PBS_The Airmen and the Headhunters
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00:001944, stranded U.S. airmen are protected from the Japanese by the so-called Wild Men of
00:07Borneo.
00:08These folks know how to fight.
00:10They're dying to get back to hunting heads.
00:14Japanese heads.
00:15And they're encouraged by an eccentric British major sent to enlist local tribes in a guerrilla
00:19war against the Japanese and rescue Allied soldiers.
00:24I always had a hope that we were going to make it.
00:26The Airmen and the Headhunters, coming up on Secrets of the Dead.
00:47Secrets of the Dead was made possible by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.
01:05At the height of World War II, as battles raged around the world, a little-known conflict
01:10took place in the remote jungles of Borneo.
01:15The unlikely Allies, a crew of stranded American airmen hiding from the Japanese, indigenous
01:22tribes who still fought with blowpipes and machetes, and an eccentric British major
01:30hell-bent on taking jungle warfare to the enemy.
01:34There is only one sort of rule in jungle warfare.
01:37Do not be smelt before you are heard.
01:40Do not be heard before you are seen.
01:42And below all, do not be seen.
01:50The young, naive U.S. aircrew thought they had landed among bloodthirsty savages.
01:55But they quickly found out they were wrong.
02:00They put their lives on the line to prevent our capture.
02:05We began to realize that.
02:08So those people were risking everything.
02:11As island traditions met Western conflict, the very definitions of civilization and culture
02:16were tested.
02:18And an outlawed bloody right was resurrected.
02:24I saw four Japs lose their heads.
02:32I knew quite well if they got me, I was dead.
02:46November 16, 1944, the day World War II crashed headlong into the tropical island of Borneo.
02:57High above the clouds, a huge formation of American B-24 Liberators was on a routine
03:03mission to bomb Japanese ships.
03:08Sitting in one of the aircraft was wireless operator Dan Illerich.
03:13The Navy had seen or identified a Japanese aircraft carrier headed for Brunei Bay.
03:19And so we were to try to find that aircraft carrier and do what we could.
03:27It took the Liberators five and a quarter hours to get to Brunei Bay from their air
03:31base in the Dutch East Indies.
03:36The 11-man crew on Dan's plane had been together for less than six months.
03:40They were on their eighth mission.
03:43The oldest among them was only 22.
03:47This is the pilot, Tom Coberly.
03:49This is the co-pilot, Jerry Rosenthal.
03:52This is the navigator, Fred Brennan.
03:55This was the bombardier, Phil Koren.
03:59This was Jim Nock, the engineer.
04:01This was me, the radio operator.
04:06I was 18 when this picture was taken, just getting ready to turn 19.
04:14Young and inexperienced, these airmen were fighting the war above a mysterious country
04:18they knew little about.
04:21The third largest island in the world, Borneo is sparsely populated and covered in dense
04:27mountainous jungle.
04:30Zoologist Gaethorn Cranbrook has spent his life studying this wild countryside and its
04:35many natural resources.
04:37Borneo was very underexplored.
04:40The forests were not regarded as an important resource because timber extraction was impossible
04:47in those days.
04:48Borneo was always reputed to have gold, and what Borneo did actually have was oil.
04:58Borneo's oil made it an important battleground during World War II.
05:06After their attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the Japanese swiftly captured territories
05:12across Southeast Asia.
05:16Borneo under British and Dutch colonial rule was one of the first to fall, and soon the
05:22island was supplying nearly half the oil for Japan's war machine.
05:28But by November of 1944, as the American liberators approached Brunei Bay, the tide had turned.
05:36Japan was losing its grip on the region, and the U.S. Army Air Forces were regularly bombing
05:41oil tankers coming into and out of Borneo.
05:48Expecting a routine flight, Dan Illerich's squadron was surprised by heavier-than-expected
05:53resistance.
05:56Flying into a maelstrom of anti-aircraft fire, Dan's plane was hit.
06:00They took us in straight and level for too long, and that gave the Jap gunners a chance
06:06to, you know, pick us up.
06:10With the flight deck and rudder control badly damaged, the aircraft veered off over Borneo's
06:15jungle interior.
06:22Deep in the forest, the local tribespeople had no idea their lives were about to be changed
06:27by the approaching aircraft.
06:31Two young boys saw the plane descend.
