World War II Diary: Remembering Dr. Wassell and the Wounded Sailors on Java….75 Years Later
In the early days of World War II, in the spring of 1942, the American people needed some good news. There had been little in the previous five months since Japan’s devastating attack on the U. S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor in early December of 1941. Soon afterwards, American forces on the Pacific islands of Guam and Wake Island had surrendered to overwhelming Japanese invasion forces. Britain had lost Hong Kong, its supposedly impregnable fortress of Singapore, and two of its mightiest warships in the Pacific fighting. The oil and rubber rich Dutch East Indies had fallen in March. On April 9, American and Filipino forces, after an intense four month long struggle, surrendered to the Japanese on the Bataan Peninsula in the Philippines. It was the largest surrender of U. S. forces in our history. There actually was some very good news at this time, but it was being kept quiet as much as possible for security reasons. On April 18, 1942, the now famous Doolittle Raiders had carried out a surprise bombing attack on the Japanese homeland. With carrier launched B-25 bombers, they had caught the Japanese completely off guard. However, at this time, the American public knew hardly anything about the Doolittle Raid and its “thirty seconds over Tokyo.” They still needed encouraging news. There had been plenty of American courage exhibited thus far in the war, but little success in our struggle against the brutal and oppressive Axis powers.
On Tuesday, April 28, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered one of his memorable radio fireside chats to the nation. His words would provide some badly needed encouragement. “He remained with them, knowing that he would be captured by the enemy….. ( he) kept them alive by his skill and inspired them by his own courage…. ( he) was almost like a Christlike shepherd devoted to his flock.” Roosevelt spoke of a 58- year- old U. S. Navy doctor who had been serving on the southwest Pacific island of Java, Dr. Corydon Wassell. This incredible story of true heroism and sacrifice boosted the spirits of the American people, making Wassell a legend almost overnight. The famous filmmaker Cecil B. DeMille, listening by radio, contacted Roosevelt soon after the address. He proposed to make a Hollywood blockbuster movie about Wassell’s exploits. When it was completed two years later, the premiere of Paramount Studios inspirational “The Story of Dr. Wassell,” starring the legendary Gary Cooper, took place on June 6, 1944, D- Day in Europe. Prior to that, the renowned author of “Goodbye Mr. Chips” and “Lost Horizon,” James Hilton, wrote a bestselling book about the heroic Navy doctor, “The Story of Dr. Wassell,” one of his only works of non- fiction. Hilton donated all of his earnings from the book to the Navy Relief Society. But, who was Corydon McAlmont Wassell?
The almost 60- year- old physician had lived a full and fascinating life, even before being ordered by the Navy, very early in the war, to duty on Java in the Dutch East Indies. Java is today the most populous of all the islands that comprise the nation of Indonesia. Corydon Wassell was born on the fourth of July, 1884 in Little Rock, Arkansas. A modest man with a slow drawl, he received a medical degree from the University of Ark. and completed further medical training at Johns Hopkins University. Over the next 30 years he would practice medicine in a staggering variety of ways and locales. After serving for a few years in rural Arkansas, as a small- town doctor with a big heart for poor sharecroppers and black field workers, Wassell and his wife went to China as Christian medical missionaries. Known for his compassion, he was a key figure in the Red Cross while there, worked in mission hospitals, had a private practice, researched and wrote about encephalitis and amoebic dysentery, discovered the source of a devastating plague and served as a maritime port medical officer. During his roughly 14 years in China, he and his wife had four children born to them. When his first wife died, he later remarried to a missionary nurse. Wassell’s mission work took him to some of the remotest and most difficult areas in China.
Somehow, in the midst of all of this activity, the good doctor managed to receive a commission in the U. S. Navy Reserve as a medical officer. Lieutenant Wassell even had a stint of unpaid active duty with the famed American gunboats of the Yangtze River Patrol in China. In 1927, he left China for another period of private practice in Arkansas. Soon, however, he moved into the field of public health, working with the Little Rock public schools, pushing for affordable diphtheria immunizations and battling malaria in the Civilian Conservation Corps ( CCC) camps during the Great Depression. Finally, in 1940, with war clouds looming on the horizon, the Navy recalled him to active duty. After a brief initial tour of duty in Key West, Fla., he was ordered to the naval base at Cavite, near Manila, in the Philippines. His ship, scheduled to sail from the States for the Pacific on Dec. 7, 1941, was delayed due to the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor on that same day. Wassell was subsequently reassigned to the Surabaya Naval Base on Java.
Commander Wassell’s primary task at Surabaya was to serve as the U. S. Navy’s chief medical officer for the island of Java. No sooner had he arrived in January of 1942 than the Japanese noose around the islands of the southwest Pacific began to tighten. As island after island fell, the Empire of Japan set its sights squarely on Java, known for its abundance of rice, oil and rubber. Wassell had arrived just as the island was about to feel the hammer blow of a Japanese invasion.
Owing to both Surabaya’s open and exposed location on Java’s northeast coast and a pressing need at a small Dutch hospital in the island’s interior, Dr. Wassell was ordered inland. His job now was to act as a liaison between the kindly Dutch hospital staff and 41 injured U. S. Navy sailors being treated there. The sailors had been wounded, most severely, when their ships, the light cruiser USS MARBLEHEAD and the heavy cruiser USS HOUSTON, had been mauled on Feb. 4 by a powerful Japanese force closing the net around Java. The Dutch doctors and nurses, aided by Javanese staff, were proficient and compassionate. In the years to come, Dr. Wassell and the survivors of the American contingent being cared for there, would fondly remember their kindness. As the new doctor took up duties at the hospital, Java’s days were numbered.
