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A soaked leather portfolio from a Filipino beach ended up changing the course of a major Pacific battle. In April 1944, after a Japanese flying boat carrying Vice Admiral Shigeru Fukudome crashed off Cebu, secret papers believed lost at sea were found in occupied Philippines and quietly carried through a chain of danger and deception.
A shopkeeper in the village of Perilos knew the truth, but when two hundred soldiers searched every house and offered rice and cloth for information, nobody talked. From a fishing village to guerrilla camps, through enemy-patrolled waters and onto a submarine packed with refugees, the documents made their way to an American admiral preparing for the largest carrier battle in history.
This military history story explores espionage, resistance, World War II intelligence, and the human courage behind one of the war’s most remarkable recoveries. It is a gripping wartime narrative for listeners who enjoy WW2 stories, Pacific War history, historical documentaries, and forgotten true stories from the Philippines.
SEO: Ideal for fans of WW2 stories, military history, Pacific theater history, World War II documentary-style narration, and historical war stories. If you search for forgotten WW2 stories, Japanese fleet history, Filipino resistance, or wartime intelligence stories, this narrative delivers a compelling piece of history with strong search relevance.
A shopkeeper in the village of Perilos knew the truth, but when two hundred soldiers searched every house and offered rice and cloth for information, nobody talked. From a fishing village to guerrilla camps, through enemy-patrolled waters and onto a submarine packed with refugees, the documents made their way to an American admiral preparing for the largest carrier battle in history.
This military history story explores espionage, resistance, World War II intelligence, and the human courage behind one of the war’s most remarkable recoveries. It is a gripping wartime narrative for listeners who enjoy WW2 stories, Pacific War history, historical documentaries, and forgotten true stories from the Philippines.
SEO: Ideal for fans of WW2 stories, military history, Pacific theater history, World War II documentary-style narration, and historical war stories. If you search for forgotten WW2 stories, Japanese fleet history, Filipino resistance, or wartime intelligence stories, this narrative delivers a compelling piece of history with strong search relevance.
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00:00April 3, 1944. A fishing village called Perilos on the southeast coast of Cebu in the Japanese-occupied Philippines.
00:09Morning. A shopkeeper named Pedro Gantuangoco looks out over the Bohol Strait and sees something in the water that does
00:17not belong there.
00:19It is not driftwood. It is square. It rides low, and the tide is bringing it in.
00:26He calls his neighbor, a man named Oppoi Wammer. Wammer rows out and hauls the thing into his boat.
00:33It is a box, slick with oil. Inside the box is a portfolio of red leather.
00:40Inside the portfolio are papers. Soaked, stuck together, covered in Japanese characters, and stamped with seals.
00:49Neither man can read a word of it. But both of them know what has happened on this coast in
00:55the last two days.
00:57Before dawn on April 1, a big four-engine Japanese flying boat had come down in the strait a couple
01:03of miles offshore, and its fuel had burned on the water.
01:07By daylight, there were Japanese survivors swimming toward the beach.
01:11And ever since, a Japanese float plane had been flying low over the villages.
01:16Back and forth. Looking for something.
01:20So Gantuangmoco makes a decision. And I want you to notice it.
01:24Because it is the first of many just like it in this story.
01:28He does not bring the box ashore.
01:31He tells Wammer to stay out on the water, anchored, like a man fishing, and to wait for dark.
01:39At noon, Japanese soldiers come down to the beach at Perilos.
01:43They search the shoreline. They search the village.
01:47Nobody searches the boat sitting out on the water.
01:51That night, Wammer brings it in.
01:53The two men peel the pages apart and lay them out to dry on a bamboo floor.
01:58The next evening, they slide the papers back into the box, and they bury it.
02:03Keep that picture in your head.
02:05A box in the ground under a fishing village.
02:09And around it, a Japanese garrison that is about to turn this entire coast upside down to find it.
02:16Because the papers in that box are the battle plan of the Imperial Japanese Navy's combined fleet.
02:22The plan for the decisive sea battle the Japanese Navy had been preparing for, signed by the Commander-in-Chief
02:28himself.
02:29And nine weeks from now, a translation of those pages will be aboard the flagship of the American Fifth Fleet,
02:35in the hands of the Admiral about to fight that battle.
02:39How it got there is a chain of people.
02:42Fishermen, guerrillas, two escaped prisoners of war, a submarine crowded with refugees, and an American soldier from Hawaii who had
02:51taught himself Japanese out of a dictionary.
02:54And at the end of that chain is the question this whole story turns on.
02:59What did that plan actually tell the Americans?
03:02And what did an American admiral decide to do once he had read it?
03:07If you want to follow that box from a beach on Cebu all the way to the American fleet, please
03:13hit like and subscribe.
03:15It helps more people find the story of the Americans who carried it.
03:20To understand why the Japanese wanted that box back so badly, you need to know whose it was.
03:26Admiral Minnichi Koga had commanded the combined fleet since April of 1943, when American fighters shot down Admiral Yamamoto over
03:34Bougainville.
03:35Koga inherited a fleet still powerful on paper, and a war turning against it.
03:41In February of 1944, American carrier aircraft struck the great Japanese anchorage at Truk for two days and destroyed upwards
03:50of 275 aircraft.
03:53Koga pulled his headquarters west, to Palau.
03:56There, on March 8th, his staff issued the final version of the plan.
04:01Its formal title was Combined Fleet Secret Operations Order No. 73.
04:07Inside the fleet, it was simply the Z-Plan.
04:12Three weeks later, the Americans came to Palau, too.
04:15On March 29th, an American submarine torpedoed the battleship Musashi, Koga's flagship, as she left the harbor.
04:23At dawn the next day, American carrier planes began hitting the anchorage.
04:28Koga decided to move 600 miles west, to Davao on Mindanao.
04:33On the night of March 31st, he boarded a Kawanishi flying boat.
04:37His chief of staff, Vice Admiral Shigeru Fukudome, took a second one, with 14 staff officers.
04:44Fukudome carried the leather portfolio with the plan.
04:47Before they left, Koga reportedly told Fukudome that Yamamoto had died at exactly the right time,
04:54and suggested the two of them go out and die together.
04:58Koga's plane flew into a tropical storm, and was never seen again.
05:03Fukudome's plane fought headwinds until the fuel ran low.
05:07The crew turned for Sibu, came in steep in the dark, and misjudged the height.
05:13Fukudome grabbed the controls himself.
05:16At about 2.30 in the morning on April 1st, the flying boat hit the water and broke apart.
05:22Twelve men lived. Twelve died.
05:26Fukudome, his leg injured, clung to a seat cushion, and watched the fuel burning on the surface around him.
05:33And he made an assumption that would shape everything that followed.
05:37He was certain the plan had gone to the bottom with the plane, so he never looked for it.
05:43Now here's the irony.
05:45A third aircraft had left Palau that night, hours late, carrying the fleet's communications staff and its top-secret codes.
