You won’t be fighting us, he remembered saying, one-on-one, samurai knights getting off their horses, taking off their fantastical headdresses, unlimbering their gleaming, multihued katanas to challenge the champion of the other side for the glory of the field. You will instead be cowering in your shelters, if you have shelters. You will be trying not to shit yourself while unimaginable destruction rains down on everything you have ever known and loved, everything familiar to you, your family, your workplace, your home, your village, town, city, and all of it descending soundlessly from a stratospheric composition of pinkish ice-crystal contrails scribed across the skies of a winter’s evening, and not for a few minutes but for an eternity of overwhelming sound, pressure, heat, bone-rattling concussion, and the certain knowledge that you will never survive what is happening all around you.
Something small bounced off his head. He looked up.
The major was standing above him on the seawall. He appeared to be entirely unhinged. He was wobbling on unreliable legs with both hands clasping his bloody head. His uniform was shredded from top to bottom, and his body looked as if he’d been flogged. Blood trickled down from his eyes and ears. His mouth was moving while his hands clawed at his head and hair as if he were searching for lice. Behind him the naval base was simply ablaze. Huge clouds of smoke and dust pumped up into the lambent evening sky, the smoke illuminated from within by intense fires. The major finally fell to his knees and tried to steady himself with one trembling hand. The other hand produced a pistol. His eyes were so deformed Gar wondered if he could really see him, but he was obviously intent on shooting something. Somebody. Him.
Gar knew he should duck back underwater as the major raised that pistol, even as Gar saw that his injured arm was unable to control the gun. Gar was in such a state that he decided not to bother ducking. The major pointed the pistol in Gar’s general direction and began firing. Gar could feel but not hear the gun going off. He could see the bullets scribing bright white bubble trails into the water at odd angles. That seemed to be an important detail as this half-mad, bomb-shocked Japanese officer tried to kill him. Gar knew he should have been afraid, terrified, even. Instead, he realized that he sympathized with the deranged officer up above on the pier.
The major stopped shooting when he realized he hadn’t come anywhere near Gar with his wild gunfire. He looked to his right, where a small cluster of similarly stunned crewmen on the nearest destroyer—themselves still on their hands and knees, their faces bloody from concussion—were watching from the middle of the dock. Gar wasn’t sure they even saw him down in the water, littered as it was with floating debris and oil. The major opened his mouth and tried to say something, but only produced bloody froth. He was weeping, so frustrated and concussed that he probably didn’t even know he was crying. His mouth continued to move, and then he closed his eyes for a moment, bent over, and forcefully exhaled, seeming to shrink into himself. He then put the pistol into his mouth and fired one last time. His body dropped sideways into an awkward pile of bloody limbs and rags.
Gar stared for a second and then glanced left toward that destroyer. The men were standing now on her quarterdeck, some of them as blood-spattered as the major, at ragged attention and bowing deeply in respect for what the major had just done, apparently unaware that their ship was beginning to list to starboard.
They’re not human, Gar thought. They’re fucking monsters. They approve. Whatever are we going to do with these people?
TWENTY-SEVEN
Hours later he was back with the group of POWs at that tiny train station on the outskirts of Hiroshima City. He wasn’t entirely sure how he got there, and his mind was already blocking out the images of utter destruction at Kure. The other prisoners had been gathered into a waiting room surrounded by armed guards, and the atmosphere had changed significantly. Each of the guards looked ready and all too willing to impale the nearest prisoner on his bayonet. It was getting dark, so they could no longer see much outside, but the red glow on the horizon from the fires at Kure remained undiminished.
Gar was booted into the room by a guard. His clothes, already ragged, were still wet and spotted with oil and blood from his damaged ears. Two guys picked him up and gently pulled him into the room, away from the nearest guards, who were prowling the perimeter of the group as if looking for potential culls. The room was warm because of the crowd, and Gar was grateful for it. He sat down. His brain still wasn’t working well, not after the bombardment at Kure. He couldn’t figure out why he was still alive. After the major did himself in, Gar remembered, he’d wondered how long before one of the watchers on that destroyer got a rifle and did the job correctly. By that point he wouldn’t have minded.
The POWs slowly and surreptitiously pushed him all the way back into a corner of the waiting room. His traveling companion on the train, the army air force major, sat down next to him and asked what had happened. In halting words, Gar told him.
“They flatten the place?”
“Looked like it to me,” Gar said. Then he realized he’d heard what the other man had said. He felt his sticky ears. He was no longer deaf.
“Big raid, then?”
“The sky was full of contrails. Looked like hundreds. Probably not that many, but big enough. They were long past Kure when the bombs started to go off.”
Franklin nodded with satisfaction. “That means we’re operational from Tinian. You see fighters?”
Gar shook his head. “I saw the end of the world,” he said. “That was enough.”
“Good,” Franklin said. “About goddamned time. I saw you in that room with that Jap. Why were you getting special treatment?”
Gar told the major what had happened, and why.
“You’re special, then?” Franklin asked. “’Cause you’re willing to talk?”
“You’re all wrong about that,” Gar said. “That guy tried to kill me.”
