Ship of Ghosts - James D. Hornfischer [158]
But to a young Marine 7,500 miles away, suffering the rigors of malaria at a place called 114 Kilo Camp, her son had an important charge to keep. The forces the prisoners envisioned coming for them had long since gathered and set sail. Among the swarm was the USS San Jacinto, the light carrier built with the $49 million surplus from the Harris County War Bond Drive, a ship that counted among its hard-hitting air group a future president, George H. W. Bush. As Lieutenant Bush and the other aviators of VT-51 were flying strike missions against the radio installations at Chichi Jima in the first week of September 1944, the USS New Orleans moved in close to bombard that island with her guns. It was the son of the old Houston’s late captain, deep in the plotting room, who was laying the main batteries on target.
CHAPTER 48
When the war reached the American POWs, they rather wished they could have stayed hidden and been spared its fury. There were no liberating armies, no waking fulfillment of the dreams falsely spun when the troopers of the Lost Battalion first arrived at Bicycle Camp. Rather, it took the form of large bombers flown by pilots who had no earthly idea that their bombs would terminate their parabolic plunges among American captives.
Flying from bases in India in indirect support of General Stilwell’s Burma Raiders, the bombers of the Tenth Air Force ranged up and down Burma’s western coast, hitting dockyards, shipping, bridges, and railway centers. They spread a steady rain of iron on Japanese targets in Burma from before Christmas 1942 clear through 1943. Their success against shipping was partly why a railway had to be constructed in the first place. Nowhere were Japanese supply lines safe, not by land, air, or sea. But the wings of freedom were, for the prisoners, wings of death.
On June 12, 1943, the jungle’s peace yielded to a symphony of radial aircraft engines. Six planes—B-24 Liberators—approached from the southeast, circled the camp, and made their bomb runs in two waves of three. The Japanese raised no air alarm. Once more, they confined the prisoners to their huts and refused them access to the slit trenches. Though the bombers’ targets appeared to be the railway lines and workshops east of the camp, two bombs fell within the camp perimeter. There were deep percussive thuds, the closest of them sending shrapnel through the atap roofs. One of these bombs struck a well inside the camp that from the air might have looked like a gun emplacement. Twelve prisoners were killed and fifteen wounded. Losses among the Burmese camped outside the fence were doubtless heavier.
The next day Brigadier Varley was called to the Japanese headquarters and met some Japanese officers he had never seen before. One of them spoke perfect English and identified himself as a representative of the propaganda department at Rangoon. He asked Varley what he thought about the bombing and the deaths of the prisoners. Varley replied that the camp’s illegal proximity to the rail yards, a military target, was bound to bring tragedy. He said that Japanese antiaircraft fire from within the camp not only brought return fire from the bombers’ window and turret gunners but was sure to void any protection the Red Cross might have guaranteed the hospital and the prison camp.
On June 15, bugles sounded as the Liberators again appeared. Though there were just three planes on this raid, the results were far worse. Thanbyuzayat’s fourteen huts, which must have looked like a military barracks from the air, were in the crosshairs now. Though the new hospital was not hit, bombs fell inside the camp, collapsing several slit trenches and setting several roofs afire. Nineteen Australian and Dutch prisoners were killed, with about thirty wounded. Varley himself was injured in this attack, receiving shrapnel in his legs and back, bruises from head to toe, two black eyes, and punctured eardrums.
Adorning the top of the