“Morrill had received no direct orders to surrender himself or his crew, and he wasn’t inclined to wait for any.”

By Walter Topp

“YOU WON’T GET 30 miles,” said the young naval officer. “Those destroyers out there are thicker than flies. They’ve been patrolling all day and all night for weeks.”

Lieutenant Commander John Morrill didn’t care what the officer from the USS Tanager (AM-5) thought. He was leaving and the sailors gathered around him could join him or they could stay. It was May 6, 1942. Earlier that day, U.S. Army General Jonathon Wainwright had surrendered Corregidor to the Japanese, ending five months of stubborn but increasingly hopeless resistance.

Now, Morrill, commanding officer of the USS Quail (AM-15), was standing in the stern of a 36-foot diesel-powered boat idling in Manila Bay, asking the remnants of his crew if they wanted to come along with him in the open boat as he made his way through the Japanese cordon to Mindanao, 600 miles away.

‘Damned fast if we are going’

Though white flags had been raised over Corregidor’s battered topside barracks and over the island forts that dotted the bay, Japanese artillery was still blasting American positions and the sound of machine gun and small arms fire drifted across the water. LCDR Morrill had received no direct orders to surrender himself or his crew, and he wasn’t inclined to wait for any. Even before the Japanese had landed on Corregidor, communications between American units had been spotty at best, and with Quail now sunk in the bay – scuttled by Morrill and his crew a few hours ago – Morrill had no way to communicate with anyone else.

Having completed his last mission, Morrill had gathered the remnants of his crew in two small boats off Caballo Island, two miles from Corregidor. In the evening darkness he told them of his plan and invited them to join him.

“You all know that the situation is,” he said. “On a logical basis your chances of remaining alive are probably better staying here, and some of our officers feel that escape is impossible.” Already the Japanese were tightening the noose of search planes, destroyers, patrol boats, and barges that had surrounded Manila Bay since December.

But five months of brutal warfare against the Japanese had convinced the Quail crewmen that they were unlikely to experience humane treatment if captured. If there was a chance to avoid surrender, most were eager to take it.

“I think I can get you through,” said Morrill. But, he added, “We’ve got to get out of here damned fast if we are going.”

Abandoned to their fate

Morrill and his crew had watched ruefully when the Asiatic fleet’s major surface ships had been ordered out of Manila Bay as war became increasingly likely. On Dec. 7, all three of the fleet’s cruisers and nine of 13 destroyers were well south of Manila. The fleet’s 29 submarines had remained in Manila, along with the tender USS Canopus, to defend against the expected invasion, but they achieved no significant successes against the actual landings and by the end of December all of the submarines were gone as well. Canopus remained to support the PT boats, minesweepers, and gunboats that were left, until April 9 when the steadfast old tender was scuttled by her crew in Mariveles Bay on Bataan as Japanese forces advanced to the tip of the embattled peninsula.

By then the PT boats were gone, too, having left on the night of March 11 to carry General Douglas MacArthur, his family, and his key staff south to Mindanao.

As the Japanese battered American and Filipino defenses on Bataan, more than 2,500 U.S. Navy sailors and officers had been left to their fate there and at Corregidor, including the crews of the tender Canopus, the salvage vessel Pigeon, six minesweepers, five gunboats, and two tugs; the members of Patrol Wing Ten whose aircraft had all been destroyed. There were also hundreds of support personnel from the base at Cavite.

A handful of Navy personnel had been evacuated, including the cryptanalysts assigned to the radio intelligence unit at Cavite, but as the allied defenses crumbled, nearly everyone else found themselves drafted to support army or marine units as gunners, communicators, runners, or infantry. More than 500 sailors from various units along with a handful of Marines and Filipino troops were organized into a naval battalion by Commander Frank Bridget and despite their almost total lack of training fought credibly on Bataan.

The last missions

The minesweepers, though, had retained their crews, as the 188-foot ships were still able to provide useful service to the troops ashore. Armed with a pair of three-inch guns and a handful of machine guns, the little ships provided gunfire support to troops on Bataan, patrolled against Japanese landing attempts along the coast, and provided anti-aircraft support wherever they happened to be. They also transported troops and supplies as needed and maintained the mine field that stretched across the mouth of Manila Bay.