05:54It was the only one of the three to reach Davao.
05:58Tokyo sent out a coded message reporting the commander-in-chief missing.
06:02American codebreakers read it, and within hours it was in Washington.
06:06So the Americans knew a Japanese admiral had vanished.
06:10What they did not know, and had no way to know, was that his war plan was drying on a
06:16bamboo floor in a village on Sibu.
06:20And the Japanese Navy was about to run a simple experiment off that coast, one that would lead its soldiers
06:27straight back to Perilos.
06:29The experiment was simple.
06:31Japanese Navy specialists went out to the spot in the Bohol Strait where the flying boat had gone down, and
06:37they set boxes adrift.
06:39Boxes about the size of the one that had carried Fukudome's papers.
06:43Then they watched where the current took them.
06:46Every one of them washed up at Perilos.
06:49Think about what that meant for the people of that village.
06:52The Japanese now knew that if anything from that aircraft had floated, it had come ashore on this beach and
06:59no other.
07:00So about 200 soldiers came to Perilos.
07:03They went through every house.
07:05They questioned the villagers one after another.
07:07They offered rice and cloth, which, in the occupied Philippines in 1944, were worth more than money, to anyone who
07:16would say what had come out of the sea.
07:18Nobody said anything.
07:20The soldiers came back a second time.
07:23Later, Perilos was burned.
07:26And Perilos was not the only place.
07:28The Japanese garrison commander in Cebu City, Lieutenant Colonel Seiti Onisi, ordered villages burned across the area, and hundreds of
07:36civilians were killed.
07:38On paper, the Japanese were searching for survivors of an aircraft accident.
07:43On the ground, it was a campaign of terror meant to make someone, anyone, talk.
07:50Pedro Gontuanguoco had a buried box under his feet that was now worth more lives than he could count.
07:58And here is a detail that tells you how ordinary people thought about that box.
08:03Along with the papers, it held a small pouch of gold nuggets.
08:08Gontuanguoco did not want the gold.
08:11He did not want the papers.
08:12He wanted the thing gone.
08:15So he dug it up and handed all of it, papers and gold, to a local gorilla.
08:22From that moment, the box was moving inland, up into the mountains.
08:26And to see where it was going, we need to go back to the morning of the crash, and follow
08:31the men who swam.
08:34April 1st, 1944.
08:37About 11 in the morning.
08:38The shore at Magtalisai.
08:40A small village near San Fernando, a few miles down the coast from Perilos.
08:45Two villagers hear singing out on the water.
08:48It is the Japanese survivors, keeping each other going as they swim.
08:53The two men paddle out in canoes.
08:56A third Filipino pushes his boat out after them, sees that the swimmers are Japanese, and swims back to shore.
09:03Two of the Japanese climb into his empty boat and row away.
09:07Remember those two.
09:09They will reach a Japanese army post and report the crash.
09:12And that is how the garrison in Cebu City learns what happened.
09:16The rest come ashore.
09:18Ten men.
09:20Among them is Fukudome's aide, Commander Yuji Yamamoto.
09:24Along with the pilot, the co-pilot, a warrant officer, and six sailors.
09:30On the beach, some of the villagers want to shoot them on the spot.
09:34Others argue against it.
09:35And the argument against wins.
09:38The prisoners are tied and marched inland.
09:41Fukudome himself almost refuses to be saved.
09:44When the canoes reach him, he hesitates in the water,
09:47until five or six Filipinos take hold of him and pull him in.
09:51Within a few hours, he has worked out what that means.
09:54No Japanese officer of flag rank, not once in the entire history of the Japanese Navy,
10:01had ever been taken prisoner.
10:04He is the first.
10:06Let that register for a moment, because it explains the violence that followed.
10:11For the Japanese command, this was not simply about a briefcase.
10:15A vice-admiral, the chief of staff of the combined fleet,
10:19was being carried into the hills by Filipino farmers and fishermen.
10:23The march went up through Barrio Balud and Barrio Basak.
10:27At Basak, one of the prisoners tried to escape and was killed.
10:32The others kept climbing.
10:35Fukudome's leg wound had become infected,
10:37and by the time the party reached a guerrilla aid station near Kaloktogan,
10:41he was running a fever of about 104 degrees.
10:45A guerrilla doctor cleaned the wounds and treated him,
10:48and the party went on climbing, toward the guerrilla headquarters in the mountains near Barrio Tabunan.
10:54The man at that headquarters was an American.
10:56Lieutenant Colonel James Cushing was in his mid-30s,
11:00a big, quiet mining engineer, born in Mexico and raised in El Paso, Texas,
11:05who had come out to the Philippines hoping to strike it rich.
11:08When the Japanese invaded Cebu in 1942,
11:12the army made him a temporary captain because he knew explosives.
11:15He blew up the oil tanks and wharves of Cebu's port and walked into the hills.
11:20He never came down.
11:23By 1944, Cushing commanded the Cebu Area Command,
11:27several thousand Filipino and American guerrillas.
11:30Many had rifles.
11:32Many did not.
11:34And there is one more thing worth knowing about him as this story begins.
11:39His older brother, Walt, also a guerrilla leader on Luzon,
11:43had been killed by the Japanese the autumn before.
11:46On April 8th, Cushing learned that prisoners were being brought to him.
11:51He radioed General MacArthur's headquarters in Australia.
11:54Ten Japanese, he said,
11:56and constant enemy pressure makes this situation very precarious.
12:01That same day, the prisoners arrived.
12:05Fukudome and two others went straight into the guerrilla hospital.
12:09Cushing questioned them through Commander Yamamoto,
12:11who spoke English and gave evasive answers.
12:15Cushing came away believing the senior prisoner was a general named Twani Fudome,
12:20commander of Japanese land and sea forces at Macassar in the Celebes.
12:25Fukudome later admitted he had never corrected him.
12:29So, here is where things stood on the night of April 8th.
12:33In a guerrilla hospital in the mountains of Cebu
12:35lay the chief of staff of the combined fleet, under a false name.
12:40The lohim, Japanese columns were climbing the mountain tracks,
12:44burning villages as they came.
12:46And somewhere on those same tracks,
12:48a guerrilla was carrying a box out of Perilos.
12:51The American in the middle of all of it had no idea what that box contained.
12:55It would reach him at almost the same hour he had to decide what to do with his prisoners.
13:00And the decision he made would still be argued about at MacArthur's headquarters weeks later.
13:05April 9th, 1944.
13:07The Mountains of Central Cebu.
13:09At MacArthur's headquarters in Brisbane, Colonel Courtney Whitney,
13:13who ran the guerrilla networks in the Philippines, had read Cushing's message.
13:17His answer was correct and careful.
13:20The prisoners were to be treated according to the laws of land warfare.
13:24Headquarters would help move them off the island.
13:27Behind the scenes, a submarine was being arranged from the American base at Fremantle.
