62 pages • 2 hours read
Hampton SidesGhost Soldiers: The Epic Account of World War II's Greatest Rescue Mission
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2001A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Book 1, Chapters 5-7Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Book 1: “Blood Brothers”
Book 1, Chapter 5 Summary
The Americans at POW camps were expected to follow all Japanese orders in “a state of complete subjugation” (179). The prisoners dressed in G-strings and hand-made sandals. They cut their hair short to avoid lice. Most lost significant amounts of weight.
A few months and a large POW death toll later, the Japanese transferred the prisoners from Camp O’Donnell to Cabanatuan camp, a prewar installation for the Philippine Army. Cabanatuan became “the largest continuously running prisoner-of-war camp in the Philippines, and the largest American POW camp ever established on foreign soil” (181). The camp housed Corregidor prisoners and those from Bataan. At first, Cabanatuan was an “extermination camp” because it was managed by Shigeji Mori with “malign neglect” and a high death toll from illnesses, lack of basic medicine, and malnutrition (181).
The camp established a form of society and a schedule. It had street names like Broadway, a library, and a baseball diamond. Abie Abraham helped establish a “café” for the prisoner to play bridge. Well-educated prisoners lectured others on subjects ranging from history to astronomy, since the stars were visible in the night sky. A metal triangle akin to a chime marked every 30 minutes because it brought order: “Broadcasting the passage of time became a kind of sacrament” (184). POWs held a variety of jobs: cooks, grass cutters, typists. Some were allowed to shop for basic supplies with their guards in Cabanatuan City. Others worked on a farm growing sweet potatoes and other fruit and vegetables for the Japanese army but not themselves.
To pass the time, some prisoners also relied on their imagination. They also dreamt more about food (cheese, ice cream, pie) than women and sex. The prisoners “perfected the sport of gastrosado-masochism” as they exchanged recipes for things they could not cook (189). In December 1942, they received Red Cross Christmas packages—canned sardines, instant coffee, dried prunes—which left a lifelong impression on the always-starving men. The prisoners were “hungry not merely for food but for any contact with the outside world” (191). Some prisoners waited for others to die, not unlike vultures, to get their cigarettes. In general, the Americans had to balance relying on themselves, finding food, and cooperating with small groups. Many grew up on farms during the Great Depression, so they were “well accustomed to the art of scraping by” (193). One example involved two friends, both of whom lost their teeth, sharing dentures at mealtimes. Dogs, cats, ducks, and small wildlife were all caught and cooked. Exceptions included mosquito-eating geckos and Soochoo, the bulldog mutt who was the camp mascot.
The Japanese relied on the “blood brothers” type of collective punishment: the POWs were organized in groups of 10 (198). Should one try escaping, all 10 would be executed. The concept was implemented twice, and the “deterrent was highly successful” (199). There were other occasions when some prisoners were shot without provocation, such as the killing of Robert Huffcut who was only picking eggplants. At one point, the Japanese engaged in dubious research by examining the Indigenous Americans held at the camp. On another occasion, they made the prisoners write essays on their worst experiences during the war and handed out prizes.
Obtaining medical supplies for the American doctors at Cabanatuan “was a daunting and horrible challenge” (200). Lacking basic medicine, they had to improvise, such as using maggots to clean wounds or drilling teeth with a power drill with a foot pedal. After diseases like malaria subsided, new conditions arose out of chronic malnutrition and vitamin deficiency, such as losing hair, teeth, hearing, and eyesight. Many men experienced gynecomastia—developing breasts—a cause of discomfort and embarrassment. Some underwent mastectomies to avoid “getting raped by some of the other men in the camp” (203).
Edward Thomas developed diphtheria, having already lost 100 pounds since the war began. He was quarantined and expected to meet “a slow, painful, and agonizing death” (206). Doctor Willard Waterous managed to convince the captors to obtain antitoxin since the epidemic spread quickly through the camp. Expected to receive the last dose, Thomas gave it to a fellow inmate instead because the latter was sicker. By the next day, Thomas got significantly better—a seemingly miraculous recovery—and was “most grateful to be alive” (208).
Book 1, Chapter 6 Summary
Colonel Mucci made Platero, a village two miles outside the POW camp, his bivouac (outdoor camp) and mission staging area for the Rangers. Battalion surgeon Dr. James Fisher was to set up a field hospital for any potential injuries. Platero’s residents warmly met the Rangers with a feast. There were not many collaborators in the countryside, as many Filipinos “despised the Japanese with a countervailing passion” (216). For instance, some Filipino women were taken to Manila as “comfort women” for the Japanese troops (217). However, Mucci did not trust the village mayor despite his hospitality. As a result, the Americans placed him under house arrest with apologies, as a precaution.
