Horror Trek: A True Story Of Bataan

By Robert W. Levering

This record of the personal experiences and first-hand knowledge of the early days of the war in the Philippines; the tragic defense of Bataan; the horrors of the Death March; the sadistically planned and executed inhuman sufferings forced upon the valiant survivors of the operations of war, doomed to a life or death existence as so-called prisoners of war, is vividly portrayed in these pages called “Horror Trek.”

The author, Robert W. Levering, through love of country and inherent natural instincts of character and principle, elected to follow his comrades in arms to the field of battle rather than accept the comparative safety offered to civilian internees in “Santo Tomas.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Verdun Press
• Release date: Nov 6, 2015
• ISBN: 9781786257383

Robert W. Levering

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Text originally published in 1948 under the same title.

© Pickle Partners Publishing 2015, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

HORROR TREK: A TRUE STORY OF BATAAN, THE DEATH MARCH AND THREE AND ONE-HALF YEARS IN JAPANESE PRISON CAMPS

BY

ROBERT W. LEVERING

With A Foreword By

G. G. HARRISON

Rear Admiral, USNR (Retired)

Illustrated

Robert W. Levering

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 5

DEDICATION 6

FOREWORD 9

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 11

INTRODUCTORY NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR 12

HORROR TREK 16

I—MEN WITHOUT NUMBERS 16

II—COLD MURDER IN A TROPICAL PARADISE 20

III—PACIFIC VOYAGE 23

IV—SHANGHAI AND HONG KONG 25

V—MANILA’S WAR OF NERVES 28

VI—WAR COMES 31

VII—RETREAT TO BATAAN 39

VIII—SURRENDER 47

IX—MARCH OF DEATH 53

X—CAMP O’DONNELL 64

XI—CABANATUAN 77

XII—PORT AREA DETAIL 82

XIII—HELL SHIP 102

XIV—JAPAN 109

XV—THE LAST LAP 124

EPILOGUE 131

APPENDIX 133

I—LETTERS 133

II—POEMS—AUTHORS UNKNOWN 154

A LAMENT 154

I’m A Hungry Man From Old Bataan 154

A SOLDIER IN OLD BATAAN 156

THE FORGOTTEN MEN (Fall and Disgrace of Old Glory) 160

THE FORGOTTEN MEN (The Aftermath) 162

MOTORS IN THE WEST 164

A SOLDIER 165

CORREGIDOR ISLE 166

WE ALL MUST DO OUR BIT 167

THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER 168

THE MARCH OF DEATH 169

BOOT HILL 171

THEY FLY BY NIGHT 172

THE ADVENT OF RED CROSS 172

HITCH IN HELL 175

SCUTTLE BUTT 176

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 179

DEDICATION

To

The valiant defenders of Bataan and Corregidor

In the hope that through the sacrifice of their sacred Honor

Nations may be inspired to greater efforts

For peace in the World

G. G. Harrison, Rear Admiral, USNR (Retired)

American Commander. Japanese Prisoner of War Camp No. 11, known as Yamamoto Butai, contributor of Foreword herein.

FOREWORD

This record of the personal experiences and first-hand knowledge of the early days of the war in the Philippines; the tragic defense of Bataan; the horrors of the Death March; the sadistically planned and executed inhuman sufferings forced upon the valiant survivors of the operations of war, doomed to a life or death existence as so-called prisoners of war, is vividly portrayed in these pages called Horror Trek.

The author, Robert W. Levering, through love of country and inherent natural instincts of character and principle, elected to follow his comrades in arms to the field of battle rather than accept the comparative safety offered to civilian internees in Santo Tomas.

He came under my observation and command in November of 1942, at which time I was by virtue of rank and seniority Camp Commander of the Port Area Detail known as American Prisoner Camp No. 11. We were quartered in the Manila Port Terminal Building opposite the inshore end of Pier No. 7 in Manila Harbor. We were then an established unit of four hundred and twenty people including twelve officers, whose sole purpose in the eyes of our captors was the ability to perform the coolie labor required in the loading and unloading of enemy overseas transportation vessels.

Fortunately the Japanese Superintendent of our camp, Captain Saegusa, was an Americanized English speaking gentleman, a Reserve Officer in the Japanese Army, who had been the office manager of the N. Y. K. Japanese Steamship Company in San Francisco for the five years immediately preceding the outbreak of war. He did his best to make our existence livable, in providing extra food, and rendering fair and just treatment.

Camp No. 11 was disbanded in July, 1944, and its personnel with few exceptions was sent to Japan, many on ill-fated prison ships that were lost on the way.

