Risk & Resolve
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Risk & Resolve
Henry Clay Conner's WWII Journey (Part 1 of 7): From Army Radio Operator to Filipino Guerrilla Leader
Henry Clay Conner, Jr. shares his extraordinary WWII experience from joining the 27th Bomb Group as a communications officer to becoming a guerrilla leader in the Japanese-occupied Philippines. His candid account reveals how unprepared American forces were for the reality of war in the Pacific and the cultural misunderstandings that led to tragedy.
• Born in Indianapolis on August 31, 1918 and graduated from Duke University in 1940
• Joined the Army Air Force in January 1941 with minimal training in communications
• Assigned to the 27th Bomb Group, the first complete bomb group sent overseas in US military history
• Stationed in the Philippines when Japanese forces attacked just hours after Pearl Harbor
• Received no cultural orientation about Japanese attitudes toward prisoners of war
• Heard President Roosevelt describe American forces in Bataan as "expendable"
• Chose to escape rather than surrender when Bataan fell on April 9, 1942
• Survived for 34 months behind enemy lines, leading guerrilla forces with Filipino support
• Witnessed firsthand how Japanese occupation forces mistreated Filipino civilians
• Credits Filipino loyalty and support for his survival throughout the occupation
You're listening to Risk and Resolve. And now for your hosts, ben Conner and Todd Hufford, welcome back to another episode of the Risk and Resolve pod. I'm excited, you'll see, I'm here by myself today Again one of your co-hosts, ben Conner but I'm excited to announce a five-part series that we're going to start today. That will be kind of intermingled over the next month and a half with our regular type of episodes, but this five-part series is really special to me. We are going to release recordings from my grandfather.
Speaker 1:So a little bit about the backstory of my grandfather. Obviously or maybe not obviously to some my grandfather, clay Conner, was the original founder of Conner Insurance. You know we are a third generation insurance agency in Indianapolis. So our firm was started by my grandfather and my grandfather has a very interesting story and that interesting story was life changing for him, which was certainly then life changing for the rest of our family. Rest of our family and his experiences in his personal journey really is a tangible footprint and fingerprints on our family and within the knitting of our company.
Speaker 1:So a little bit of the backstory of my grandfather. He actually grew up on the East Coast. Story of my grandfather. He actually grew up on the East Coast. He was an only child, went to Duke University and ended up enlisting to serve in World War II and he was stationed in the Philippines and had an incredible war story where he ended up being missing in action for almost 30, over 30 months in the Philippines, you know, organized a guerrilla army and survived and came back to America because of his mother and since he was an only child. So what we're going to release is him recounting his story. So the context to what you're going to listen to is a tape recording from 1983. Actually, that is the year that he ultimately ended up passing away was in 1983. So this was months before he passed away.
Speaker 1:He did a recording with Doug Clanahan of the Indiana Historical Society and the purpose of this recording was to capture or to detail a historical account of what he experienced in the Philippines while he was missing in action, and so they wanted to capture that war experience. But they also wanted him to detail just like, who are you Like? What was your background before this incredible event occurred in your life? So, and the reason that interview existed was because the indie star in 1983 wrote an article about his story on flag day, and the reason why is that he had, uh, more or less the story of a flag that never touched the ground, so flag that he carried with him through his experience, that never touched the ground and was kind of that hope of like adventure and survival. So, anyway, they posted, they wrote about that and published it on Flag Day.
Speaker 1:The Historical Society was like my goodness, we need to capture more of this man's account. And so that's what you're going to hear over the next five weeks. And what I'm also pleased to share is that we also are going to have an interview, following that five-week series, with the author of the book Resolve, and I have a copy right here, so a copy of this book Resolve. This book is about his war story, written by Bob Welch. So we're going to it's going to be kind of a capstone to this series we're going to interview Bob Welch, who's an incredible person in and of himself, so we're going to tell his story but just dig into what his experience was like in um, in writing the story of my grandfather, that that biography and capturing just who he was as a person. So, um, full disclosure. Uh, the audio on this, again, it's a tape recording from 1983. So the audio uh isn't the highest quality, um, but I still think it's really purposeful um to share this story. So, um, I'm pleased to share with you my grandfather, clay Connor.
