Evening star., 1943-06-22
They Call Ii Pacific
by CLARK LEE:

as hell at me one night when I told
him the truth-that group of small
ships which had suddenly appeared
in the bay between Corregidor and
Bataan was not a convoy but some
vessels which had been moved from
the south side of Corregidor to
escape shelling by the Jap guns at
! Cavite.
MacArthur's blockade-running was
! getting results, so he sent Mai. Bird
of the Quartermaster Corps down to
Cebu to arrange for transshipment
of the supplies that he knew were en-
route from Australia. Bird squeezed
himself into the fuselage of a P-40,
which is strictly one-man air
plane, aid the pilot pulled it off the
Cabcaben runway one night and set
1t down in Cebu two hours later.
Bird worked with Col. Thomas Cook
at Cebu.
The supplies from Hurleys ships
reached Cebu, but they never got
TO Corregidor. The Japs sent a
Warship into the Inland Sea and
1t sank all but about six of Mac
Arthur's small ships that they had
missed on their previous raids. in
cIudlng one carrying President Que
zon. too, but he slipped through
their hands on a PIT boat and got
TO Mlndanao where he boarded an
alrplane for Australia. One or two
OF our small ships were captured
intact by the Japs while their crews
were ashore.
Later, two submarines went to
Cebu to try to take some of the
supplies to Corregidor. but again it
was too late. The Japs by that
time had finished their campaigns
IN Java and Malaga and had come
back to mop up the Philippines.
X X X X
The submarines, however had
previously performed several valu-
able missions in running into Cor
regldor. In all. at least seven sub
marines made the trip between late
January and early May, when Cor
regldor finally fell I'll never forget
the arrival of the first sub. Its trip
was supposedly secret but word
quickly spread with electrifying ef-
tect. 1t meant that we still had con-
tact with the outside world!
The sub tied up at the south dock
on Corregidor and I went down to
talk to the sailors. They had been
at Pearl Harbor and the reports thev
gave us were far grimmer than the
official announcements of damage.
But they had good news. too.
Darwin is lousy with American
soldiers" they said The harbor is
chockful of ships and they should be
heading up this way soon. There
are so many troops there that they
nave to ration beer Only 5000 bot
ties are sold every day and our SOL
oilers stand in line for hours to get
one. We've got plenty of planes
there, too"
Other subs came in from time to
time. They brought supplies and
they took out few fortunate peo-
pie: Quezon and his family and
staff; Sayre and his group, some
Navy officers and number of Army
pilots. One of them also took out
$2,OOO,O00 in gold bars belonging to
the Philippine Government. The
paper money on Corregidor was
burned, several million dollars of it.
while soldiers and sailors looked on
enviouSly
Hurley's three ships and those
submarines represented the only eff
forts that the United States made
to get aid to the Philippines, except
for the bombing raid that Macarthur
arranged after he reached Australia.
That raid was really a salute to the
dead of Bataan who would have still
been living if the United States had
not decided that the Pacific was a
secondary front.
Even months after that last raid
Macarthur still did not have the
men or planes or ships in Australia
to take the offensive against the
Japs. Those materials, as it turned
out much later, were going to North
Africa.
tCopyrght, 1a43, by Clark Lee the Viking
Press