13:31It was a sound plan.
13:33It was also a plan made two and a half thousand miles away.
13:37Here is a detail I want you to file away,
13:40because it explains everything Cushing did in the next 24 hours.
13:45Around midday on April 9th, Cushing sent Brisbane another message.
13:49He was spreading word that the prisoners had already been taken off the island.
13:53A deception to draw the Japanese away.
13:56And he asked for instructions.
13:58That message did not reach Brisbane until April 12th.
14:02Three days.
14:03Cushing was not going to get an answer in time.
14:06And he knew it.
14:07He moved his camp across a ravine to a ridge near Kamungayan.
14:11A spot the guerrillas called Tupas Ridge.
14:14Then word came up the trail that Onisi was holding more than a hundred Filipino civilians as hostages.
14:21That afternoon, the Japanese arrived.
14:23Hundreds of them.
14:25Cushing had 25 soldiers.
14:28The firefight on the ridge was fought against more than rifles.
14:32A Japanese float plane came over and strafed the guerrilla positions and dropped anti-personnel bombs among them.
14:38Three of Cushing's people were killed.
14:41One of them was a nurse.
14:43Now picture the choice in front of him that evening.
14:46Above him, in his hospital, lay a man he believed was a Japanese general.
14:51The most valuable prisoner any guerrilla in the Philippines had ever taken.
14:57Below him were several hundred Japanese soldiers.
15:00And behind them, roughly 2,000 more combing the southern half of the island.
15:05Every day he held on to his prisoners, more villages would burn and more civilians would die.
15:10And headquarters, the only authority that could tell him what to do, would not even read his question until it
15:16was far too late.
15:19Cushing decided to trade.
15:21He wrote out an offer to Lieutenant Colonel Onisi.
15:24He would hand over General Furomei, three officers, and six enlisted men, on one condition.
15:30The killing of civilians had to stop.
15:35Commander Yamamoto translated the letter into Japanese.
15:38Two guerrillas and two of the prisoners carried it down the mountain into the Japanese lines.
15:44Onisi's reply came back with the same messengers.
15:47His operation, he wrote, was only intended to rescue the Japanese Navy officers that had crashed.
15:53And he pledged to protect the lives and property of civilians.
15:57Cushing tried to bargain.
16:00Four prisoners now, he offered, and the rest later.
16:04Onisi's answer was four words.
16:07All or no one at all.
16:10The last guarantee came from the prisoner himself.
16:13Fukudome gave his personal promise that the killing would stop.
16:17Cushing agreed to send everyone down at daylight.
16:21Onisi wrote back once more.
16:23And it is one of the strangest letters of the Pacific War.
16:27He praised what he called Cushing's warrior-like and admirable action.
16:33And he closed with a line from one soldier to another.
16:37I expect to see you again in the battlefield someday.
16:41Around midnight, Cushing radioed Brisbane what he had done.
16:45The prisoners, he said, were too hot to hold.
16:48He had 25 men against a force of about 500, with 2,000 more out in the south of the
16:56island.
16:57That message, too, reached Brisbane on April 12th.
17:02At noon on April 10th, Vice Admiral Shigeru Fukudome and nine other men walked back into Japanese hands.
17:10And this is the moment the story turns.
17:13Because at almost exactly that time, the box from Perilos arrived at Cushing's camp.
17:20Cushing could not read Japanese.
17:22But he could see what was in front of him.
17:24A portfolio of red leather with an elaborate emblem.
17:28A bound volume with a red cover marked with the letter Z.
17:31Papers stamped with official seals.
17:34Nobody packs a fishing report like that.
17:37Whatever this was, it had been riding with the man he had just given back.
17:41So ask yourself, what a sensible man does at that moment?
17:45He has just traded a Japanese admiral for the lives of civilians.
17:50The Japanese have every reason to believe they have what they came for.
17:54If they learn the papers survived, the burning starts again.
17:57And this time, they know exactly what to ask for.
18:02Cushing said nothing.
18:03He had the documents rolled up tight and sealed inside two empty mortar shells.
18:09Then he watched what the Japanese did next.
18:12Onisi held to a three-day ceasefire with the guerrillas.
18:16And then ordered his troops to stop attacking civilians.
18:19On April 15th, Fukudome flew to Manila.
18:23And five days later, he was in Tokyo.
18:26Remember, he still believed the plan had gone down with the plane.
18:29On April 17th, the acting commander of the combined fleet reported to Tokyo
18:34that the search for Admiral Koga was over.
18:37The Japanese file on what they called the Otsu incident was closed.
18:42In Brisbane, meanwhile, the delayed messages finally landed, all at once.
18:46And by April 14th, headquarters understood that Cushing had made his deal
18:51without waiting for orders.
18:53The prisoner they had been arranging a submarine for was gone.
18:58But on April 13th, Cushing had sent another message.
19:02He reported that he had recovered Japanese documents,
19:05including two operations maps that covered Palau, the Philippines,
19:09most of French Indochina, Hainan, and South China.
19:13Pause on that for a second.
19:15The Japanese believed they had lost an admiral for nine days and got him back.
19:20The Americans believed they had lost a prized prisoner.
19:24Neither side yet understood that the real prize was sitting in two mortar shells in the mountains of Cebu.
19:30So far, it had been kept safe by silence.
19:34Now it had to be moved, across an island patrolled by thousands of Japanese troops,
19:39over open water, to a place where a submarine could reach it.
19:44And the two men Cushing trusted to carry it already knew what it meant to fall into Japanese hands,
19:49because both of them had escaped from a Japanese prison camp.
19:53April 15th, 1944.
19:56Two Americans left Cushing's headquarters with a bodyguard and two mortar shells.
20:01Their names were Russ Snell and Jimmy Dyer.
20:05Both were former prisoners of the Japanese,
20:08men who had already been through the camps and come out the other side,
20:12and who knew exactly what would happen to them if they were caught with what they were now carrying.
20:17Their route ran down out of the mountains,
20:20across the island of Cebu,
20:22and over the Tanyon Strait,
20:23a stretch of water patrolled by Japanese boats,
20:26to the island of Negros.
20:29It took them thirteen days.
20:31On April 28th,
20:33they walked into the headquarters of Lt. Col. Edwin Andrews
20:37in the hills behind a place called Kulipapa on southern Negros
20:40and handed over the shells.
20:43Now, let me show you something about how the Americans themselves
20:46saw these papers in those weeks,
20:49because it is not what you might expect.
20:52At MacArthur's headquarters,
20:54nobody yet knew what they had.
20:56On April 14th,
20:57Whitney told Brigadier General Charles Willoughby,
20:59MacArthur's chief of intelligence,
21:01that the documents could probably go out on the submarine Narwhal
21:05on her regular supply run around the end of May.
21:08Willoughby pushed back.
21:10These papers, he wrote,
21:11might be extremely valuable.
21:13He wanted them sooner.
