Submarine From Corregidor: Manila Goes Under

by ELIZABETH E. SAYRE

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NEVER in my life had I felt the least desire to go down in a submarine. I can remember the day when the High Commissioner’s naval aide in Manila said to our fifteen-year-old son, “Bill, how would you like to go out with me today and look over one of those new submarines?” Bill had come back with an enthusiastic “Swell! When do we go?” I was saved from embarrassment by not being invited! Little did I think then that I should, in the near future, live two weeks on a submarine, going through three thousand miles of water where a great naval battle was being waged, and spending the daylight hours submerged.

When war broke out in the Far East, we in the Philippines were almost immediately under fire from the air. From the moment the news reached us of the Jap treachery at Pearl Harbor until enemy planes began to bomb the Philippines was a mere matter of some four hours.

At 8.00 A.M. on December 8, Jap bombers rained destruction on Camp John Hay in the mountains to the north. Our youngest son was there at the Bishop Brent School, and the bombing brought immediately into our household the fear and anxiety which never entirely left us until we were again on home soil. At noon on that same Monday Jap planes in large numbers raided our largest air base at Clark Field, adjoining Fort Stotsenberg. There we lost a considerable number of planes and Flying Fortresses. Nurses from Fort Stotsenberg Hospital told me afterward that mess call had just sounded and they were on their way to lunch when bombs began to fall. There were many badly wounded and burned casualties as a result of this raid. Some of the cases which were movable were taken in to Sternberg Hospital, Manila. One of these boys my husband stopped to speak to there a week later. Earnestness showed bravely from his swollen lips and eyes as he struggled to speak. “Is it true, sir, that a transport landed today? We’ll get them soon, won’t we, sir?” No thought of self-pity — only the thought, “We’ll do the job. We’ll lick the Japs as soon as we get some planes and some reinforcements.”

The hospitals in and around Manila were soon full and it was necessary to add to the number of beds. Additional hospital units were set up — one large one at “Jai-Lai” stadium, a large air-cooled building; another one at LaSalle College, and another out at Caloocan. The doctors and nurses worked night and day.

On December 15 I went to Sternberg Hospital to see Miss Marie Adams and Miss Catharine Nau, who had set up a Red Cross service there. The beautiful grounds had been dug up to make narrow ditches deep enough to lie down in. They made me shudder, for they looked like shallow graves. Later I was to know them as the friendly “fox-holes” of Corregidor and Bataan. Our Volunteer Unit at the Residence had promised to make and fill fifteen hundred “Treasure Bags” for enlisted personnel in military hospitals, so that every soldier and sailor — American and Filipino — might receive on Christmas Day a bag filled with small gifts, toilet articles, and cigarettes and candy. This was carried out in spite of air raids, disrupted homes, and difficulties in transportation. On Christmas night in the hospital tunnel at Corregidor, I saw several men carried in on stretchers, with one of our Treasure Rags clutched on his chest or dangling from his arm.

Three days after war broke out, we stood on our terrace at the Residence of the High Commissioner in Manila and watched a perfect formation of twenty-seven silver flying ships circle over Manila Bay and turn toward Cavite, where they dropped their heavy load of bombs on our naval station. Great clouds of smoke followed the explosions, and for two days afterward we saw flames going up as tangible evidence of enemy destruction there. Our hearts sank. We knew that the enemy had badly crippled our defenses; and in spite of the heroic efforts of our Filipino and American flyers, the Japanese had their own will in the air.

Each day at twilight, most of our staff and secretaries gathered at the Residence for the night, as our air-raid shelters were substantial. The Residence was only completed for occupancy in April, 1940, and it loomed up on its area of barren filled-in ground, a perfectly exposed target for the enemy. But the Jap planes ignored us, bombing the ships off our seawall, the piers not far away, and the Pasay area a mile or two up Dewey Boulevard. They must have felt sure of their success and were saving the Residence for their military headquarters, for they moved into it immediately upon occupying the city, and transferred our staff elsewhere.

