us would help morale immensely.”
“Until the reprisals begin,” I pointed out. “Then having actual Americans here might be viewed as the cause of the reprisals. Tell me: if the Jap garrison knows we’re here, what will they do now?”
“They’ll hunt you,” he said. “It doesn’t take two hundred men to guard those prisoners of war. If nothing else, the rest of them probably need something to do.”
“What about those Mohammedans we met earlier—will they help? They looked like fighters to me.”
“They will fight,” Father Abriol said. “But only on one condition: that the people they’d be fighting for would have to renounce the Christian faith and become servants of Allah and his Prophet.”
Now I began to understand. Father Abriol had two masters: the resistance movement bosses in Manila, but, more importantly, the Roman Catholic Church. If Father Abriol struck that particular bargain with the Mohammedan pagans, he’d have more to worry about than the Japs.
Rooster was quietly shaking his head. I could see that the boat idea was beginning to look better and better to him. Then what sounded like a church bell rang three times from the direction of Orotai, causing Father Abriol to look up sharply.
“We need to go,” he announced. “First drink water, as much as you can. Then fill your water tubes.”