Miscellaneous travels on Corregidor

[fots2]

Sorry for the delay guys, I will reply to you tomorrow.

[EXO]

Monja has been an easy target for scrappers who come and go by boat as they please.

The protection of Corregidor from scrappers has been a failure. Those of us who have visited Corregidor's out of the way places often have evidence of it in our photographs. We know there's no point in complaining.

Major Strasser has been shot! [pause] Round up the usual suspects!

[fots2]

beirutvet and oozlefinch,

There is a lot of dirt in these tunnels however there is no roof collapse. This creates a mystery for sure. (okla will love this ). Both rear entrances are collapsed and look untouched as far as digging goes.

Just past the 1:30 mark in the video you do see a side lateral on the right. It does not go far so I did not spend extra time looking at it. Here, the original concrete wall has been broken through and solid rock chipped away for about two feet or so. A smaller diameter section continues a bit further but is full of broken rock so you cannot see how far it goes. In this direction is the SE side of the ridge (named Wheeler Point) in which Battery Monja lies under. The South Shore Road went by there. I see no season for Americans or Filipinos to do this so I assume the Japanese dug here for some reason. Perhaps it was the holdouts keeping busy until they gave up in 1946.

It is not possible that digging in this small lateral accounts for all the dirt in the main tunnels, it came from elsewhere. I can’t imagine any of it resulting from erosion either. The dirt is not densely packed and the tunnel has the appearance of never being flooded or even very wet. A lot of it looks more like soil than crushed rock.

So where did the dirt come from? Oozlefinch’s guess for this is as good as any and he actually provides two clues that I was not aware of. He says that when he was there in ’87, (1) the gun well was nearly full of dirt and (2) there were no inside mounds. Since the opening from the gun well out to the cliff is open now and mounds of dirt are inside, this gives me a little SWAG of my own. I can imagine illegal scrappers/treasure hunters digging inside the battery at the gun well sometime after 1987. Dumping the dirt outside and down the cliff face would make it obvious that they were working there (visible from fishing boats etc) so the dirt was distributed along the floor inside the tunnels. This location is very remote on Corregidor so they could dig to their heart’s content without any interruption. By the way, EXO is correct about the scrapping. The nearby shelter for Searchlight #4 has been stripped of rebar.

The original cause of the opening at the gun well (i.e. the Casemate entrance) being filled with dirt could have been shelling from off-shore ships in 1945 that brought down part of the hill or more likely, later landslides.

Now about the tunnel under the battery; yes it exists and it does connect up into the battery at the bottom of the gun well. The entrance is directly below the Casemate entrance and actually hidden from view. You could easily miss it if you did not know it was down there.

This is an unlined tunnel cut into the solid rock. Upon entering the tunnel you see a “T” intersection. If you go right, the floor soon drops a bit and the tunnel becomes very narrow. It is eventually dead-ended. If you go left the tunnel is straight. It ends in a good sized room which is large enough to stand up in.

Along the left-side tunnel is a hole in the corner ceiling where this tunnel connects up into the bottom of the gun well. A skinny Japanese soldier could get up there with no problem where my fat a** requires some effort to do so. Coming down is much easier obviously but there is no point in doing this. Go from the battery to the tunnel via the outside cliff entrances, it can be done safely.

Battery Monja is a unique place and few people make the effort to get there. It has lots of unusual things. For example, in the video notice the big hole in the concrete floor at the entrance to the two magazines. There are others too. Even with a boat dropping you off at a nearby beach, Battery Monja is not an easy place to get to. It is quite a steep climb, vegetation can be thick and it is always hot up there as it gets direct sunlight all day long. Take lots of time and lots of water. Karl brought a rope once and that helped a lot. I would like to go there again someday.

Hey Oozlefinch, do you have any old slides you could scan to show us what you saw in 1987?

Sorry but I cannot answer your question about what happened to the original 155mm gun in the casemate, I wish I knew. A February 1945 photo shows that most of the Casemate concrete to be gone at that time, perhaps the gun too.

I will respond to the Searchlight #8 and panorama questions later.




Pre-war view of Battery Monja Gun #1 in it’s Casemate.




Another pre-war view.




February 1945 view of Wheeler Point taken offshore from a PT boat.




Battery Monja Casemate entrance today.




Looking back out the entrance.





At the rear of the gun well is the start of the tunnel. Notice that the concrete floor has been broken away.




At the rear of the Casemate we can see below the gun well through the broken floor. This leads to where we can get down to the lower tunnel.




Here is a good view of the little side tunnel seen in the video just past the 1:30 mark. It looks like a hand-dug tunnel that has collapsed.




At a tunnel intersection notice the dirt piled up against one wall and a clear footpath on the right.




Looking down at the lower tunnel entrance.




Rock slides have nearly sealed the entrance.




Inside the tunnel at the “T” intersection with the entrance is to the right.




Past the rock pile the floor slopes downward and the tunnel narrows.




The end of the right-side tunnel has been wet. Could this lower section of tunnel have been a cistern to hold drinking water for the holdouts? I can only guess.




The view near the end of the left-side tunnel.




The floor in the end room has been wet in the past too.




The hole in the corner ceiling up to the Battery Monja gun well.