While on Corregidor, we saw a copy of a Manila newspaper of January 7, showing the Jap military commanders receiving the Filipino officials invited to act as commissioners under Japanese rule. Every chair and lamp seemed to be in exactly their accustomed places, and my housewifely instincts were gratified to see that the chintz slip covers had been left on the chairs, but outraged to observe the Jap officers tracking up the highly polished hardwood floors with their rough boots. I wondered if the bronze shield of the United States still served as ornament over the marble entrance to the room, or if the Japs had torn it from the balcony as a souvenir for the Emperor.

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On the morning of December 24 word came from General MacArthur that a nucleus of our staff was to leave for Corregidor at 1.30. It was about 10.30 when Mr. Sayre appeared in the ballroom entrance and motioned to me where I stood in the center of Red Cross activity going on there, preparatory to sending out the Christmas Treasure Bags. My husband told me there was danger of the city falling, that we must be prepared to move soon and in great secrecy to the fortified island of Corregidor, from which point our civil government would continue to function. It was cruelly hard to have to leave friends and loyal staff people this waY, but there seemed nothing to be gained by allowing ourselves to be captured, after which there would be no way for either the United States High Commissioner or the President of the Philippine Commonwealth to function.

I went back to the ballroom and joined the group of some twenty women of our Red Cross Volunteer Unit who were feverishly working to finish our job, but whose lips and faces had become singularly quiet. I think they sensed a crucial climax. We had been drawn very closely together in the last two weeks of danger, working between air raids, sometimes carrying bandage-making and Christmas work to the basement shelters, when the sirens shrieked and the bombing began.

As we bent over a large packing box, I whispered the plan of our departure to Amea Willoughby, wife of the High Commissioner’s Financial Adviser, for she and her husband were to go with us. Finally we packed away the last Christmas box and surveyed the room. It was a riot of color, for every table and sofa and chair was piled with variegated Treasure Bags. It was the fruit of many hours of work and planning. Well, the boys in the hospitals would know we did not forget them. The Red Cross would see to that. We wished each other a happy Christmas Day and broke up our meeting. I did not see any of those good friends, American or Filipino, again.

Our whirlwind departure from the Residence took place with military precision at 1.30 in spite of a noon bombing of the port area. I had packed my own and Bill’s suitcase in a few moments, before partaking of a sandwich lunch we had quickly eaten in the basement shelter during the air alarm. It was hard to go — to leave the home where for over two years we had had so many happy times, and which had taken so much of our thought and time to establish and furnish. We felt no impulse to carry any of the art treasures with us. They belonged to a period in our lives which was now past. We walked down the corridor of the family entrance.

I paused at my secretary’s office and tried so hard to smile and look happy when I said good-bye. I played a little game with her. “Perhaps we shall be back in a few days and this may be a false alarm. I cannot say where we are going, but you will guess.” She was wonderful and brave in spite of the fact that her husband had disappeared that very morning on some unknown mission. There were the Filipino houseboys, frightened but trying to smile. Anna Zee, — poor faithful Chinese, — whose heart quailed at the thought of Jap invaders. One boy and one cook we were allowed to take with us — no more! And one suitcase apiece. I managed to grab the largest knitting bag ever made, a rattan affair which was commodious enough to take our present for Bill’s Christmas, an inflated football. (Alas, he never used it on Corregidor!)

