Some of the Japs in the Navy Tunnel
 
 could speak a little  English. They told
 
 us they had been used as assault troops
 
 at Hong Kong and Singapore. We were
 
 only slightly comforted at being told
 
 that we had put up the stiffest resistance
 
 they had met.
 
                        
 
      The first officers to enter the tunnel
 
 were non-coms,  sergeants. As the first
 
 one entered, a Jap soldier was hopefully
 
searching me--everything of value in my
 
 possession had long since been taken
 
 away from me. The Japanese sergeant
 
 slapped and cuffed this soldier brutally,
 
 the soldier standing rigidly at attention,
 
and the sergeant blandly ignoring the 
 
evidence of previous looting that was in
 
 plain view.
 
                   
 
     But Japanese battle action did not
 
 end with our surrender. On the second
 
 day after our capitulation, Japanese planes
 
flew at minimum level over The Rock and 
 
dropped bombs, first making sure that their
 
 own men were out of the way. Casualties
 
 on our side were alight, and the Japs
 
 evidently were only bolstering  a threat
 
 made to General Wainwright that, unless
 
 all the forces in the Visayam Islands
 
 surrendered, all on Corregidor would be
 
massacred.
 
 
 
       And it did not take us long to learn
 
 the temper of our captors.  A gun crew
 
 on nearby Fort Drum, called "the concrete
 
 battleship",  had fired into a Japanese assault
 
 party a few days before Corregidor fell. A 
 
high-ranking Japanese officer was killed.
 
 This officer' s brother, on the jap headquarters
 
 staff back in Manila, ordered that the men on
 
 Drum be given special attention. They were 
 
beaten and hased unmercifully for
 
forty-
 
 
 
                              14