Speaker 2:Mr Connor, first of all, thank you for giving me the opportunity to record this interview, and the first question I have for you is what is the place and date of your birth August 31st 1918, Indianapolis, Indiana, All right and what were the names of your parents? My father was Henry Clay Connor, who went by the name of Clay Connor, and my mother was Marguerite Dearing, and I was the only child and I went also by the name of Clay Conner, or rather Clay Conner Jr. So the community and those who know me in business have always known me as Clay Conner, but I use the legal name and have now in my old age, been using it more in order to identify me from my son, Henry Clay Connor III. Okay, what was the occupation of your father? I assume that your mother didn't work, you know, outside the home. But what did he do? He was a salesman and was employed by the Allison Company here in Indianapolis in 1926 and became their eastern representative in 1928. And their primary target was banks. That was the beginning of the finance business in the American economy, because personal loans were not common prior to that time. So they manufactured the coupon books or finance books and then branched into Jeter Waters and places like that.
Speaker 2:So I grew up on the East Coast because we lived in Clarkburg, Connecticut, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and Irvington in East Orange, New Jersey. When did you move away from Indianapolis? 1928. 1928, when you would be about 10 years old, and then moved around in those areas. So your education it occurred both here and then on the East Coast. I graduated in Irvington, New Jersey High School in January of 1937. And my father had a reasonable Southern heritage decided that my best interest would be served by going to a school below the Mesa Dixon line. So I went to Duke University and was glad for it, Graduated in the class of 1940, just prior to World War II.
Speaker 2:What was your getting back to the high school in New Jersey? What was your major there? In high school my primary interest was always history and economics Very cool. And then at Duke you also majored in those subjects. In economics I had an A-B degree in economics as a major. I actually had three majors but my primary interest has always been economics and history.
Speaker 2:Did you take ROTC at Duke, Any kind of military contact prior to your graduation? No, none. I don't believe there was any ROTC at Duke prior to Wolf. I don't know if there was. I wasn't aware of it. I never saw anybody run their own uniform down there After you graduated. Let me refresh my memory June of 1940. June of 40. June of 1940. This is naturally prior to Pearl Harbor. Did you get a job right after that, or did you look for work? My father gave me two days vacation and subsequently notified me that it was over and that I had commenced. Not only had I been to commencement at Duke, of which he was very proud, but I was going to commence to work immediately to relieve him of all of his years of burden, although I did work at Duke and enjoyed it.
Speaker 2:I'm glad I did. I went to work for the Aliceville Coupon Company in Indianapolis as a pressman. What's it been? What was a pressman? Somebody who actually prints the coupons? Yes, I was running a press group. I didn't do a very good job. I almost killed myself. I had absolutely no mechanical ability or talent. I was too interested in all the things that were going on in business to deal with the slowness of the mundane operation of the printing press grinding out thousands of pieces of paper. But the war also was coming on and I was very fascinated by things that were happening in Europe. So I left there on my own and went back to the East Coast One day would this be, excuse me, mr Powell?
Speaker 2:Well, that would be probably September 1st of September, right after my birthday 40. And tried to enlist, believe it or not, in the Marines Navy Air Force, army Air Force. But yeah, there was a waiting list for those schools. In those days I didn't realize that yes, there was, and they had what they called cadet army. They were officers training in cadet schools and so I finally was accepted, but at a future date. I was not actually on the list until about the second or third school of communications which I went to in January of 41. What would that be located? Scottfield, illinois, oh, scottfield, that's in southern Illinois, or outside, very close to East St Louis. East St Louis Okay, that'd be west of Scottfield. It's Belleville, belleville, okay.
Speaker 2:Well, anyway, in the interim period I had to do something. In the interim period I had to do something. So I went to work as a fuller brush man in the daytime, going door to door through Montclair, which is a very fashionable large mansion type of town suburb of Moorick In New Jersey, and then at night I worked with Arthur Murray as a dance instructor. So I had a lot going and had a wonderful time and enjoyed my days. I got up at six and went to bed probably at one in the morning and I was able to buy a new car and do a lot of things and it was really a fun time. I enjoyed every minute of it and I was looking forward to getting in the service because all my friends had volunteered or were doing the same thing All over the country. The graduates at Duke were all kind of getting in there and I was looking forward to the experience. Did you have contact with your friends during this interim period, before you actually got into the service and they were telling you you know, I'm getting into the service, how about you?