Our tin hats are over our shoulders, our gas masks on our arms. There are the two cars — we pile in. “Good-bye.” The car moves; we turn and look out the back window. There is Claude Buss, Executive Assistant to the High Commissioner, now to be left in charge of our staff. He is waving, smiling, bless him! We circle the flag, our flag stiff flying! We pass through the gates — it cannot be forever! There is the fine-looking policeman who has stood like a dignified dragon over our gates. He salutes slowly, easily — he is full of a serene confidence. Then left on the Boulevard and past the Elks’ Club, the Army and Navy Club, the Luneta, the Manila Hotel. It is a clear, sunny day, but there is a cloud of smoke rising behind the Manila Hotel. We turn into the Presidential landing, trying hard to joke with each other, but the effort is rather hysterical. “Is it really cold on Corregidor? How about an overcoat?” — “Look, I brought two Christmas packages which came this morning.” (One turned out to be an evening bag and the other was sachets!) “You know, I couldn’t get any more batteries for my flashlights — there aren’t any to be had in Manila.” The Quezon party arrive in their cars. There is the President, looking pretty well considering he is only just recovering from a serious illness. There is Mrs. Quezon, the two daughters and the young son; Vice-President Osmeña, Chief Justice Santos, Secretary of Finance Roxas (now in his uniform as a Colonel). We crowd into two waiting launches and chug away from the landing.

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Our launch was now nosing out into the blue waters of Manila Bay. We knew that Jap planes might appear at any moment. We looked back at the clouds of smoke rising from the recently bombed port area. The Tabacalera warehouse was burning and one ship beside the dock was in flames. Pier 7 was not hit — its turn was soon to come! We took one last lingering look at our substantial concrete Residence. The sentries were pacing the seawall and the terrace. We turned our eyes toward the Manila Hotel, where the MacArthurs and Admiral Hart had their living quarters. Our flag still flew from the highest turret.

Out in the sparkling blue bay we approached our waiting ship, the Mayon, an old, sturdy, Southern Island boat. President Quezon’s luxurious yacht, the Casiana, stood near by, with its new coat of war gray. Upon this comfortable ship we had cruised to Mindanao the year before, when President Quezon had opened the new cross-Mindanao highway, naming it the Sayre Highway in honor of the High Commissioner.

We boarded the Mayon, for the Casiana was to bring the MacArthur party in the late afternoon. The Quezon party were soon aboard and we were all told to remain below deck for fear of air raids. Each one of us was fitted into a hot and stuffy life jacket. We paced the lower passageways, feeling hot and impatient. Why didn’t we start? Soon the word came we were waiting for the chief engineer. He never turned up, so after a half hour of nervous fidgets it was decided we should make the trip with the second engineer in command. At last we were under way with two PT or mosquito boats forging ahead of us as convoys. Once away from the inner bay, we all went out on the lower afterdeck, enjoying the sunshine and cool breezes. I have never seen a lovelier sky, clear blue with little puffy white clouds — and no Jap planes over us for the moment! We began to feel a sense of freedom, of escape.

As we approached Corregidor, President Quezon’s aide, Colonel Nieto, came in to announce we were landing. We all eagerly collected our “impedimenta” and in relays went ashore.

Landed on the “Rock” at the busy pier, we were met by Lieutenant Brown, General Moore’s aide. We were told Corregidor had been air-raided at four o’clock, so that we had timed our arrival most opportunely. As we drove up the dusty road, we saw that the fortress was as busy as a beehive. Droves of workmen, like ants, were rushing to and fro, carrying and storing all sorts of military food and hospital supplies. Within a few moments we were at the west entrance of Malinta Tunnel and so we passed under the great rocky hill which was to shelter us from heavy bombardment for two months.

The two entrances to this main tunnel were wide and only a distance of about a quarter of a mile apart, so that the interior was partially lighted by the sunlight. Over halfway in, our car stopped at the sign “Malinta Hospital.” Here we stepped into a whitewashed lateral stretching off at right angles to the main tunnel, and running through the Malinta hill for about a quarter of a mile until it came out upon the southeastern side, meeting a steep roadway descending to the water’s edge.

