Ship of Ghosts - James D. Hornfischer [75]
“The United States Asiatic Fleet seldom tasted victory,” Morison wrote. “It drank the cup of defeat to the bitter dregs. Nevertheless, the fortitude of that Fleet in the face of almost certain disaster inspired the rest of the Navy in the forty months of war that followed, and its exploits will always be held in proud and affectionate remembrance.”
CHAPTER 22
For Otto Schwarz, after abandoning ship there had been no longing looks back at Old Glory whipping from the mainmast truck, just a deltoid-burning crawl stroke away from the gunfire and the explosions. Stopping to rest, he donned the life vest he had been dragging with him, then noticed the moonlit mountaintops in the indeterminate distance. Alone, he set out for them, arms chopping the sea all through the night.
Over the water Schwarz could hear shouts, the pop-pop of machine guns, faint screams, and silence. Then, startlingly closer, he heard the rumbling gurgle and swish of diesel engines, and sensed a small craft nearing him. He went motionless just as a searchlight beam grabbed at him. The boat came closer. He heard Japanese voices and tensed, waiting for bullets to come. A Japanese sailor prodded Schwarz with something long and sharp, a boathook perhaps. There was more jabbering discussion, then the searchlight switched off, the engines roared to life, and the boat was gone.
Word passed swiftly over the waters that the Japanese were shooting survivors where they swam. Jim Gee heard the reports—from stunned word of mouth and from the gun barrels themselves. The Marine could hear urgent advice passing between his shipmates: Swim that way. No, that way. Oil over here. Land’s that way. He settled for treading water. With no life vest or doughnut ring, he calmly kept his place afloat for about an hour as Japanese boats played yellow-white searchlights in all directions, looking for his like.
But in time Gee grew exhausted, deeply so. The consequence of rescue by the enemy was plain to the ear as gunshots ricocheted over the water. He thought of his shipmates killed in action. Well, a lot of them have already gone. There’s no need for me to do otherwise. What made him special? The existential vertigo became so unbearable that he despaired and finally just gave up. He quit the air and let himself slide under the water.
Gee stayed down long enough for a desperate reflex to kick in. “I took a deep drink of that sea water and I knew that wasn’t really where I wanted to be.” He kicked himself back to the surface and to his good leatherneck senses. A thought finally reached him that reoriented his thinking and told him that all was far from lost: “I had a round-trip ticket home…. I was going back home. From that point, I never wavered any one minute in believing that I wouldn’t make it.”
For some, the decision to survive was abrupt, coming in a flash. For others it was a function of staying on autopilot and letting the will regather its might. According to Charley Pryor, “You’re just completely beyond exhaustion but still you go. At a time like that you’ve got some reservoir of strength you never knew you had until you have to use it. Within ten minutes you feel, ‘Well, I can’t swim another stroke,’ but then eleven hours later you’re still going.”
Seaman second class Eugene Parham was on a lifeboat led by Lt. Cdr. Sidney Smith, the plotting room officer, when it drifted into a herd of Japanese troop transports anchored offshore. Soldiers and sailors lined the rails, jeering unintelligibly. When Commander Smith gave them permission to surrender if they so chose, Parham and some others climbed aboard a transport and submitted to their captors. Shortly afterward, a motorboat towing an empty Houston life raft puttered by and the next thing Parham and six other Americans on the transport knew, the Japanese were forcing