"We don't have to go," he told Karl Gaber.
The gunner was surprised to hear that.
But this mission was different from the many flights they had made before. This would be over Tokyo Bay, a hornet's nest whenever a daytime mission was flown there.
And this mission was being flown just two days after the atomic bomb had been dropped on Nagasaki, the second such bomb to fall in a week. Talk of a Japanese surrender was in the air. The men in the American
forces massed against Japan could dare to hope that the war would end, that they had gotten through it alive. They didn't know it, but in just three
more days, on Aug. 14, the Japanese would agree to the Allies' terms of surrender. Just three more days. It wasn't enough.
The men of the PB4Y-2 Privateer, a Navy variant of the Army Air Force's
B-24 Liberator, would leave Iwo Jima the morning of Aug. 11, 1945, and become the last four-engine bomber shot down in World War II. Eight of the 12 men aboard would become prisoners of the Japanese; the other
four would die. In the single month they would be imprisoned, they would suffer the beatings and the starvation diet that marked the captivity of
virtually every Allied prisoner taken during the war. In those few weeks, Gaber would drop from 136 pounds to 98. His digestive system would
give him trouble the rest of his life and his own mind would be marked with "a crease ... that never leaves."
The plane was under the command of pilot Lt. Commander J.B. Rainey.
As part of Patrol Bombing Squadron 121, he and his crew had spent the summer of 1945 flying two kinds of missions from Iwo Jima. There were air-sea rescue missions when they would carry life rafts and radios to
drop to crews of U.S. aircrews that had been shot down near Japan. And there were patrol missions over parts of the Japanese home islands, the nearby Bonin Islands or Marcus Island, a heavily fortified, solitary island
well east of Japan.
On this day, two Privateers would fly at low altitude to the island of Honshu, then patrol the waters south of Tokyo, keeping low – just a few hundred feet off the surface.
When he first approached Gaber, Whitted asked, "Did you write
home last night?"
Gaber asked him why.
"The navigator told me there had been some discussion whether we had to fly the mission. He said we don't have to go, that we could stay."
Gaber had never heard that option before.
Still, like the rest of the crew, he went. "We all went."
It took them four and a half hours to fly from Iwo Jima to their patrol area.
A ground haze reached up to 1,000 feet, making visibility poor, according to the after-action report filed with the squadron. Leading the way was the Privateer commanded by Lt. Cmdr. T.G. Allen. About 45 minutes
after making landfall near Hamamatsu Airfield, the gunner in Allen's aircraft spotted four Japanese fighters dead ahead. A few seconds later,
Rainey spotted two fighters coming in from his eight o'clock position. The four coming at Allen fired a burst, knocking out one of his engines, then went after Rainey's plane.
"I'm looking at the fighters coming from behind. I see puffs of smoke coming from them. I fired back. The first one missed. He went up and
around. The next plane fired and I fired. The next thing, the inboard engine blew, and went in flames."
Gaber got out of the turret and headed for his ditching station behind the
pilot. The navigator told him to go back to his guns. He didn't get a chance.
"The plane was shaking so bad. I rolled over and sat with my head buried in my knees."
The plane lost altitude. One wing dipped, hitting the water and then it cartwheeled in.
Inside, Gaber put his hands out in front of him. The radio and electronic
jamming gear in front of him landed on top of him as the plane flipped in.
"The next thing I know, all this is on top of me and the plane is settling into the water."
Daylight still entered the plane as he got up, but it quickly got pitch black, then cleared again.
"My theory is that the plane went 30 feet under the water's surface. The
bottom got pulled off, including the bomb bay doors." He thinks he came out of the plane through the open bomb bay. "... or there was an angel watching."
With his Mae West life preserver on, he floated to the surface, which was covered with oil or gasoline. He and Bill Long found each other and tied
their life rafts together. Two of the plane's life rafts also popped up, then other members of the crew. Four never made it: Ensign E.J. Heeb, plane
captain D.W. Mott, mechanic R.E. Guth, and gunner C.A. Bremer. Two of the men had been assigned stations at the machine guns set in blisters on the side of the airplane. The Air Force version of this plane
had open windows for its side machine gun mounts. The Navy used blisters with awkward seats for the men who manned them. Gaber said he never heard of anyone at those stations surviving when the plane went
down. He had once been assigned a blister gun before moving to the top turret.