So there were really three tunnel entrances to “Malinta,” and each one was used for a particular purpose. The exit, or southeast end of the hospital tunnel, was the one which became our outdoor sitting room during “safety hours,” and this end was also used as the hospital mess where corps men and ambulatory patients had their meals out-of-doors when bombing and shelling were not going on. Here we listened to the radio, the Voice of Freedom hour, the William Winter broadcast from San Francisco, which later on meant so much to all of us, and here we later heard the stupid distorted Jap broadcasts from Manila (which either completely disgusted us or sent us off into hysterical laughter).

This hospital lateral was to be our home. In it we came to know intimately the doctors, nurses, and corps men. We saw behind the scenes and we talked with them freely. We who were on Corregidor need never ask if Americans and Filipinos can “take it” — we know they can.

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And so it was that, on Christmas Eve, the Sayre and Quezon parties took up residence in one of the hospital laterals, where iron beds were placed end to end against the wall on two sides, leaving a narrow walkway between. On each pillow was pinned a penciled place-card. I looked around me — there was Mrs. MacArthur, Arthur MacArthur, Arthur’s nurse, Mrs. Quezon, Miss Quezon — and so on. We were quietly greeted by a low-voiced, lovely-looking young woman — Ann Mealer — who was “Queen Nurse” in every sense of the word. She proved her courage and her efficiency many times over and I never saw her ruffled, excited, downcast, or bored. She was a ready friend in time of trouble, but she let us know in the very beginning that we were now in a hospital and that the patients came first and we weren’t patients! This was surely the best way to start us off in our new life. No sympathy or commiseration expressed — only a gentle suggestion that we wait on ourselves, make the best of a crowded life, and “Here is a towel and there is the bathroom!” We soon discovered that in our No. 9 lateral we were to keep our beds tidy and our floors clean, that we were to be quiet after nine o’clock, and that we were to fit ourselves into the nurses’ schedule.

In these early days of our tunnel existence there was one bathroom for sixty-eight women, and the only harassment which lowered our morale to the breaking point was when we waited in line to get a “teacup” bath only to have the water turned off just as we got to the head of the line! Later on, thanks to the tireless efforts of Colonel Arthur Parker (Quartermaster Corps, who recently lost his life on Corregidor), additional artesian wells were tapped and piped and we had the great luxury of a bath a day and water for laundry. Also, one or two additional bathrooms were built into the tunnel. Ask anyone on Corregidor what is the greatest single blessing to man and they will all say with one breath, “Water — fresh pure water!”

Tunnel life is a most intimate form of existence. Privacy was practically unknown. It reminded me a little of boarding-school days. Our beds touched one another and there were no screens or partitions between. We were a strange assortment — seventeen women from civilian and army life. There was a President’s wife, her two Filipino maids, a General’s wife, several middle-aged women, a journalist, a young mother with a tiny baby, a Chinese nurse, three young girls, and a canary bird! In the far end of the same lateral, separated from us by a hospital screen, were some twenty doctors. When we went in or out of our tunnel we had to pass through the doctors’ quarters. They were very good sports about these rude interruptions we made upon their privacy. At first we suffered more than they did over it if we found ourselves trespassing at the very moment one of them was getting in or out of his uniform, but before long we blithely said “Good morning” or “Good night,”no matter what stage of dishabille they were in.

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After we had learned to get used to our underground life and to find our way around the maze of laterals, we had an ever increasing respect for the Army engineers who had planned and carried out this secure refuge under a solid mountain of rock. The hospital services were improved each day: doctors and nurses were indefatigable in working out a more practical way of doing things. Everyone realized time was short — we might be under heavy fire any day, so it was terribly important to do the work while the Japs were busy with the taking and occupation of Manila.

