When Men Must Live: An Inspirational True Story of Courage, Hope, and Freedom

By Kenneth B. Murphy and James T. Murphy

The compelling saga of the trials and tribulations of one American taken captive by Japanese Imperial Forces in the Philippine Islands shortly after the outbreak of World War II. Forced to make the infamous Bataan Death March under a blistering, tropical sun for nearly two weeks with virtually no food or water, this twenty-one year old lad from southeast Texas encountered countless acts of cruelty contrasted with heroic acts of selflessness and kindness along the way. Before that journey ended, thousands from within his ranks lay dead. And in his weakest moment, he discovered his greatest strength.

This intimate, first-hand account spanning three and a half years of captivity is fluently narrated and artfully woven into the historical backdrop of a world at war. It is a poignant tale covering mankind's most universal themes and challenges--the struggle of good versus evil, of man's inhumanity to man, of faith and fate, and of life and death--along with a few true-life miracles thrown in for good measure.

Offering down-to-earth insights for discovering and following one's core values, it is a story that transcends generations and gender. Follow this remarkable journey--ponder its lessons, reawaken your faith in life, in humanity--from the vantage point of one man who defied the U.S. Secretary of War's dark prediction of his fate in early 1942 when he declared that "There are times when men must die".

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: May 15, 2009
• ISBN: 9780982325810

Book preview

Murphy

CHAPTER 1

The Next Day

"To be prepared for war is one of the most

effectual means of preserving peace."

George Washington, January 8, 1790

Speech to both Houses of Congress

Sergeant James T. Murphy was abruptly awakened nearly two hours before daybreak on a balmy tropical night at Nichols Field, just six miles south of Manila on the Philippine island of Luzon. It was Monday morning, December 8, 1941 in the Pearl of the Orient.

Murphy had been sleeping on his standard Army issue wood-framed, canvas folding cot in Hangar 2, where his radio station was set up along with a weather station used by American military forces on the base air field. There had been very little radio activity that night beyond the usual intermittent reports alerting the staff on duty about the possibility of potentially hostile Japanese planes in the area flying nightly scouting patrols over Luzon.

Murphy: The weather station and the radio station were together on the airfield. I had a cot set up so that I could be there day or night to maintain personal control over the other radio operators who were on duty around the clock. They were mostly on standby throughout the night, as there was virtually no activity in the area that night. Once or twice a message came in from a plane that was out on scouting patrol, or when we detected another patrol coming in at night.

I was working directly with Major Richard A. Grussendorf, the Base Operations Officer. He was there keeping track of things too that night. We just had a little cubby hole between our two offices where I could talk to him and hand him messages. We were on alert for an attack at that time in the Philippines because we knew tensions were high between the U.S. and Japan. But we did not hear anything about Pearl Harbor for hours, and then it came as sort of a rumor.

As the chief radio operator of base communications at Nichols Field, Sergeant Murphy reported in to First Lieutenant Glen M. Alder, the Nichols communications officer.

Murphy was responsible for overseeing other radio operators day and night, handling and transmitting important military information and commands to the officers and other military staff in the general vicinity, typically working under the immediate jurisdiction of various top military leaders stationed throughout the area. Included among this list was Major General Lewis Brereton, U.S. Army Air Corps, who reported directly to General Douglas MacArthur, commander of the United States Armed Forces in the Far East.

But something particularly unusual was brewing on December 8 in those dark pre-dawn hours, which became powerfully evident as Murphy awoke.

Murphy: I was on duty at the radio station in Hangar 2 right there on the flight line. I had been sleeping down there when the messages first started coming through.

The first message I received was Field Order Number One in clear text – General Brereton ordering a B-17 attack on Formosa. That order was followed almost immediately by Field Order Number Two, canceling Field Order Number One, by order of General MacArthur.

Admiral Thomas C. Hart, Commander of the U.S. Asiatic fleet headquartered at Manila, got a dispatch from Hawaii forty minutes into the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. It was well past dawn in Hawaii, but it was still Sunday, December 7th there in Oahu on the other side of the international date line, thousands of miles to the east of the Philippines.

Upstairs in his penthouse suite at the Manila Hotel where he lived and kept his command headquarters, General MacArthur got a dispatch from the Army after Admiral Hart got his message. Hart was already dressing to go meet with his staff at his office while MacArthur was still receiving his message by telephone.

Murphy: We received a dispatch from Pearl Harbor during the air raid and the dispatch said Air raid on Pearl Harbor. This is not a drill.

Throughout the various military command offices in the area and in virtually all the surrounding quarters, rumors became rampant, then gradually turned in to truth.

We hear that Pearl Harbor was attacked! was the common, astonished reaction as word began to trickle in through both formal and informal channels. The buzz continued to spread from one duty station to another throughout the Nichols Air Field compound.