Speaker 2:Indirectly, I don't think we sit out and discuss the consequences of it, the problems involved, nor did we foresee the magnitude of the involvement of the United States. But it was kind of an underlying thing that was moving in the areas of those young people, most of whom are very patriotic, basically conservative, basically conservative, uh and uh, I would say 90 percent of the, the young americans and college graduates in those days, were thinking in terms of a patriotic effort. Oh, my friends were, yes, I. So it's a different era completely. And uh, I suppose there was a certain would you consider it like a naivety about you. You know the horrors of war. There's a generation that hadn't really been exposed to it. I think Black Knight had something to do with it.
Speaker 2:World War I is kind of a distant memory and this is a younger generation who are really enthusiastic about I don't know saving the world from democracy. Is that the reading you got at the time or the way you felt yourself, right? Well, old men don't fight wars, right, that's true. Old men dream dreams, as they say, and young men fight wars. Yeah, but excuse me, I don't think that as a young man, you have the fear of what can happen, nor do you have the reality of death not you and or the problems of being cut off or isolated, or fever, compelled by fever, to be left to die or injured. I don't think you think of all those things. I think you think more in terms of my obligation to my country, especially with the background and the training and the heritage they went through in those days.
Speaker 2:So when you finally went into this cadet program, this would be about June of 41?. Well, the cadet program? No, I didn't go until January. I think I raised my hand and was in some time in mid-December. I was actually inducted in Newark on my papers. In fact, we've got some orders here. I'll run them off for you. I think I've got those orders and I don't know the exact date, but I think it was around January the 7th or something that I was to report to Scott Field. But it's right in that area. Okay, what was the length of your training there at Scott Field? What was the length of your training there at Scott Field, I was assigned in July it seems to me to Savannah Army Air Base, to the 27th Army Group, which is tactical unit.
Speaker 2:I could have been assigned, I could have taken my choices. I could have been assigned, I could have taken my choices. You're standing in, your class gives you a choice of where you can go to, whether you go to a training base or you go to a tactical unit. And I was kind of intrigued with that picking up a fighter type right, bombing low, and it's a light bomb clip. It was a brand new outfit. It had been uh, organized from the third bomb down in barksdale, louisiana, and signed to then savannah army air base, which then become later became, after all, after the war started, I guess on the front of field and it's now a subdivision. You know, that's, that's their way.
Speaker 2:We stopped from Tybee Beach there outside of Savannah. I was assigned, I chose that and that would be what most of the guys in the lower part of the class would get, because that would not be the units that would be assigned overseas. Any dummy would know, if they'd sit down and think about it, that you're picking an outfit that's going to be first on the line. Well, I never thought about that and besides, I thought that'd be interesting if it was true. And as a result, the 27 bottom is the first, the first air group, army air group to ever be sent overseas in the history of the United States as a bomb group. They were the first one. Prior to that time, the bomb groups that were overseas were sent as squadrons and made a group overseas, such as Pickham Field or Clark Field. Those groups came together from squadrons that were sent over, but we were sent over as an air group. How many planes? 1,700 men, 1,700 men. We weren't fully staffed, but we were 1,700 men and I was a second lieutenant in this and a group communications officer of the 27th Barrow.
Speaker 2:And we left San Francisco in November and got to the Philippines about three weeks later, which is the latter part of November, and of course we were bombed on December the 8th without any warning. We knew that Pearl had been hit a few hours earlier, but the few hours was only, as the sun travels, because the Japanese hit us at noon when they hit them at six and of course the sun west of Pearl does not come up for about seven hours. Six hours, then you've got the international date line. So the 7th of December in Pearl was the 8th of December in Manila. So we were actually hit within hours Well, almost close to being simultaneous of December and Pearl was the 8th of December in Manila, so we were actually hit within an hour Well, almost close to being simultaneous.
Speaker 1:Well, within hours.