Beside/under the gun well this area is about 2 to 2 ½ feet high. Crawl along here and go up through the broken floor to the right.




Here is what EXO is talking about. Not far from Battery Monja is the shelter for Searchlight #4. Rebar has been stripped from the walls and ceiling.




The view from near Battery Monja looking west towards Bataan.




Wheeler Point today.

[oozlefinch]

Fots - I have not had any success in posting photos to this board, so when I have the opportunity (we're in the process of packing up the house pending buying another, and all of my slides are now in storage) I will scan them and send them to you, and maybe you can post them. In the before and after pictures of the mouth of the casement you can see how much concrete has been chipped/blasted away. When I went in the opening it was only about 2' high, so you can see how much bigger it is now. I don't think it's too much of a SWAG to assume that the dirt that filled the gun well, and is now piled in the tunnels, came down the cliff from above during rains, etc., during the 40 plus years before I first saw it. Of course part of the dirt is probably from the hole in the floor (someone going after Yamashita's gold?) which wasn't there back in the 80's

[fots2]

oozlefinch,

I would be happy to help you out with posting some of your old slides. Let me know when you are settled and we will finalize the details. I think I could learn a few things from your photos.

I agree that much of the casemate mouth is missing today. It must have been impressive before the war. Treasure hunters are likely suspects for digging out of the gun well as there is no evidence of scrapping at this particular location.

[fots2]

beirutvet, here is the Searchlight #8 answer for you.







Morrison Hill is its name. It is the highest point on Corregidor Island at 425 feet +/-5ft. Malinta Hill is 400 ft. (Info from 1936 map).

[Registrar]

Proboards free storage of user-supplied images is no longer available to us, as the quota has long ago been filled. Essentially I am reluctant to delete the contents of the free-storage because it will leave a lot of threads and posts without their images. Instead, users are encouraged to learn to use a free hosting service, or to acquire some subscription storage.

It seems to me that a good number of our members seem to prefer photobucket, but I have subscription storage and don't know the ins and outs of the free hosting providers.

[beirutvet]

Fots2

Thanks so much for the info on the light and Morrison hill.  I did not know that Morrison was the highest point, I always assumed it was where the lighthouse was.  Very neat info on the light.  So it was on some kind of rail system, I guess the system is long gone.

[fots2]

Since we have been talking about Battery Monja, here is a little story for you that you might find interesting. I heard this a few years ago and wanted to learn more but that opportunity never came. The only reason I will mention this now is because there may be some truth to it, stranger things have happened during wartime.

First, some background.

Battery Monja was the only battery which was not retaken by the Americans in 1945. The battery and immediate area proved to be too costly as US casualties were high. On January 1st of 1946, twenty Japanese soldiers walked up to the Topside Parade Ground and surrendered which was months after the war had ended. I have read that occupying troops had heard “rustles in the bushes” at times and suspected there were stragglers but had seen or captured none. It is said that the Japanese shelter for those months was Battery Monja.




One evening I was chatting with the son of a Philippine Scout. His father said that at the end of the war there were two types of Filipinos soldiers; those who wanted “back pay” (put the war behind them and move on) and those who wanted “pay back” (to kill any remaining Japanese). To protect Japanese POWs from the local population on Luzon etc, some were moved to remote Corregidor Island where two POW camps were set up on Bottomside. The POWs provided labor for clean-up projects. Since the island was isolated, security was generally lax. There are photos of these camps on Corregidor.org.

Since I have been to Corregidor quite a few times, the ferry ride going there is generally boring so I often chat with the Sun Cruises tour guides. They have an interesting perspective to what happens there daily. One of the guides, Carlos Reyes, asked me if I knew about a Japanese soldier who used to return to Corregidor almost yearly but had not for the past few years. I said “no” and here is what he told me.

For a few years in a row, an aging Japanese man along with a Filipino translator would go to Corregidor. They kept to themselves but were noticed by the guides as they were not the usual type of tourists they see. One year Carlos went over to the Filipino and asked him why they often return to Corregidor. The Filipino told him that the Japanese man with him was a former soldier who had surrendered on Topside in 1946. Each year the Japanese man comes back to the Philippines and he takes him to Battery Wheeler where apparently he prays for his former buddies.

Carlos asked if he has been told any wartime stories. Apparently, the “holdouts” were in contact with the POWs at times when they were out on work details. They knew the war was over. On occasion, if a holdout needed something such as medical attention then they swapped clothes with a POW for a few days. As long as the daily head counts in the camps matched then it seems everything was ok.

Is the story of the Japanese holdouts finding out about the end of the war by reading a newspaper that washed up on the beach just a “face saving” measure and no further questions were asked? Who knows? There might be some truth to this story but we may never know for sure. It seems to me that the Japanese side of the “Corregidor story” has never been told. Now that would be interesting.

The Japanese man and his translator have not returned to Corregidor for a few years now. If this is true then imagine what insight we could gather from their months hiding on Corregidor.

[oozlefinch]

Fots - That is quite a story, and I see no good reason that it is not true. I'm sure that the Japanese holdouts probably discussed the act of surrender quite a bit in the year and a half after the retaking. After 09-02-45 I would think that any remaining Japanese POW's on Corregidor were probably repatriated, so the only way the holdouts would have known that the war was over would have been probably by a newspaper.