The U.S. had indeed been attacked, but the news to Murphy and his fellow Americans still seemed unbelievable, bordering on the fragile limits of their ability to comprehend the full significance of the moment.

And though no one wanted to believe the harsh reality of what was unfolding before him, to a man each individual’s prior military training and deeply instilled professional discipline immediately kicked in. Through a combination of skill and military bearing, each responded according to his designated job duties, even as the intensity and urgency of the situation continued to escalate with every passing minute.

While the business at hand would occupy the hours to come, everyone continued talking, and Murphy was particularly aware of the chatter among the officers in charge of flight operations at Nichols Field. There was a lot of speculation, if not specific direction, occurring in a constant stream of give-and-take at all levels of the decision-making chain.

Finally, General MacArthur’s headquarters called down to Nichols Field to speak directly to the Base Operations commanders. They talked directly on land lines about Pearl Harbor, as the chain of command passed down instructions for each man to increase his level of alertness and to continue to carry out specific tasks as they were being assigned.

Murphy: Then, I just stood by and handled any messages that came through. I stayed up after that. It was at around 4:00 a.m. when I first heard about it. I stayed awake from then on, of course. We just didn’t know what to expect next.

Within hours of the attack on Pearl Harbor, various military installations in the Philippines came under aerial bombing and strafing attacks by Japanese war planes which, in numerous cases, found many of their U.S. counterparts parked in rows on the ground, left vulnerable out in the open amid the ensuing confusion as commanders scrambled to react hastily in the chaotic hours that followed.

Over the next two weeks, American forces were on the defensive and on the move, vacating their exposed and battered bases as the all-out Japanese assault on the Philippines escalated.

With limited preparations and provisions in place for such an eventuality, Murphy and thousands of his fellow troops, along with a sizable, loyal Filipino Army not fully trained nor battle tested, found themselves executing a retreat strategy into the mountain jungles of the Bataan peninsula some twenty-five miles across the bay from Manila.

U.S. military commanders were now in the throes of executing War Plan Orange-3, a plan that called for evacuation into the hills and mountains of Bataan, there to hold out and survive by any means possible until the much-anticipated arrival of American reinforcements.

But with communications to the homeland having been cut off for these embattled U.S. troops, little did they know of what lay in store for them in the days to come.

Little did they know of the means their military and political leaders would employ in conducting the next phase of war they found themselves on the brink of.

Little did they know that in the midst of winter, in January 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and their respective military strategists would jointly adopt what came to be known as the Europe First policy, foreshadowing where the vast majority of America’s military resources would be concentrated in the months and years to come following the outbreak of war at Pearl Harbor.

Little did they know that it would take months for America’s naval armada to recover from the damage inflicted at Pearl Harbor, and for America’s war-fighting machine to gear up sufficiently to mount a meaningful counteroffensive.

Little did they know that they would be left to rely almost entirely on their own ingenuity, their own resourcefulness, and whatever physical strength and willpower they could muster to endure the ordeal that lay before them.

Little did they know that a decent meal, a decent night’s sleep – and peace itself – would not come for another one thousand three hundred-and-seventy days and nights.

Little did they know that for thousands of these brave souls, a more divine form of peace would come even sooner – through eternal slumber found only in death itself.

Little did they know …

Yet the most haunting questions were still unasked, and still unanswered –

To what extent would the world ever learn the fate of this isolated multitude of some twenty thousand American troops and an additional seventy thousand loyal Filipino citizen-soldiers who fought alongside them?

Who among them would die? And who among them might live?

CHAPTER 2

When Men Must Die

There are times when men must die.

Attributed to United States Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson

Arcadia Conference, Washington D.C., January 1942

Henry L. Stimson, Secretary of War in Franklin Roosevelt’s Administration, uttered those chilling words on a brisk, wintry day in the nation’s capital in January 1942 while contemplating America’s military strategy during the early stages of World War II.

He was not spouting hollow political rhetoric to bolster American sentiment against Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Germany, or Benito Mussolini and his Fascist Italy, or Emperor Hirohito and his Imperial Japan.

Neither was he offering a calculated warning of America’s intention to wreak vengeance on those hostile nations following the recent onset of war.

Ironically, Stimson was instead presaging the fate of thousands upon thousands of his fellow Americans, those embattled troops who were at that moment stranded – some would later say abandoned – in the Philippine Islands since coming under siege in the immediate aftermath of Japan’s devastating attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

The United States had been at war with the Japanese for less than eight weeks.

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had arrived in Washington D.C. aboard the British warship Duke of York and stayed at the White House as a guest of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt from December 18, 1941 until January 14, 1942, except for a brief respite when he took a three day side trip to Ottawa, Canada.

