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First we went to Olongapo in Subic Bay and ran into a
Japanese task force two days out of the Philippine
Islands. They were heading for the Philippines, this was
going to be the invasion force. They had at least 15
ships: troop ships, destroyers, light cruisers.
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.
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