Re: Bataan and Corregidor

Date: May 27, 2004

"WWII Stories: “I was determined. I wasn’t going to let those little devils bury me.”

Hugh Merritt paid to have a monument erected at Little Creek Naval Amphibious Base in memory of those who served on Bataan and Corregidor in the Philippine Islands. By ED MILLER, The Virginian-Pilot

VIRGINIA BEACH — The white Mercedes pulled off the road and under an oak tree. Hugh Merritt, 85, popped the trunk, pulled out a plastic shopping bag and walked across a clearing toward a granite monument, 3? feet high.

He set the bag on the grass and took out several miniature American flags, wrapped in brown paper. Then he removed seven full-sized flags and a blue garrison cap with a pin near its crown that read “Ex-POW.”

Traffic rolled by on Nider Boulevard on the Little Creek Naval Amphibious Base.

The azaleas behind the monument were in full bloom. It was a Thursday morning, May 6 – 62 years, to the day, that the island of Corregidor fell to the Japanese. “They took the American flag down,” Merritt recalled. “They lined us all up and sent word down to get rid of guns, destroy ’em.”

They were a ragged bunch. They had been living on half-rations for months, first on Bataan and then during the 28-day siege of Corregido.

The Japanese stripped them to their skivvies. American officers told anyone with Japanese money to get rid of it; the Japanese would know it had come from their soldiers.

Some men tried to hide the money in their shoes.

“The Japs would find it, and shoot them right there. You’d hear a shot, down the line a ways, and you’d know there was another guy gone.”

The men were loaded on barges and taken to Bilibid Prison in Manila. From there, they were jammed into boxcars for the ride to Cabanatuan No.1, a POW camp.

“I don’t know how many guys died. You really didn’t know they were dead, because they couldn’t fall. When they couldn’t get out the door, you knew the ones left behind were dead.”

On the third day three officers escaped. They were quickly captured, made to dig their own graves, and shot.

Prisoners were placed in squads of 10. If one escaped, the Japanese killed the other nine.

“If you heard shots, you knew they had shot them. If you didn’t hear shots, you knew they had beheaded them.”

In April of 1944, about 350 prisoners were loaded in the hold of a cargo ship headed to Japan. There was no room to sit, and no water. A five-gallon can served as the bathroom.

“At night time, for those that died during the day, they’d throw ropes down and you’d tie them on it, and they’d haul them up and throw them over the side.

“Then after a while, you could sit down.”

They were taken to a copper mine near Hitachi, where they worked 2,500 feet down, 12 hours a day, seven days a week.

Many men simply gave up.

“They said, 'Uncle Sam’s not coming to get us. They just forgot us.’ We knew there was no one coming.

“When your buddy died, you stripped him. You took his clothes, because that was the only way you had any clothes. There was never a man that I knew, when I was on death detail, who was buried with his clothes on.

“I was determined. I wasn’t going to let those little devils bury me over there.”

The Japanese gave the men two cigarettes a day. Merritt traded them for rice. Dying men often craved a last smoke.

One day they came out of the mine and found no shift waiting to relieve them.

“They told us, 'No more work. No more work. The U.S. and Japan have signed a peace treaty.’ ”

After a few days, fighter planes appeared in the distance. They swooped in low, then turned around and left.

“Three or four hours later, they came back. They had these sea bags full of candy, cigarettes and girly magazines. They dropped them daggone things down. Some of them went right through the barracks. Man, I’ll tell you, we had a ball.”

Eventually they boarded a train to Yokohama, where hospital ships awaited.

Merritt limped up the ramp to the ship using a rifle as a cane. He had taken the rifle from a Japanese guard, and wrapped it in a blanket.

He weighed 86 pounds. At the start of the war, he had weighed 150.

“This corpsman said to me, 'What have you got there?’

“I said, 'None of your damn business.’ “He said: 'You’ve got to tell me what you’ve got.’

“ 'A rifle.’ “ 'You can’t take a rifle on board.’

“I looked at him and I said, 'Are you going to take this rifle away from me?’

“He said: 'No, I don’t think I’m going to.’ “

The rifle leans in a corner of the guest room in Merritt’s Virginia Beach home, along with other mementos of a 30-year Navy career.

Merritt enlisted in 1935, a month after his 17th birthday. He pedaled his bike from his home in Lambert’s Point to the recruiting station in downtown Norfolk.

He became a torpedoman’s mate second class. It was only by a series of coincidences and bad timing that he wound up shouldering a rifle in the Philippine jungle, wearing Navy whites dyed yellow with coffee grounds.

Early in 1942, pinned down on Bataan, outnumbered and with little modern weaponry, they waited for the help they’d been promised. It never came.

Merritt was awarded a Purple Heart in 1950 and the Bronze Star in 1992.

He reached into his own pocket to create the monument at Little Creek.

It is dedicated to the “Battling Bastards” of Bataan/Corregidor, Philippine Islands, and was dedicated on April 10, 2000.

Merritt dug the post holes for the six flag poles that encircle the monument, and planted the grass that surrounds it. He keeps the grounds tidy, spraying weeds, trimming trees.

Each May 6, he visits, carrying his flags.

Merritt placed a miniature flag in the stones at the base of each flag pole. Then he carefully unfolded each of seven different flags.

He raised the American flag first, directly in front of the monument. Then, working clockwise around the monument, he raised a Navy flag, an Army and an Army Air Corps flag together, a USS Bataan flag, a POW-MIA flag, and a Marine Corps flag.

Merritt then put the garrison cap on his head and placed a single flag at the foot of the monument.

Merritt is not sure who will maintain the monument when he’s gone.

While he’s still here, his mission is clear.

“I want people to remember,” he said.

Reach Ed Miller at 446-2372 or ed.miller@pilotonline.com
©Virginia Pilot"