Ghosts of Bungo Suido (2013)

by Deutermann, P. T

  “I will leave now,” Gar’s escort said. “Clean yourself, eat something, rest. I will return in two hours.”

  “What is your name, please?” Gar asked.

  The man hesitated. “That is strictly forbidden,” he said finally. “Wait, I know. You may call me Charlie Chan.”

  Gar looked at him through puffy eyes. “Charlie Chan is a Chinese master detective,” he said.

  “True,” he said. “But we have conquered them, too, yes? And you’re next, of course.”

  He stepped out into the passageway, then closed and quietly locked the door. Gar sat there for a moment, taking stock. All this civility, now food and hot cloths, a stateroom—so why did he feel like a steer in a Nebraska feedlot? Go ahead, eat up. Eat as much as you want. We insist. Really, we do.

  On that famous other hand, he could be tied in chains down in the bilges somewhere, subsisting on whatever water dripped down through the gratings from a leaky steam line. He knew this was a game of some kind, but he also knew his responsibilities here: maintain strength if possible, tell them nothing of value, and escape if he could. So he gratefully used all the hot cloths, drank the tea, and gobbled the sticky rice balls. Then he lay down in the rack, a maneuver that took a few minutes. The two beatings had been expertly administered to inflict as much bruising as possible. The food and tea helped but were no substitute for a handful of APCs. He forced himself to ignore the pain and to go to sleep immediately, wondering if they were at sea already. If this thing was as big as she’d looked through the snow the other night, one might never know.

  He awoke not two but eight hours later, according to his watch. He was surprised they hadn’t taken it. The stateroom was dark, with the only light coming from the passageway outside, streaming through a tiny ventilation grate above the door. He tried to move but couldn’t. A moment of panic—had they tied him up? Then he realized it was his muscles that were tied up, having been well and truly tenderized by that furious banshee on the minesweeper.

  Eventually he did manage to get up and find a light switch and the basin. He tried to make some water come out of the single tap, but there was only the hiss of air going the other way. The water line wasn’t activated. He wondered how much more of this behemoth wasn’t finished yet. The passageway outside the door was quiet, but there were things, industrial things, going on throughout the ship. He tried to feel whether they were moving, but concluded they were still parked alongside the pier.

  Fifteen minutes later he heard the lock click in the door, and then Charlie Chan was back. He’d changed uniform and was wearing a light jacket this time. The two guards were right behind him, standing at loose attention out in the passageway.

  “What ho, Captain,” he chirped. “I say, you do look a frightful mess.”

  British Charlie Chan. Gar tried to think of something witty but ended up just staring at him.

  “It’s time we had a tour, you and I. First, the jakes, eh, what? Then a tour of His Imperial Majesty’s most amazing new ship.”

  He spat out something in Japanese, and one of the goons came in and slipped a pair of handcuffs on Gar. They were steel rings but with what felt like a silk cloth between them, long enough that he could have put his hands in his pockets if he’d wanted to. They then attached what looked like a white leash to his left hand and handed the other end to Charlie Chan.

  “A few rules,” Charlie said. “First, you must walk behind me, no closer than two feet. You must keep your eyes cast down except when I show you something I specifically want you to observe. If one of the crew or the shipyard workers says something to you, you are to keep silent and not look him in the face. And otherwise, do not speak. Okay?”

  He stepped out of the stateroom and tugged on the leash. Gar followed him down to the head, where he was unleashed to make morning ablutions. Gar pretended not to notice that his urine was red. Before they left the head, he was handed a loose white garment resembling the top half of a kimono. There were Japanese characters emblazoned on the back. Then they headed what felt like forward because the deck was sloping gently upward. There were others in the passageway, and Gar thought he heard soft hisses and giggles as they went by, the Kempeitai officer with his American dog in attendance. Gar did as he had been told and kept his eyes down and his trap shut. He was much taller than everyone around him but felt considerably smaller. One goon led the procession, the other stayed behind Gar, carrying a heavy wooden baton. Gar could just imagine what those characters on the silk jacket said.