06:34Yes, it was very low in the sky and smoking.
06:42All we could hear was the sound. And then we saw the smoke. That's all we saw.
06:53When it reached Long Kasarun, we saw these parachutes, and they came down.
07:05We never made a jump, and we didn't know how we were going to land on the ground. I went
07:09down through a bunch of bushes and trees and stuff. I think that's where I got my face
07:15all bloody.
07:21The airmen were scattered across the jungle. Not all of them survived.
07:32Four of them fell some distance from the plane, but two landed a bit closer. The man who was
07:39closest to the plane died, but he didn't burn to death.
07:47Lieutenant Koren and I landed almost on top of each other.
07:55Dan and Phil Koren, the bombardier, landed some distance from the plane. They had no
07:59idea whether any of their fellow crew members were still alive.
08:05But Dan did know that he was the only one from his section of the plane to have made
08:09it out safely.
08:12I'm the only survivor off of that flight deck. There were four of us on the flight deck.
08:17Fred Brennan, the navigator, was killed outright. The pilot, Tom Coberly, had serious wounds
08:24in his leg, compound fracture of his leg. The co-pilot, Jerry Rosenthal, had a very
08:29severe wound on the right side of his head. I think that Jerry Rosenthal lived long enough
08:37to get us out of the airport. And I think why we went down, why the airplane started
08:42to spin, and we had to leave it, was Jerry died.
08:47Dan and Phil knew the burning aircraft would soon draw unwanted attention to their position.
08:52They needed to move.
08:55We were on the side of the hill, very close to where the airplane went in, and of course
08:59we were wanting to get away from there, so it was downhill.
09:08It was pure jungle.
09:15We didn't know where we were, we didn't know who we were going to deal with, and we were
09:19going to have to try to get ourselves organized somehow.
09:26We had no idea of Japanese occupation or where we were.
09:35Their number one priority was to avoid capture by the Japanese. Japan's soldiers were known
09:42to torture and execute their prisoners. A photograph of one particular beheading had
09:48been widely circulated among Allied air crews.
09:53Fortunately, the heroism of their dying co-pilot had bought the men several precious weeks.
10:00The B-24 had crashed near the settlement of Long Kasserun, a good distance from the Japanese
10:05garrisons on the coast.
10:11But the remoteness of their location brought a new set of dangers.
10:16The airmen had fallen into the territory of the so-called Wild Men of Borneo.
10:22The outside world called them Dayaks, but they were actually a group of more than 200
10:27different tribes, many with fierce reputations.
10:31When the plane crashed, they went to investigate.
10:39It was a few days before we could get to the plane. The day after it happened, we couldn't
10:45get close to the plane. The fire was very hot and we couldn't go near it. The river
10:51was full of fuel, so much fuel. Lots of the jungle around the river was burnt because
10:57of all the fuel in the river.
11:02As the Dayaks approached, Dan and Phil moved off down the mountain. But they didn't do
11:09much to cover their tracks.
11:14At the point we came out, there was a beach area where we were.
11:21And we were sitting on the sand, on the slope of the sand, when both of us felt that we
11:32were, you know, something was happening. We sensed it.
11:37And that was when the Dayaks first found us. And they reluctantly appeared. They were across
11:43the river, and they were being very cautious about approaching us.
11:50We had no idea who they were. Everyone was scared. No one knew what was going on.
11:58And then one of the Dayaks got brave enough to come across the stream towards us.
12:08And as he walked up the sandbank, and he saw the holster, all of a sudden he started hollering,
12:21Oosa, Oosa, USA.
12:24Dan and Phil were amazed that these so-called savages had even heard of the U.S.
12:32The airmen would soon learn that other Americans had preceded them to these jungles in more
12:36peaceful times.
12:39In the 1930s, Protestant missionaries had come to Borneo to proselytize.
12:46Among them was Reverend John Wilfinger, who had successfully converted many of the Dayaks,
12:51including half of Kapung Balang's Lundaya tribe, to Christianity.
12:56But the Japanese invasion brought the missionary work to an end.
13:02Reverend Judith Hyman has studied the horrors of the Japanese arrival.
13:07Most of the missionaries had been rounded up and taken off to a camp and murdered, including
13:14the wives and the babies. And this horrified, just horrified the Lundaya.
