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We had 750 Marines in Shanghai and we had roughly 700 that were
stationed in the Philippine Islands in Cavite, so they joined us
and we made one unit. So we had roughly 1,500 Marines in the
Philippines.
As far as we were concerned, we were on our way home. I don't
know how many of those people were going to go, but they really
didn't join up with us until the war started. They were still in
their regular duties there in the Philippines. But once the war
started, we were all consolidated together. But as far as we
were concerned, this was just a stop over and we were on our way
home. And, of course, a week later, why, then the war started.
At 2:30 in the morning, we heard the bugler sounding call to
arms, and, of course, we all woke up, what in the world is going
on. They told us that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor and
that we were at war. So we all went out on the beach and they
gave us 10 rounds of ammunition with our old 3 rifles.
What we had was what we had in Shanghai and what the Marines
in 1927 brought with them. These were rifles, grenades, 20
millimeters, machine guns, B.A.R.'s that were actually from
World War I. And of course, a lot of our equipment at the time
in Shanghai was used for school. We'd tear them down, put them
together. Tear them down, put them together. That's what we had
during the whole war, six months of war, was the old threes and
some of them would shoot and some of them wouldn't shoot.
Especially with the grenades that we had. We had a box of, I
think, there were 10 grenades in a box and if you threw 10,
maybe three would go off. And the rest of them were just dried
up because they were never used.
Then they kind of spread everybody out. We got out of the
barracks and put pup tents up to where you could kind of
disperse yourself. We had PBY's that were stationed at Subic Bay
and they were kind of irritating the Japanese because they were
going out with 500 pound bombs and dropping them on their ships.
One time they did hit one and damaged it pretty bad. So they
flew back in one day and then the Japanese, eight Zeros came
right in after them, right after they landed. And they just shot
them all to pieces and that was our first time that we were
under fire.
They were running through the Cavite Navy Yard machine
gunning and dropping little personnel bombs and half of them
didn't go off but some of them did. Right after that, 28 bombers
came over and that was the first time that we were under a
aerial bomb attack and that's where I really got a good dose of
concussion.
Concussion is just like a sack. You blow up a sack and that's
when the bomb hits and your body expands and then when it
explodes and goes out and then everything just compresses real
quick. And if you just happen to be in an area where it bounces
off of something, it could kill you real easy. Of course, we had
no helmets at the time and we just stood there watching those
bombers come over and we watched the bomb bay doors open up. And
we just say, well, what's going on now? And then we could see
little black dots coming out and somebody said, well, that's
bombs coming down and boy, they just lowered the boom.
Two days after that they evacuated Olongapo, we were put out
into the bivouac areas, more or less in the woods, you know, to
kind of get out of all that. Then we found out it we were going
to Mariveles, which had a dry dock down there for the ships to
come in.
The Japanese put 300 troops in Mariveles. Brought them in by
submarine, with field artillery pieces. The only way that they
were found out was, a couple of navy guys were out in the woods,
you know, just sky larking around and ran into these Japanese
and that's when they started fighting those Japs over there. We
had those 10-inch guns on Corregidor, and, of course, they could
square it out on a grid, and they could hit certain grids going
down. Eventually they killed them -- some of them committed
suicide, the Japanese officers. They killed all 300 of them but
they had field pieces. What they were after was that dry dock,
they wanted to blow that up. Down on the beach, most of the dead
Japanese officers had college class rings, they were educated in
the United States.
All of our stuff that we had in our teakwood chests, boxes
and everything, they just blew it all up. And then from there we
went down, we were trucked to Manila and stayed there and then
we went over to Corregidor right after that for beach defense.
They wanted all the Marines to go and set up beach defense on
Corregidor. We arrived in Corregidor, well, it was December
28th.
MacArthur, of course, was the Commander in Chief of the
troops in Bataan and his headquarters were on Corregidor at the
time. And the Army was in Bataan and they were doing most of the
fighting there. They shuttled us over to Corregidor on December
28th and set up beach defense. Of course, we didn't have enough
to do an adequate job. So they supplied us Filipinos and they
had about 300,000 of the Filipinos in their section of the army
and we got maybe six in each squad to make up the difference.
