Ship of Ghosts - James D. Hornfischer [172]
He was referring to all of Burma, principally its strategic central region, the wedge between India and China. But he did not neglect the realm of the Death Railway. Over southern Burma and central Thailand, whose corduroy ridgelines gave false verdant beauty to the deathscape of the POW railway, it was his longest-range aircraft that carried the load. The flight from India was a challenge for even the best pilots and navigators. Burma featured some of the worst flying weather in the world. The mountains and valleys disturbed the circulation of the monsoons, leading to unpredictable weather. The Tenth’s Liberator pilots needed every bit of their plane’s famed endurance to make the three-thousand-mile round-trip to Tamarkan and back.
The Liberators of the Tenth Air Force’s Seventh Bomb Group flew their first reconnaissance missions over the railway in January 19, 1943, when Col. Conrad F. Necrason, the same pilot who had led the attack on the Nichimei Maru and the Dai Moji Maru, photographed the entire length of the line, unaware that the slaves hacking the right-of-way through the jungle were Allied prisoners. Because the bomber command gave priority to targets far closer to India, the B-24s did not make their first concentrated effort to destroy the bridges, rail junctions, and marshaling yards along the Kwae Noi until the latter part of 1944.
The September 6–7, 1944, strikes on Nong Pladuk turned out to be tragic miscues. As at Thanbyuzayat the previous June, the Japanese placed their prison barracks in harm’s way. The campaign of aerial bombardment to follow would all but destroy Nong Pladuk’s vital rail facilities. But they also commenced a terrible phase in the war in which American forces—bombers and submarines—inflicted grievous numbers of deaths on their own countrymen and allies. The B-24Js that pasted Nong Pladuk killed more than a hundred prisoners. At sea the toll was even higher. The railway survivors had heard enough war news to dread the thought of sailing between Luzon and Formosa in the South China Sea, well known as a torpedo gallery for the increasingly bold U.S. submarine wolf packs. Called “Convoy College” by the Americans for its status as a rendezvous area for Japanese merchant shipping, it was a harrowing journey. Like their counterparts in the Tenth Air Force, the submariners had no way to know that some of the ships they hunted were full of friendly POWs.
On June 24, 1944, the Japanese transport Tamahoko Maru had been torpedoed by the USS Tang (SS-306). Among the dead were 560 Allied prisoners of war, including two survivors of the USS Houston and fifteen members of the Lost Battalion. The survivors were bound for prison in Japan. Imprisoned at Camp Omori, also known as Tokyo Main Camp or Tokyo Base Camp No. 1, the Houston’s Cdr. Al Maher was joined by fellow prisoners such as Maj. Gregory “Pappy” Boyington, the legendary Marine fighter ace, and later, by Cdr. Richard H. O’Kane, the celebrated captain of the Tang, who had no way to know that it had been his own torpedoes that had killed some of Maher’s men on June 24.
Every aspect of Japanese national life was suffering under the tightening chokehold that O’Kane’s brothers in the Silent Service were applying to Japan’s oceanic lifelines. On September 6, the same day as the tragic bomber raid on Nong Pladuk, a convoy of unmarked passenger-cargo vessels laden with Allied prisoners departed Singapore and was soon beset by American submarines. In the predawn hours of September 12, the USS Pampanito (SS-383), under Lt. Cdr. Paul E. Summers, the Growler (SS-215), and the Sealion II (SS-315), stalking Japanese merchant traffic in Convoy College, located and attacked the Japan-bound convoy of seven transports and two oilers, escorted by six destroyers.
Caught on the surface at one point, the Growler made a bold head-on surface attack on a Japanese destroyer charging her. Struck by two of the Growler’s torpedoes, the Shikinami—which had helped sink the Houston in the Battle