13:23Their favorite local missionary, John Wilfinger, who had escaped from this because he happened
13:29to have been up country, gave himself up and was taken down to Tarakan and was executed
13:38there on Christmas Eve.
13:41Wilfinger's beheading bred in the Lundaya a deep hatred for the Japanese. And with the
13:46arrival of the airmen, they had a chance to get back at their enemies. They welcomed the
13:50Americans into their communal longhouses.
13:55We went directly to a longhouse. They prepared dinner for us and then as the sun went down
14:00and became dark, we sat around the fire and they went about their customary things of
14:06doing and they showed us where they wanted us to go to sleep and we spent the night.
14:15Deep in the heart of Borneo, the airmen had found shelter with a most unexpected ally.
14:21It remained unclear how far the Dayaks would go to protect them when the armed Japanese
14:26patrols arrived from the coast.
14:35The following morning, the Lundaya led Dan and Phil to a lean-to in the jungle. There
14:41they found flight engineer Jim Nock and nose gunner Eddie Haviland.
14:48The four of us got together. Eddie was blinded. He couldn't see because of some cut wounds
14:57and wounds to his eyes. So we stayed there until Eddie was able to see and maybe be able
15:03to walk.
15:05With no information on the whereabouts of the other crew members, the four survivors
15:09began thinking about rescue. They had been briefed that U.S. submarines often passed
15:15by the northern tip of Borneo looking for downed airmen. But with their injuries, the
15:21harsh terrain and Japanese patrols along the coast, trekking the 200 miles to the spot
15:27was not an option.
15:31Instead, they prepared to meet with William Makahana, the local administrator charged
15:36with running this jungle region for the Japanese.
15:42This is a photo of William Makahana, very brave man, with a very brave wife right behind
15:51him, hour behind his throat.
15:57Makahana was an Indonesian who had worked as a teacher with the American missionaries.
16:02Now, he was the reluctant liaison between the Dayaks and the Japanese. When news of
16:08the downed aircraft reached him, he had no choice but to inform his bosses further down
16:13river.
16:16But although he officially answered to the Japanese, Makahana's loyalties lay with the
16:21tribe's people. He is still fondly remembered.
16:28That man was really good with the people. That was Makahana. He was working as the district
16:36officer here.
16:40Committed Christians, Makahana and his wife knew it was up to them to keep the airmen
16:44from meeting the same fate as their missionary predecessors.
16:50His job was to turn them over to the Japanese. And between his own conscience and the even
16:58more strenuous conscience of his Christian wife, he couldn't do it.
17:06Makahana set up a meeting with the local Dayak headman and asked them to help him hide the
17:12Americans.
17:18But finding a good hiding place presented a challenge. Many of the Christian Dayaks
17:23took their religion so seriously, they would be unable to lie when the Japanese questioned
17:28them.
17:30So Makahana needed to move the airmen to a more remote area, where unconverted Dayaks
17:35still practiced their ancient rituals.
17:38Makahana started moving us west, deeper into non-Christian areas.
17:45When the Japanese heard the American airmen had landed in the jungle, they came up to
18:05Long Barang to look for them.
18:13Long Barang was the administrative center of Makahana's district, and also where he
18:17lived with his young family.
18:20Makahana had told the Japanese that the airmen had crash-landed somewhere nearby, but had
18:25not revealed that the Dayaks had found them and were hiding them in the forest.
18:31We built huts for the Americans twice. They spent one night in the first hut, and on the
18:36second night we moved them somewhere upriver, to a small river on a route that no one would
18:42pass along.
18:47Makahana knew that if his subterfuge was even suspected, the Japanese would reap terrible
18:51revenge on him, his family, and the Dayaks in his district.
18:57So in early December, three weeks after the crash, Dan and the other airmen were moved
19:02even deeper into the jungle.
19:03It was about a week or ten days that they had us on the side of the mountain, when they
19:08came and got us again, and took us to what we call Polkat Gulf, which was down in a very
19:16steep ravine, had running water, and they left us with an amount of dry rice and chopped
19:25wood and a pot to cook in, and they indicated to us to stay put, don't go anywhere, just
19:31stay here.
19:34Four airmen remained hidden for the next six weeks, completely dependent on the Dayaks
19:39for their survival. Their injuries, including Eddie's damaged eye, were healing, but malnutrition
19:45and the jungle heat were taking their toll.