During the two years that Camp 11 functioned as a labor Battalion the author, Robert W. Levering, was a tower of strength, cheerful, able, a builder of morale; cognizant of the dangers of our position and aware of the need of unity and co-operation to the end that our camp might survive in spite of the overwhelming odds against us.

Allowed to maintain our own internal administration, we divided our personnel into six groups. I required that each group elect a representative. These six people determined our camp policy, All for one, and one for all. Mr. Levering was promptly elected by his group, and served faithfully and well, displaying rare judgment and understanding in executing the responsibilities of his office. At that time our ability to survive and live hung in the balance.

To the many readers of this book I extend assurance that the facts are as represented and the personal opinions of the author are sincere and as he saw them. To my people who made up the personnel of Camp No. 11, greetings. By your faith and confidence and the Grace of God, we lived.

I am proud to have been with you.

Dated at San Francisco, California

July 2, 1948.

G. G. Harrison,

Rear Admiral USNR (Retired)

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Robert W. Levering Frontispiece Facing

Admiral G. G. Harrison

Harvey W. Dearborn, U. S. Navy

A Typical Japanese Prison Camp Guard

William A. Hauser, U. S. Army

Yamamoto Butai group picture

John H. Riley, U. S. Navy

James Kerns, U. S. Marine Corps

Allen E. Clark, U. S. Navy

Thomas E. Barnum, U. Si Navy

Delbert Lynn, Tippecanoe, Ohio

The Author and three other prisoners of war, three weeks after Japanese surrender

INTRODUCTORY NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Robert W. Levering’s great-great grandfather, Daniel Levering, was among the pioneer settlers of the Owl Creek Valley, Knox County, Ohio. The author, son of Lloyd D. and Gertrude Levering, was born October 3, 1914, on the old family farm at Waterford (formerly Levering Post Office), Ohio. He worked his way through Denison University, Granville, Ohio, and The George Washington University Law School, Washington, D. C. He received his A. B. Degree in 1936 and his LL.B. Degree in 1940.

Shortly after being admitted to the Ohio Bar in 1940, Mr. Levering accepted an assignment with the War Department and was sent to the Manila Office of the Chief of Engineers, Philippine Department. There he was assigned to executing army contracts with private contractors, mining and engineering corporations, for the building of harbor defense bomb proofs, airfields, cantonments and docking installations—all a part of America’s eleventh hour attempt to secure the defense of the Philippines.

With the outbreak of war, Mr. Levering responded to the Army’s call for civilian volunteers. Here’s the Record:

ARMY SERVICE FORCES

THIRD SERVICE COMMAND

WOODROW WILSON GENERAL HOSPITAL

STAUNTON, VIRGINIA

8 February 1946

Mr. Robert W. Levering

Fredericktown, Ohio

My dear Levering:

"Your letter of January 28 has reached me here at Woodrow Wilson General Hospital, and I hasten to reply.

The facts that you were sent from the United States to serve in my office as a civilian employee and that you volunteered for service in the field, and that you were captured on April 9, 1942, by the Japanese are well known to me. I can truthfully certify to that and to the further fact that your service was entirely satisfactory and that in my judgment your conduct was worthy of great praise.

With best wishes, I am

Very sincerely yours,

(signed) H. H. Stickney

Colonel, C. E.

Washington, D. C.

16 February 1946

To WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:

"This is to state that Mr. Robert W. Levering of Fredericktown was employed by the War Department of the United States and was sent from Washington to work in the Procurement Section of the Office of the Chief of Engineers, Philippine Department, Manila. I served during the latter part of 1941 as an officer, with the rank of major, in this Department.

"By 31 December 1941, when the rapid advance of the enemy created conditions requiring the service of every available man to defense problems, the significance of which superseded, in his mind, attention to matters of a personal nature, Mr. Levering volunteered to go with the field forces to Bataan. We were together when our boat docked at Cabcaben on New Year’s morning, 1942.

"Mr. Levering, with outstanding devotion to duty, lived and served with me in Bataan under exactly the same siege conditions as any military personnel.

I am happy for the opportunity to commend him.

(Signed) Arnold A. Boettcher

Portland, Oregon

10 April 1946

To WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:

"This is to certify that I have known ROBERT W. LEVERING of Fredericktown, Ohio, since 1941, when he arrived in Manila, to which city he had been sent by the War Department in Washington to serve as a civilian employee handling contracts in my office, the Procurement Section, Office of the Chief of Engineers, Philippine Department.

"After the outbreak of hostilities on December 7, 1941, and during the siege of Manila, Mr. Levering assisted in procuring and in the loading and evacuation of hospital and other vital supplies from the besieged city.