Once Bataan fell, the sweepers had just one more critical job: opening a second channel through the minefield so that boats from Corregidor could exit the bay to rendezvous with US submarines that might arrive on resupply or evacuation missions. The original swept channel was too close to Bataan, now that Japanese artillery could be placed anywhere on the peninsula.

During the next few weeks, the crews of the three surviving minesweepers worked each night to clear the channel. Eventually, more than a third of Quail’s crew were drafted to serve ashore as gunners, taking several of the ship’s machine guns with them. As Japanese bombing and shelling of Corregidor intensified, and the entire bay fell within range of Japanese guns, the remaining crew of the minesweeper moved ashore during daylight hours, returning to the ship at dark to continue work on the minefield.

The final submarine mission was completed on May 3, when the USS Spearfish evacuated six Navy officers, six Army officers, eleven Army nurses, one Navy nurse, and the wife of a Navy officer. As the submarine was departing, the Japanese unleashed a massive artillery barrage that signaled the beginning of their final assault on Corregidor. The initial Japanese landing took place on May 5.

On the night of May 5, Morrill, the ship’s three other officers, 24 crewmen, and an additional officer from the sunken Tanager, made their way back out to the Quail to man the ship’s remaining guns. The rest of the minesweeper’s crew was ordered to man defensive positions on Corregidor. The next morning, May 6, as Japanese troops advanced on Corregidor, Morrill and his men were ordered to leave Quail on the ship’s boats and head to Fort Hughes, a coastal artillery battery on Caballo Island, two miles south of Corregidor, where the sailors would man anti-aircraft guns.

They were there that afternoon when General Wainwright surrendered Corregidor.

Stay or go?

At first, no orders to surrender were sent to Fort Hughes. Instead, Morrill was ordered to take a party out to the anchored and abandoned Quail, which, despite unrelenting Japanese air attacks, was somehow still afloat, and scuttle the ship.

Morrill and five men made the trip in a small boat, braving Japanese dive bombers, artillery and machine gun fire. After boarding Quail, breaking open valves to flood the ship, and setting demolition charges in the magazine, they hurried off. Unsure they could make it back to Caballo’s dock against the Japanese planes and artillery, they took refuge on the wreck of the Ranger, a Navy tug which had been abandoned by her crew and was beached in shallow water near the island.

While they waited for darkness aboard the Ranger, they grabbed anything they thought they could use on a voyage south, including charts, binoculars, a sextant, navigating instruments, rifles, food, water, lubricating oil, cigarettes, dynamite, and four drums of diesel fuel. Finally, the sun set and they made their way to their anchored 36-foot diesel-powered whaleboat – an open craft used as a workboat – on which Morrill planned to escape.

As they stowed their supplies aboard the diesel boat, the other boat went back to Caballo and returned with around 20 members of Quail’s crew and the officer from Tanager. When Morrill offered them the choice of heading south in the diesel boat or returning to Caballo and captivity, several opted for Caballo.

For some, the months of constant tension, short rations, disease, death and the knowledge that they had been abandoned, along with the shock of Corregidor’s sudden capitulation had been too much. They were exhausted, mentally, physically and spiritually. Though it had been apparent for months that no reinforcements were coming to the Philippines, the finality of their predicament and the uncertainty of their fate still shocked many of the Americans.

“I want to go,” one petty officer told Morrill, “but I just haven’t got the heart to make any more effort. I placed all of my faith in the Rock not surrendering, and now that it has, it just seems that the bottom has fallen out of everything.”

Altogether, 16 members of Quail’s crew joined Morrill in the diesel boat and made ready to go. Fully loaded, the boat had just six inches of freeboard; once they were clear of Manila Bay, they would need to toss out some of their gear. They expected the boat to average four nautical miles per hour when underway.

But first they needed to get out of Manila Bay. And before they could do that, they needed to return to the Caballo dock and pick up one final crewman who had earlier begged to be included.

That done, the 36’ boat, crammed with 18 Navy men, with its gunwales scant inches above the waves, got underway. Ahead lay many hundreds of miles of shoal water, unknown currents, unseen reefs, pounding surf, and thousands of islands – many occupied by the Japanese – all heavily patrolled by enemy ships, boats and aircraft.