19:49By the middle of January 1945, each man had lost close to thirty pounds.
19:55I always had a hope that we were going to make it, that we were going to get out of
19:59it somehow. I didn't know how we were going to do it, but I think we were being very optimistic
20:04about our circumstances.
20:07While the Americans hid in the gulch, small groups of Japanese soldiers had been fruitlessly
20:12searching for them and the remains of their plane. Finally, the authorities decided to
20:17send in a large patrol to flush the airmen out once and for all.
20:24There was chaos in the village. Japanese were coming in and out. People from other villages
20:32came to look for the Americans. I told them the Americans had left and we didn't know
20:37where they'd gone.
20:46The Dayak's stubborn refusal to give up the Americans had strained Japanese patience to
20:50the breaking point. They knew they had been tricked and were looking for revenge.
20:57The Japanese were asking us, where is the airmen?
21:07They went to look for the airmen, but we'd hidden them. The Japanese were very angry.
21:17The Japanese hostility struck a raw nerve in the Dayaks, who already harboured a deep
21:22resentment for their occupiers. Not only had the Japanese beheaded their beloved missionaries,
21:29they had confiscated food and goods, killed livestock, and worst of all, mistreated the
21:35local women.
21:38They always bothered the girls. They would go after them. That's why we were so upset
21:43with them.
21:49All the people had a big meeting about killing the Japanese. They were saying, if we don't
21:56kill them, then we'll become the victims. They'll execute all of us.
22:04Enraged and desperate, Makahanap and the Dayaks were about to cross a dangerous line. They
22:12decided it was time to fight back.
22:18A group of warriors crept into a longhouse and killed three Japanese soldiers with machetes.
22:27But there were more coming, brought by Dayak boatmen who had been forced into service.
22:35Two boats came, maybe three or four boats. The river was flooded at the time.
22:47When they reached the rapids at Lompaku, all of the boatmen stepped out and started dragging
22:52the boats up the river.
22:56After they'd pulled the boats up, they made camp, and the Japanese started sleeping inside
23:01the boats.
23:07They were still asleep when the boatmen turned around and stabbed them all to death.
23:16Even the women were enlisted in the fight. Makahanap came up with a daring plan to lure
23:21the Japanese soldiers into a trap using nudity.
23:27He asked Binan and some of the other girls to bathe naked in the river and stand on a
23:32rock calling out to the Japanese.
23:35Then the Japanese came down to the river and went towards them.
23:41My friend Lasang Dawat and I took out our spears and stabbed them, and slashed them
23:46in the back.
23:53But the Dayaks weren't just executing the Japanese. With Makahanap's tacit approval,
23:59the warriors had agreed to resurrect an ancient bloody ritual.
24:08Yes, we cut them here, and here, and here.
24:23They were on their way to Long Matiu to look for the two Japanese who had killed them.
24:36The ritual was headhunting, and the Dayaks took the heads of nearly every Japanese soldier
24:42they killed.
24:47We brought the heads and distributed them to every village.
24:57After the heads had been taken, the villages were very peaceful.
25:08The Dayaks were thrilled to have resumed their long-lost custom. Headhunting had not been
25:13practiced in Borneo for years, because the island's colonial rulers, the British and
25:17the Dutch, had outlawed it at the turn of the century.
25:23But the banning had not stopped many Dayaks from missing the practice, which had been
25:27an intrinsic part of their culture for hundreds of years.
25:32The people who hadn't become Christian had a big hole in the middle of their religion.
25:39It was like having the mass without the wine or the bread. They didn't have the central
25:46rite, and it didn't have the excitement, the thrill, the courage, the blood that had been
25:55part of headhunting.
25:58The headhunting went hand in hand with special ceremonies in the longhouses, and had more
26:03to do with ritual than war.
26:08Still hidden deep in the jungle, and unaware of the recent killings, Dan, Phil, Eddie and
26:13Jim were about to experience the celebrations firsthand.
26:18We were damned at no firewood and no machetes to cut firewood with, and all we had was raw
26:23rice. And we thought we were in bad shape. And then they came and got us, and they brought
26:31us back, took us back down to Penaragon Lagoon's place, longhouse, and that's where we walked
26:38into smoking heads over the fire.
26:48The young Americans had been brought in to witness a rare headhunting feast.