Everything and everyone on the island of Java seemed to be in a state of confusion. Wassell feverishly fought for help in evacuating his 41 patients to safety, hopefully in Australia. Stories of Japanese atrocities toward hospital patients, in their beds, during the conquest of Singapore had been widely circulated among Allied servicemen. He and his precious flock, these 41 young American men, knew clearly the fate that could be awaiting them. Evacuation, however, was greatly complicated by the condition of the patients, several being unable to walk.
Finally, the Navy ordered Wassell to get those who were less seriously wounded and ambulatory on a train for transport to the south Java port of Tjilatjap, for evacuation. The rest, those with more serious wounds, were simply to be left behind. As Dr. Wassell struggled with the order, he made the decision to take all 41 men, including those on stretchers. The 50- mile journey through the jungle by rail was hot and hard, punctuated with frequent stops, one due to a Japanese air raid. Tjilatjap was a teeming sea of humanity. Despite his orders to bring the men there, Wassell was initially told that none of the wounded sailors would be allowed to embark and leave on any of the waiting ships. Only after the intervention of a high- ranking officer, were the walking wounded allowed to board a large Dutch freighter, the BRESKENS. The sailors confined to stretchers would have to stay behind. The rationale was that if they were torpedoed at sea, these men could not help themselves. Dr. Wassell, the ever intrepid caregiver and compassionate shepherd, stayed with them. Nine patients, and the man who represented their only chance for survival, made the excruciatingly painful 50 mile journey back to their hospital in virtual silence.
Dr. Wassell now saw these remaining sailors as his boys. They mattered to him. They were not expendable. He determined to do whatever he could to save them. A call to a nearby airfield, serving as base for U. S. and British warplanes, yielded the wonderful news that they would be able to evacuate his boys soon, in one of the very few remaining bombers about to relocate from the base. Within a few hours, however, Japanese bombardment of the airfield damaged the designated plane. There would now be no room for his wounded sailors. Shortly after this heartbreaking news, word came that Japanese troops had actually landed on Java. The bombs and guns could now be heard in the distance.
About 24 hours after arriving back in the interior, just before dawn, the lead elements of a retreating British convoy rolled into town. Wassell pleaded with the commanding officer for a ride, for himself and the wounded, back to Tjilatjap, where a few ships still remained. The Brits were more than happy to help the Yanks. In short order, still drained and suffering from the demanding travel of the last few days, Dr. Wassell and his flock were headed back to the port city. This time, travelling in army trucks and an old car, the injured men suffered even more. It was late February 1942, almost exactly 75 years ago.
Arriving in Tjilatjap, Dr. Wassell secured a room in which the men could rest and took a boat out to one of only two ships remaining at anchor in the harbor. She was the JANSSENS, a modest sized steamer. Built to carry only a small number of passengers, she was bursting at the seams with a mass of humanity. The captain of the vessel resisted Wassell initially, not wanting seriously wounded passengers on his ship. The faithful doctor pleaded relentlessly for his men. Finally, the JANSSENS’ skipper agreed, but only on the condition that the wounded men were solely Wassell’s responsibility. Leaving the harbor at night, under the cover of darkness and falling rain, the American sailors were forced to lie on the open deck at the stern of the ship, under an awning. Wassell liked it this way. The cooler air would be better than the stale, hot air below decks. Plus, they would be nearer the lifeboats.
The JANSSENS’ voyage to freedom had barely gotten underway, when they were strafed repeatedly by machine gun fire from Japanese Zero fighter planes. Amazingly, the ship itself was essentially unharmed, although ten people onboard, mostly ship’s crew, were wounded. The sailors, fully exposed on the open deck, had not been touched. It was Dr. Wassell, of course, who treated the wounded, using the ship’s bar as an improvised surgical table. At this time, a large number of the passengers, fearing that the ship was doomed, asked to be put off. A few hours later, many of them were deposited on shore at an inlet. The JANSSENS then proceeded due south, bound for Australia. The threat of further attack, by air and by submarine, seemed very likely, if not probable. But, the JANSSENS plowed ahead day by day, with men constantly straining to see land. After ten arduous, tense days at sea, the little steamer pulled into the harbor of Freemantle, Australia….. and freedom.
Dr. Wassell made sure all of the sailors were placed in hospitals ashore. A few days later, he was shocked to be told that he had received the Navy Cross, for “gallantry and splendid leadership.” When informed of the tribute paid to him by the rescued sailors, he wept. Dr. Wassell retired from the Navy in 1947, with the rank of Read Admiral. He and his wife served once again, for a brief time, as unpaid missionaries on the Hawaiian island of Molokai. All of the income that he received from the highly successful film of his fight to evacuate the wounded sailors of Java was donated to a hospital for the blind and deaf in Arkansas. He died in 1958, at the age of 73, and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
Our nation must never forget men like Dr. Corydon Wassell. President Reagan’s warning about the history of our country is once again very appropriate, “If we forget what we did, we won’t know who we are.” Tell your children and grandchildren about Dr. Wassell and the rescued sailors. Teachers, tell his story in your classroom. Share it with your family members and neighbors. Remember Dr. Wassell and the wounded sailors on Java….. 75 years ago.