Army SIGINT operations began in 1936 when Lt Mark Rhodes of the Signal Intelligence Service (SIS) established the 10th Signal Service Detachment in Manila. This small detachment intercepted Japanese press broadcasts, diplomatic traffic, some military messages and any Kana code it could hear. The intercept was then passed to the SIS for training at its school.
In response to Japan's aggression in the Pacific, in July 1941 General MacArthur sets up the Army Forces Far-East command in Manila. Soon afterwards Det 6, 2nd Signal Service Company arrives. The detachment is headed by Major Joe Sherr with Lt Howard W. Brown as it operations officer. There are 6 Sergeants, 3 Corporals and 6 Privates in the detachment. It is not clear if the 10th Signal Service Det integrated with the 2nd Signal Service unit or continued operations on its own.
On December 8 1941 the Japanese begin bombing the Philippines. On December 22 1941 the Japanese invasion force landed at Lingayen, 100 miles west of Manila.
The 2nd Signal Service Company personnel were evacuated on Christmas Eve and its men moved to Corregidor with the rest of MacArthur's staff. Radio intelligence operations cease and most the units members are reassigned. Those that remain are allowed to open a small intercept station in Corregidors Malinta Tunnel.
During this time MacArthur's forces were performing a double-retrograde maneuver, moving from Luzon to Bataan Peninsula and then to the island of Corregidor. Many of the units never made it further than Bataan. About 2,300 military and civilians would escape from Bataan to Corregidor. The scores of thousands remaining became the victims of the infamous Bataan Death March to the O'Donnell and Cabanatuan prisoner of war camps, otherwise known as "hell camps.
On 17 March 1942 MacArthur leaves the Philippines for Australia. MAJ Sherr departs with General MacArthur because he was a master of cryptanalysis and deemed important to the war effort. Lt Brown evacuates on 14 April and is flown to Australia where he joins MacArthur's SIGINT operation there. Some of the other members of the Signal Service unit may have departed in the various evacuations conducted prior to the final fall of the island but not all managed to escape.
On 9 April the Bataan defenders - 79,500 men, the largest force in American military history to succumb to an enemy - are ordered put down their arms. Our forces in Corregidor hold out until May 6th - battered by constant shell fire and aerial bombardment, with supplies running out. After their surrender they suffer two-weeks of the famous Japanese sun treatment for prisoners, forced to sit unprotected in the most sun-baked areas of Corregidor. They are then taken by train to Manila and forced to march through the streets to impress the Filipino population with the might of the Japanese military forces. Most were then interred at the hellhole prison camp Cabanatuan. When the U.S. turned the tide in the Pacific in 1944 and it was likely the we would retake the Philippines, many of those that had survived the camps were taken to prison camps in Japan aboard the infamous hell ships.
What of the members of the 2nd Signal Service Company that remained in the Philippines after its fall? Six of the enlisted men were part of an unsuccessful evacuation attempt in early April. Three of them, along with other personnel of the failed evacuation, decided to take to the hills rather than giving up and becoming prisoners of war. They were CPL Irving A. Stein, CPL Michael Maslak and PFC Stanley Kapp. They were issued pistols and packed six cans of sardines and ten pounds of rice. They gave most of their quinine tablets to the sick child of a Filipino Sergeant. The make-up of the small group kept changing as men fell out or became separated, and other met them on the trail and joined. With the cash they had with them, they bought a small 30-foot dugout canoe and on the afternoon of 10 June 1942 set sail for Darwin, Australia, some 1,700 miles away.
They endured storms, swamping, cramped quarters, ripped sails, a waterlogged compass, and exposure during their 28 days at sea. Twice they encountered Japanese ships. Navigating mostly by the stars, they spotted land on the morning of 8 July. It was not Australia, but New Guinea. They landed on a small unnamed island between Waigeo and Halmahera, where they were put up for five weeks by the Chinese owner of the island to repair their boat. On 24 September 1942 they were taken prisoner by the Japanese and spent the rest of the war in a prison camp in the Netherlands, East Indies. CPL Stein and PFC Kapp die in 1944 from exposure, disease and starvation. Maslak survived and was liberated in September of that year.
Four months later Maslak was reassigned to Arlington Hall Station to resume his SIGINT duties with the Second Signal Service Battalion as a staff sergeant.
Another SIGINT operator, Thomas R. Kennedy was assigned to the 10th Signal Service Company in October 1940. He was in Bataan when it fell, survived the death march and was held prisoner in Manila until December 13th, 1944 when he was placed on the Japanese hell ship Oryoku Maru for transport to Japan. Transporting Japanese soldiers, civilians, and 1,619 prisoners of war out of Manila, the ship suffered repeated attacks from American fighters who had no idea she was carrying POWs that day. That night, the soldiers and civilians were put ashore, leaving behind the prisoners and their guards. Returning to finish the Oryoku on 15 December, fighters from USS Hornet loosened bombs that killed approximately 300 prisoners of war. The survivors were rounded up, and held in an open enclosure for five days with almost no food until they were transported in two groups to San Fernando by truck. Several of the weaker prisoners were "selected" for execution. On Christmas Day, the survivors were loaded onto the Enoura Maru and the Brazil Maru. The ships arrived in Takoa (Formosa) on New Year's Eve, and remained in port for the next six days with the prisoners still aboard who received no food, and little to no water. The men from the Brazil Maru were then transferred to the Enoura Maru. On 9 January 1945, 300 prisoners died when the Enoura Maru was bombed. Of those killed, approximately 200 prisoners in the forward hold were killed instantly. On 11 January, the remaining 1,000 POWs were loaded onto the Brazil Maru which did not head to sea until 14 January. The Brazil made port in Moji (Japan) on 29 January with only 500 of the original 1,619 prisoners of war who began the long ordeal onboard the Oryoku Maru a month and a half earlier. Thomas Kennedy died sometime during that January. Within weeks, one hundred more men would perish.
Colonel Sherr was killed in an air crash en route to New Delhi in September 1943. The allies landed back in the Philippines in December 1944.