21:15Four days later,
21:17headquarters ordered Cushing to take every precaution to protect them.
21:21Meanwhile, on Cebu,
21:23the fishermen kept bringing things in.
21:25On April 27th,
21:26Cushing reported that more documents from the crash
21:29had been recovered through local fishermen.
21:31Those went to Negros as well.
21:33A few days later,
21:35he sent another batch south to Colonel Wendell Fertig,
21:38the American guerrilla commander on Mindanao.
21:41And then,
21:42the Japanese gave themselves away.
21:44They announced a reward for the return of the papers.
21:4750,000 pesos.
21:50Let me put that figure in context.
21:52That was about 25,000 American dollars in 1944,
21:56offered on an island where a family could be shot for hiding a sack of rice.
22:01Nobody offers that kind of money for a dead admiral's personal letters.
22:06The Japanese garrison on Cebu either knew or strongly suspected
22:10that something important had survived the crash,
22:13and they wanted it back.
22:15On May 2nd,
22:16Cushing reported that the most important documents
22:19had reached Andrews on Negros.
22:21The message landed in Brisbane two days later,
22:24along with bad news.
22:25The narwhal was being refitted
22:28and would not reach the Philippines until mid-June.
22:31Whitney asked the question nobody wanted to answer.
22:35Should they send a submarine just for this?
22:38Willoughby said yes at the earliest opportunity.
22:41And then,
22:42in the same breath,
22:43he urged caution.
22:45Don't exaggerate the importance of these papers,
22:47he warned,
22:48because the enemy must never learn they had been recovered.
22:52Hold on to that warning.
22:53It says something important about the people handling this box.
22:57Knowing what the enemy is planning
22:59is only worth anything
23:00if the enemy doesn't know that you know.
23:04The final piece arrived on May 5th.
23:07Radio Tokyo announced that Admiral Mineji Koga,
23:10Commander-in-Chief of the Combined Fleet,
23:12had been killed in action in March,
23:15while directing operations from an aircraft.
23:17Admiral Soimu Toyoda had been named to replace him.
23:22In Brisbane,
23:23Whitney put it all together.
23:25A Japanese commander-in-chief dead in a plane in March.
23:29The intercepted Japanese messages about the Otsu incident.
23:32A guerrilla on Cebu sitting on documents from a flying boat that crashed the same night.
23:38And the enemy offering a fortune to get them back.
23:41Whitney went to MacArthur's Chief of Staff,
23:44General Richard Sutherland,
23:45and pressed for a special pickup.
23:48Sutherland agreed.
23:49May 7th, 1944,
23:521130 at night,
23:54off the north coast of Borneo.
23:56The American submarine Craval was on patrol when a top-secret signal came in.
24:01Proceed to the eastern Sulu Sea for a special mission on May 11th.
24:07Her captain was Lieutenant Commander Francis David Walker, Jr.,
24:11who had taken command of the boat at Fremantle less than two months earlier.
24:15The orders came with a cover story.
24:18Craval would be evacuating American civilian refugees from Negros.
24:23Anyone who noticed a submarine off that coast would see a rescue,
24:27not an intelligence operation.
24:30On May 8th,
24:31Walker was directed to a point off the coast north of Besai,
24:35on Southern Negros.
24:37On May 10th,
24:38Whitney radioed the guerrilla commander there,
24:41Salvador Abcede,
24:42and told him to keep the whole matter secret.
24:46May 11th,
24:47about 4.30 in the afternoon.
24:49Craval lay off Besai.
24:51Walker watched the beach through his periscope.
24:54People.
24:56Boats.
24:57At 5 o'clock,
24:59two large boats and a cluster of small outriggers
25:02pushed off and headed toward the pickup point.
25:04Walker's orders called for 25 passengers and no baggage.
25:09At three minutes before six,
25:11Abcede climbed aboard and told him the actual number.
25:1541 Americans.
25:1721 of them children.
25:198 of them women.
25:21Some of the men were former prisoners who had survived Bataan,
25:25worn down,
25:26and in need of a doctor.
25:28Think about what Walker was being asked to do.
25:31A combat submarine has no spare bunks,
25:34almost no spare air,
25:36and nowhere to put a child during a depth charge attack.
25:40He was going to take her through Japanese waters for more than a week
25:44with all of them on board.
25:46He agreed on the spot.
25:48Two minutes later,
25:50the passengers began coming down the hatch,
25:5240 of them,
25:54Russ Snell and Jimmy Dyer among them.
25:57One man stayed behind,
25:59a missionary who had seen his family safely aboard
26:02and then went back ashore to keep working among the guerrillas.
26:06And then Abcede handed Walker one more thing.
26:10A small wooden box.
26:13Extremely important documents, he said,
26:15and General MacArthur was anxious to see them.
26:18At 6.37 that evening,
26:20Craval got underway for Australia.
26:22Picture who was aboard her now.
26:25Sixty-odd crewmen,
26:26forty refugees,
26:28half of them children,
26:29and somewhere in the boat,
26:30a wooden box carrying the battle plan
26:33of the Japanese fleet.
26:34On the third day out,
26:36Walker's lookout sighted a Japanese convoy.
26:39He had four torpedoes left.
26:41What he did next,
26:42his own yeoman would still be puzzling over decades later,
26:46given what was in that box.
26:47May 14, 1944.
26:50The Celebes Sea.
26:52The convoy was a target any submarine captain would want,
26:55and Francis Walker had four torpedoes left.
26:58He also had 40 civilians aboard,
27:00and a box that MacArthur's headquarters
27:03had sent him across the Sulu Sea to collect.
27:06He went after the convoy anyway.
27:09Years later,
27:10the boat's yeoman,
27:11Albert Dempster,
27:12still could not quite make sense of it.
27:14Why spend your last four torpedoes on a convoy,
27:17he wondered,
27:18when you are carrying a package that important?
27:21The Japanese answered before he could.
27:24Craval was caught,
27:25and depth-charged hard.
27:27The accounts differ on whether the charges came from an escort
27:30or from a Japanese bomber,
27:32but they agree on what they did to the boat.
27:34The periscopes and the radar were knocked out.
27:38The Navy's own history of the boat calls it a
27:40special ordeal for the passengers.
27:43Stop and imagine it.
27:45Women and children wedged into the corners of a submarine,
27:49lights flickering,
27:50every charge hammering the hull like a sledgehammer on a steel drum,
27:53and nothing to do but sit there
27:56and wait for the next one.
27:58Some of the men around them had survived Bataan.
28:01Most of the passengers had spent two years
28:04hiding in the hills from the Japanese,
28:06and now the hiding place was a steel tube under the sea.
28:10Over that voyage,
28:11Craval was spotted and attacked more than once,
28:14and survived severe depth-charging twice.
28:17Walker kept her on the surface whenever he could,
28:20running for Australia.