  They climbed three ladders and then went through a hatch into what had to be the hangar bay. Charlie Chan stopped and told Gar to look around. It was pretty amazing. They were at the back end of the hangar bay, which stretched ahead of them for at least three football fields in length. There were no planes, but the hangar was filed with industrial gear—small tractors, welding machines, cable reels—and a cast of thousands, sailors and shipyard workers, milling about in seeming confusion. There were two large squares of light in the overhead, 50 feet on a side, embedded in what had to be the flight deck some 60 feet above where they were standing. Gar assumed these were elevator access holes, although he didn’t see the elevators themselves.

  “Three hundred planes,” Charlie boasted. “And more on the flight deck. All along here, machine shops, repair facilities, elevators to the rooms below with ammunition and spare parts. Much bigger than your Essex class, yes?”

  Gar nodded. He’d been aboard one Essex-class carrier in Pearl, and he’d thought that was pretty damn big, but this was overwhelming. He looked up at the sky through those two big squares and was surprised to see the clouds moving aft. His surprise must have shown.

  “Ah, yes, Captain, we are at sea. Still inside the Seto, but soon we leave for Tokyo and your new place of residence. Amazing, isn’t it? You cannot feel her move, she is so big.”

  Of course, the Inland Sea was perfectly flat. It would be interesting to feel her movements once out in the greater North Pacific Ocean, Gar thought. Or once she had to conduct evasive maneuvers while trying to get by all the waiting subs. Maybe even Dragonfish, assuming she hadn’t joined all those other boats asleep in the deeps of Bungo Suido.

  They proceeded up four flights of stairs, or ladders, in navy parlance. That brought them out onto the flight deck and into a wintry breeze and cold gray sunlight. They were definitely still in the Inland Sea, surrounded by small green islands. Even in winter, it was gorgeous. The ship was steaming into the wind, with thin trails of boiler smoke coming out of two oddly canted funnels that leaned out to starboard, away from the flight deck. There were a few hundred men working on the flight deck, welding in tie-downs, installing safety nets, and bolting on HF antennas out on the deck edges. As they walked past the after elevator aperture, Gar could see that the flight deck was armored—it looked like 4 inches of solid steel. Charlie Chan saw him looking. “Yes, Captain, armored steel flight deck. Stop a one-thousand-pound bomb.”

  “That must make her very top-heavy,” Gar said.

  “So I was told, “Charlie said. “Supposed to be two hangar decks, but she would not have been stable in that configuration. Shinano is a conversion.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. She is sister to Musashi and Yamato. Do you know those ships?”

  Gar smiled at him. The Japanese had kept those two battleships secret right into 1943. They were the biggest battlewagons ever built, 70,000 tons and 18-inch guns. Shinano had probably started building as a third in the class and then, after their disaster at Midway, the Japanese had opted to finish her as a carrier.

  “Yes, we know about those ships,” Gar said. “Also very big.” He decided not to mention that one of them, Musashi, had been sunk. Charlie seemed highly edified that he even knew about them by name. No reason to spoil his good mood.

  They continued their walk up the starboard side of the flight deck, heads bent into the rising wind, while the shipyard workers and ship’s officers gawked at the spectacle of the policeman leadi
ng a captive with a leash for a tour around the ship’s expansive upper works. By now Gar really wanted to know what had been embroidered on the back of his hopi coat, because there was derisive laughter after they passed by the groups of workers.

  They walked to the very forward end of the flight deck, admiring the beautiful scenery ashore, which looked more like a painting than an actual countryside. A few small fishing boats darted right in front of the big ship’s bow in order to cut off pursuing devils. Gar wondered if Hashimoto was out on one of them, patiently waiting for the paper rain. He also remembered Hashimoto describing the Kempeitai police as hated and treacherous dogs. Gar was under no illusions about Charlie Chan becoming his best buddy. He was counting coup, parading the captured skipper of an American sub as his poodle.

  “No catapults?” Gar asked him over the buffeting of the wind. His flimsy coat was not built for warmth.

  “No need,” Charlie said, indicating the thousand feet or so of flight deck behind them. With a stiff wind over the bow from the ship’s own speed, even a loaded dive-bomber could probably make a takeoff run with ease. Gar saw Charlie looking up at the windows of the bridge on the island structure amidships. Someone was waving to him in the peculiar fashion of the Far East, fingers down in a come-here motion.

