Look to the Bridges! (53)

     The war was far from over, but the Americans could take pride in what their engineers could accomplish.  Here is an article from an unidentified newspaper that was in Gene's scrapbook:

WRECKED BRIDGES TELL STORY OF JAP FAILURE IN PHILIPPINES:

American Engineers Did More in 26 Days to Repair War Damage on Luzon

Than Nips Accomplished in Three Years

     Central Plains Command Post, Luzon - (A.P.) - You need do no more than follow the American troops down this rich valley from Lingayen to Manila to see why Japan has muffed her chance at empire.

Modified Rand McNally map showing locations mentioned in the article

     When the Fourteenth corps troops made their blitz to the capital they ran into all sorts of blasted bridges.  But at least half of the big bridges - the ones that gave the greatest trouble - hadn't been blown by the Japanese at all.  They were the unrepaired remnants of bridges the Americans blasted in their withdrawal in 1941.  The Japanese had never repaired them although they were the economic arteries of one of the richest areas captured by Nippon.

     In the main, the Japanese replaced them with flimsy makeshift spans reachable only via tortuous detours scarcely able to support heavy traffic and almost every one a constant bottleneck.  At Bambam, for example, the parallel railroad and highway trestles had been dropped into the river.  I saw them first from the air and remarked to the pilot "the Japs did a good job on those two."

     But when I passed thru Bambam [Bambang?] with the troops later I saw my error.  The steel wire reinforcing that hung from the jagged, broken concrete blocks was black with old rust.  The Japanese didn't perform that artistic job of demolition at all - we did back in 1941.  Two big spans - linking rich Tarlac and Pangasinan and the northern provinces to Manila's ship piers via railroad and road - hadn't been repaired in three years.  Down between them on the river's surface was their solution, a one-way small piling treadway on a pontoon.  They didn't get around to blowing that one up but even so our engineers had to strengthen it before the big stuff could move across.

     When we looked that area over, Maj. Reginald Jackson ... used the words of the major league baseball scout after watching a raw lefthander "Japan as an empire builder is several seasons away."

     My retort was that after she has been pushed all the way thru this current meat grinder she'll be a hundred seasons away.

     I backtracked the troops after reaching Manila and I can tell you this - that after twenty-six days, the supply men and engineers of the Fourteenth corps of the United States army had better bridges between Lingayen and Manila than the Japanese had after three years.

     The bridges were only part of the answer.

     Between Calumpit and Malolos, the national road - the Lincoln highway of Luzon - contains a five-or six-mile segment that was not hard surfaced.  You ought to ride that stretch in a jeep after three years of Japanese maintenance.  We drove over it never more than ten miles an hour.  I was so bounced and bumped that the canteen in my belt was bent.

     These were physical evidences that a would-be empire builder had sliced himself off a chunk that his protuberant incisors couldn't even nibble at.

     The greater answer was in the eyes of the people.

     There was the old shop keeper at Balintawak on the outskirts of Manila who dashed up to the jeep of Maj. Gen. Robert S. Beightler, Thirty-seventh division commander, with an armful of cold beer.

     He saw the two stars on our jeep, jumped up and down, waved his arms and yelled, "Welcome, welcome.  No more Japs.  No more of those _____ Japs."

     Again he waved his arms and hunted for stronger words.

     "Hallelujah," I suggested.

     "Hallelujah, Hallelujah.  No more _____ Japs."

     There - it occurred to me - was an Asiatic small businessman, perhaps representative of the business core of Asia, celebrating with American oaths the end of Japan's program of "Asia for the Asiatics." [The Japanese had declared that they would be the protector of the Orient.]

     The bitterness, the utter hatred they had wrought among these people in three years was, when you thought it over, far more eloquent testimonial to their failure than the bridges they didn't rebuild.