Speaker 2:The sun and the noon because of the flight out of Formosa to Hiddens. Where they hit. They struck Pearl from aircraft carriers, they struck us from Formosa, so they had the flight time. So it was almost like a synchronized. Oh yeah, I mean it was synchronized. In other words, one was planned to hit Pearl you hear all about the big planning and all that. Well, they also planned to hit Manila at the same time.
Speaker 2:We just briefly touched on the actual training which was at Skyfield, but I want to talk just a little bit about the, the training there, and then in relationship to, uh, the japanese attack, uh, could you go into some a little bit of detail about the kind of training you got at scott field and do you think that that adequately prepared you for what the japanese did in the philippines? I mean, on the on the 8th of december just Now? This sounds like a loaded question. No, that's ridiculous. I was supposed to be a group communications officer with people in which I basically like people and had a lot of friends and made friends quickly. I would have been the laughingstock of the group. I was supposed to learn from January to July how to put a transmitter. They don't have transceivers, they have transmitters and receivers, helicrafters and 5KW. I didn't know one tube from another. It was all tubes in those days. Everyone they saw on stage and I didn't know one tube from another. I was so bad and I was supposed to be able to knock out CW 10 words a minute or 15 words a minute. I couldn't do it. I don't know how I even got through the school. Now that wasn't because I guess I was stupid. If I graduated from college I should have been able to learn all that. But I told you earlier I was not really mechanically minded. How in the world I ever got into that mess, I don't know. But I had some wonderful, tremendously talented, brilliant, in fact absolutely brilliant, well-experienced communications people who could build a transmitter and receiver with raw material. Oh crap, I mean. We on Batan had some of the finest tenors you ever saw, creative talent, and I had talent in other areas and put it to use. I was probably the best scavenger on batan. Our unit did not go home, not on batan, believe it or not. You know they talk about the starvation and all that. I know how to get the food and that was great. That's very nice.
Speaker 2:But if you say, let's put it this way, I wound up in the guerrilla force, leading guerrilla, and was asked to train after the war by the Army. So they knew I knew something about guerrilla tactics. Right? Do you know that in my entire army career prior to batan, I had never fired a 45, I had never fired a browning automatic? Right, we had springfield old threes and infields.
Speaker 2:Now you know what kind of guns? Yeah, we ran, we had that early one, you know, or like. Yeah, but they, what are they? Uh, I can't even think of the Norm 16s and stuff. Right, golly, do you ever fired a with a lot of old ammunition? I'll bet too.
Speaker 2:So I read someplace that account that appeared on NBC that maybe one out of five or ten whatever, I don't know what the ratio was would fire, and then the rest were duds. I didn't In an artillery shell, but you didn't, not in guerrilla warfare. I didn't have that problem. Fortunately, whatever ammo I came into worked. Fortunately, because the only thing we used our ammo for, because of the limitations of it, was a defense to escape. Now, when we went in to intimidate and capture or get or steal whatever you want to put it in a war, I don't think you can steal anything from the enemy. But that was the general tenure, because it was an occupied country with another government, so we were like a bandals steel. But in any event, when we went in we didn't fire one in, we went in to do a job and fired to get out. See, that's, that's after the occupation, oh yeah, of japan. Yeah, now let's put your your initial question was I adequately trained? I never, i't. I couldn't operate a radio, I couldn't transmit or receive anything CW to intelligent, because those birds were operating with all this high frequency just fast and they and you wouldn't believe how they could transcribe.
Speaker 2:Did you get any message traffic in about? You know, there's this. We had to speak on everything, john Tolan, saying that there was messages coming in the washington new prior to the actual attack. They'd broken the purple code, but messages weren't getting out into the field in hawaii, they weren't getting out into, uh, the philippines. You think that is indeed the case.
Speaker 2:You didn't get any prior warning, or or was there just rumors about the japanese, possible japanese attack prior to the attack on manila and prior to Pearl Harbor, you know, approximately the same day? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. We were not even functioning. Prior to the attack, we were just stationed. We were waiting for aircraft. Oh, you didn't even have aircraft. Our airplanes were on another ship on the legs, which was a freighter, and when the bombs were dropped they were traveling at a lower rate of speed and, uh like, they discovered during the trip that they forgot to put any of the coolant in than the engines, so they couldn't fly them anyway. So they took them to australia. Wait, we're an air group. That never existed. You can.