During this period, British and American military leaders continued to conduct discussions in an attempt to explore and reach agreement on a strategic plan for the most effective way to prosecute what would eventually come to be known as World War II.

The first agreement, and the most meaningful, was the decision that would come to be known as the Europe First policy.

Churchill and Roosevelt immediately accepted the basic statement of position drawn up by General George Marshall and Admiral Harold Stark, which held that Germany was the predominant member of the Axis Powers, and consequently the Atlantic and European area would come to be considered the decisive theater. These basic premises were, in subsequent months, articulated as follows:

… but notwithstanding the entry of Japan into the war, our view remains that Germany is still the prime enemy and her defeat is the key to victory. Once Germany is defeated, the collapse of Italy and the defeat of Japan must follow. In our considered opinion therefore, it should be a cardinal principle of A-B strategy that only the minimum force necessary for safeguarding the vital interests in other theaters should be diverted from operations against Germany.

A major item of discussion at one of these strategic planning meetings was the subject of what to do about the defenders on Bataan and other forces dispersed throughout the Philippines. The top American military planners determined that it would be impossible to relieve these forces.

The conventional reasoning at the time by these officials was that all the defenders could do was to delay the inevitable, to attempt to slow down the Japanese in their advance toward other Allied strongholds throughout the neighboring Asia-Pacific region.

By employing such a delaying strategy, it was reasoned, Allied Forces would have time to build up enough strength, in due time, to generate the capability to eventually save other nations being targeted by the German-Italian-Japanese alliance.

It was during these strategic planning discussions where, upon realizing that some eighty thousand or so combined American and Filipino forces in the Philippines were now for all practical purposes doomed, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson grimly turned to his colleagues in the room and calmly, matter-of-factly remarked, There are times when men must die.

Had the American defenders in the Philippines heard such a statement coming from the highest levels of their own government, they would surely have wondered how the leaders of the world’s most powerful military establishment could adopt such a defeatist point of view, especially considering that the outcome of what was becoming the greatest war the world had yet seen was—unpredictably—nearly forty-three months out into a distant and unknown future.

Moreover, they might also have wondered how these same leaders could telegraph to their allies and fellow war strategists around the world that this great nation—built on the sacrifice of blood, sweat and tears of countless of its citizens through the generations—was willing to give up on a single, valued American life—let alone thousands of it’s finest forces serving at that time in the far reaches of the Pacific.

Yet that is precisely what Stimson meant, and precisely what he foretold.

There are times when men must die.

That presumptive decree must have hung heavily in the air that day, reverberating through the halls of power in America’s capital.

What reaction did those words elicit in the hearts and minds of everyone within earshot? And how many, hearing those words as they were uttered, could truly and completely comprehend the inevitable consequences of Stimson’s statement?

Its impact would soon be felt by Stimson’s fellow citizens—men whose tombstones were not yet written, but whose fate had now been irrevocably cast by a handful of statesmen-politicians in Washington D.C.

At that very moment, some twelve thousand miles away, a lanky, tanned and handsome twenty-one year old Army Air Corps Sergeant from Livingston, Texas was engaged in a vigorous and valiant battle on the jungle peninsula of Bataan on the island of Luzon in the Philippines, doing everything in his might, and then some, to stave off the relentless onslaught of the invading Japanese army, navy and air forces.

In the waning days of December 1941 and on into early January 1942, America’s military forces were in a full defensive retreat, engaged in nothing less than a fight for their very lives in the defense of the Commonwealth of the Philippines, the jointly held Pacific territory that America had helped win and defend for—and with—the Filipinos over the course of the four preceding decades.

Sergeant Murphy and the U.S. forces in the Philippines had managed thus far to fend off and elude the stream of Japanese attackers now infiltrating the lush tropical valleys, mountains and beaches of Luzon and other neighboring islands.

They were struggling to survive day by day on sparse rations, with limited war-fighting equipment and rapidly diminishing munitions to sustain them in the weeks following the disaster at Pearl Harbor, now confronting the aggressive, inexorable advance of General Homma’s Japanese Army deeper and deeper into the Philippine Islands.

CHAPTER 3

Liberty

" … that they are endowed with certain unalienable Rights,

that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

United States Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776

On September 30th, 1920, in the family home near downtown in the community of Livingston, Texas, the rural county seat of Polk County some seventy miles northeast of Houston, Erma Rose Murphy gave birth to her fifth child—James Thomas Murphy.

Though he was the fifth child by that time born to Erma and her husband, General Houston Murphy, the couple’s second child, David, died in infancy a few months after his birth in 1914. The couple’s pride and joy on this last day of September was abundant, as their new son—who would come to be known as Tom instead of James or Jim—joined his older brothers Raymond (born in 1910) and Lloyd (1915), and a sister Naomi (1918) as the newest member of the Murphy family.

