‘‘I don’t want to surrender,’’ the captain said. ‘‘The Japanese have the Bushido notion that soldiers are supposed to die, not surrender. Surrender is disgraceful; those who surrender are treated accordingly.’’
‘‘You’re going to be ordered to surrender,’’ Whittaker said. ‘‘How are you going to reconcile disobeying an order like that with your officer’s code of honor?’’
‘‘Not easily,’’ the captain said, ‘‘but I am not going to surrender.’’
‘‘I realize how absurd this sounds,’’ Whittaker said, ‘‘but if I tell you where the boat is, will you give me your word of honor you won’t try to stop them?’’
‘‘What I was thinking of doing was going back up there and telling them you told me to take over,’’ the captain said. ‘‘My colonel will let me go, if I give him half an excuse.’’
‘‘If you knew where the boat was, Withers would believe you. Otherwise, he wouldn’t,’’ Whittaker said.
‘‘Are you going to tell me?’’ the captain said.
‘‘Let me think about it,’’ Whittaker said.
There were half a dozen pleasure cruisers tied up at Mariveles. Two of them were still capable of making the run between Mariveles and the island fortress of Corregidor.
As he waited to board a thirty-two-foot ChrisCraft whose interior had been stripped to the hull ribs by a fire, Whittaker turned to the captain.
‘‘I want those guys to try for Mindanao,’’ he said. ‘‘Withers believes that Corregidor can hold out until help comes. I don’t think help’s coming. Corregidor’s going to fall, and everybody on it is going to be captured. If I tell you where the boat is, will you t
ry for Mindanao?’’
The captain nodded. Whittaker asked the captain for his name, and then wrote a note to Withers. The captain read it. It said that he was going to help them get to Mindanao.
‘‘It doesn’t say where the boat is,’’ the captain said.
‘‘I don’t want you to suffer a relapse of officer’s honor,’’ Whittaker said. ‘‘When it’s time to go, Sergeant Withers will show you where the boat is.’’
The captain met his eyes.
‘‘Thank you,’’ he said. ‘‘Good luck on the Rock.’’
‘‘If you see a large flash and hear a large bang, that’ll be me,’’ Whittaker said. ‘‘I think I made the mistake of letting the brass know that I’m very good at blowing ammo dumps.’’
‘‘Is that why they sent for you?’’
"Either that or MacArthur wants me to take over," Whittaker said.
The other passengers, nurses, some of them weeping because they had been ordered to leave their patients, some of them simply looking dazed, arrived in the back of a truck and were put aboard the gutted ChrisCraft.
A sailor ordered Whittaker aboard.
Whittaker and the captain looked at each other and shrugged shoulders; then Whittaker jumped into the ChrisCraft. He put his hand out to steady himself. Whatever it was that he put his hand on moved. He looked at it. It was a very clever stainless-steel device in which yachtsmen could put their glasses so that Scotch on the rocks—or whatever they were drinking—would not splash on the carpet and leave a stain.
They were strafed twice by Japanese aircraft between Mariveles and Corregidor, but the sailor was good at his job. He knew the exact moment when to spin the wheel and throw the engines in reverse, so that the stream of machine-gun fire went over their heads.
Malinta Tunnel Fortress Corregidor 1550 Hours 11 March 1942
‘‘Get rid of that hat,’’ Lieutenant Colonel Sidney Huff said to First Lieutenant Jim Whittaker.
Whittaker did as he was ordered, laying the Filipino peasant’s straw hat on the concrete floor of the lateral of Malinta Tunnel.
Huff went into a tiny cubicle off the lateral and then came immediately out.
"General MacArthur will see you now, Lieutenant," he said, gesturing for Whittaker to come.
MacArthur was sitting behind a GI table. Except for a telephone and IN and OUT boxes, his famous gold-embroidered cap was the only thing on the desk.