28:22Early on May 19th,
28:24eight days after Besai,
28:25two small Australian Navy boats
28:27came out to meet her off Darwin.
28:30Commander X.M. Smith,
28:31who ran the American naval base there,
28:33came aboard to collect what was politely called
28:36the mail from Negros.
28:38He signed a receipt for the wooden box
28:40and took it ashore.
28:41A courier drove it to the airfield.
28:44About six hours and 1,800 miles later,
28:47a plane set down in Brisbane,
28:49and by midday, the box was on Courtney Whitney's desk.
28:53Forty-six days after a shopkeeper in Perilose
28:56saw it floating in the strait.
28:58On May 21st,
29:00Whitney passed the documents to Willoughby,
29:01and Willoughby sent them straight to Colonel Sidney Mashbeer,
29:05head of the Allied Translator and Interpreter Section,
29:08which everyone called A-T-I-S.
29:10Its headquarters was a requisitioned house at Indrupilli,
29:14on the edge of Brisbane.
29:15The originals were photographed,
29:17and the photostats went to Mashbeer's five best translators.
29:21Two of them were Nisei,
29:23Americans of Japanese descent,
29:25Lieutenant Kiyoshi Yamashiro,
29:28called Sankei,
29:29and a soldier named Yoshikazu Yamada,
29:32called Yosh.
29:33Pay attention to Yoshikazu Yamada,
29:35because his story bends back on this one
29:37in a way nobody could have planned.
29:39He was born in Hawaii,
29:41and drafted in April of 1941,
29:44and the army made him a medic.
29:45In October of that year,
29:47he was posted to Del Monte Airfield on Mindanao,
29:49in the Philippines.
29:51In April of 1942,
29:53as the islands fell,
29:55the truck he was riding in
29:56hit a bridge during a night evacuation of the airfield,
29:59and he wrecked his back.
30:01He was flown out to Australia,
30:03and spent months in a military hospital in Melbourne.
30:07He had learned very little Japanese at school.
30:10He taught himself the rest out of a dictionary
30:12a superior officer had given him.
30:14So, two years after he was carried out of the Philippines
30:18on a stretcher,
30:19the Philippines had sent him something to read.
30:21The first surprise was that it was not in code.
30:24The documents were written in plain Japanese.
30:28The second came on the first page.
30:31Secret Combined Fleet Order No. 73
30:34Copy No. 6 of 550
30:37Issued on March 8th from the battleship Musashi at Palau
30:41Signed by Admiral Koga
30:44The preamble set out the scope.
30:46The Combined Fleet would direct its main operations to the Pacific area.
30:50The operations would be known as the Z operations.
30:54And then the work got hard.
30:56These were Army translators reading a Navy document,
30:59written in a Navy's private vocabulary.
31:02The Japanese used their own names for places the Americans knew by other names.
31:07Wake Island, for instance, appeared as Otori.
31:11Naval technical terms that no Army linguist had ever needed had to be worked out line by line.
31:17The day after he joined the Z-Plan team, Yamada was promoted to warrant officer.
31:23That tells you how seriously the Army was taking these pages.
31:27Here is what I want you to keep in mind.
31:29At this moment, in a house outside Brisbane,
31:33a handful of men who had never served a day at sea
31:36were the only people on the Allied side reading the Japanese fleet's plan
31:40for the decisive battle of the Pacific War.
31:43And on the other side of the world, in the other direction,
31:46the American Fifth Fleet was already gathering for its next move.
31:50Then a radio message came in from Cebu.
31:52On May 22nd, Cushing reported that the Japanese
31:56now knew about the additional documents his fishermen had found.
32:00The Japanese naval commander on Cebu, Takeshi Watanabe,
32:04had had leaflets dropped over the villages dated May 17th.
32:08Everything taken from the April 1st crash
32:11was to be handed to the mayor of San Fernando by noon on May 30th.
32:15If not, he promised, drastically severe methods would follow.
32:21Whitney sent the message on to Sutherland with a short note.
32:24Whatever doubts anyone at headquarters still had about the value of these papers,
32:29the enemy plainly had none.
32:32That night, or early the next morning,
32:35Mushbir ran off 20 copies of the 22-page translation himself
32:39on a hand-cranked mimeograph.
32:42On May 23rd,
32:44ATIS issued Limited Distribution Translation No. 4,
32:48titled, Z Operation Orders.
32:52Copy No. 1 went by Officer Currier
32:55to General George Marshall in Washington.
32:57Copy No. 2 went to General MacArthur.
33:01MacArthur, Sutherland, and Willoughby read it and were impressed.
33:05But by every account, they were not sure what all of it meant.
33:09It was a naval battle plan, and they were soldiers.
33:13The man in Brisbane who did understand it was a Navy captain.
33:17And he saw at once that it was in the wrong theater,
33:20in the wrong hands, and that time was running out.
33:22The Navy captain was Arthur McCollum,
33:25Director of Intelligence for the 7th Fleet
33:27and the Navy's liaison at MacArthur's headquarters.
33:30He read the ATIS translation
33:33and understood what the Army men around him had not.
33:36The Japanese were describing
33:38how they would fight their decisive battle.
33:40And it would not be fought in MacArthur's theater.
33:44It would be fought in the Central Pacific,
33:47against Admiral Nimitz's fleet.
33:49McCollum asked for copies to be sent to Pearl Harbor at once,
33:53to the Joint Intelligence Center there.
33:55Sutherland agreed.
33:56An Army bomber carried them nearly 5,000 miles in 48 hours,
34:02landing to refuel at island after island across the Pacific.
34:06At Pearl Harbor, the papers landed on the desk
34:09of Captain Edwin Layton, Nimitz's fleet intelligence officer.
34:14Layton had spent years in Japan before the war,
34:17studying the language,
34:18and he had been reading the Imperial Navy's mind
34:21since the morning of December 7th.
34:23The first thing he noticed was the stamp,
34:26top secret,
34:28not to be copied or reproduced
34:30without permission of General MacArthur.
34:32Think about the position that put him in.
34:35The most important document the Allies had ever captured
34:38about the Japanese fleet
34:39had reached the American fleet commander,
34:42and the American fleet commander
34:43could not pass it to his own admirals
34:46without the Army's permission.
34:48Nimitz asked MacArthur for that permission.
34:50The second thing Layton noticed
34:52was the translation itself.
34:54It was mostly right, he judged,
34:57but it read like what it was,
34:58the work of Army linguists
35:00who did not know the Japanese Navy's language.
35:03Fleet planners about to go into battle
35:05could not act on a phrase that was nearly right.
35:08So Layton asked Mashbir for the photo stats,
35:11and he and his translators at Pearl Harbor
35:13went through the entire Z-Plan again.
35:16It took them two days.
35:18Now we can look at what the American admirals
35:21were about to read.
35:22And remember the question we started with
35:23on that beach at Petilos?
35:26Because this is the first half of the answer.