  “Ah,” Charlie said. “Let us meet Captain Abe, captain of Shinano. He will be very much interested in meeting you.”

  Gar was already pretty tired and cold. It felt as if damned near every muscle in his body was in spasm, and he was having a tough time walking and climbing all those ladders. Nevertheless, up they went.

  Captain Abe was of average height for a Japanese and looked to be about fifty years old. He was gray and grizzled and had a face that fairly shouted no nonsense. He was wearing blues, his dress cap, and white gloves. Several officers were standing around on the bridge, while a navigation team was quietly doing the piloting as the great ship threaded its way through all the small islands and channels. Quartermasters manned both bridge wings and called in bearings to known points ashore every three minutes.

  Gar stood the required two steps behind Charlie as he explained to Abe who, and presumably what, he had on the other end of the leash. He heard the word “Ofuna” again and watched the officers smile. Apparently Ofuna had itself a reputation, Gar thought. He was very conscious of his leash, but he kept his eyes down. He kept telling himself that this was still better than being in the bowels of the ship with the other slaves.

  “Captain Abe requests to know the name of your submarine,” Charlie said.

  At this point Gar had a decision to make. Stick with the name, rank, and serial number, or answer innocuous questions like this and then begin to feed them some misinformation when the right opportunity presented itself.

  “Dragonfish,” he said, and Charlie translated. Abe said something in Japanese.

  “Balao class,” Charlie translated. Now it was Abe showing off. Gar nodded but was careful not to look directly at him. Abe spoke again.

  “How many submarines will we face on the way to Yokosuka?” Charlie translated.

  “Ten,” Gar said without hesitation. “The waters this side of the Japanese Islands have been divided into ten patrol areas. Some have one submarine, some a wolf pack. It will be an interesting journey.”

  Charlie looked at him for a long moment before translating. Abe laughed and grunted out a short comment. The other officers also laughed.

  “He says, nice try,” Charlie reported. Gar continued to stare down at the deck.

  Abe went over to a small desk next to the bridge’s captain’s chair. He opened the desk and withdrew a pistol, which he brought over to where they were standing. Then he asked Charlie a question. Charlie translated.

  “Captain Abe wishes to know if you would like to kill yourself now. You are totally dishonored. He will grant you that privilege because you were a commanding officer. You can even use his pistol. Out there, on the bridge wing, where there are drains.”

  The bridge went quiet. They were all staring at Gar now, with his leash and multihued, battered face. Gar took care with his words.

  “Tell Captain Abe that for us, capture is an unfortunate but temporary circumstance. There is no dishonor in being captured.”

  Abe snorted after hearing Charlie’s translation, and some other officers laughed their contempt. Then he spoke again.

  “You have no concept of honor, American dog. You are correct about your position being temporary. Since you will not kill yourself, we will have to do it for you. Temporary, yes. This I know.”

  “May I speak?” Gar asked Charlie. Abe gestured that he could with a contemptuous wave of his gloved hand.

  Charlie translated as Gar made his reply.

  “This is what I know,” he said. “In 1942, Japan was supreme in the western Pacific. Now, what’s left of your overseas armies are starving in Malaya, destroyed in New Guinea, and expelled from the Solomon Islands, which even you renamed the Starvation Islands. Rabaul is lost. Tarawa is lost. Kwajalein is lost. Guam and Tinian are lost. The Philippines have been invaded. Okinawa has been bombed. Here in Japan, the flow of oil and food and rubber and tin and coal has been cut to ten percent of what you had coming in 1942.

  “You have this one magnificent carrier, and it is very impressive, but it is one carrier. Admiral Halsey has forty-two Essex carriers and thirty-five smaller ones. He is coming with a fleet of five hundred ships. The American navy has more than ten thousand ships. Soon Japan itself will be lost. And yes, Captain, you will run a gauntlet of American submarines if you try to get to Yokosuka.”

  Charlie Chan had been slowing down a bit as Gar recited the Japs’ real strategic circumstances. Gar still was not looking Abe in the face; he had a gun in his hand and, Gar suspected, a thunderous expression. No point in giving him an excuse. When Charlie stopped speaking, Abe exploded into a torrent of angry Japanese.