“Well, what the fuck were you doing talking to them?”
“Like I said, I was trying to convince them they’ve already lost the war. That there was no longer any point to resisting. That the whole industrial might of the United States was about to roll over them and squash ’em flat. That’s what I was doing. Do it again, too. Because they are fucked. They just don’t know it yet.”
“Screw that noise,” Franklin said. “You don’t talk to the enemy. You never talk to the enemy. You do, you’re a fucking collaborator.”
“I guess you’re entitled to your opinion,” Gar said. “But collaborators help the enemy. When I tell ’em they’re gonna lose this war, that’s not helping.”
Franklin shook his head and turned his face away from Gar in disgust. After about ten minutes, Gar asked the guy on the other side of him where he thought they were going.
“Doc thinks we’re going to a coal mine on some hill right behind Hiroshima City.”
Gar started laughing. They were being taken to a coal mine. His old man had been right after all.
Franklin gave Gar a funny look and moved away from him, as a train pulled into the station and stopped in a cloud of steam exhaust. The prisoners were herded into two boxcars. Gar had passed out again and was the last one to be rousted out of the waiting room. The first boxcar’s doors were already shut, so he was driven at bayonet point to the second car and booted into a small group of British POWs. They picked him up and pulled him away from the sliding door, which had been about to break both his feet as the guards pushed it shut. Gar mumbled a quick thanks and then went back down to see his new best friend, oblivion.
* * *
They were brought into the camp in dump trucks just after sunset. There were twenty-two of them, eight officers, the rest troops. Gar was the only American in the group. The guards immediately lined them up in two facing ranks—officers on one side, enlisted on the other—then stood behind them with bayonets fixed, one guard for every two prisoners. Wooden telephone poles served as light standards, and yellowish floodlights illuminated the grounds of the camp. The
y could see what looked like a barracks in front of them, but no other prisoners were visible. By now Gar knew better than to do any obvious rubbernecking, but they could see that the prison perimeter walls were made of sheet metal panels attached to concrete posts. There were watchtowers at the corners and machine guns sticking out of them, pointed down onto the assembly area. Behind the barracks area were some large metal-sided buildings and what looked to Gar like the tip pile from a coal mine. A rail spur, filled with coal cars, came through the back walls of the compound.
In certain parts of the United States, coal was king. By mid-1945 in Japan, coal was king squared. It was so vital that POWs being used as slave labor in the mines worked right alongside regular Japanese coal miners, with the difference being that the miners were fed and the POWs were not. Uncle Charlie Lockwood’s submarine war of attrition had reduced Japan’s oil imports from their Greater Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere to almost nothing. They couldn’t burn coal in their warships or airplanes, but just about everything else requiring energy, such as merchant ships, power plants, factories, hospitals, and a good percentage of daily life, ran on coal or even wood. Their coal-mining technology was somewhat primitive compared to the States’, and this was doubly so when diesel fuel dried up. The POWs had become substitutes for powered mining equipment.
There was what had to be an administration building to one side of the open area out in front of the barracks, with covered porches on three sides and a flagpole right in front. As they waited, a guard pulled open the front door to the admin building and then saluted an older Japanese officer as he came out. The officer stopped and looked around the assembly area. This must be the commandant, Gar thought, as the officer walked over to stand at one end of the open space between their two ranks. He was wearing a short-sleeved uniform shirt with badges of rank on its shoulder straps. His trousers were bloused into shiny brown boots, and he wore their version of a squared-off foraging cap. A Sam Browne belt rig across his chest was attached to a large, holstered pistol on his right hip, and an enormous sword dangled from his left. His face was one enormous scowl as he roared out an order.
Nothing happened, and he sounded off again. None of the prisoners knew what he was saying, but the guards apparently did. Two of them stepped forward, slid their rifle barrels over the nearest officer’s shoulder, and pushed down, hard. Apparently some of the officers had been POWs for a long time, because they immediately knelt down on the ground, then squatted backward onto their heels, their hands flat on their thighs, and bowed their heads. The rest of the officers did likewise. The enlisted remained standing. The commandant, if that’s what he was, walked down the line looking at each officer the way an auctioneer might look at a steer. Then he strolled back to the head of the two lines and asked the air a question. One of the guards replied deferentially while pointing at the officer line. The commandant nodded and then made a short speech. Again no one understood until the last man on the officer line, who Gar had been told was a doctor, said something softly. The commandant stared down at him and spat out another order. The doc spoke louder this time. “It’s the honor speech. He wants to know if any of the officers want to kill themselves now to restore their honor. If you do, stand up.”
None of them did.
The commandant gave each officer an inquisitive stare, then grunted. He then went to the doctor, and slapped him across the face as hard as he could. He repeated this welcoming gesture until each of the eight officers kneeling in the dirt had a bloody nose and a bright red palm print on his face. Gar didn’t think his ears could ever ring again, but they did. The enlisted guys in the rank opposite pretended not to watch. Then the commandant went behind the rank of kneeling officers, unzipped his trousers, and proceeded to walk down the line, urinating on the back of every officer. He must have been drinking tea all goddamned morning, Gar thought, because he did a thorough job of it. Then he said something to the guards, who all laughed enthusiastically, and went back to his office.
