Captain Courageous

Because of a bevy of other headlines, somewhat overlooked earlier this month was the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II.

The signing ceremony aboard the USS Missouri on September 2, 1945, was a formality, because the war essentially ended two weeks earlier, when Emperor Hirohito told his people that Japan was giving up. That allowed the Allies to begin liberating the POW camps containing thousands of inmates.

A particularly brutal one was Omori, on the outskirts of Tokyo. The following is an excerpt from toward the end of “Running Deep,” which will be published next month.

On August 15, 1945, precisely at noon, the Omori camp loudspeaker carried a strange voice. Word spread that it was that of Emperor Hirohito. The guards listened intently to their god-like leader. The prisoners did too, with those having learned enough Japanese translating for the others.

One sentence stunned everyone: “The war is over.”

The emperor had finally bowed to the glaring truth of destruction. By the 15th, “Japan had already endured carpet bombing, firestorms and two atomic bombs,” reports Sarah Kovner in “Prisoners of the Empire.” “Sixty-six cities were devastated. It was estimated that 9 million people were homeless. Close to 3 million Japanese were dead, including 1.7 million servicemen. Somewhere between a quarter and a third of Japan’s wealth had gone up in smoke.”

With the news of an apparent surrender spreading throughout the camp, an uprising could be imminent, even as weak as the prisoners were. The guards slaughtered an old horse and carried the carcass with them as they hurried out of the compound.

Captain Dick O’Kane and some other prisoners almost did not survive that first night. Several of the angry guards had gotten drunk and could be heard shouting that it was finally time to kill the crew of the despised USS Tang and others in the same barracks.

A sympathetic — and sober — guard gave the prisoners a hammer and nails to nail the door closed. After they had done this, the inmates watched through cracks in the barracks walls as a guard swung a double-handled samurai sword at the door. Pappy Boyington gripped the hammer, poised to attack the drunken guard if he got through. But the effort proved too exhausting, and the guard gave up.

When the sun rose early the next day, not a single Japanese guard could be found at Omori.

With the camp untended, many of the inmates did not know what to do. They were “free,” but what did that mean? Most of the captives did not have the physical or mental strength to leave the camp.

This was especially true of Dick O’Kane. “He was exhausted, frail, going downhill fast,” wrote William Tuohy in “The Bravest Man.” “Dick had provided leadership to his men. He neither cracked under torture and the many beatings nor gave the Japanese vital information.”

Thankfully, the prisoners did not have to wait long for help to arrive. B-29s flew overhead — this time, however, dropping supplies instead of bombs. Crates began to rain down on Omori. This was almost as dangerous as an attack because cartons of clothing and food slammed into the ground and through the tin roofs of buildings. The inmates scattered, seeking any kind of hidden shelter.

“After living through all I have,” declared a fleeing Pappy Boyington, “I’m damned if I’m going to be killed by being hit on the head by a crate of peaches!”

One pilot dropped a pack of cigarettes with a note wrapped around it, which read, “Hang on! It won’t be long now!”

There was jubilation on August 28, when ships from Admiral Bull Halsey’s 3rd Fleet sailed into Tokyo Bay. Cheering prisoners thronged at the shore. Two men, thrilled beyond reason, jumped into the water and began swimming toward the ships. They were quickly overcome by exhaustion and only survived because occupants of the first dispatched boats hauled them in, one of the swimmers by his ears because all his hair had fallen out.

More boats were sent to the Omori island. This new group of officers and sailors was led by Captain Harold Stassen, who, in 1943, during his third term as the governor of Minnesota, had left office to join the Navy. His initial brief was to assess the situation at the camp and develop a plan to retrieve the prisoners.

However, he saw immediately that almost all of Omori’s 600 or so inmates were like walking skeletons. Without hesitating, Stassen ordered that the captives be evacuated right away and taken to ships anchored in the bay. Admiral Halsey concurred.

One of the first boats to reach the island contained carried a Navy photographer named John Swope. The scene in front of him was pandemonium. “We were immediately besieged by a hundred clasping hands and arms,” he would write to his wife, the actress Dorothy McGuire. “They continued to cheer and yell and shake our hands and clap us on the back and fall on us in tear-soaked embraces.”

First to receive patients was the USS Benevolence. By the end of August 1945, the U.S. Navy operated 15 hospital ships. The Benevolence was new to the “mercy fleet,” having been commissioned only in May. She had a bed capacity of 802 patients, with the ability to increase.

The crew consisted of 58 officers, 30 nurses, two Red Cross workers, 24 chief petty officers, 230 crew members, and 238 hospital corpsmen. The Benevolence also carried a packed and crated field hospital, which could be established on shore.

A priority for the Navy doctors and medics who scoured the camp was to determine who to evacuate first — in other words, to separate those who had a chance to live from those who did not.

Dick O’Kane fell into the latter category. After a cursory look, a doctor told the litter-bearers with him, “Leave this one. He’s not going to make it.”

The pronouncement roused O’Kane. He could speak only in a hoarse whisper, but it was loud enough for the Navy doctor to hear: “No way I’m staying here. I’ve come this far, I’m going to make it the rest of the way.”

The ghost-like captain was transferred to a stretcher and carted off toward the beach.