Hunted By Japs For Years, American Flier Is Rescued

by Al Dopking

Published 1 November 1944

With the 7th Division, Leyte, P.I.—A slender, blue-eyed American who escaped at Bataan’s fall was rescued from Leyte mountains Monday, ending three years of secret missions in the Philippines with the Japanese constantly hounding him.

Second Lieutenant Joseph Francis St. John, twenty-four, Philadelphia, related the story from the bamboo hut where he was given his second pair of shoes in three years. He was brought through American lines by First Lieutenant Claude Hornbacher, Sebewaing, Michigan, whose patrol reached him by crossing the bay south of Abuyog.

Rescued also was red-haired Ensign Edwin J. Eattie, twenty-one, Columbiaville, Michigan, naval pilot who crashed in a dogfight during the invasion and took refuge with St. John.

(The dispatch failed to reveal any details of the “secret missions.”)

St. John came down from the mountains with a burning hatred for the Japanese and a great admiration for the Filipinos who helped him hide. A B-17 gunner of the 14th Bombardment Squadron when he was bombed out 7 December 1941, St. John reached Bataan Christmas eve and later with nine hundred other airmen went to Malabang Airfield on Mindanao where “we waited for planes that never came.”

When the surrender came, St. John and eleven other Americans fled to the hills and finally reached Leyte 8 May 1942, in a frail native launch, passing through the straits in the darkness. There, Col. Cornell, the island commander, told them they must leave before 5 p.m., 10 May, to avoid surrender. They left two hours before the deadline in an outrigger boat for Australia but they were shipwrecked off Cauit Point, Mindanao, 17 May, in a storm. It was St. John’s birthday.

Then began his guerrilla life. He subsisted on fried monkey meat and tropical fruit. He once wasted from 155 pounds to one hundred before he was cured of malaria with “ditto,” tree bark brews concocted for him by a native. His escapes were many. Once two hundred Nips charged his hide-out, shooting everything at him without success.