On the morning of January 30, 1945, the transient Japanese army was retreating at night to avoid the US air strikes. However, they seemed uninterested in the POW camp and focused on heading toward their mission in northern Luzon. Up to 300 soldiers remained inside the Cabanatuan camp along with 75 armed guards in the entire compound. The Rangers still required more information about the camp. The terrain was completely flat. Lieutenant Bill Nellist and Private Rufo Vaquilar, disguised as Filipino farmers, decided to use an abandoned shack on stilts to gain “just enough elevation to enable the Scouts to peer down into the camp enclosure” (220). The two men “could see prisoners ambling about the compound and could even count the guards up in the towers” (221). They identified “the general logic of the place” and the layout of the paths and buildings (221).
Nellist compared an air surveillance photograph of the camp to first-person observation using the rifle’s sight to determine “accurate distances between all the camp’s major features” (222). Based on the photograph, Filipino guerillas’ information, and their own observations, the Scots were able to get “the full portrait” of the camp (222). Three Alamo Scouts—Gilbert Cox, Franklin Fox, and Harold Hard—crawled to the shack to check up on Vaquilar and Nellist. The latter noticed a lone Filipino woman talking to the Japanese camp guards, found it suspicious, but did not see any changes inside the camp.
Back at Platero, Prince and Mucci were developing their plan and were relieved to receive Nellist’s intelligence report (227). Based on this information, Prince arrived at a master plan that would involve up to 1,000 people, with Mucci’s approval. In the meantime, Platero and other nearby villages were being evacuated, leaving only men without disabilities “to minimize civilian bloodshed should the Japanese retaliate” (228). Guerilla leaders Joson and Pajota “had to seal off a solid mile of the road and hold it long enough for the Rangers to attack the camp, remove the prisoners” (230). Reaching the vicinity of the camp, the Rangers were to crawl on their stomachs. A part of F Company would then sneak behind the camp in the back and use the ravine to conceal themselves.
F Company would then fire on the camp rearguard towers at sunset, while C Company, led by Prince, would cross the road to the camp entrance, firing at the guards and storming the gate. Prince was to manage the overall action from the main gate as the rest of the troops would work inside, quelling Japanese resistance and rescuing the POWs. Prince would also use red flares to signal for all participants the end of the assault and, subsequently, to alert the guerillas to withdraw. In the end, a 30-mile journey toward the US lines would take place. The Rangers also decided to use American planes to buzz over the camp “purely as a diversion” (233). Dr. Fisher opted to participate in the raid with an experienced Filipino doctor, Carlos Layug, staying back at the field hospital.
Book 1, Chapter 7 Summary
Cabanatuan POWs “were not completely lacking in sources of outside help” (237). The US woman, Margaret Utinsky, and a German Catholic priest, Father Heinz Buttenbruck, both from Manila, provided essentials through smuggling and passed on messages. Another notable example was a woman nicknamed “High Pockets.” She ran Club Tsubaki in Manila—an “ultra-exclusive nightspot” (238). It was a cabaret, not a brothel, although the hostesses occasionally exceeded their professional duties with certain Japanese patrons.
The woman’s assumed identity was Dorothy Clara Fuentes, an Italian Filipina, which she obtained from her friend in Italy’s consulate. Her real name was Claire Phillips, an American. She sang like her performers, extracted military information from the Japanese guests with innocent questions, and passed it on to General MacArthur’s headquarters in New Guinea or Australia. Most of the time the information was not crucial. Exceptional cases involved the Japanese troops using Red Cross civilian markings to transport soldiers. High Pockets also used earnings from the club to buy medicine, Vitamin C fruit concentrate, and food to be smuggled to Cabanatuan (247). Her husband, John Phillips, whom she married shortly before Pearl Harbor, was held at this POW camp until his death. She remained dedicated to the mission even after she learned of his passing. The initial idea for espionage came from another US soldier, John Boone, who worked with the Philippine insurgency.
Claire corresponded with POWs in the camp, some of whom called themselves “the Forgotten Men,” using assumed nicknames (248). She was aware of the high risks she was taking. Her stress led to an ulcer and required surgery. On one occasion, a boy sent by the Japanese military police, Kempeitai, attempted to get her to help a fictional “Captain Bagley.” She refused, and “her quickened intuition may have saved her life” (250).