Five days after our arrival on Corregidor came the first big bombing raid. Jap planes had been flying high above us, but until December 29 they had not dropped their eggs. On this day bombs rained upon the Rock for two and a half hours and “Topside,” the upper level of the Island, was practically demolished. One end of the main hospital building was destroyed, although there was a great Red Cross to mark it for what it was. Many hurt, shell-shocked, and wounded were carried into our hospital tunnel. The floors and canvas stretchers were soaked in blood. Doctors and nurses worked valiantly all afternoon and night trying to save lives. On “Topside” one Filipina nurse, Miss Salvacion, remained at her post during an emergency operation where bombs were falling all around her. I asked her about it afterward and she smilingly replied, “Oh! I was scared, Mrs. Sayre, but what I did was nothing; anyone would have done just the same.”

The ambulance drivers did superb work. One of them, a friend of my son’s, named Roy Jones, made many trips to “Topside” in the midst of bombing to bring wounded down to the tunnel. Finally his ambulance was crippled — tires blown off — and Roy got a dose of shrapnel in his shoulder. He stopped by the hospital lateral for treatment, then went out again to continue his work in another car. One nurse went up on an ambulance to “Topside” Hospital — the bombing intensified, and she and the driver jumped out of the car, lay in a ditch beside the road while the ground rocked around them. She said, “I prayed, ‘Oh, Lord, let a bomb hurry up and hit me quick and get this thing over with.'" But when a lull came they sprang up and went into the hospital, loaded their ambulance, and went on with their work. One officer, Lieutenant Keyser, picked up a wounded man and carried him in his arms to an air-raid shelter. Just as he stopped to go in, a bomb hit behind him; the concussion killed him, but his patient was saved. It was during this raid that Colonel Craig, commanding the hospital, was knocked unconscious by the force of an exploding bomb. But in a few days he was well again and back on the job.

During one heavy raid when large bombs dropped near the hospital entrance the concussion was felt in the innermost recesses of the tunnel. In the midst of an atmosphere charged with tension, a voice called excitedly, “Everybody into the side laterals — clear the main passage. Lie down on the floor against the wall, open your mouth, and put your fingers in your ears!” This was hysterical advice given by an inexperienced person, but the loud imperious voice had its effect on me — I suddenly found myself on top of a suitcase underneath my bed, and how I ever managed to get myself into these close quarters in such short order was ever afterwards a mystery to me.

This first heavy bombing was followed by many others, but we learned from our first experiences. We did not take so many chances and we did not hesitate to jump face down into a ditch or a fox-hole if we heard a plane overhead. It was the men at the batteries or manning machine guns and anti-aircraft who had to remain at their posts and take it, watching eagerly for a chance to make a hit. Their bravery was something incredible. They stuck at their posts even when the bombers flew low. Before long, the Jap planes learned a wholesome respect for our anti-aircraft marksmen and they took care to fly high. One of our anti-aircraft on Corregidor brought down a Jap plane 27,000 feet up — five miles! No wonder the Japs took care to fly high! For that very reason the Jap bombs rarely hit with precision a military target on Corregidor— even though their raids were always in broad daylight.

Two weeks before we left Corregidor it became necessary to give more room to patients. The number of malaria cases was steadily increasing. And so the High Commissioner’s and President Quezon’s staffs were moved into lateral No. 1, which boasted four or five partitions making a few small rooms. After spending a night in one of these cubicles, I was reminded of Mark Twain’s story about a hotel bedroom partition when he said “it was so thin he could hear the young lady in the next room change her mind.” President Quezon slept in one of these cubicles when it was thought unwise for him to sleep in the tent house built for him on a platform near the tunnel entrance. He had a racking cough which was most distressing and he had lost much weight since coming to the Island fortress. But he never lost his indomitable will, and how we did admire his fighting spirit!