Speaker 2:So you said, and I was trained in communications and other way. Don't know anything about that. I never had fired a gun and I'm going to Bataan to defend this Bataan, which is a total defense. So I was put in charge of a special communication group and what I did was find all of the town was fined. All of the time. I had carte blanche as a second lieutenant by command of General Wing and General Aiken.
Speaker 2:General Wing, you ever heard of Toby Wing? She was a movie star prior to World War II. Her father was General Wing. He was there. Oh, yes, I recall that Toby Wing, it's her father. It's W-I-N-K, is it? I don't know. Maybe Wink it's her father. It's W-I-N-K, is it? I don't know, maybe Wink, I don't really know. Okay, anyway, general Lincoln and General Wink and General King, they all liked me so they thought I could get this group together. So I put this Fifth Intercept Group communication together and I became the center headquarters for the group area. A general command communication. Wow, very impressive. Did you get message traffic then from Washington after this was?
Speaker 1:done, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:We got traffic. Well, we didn't get it direct from Washington, we got it from Del Monte, which was Mindanao, which was permanent in Australia. We got it from China. We picked up some information from China. We picked up some from Mindanao, we picked up some from Australia then, and now we picked up some from Australia, depends on the way things are going.
Speaker 2:Did you see MacArthur at this time, or at all? Just twice? Just twice, because it's a very confusing time, and probably twice. What kind of hours did you work? You were working. You know. Probably they were working hours. Yeah, you're just living hours. You're talking about before it started. Oh, there was no working hours, everybody was surviving. Yeah, you're surviving. If you've got a million of the enemy coming in to occupy an island and you're there in a uniform that's the wrong color. Nobody, there's no working, it's surviving, everything's surviving. So you moved out of Manila out to Bataan almost immediately after then the attack on the 8th of December I'm trying to establish some idea of a time frame, you know like about a week or whatever.
Speaker 2:We set up a general area of information at what was then called Nielsen Field, which was I became became the CEO. I'd recently had a book, a guidebook where one of my friends was that because he made the CEO of Nielsen Field and all this time I thought I was the CEO of Nielsen Field and I don't know. He probably was. I'm going to see him, I think at a reunion. I'm going to ask him. And he was supposed to be. According to him, he was the CO, but I got the orders from I can't think of the general's name. He was out of the Army Air Force or something like that. Anyway, arnold, no, no, anyway, he was in this book. He was the CO. Well, I must have been the head of communications at that. But all this time, all these years, I thought I was the CEO of the Associated. Where's that located? Right, isn't it? It was old. It's where McCotty is, a great big development of shopping and all that. This is the place where the planes that they were supposed to bring in, what was the vintage? Or the 827 that they were supposed to bring, boy oh boy, they were already in for just about everything at that time, just scissor and paste.
Speaker 2:What about morale after Pearl Harbor, which is well, excellent, it was very good, very good, I thought when they nobody figured we were going to lose anything or got a desperate and we just were scurrying around the side of what we were going to do and we were going to defend Manila. So we set up a warning and we set up this communications, this communications and trying to get the planes in and out. We were going to get a few planes off the ground because the jets blown down most of our planes the first day and the rest of them went to Australia. So we had very little limited air force left and so our primary objective was to try to determine what we're up against. And I didn't even know we were trying to determine what we're up against. The generals will figure that out. I just did what I was told to do and I said that's the hours of sergeant. Unless I was, you can't think of what the word I was, because the attendant doesn't know sergeant's using. Well, thank you. Yeah, anyway, I was dealing with the sergeants. They were giving me a dorm, but I was dealing with the sergeants. They were giving me a storm, but it was a madhouse.
Speaker 2:But it's a good point that you made about the level of morale. I think the common convention is that you always hear, and of course they're talking about after the defeat, but the fact that, my gosh, they held out for five months on Count Corregidor and they held out for four months if you count, uh, baton, before a file on april, I guess it was the night of the day, yeah, you wouldn't forget pub day and then bay six for 1942, for corregidor, but the fact was that the morale level was high and, uh, I heard an old expression was ignorance is bliss. Do you think the fact that you didn't know your situation with respect to Washington? They said on this documentary that help was not going to be coming on the way, but the men there didn't know it. If you had known that there was no help going to be on the way, could you have held out that long?