One of Claire’s messages was intercepted, and on May 23, 1944, her subversive activities finally caught up with her. She was assaulted, stripped, burnt with cigarettes, and underwent the “water treatment” torture (252). Unable to break her, the Japanese moved her to the Fort Santiago dungeons, where she stayed for three months in solitary confinement. The Japanese then targeted her contacts, especially the prison chaplains. The latter’s role was very important because “the prisoners saw daily evidence of the spirit world,” and the chaplains “constantly found themselves in the midst of the most profound life-and-death questions” (253). Captain Suzuki, the camp commandant, interrogated chaplain Robert Preston Taylor and threw him into a "heat box” (257) solitary confinement for the summer of 1944, tortured Chaplain Alfred Oliver, and held medic Colonel Schwarz “so long without water and food that he hovered on the verge of death” (256). Later, Taylor almost died from dysentery going into a coma. Some thought his recovery to be “a miracle” (257).
In September 1944, the POWs got a “returning sense of hope” from seeing more and more American airplanes over their heads and thinking that their ordeal would be over soon (258). On October 7, however, the Japanese announced that 1,600 of the healthiest POWs would be taken to Japan, and “only the sickest would stay behind” (259). They planned to use the POW labor in Japan-controlled Manchuria because General MacArthur’s return to the Philippines was “imminent” (259). Many men pretended to be sick to avoid leaving, going as far as to fake their “hot stools” samples with dysentery bought from sick prisoners (260).
Colonel Curtis Beecher and Lieutenant Henry Lee, a camp poet, were chosen to go. First, the 1,600 men were taken to a Manila prison, Bilibid. Then they boarded a ship called Oryoku Maru, which was seriously cramped. The Japanese traveled above. The conditions were so terrible that “[f]ifty men had died of heat prostration, bad air, and human malice” overnight (265). Some were said to drink their own urine or the blood of their fellow prisoners.
On December 14, the Americans repeatedly bombed the ship without immediately realizing that they were striking their own. Some of the bombs killed and wounded hundreds, including Japanese women and children. The Japanese survivors were evacuated by lifeboats to Olongapo Point in Subic Bay, while the POWs were expected to swim ashore 500 yards away. Eventually, the American planes realized that the POWs were on board: “At the last second one of the dive-bombers pulled out of the formation in sudden recognition” and disappeared (268). The headcount on the shore revealed 1,300 POWs remaining, “many of [whom] were seriously wounded” (268). The US planes returned and “dealt the Oryoku Maru a deathblow” (268). The prisoners cheered.
The doctors treated the wounded with razor blades due to lacking medicine and instruments. The POWs stayed at a tennis court on the shore for six days. Then the Japanese took 15 of the worst cases and decapitated them in “a remote spot in the jungle” one by one (270). Transported to San Fernando, the POWs were then put on a “decrepit ship,” the Enoura Maru, and sent to Formosa (present-day Taiwan) (271). Dropping anchor on January 1, 1945, the prisoners were held on board until January 9, when the US bombers started striking the area. The ship was damaged but did not sink. Only three days later did the prisoners get “assistance of any kind” (273). Of the initial 1,600 who departed camp Cabanatuan, 700 were dead. Lieutenant Henry Lee died, but Chaplain Taylor survived. On January 13, the remaining POWs boarded the Brazil Maru and were shipped to Japan.
Book 1, Chapters 5-7 Analysis
The last three chapters of the “Blood Brothers” part of the book continue to explore the question of survival in extreme situations. This question is central to Ghost Soldiers because its focal point is the rescue raid from the inhumane conditions and a potential massacre. This theme, Human Survival in Extreme Conditions, also provides historical documentation based on interviews, diaries, poetry, and other types of sources to preserve the memory and to explain why the postwar war crimes trials covered POW abuse in the Philippines. At the same time, the author focuses on North American and European POWs and provides little information about Filipino prisoners.
The conditions were so cramped and unbearable and, consequently, the death toll was so high at Camp O’Donnell that the Japanese transferred the prisoners to Cabanatuan. The latter was a more spacious prison compound, but the transfer did not improve the chronic nutritional deficiency or access to basic medicines to treat preventable illnesses. As a result, the POWs lost a significant amount of weight and incurred damage to basic functions like eyesight and hearing in addition to periodically experiencing more serious illnesses like dysentery. At times, being sick benefited the prisoners, such as the case of false stool tests to avoid going on the so-called “hell ships” for labor. The latter is reminiscent of basic survival instincts in nature, such as animals playing dead.
Another survival tactic was psychological. For example, the prisoners’ fantasies about freedom did not involve grandiose subjects but rather basic necessities. They collectively imagined ice cream and chocolate and even exchanged recipes for meals they could not make.