27:01There was insistent ringing of gongs. That was their music, the different tones of brass
27:12gongs, and they beat out rhythms.
27:16Yes, we wanted to celebrate, to celebrate for winning the war.
27:23The Japanese heads were washed and dried before being smoked over the longhouse fire.
27:30According to Dayak beliefs, these were protective measures to ensure that no misfortune came
27:35to the longhouse.
27:39If the airmen needed any proof of how far they were from home, this was it.
27:44Very happy that it wasn't our heads hanging there smoking.
27:48That's their way of life. I was a guest in their house. I wasn't going to criticize what
27:53they were doing. That was my feeling. Maybe I should have felt bad about it, but I didn't.
28:01I knew that that could have been my head in a sack going down a river if it had been reversed.
28:09The Americans were very happy when we killed the Japanese, because now they knew they were safe.
28:22With the Japanese no longer an immediate threat, the airmen were moved back to the village
28:26of Long Barang. There, Makahanap gave them news about the rest of their crew. Three others
28:33had survived the crash. Tom Capon, John Nelson, and Franny Harrington had been found by other
28:39Dayaks in a neighboring district.
28:42The longer we were dealing with Makahanap and the longer we were dealing with the Dayaks,
28:46we began to realize that they were on our side. As well as they could, they were going
28:54to protect us.
28:59But there was only so much the Dayaks could do. After two months in the jungle, the Americans
29:04were malnourished, suffering from tropical diseases, and in need of medical attention.
29:11They were happy to be alive, but starting to lose hope of ever being rescued.
29:19Little did they know, help from the outside would soon be on its way. All across Southeast
29:25Asia, the Allies were recapturing territories from the Japanese. Borneo was a primary objective
29:32for the British. A third of the island had been controlled by Britain before the war,
29:37and the United Kingdom wanted it back.
29:44In addition to a large seaborne invasion, they were planning to establish a Dayak guerrilla
29:49army that could ambush the Japanese from the island's interior. But to organize this
29:54unusual force, they needed someone with local knowledge. They selected an eccentric, self-taught
30:00anthropologist who had led an expedition to Borneo in 1932. His name was Tom Harrison.
30:08Harrison had few military qualifications, but his understanding of the Dayaks more than
30:15made up for his lack of combat skills.
30:19He fell in love with the people. He found them very congenial, which they are. They're
30:24so courteous, they're so polite, they're very friendly, and I think he had a good time as
30:30a young man there. So I think that was how his enthusiasm had arisen, and he was one
30:36of the very few people available who seemed to have some kind of expertise on the interior
30:40of Borneo.
30:43Not only did he have experience living with the Dayaks, he had experience acting like
30:47them. He had marked himself with tribal tattoos, and believed the only way to truly understand
30:54local people was to immerse oneself in their culture completely. When the British approached
31:00Harrison about returning to Borneo, he jumped at the opportunity.
31:08He wanted to anthropologize. He wanted to understand how their society worked, and there
31:15are a lot of anthropologists who think you can do this by getting close to them. I'm
31:21sure the daredevilness was an aspect of his character that they liked, ready for anything.
31:28In June of 1944, Harrison was sent to Australia on loan to a special unit known as Z-Force.
31:38The anthropologist turned major was to lead a group of commandos into the interior to
31:43set up guerrilla operations. He was also charged with rescuing any Allied airmen he came across
31:49in the jungle.
31:50He knew there were Americans before he came in, and he was under instructions to do his
31:57best to find them and to get them back out again.
32:02Harrison's team included a young sergeant named Jack Treadray.
32:06Each of us had a specialist part in the team. I was the team medic, we had our radio man,
32:17we had our armaments man, and each one of us had to be able to do the other's work as
32:24well.
32:27The official plan was to enter Borneo from the coast and travel upriver. But Harrison
32:33proposed a radically different idea, parachute directly into the interior, where their presence
32:39was less likely to get back to the Japanese.
32:43During his 1932 expedition, Harrison had heard rumors of a fertile plateau in the center
32:49of the island.
32:51We had gone a good way inland, but much further inland we saw great mountain ranges, and we
32:57heard that behind them lay a sort of Shangri-La.
33:05Now Harrison would need to find this plateau and see if it was suitable as a drop zone.
33:10In early 1945, Harrison persuaded his military bosses to send him on a reconnaissance trip
33:16from his base in Indonesia.
