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 One
may become a leader in a variety of ways. Some learn the
skills over the course of a lifetime, while a chosen few are
born leaders. This is the story of Thomas James Eugene
Crotty, a natural leader, who became an outstanding Coast
Guard officer.
Born in 1912, Thomas James Eugene
“Jimmy” Crotty was the youngest of seven children. He grew
up in the old Fifth Ward of Buffalo, New York, and devoted
his early life to athletics and team sports. In a letter to
Crotty's mother, Helen, Jimmy's childhood friend William
Joyce reminisced about “those wonderful days when we were
boys, athletes, and friends together.” Crotty competed for
three years on the American Legion junior baseball team.
And, in his senior year in high school, he managed and
coached the team that won the 1929 American Legion Junior
National Championship. Many of the trophies and photographs
from Crotty's winning teams remain on display in the
American Legion post on Buffalo's south side.
At the Academy, Crotty excelled in leadership and athletics.
During his senior year, he served as class president, company
commander and captain of the football team. Graduation in 1934
proved to be the last time many of his classmates and friends would
see him. (Coast Guard Academy Tide Rips, 1934)
During his
senior year at Buffalo's South Park High School, Crotty applied for
entrance to the U.S. Coast Guard Academy. In the Academy entrance
examination essay, Crotty wrote his opinion regarding the nearly
ratified London Naval Treaty of 1930. He prophetically noted that
the United States “accepted a compromise with England and Japan
which gave to these two countries exactly what they wanted . . .
while [the] United States gained nothing which was necessary for her
to regain her power in the sea.” Later in the essay, he wrote, “War,
that deadly horror which spreads destruction and ruin to many
innocent and harmless countries, must be abolished.”
At the Academy, Crotty excelled in athletics. He participated in
basketball for three years and competed in football all four years,
serving as the team captain his senior year. Crotty also served as
class vice president and, during his senior year, as class president
and company commander. In the 1934 Academy yearbook, the editorial
staff wrote, “He will be missed by all of us when we come to the
temporary parting of ways, but the future will be enlightened with
thoughts that we will serve with him again. Bon Voyage and Good
Luck.” For most of Crotty's classmates, graduation would be the last
time they would see their friend.
After graduation, Crotty began a promising Coast Guard
career, which hardened him into a mature leader. For six
years, he served aboard cutters based out of New York,
Seattle, Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, and San Diego. His
assignments included duty on cutter Tampa, during her 1934
rescue of passengers from the burning passenger liner Morro
Castle; and, a Justice Department appointment as special
deputy on the Bering Sea Patrol. Throughout these years,
Crotty continued to play on, and coach, Coast Guard sports
teams.
In the late 1930s, diplomatic tensions
heightened between the U.S. and Imperial Japan and the
American military began sending additional personnel and
units to Pacific outposts. These military moves set Jimmy Crotty on a collision course with tragic events
unfolding in the Far East. In 1941, the Coast Guard assigned him to
the U.S. Navy for specialized training in mine warfare. Jimmy
probably embraced the opportunity to cross-train with the Navy. As
one of his commanding officers wrote, Jimmy was “forceful and always
enthusiastic about engaging in new problems; sometimes ‘too' willing
to attempt things when perhaps, maturer judgment would suggest
further consideration.” In April 1941, Crotty received orders to the
Navy's Mine Warfare School in Yorktown, Virginia, with additional
training with the Mine Recovery Unit at the Washington (D.C.) Navy
Yard. Crotty became the Coast Guard's leading expert in mine
warfare, demolition and the use of explosives.
After
completing his mine warfare training, Crotty received orders from
the commander of the Navy's Asiatic Fleet, Adm. Thomas Hart, to sail
for the Philippines and join a Navy mine recovery unit at the
fleet's homeport in Manila. On Tuesday, September 2, Crotty
concluded a visit to Buffalo and saw his family for the last time.
By Friday, he was in San Francisco embarking the passenger liner
S.S. President Taylor on a one-way trip to the South Pacific. The
30-year-old officer thought his deployment would last six months,
but he would never see the States again.
On Oct. 28, 1941,
Crotty finally arrived in Manila and the Navy attached him to
In�Shore Patrol Headquarters at its Cavite Navy Yard. By that time,
overall military commander Gen. Douglas Macarthur expected an attack
by the Japanese in the first half of 1942. However, on Sunday,
December 7, without warning or provocation, the Imperial Japanese
Navy launched a surprise attack on military installations at Pearl
Harbor, Hawaii. And, on Wednesday, December 10, Japanese aircraft
bombed and destroyed most of the facilities at Cavite Navy Yard.
Advancing enemy ground forces necessitated the movement of American
personnel behind fortified lines on the Bataan Peninsula and on the
island fortress of Corregidor in Manila Bay. By December 26, the
Navy had transferred the 16th Naval District Headquarters from
Cavite to Fort Mills, located within rocky Corregidor Island. The
next several months would test Crotty's mental and physical limits.