Some engaged in creative pursuits and the feeling of usefulness. Not only did the prisoners have to make things for their daily life with their hands, fashioning them from whatever was available, but those like Lieutenant Henry Lee wrote poetry. Working on the farm also provided them with the feeling of usefulness.
Furthermore, religion played an important psychological role. Prison chaplains like Robert Preston Taylor offered spiritual guidance to prisoners who saw their comrades dying on a regular basis. On one occasion, when Chaplain Taylor himself was near death, “the tables had turned, and the camp was praying for him” to a seemingly miraculous recovery (257). This emphasis on religion in extreme situations carried over from combat and resulted in a military aphorism, “There are no atheists in foxholes,” attributed to Chaplain William Thomas Cummings (123). At times, a sense of hope meant the difference between living and dying, and some patients just gave up. Such hope not only came from contacts with the outside world through the Bamboo Telegraph and the Red Cross Christmas packages, but also through seeing increased American air activity starting in late 1944, signaling the Allied return to the Philippines.
Another feature of POW camp life was the establishment of a functioning “society,” as discussed in The Social Organization of the Cabanatuan POW Camp theme. The author uses this theme to reveal certain aspects of human nature, such as its need for community. Here, the camp “society” was, of course, based on a perversion of the usual social contract but, nonetheless, the organization of camp life still functioned as a rudimentary society. It included “a discernible structure, with elaborate grapevines for disseminating goods and information” (182). The Allied prisoners had their own leaders, such as Colonel James Duckworth, and lived in a separate part of the camp. Other men held different jobs: from farm workers cultivating vegetables for the Japanese and engineers digging irrigation ditches to doctors treating the body and clergy treating the soul.
This organization of life by profession offered a glimpse into the time of peace amidst a wartime camp. Also, the passage of time was so crucial as an organizational principle that the men took turns on clock duty and rang a chime-like triangle to mark every half-hour. The men did not know when they were being released but they could at least organize each day. Another important organizing principle was quite grim: the burial of their comrades, which took place frequently. Thus, this miniature society shows that humans are social animals requiring not only interaction with other humans but also rituals and organizing principles to function and survive.
The third theme that the author continues to explore is Colonialism and World War II: The Japanese, Americans, and Filipinos. Sides’s goal is to reveal the issues with organizing an underground network for the POWs and carrying out a difficult rescue operation on a third party’s territory. At the center of this theme is the question of race and imperialism. The Philippines was an American colony until 1946, annexed after the Spanish-American War. The latter was followed by the Philippine-American War between the colonizer and the colonized. At the same time, the Philippines gradually became dependent on the US mainland economically, which complicated the question of its autonomy.
The US government treated Filipinos paternalistically. The tension between seeking independence and colonial dependence translated into different responses during the Japanese World War II occupation of the islands. The responses were more multifaceted than the author portrays them to be: he appears to downplay the extent of collaboration with the Japanese. Some Filipinos felt betrayed by the US and the fact that it prioritized aiding Britain over its own territory. Others, like the former Filipino leader Emilio Aguinaldo, collaborated with the Japanese. Other Filipinos—who are profiled in this book—displayed “intensely pro-American loyalty” toward the US troops that was “both touching and a little hard to understand” (99). The loyalty of Filipino professionals like Doctor Carlos Layug was also an important factor in this context, considering his help with the rescue mission.
The ability to disguise themselves as Filipino farmers also benefitted the US troops in reconnaissance work, especially Filipino Americans like Alamo Scout Private Rufo Vaquilar. Others, like the Huks with their left-wing views, opposed both the Japanese and the Americans. Sides suggests that the Japanese “Asia for the Asiatics” slogan “sounded phony to even the most unsophisticated Filipinos; almost laughably so” (216), a claim disputed by some other historians, such as Daniel Immerwahr. Furthermore, the fact that the author describes Colonel Mucci’s repeated distrust of the locals seems to point to the fact that cooperating with the Japanese may have been a bigger problem for the Americans than he makes it out to be. Overall, this debate only highlights the diverse groups and individual responses to the war.
The question of loyalty is also relevant in the context of Claire Phillips, who was at the center of a major underground network helping the POWs and gathering intelligence information on the Japanese troops. Her story also embodies the theme of resilience and survival. Claire’s loyalty is to her country, to her soldier-husband who died at the Cabanatuan camp, and to others like him who were still alive. Her patriotism—including surviving Japanese interrogation torture—provides an example of female heroism within the war context. Overall, the discussion of loyalty and collaboration demonstrates the way in which people in extreme situations display a variety of responses informed by individual choices and group loyalties, race and ethnicity, citizenship, and personal circumstances.
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