Speaker 2:There was always that hope to really hold you together that the reinforcements, the cavalry, was going to come in at the last minute, like in the movies, and save you. Did you even think? Or was it just a case of one day to the next and you never really even thought about it? Like, we're going to hold this thing, no matter how long it takes. Well, the Bible said it as a point in the mail was to die. To them the judgment. Well, he may know he's going to die, but he doesn't look like it and we're not afraid all the time. Does he Every day's hope, every day's hope? Well, the fact is, the fact of the matter is that very few people seem to remember that President Roosevelt got on radio again when certain things had happened in the tent and MacArthur had been ordered in April.
Speaker 2:To excuse me, in March 3rd, 2nd or I had real good contact and was immediately told if you were president of the United States and my rationale was excellent and you had a man who really knew the orange, would you order him out in order that he could regroup and come back, or would you let him die on the Monday? I said I'd order him out. He says then, do you think? And all the scuttle was, macarthur escapes and we're left behind, see. And I said I think I would order him out, I'd want to find a man out of there. And, of course, how are you going to get a bunch of them? I said I'm going to get them out. I said I'm going to put people. But the president of the United States got on the radio and I heard it. I heard it coming out of Honolulu that in asking the question of botany, he said they're expendable. That was President Roosevelt's words, said they were expendable. That was President Roosevelt's words, that they are expendable. Now, when you hear the President of the United States say they are expendable, that's a write-off. But if you're not there and you're not one of the 30,000 men and you're not one of the 30,000 of the men's parents or brothers and sisters, they're expendable.
Speaker 2:You go to the next page, you read the next obituary, but when it is you who they say, you stop and think what does that mean? Is that propaganda? That's propaganda, couldn't be True. Is that propaganda? That's propaganda, couldn't be true. The President of the United States, a woman, saying you're appointed, wants to die, you see. So there's a disbelief about this. There's just future, not me, right? You follow Right. So, follow Right. So it was a startling thing and it was a reality. But you took the bull by the horns and you determined to survive. And if you're determined to survive, you're going to use every feasible new tact, technique and available method to do just that. You survived. And that's what we did. For four minutes, for four months. You did that.
Speaker 2:When did you actually escape from Bataan? Is it towards the end or was it after the actual Bataan on April 9th, your escape took place. In other words, there's a man that owns a radio station down in the I guess it's Montgomery or Seattle. It's called Tuscaloosa, alabama. I'm Ednock, his name's Bert Bank, he was a captain at the time and he's still alive. And Bert was on the front line and he saw the Japanese breaking through and he had a portable radio, because and a radio, they were portable, and he was on there warning that the japanese had broken through the trouble, they were coming south and that they were, uh, killing everybody in the way. Evil though they order, a lot of filipinos were carrying white flags and so on. Big men put down their arms. They were still strengthening and killing everybody along the roadside, Moving the tanks and the zigzag pattern killed people on both sides of the road. Get out of the way. This is Burt Bank. The Japanese are both the same. They kept repeating it. He's in my house at 27 Bond, but he was stationed up there and I was stationed in communications, so you were further down the peninsula, down towards the Corregidor area.
Speaker 2:I was in what's called Little Baggiel Little Baggiel, okay and the death march started at Marvina, all the way up here to San Fermin was where they put them on the trunks. They took them up to O'Donnell, which is right here, but Iowa Station, little Baggiel, was right here and the Japanese broke right through here and went scattered from like this way, and they were coming down these main roads to clear out. Well, the Americans and the Filipinos were all up on the sides of the mugs and bikes on the main road and so forth. We were in Old Baggio at the communication center, okay and so and so I realized that things were in pretty bad shape. So I talked to general staff and we were getting ready to.