Radioman Paul Williams had been seriously injured when the plane crashed. They got him into a raft and gave him morphine. In the
meantime, the Japanese fighters came back. There's different stories, Gaber said. Some of the survivors think the Japanese were trying to kill them. Gaber thinks they were shooting at the nose wheel that was
floating nearby.
In his after-action report, Allen said there was a general melee taking place. He made a wide circle and saw only smoke and oil where
Rainey's plane went in. Four of the Japanese Zeke fighters were pressing home their attack. Allen was having trouble keeping his damaged Privateer in the air. The gunners fired back, getting hits but the
fighters were determined and made repeated runs at the bomber. After 30 minutes of this, according to the after-action report, Allen's gunners shot down one of the fighters. They saw it crash into the ocean.
Gaber and the rest of the survivors could see little of this from their raft. To them it looked like Allen's plane turned around and left the area as
soon as the fighters attacked. They didn't see any fighters get shot down.
But they had more immediate problems. They floated on their rafts until
dusk. "We had no real hope of surviving, other than getting captured."
They saw smoke on the horizon. As the boat making that smoke got close, Rainey ordered the men to throw overboard anything that might be
of value. On the boat's top deck, a squad of riflemen fired, only to scare the Americans. Sill, one of the men was wounded. The airmen popped
open a parachute, waving the white silk to show that they surrendered.
"We were scattered all over by this time. They went around and picked
us up one by one. They blindfolded us, sat us down on the deck and tied us up. We were tied so tight I couldn't stand it," Gaber said.
His Marine boots were pulled off. His watch was taken.
The hog-tied aircrew was then taken to shore. Once there, they were dragged ashore where their feet were untied, then led – still blindfolded –
in circles and marched up a grade. They stopped. The Japanese started talking.
Wham! Gaber was hit. "I saw stars. Then I was pushed down a flight of
stairs and landed on the radioman. He was moaning and groaning."
The captives' feet were tied again and the men were tied to a post and left there. Compounding the misery was a steel pit jammed into each
man's mouth to make sure they wouldn't talk. The radioman's was put so tight his mouth split a quarter inch on each side. Now and then a guard would come in a shine a light on them. The pain from their ropes
was unbearable. They tried to untie each other. But then a guard came in, saw whet they had done and called out.
"About 15 of them came in and they started to beat us with bamboo sticks."
The guards focused on the bigger men, and at 136 pounds, Gaber was one of the smaller ones. He could hear the pilot praying as he was took hit after hit.
When morning came, the crew, still blindfolded, was taken into a courtyard and shoved to their knees. They could hear the guards talking.
Then they heard the bolt action of a rifle and the click of the trigger on an empty chamber.
"One of them came over, grabbed me by the chin and raised my head up
like he was going to cut off my head. He did it two or three times."
Nothing happened though. None of the Americans was killed – just terrorized.
During their time there, at the "dungeon," as Gaber called it, there was actually a brief moment of humanity. A young guard came over to Gaber and asked him "How old you are?" The guard then massaged the
captive's hands, which had swollen where they were tied. The rope had worked into the flesh. It was the only mercy he would ever see from a guard.
Their fun over, the Japanese put the captives onto an open flatbed truck, one that burned charcoal for fuel. They were taken to a railway station
and loaded onto a train. Eventually, their blindfolds slipped down a little from the jolting vibration of the rough ride, enough to let them see the
passing countryside. When they got to their destination, the men were sat down in the rail station where there were Japanese civilians and given
water, a gallon of it. It was the first water they had received since the day before. After drinking all they wanted, they were blindfolded, put back on
the train and kept there. Eventually, nature worked its course, now the bound men had to relieve themselves. And they did – right where they
sat. When they reached the next station, the Americans were marched first in circles and then on to the prisoner-of-war camp. Along the way, they provided the amusement for the civilians who laughed at the wet
spots on each man's pants.
In the camp, the blindfolds were removed again and a simple order given: "No talk."
Each POW was stripped, given a loincloth and put into a solitary
confinement room built of fish crates. They received a small portion of rice, tea that was more like hot water and two potato peels. Each room had a straw mat to sleep on and one loose-meshed mosquito net.