35:29The Z-Plan was Japan's blueprint
35:32for one decisive battle.
35:34The Japanese term was Kantai Kessen.
35:37The idea was that the American fleet
35:39would come forward into the line Koga had drawn
35:42from the Marianas down to Palau.
35:44And when it did,
35:45Japan would throw everything at it
35:47in a single blow.
35:49Carrier aircraft.
35:50And on top of that,
35:52land-based aircraft,
35:53more than a thousand of them according to the plan,
35:56spread across the island airfields
35:58of the Marianas,
35:59the Carolines,
36:00and western New Guinea.
36:02Let me spell out what that meant,
36:04because it is the key to everything that follows.
36:07Japan's island airfields were not just bases.
36:11In this plan,
36:12the islands themselves were weapons,
36:15unsinkable aircraft carriers.
36:17Japanese planes could strike the American fleet,
36:20land on an island to refuel and rearm,
36:23and strike again.
36:24The companion document
36:25that came out of the same box,
36:27the Air Staff Study
36:28that ATIS published on May 28th,
36:31showed how Koga's staff
36:33meant to fight that air battle.
36:35Put the two together,
36:37and an American admiral
36:38could see the shape of the trap
36:40before he walked into it.
36:42The Japanese wanted the American fleet
36:44drawn out,
36:45away from its beachhead,
36:47onto ground of their choosing,
36:49where the carriers and the islands
36:51could hit it together.
36:53Leighton took his findings to Nimitz.
36:55The revised translation was mimeographed
36:58and sent to every flag officer
37:00involved in the coming invasion
37:02of the Marianas.
37:03That invasion was already in motion.
37:06Its name was Operation Forager.
37:11535 ships,
37:1315 carriers carrying about 900 aircraft,
37:17127,571 troops,
37:22the largest amphibious assault
37:24yet mounted in the Pacific,
37:25and it was aimed straight
37:27at the islands Koga's plan was built around.
37:30On June 8th,
37:31a flying boat landed
37:32at Eniwetok Atoll in the Marshalls,
37:34where the invasion fleet was gathering,
37:36and copies were carried aboard
37:38the heavy cruiser Indianapolis.
37:40They were handed to Admiral Raymond Spruance,
37:43commander of the 5th Fleet.
37:46Spruance was the man
37:47who had won at Midway.
37:48He was about to command
37:49the largest carrier battle in history.
37:52The fast carrier force,
37:54Task Force 58,
37:56under Vice Admiral Mark Mitcher,
37:58had already sailed from Majuro.
38:00So copies were flown out
38:01and dropped from the air
38:02onto Mitcher's flagship,
38:04the carrier Lexington,
38:05on the open sea.
38:0766 days after the box
38:09washed up at Perilos,
38:11Japan's battle plan
38:12was in the hands
38:12of the two American admirals
38:14who would fight that battle.
38:16But here is the question
38:17any careful listener
38:18should be asking.
38:20Koga was dead.
38:22Did the plan die with him?
38:24Not exactly.
38:26Admiral Soemu Toyoda
38:27took command of the combined fleet
38:29on May 1st,
38:30and within days,
38:31his staff had reworked Koga's plan
38:33into a new one
38:34called Operation A,
38:36AGO.
38:37The decisive battle area moved,
38:40and the details changed,
38:41but it was built from Koga's draft.
38:43The same thinking.
38:45The same reliance
38:46on land-based air
38:47from the islands.
38:48The same hope
38:50of one great blow.
38:52The Americans did not have AGO.
38:54What they had
38:55was the logic beneath it.
38:57And on Cebu,
38:58the price was still being paid.
39:01On May 30th,
39:03the Japanese deadline expired.
39:05That same day,
39:06Japanese troops
39:07surprised Cushing's headquarters,
39:08and the guerrillas got out
39:10with several casualties.
39:11Through the first half of June,
39:13Japanese planes bombed
39:15and strafed the mountains,
39:16nine of them at a time
39:17by Cushing's count.
39:19The leaflets had promised
39:20drastically severe methods,
39:22and the Japanese kept that promise.
39:25Not one paper went back
39:27to the mayor of San Fernando.
39:29June 15th, 1944.
39:31American marines and soldiers
39:33went ashore on Saipan.
39:35The Japanese fleet came out to fight,
39:37exactly as the plan had said it would.
39:40On the evening of June 18th,
39:42Mitcher asked Spruins
39:43for permission
39:44to steam west through the night,
39:46toward the Japanese fleet,
39:47so his carriers
39:48could strike first at dawn.
39:50It was the aggressive move.
39:52It was the move
39:53every aviator
39:54in the task force wanted.
39:56And it was exactly
39:57what Spruins had been warned
39:58the Japanese would try
39:59to make him do.
40:01Spruins thought about it
40:02for about an hour.
40:04His answer would be criticized
40:05for the rest of his life,
40:07and it is the reason
40:08the next two days
40:09went the way they did.
40:10June 18th, 1944.
40:12Aboard the cruiser Indianapolis,
40:14west of the Marianas.
40:17Raymond Spruins
40:18was not an aviator,
40:19and every aviator
40:20in Task Force 58 knew it.
40:23Mitcher's staff
40:24wanted to steam west
40:25through the night
40:25and hit the Japanese carriers
40:27at first light.
40:29Radio direction finding
40:30had placed the Japanese commander,
40:32Admiral Jisaburo Ozawa,
40:33about 355 miles
40:36to the west-southwest.
40:38Every hour spent waiting
40:39was an hour the enemy
40:40could use to strike first.
40:43Spruins sat with the request
40:44for about an hour.
40:46Then he said no.
40:47His signal to Mitcher
40:48said that Task Force 58
40:50must cover Saipan
40:51and the American forces
40:53engaged in that operation.
40:55The fleet would stay close
40:56to the beachhead
40:57and let the Japanese come.
40:59Here, at last,
41:01is where the box
41:01from Perilos pays off.
41:04Spruins knew
41:04from the captured papers
41:06how the Japanese
41:06meant to fight.
41:08If he chased Ozawa west,
41:10past Guam,
41:11he would be doing
41:11exactly what the enemy wanted.
41:13The Japanese carrier planes
41:15would be able to hit him
41:16and then land
41:17on the island airfields
41:18behind him,
41:19on Guam,
41:20Tinian,
41:20and Rhoda,
41:22refuel,
41:23rearm,
41:23and hit him again.
41:25He would be fighting
41:26the carriers in front of him
41:27and the islands at his back
41:29at the same time,
41:30with more land-based planes
41:32flying in from Japan.
41:34And while he was off chasing,
41:36a Japanese force
41:37could swing around him
41:38and fall on the transports
41:40off Saipan.
41:42Koga's plan
41:43had turned the islands
41:44into weapons.
41:45Spruins' answer
41:46was to stay
41:47where those weapons
41:48could be watched
41:49and make the Japanese
41:50fly to him.