"Before the Army withdrew from Manila, Mr. Levering volunteered his services to the forces in the field, and accompanied me personally when I departed for Bataan on New Year’s Eve, 1941. There he served under me throughout the campaign and until the surrender on April 9, 1942.

I recall that in Bataan, Mr. Levering had indicated his desire to enlist and become officially a member of the military forces, but at that time, amidst the confusion when the enemy was pressing heavily against us, conditions precluded his ever having been sworn in, but he never ceased to serve his country hand in hand with the military personnel under my command.

(Signed) Roscoe Bonham

Colonel, C. E. U.S. Army

16 February 1946

CLAIMS OFFICER,

HEADQUARTERS FORT HAYES,

COLUMBUS 18, OHIO.

SIR:

"I first knew Robert Levering when he was a lawyer in charge of contracts in the Department Engineer’s Office in Manila, Philippines.

When the Engineers moved to Bataan, we were greatly outnumbered by the enemy and needed all the help we could get, so Mr. Levering came along to help us fight the war against the Japs. He, being a civilian, could have taken the relatively comfortable internment at Santo Tomas University in Manila, instead of the rigors of war we knew in Bataan, but he was with us all the time on the same missions, in the same fox-holes as we military soldiers, until the end in April, 1942.

(Signed) M/Sgt. Carl J. Milyneck

U. S. Army

In the early months of 1942 there were some thirty-eight thousand American troops in all on Bataan, according to War Department figures. At war’s end only a few more than three thousand of these remained alive to tell the horror story of three and one-half years’ captivity in filthy, disease-ridden prison camps in the Philippines and in Japan. Mr. Levering, among the one in ten to survive, upon his return home, was given honorary membership in The Mount Vernon Post No. 58 American Veterans of World War II (AMVETS). The citation reads in part, as follows:

"Mr. Robert W. Levering is hereby cited an honorary member of Mt. Vernon Post No. 58 American Veterans of World War II AMVETS through powers conferred on our Commander Robert Alexander by the State and National Departments and with the unanimous consent and approval of our membership, for outstanding service to his country in time of war.

"When the fall of Manila was imminent, Mr. Levering with complete disregard for his personal safety and with a desire to serve his country in any and every way possible, refused to accept his privilege as a civilian, of relatively comfortable internment in Santo Tomas University in Manila; instead he volunteered his services to our forces in the field.

"Among the last to leave the besieged city, Mr. Levering arrived at Cabcaben, Bataan, New Year’s morning, 1942, where he expressed a desire to enlist in the military forces, but, due to the confusion caused by the overwhelming pressure of the enemy, he was never sworn in. Nevertheless he demonstrated his increasing devotion to his country by fighting alongside military personnel, suffering with them the extreme privations and near starvation which enabled our forces to hold out against unsurmountable odds until April 9, 1942.

"By refusing to flee from the enemy to Corregidor as many others had done, Mr. Levering was subjected to that ignominious 120-mile trek to Camp O’Donnell, known to the dark pages of the history of those somber days as ‘The Death March,’ which only one out of ten Americans survived.

LEST WE FORGET

(Signed) Robert L. Alexander,

Commander

Hugh Hookway,

Adjutant.

Also, the JOE COCANOUR Post No. 500 of the author’s hometown of Fredericktown, Ohio, has conferred upon him honorary membership in THE AMERICAN LEGION.

Mr. Levering is married to Eileen Rosemary Burdick, daughter of Congressman Usher L. Burdick of North Dakota, and they are the parents of a daughter, Roberta Carmen, aged one and a half years. He is now engaged in the general practice of law in Mount Vernon, Ohio, where he and his family reside.

HORROR TREK

I—MEN WITHOUT NUMBERS

ON the day Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japanese, and all differences of opinion in America were sunk, a case of 1903 Model Springfield rifles was carried into my office in Fort Santiago, Manila. I selected one of these weapons, as well as two bandoleers of .30 caliber ammunition and a proffered 1917 style steel helmet. Thu is began my participation as a civilian volunteer in the Battle of the Philippines,—a battle everybody knew from the beginning could not be won.

I was not the only civilian to volunteer his services to the armed forces in this hour of America’s crisis. Six other specially trained men who came with me form the Washington office, William DeMor, of Florida, Sam Snyder of New York City, Tom Lovett of Chicago, Illinois, Bill Kenney of Portland, Oregon, Jimmie Kiernan of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Don Kirkpatrick of Memphis, Tennessee, all donned army khakis when asked by the Engineer Corps to drive a truck or perform some other service in the Battle Zone. Of this group, all but James Kiernan and me were killed or perished on Bataan or in the Prison Camps after the surrender.