33:19Looking over the island's jungle interior, he could see nothing but the broccoli-like
33:23canopy stretching to the horizon.
33:29But then, as the aircraft headed home, Harrison spotted a clearing.
33:34The spot was more than 50 miles from the Lundaya tribal region, where American missionaries
33:39had once ventured, and where the airmen now sheltered.
33:44It was also far more isolated, and when Harrison returned to the site in mid-March 1945, the
33:50local Kelibet people were terrified of the low-flying plane.
33:56On the first day, the plane came circling overhead, and we were really scared, and we
34:02were thinking, what in the world is this? Then the plane went away.
34:10A few days later, the aircraft returned, this time with Harrison's commandos on board.
34:20Before we got on the plane to do our jump, Tom Harrison, our party leader, opened up
34:26a tin and handed us all a tablet, and he said, that's the L-pill, it's cyanide, if you're
34:34in trouble, bite it, and that'll be it.
34:40The next day, four planes came, circling, circling. Then eight men came down. They were
34:47parachuting down, and we looked up at them, and they were just this big.
35:04They parachuted over there, the plane was circling overhead, and then they landed over
35:10there. When they reached the ground, there was a signal, and then smoke.
35:26Within minutes, Harrison was met by a party of Kelibets, who led him and his men through
35:30the fields to the Longhouse.
35:37Things became fearfully confused. The main overall reaction was bewilderment, amazement,
35:42coupled with dreadful efforts to ask questions from both sides. The first things the Kelibets
35:48wanted to know were, were we humans, and how did we get out of the airplane?
35:54Harrison's biographer, Judith Hyman, is one of the few people able to read the spidery
35:59scrawl of his wartime diary.
36:03This is the first page of the diary after Tom landed in Barrio. They spend all day looking,
36:12searching for storpedoes, which were the ways in which they parachuted in supplies. And
36:19then it ends with, Borak! exclamation point.
36:29Borak was the local rice wine, and Harrison knew from his previous expedition that imbibing
36:34was a sure-fire way to fit in with the locals.
36:40But there was also work to be done, and by the next morning, he had sent Jack Treadray
36:44out to distribute medicine to the nearby tribes.
36:48He drew a big circle on my map, and he said, I want you to go to every one of those kampongs,
36:56find out whatever information you can, treat everyone you can.
37:01The medical attention was to show the Dayaks that Harrison's commandos were there to help,
37:05not hurt.
37:06A hundred percent of the population had malaria, either amoebic or bacillary dysentery. They
37:15were in a bad way.
37:20Back in Long Barang, it didn't take long for news of the commando's arrival to reach the
37:25downed airmen.
37:29We were sitting in that longhouse, you know, bored because there's nothing to do, and at
37:33the other end of the longhouse, a big commotion started. One of the Dayaks had come in from
37:38the west, and these Dayaks were sitting around the fireplace, it was daytime, not firing
37:43up burners, and they were drawing pictures on the floor. They drew a parachute and sat
37:50the man on top of it.
37:52Well, we thought we got another crew. Makahanap took off for that area to see what was going.
38:02If another crew, he was going to bring it in, and that's when he found out that Harrison
38:06was there.
38:08A few days later, Makahanap brought the airmen a letter from Harrison. The Americans quickly
38:13realized from his eccentric style that they weren't dealing with an ordinary officer.
38:19My dear fellow, as an Englishman, I had better start like this. I have brought in a party
38:24of eight, not only to bugger up the Japs, but also, specifically, to look for lost whites
38:31and help them to get out in any way we can.
38:34He asked for the senior officer and any radio personnel to come and visit with him. So we
38:42went off to see Harrison.
38:45After nearly five months waiting for rescue, Dan Illerich, Phil Corrin and Tom Capon set
38:51out for Harrison's base. It took them more than a week to get there. When they finally
38:58arrived on April 21st, Harrison wasted little time on greetings and immediately put Dan
39:04to work with Australian radio operator, Bob Long.
39:08The first photograph was one of me, taken in 1941. Dan looked at me and said, well,
39:15Dan was easy to work with. He was quite good at the figure and the code part of it. He
39:25was slow on his morse.
39:28You know, when you sit around in a longhouse for four months doing nothing and a man offers
39:32you a chance to practice your trade, I'm not going to turn him down. I just thought that
39:37was an opportunity to be able to do something to keep me busy and help out until they could
39:43get us out.