41:52Remember the warning
41:53Willoughby gave
41:54back in Brisbane?
41:55Knowing the enemy's plan
41:56is only worth something
41:57if you act on it
41:58without giving away
41:59that you know.
42:01Spruins did not chase.
42:03He waited.
42:05And to anyone watching,
42:07it looked like caution.
42:09The next morning
42:10showed what it really was.
42:12June 19th,
42:141036 in the morning.
42:16American radar
42:17picked up the first
42:18Japanese raid
42:19coming in from the west.
42:2068 aircraft.
42:22The Hellcats
42:22were already up and waiting.
42:24Within minutes,
42:2525 of the attackers
42:26were falling.
42:2716 more went down
42:29before the raid was over.
42:31At 7 minutes past 11,
42:33a second wave arrived.
42:35107 aircraft.
42:3797 of them
42:38never made it home.
42:40A third raid
42:41of 47 planes
42:42came in
42:43at 1 in the afternoon.
42:44A fourth
42:45of 49
42:46missed the American fleet,
42:48turned for Guam
42:49to land,
42:50and ran straight
42:51into Hellcats
42:52circling over
42:53Odote Field.
42:5530 of the 49
42:56were destroyed there.
42:58Stop on that
42:59for a moment.
43:00Odote Field
43:01on Guam
43:02was one of the
43:02island bases
43:03Koga's plan
43:04had counted on.
43:05It was supposed
43:06to be
43:06the Anvil.
43:08It became
43:09a killing ground
43:10for the planes
43:10it was supposed
43:11to save.
43:12And it was a pilot
43:13from the Lexington,
43:15the very carrier
43:16that had received
43:17its copies
43:17of the captured plan
43:18by airdrop at sea,
43:20who gave the day
43:21its name
43:21after the fight
43:22over Odote.
43:24Hell,
43:25he said,
43:25this is like
43:26an old-time
43:27turkey shoot.
43:27By nightfall,
43:29Japan had lost
43:30more than
43:30350 planes
43:32on that one
43:33day alone.
43:34American losses
43:35in air-to-air
43:36combat were
43:37fewer than
43:37two dozen
43:38Hellcats.
43:39The day
43:40had a second
43:41blow nobody
43:41on the surface
43:42saw coming.
43:43That morning,
43:45two American
43:45submarines had
43:46slipped inside
43:47Ozawa's screen.
43:49The Albacore
43:50put a torpedo
43:50into the new
43:51carrier Taiho,
43:52Japan's largest
43:54and most modern.
43:55The Kavala
43:56put three
43:57into the Shokaku,
43:58one of the carriers
43:59that had launched
44:00the attack
44:00on Pearl Harbor.
44:01Both carriers
44:03blew up
44:03and sank.
44:05About 1,650 men
44:07died aboard Taiho
44:08and 1,263
44:11aboard Shokaku.
44:13The next
44:14afternoon,
44:14June 20th,
44:16American search
44:16planes finally
44:17found Ozawa's
44:18fleet.
44:19It lay
44:20275 miles
44:22out,
44:22and farther
44:23than that
44:24by the time
44:24the planes
44:25would get
44:25there,
44:26heading west.
44:27Too far
44:28for a safe
44:29round trip,
44:29and late
44:30in the day,
44:31so the planes
44:32would be coming
44:32home in the dark.
44:34Mitcher launched
44:35anyway.
44:37226 aircraft
44:38reached the
44:39Japanese fleet
44:39near sunset,
44:41sank the carrier
44:42Hiyo,
44:42and damaged
44:43three more.
44:44Coming home,
44:45the American
44:46pilots were low
44:47on fuel
44:47and over a
44:48black ocean.
44:49At 8.45
44:50that night,
44:51the first of them
44:52reached the task force.
44:54Rear Admiral
44:55Jocko Clark
44:56switched on
44:57his carrier's
44:57lights.
44:58in waters
44:59where Japanese
44:59submarines
45:00were operating,
45:01and against
45:01standing orders
45:02to run dark.
45:04Then,
45:04the whole task force
45:05lit up.
45:06Pilots were told
45:07to land on any
45:08deck they could
45:09find.
45:10About 80 planes
45:11were lost
45:11to empty tanks
45:12and crashes
45:13in the dark,
45:14but about
45:15three-quarters
45:15of their crews
45:16were pulled
45:16out of the water.
45:18When it was over,
45:19Japan had lost
45:20three carriers
45:21and something
45:22like 600 aircraft
45:23between carrier
45:24and land-based
45:25units.
45:25The Japanese
45:27Navy's
45:27carrier air
45:28arm,
45:29the force
45:29that had
45:30struck Pearl
45:30Harbor,
45:31never recovered.
45:33So now
45:34we can answer
45:34the question
45:35we started
45:36with on the
45:36beach at
45:37Perilos.
45:38What did
45:38the plan
45:39tell the
45:39Americans?
45:41It told them
45:42what the
45:42Japanese were
45:43hoping the
45:43American fleet
45:44would do.
45:45Rush west.
45:47Leave the
45:47beachhead.
45:48Fight the
45:49carriers and
45:50the islands
45:50at the same
45:51time.
45:53And what
45:53did an
45:54American
45:54admiral do
45:55once he
45:55had read
45:55it?
45:56He did
45:57not do
45:58it.
45:58He stayed.
46:00He let
46:01the enemy
46:01come to
46:02him across
46:03the islands,
46:03over the
46:04guns and
46:05the fighters
46:05of his
46:06own fleet.
46:08To be fair
46:09to the
46:09history,
46:10nobody can
46:10measure exactly
46:11how much
46:11of Spruance's
46:12decision came
46:13from those
46:13pages and
46:14how much
46:15came from
46:15his own
46:15judgment.
46:17Historians
46:17still argue
46:18about it.
46:20Aviators
46:20cursed him
46:21for letting
46:21Ozawa's
46:22fleet get
46:22away.
46:23Admiral
46:24John
46:24Towers
46:24even
46:25demanded
46:25his
46:25relief.
46:27Nimitz
46:27refused,
46:28and Admiral
46:29King and
46:29Admiral
46:30Turner
46:30backed
46:30Spruance.
46:31But the
46:31papers had
46:32been on
46:32his
46:32flagship
46:33for 10
46:33days,
46:34and the
46:35Japanese
46:35did exactly
46:36what the
46:36papers said
46:37they would.
46:39There's
46:39one more
46:40thing this
46:40story owes
46:41the people
46:41who held
46:42that box
46:42first,
46:43the ones
46:44whose names
46:44were never
46:45written on
46:45any ship's
46:46roster or
46:47any order
46:47of battle.
46:48What
46:49became of
46:49them?
46:50And what
46:51became of
46:51the American
46:52engineer who
46:52decided,
46:53on a burning
46:54mountain,
46:55to give the
46:55enemy back
46:56its admiral
46:57and keep
46:57the plan?
