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By Root 1482 0

had not disposed Java’s nationalists to like the Americans any better than they did the Dutch. Some say the Japanese, perhaps not quite appreciating their new subjects’ readiness to collaborate with them, put a fifty-guilder reward on white men captured dead or alive. The cash might not have been necessary. Rhetoric of a “Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere” fueled nascent Javanese nationalism and paid dividends of loyalty in the early going, netting the Imperial Army scores of prisoners. Survivors who caught wind of the natives’ hostility hid out in the hills, subsisting on water, coconuts, and scraps from friendly Sundanese villagers. These acts of kindness and generosity—providing nourishment, concealment, shelter, and likely routes toward Allied army positions—were frequent enough to prevent the question of trusting the locals from ever becoming completely decided.

Ens. Charles D. Smith and coxswain Red Huffman, old hands from Turret Two, washed ashore on a small island about three hundred yards off St. Nicholas Point. Worn beyond hope, they slept until daylight on March 2 and woke to find that five others had joined them, Marine sergeant Joe Lusk and four sailors. The presence of Japanese ships and aircraft complicated the job of reaching the Java mainland, but in the morning a rainsquall passed through, providing sufficient medium-range concealment for them to swim ashore safely by daylight. They gathered themselves on the beach, slipped across the Japanese-patrolled coast road, then climbed to high ground and looked over the other side of the hill to the sea.

About five miles down the beach, they could see six or eight transports anchored off St. Nicholas Point. Beyond them, prowling the edge of Bantam Bay, was a light cruiser, three destroyers, and some patrol boats. No doubt the Japanese were still reeling from the sudden, spectral appearance of Allied cruisers in their midst. The price the two ships had extracted from the landing operation was plain to see. Swimming ashore, more than a few Houston survivors saw the hulks of three large Japanese merchant ships, sunken and lying on their sides, as well as a seaplane tender or some other kind of major auxiliary vessel with its flight deck mostly awash.

The problem with the survivors’ proto-heroic efforts at evasion and escape was that ultimately there was no way out. All Allied personnel who could manage it had fled to Tjilatjap and evacuated Java a week before. Now there were no ships or planes left to catch. Though there remained some ground battles yet to be fought for control of the island, the surviving sailors were stuck well behind Japanese lines, in a terrible position to link up with friendly troops. What the location and number of the few remaining Allied units might be, no one quite seemed to know.

CHAPTER 23

Before their ships were sunk together, the sailors of the Houston and the Perth had been no more than friendly strangers. With a wide ocean stretching between them, they waved from distant rails but seldom saw each other for the man beneath the uniform. The collective ordeal propelled them into a deeper alliance; many would end it as lifelong friends. “Those Aussies,” said Otto Schwarz. “If you ever have to get captured, get captured with Aussies.”

One of the traits the Americans seemed to have in common with the Australians was a boundless sense of the possible. Unlike the British, who struck many of the Americans as repressed by traditions and hierarchies, or the Dutch colonials, orderly and risk-averse like landed gentry, the Australians tended to be maverick optimists. While the Dutch were preparing themselves for surrender, the American and Australian sailors had fight left in them and showed it.

In fact, for some survivors of the Perth, it wasn’t enough merely to reach shore on Java or some barren island in Sunda Strait. There were a couple of well-led groups that hatched plans to travel like castaways all the way home to Australia. They built boats and jury-rigged them for sea. They set sail and felt their way home, navigating