His father, who was named after General Sam Houston, a renowned 19th century American soldier, statesman and politician, worked at the local ice plant making ice in Livingston. And although farming was an integral part of the local livelihood of most families in the area at the time, Murphy’s father didn’t really care for farming all that much.

For his part, General Houston Murphy seemed to exude greater, or at least different, ambitions than a lot of the other career farmers in the area, typically seeking out other ways to improve his family’s standard of living and quality of life. As a result, he ended up working at an electrical generating plant in town doing a variety of mechanical and electrical jobs to earn a living to continue supporting the needs of his growing family.

During the early 1920s, the oil industry in southeastern Texas was experiencing a great boom period, and the refineries needed workers in their plants throughout the region. So G.H. Murphy, finding another opportunity to make a better life for his family, was hired by the Gulf Oil Company, and moved his family to Port Arthur, Texas in early 1921, when baby Tom was a mere six months old.

As a toddler, Tom also had two younger sisters born during the family’s time in Port Arthur—Helen (1923) and Johnnie (1924)—and later another brother Glenn, who was born in 1930, but died as an infant within a few days of birth.

Murphy: We lived there in various places in Port Arthur until I was fifteen. At that time my dad was injured in an explosion and fire at the Gulf Oil refinery and could no longer do that kind of work, so we moved back to the Livingston area—Schwab City in Polk County to be exact.

Dad was hospitalized for a long time, several months. He was burned over most of his body and his hands were disabled forever more. Income was slow, and so Mom and Dad ran little places of business around the oil drilling areas in Schwab City, such as a little grocery store, and a couple of restaurants. Usually they managed the businesses and hired the help.

Later on, when it got a little slow there, they put in a small rooming house. We lived in a little place where my mother just served meals. My parents were good managers of money and did well, and were able to keep us all in school in Livingston.

Murphy went on to finish his final three years of high school at Livingston while living in Schwab City, which was about nine miles out of town in a heavily wooded area. He spent a lot of time outdoors, especially in the woods, even if it meant going out by himself. He enjoyed fishing in the local streams and lakes around Livingston, where the catch was mostly perch and catfish, with an occasional trout or bass.

He also spent some time hunting and stalking wildlife in his heavily wooded surroundings, and was an active member of Boy Scout Troop 74, where his father served as a Scout Committeeman.

Murphy also worked part time in a variety of jobs, where earning money to support his high school activities became a source of personal pride for him. He worked at a local filling station pumping gas and fixing flat tires for W. C. Munson, who was the station owner and also the local Scoutmaster of Troop 74. On occasion, Murphy also picked fruit, vegetables and even cotton for some of the local farmers.

Murphy: I didn’t do much hunting, but when I did I used the .22 rifle that my dad gave me on my fourteenth birthday. I enjoyed the outdoors immensely. With the Boy Scouts, we camped down by the lakes and streams on weekends, fishing at night, sleeping in the open under the trees on our blankets, and making a bonfire to keep warm. Sometimes we’d hear wolves howling as they passed nearby during the night.

We held our regular Scout meetings at night, and we’d be outdoors playing games at night under the light given off by the tall torches, or flares, in the oil fields that were burning surplus gas from the oil wells.

Murphy also found time to keep physically fit and enjoyed participating in sports activities whenever he could at school.

Murphy: I was on the track team at Livingston High School. I ran the hundred yard dash and did the long jump. I also came out for basketball, but didn’t make the team. We also had a great problem with getting to practice for sports at the time, because there wasn’t any transportation to make it back and forth for practice between Schwab City and Livingston.

In May of 1938, at the age of seventeen, Murphy graduated from Livingston High School. That July, the family moved to Liberty, Texas, about forty miles east of Houston.

Murphy: I worked a little bit at a grocery store in Liberty in the summer. I was very carefully weighing stuff like rice and sugar into packages. I would do this so precisely, but they warned me I was being too precise, that I needed to hurry up and move on!

There were other examples in Murphy’s everyday life that reflected the degree to which he constantly demonstrated care, concern and conscientiousness for others.

Murphy: I was doing a lot of fishing around there too. There was a one-armed fisherman who fished commercially for a living down on the Trinity River, and he had a family with a couple of kids, and I’d go down and help him run lines for his fishing. I just wanted to help him out. I think I was just always that sort of person.

Way back in grammar school there was an old man, a janitor for the building, and he had trouble getting down around the lockers and cleaning with his little hand broom and I would see him struggling and I would help him on that. Sometimes he would give me a bar of candy. I always had