Well, of course, they didn't want to fight. They wanted to go
home. And then of course we went through a lot of bombing. They
came over and bombed Corregidor.
Our Air Force was destroyed at Clark Field. Macarthur lined
them up wing tip to wing tip and they just came in and just like
they did on Pearl Harbor, they destroyed the whole thing. We had
a few P-40's and a couple of B-17's. But the P-40's, of course,
had no superchargers on them so they couldn't fly high altitude,
so they would go up and mock the Japanese Zeros and then the
Zeros start chasing them. Then they'd make a run over Corregidor
and as soon as they did that, why then everybody would open up
on the Jap planes. Some of them even hit the Americans as they
were flying. Everybody was trigger happy, you know. Anything
that flew, they were going to shoot at.
From what I understand, one of the high Princes from Japan
came over to view the war torn area and there were three light
bombers and he was in the middle one. Our anti-aircraft guns we
had, the highest they would go would be 21,000 feet if they had
a long fuse. But most them just had a short fuse, they couldn't
go very high. But they came down low enough to where they put
one direct shot into the bottom of that middle one and it blew
up and blew up the other two. So I can hear the motors now just
as they were trying to gun them to get out of the dive they were
in. But they shot down all three of them.
MacArthur left in February. They ordered him out. Of course,
he took his wife and his child, his furniture. That's what we
heard now. Some of them said they were down at the dock when
they left, but he took quite a bit of his furniture, personal
maid, but he wouldn't take the seriously wounded out. They were
left. But he took everybody that was with his staff. They all
got to go out and get out of there. They went out first by PT
boat and they went down to Mindanao and then from Mindanao, they
had a plane down there and got in a B-17 or a PBY, maybe, but
they flew him from there to Australia. That's how he got out. Of
course, he said he went all the way with the PT boat, which he's
not about to, you know.
Corregidor is divided into three areas: Topside, Middleside,
and Bottomside. Bottomside where all the docks where and Topside
where all the barracks were. And they put us in these barracks,
they said, you don't have to worry about this building because
it's bomb proof and all this and that. Well, not long after
that, the Japanese came over Corregidor and started bombing.
Dive bombers and horizontal bombers and in the meantime we had
taken sand bags and put them up -- the front of the building had
these arches and we put sand bags up there in case anything hit
in front that you'd have some protection. But they went in there
and they were strictly after that barracks. They were going to
blow that up. And I was in one room in a corner room and a
thousand-pound bomb fell and went completely through a two story
building. Went completely through three stories, landed at the
bottom, and I had pictures of where the bomb went through the
roof and everything and it didn't explode. So if it did I'd
probably still have been traveling, you know. Right after that
they put us all out at different areas and some beaches. We had
to set up our defenses there and put up the barbed wire.
We heard that the Americans are going to come over and
they're going to bring supplies and replacements and all this
and that which they never did. We never did see a ship. A
submarine would get in there every now and then, but the ship,
we saw one ship come steaming in and a submarine blew it up
before it got into the bay. So we were without supplies,
replacements, our food was running low, and, of course, we had
C-rations and the Army had K-rations, and that dwindled away.
They had the Calvary and started eating the horses, you know.
They' butcher up the horses and pass that meat around and
everything. Then Bataan fell April the 9th and the Army didn't
destroy any of their field artillery pieces and the Japanese
just turned them around and started firing on Corregidor.
The ones that were on Bataan when it fell, the majority of
those made that Death March and they lost, gosh, I guess they
lost over 10,000 on that march. Eighty miles with no food or
water. If they dropped, they would either bayonet them or shoot
them and they even had tanks that would run right over them and
just flatten them out.
From April the 9th until May the 6th, why, of course, it
intensified pretty good. The bombing picked up. The artillery
picked up, and, of course, Corregidor was five square miles and
they had 600 guns that completely surrounded Corregidor and they
were firing day and night, day and night. Airplanes would come
over at nighttime and drop bombs and so it got pretty hectic
there the last month. (continue)
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