Standing orders for the camp's prisoners hung on thin strips of paper. It told them how to bow down and how to ask to go to the relief station.
But there were things they would have to learn the hard way.
In Gaber's stifling hot room was a small window, about 18 inches square. A shutter opened outward. And lying on the floor was a piece of
bamboo. He propped the shutter open with the bamboo and fell asleep. A guard came in later, ordered him to get up. Gaber did, but he didn't
bow. The guard hit him with a stick. Then he pulled the bamboo out of the window and hit Gaber again. Motioning Gaber to stand up, he swung the stick and hit him again.
"No sit down," he said. Was that an order to sit down or not to sit down? Gaber sat. The guard hit him again.
A couple of days later, a B-24 flew over the camp and by the sounds of
it, struggling to get altitude. Gaber had to look. He opened the shutter. In short order, the guard was back and inflicted another blow with the stick.
Each day brought mistreatment at the hands of the Japanese, more than Gaber can or will tell. "It's too brutal."
It would come to an end, though.
Situated in a valley, the prison camp had a solid wooden fence
surrounding it.
"All of a sudden, the fence came down. The next day they brought some of our clothes. We didn't know what was going on."
They did know the war was going well and could figure out these were good signs. The prisoners painted a large WP on the roof of one of the buildings. Then they planned a party. The Japanese, no longer the
rulers, gave the prisoners peanuts and whiskey for the party.
"Ohh, our stomachs hurt so bad when the party was over," Gaber grinned.
Formal liberation came courtesy of a British Army officer and a handful of
tommies. To the disgust of the Americans prisoners, the British sat down with the Japanese and had dinner. Making it worse, the officer told the prisoners to stay at the camp. It might be a week before
transportation would arrive for them. In the meantime, they were still eating poorly.
In small groups, the prisoners starting drifting away, heading for the
nearby town. A 1937 Ford, fixed to run on charcoal fuel, was at the camp. Gaber and three others commandeered the car and drove to a
nearby airfield. They found an underground storage facility and went in. Inside they found trunks of Japanese flight gear and "huge piles" German
Mauser rifles. Gaber picked out a nice one for himself, then they drove back to the camp.
A day or two later two U.S. Navy torpedo bombers flew low over the
camp and dropped some supplies. The next day a B-29 dropped a pallet loaded with cigarettes, shoes, candy bars, flour and sugar. Some of the
containers burst open, including one with sugar. Desperate for sugar, the Japanese hurried to where the sugar containers burst open and separated it from the dirt, often a grain at a time. When transportation
finally arrived, the Americans would leave the rest of the supplies behind.
Truly liberated now, they were taken to Astuga airfield, where they stayed for three days, feeding on C-rations, a virtual feast compared to
what they had been eating.
Gaber and the rest of the prisoners would make their way back to the United States, landing at Okinawa, the Philippines, Guam, Pearl Harbor and eventually San Francisco.
At Clark Air Base in the Philippines, Gaber found his brother Herman.
"As we were waiting to move on, I came across my brother who was in
charge of the motor pool. I went up to him and he no idea who we were. He didn't recognize me."
But at 98 pounds, Karl Gaber was a shadow of the one Herman recalled.
The visit was a short one; their plane was leaving soon to take the former prisoners to Guam. Gaber had already sent messages home through the Red Cross and with post cards.
The U.S. military was determined to rebuild the men who had suffered and starved at the hands of the Japanese. Once they reached Pearl Harbor and then Oak Knoll, California, the former POWs had access 24
hours a day to the kitchen. They got physical rehabilitation to rebuild their strength and to heal the injuries they had suffered.
He was able to visit home in January 1946 on a furlough, then finished
his service at Great Lakes Naval Station in Chicago. He was discharged in April.
For the next three months, the ex-sailor, ex-POW made up for lost time. "I lived in the dark and slept in the day.
He did settle down, marrying Marjorie Mortenson in 1952 and getting a job as a tool and die maker at Marx Toys. They had two daughters, Deborah and Susan, and now have three grandchildren.
But even with a family and a skilled job, after 55 years, "The hell never comes out of ya."
His time in the Navy up until he was captured "was the best two and a half years of my life."
But being a prisoner of the Japanese ... "it put a crease in your mind. And it never leaves."
By BILL WELCH