‘More patrol boats than we could count’

Their plan was to travel by night and hide each day in small coves along lightly populated sections of the coast. They thought that villagers – when encountered – would likely be friendly, but they also knew that there were Japanese sympathizers on the islands and that enemy troops were already posted throughout the archipelago. Further, they knew that their presence would be extremely dangerous for any Filipinos in the area if the Japanese found out that they had been there. So, their goal was to minimize contact with locals and to avoid Japanese troops at all cost, though they also knew that they would need to obtain food, water, and fuel at times to complete their journey.

As the group motored out of Manila Bay, they had just a few hours of darkness until the moon rose and visibility would increase. They hoped to make as much distance as they could before they had to stop and hide.

But the officer from the Tanager – who had declined to join them – had been correct. Japanese destroyers and patrol boats were everywhere. In the first several hours they encountered four enemy destroyers and, in Morrill’s words, “more patrol boats than we could count.”

They knew, though, that in the dark they were almost impossible to see from any distance. Sitting low in the water, with no deck structure at all, from hundreds of yards away their boat would appear to be a log as long as everyone aboard kept down and they showed no lights at all. They also hoped that if they ever were spotted, they might be mistaken for a Filipino fishing craft.

As the moon rose, the fugitives pulled into a small cove on the Luzon coast and quickly began cutting branches and small trees to conceal their boat. Later, when dawn arrived, they were shocked to find out that they had barely made five miles against the current. They could actually still Corregidor in the distance.

An even worse surprise came a few minutes later when a Japanese search plane flew directly over them at a height of 500 feet. Fortunately, the Japanese pilot apparently never saw them and no Japanese boats or patrols approached.

During that first day, hidden in the trees and rocks near their camouflaged boat, the group watched several Japanese warships and patrol boats pass by. In the morning they saw a column of 16 patrol boats heading for Manila Bay. In the afternoon they saw the same column heading the other way with their decks now crammed with American prisoners – as many as 2,400 they estimated.

As darkness fell, they uncovered the boat and prepared to get underway. But they stopped abruptly when a Japanese destroyer entered the cove heading straight toward them. Fortunately, the warship was looking for a place to anchor for the night, not for a boatload of American sailors. Intent on anchoring securely in the unfamiliar waters, the Japanese crew never spotted the Americans, just 500 yards away.

Safe for the moment, the Americans were nevertheless trapped where they lay. They spent an uncomfortable night staring at the Japanese ship, clutching their weapons and listening for sounds of anyone approaching. In the morning the Japanese left, but there was no way the Americans could get underway in the daylight. They spent a second day hidden in the cove. That night, as they again prepared to leave, another Japanese destroyer – or perhaps the same one – approached their hiding place. But this time the ship pulled into a neighboring cove to anchor. Holding their breath, the Americans slowly edged their way out of the cove and into the darkened channel.

And so it went.

‘Across the Pacific if we had to’

For 31 days the group made their way south, jumping from island to island through the Philippines and the East Indies, avoiding Japanese patrols, steering clear of heavily populated islands, but receiving generous help and courageous support from countless friendly villagers, rich and poor, that they met on the way.

Over and over again, as they made their way through the Philippines, they were offered food, water, shelter, and information about Japanese activity. Early in their voyage they were told that Mindanao was occupied by the Japanese. Okay, they figured, then they would just have to continue on to Australia. It was 1,400 miles farther south, but they were determined to avoid falling into the hands of the Japanese. If they had learned that Darwin was in Japanese hands, Morrill later wrote, “We wouldn’t give ourselves up. We would seize a boat bigger than ours, one that could go across the Pacific if we had to.”

They didn’t end up crossing the Pacific, but they did travel more than 1,000 miles over roiling open water between the Philippines, Indonesia and Australia. Their undecked, flat-bottomed, and overloaded boat, never intended to survive ocean storms, struggled through heaving seas while the crew bailed continuously for hours, but they pushed through.

