Dan Hampton - Valor: The Astonishing World War II Saga of One Mans Defiance and Indomitable Spirit

The author and publisher have provided this ebook to you for your personal use only. You may not make this ebook publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this ebook you are reading infringes on the authors copyright, please notify the publisher at:

us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

In valor there is hope.

Tacitus

Dear Reader,

Much of the historical content contains derogatory ethnic or racial terms that reflect common sentiments expressed by those fighting the Second World War. These have been left as originally written in this text to present the historical documents as completely as possible, and are not the opinion of the author.

Dan Hampton

DECEMBER 8, 1941: 0825

LUZON, PHILIPPINES

Nuns cheered, pointing excitedly at the sky, and a few waved.

One of them, her long black veil bobbing wildly, even danced a little jig. Silence was a normal rule in the convents walled garden, but this morning, as sunlight glinted from the planes wheeling overhead, no one cared. Big, twin-engined bombers cut wide silver streaks through the blue morning sky above the Philippine island of Luzon, and everyone below was overjoyed to see them. Perched on a wooded hilltop, the Dominican Maryknoll convent overlooked Baguio, a resort town and summer capital of the Philippine Commonwealth.

Sister Miriam Louise, an impish young woman born Louise Kroeger in Jefferson City, Missouri, stopped dancing and squinted against the sun at the planes. She felt particularly relievedrelieved and proud. Her countrymen were here in force to protect these islands, and what could ease the building tension in the Pacific faster than American warplanes arriving in the Philippines? She had heard the Dominican fathers discussing the powerful new aircraft; B-17s, called a Flying Fortress, and knew they had recently arrived at Clark Field, eighty miles south of Baguio toward Manila. Surely these were those planes out early for training flights on this bright Monday morning.

They were not.

Two miles overhead, Captain Ryosuke Motomura of the Imperial Japanese Army Air Force (JAAF) stared past the nose of his Ki-21 Sally bomber at Luzons lush countryside, then glanced at the map on his leg. Baguio. No mistake. A veteran of China, the pilot was accustomed to finding targets hed never seen before and identifying them from the airjust like this one. Motomura had lifted off in the foggy, predawn darkness from his base at Choshu just over three hours ago. Leading eighteen bombers of the 14th Army Air Regiment to the far tip of Formosa, hed turned the formation south across the Bashi Channel, and headed 231 miles across open water for Cape Bojador on Luzons northeastern coast. From here it was a 140-mile flight down the coast to the port of San Fernando on Lingayen Gulf, a forty-five-degree left turn, and the final twenty-five miles to Baguio.

The town was easy to see. It was really the only thing out here, and for once there were accurate maps, courtesy of a Japanese officer who lived here during the past year. Loakan Airport was his main reference; a straight gray line cut into the saddle of the mountains south of town. Working back along the ridgeline, Motomura found a pronounced hill sticking out like a bumpy green tongue, and this was the site of an American base named Camp John Hay. Flying the planned course on time, at 13,000 feet and 250 miles per hour, the captain had done his part, and when the town passed beneath the right wing his bombardier began counting down over the intercom.

As 2,200 pounds of bombs tumbled from its belly, the aircraft abruptly jolted upward. Far below, smiles froze and cheering voices tapered off in confusion as little dark flecks fell from the aircraft. What could those be? Today, December 8, marked the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, one of the holiest days of the Catholic year. It was Monday in the Philippines, but east of the International Date Line today was still Sunday, December 7, 1941. Maybe the Army Air Force was dropping food or candy for the children. But as the wobbling black specks nosed over and suddenly gathered speed, the nuns stopped cheering altogether. These were not Flying Fortresses, nor were they American planes, and they were not dropping candy.

In fact, the black flecks were 220-pound bombs; ten per aircraft, so over eighteen tons of high explosives were plummeting down toward the idyllic hill station. As the bombs disappeared into the trees, orange-and-black explosions shattered the morning calm, while two miles east of the convent the entire U.S. Army installation vanished beneath rolling dark clouds of mangled trees and earth. Clusters of shacks and small buildings in the barrio beneath the hilltop simply ceased to exist.

This was war.

Long anticipated, it was now actually here. Strikes by Imperial Japanese forces would continue throughout the day, not just in the Philippines but also on Singapore, Wake Island, Guam, and Hong Kong. Unknown to the Americans, Admiral Isoroku Yamamotos Operation Z had actually commenced with complete secrecy thirteen days earlier with Operations Order 5:

The task force, keeping its movements strictly secret and maintaining close guard against submarines and aircraft, shall advance into Hawaiian waters, and upon the very opening of hostilities shall attack the main force of the United States fleet in Hawaii and deal it a mortal blow.

Vice-Admiral Chuichi Nagumo, commanding a strike fleet carefully concealed by a bleak, horn-shaped inlet in the northern Kuril Islands, weighed anchor at 0600 the following morning. On November 26, 1941, thirty-two warships of the Imperial Navy cleared the snow-covered, volcanic shoreline of Hitokappu Bay and, cloaked in ice fog and blowing sleet, came around toward their target three thousand miles away to the southeast: the Hawaiian island of Oahu, and the home port of the U.S. Pacific Fleet.

By dawn on December 7, after crossing the North Pacific Ocean undetected, Nagumos six big carriers swung into the trade winds and surged ahead at thirty knots. A Zero fighter piloted by Lieutenant Commander Shigeru Itaya wobbled into the air off the Akagi, followed by 182 other aircraft. At 0753 in Hawaii, the leader of the Pearl Harbor strike, Commander Mitsuo Fuchida, had his radioman tap out Tora, Tora, Tora back to Nagumos flagship, the aircraft carrier Akagi. This code phrase, translated into English as Tiger, Tiger, Tiger, indicated that complete surprise over the American fleet had been achieved, and the attack was proceeding as planned. Less than two hours later, eighteen American warships were destroyed, and 2,403 lay dead in Pearl Harbor.

Within forty-five minutes, news of the attack traveled 4,800 miles east to the War Department in Washington, D.C., and into the office of Henry Lewis Stimson, the U.S. secretary of war. Stimson immediately dispatched cablegram number 736 some 8,500 miles west to the commander of United States Army Forces in the Far East headquarters in Manila: General Douglas MacArthur.

HOSTILITIES BETWEEN JAPAN AND THE UNITED STATES COMMA BRITISH COMMONWEALTH COMMA AND DUTCH HAVE COMMENCED STOP JAPANESE MADE AIR RAID ON PEARL HARBOR THIS MORNING DECEMBER SEVENTH STOP CARRY OUT TASKS ASSIGNED IN RAINBOW FIVE