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An aerial photograph of the rocky island of Corregidor
during World War II, home to
the underground headquarters of Fort Mills. This view from the east
shows the narrow peninsula on which Japanese invasion forces landed. (U.S. Army
courtesy image)
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After his Navy command's transfer to Corregidor, Crotty served a
variety of roles with several units. In mid-December, he became
second-in-command aboard the minesweeper USS Quail, where his
shipmates knew him as “T.J.E.” At the same time, Crotty supervised
the demolition of strategic civilian and military facilities to keep
them from falling into enemy hands. These assets included the fleet
submarine USS Sea Lion, which the enemy had damaged during the
December 10 air attack. Crotty had the sub stripped of useful parts,
filled it with depth charges and blew it up sometime around
Christmas Day. Sources indicate that Crotty participated in further
demolition work at Cavite and the Navy's Sangley Point Naval
Station, before the enemy occupied the bases around Manila.
While serving aboard Quail, Crotty would disappear for days at a
time, not only for demolition missions, but wherever he was needed.
By January, the Japanese ruled the skies over the Philippines, so
grounded naval aviator Cmdr. Francis Bridget assembled approximately
500 unattached marines, Navy pilots and sailors, and converted them
into an infantry unit unofficially named the “Naval Battalion.” In
early January, the Japanese had landed troops on the undefended
beaches of Longoskawayan Point behind Bataan's American lines. The
Japanese hoped to cut supply lines and flank American and Filipino
forces. Bataan's Army command assigned Bridget and the Naval
Battalion the mission of surrounding the Japanese infiltrators and
pushing them back into the sea. Crotty rotated over to Bataan during
this time to serve in the jungles with Bridget. Late in the month,
the two men boarded the Quail and, on the morning of January 27,
they coordinated a land and sea bombardment that wiped out much of
the Japanese force hidden in the jungle and in coastal caves. The
next day, Filipino infantry took over from the Naval Battalion and
finished the job a few days later.
During the rest of
Crotty's time aboard Quail, the minesweeper provided vital
anti-aircraft cover, likely shooting down several low-flying
Japanese aircraft. Quail also maintained and patrolled the Navy's
enormous minefield seeded around Manila Bay. This minefield and one
planted by the U.S. Army prolonged the survival of American forces
by denying the Japanese navy access to Manila Bay; allowing passage
of American water traffic between Bataan, Corregidor and other
island defenses; and safeguarding U.S. submarines surfacing at night
to deliver essential supplies and remove critical personnel. On a
number of occasions, Crotty assisted in the minesweeping process,
which required two motor lifeboats, a chain and rifles. With the
chain suspended between them, the two boats proceeded along a
parallel course through the minefield. The chain would snag the live
mines, and the boat crews would raise them to the surface and shoot
holes in them until they sank. This process helped clear as many as
20 mines with the loss of only a few to detonation.
April
proved a pivotal month for Crotty. On Wednesday, April 1, he sent by
submarine the last message his family would ever receive. A little
over a week later, on Thursday, April 9, the diseased, starving and
exhausted American and Filipino troops besieged on adjacent Bataan
Peninsula could hold-out no longer and surrendered to the enemy. By
mid-April, Crotty transferred from Quail to Fort Mills, Corregidor,
and for the rest of the month, he served as adjutant to the
headquarters staff of the 16th Naval District.
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The troops left behind. A candid shot of men in the tunnels of
Corregidor photographed on May 3, 1942, and sent out on the last
submarine before the May 6, 1943 surrender. (U.S. Army
courtesy image)
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Jimmy also
served as a member of the Marine Corp's Fourth Regiment, First
Battalion, which defended the narrow strip of the island stretching
from Malinta Hill to the eastern point of Corregidor Island. Of the
four battalions defending Corregidor, only the First Battalion would
see action against the enemy, which landed on Tuesday, May 5.
Eyewitness accounts indicate that Crotty supervised the crew manning
a 75mm field howitzer dug-in on top of Malinta Hill, the small rocky
mountain that held the island's underground command center. Crotty's
field piece faced east, toward the oncoming Japanese troops and he
served up until American forces surrendered in the afternoon of
Wednesday, May 6.
With Corregidor's capitulation, Crotty
became the first Coast Guard prisoner of war since the War of 1812,
when the British captured U.S. Revenue Cutter Service vessels and
their crews. The Japanese loaded Crotty and his fellow prisoners
into watercraft transferring POWs from Corregidor Island to Manila,
where they boarded railroad cars bound for a prison camp in northern
Luzon. Eyewitnesses indicate that the prisoners stood throughout the
lengthy trip and many of the weak and infirm who entered the boxcars
never left them alive. Crotty, however, made it to Cabanatuan
Prison's Camp #1, and bunked in barracks reserved for officers with
the rank of lieutenant.