  “None of this is true,” Charlie translated. “None of it. Tokyo has told us repeatedly of great victories, of hundreds of American ships sunk, your armies dying in the jungles like insects, your airplanes littering the Pacific Ocean. What you say is lies, all lies.”

  “Do you go to Tokyo with a full load of fuel, Captain?” Gar asked. “Is there plenty of food aboard? Dozens of airplanes?”

  Charlie hesitated. Abe saw that and pressed him, then hissed in annoyance. He gave a short, sharp order and turned away.

  “That is none of your business, prisoner,” Charlie said, but looking nervous for the first time. “You are correct. There is much to be done. He has ordered me to put you to work.”

  He passed the leash to one of the goons, who pulled Gar forcefully off the bridge and toward a succession of ladders pointing down into the depths of the ship. The last sight Gar had of Captain Abe was of him slapping the barrel of that pistol into his open palm, as if trying to decide what to do with it.

  Oh, well, nice while it lasted, he thought.

  NINETEEN

  They went down seven sets of ladders, which meant they were nine decks below the carrier’s bridge. They ended up on a mezzanine deck somewhere under the hangar bay. The main engineering spaces were right below them, and this deck contained auxiliary machinery, ventilation fan rooms, motor generator rooms, and a host of other smaller spaces arranged along a passageway on the starboard side of the ship. There Gar joined the rest of the prisoners, who numbered about fifty. They were divided into groups of five, with a Japanese marine in charge of each group.

  Gar’s personal goon pointed him at a group of four. When he joined them he was handed a wooden mallet, a blunted chisel, and a basket of oakum fiber. Their job was plain to see: stuff the oakum into every bulkhead penetration in front of them, and then hammer it tight around the cable, pipe, or wire bundle coming through the hole in the vertical bulkhead. As in warships the world over, there were hundreds of penetrations through the bulkheads between adjacent spaces. None of these appeared to have the simple metal device the U.S. Navy used to ensu
re watertight integrity, called a stuffing tube. On this ship there was just a drilled hole, and they were stuffing it with oakum, as had been done in the seventeenth century. If the space ahead of where they were working ever flooded for any reason, the water would soon be pouring into this space. In damage control parlance, that was called progressive flooding, and it always had one, inevitable result. Oakum was a joke, a bad joke.

  They stood on small stools to reach the cableway penetrations that ran along the overhead. Gar wondered why they were bothering. A stuffing tube anchors the caulking material between two metal collars that are permanently attached to the bulkhead. Water pressure on one side pressed the collar into the other side, sealing it. Hammering oakum into the holes gave the impression of sealing them, but he knew that with the first hint of real pressure all that oakum would pop right out, no matter how hard they hammered it. They were kidding themselves, especially if this compartment was below the waterline.

  They were not allowed to speak to or even look at each other. Anyone caught looking around got whacked on the head by the ever-ready bamboo baton. Still, Gar could see that most of the prisoners were Allied soldiers or sailors, dressed in the tattered remnants of various uniforms. They were all considerably thinner than he was and bore the many scars of the Japanese army’s hostile indifference toward POWs. In retrospect Gar realized that the captain’s offer to let him shoot himself should not have come as a surprise. Wait until the B-29s come, he thought.

  His thoughts were interrupted by sharp commands from the guards. They picked up their baskets and went single file into the next compartment, where they set to work hammering oakum into the other side of their previous efforts. The senior guard finally spotted Gar’s wristwatch and then quickly relieved him of it.

  Hours later they were all herded back up several ladders and out into the cavernous hangar bay. From there they were marched to the very back end of the hangar bay, through a long passageway, and out onto the fantail of the carrier. The flight deck extended overhead, supported by crisscrossed I-beams rising out of the steel of the main deck. There they were made to sit in ranks against the final bulkhead, their backs to the cold steel, and their hands in their laps. One of the goons came along the line of sitting men and inspected their hands to make sure they were empty. They showed him palms up, palms down, and then dropped their hands back into their laps. If one didn’t do it fast enough, the guard would reward him with a smack on the elbow from his baton.