Speaker 2:We immediately sent the demolition squads out to blow up our ammunition dumps, which we were right in the middle of the ammunition dumps. So for the next 24 hours that place was unbelievable. Addition, and so the next 24 hours that place was unbelievable. We had all kinds of mortars and heavy shells and everything. It blew out every tree in the area. It was unbelievable. We were all in shelters for at least during the hours while this thing was going on, just blowing all the tension, struggling. It took 20 hours, plus to it was on trial. It was absolutely unbelievable. Well, anyway, we got a lot done and of course nobody came in there. Lord, nobody was coming in or going out. It was impossible. Went on all night and all the next day.
Speaker 2:So the next day, so the next day, a guy by the name of Anderson Captain Anderson, who had been to the Philippines prior to World War II was on an airline out of Manila and right to a Filipino bureau Was Lieutenant Lapham. On a few others, six of them were coming through from another area and said if you'd like to go over with us, we're going to try to contact Colonel Thorpe, who was commissioned by General McArthur to escape in Colonel Jail from this area, went up through here and set up a barrel of war with Brian at Wolfsport and he was supposed to be operating on the backside of the right at Wolfsburg and he was supposed to be operating on the back side of the Japanese from Wolfsburg and gathering help from the Filipinos, strength and unifying. So that was a rallying point then for the Filipinos. Some of their soldiers and such the Japanese were a lot stronger force than the Americans had anticipated and Thorpe didn't get that job done very successfully. He did do a few bridges, a few things, but it was tough. Well, anyway, we didn't know that, we didn't have communication with Thorpe from the choir, but he was going.
Speaker 2:So I went to the general staff who I was working with and asked them what the rules were. Regulations, and they said that it's every man for himself. But they advised me, knowing the Philippines as well as they did, to stay with the group because there would be safety in numbers and, according to Geneva conference, with the treaties, with the amount of 30,000 Americans we would be traded suddenly and maybe be given the pretty good treatment the Americans would be returning within six, eight months and it'd be the best. But if I escaped, then I was. If I was captured, I'd be killed and subject to be killed because that's the rules of the game. So they said first of all, the mounds are too treacherous and we'll never make it. And I said well, anderson seemed to think he can. How about me do it? Try it. But if you want to try a sorrow of the arts, that's okay. According to the rules of the order, anybody that escapes. Why? That's what they're eating. That's part of it too.
Speaker 2:The Japanese, they were signatories to the Geneva Convention. Are you kidding? They didn't have think about it? Oh, when they were captured, not when they captured. You see, the thing you have to understand that we didn't know was that the Japanese and the Koreans who they had sent into the Philippines were pretty rough, uneducated people and they thought that anybody that surrendered was a coward and that you die rather than surrender. You're an emperor, you do not surrender, and anyone that surrendered is absolutely nothing, he's dirt and he should be punished or should be penalized. The results of that are that they treated the Americans that way, but the Americans didn't know that at the time. You were not that knowledgeable. Anybody was knowledgeable about Japanese culture at that time. Zach Buck, nothing, Uh-huh, we knew absolutely what.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:I'm going to cut it back a second. So the terrible problem was that there should have been some communications relevant to indoctrination and teaching. They're going to be sent into a cell. You should have some background.
Speaker 2:This is a failure, I think, of the high command not letting the troops know the consequences. It seems incredible to me that there wasn't somebody at the State Department that didn't know something about Japanese culture, that knew that the Japanese felt that anybody who surrenders is a coward and should be dealt with harshly. Forget about the Geneva Convention. And yet here are these people who are up against hopeless odds, in some cases the number of men who died in prison camps or in the death march. They would probably have been better off fighting and taking some of the Japanese with them, because they weren't going to make it anyway. And rather than surrendering and of course it was just a hopeless situation you took the best approach.
Speaker 2:But why did you decide that, hey, I'm not going to surrender with these 30,000. I'm going to take my chances out in the jungle? Do you recall what made you change your mind or decide to join the minority rather than the majority? Join the minority rather than the majority? Well, I suppose different men are subject to different thought processes and I considered it and thought of it being an adventure and as long as I was free, I would have some say over my destiny, and I didn't think that I knew nothing about the mountains. I grew up in New York City or area, or the metropolitan area of New York or Harper, connecticut or Harrisburg or Indianapolis, and I had never been on a camping trip in my whole life.