The guards signaled for the prisoners to get up by prodding them with their bayonets, then marched the officer group over to a small building next to the barracks, where there were two large square cement tanks full of water. One of the guards rigged out a fire hose and hosed all the officers down, fore and aft, after which they were made to strip and take a second fire-hosing, with soap this time. Finally they were told to get into the square tanks and do another soap-down. They then scrubbed their clothes in the tanks and put them back on. The guards drained the tanks, washed them out, and let them refill. The POWs were marched back to the barracks and herded inside with much yelling and cursing in Japanese. The guards locked the doors and posted two sentinels out front.
The enlisted guys were already in the barracks, where it was apparent that the new arrivals weren’t going to be the only occupants. There were two blocks of three-high bunk beds, one set occupied, the other empty. Filthy straw mats served as mattresses, and a block of wood as the pillow. A single sheet was rolled up at the end of each occupied rack. There were no signs of any personal possessions such as shoes, clothes, books, or anything else.
“Where is everyone?” one of the British officers asked.
“Probably down in the mine,” one of the troops said. He also spoke with a British accent.
Gar wondered if he really was the only American here. Many of the Brits seemed to know each other, and he learned that they had all been shipped to Japan from the Dutch Indies on what they called a hell ship. Five hundred POWs left port; 240 made it alive to Japan. The rest died en route of starvation, malaria, pneumonia, dysentery, or just plain exhaustion and dehydration.
The doctor who’d been interpreting for the rest of them signaled Gar that he wanted to talk. “Alright then, Yank,” he said, as they sat down together on one of the benches while some of the other officers gathered around. “Who might you be?”
TWENTY-EIGHT
Gar told them he was a U.S. Navy commander and erstwhile skipper of a submarine. The doctor asked his date of rank. Surprised, Gar told him.
“Right,” he said. “Anyone beat that?”
The other officers were shaking their heads.
“You, sir,” he announced to Gar, “are Senior One. Tonight when the rest of the chaps get back from the mines, we’ll find out who has been Senior One and whether or not that still stands.”
“Didn’t feel very senior,” Gar said, “when that guy was pissing down my back.”
Some people smiled, but the doctor didn’t.
“Look here,” he said, “I’m Major Alex Morris. I’m a medical officer. M.O. We’ve learned this the hard way, believe you me. The only way we have survived has been to reconstitute our military organization and discipline. The senior officer in the camp, of whatever service or even regiment, becomes Senior One. We establish a chain of command, and we adhere to military discipline. We insist that the Japs deal with Senior One for all matters pertaining to the prisoners.”
“And they tell you to fuck off and die, right?”
The major made a face at Gar’s crude language. “No, surprisingly, they don’t. One must of course observe the conventions. We bow, they don’t bow back. We don’t speak until spoken to. We never look them in the face, because, by surrendering, we have lost our faces.”
“You used the word ‘insist.’”
“Just a figure of speech, Commander. Thing is, most of the camp commandants have figured out that everything runs smoother if they pretend to recognize a military chain of command among the prisoners. With the exception of the occasional sadist, they don’t want problems. They want production, because in their eyes, that’s what prisoners are for—slave labor in coal mines here, copper mines in the north, railroad and bridge building in the far south. I mean, let’s face it. A Japanese army officer assigned as a POW camp commandant is not likely to be held in high regard by the generals, is he. The last thing he needs is an ‘incident,’ a rebellion, a major escape, a drastic drop in production of whatever the hell,
or some other problem that causes him to lose face with his higher command, because the consequences of ‘problems’ in the Japanese army is a quiet order to go find your short sword and use it.”
“And you’re saying this gives us leverage?”
“Not at all. We have no leverage, not one iota. At any time and on any given day, they could assemble the lot of us out front and tell the guard towers to open fire. You may not be aware of this, but it is common knowledge that Imperial HQ have given orders to all the camps that all prisoners of war are to be killed at the first sign of an invasion of the Home Islands.”
“No, I did not know that,” Gar said. “Nor do I think my bosses know that.”
“Well, believe it, Commander. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn tonight that even here they’ve been drilling for the occasion. This is a small camp, from the looks of it. Probably dedicated to the one mine, so perhaps the kill-all orders haven’t reached here. Trust me, the larger camps are all firmly on notice.”
“How long have you been a POW?”
“Since the fall of Singapore, I’m afraid.”
“Jesus—that was, what, early ’42?”
“February fifteenth, to be precise, and we will never, ever live it down.”
Three years plus, Gar thought. That made his predicament seem trivial by comparison.
“What you must understand, especially if you become Senior One in this camp, is that we are all role-playing here. The Japanese officers are playing at being little gods. We are, in their eyes, vermin. They are being told that they are winning this war. We prisoners are supposedly evidence of that, and, as I mentioned before, we forfeited every scrap of our manly honor the day we put our hands in the air and our rifles on the ground.”
Ghosts of Bungo Suido (2013) Page 25