| Published
in December 2009, Volume 5 continues the series covering the postal
history of the POWs and civilian internees in East Asia.
The Philippines
and Taiwan are the subject of this volume. Published in 2009,
Volume 5, subtitled “No Uncle Sam”, covers the story of the mails
to and from Americans servicemen captured in the Philippines and
British and Australian servicemen and senior officers of many
nationalities transported to Taiwan. As with other centres where
POWs were taken prisoner, many of the POWs captured in the Philippines
were transferred overseas and the book documents these transfers.
Many examples of mail are shown with various censors and directional
markings to and from the camps. Corrections to the camp numbers
in the Philippines is documented, correcting erroneous information
contained in the National Archives and repeated elsewhere, although
not all numbered camps are fully identified.
It also covers
the postal history of the more than 4,000 civilians held in the
Philippines. Mostly American they also included over 1,000 British
and many other nationalities. Uniquely, philatelic activity continued
in the civilian camps in the Philippines and a chapter is devoted
to this subject. There is also a chapter on the postal history
of the Guerrillas in the Philippines.
In Taiwan
the principal camps were in Kinkaseki, Taichu, Heito, Shirakawa,
Taihoku and Karenko and mail to and from these camps is described
and illustrated.
The full story
of the infamous Boys Town bogus card is included in the chapter
on Taiwan explaining how it came to be issued without any intention
of misleading future generations of Postal Historians.
The hardback
book, published by BFA Publishing, contains more than 400 illustrations,
mostly in colour, on 391 pages.
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I and other aircrew
members were hurrying along the sidewalk on the way to early morning
breakfast on December 8, 1941, when someone announced that the Japanese
had bombed Pearl Harbor. The news was greeted with skepticism. Why
would they bomb Pearl Harbor and ignore Clark Field in the Philippines
with its mighty fleet of 35 B-17 Flying Fortress bombers?
In the breakfast hall, we learned that Lt Col
Eugene Eubank, commander of 19th Bombardment Group, had flown
to Manila, 56 miles to the south, to confer with General MacArthur.
Later, at 10:30am, Lt Col Eubank called a meeting of aircrew members
on the street in front of the headquarters building at Clark Field.
There he gave the shocking news that General MacArthur had given
orders for a reconnaissance mission to Formosa instead of a bombing
mission as everyone had expected. A couple of hours later, 54
high flying, twin-engine bombers came out the north to lay a pattern
of bombs across Clark Field. The bombardment raid was followed
by a strafing attack as 34 Zero fighters decimated the field and
left it untenable as a base of military operations.
A plan had long been in place by the US Army Plans Commission
in case the Japanese should invade the Philippine Islands. It
was entitled War Plan Orange-3 (WPO-3) and it provided that if
the American and Filipino forces were unable to stop the invaders,
they should withdraw to the peninsula of Bataan and defend Corregidor
and Manila Bay until reinforcements arrived from the US.
Detractors
of WPO-3 came with impeccable credentials. Just four years earlier,
General Stanley D Embrick, Chief of the War Plans Commission of
the US Army, believed that in case of an invasion by the Japanese,
the US should withdraw to its natural strategic peacetime frontier
in the Pacific, to the line of Alaska, Oahu and Panama. He knew
the territory well. As a colonel on the General Staff after the
First World War, he had opposed the 1924 version of WPO-3. Later,
as Commander of the garrison on Corregidor, he had written a critique
labeling WPO-3, “…an act of madness.” In addition, Gen. Leonard
Wood, a former
Chief
of Staff of the US Army and later Governor General of the Philippines,
had predicted that war with Japan would require “… the abandonment
of American posts, American soldiers, an American fleet and American
civilians in the Far East.”
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All of these
things had happened with lightning speed just four months after
the Japanese invaded the Philippine Islands. All of the American
posts in the Philippine Islands had been abandoned except the
tiny island of Corregidor. The naval stations at Cavite and Subic
Bay, Ft. McKinley, Clark Field, Nielson Field, and Nichols Field
were all in the hands of the Japanese. The US military had completely
ignored the admonitions of Generals Embrick and Wood.
With the
overwhelming success of the Japanese forces in the first two weeks
of war, General MacArthur declared Manila an open city and American,
British and Dutch citizens were herded into an internment camp
at Santo Tomas University. He then invoked War Plan Orange-3 resulting
in thousands upon thousands of American and Filipino forces flooding
onto the peninsula of Bataan to defend Corregidor and Manila Bay
while waiting for reinforcements from America.
The battle
raged on. Days went into weeks and weeks into months as the defenders
suffered more and more battle casualties, malnutrition, malaria
fever and a variety of tropical diseases. Word that reinforcements
were on the way became an empty dream with each day like the one
before until April 8, 1942, when it became apparent that the lines
were not holding. Fragments of military units crowded the roadway
near Cabcaben Field, moving away from the field of battle. Then
the weary soldiers knew the end was near.
April 9, 1942,
saw the surrender of an estimated 75,000 American and Filipino
soldiers and the beginning of the most inhuman ordeal in the annals
of military history, the Bataan Death March. After that, the prisoners
were moved to various camps in the Philippines, Formosa, Japan
and Manchuria to suffer another three and one half years under
the brutal Japanese. Only a month later, the island of Corregidor
was surrendered to the Japanese forces. The men and women of Corregidor
then joined their comrades in arms from Bataan in various prison
and internment camps.
The history
of World War II has been well told since the war by a multitude
of first-hand accounts by former war prisoners and civilian internees.
An integral part of that history – the history of the postal communications
– never before told, is now superbly provided on the following
pages by David Tett.
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In the foreword
to Volume 1, Martin Bell, a prominent broadcaster and war correspondent,
described that volume. “It is the stuff of history and provides
a priceless and universal appendix to so many singular stories”.
Volume 5 continues that tradition. Packed with illustrations of
letters and cards, often with their messages shown, this books
provides a blend of the postal history – the regulations, procedures,
routes and censorship of the mails – interwoven with the personal
accounts and histories of the prisoners.
Nothing is
omitted; even the propaganda stamps of the guerrillas and the
philatelic endeavours of the internees are covered – and throughout,
the background history of the prisoners, their lives, the conditions,
camps and movements are described. Nobody reading this book will
finish it without an appreciation of what these men and women
went through in the service of their nation.
Edgar D Whitcomb
Governor of Indiana
1969-1973
July 2009
Author’s note
I knew Governor Whitcomb’s
story and felt he could provide the words from personal experience
for the foreword to this book. A brief overview of his extraordinary,
heroic experiences provide a glimpse of the character of this
man. He was taken prisoner on Corregidor but escaped at night
by swimming eight hours through shark-infested waters. He was
recaptured, interrogated and beaten with an iron pipe in Fort
Santiago Prison in Manila. He convinced the Japanese he was a
civilian and was later transferred to Santo Tomas civilian internment
camp in Manila before being transferred again, this time to Chapei
civilian internment camp in Shanghai, China. In 1943, under the
assumed name of Robert Johnson, he was repatriated to the USA
in the second American prisoner exchange. In 1945 he was again
assigned to the Philippines to fly combat missions against the
Japanese until the war ended. His autobiography, Escape From Corregidor,
details his wartime experiences.
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