It is now a well-known fact that the army was utterly unprepared for war. Within its ranks it lacked specially trained men to cope with unique problems of modern warfare. It was therefore necessary to recruit civilians who were willing to give their services and their lives for their country, without any recognition whatever,—not even a serial number. The following passage from John Hershey’s book, Men of Bataan, concerning General Hugh J. Casey’s personnel shortages in the Engineers Corps is typical of the plight in which other units found themselves in December, 1941:

Pat Casey was terribly shorthanded for his dangerous demolition work. He did not solve his problem though, by leaving a few bridges standing. Instead he scoured Manila for willing civilians, and found uniforms and arms for them by going around to Army hospitals and requisitioning equipment belonging to the wounded.

In the midst of the campaign, General Wainwright made the following plea:

I call upon every person on this fortress, officer, enlisted man or civilian—to consider himself from this time onward as a member of a team of men which is resolved to meet the enemy’s challenge each hour of every night and day.

The following are some of those civilians who answered the call: Charlie Foster of Boston, Massachusetts, a clever gunsmith, accompanied the 75th Ordnance Company to Bataan. He drove his little machine shop on wheels in and out of the jungle trails to the big gun positions. He kept many a 155mm. rifle in firing condition by making parts to replace broken equipment. There was such a great need for his rare skill that he overworked himself day and night, without rest and without food, so that when overtaken by dysentery he had no strength with which to fight and he died.

Aaron Kilachko, born a Russian Jew, suffered imprisonment under the Czar in Siberia, but escaped to America and became a naturalized citizen. He later joined the American Army and was the Chief Engineer in charge of installing the huge gun emplacements on Corregidor after World War I. Following his discharge from the Army, he married a native girl; settled in the Philippines; raised a family of ten children and became a highly successful farmer. Because he spoke Tagalog (Filipino tongue), and was a master of native psychology, he was invaluable as foreman of Filipino labor battalions in Bataan. Although he was spiritually strong, and unceasingly strove to bring comfort to the weak during the siege and afterwards in the prison camps, he lost his own life on a sunken prison ship after enduring three years of captivity.

Red-headed, freckle-faced Bill Brady,{1} son of a prominent Judge, had lived so long in the Islands he was sometimes referred to as dobie. This was the name applied to Americans who had become acclimated to the tropical heat and rain, and completely inured to native customs of living. Bill was fluent in the use of Tagalog profanity, and was valuable to the Engineers in keeping Filipinos on the job during air raids, on which occasions they showed a considerable tendency to take off for the hills.

Bill Meiss{2} of Dover, Ohio, was an official with the Pambusco Bus Company in the Islands just prior to the War. He assisted in the use of the Company’s transportation facilities in effecting the retreat to Bataan. Bill had to walk back, after the surrender, to Camp O’Donnell, where he died.

Carl Kolodzik,{3} better known as Klondike, a native of Cincinnati, Ohio, civilian employee of the Navy Transport Service, was an ex-marine who did an excellent job under heavy fire in helping to maintain communications on Corregidor. He survived and now lives in Manila.

Ted Lewin, prematurely gray-haired, ex-pugilist, ran the Alcazar for several years before the War. He was a man of wealth and had a great many Filipino friends. While imprisoned in the Philippines, food and medicines sent to him through all available channels were distributed to the sick G.I.’s who needed it most. He, too, survived and lives in Manila.

Bob Rose,{4} a Los Angeles architect who drew the plans for the Jai Alai building on Manila’s Taft Boulevard, together with several mining engineers, furnished the know-how for digging tunnels into the solid rock of Corregidor and at Mariveles stone quarry.

Robert Rose’s older brother would have been given a string of medals for bravery in action, had he not been a civilian. While President Quezon’s yacht, the Don Juan, was heavily attacked from the air early in January, 1942, just off Corregidor, Walter Rose, with utter disregard for his own safety, after most of the crew had abandoned ship, plied himself through falling bombs, smoke and fire to rescue the wounded and to evacuate other passengers to safety. General MacArthur commended him for his heroism, but indicated his civilian status precluded the issuance of a formal citation and decoration. Walter Rose didn’t survive the Hell which followed the surrender, and I learned that he lost his life while attempting to secure medicine from outside the prison camp to save the life of his friend.

Cal Coolidge was a big man with a great big heart. He owned the Luzon Bar in Manila, where he hired a bartender by the name of Raymond Blackie Wills of Shanghai and Detroit, Michigan. The G.I.’s will remember Blackie by the tattoos on his body that so fascinated the Jap soldiers. Blackie and Cal were both ex-sailors. Neither ever ran away from a fight, but both lost the battle for life in the tropical China Sea when the Japanese freighter transporting American prisoners of war to Nippon was torpedoed by an allied submarine in 1944.