Exposing Atrocity: The Davao Dozen and the Bataan Death March | The National WWII Museum | New Orleans (2024)

Several of the American prisoners, eight Marine, Navy, and Army/Army Air Forces officers, and two Army enlisted men, concocted a plan with two Filipinos convicted of murder, Benigno de la Crus and Victorio Jumarong, to break out. After what they had witnessed on the Death March and the conditions of captivity, they felt a powerful burden to live, escape, and bear their chilling stories home.

John Lukacs has recounted how they succeeded in his 2010 book, Escape from Davao: The Forgotten Story of the Most Daring Prison Break of the Pacific Warand a documentary based on the monograph, 4-4-43. Lukacs’s research has helped us see fully just what these survivors of the Fall of Corregidor and the Bataan Death March underwent to throw light on atrocities perpetrated by Imperial Japan in the Philippines.

The men chose a Sunday, April 4, 1943, to execute the plan. Sent to work in rice paddies, they bolted for the swamps. “Inhospitable” does not grasp the nature of the environment they entered. It was a frightening place, made all the more forbidding by the presence of crocodiles.After a few hours, the Japanese realized their prisoners had slipped away. Patrols fanned out to find them. The swamp and jungle the prisoners had fled into and seemed so terrifying now hindered their captors. Following a few days of evading Japanese troops, the group headed north. Mountains and rivers tested their resolve.

In northern Mindanao, good fortune came in the form of American and Filipino guerillas. These fighters, led by Lieutenant Colonel Weddell Fertig (he promoted himself to Brigadier General), had refused to surrender to the Japanese and resumed the war in the jungle of Mindanao. Fertig’s contacts with US Navy Lieutenant Commander Charles “Chick” Parsons proved invaluable.

Parsons kept the guerillas supplied and ensured communications with General Douglas MacArthur (MacArthur demanded steady information about Japanese activities on Mindanao from Fertig). The escapees secured food, water, shelter, and medical aid with Fertig. They stayed with him for weeks, in some cases, months.

Eventually, seven of what became known as the “Davao Dozen” departed Mindanao separately by submarine for Australia. Lieutenant Commander Melvyn McCoy, Major Stephen Mellnik, and Captain William Edwin Dyess were among the first to get out. The intelligence they transmitted to MacArthur in the summer of 1943 was absolutely vital. He learned of the Bataan Death March from them. Three others stayed in Mindanao and fought with the guerillas. One of them, Second Lieutenant Leo Boelens, did not survive. He was killed by the Japanese in late January 1944.

Once the seven had the opportunity to relate their experiences to US military leadership, they conveyed horrifying narratives of the Death March, recounting that Americans and Filipinos were beheaded, bayoneted, shot, and buried alive on the 60 miles the Japanese marched them. Mellnik, McCoy, and Dyess (Dyess, tragically, was killed in a plane crash in California in December 1943) served as especially powerful eyewitnesses to the hell of Bataan. They passed on, too, information about the systematic deprivation inflicted on the prisoners once the Japanese placed them in camps.

The survivors also described the incredible escape they engineered and how their group connected with Fertig. McCoy and Mellnik told of how they understood all too well that if “we were caught in the attempt we would be put to death in a manner not pleasant to think about.” No group of US prisoners this size under Japanese control replicated the feat of the Davao Dozen.

Stunningly, the Department of War initially imposed a gag order on the men. They could not speak with the press about what they endured. John Dower, as well as Lukacs, noted that it was not until early 1944 that the US government permitted knowledge of the Death March to become public. On February 7, 1944, after obtaining the approval of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Lifepublished an article titled “Death Was a Part of Our Life” with photographs of nine of the 10 Americans (Sergeant Paul Marshall was mistakenly left out). Written by Mellnik and McCoy, with assistance from Lieutenant Welbourn Kelley (USNR), the piece enraged American opinion. A book, Ten Escape from Tojo, appeared later. What these men revealed bolstered morale as new and even bloodier phases of the island-hopping campaigns of the Pacific War began.

Here are the names of the Americans in the Davao Dozen:

Second Lieutenant Leo Boelens
First Lieutenant Michiel Dobervich
Captain William Edwin Dyess
Second Lieutenant Samuel Grashio
First Lieutenant Jack Hawkins
Lieutenant Commander Melvyn McCoy
Sergeant Paul Marshall
Major Stephen Mellnik
Captain Austin Shofner
Sergeant Robert Spielman

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