46:58February 1,
46:591945,
47:01Brisbane.
47:02Eight months
47:03after the
47:03battle,
47:04the people at
47:04ATIS sent
47:06Willoughby a
47:06short note.
47:07The story of
47:08the Z-Plan,
47:09they told him,
47:10had now been
47:11released to the
47:11press, and
47:12they added one
47:13line of judgment
47:14in the flat
47:15language of a
47:15military memo.
47:17The Z-Plan
47:18was probably
47:19one of the
47:19most important
47:20documents captured
47:21in the
47:21southwest Pacific
47:22area to
47:23date.
47:24Probably.
47:25To date.
47:26That is how
47:27intelligence officers
47:28talk when they
47:29mean something
47:30enormous.
47:31By then,
47:32the war had
47:33moved on past
47:34the Marianas.
47:35American bombers
47:36were flying
47:37against Japan
47:37from the airfields
47:38on Saipan and
47:39Tinian,
47:40the islands that
47:41plan had been
47:42written to hold.
47:43The Japanese
47:44Navy had come
47:45out once more
47:46at Leyte Gulf,
47:47and its carriers
47:48had gone into
47:49that battle as
47:49bait, because
47:51they no longer
47:51had the trained
47:52pilots to fight.
47:54Those pilots
47:54had died over
47:55Task Force 58
47:56in June.
47:58Here is what
47:59happened to the
47:59people in this
48:00story.
48:01Vice Admiral
48:02Shigeru Fukudome
48:03recovered from
48:04his wounds.
48:05Within a month
48:06of getting home,
48:07in June of
48:081944, he was
48:09given command of
48:10the 2nd Air
48:11Fleet.
48:12In January
48:13of 1945, he
48:14took over the
48:1510th Area
48:16Fleet.
48:17He survived
48:18the war.
48:19In December
48:20of 1945,
48:21American naval
48:22officers questioned
48:23him in Tokyo,
48:24and by their
48:24account, he
48:25cooperated.
48:26Later, he
48:27served on a
48:27commission advising
48:28the Japanese
48:29government on
48:29organizing its
48:30new self-defense
48:31forces.
48:32He died in
48:331971.
48:36Yoshiyamada,
48:37the medic from
48:37Hawaii who had
48:38taught himself
48:38Japanese out
48:39of a dictionary,
48:40finished the
48:41war as a
48:42second lieutenant.
48:43For decades,
48:45his part in
48:45the Z-Plan
48:46stayed inside
48:46classified files.
48:48In 1993,
48:50the United States
48:51Army awarded
48:52him the Legion
48:52of Merit for
48:53translating it,
48:5549 years after
48:56he first opened
48:57those photostats
48:58at Indropilly.
49:00The submarine
49:01Craval went on
49:02fighting to the
49:03end of the war,
49:03on the beach at
49:04Basai, where her
49:06crew took 40
49:06refugees and a
49:08wooden box aboard
49:08at sunset.
49:09The Philippine
49:11government unveiled
49:11a historical marker
49:12in September of
49:132022.
49:15Now go back with
49:16me, one last
49:17time, to
49:18Perilos.
49:20Pedro Gantuan Goko
49:21and Opoy
49:22Weimer never
49:23boarded a
49:23submarine.
49:25Their names
49:25appear in no
49:26after-action report,
49:28on no metal
49:29citation.
49:30The record does
49:31not tell us what
49:32became of them.
49:33What it does tell
49:34us is what their
49:35village went
49:36through.
49:37Soldiers
49:38searching every
49:39house, twice.
49:41Rice and
49:42cloth offered
49:42to anyone who
49:43would talk.
49:44And then
49:45Perilos burned.
49:47Not one
49:48person in that
49:48village told the
49:49Japanese where
49:50the box was.
49:51That silence
49:52is the first
49:53link in this
49:54whole chain.
49:56Without it,
49:57there is nothing
49:57for Cushing to
49:58keep, nothing
49:59for the Craval
50:00to carry, nothing
50:01for Yamada to
50:02read, and
50:03nothing on
50:04Spruance's desk
50:05on the evening
50:05of June 18th.
50:07And then there
50:08was the man
50:08who chose to
50:09keep it.
50:10James Cushing
50:10came out of the
50:11war with the
50:11Distinguished Service
50:12Cross, which the
50:13United States Army
50:14awarded him in
50:151945, along with
50:17a silver star, a
50:18bronze star, and
50:19the Philippine
50:20Distinguished Service
50:21Star.
50:22He never went
50:22home to El Paso.
50:24He stayed in the
50:25Philippines with his
50:25wife, a woman
50:26from Leyte.
50:28Around 1950, he
50:30moved to Palawan
50:31to start over in
50:31mining.
50:32It failed.
50:33In his last
50:35years, he lived
50:35in poverty, getting
50:36by on help from
50:37old friends.
50:39On August 26th,
50:401963, Jim Cushing
50:43died of a heart
50:43attack aboard an
50:44inter-island ferry.
50:46He was 53.
50:48As an American
50:49veteran, he had
50:50the right to be
50:50buried at the
50:51Manila American
50:52Cemetery among
50:5317,000 of his
50:55own countrymen.
50:56He was buried
50:57instead with full
50:58military honors at
51:00the Libinga
51:00Ningmanga Bayani
51:01in Manila, the
51:03Philippine National
51:04Cemetery for its
51:05war dead, among the
51:06people he had fought
51:07beside on Cebu.
51:09So when you hear
51:10that Filipino
51:10fisherman handed the
51:12Americans a Japanese
51:13admiral's war plan, that
51:15is true.
51:16But think about
51:18everything that sentence
51:19leaves out.
51:20The fisherman kept it
51:21secret.
51:22An American engineer
51:24from El Paso traded
51:25the admiral and kept
51:26the plan.
51:27Two former prisoners
51:29carried it across the
51:30Tanyon Strait.
51:31An American submarine
51:33took it out in the
51:34middle of a death
51:34charge attack, with
51:36children aboard.
51:37An American soldier
51:38from Hawaii read it.
51:40And an American
51:41admiral, once he knew
51:43what the enemy wanted
51:44him to do, refused to
51:46do it.
51:47The Japanese navy got
51:49its admiral back.
51:50The Americans kept
51:51the plan.
51:52And it cost Japan its
51:54carrier air arm.
51:56Thank you for watching
51:57this story all the way
51:58to the end.
51:59If it meant something
52:00to you, please hit
52:01the like button.
52:02It genuinely helps
52:03the story reach more
52:04people who would want
52:05to hear about Jim
52:06Cushing, the crew
52:07of the Craval, and
52:09the American translators
52:10who carried this plan
52:11from a fishing village
52:12to the Fifth Fleet.
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52:18And tell us in the
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52:21If your father,
52:22grandfather, or uncle
52:23served in the Second
52:24World War, write his
52:26name and his unit below.
52:27We read every one of
52:29them.