39:45With radio communications up and running, Harrison signaled to the U.S. Army that some
39:50of their missing airmen had been located in the jungles of Borneo. Meanwhile, his operatives
39:56began training the local tribes in the art of guerrilla warfare. They used basic Malay
40:01to communicate.
40:04I worked with Ibans. Others worked with Kayans, Kenyans, Murats. There's so many tribes
40:12over there, and they all had their own territories. But we took whoever volunteered.
40:23Harrison quickly settled back into the local culture, going barefoot and wearing traditional
40:27clothing. He also ignored official orders to wait for the main invasion of Borneo, ordering
40:33his guerrillas to begin attacking the Japanese.
40:37We couldn't afford to keep our enthusiastic supporters kicking their heels for months.
40:42Luckily, we were able to combine business with pleasure, so to speak. Within a couple
40:47of months, our ambushes had bagged three complete patrols. Not a lot, but it made the whole
40:53interior feel that now at last they were fighting.
40:57He was a brilliant organizer. He let us fight our war the way we wanted to.
41:05Rather than imposing British techniques on his Dayak combatants, Harrison encouraged
41:11them to rely on their specialized jungle skills. He convinced the men to use one of their most
41:18effective hunting weapons, the blowpipe, against the Japanese.
41:24These two natives and I were laying in wait, and one of them said to me, with your snapang
41:30to him, at his rifle, you can shoot somebody and they won't necessarily die. But one of
41:37my poison darts, even if it hits them only in the little finger, they're dead.
41:43You could be five yards inside the jungle, away from a jungle track, and they would not
41:52know you were there. The jungle was so dense. And all that would poke out would be that
41:58end.
41:59Right? You ready, Jack?
42:01Yeah.
42:01There you are.
42:03Harrison had no qualms about using poison on the Japanese. His thoughts, written after
42:09the war, evoke his contempt for his enemy and his disdain for authority.
42:15The Japs could never cope with blowpipes, and the mere suspicion that there were blowpipers
42:20around did more to them than a dozen machine guns. I don't know if we were breaking any
42:25of the rules of war. Frankly, we didn't care.
42:34I think he's grapings pretty good.
42:37Harrison the anthropologist embraced the Dayak's culture, but twisted their traditions to suit
42:42his purpose. It wasn't long before he realized, like Makahana pad a few months earlier, that
42:49he could unite the tribes against the Japanese by encouraging their most sacred ritual, head
42:55hunting.
42:57These folks know how to fight. They know how to fight silently with their blowpipes. And
43:05they're dying to get back to hunting heads.
43:11Harrison made it known that head hunting was no longer outlawed if the heads were Japanese.
43:15He even supported the practice with a bounty.
43:20William Harrison offered the natives five guilders, Dutch guilders, for any heads they
43:27brought in.
43:30As the Dayaks went out to find Japanese heads, Harrison kept track of their exploits. K for
43:35killed, P for prisoner. His commandos were equally casual about the head hunting.
43:43Personally I didn't care one way or the other because we didn't like the Japanese. The Japanese
43:49didn't like us and we knew if they caught us, we wouldn't only be killed, we'd be tortured
43:58pretty fiercely beforehand. The Japs did not have a very good reputation. The natives hated
44:05them and so it made our job much easier.
44:11Those first Jap heads thrilled the jungle people. The difficulty was to control the
44:17Japs from going too far.
44:22On May 1st, 1945, the coastal attack on Borneo finally arrived. 11,000 Australian soldiers
44:30landed at Tarakan, a small but highly strategic island off the northeast coast. Within weeks,
44:37the troops had secured an airfield.
44:40The Allies were now less than 150 miles from Balawit, the interior plateau where Harrison
44:45was based. At long last, the Americans were within reach of air support, or so they thought.
44:55Originally Harrison was going to take us out by black Catalinas, flying boats, but they
45:02couldn't find enough water that wasn't too close to Japanese forces to be able to bring
45:08that airplane in and get us loaded on and leave.
45:13Harrison knew that the Australians had a short take-off plane, the Auster, that could
45:16reach the plateau. But to land it, he needed an airstrip.
45:23Gala Raut was a boy at the time and remembers Harrison's unusual requirements.