During their voyage they evaded countless Japanese patrol vessels, weathered several serious storms, and rebuilt the engine of their boat – finishing the task, as Morrill wryly noted, “with no pieces left over.” Their engineer even carved a bearing from driftwood to repair the boat’s stern tube.

Finally, on June 3, they sighted the coast of Australia.

On June 6 they skirted the anti-submarine net and motored into the harbor at Darwin. The group had completed a voyage of nearly 2,200 miles in a 36’ open boat through the Japanese-occupied Philippines and East Indies, and escaped what would have been an astonishingly brutal captivity.

Not the only ones

Morrill and his crew were not the only Americans to avoid capture by the Japanese in the Philippines. Many hundreds of managed to evade Japanese troops for at least a time, while a smaller number – probably fewer than one hundred – joined groups of Filipino and American guerillas. These intrepid men spent the years of the Japanese occupation providing intelligence to Allied forces in Australia and, especially later in the war, mounting attacks against Japanese forces. But the Japanese were brutal and relentless occupiers, and many of the guerillas were caught and killed.

There is even an account of two American Army officers named Damon Gause and William Osborne who avoided capture and eventually made their way out of the islands in a decrepit 22-foot fishing boat and were picked up by an Australian Navy ship.

The U.S. Army reported that 25,580 American soldiers were captured in the Philippines between Dec. 7, 1941 and May 10, 1942 and 10,650 died in captivity.

The U.S. Marine Corps reported that 1,487 members of the 4^th Marines were captured on Corregidor and 474 died in captivity.

More than 33,000 Filipino soldiers were also captured at Bataan and Corregidor.

Of the 70 crewmen known to be aboard the USS Quail in October, 1941, 52 were captured by the Japanese. Like all of the other American prisoners, they endured a hellish three years of forced labor, starvation rations, primitive medical care, repeated beatings and executions. Sixteen died in captivity.

Morrill and 15 of the 17 men who accompanied him survived the war. Upon arrival in Darwin, 13 men were allowed a few weeks rest and then were assigned to various ships or units in the Southwest Pacific. Several were on ships that were later sunk. One man – Chief Quartermaster Philip Binkley – was aboard the destroyer USS Jarvis when she disappeared with all hands after being torpedoed during the U.S. landing at Guadalcanal in August, 1942. The remaining five, including Morrill, were transferred to commands in the United States. Morrill was awarded the Navy Cross for his actions in scuttling the Quail while the five men who assisted him received Silver Stars.

Morrill returned to combat during the invasion of Palau in 1944 as commodore of a flotilla of large landing craft (LCIs). He retired as a rear admiral in 1955.

Walter Topp is a former U.S. Navy officer, emergency manager, police officer, and newspaper reporter. He is currently a writer and is working on several history and emergency management projects. He speaks regularly on emergency management topics but prefers writing about military history.

Sources:

Morrill, John and Martin, Pete; South from Corregidor; Simon and Schuster, NY; 1943.

Waldron, Ben D. and Burneson, Emily; Corregidor: From Paradise to Hell; Pine Hill Press; Freeman, South Dakota; 1988.

Williams, Greg; The Last Days of the United States Asiatic Fleet; McFarland and Company; Jefferson, NC; 2018.

McGowan, Sam; “Guerrilla War on Luzon During World War II”; Warfare History Center website; https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/2015/08/12/guerrilla-war-on-luzon-during-world-war-ii/ Retrieved 2.10.2010.

Miller, J. Michael; “From Shanghai to Corregidor – Marines in the Defense of the Philippines”; Marine Corps University website; https://www.usmcu.edu/Portals/218/From%20Shanghai%20to%20Corregidor-Marines%20in%20the%20Defense%20of%20the%20Philippines%20PCN%2019000314000.pdf?ver=2018-10-30-095002-760 Retrieved 2.12.2021.

Speak Out packet; American ex-Prisoners of War website; http://www.axpow.org/medsearch/speakouta.pdf Retrieved 2.11.2021.

Office of the Provost Marshal General Report, November 19, 1945; American Prisoners of War
in the Philippines; Center for Research Allied POWS Under the Japanese website; http://www.mansell.com/pow_resources/camplists/philippines/pows_in_pi-OPMG_report.html#INTRO Retrieved 2.10.2021.