Back home in Buffalo, Crotty's status
remained unknown. At South Buffalo's St. Aquinas Catholic Church,
parishioners remembered Crotty in their prayers. Meanwhile, Helen
Crotty had received no word of her son's situation since his final
April 1 letter. According to Jimmy's older sister, Mary, Mrs. Crotty
watched and waited for the mailman every day and seemed to fail
visibly each day.
The Crotty family finally contacted
Washington, D.C., for any information regarding Jimmy's location or
condition. However, little was known at Headquarters until late
summer, when survivors and escaped prisoners returned from the
Philippines. In October 1942, Coast Guard Commandant Russell Waesche
met with, and later received a letter from, Navy intelligence
officer Lt. Cmdr. Denys Knoll. On Tuesday, May 3, Knoll had boarded
USS Spearfish, the last submarine to depart Corregidor before the
island fortress fell to enemy forces. In the letter, Knoll recounted
his recollections of Crotty's character and service in the defense
of the Philippines: “Lt. Crotty impressed us all with his fine
qualities of naval leadership, which were combined with a very
pleasant personality and a willingness to assist everyone to the
limit of his ability. He continued to remain very cheerful and
retained a high morale until my departure from Fort Mills the
evening of May 3.” Knoll concluded his letter to Commandant Waesche:
Having seen Lt. Crotty undergo all the trials during my five
months in the Manila Bay area, I feel sure that the rigors and
trials of a prisoner of war will produce little if any change, and I
look forward to the return of Lt. Crotty to active duty, for I am
sure he will continue to perform his duties in keeping with all the
traditions of the Naval and Coast Guard Services.
By the time
Knoll penned his lines to the commandant, Jimmy Crotty had lost the
battle against an invisible enemy. In July, a diphtheria epidemic
swept through Cabanatuan and, by mid-month, Crotty contracted the
illness. Eyewitness accounts indicate that with the camp's lack of
proper medication and health care, he passed away on Saturday, July
19, only three days after getting sick. A POW burial party interred
him in a mass grave outside the prison walls. In a subsequent letter
to Mrs. Crotty, fellow prisoner and Marine Corps officer, Michiel
Dobervich, wrote, “[Crotty's] friends were heartbroken over the
suddenness of his death, but we had to carry on, the same as you
do.”
Jimmy Crotty performed exceptional duty under trying
circumstances and distinguished himself through his various combat
roles. He participated in Philippine combat operations in 1941 and
1942 as a member of U.S. Navy, Marine Corps and U.S. Army and served
in a variety of missions against an overwhelming enemy force. During
the Japanese invasion of the Philippines, Crotty relied on his
innate leadership skills time and again in the defense of Bataan,
and later at Corregidor. At Cabanatuan, prisoners remembered Crotty
for his sense of humor and positive attitude. One of them recounted
his “continued optimism and cheerfulness under the most adverse
circumstances. He was outstanding in this respect at a time when
such an attitude was so necessary for the general welfare.”
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A rare photograph of Allied POWs marching in formation at
Cabanatuan Prison (1942/3 period). Crotty was remembered by fellow prisoners for his
sense of optimism despite his dire surroundings in the prison camp.
(Courtesy of the Macarthur Memorial Library, Norfolk, Virginia)
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In January 1945, the Army's Sixth Ranger Battalion liberated
Cabanatuan Prison, an event glorified in books and movies.
Liberation came too late for Crotty however, whose body remains
buried alongside thousands of American and Filipino heroes who
perished in the insufferable conditions at Cabanatuan. No one knows
the exact location of Crotty's mortal remains. Records indicate that
Jimmy Crotty was the only active duty Coast Guardsman that fought
the Japanese at Bataan and Corregidor, operations that merited
authorization of the Defense of the Philippines battle streamer for
the Coast Guard.
The story of Lt. Crotty has been lost and
forgotten like the heroic sacrifices made by thousands of defenders
of Bataan and Corregidor. Even though he singlehandedly earned the
battle streamer for the Service, Crotty received little individual
recognition for his heroic efforts during the war or its aftermath.
Finally, in 2010, the Service recognized Jimmy Crotty's heroism in a
ceremony at Buffalo, presenting the Crotty family with the Bronze
Star, Purple Heart and other fitting medals and awards. And, in
November 2015, the Coast Guard Academy will recognize Crotty by
inducting him into the Academy's Wall of Gallantry along with three
other combat heroes who merited that recognition.
The
official U.S. Marine Corps history for the defense of Corregidor
concludes that those who fought in the ranks of the Fourth Marine
Regiment, “whatever their service of origin, were, if only for a
brief moment, Corregidor Marines.” Thomas James Eugene Crotty served
his men and his country to the best of his ability under desperate
conditions. In his letter to Crotty's mother, Jimmy's boyhood
friend, Bill Joyce, concluded, “He left this world a better place
than he found it, and I am more than thankful that I was honored to
know him.” Jimmy Crotty was a member of the long blue line and his
brief life embodied the Coast Guard's core values of honor, respect
and devotion to duty.
By William H. Thiesen, Atlantic Area Historian, USCG
Provided
through
Coast
Guard
Copyright 2015
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