45:31He had a meeting with all of the elders and he asked them, can you give me land because
45:37we need to make an airstrip? So that's why they agreed to give him the land. And then
45:43we all started to dig.
45:45But the land was waterlogged and Harrison quickly realized that building an airstrip
45:50would not be as simple as clearing away brush.
45:57He was worried that an airplane might get stuck in the mud, so he asked us, what can
46:02we do? What can we put on it? So some of the older people said we can put bamboo on the
46:10airstrip.
46:17Now in their 80s, these are some of the Dayaks who ingeniously turned bamboo trunks into
46:21a makeshift runway.
46:27The trunks were first split lengthwise so they could be unrolled into flat rectangles.
46:35Then they were laid out along the plane into decking 300 feet long, supposedly the length
46:41needed for an Oster to take off and land.
46:44It was something that we'd never ever contemplated or seen or thought of before, but probably
46:55the only bamboo airstrip ever built in the world, I should imagine.
47:05The long strips were pinned to the ground with bamboo pegs.
47:13With more than a thousand volunteers, the project was completed in less than two weeks.
47:20One of Harrison's commandos took photos of the airstrip.
47:25I'm so happy with this. I'm sure that it's very strong. I'm sure that it will support
47:33the wheels of an aeroplane.
47:41With the runway finished, Harrison needed someone brave enough to land on it.
47:48He radioed military command in Tarakan, and on June 7, 1945, two Australian pilots flew
47:54in.
47:57The American L-3 Grasshopper is very similar to the tiny Oster. Dan has come to see one
48:03at his local flying club in Houston.
48:06They flew two of them in, and they landed all right because you can take a small airplane
48:12and when you bring it in for an approach to landing, you can land it in a very short distance.
48:20Landing was one thing. Taking off again was another.
48:25Typically reckless, Harrison himself volunteered for the first test run.
48:30They went to the end of the runway and made their takeoff run, and at that altitude they
48:35just didn't have airspeed when they ran out of runway, and they got off into the mud from
48:41the rice paddy.
48:43The Oster flipped over. The men were unharmed, but the plane was damaged.
48:51So the Dayaks used more bamboo to extend the runway, and under Australian supervision,
48:55to patch the broken Oster back together.
49:02On June 10, the aircraft took off successfully, this time with the first of the American airmen
49:08on board.
49:12When it touched down in Tarakan, the fuselage broke in two, but both pilot and passenger
49:17were fine.
49:20Tom Harrison's jungle base now had its very own working airport.
49:25The Major decorated the strip with an array of national flags, and a token Japanese head.
49:36When one man who had been tortured by the Japanese and had scars all over his legs came
49:44up, bringing him the head of the Japanese police chief of Lawas, he accepted the head
49:54most gratefully, and had it flown from a flagpole.
50:04Over the next few weeks, the remaining airmen were flown out one at a time from the bamboo
50:09airstrip. But one of the Americans wasn't quite ready to leave.
50:14I volunteered to stay as long as possible, in order to be able to continue to work with
50:21Bob. And I said, OK, I'll be the last one out, and that'll give us a day or two more
50:26that I can help with the signals operation.
50:30On June 29, seven months after his crash landing, Dan was finally flown out of Borneo.
50:38Less than two months later, a conflict fought with blowpipes and machetes was dramatically
50:43halted by the atomic bomb at the end of the war.
50:51Tom Harrison would leave Borneo within the year. During his time there, more than a thousand
51:08Japanese soldiers met their end. It was a small but important Allied victory that wouldn't
51:14have been possible without the bravery and skill of his committed tribal army.
51:20I hope the British government will never forget that in Borneo, it was the hill tribes,
51:25the so-called backward and uncivilized peoples, who proved the truest and the bravest citizens.
51:34Many of the DACs received honors after the war, but Makahanap died poor and forgotten
51:38by all but the airmen and the people of his district.
51:44The Americans were flown home to the United States, keepers of an extraordinary story
51:49few would believe. Dan Illerich, the only one of them still alive today, has never forgotten
51:58what the DACs did for him and his crew.
52:03We parachuted into their community in 1944 and they were courageous enough to take us
52:11in, protect us and prevent our captures.
52:15These guys knew that they were running a big risk when they started operations against
52:20the Japanese and I certainly think they're heroes or I wouldn't be standing here talking
52:25to you.
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