The life on Corregidor was not all fear and misery —there were aspects of it which furnished sudden joy, poignant sympathy, and quiet, heart-to-heart talks. It is high, cool, covered with beautiful big trees, deep tropical ravines running down to the sea, small stretches of sandy beach, and is one of the few places in the Islands where there are no mosquitoes. As bombing raids became concentrated upon Bataan and before the shelling started (the first part of February), we used more and more a little house that had been assigned to us, sleeping there at night, and going up in the early afternoon for a siesta or reading hour. Back to the tunnel for the main meal at four o’clock, then returning to our house at the sunset hour when we spread our Army blankets on the terrace overlooking Bataan and Mariveles Mountain and sat watching the sun go down. Sometimes we read aloud from Cabot Coville’s precious book of verse, or a short story; sometimes we had a feast of a can of fruit or doughnuts saved from the dessert course of our mess. Out in this lovely fresh air, the sun on our backs, our hands touching the grass and the ground, our eyes feasting on the green trees around us, anything tasted good. It was a touch of normal existence which restored our souls. Occasionally my husband and I left Bill playing “catch” on the lawn, and we took a walk in the fading sunlight down the road to “Monkey Point.” It was a lovely woodsy walk, with occasional glimpses of the sea and with plenty of shallow-grave fox-holes along the edge of the road, which, on the sound of a plane, we could duck into and lie in the warm dust until the drone of the motor passed. Often the Japs would bomb Cabcabin airfield this time of evening and we would watch in the direction of Bataan, and see the clouds of dust rise following the sound of explosions. Sometimes the bomber missed; clouds of spray, like geysers, rose from the water off the Bataan shore. More often at this time of evening the plane was ours — the lone plane which made its nightly flight over to Bataan to keep contact with our forces there, observe, report, and then return. This little plane flew low and flew fast, for it couldn’t afford to come to grips with the enemy.

On our evening walks we sometimes circled the flying field. This was most cleverly camouflaged, and the few broken dowm and battered planes were artfully concealed from view some distance away from the runway.

After a night’s sleep in our little house the return to tunnel air was always a shock and a torment. The first whiff of stale air was enough to make us long to turn back.

On the left, as we passed the heavily sandbagged entrance, was a Diesel engine which was a supplementary one for electric power. By it slept or worked its faithful attendant, a tall, lanky, rawboned gentleman who seemed always to be on his job. One day I stopped to share with him some magazines. The light wasn’t too good but he read a lot when he wasn’t tending or oiling his engine. His cot was right beside his noisy, smelly old motor. “Don’t you ever get out of here?” I asked. He pushed his khaki cap forward as he scratched the back of his head. “I guess I’ll have to do something about getting exercise, one of these days.”

After breakfast there was always some personal laundry and mending to do. We learned to be thrifty with water and soap. Even the men were careful. One morning we met Joe Stevenot near Headquarters tunnel and he was holding a glass less than half full of water. “What shall I do with this?” he asked, perplexed. “I drank a little of it, I shaved with some, I washed my face and brushed my teeth, and here’s a whole half glass left over!”

Church services in the tunnel filled a need as acute as that for food and drink. Chaplain Oliver read the services in the mess hall for those of us living in the tunnel, but he spent longer hours walking over the trails and roads to the different batteries and outposts where the men were on military duty. In the tunnel we had a little portable organ, and the hearty response to its meager tone more than made up for the small size of the instrument. We all got a lot of happiness singing the old hymns, and the mess hall was so crowded Sunday mornings that many had to sit on the concrete floor or stand outside in the main tunnel. A few patients in wheelchairs or on crutches came in and j oined us. The sound of singing voices reached back into the furthermost ends of the hospital laterals, where many maimed and dying lay quiet and listened.

As I look back over the days on Corregidor, I realize how gradual was the realization that help in the air and reinforcements on the sea would come too late to help. We used to make bets on the date when we should see our side showing greater strength in the air. Many made wagers on our return to Manila — February 22 was a popular bet, and we thought of a great patriotic celebration on that day at the Army and Navy Club. As the days passed, the realization deepened that it would take a long time to bring troops, planes, equipment from the United States to Australia, and again as long to move them to the Philippines. We listened with sinking hearts while radio messages from home boasted about how many planes we could turn out in 1943 — how many troops we could train by the end of 1942. It would not do — it would be too late!

(To be continued)