Pacific Nocturne, 1944

by Don DeNevi

  Suddenly upon them, Ellen smiled broadly.

  “I could hear the two of you mumbling about something way up there on the dune. About what, who can say?” she asked, grinning from ear to ear, hand on her hips, legs slightly spread apart as she stood before them, demanding an answer.

  Neither, Peter nor Bill, frozen in loving warmth for her, could conjure a fib.

  Finally, Peter, to save his friend from further embarrassment, told one of the very, very few lies of his lifetime.

  “How price of almonds in Galt, near the Lodi-Wood bridge area south of Sacramento, in the San Joaquin Valley went up 2 cents per pound since 1939.”

  Bill, meanwhile, regaining his composure, said thoughtfully,

  “You come this way without a weapon? Not even a .45?”

  Ellen sat down on the sand between them, the illumination from the nearest beach bonfires providing sufficient light to silhouette the three against the darkness of the dunes beyond.

  “The OP’s Marines were watching me all the way from the Pavuvu hospital.”

  “What good are they if the Ghoul hides along the path that edges the mushy swamp, slices your throat, and gets away in the murky waters?”

  “Oh, Bill, you know as tired as I am from today’s 12 hour shift I’d still give him a swift kick.”

  “Huh?”

  “Besides, I’m far too pretty to have my head detached from a beautiful body.”

  “I’ll drink to that!” Peter exclaimed, struggling to refrain from outright laughter.

  “Oh, the reasoning of a diminutive, dazzling sweetheart!” acknowledged Lundigan.

  “And, oh, oh, you’re giving yourself away, movie-star friend of mine.”

  Ellen blushed, then managed to say,

  “How picturesque we must appear from that high tower over there. And, with moonlight for the first time in weeks!”

  “Ellen, dear, you must, must promise me, us, Peter and me, never, ever again to walk along ANYWHERE, even to the potty, without a .45, which I doubt you know how to use. Not until we catch the Ghoul. Promise us, Ellen, or I’ll put the muzzle of this Tommy gun to my chin.”

  “Oh, you silly man. All right, I promise.” Ellen responded, sensing the deadly seriousness of the moment.

  “Shake on it!”

  Ellen shook Peter’s hand longer than she should have, then Bill’s, no longer than necessary.

  Peter realized it at the moment her eyes dropped while shaking his hand. Bill, of course, knew it weeks before, when the two first encountered the lovely young nurse in the lobby of the 1st Division headquarters.

  “Well, kids,” yawned Peter. “I’m headed back to quarters and my cot. Been summoned to General Headquarters, SWPA, Southwest Pacific Area, 0600 for a special order. May mean another redirected change of assignment. Join me, Bill, then I’ll take you, a lowly private combat photographer, to an elegant ham and eggs breakfast with real coffee in the doctors’ mess next door.”

  “Can’t turn that down,” responded Lundigan. “I’ll bring my 16mm Bell & Howell for a few takes within the Banika officer’s first-class New York City restaurant. Meet you at the flag pole in front of GHQ at 0530.”

  “See you soon, Ellen. You have a full-fledged Reising machine gun with loaded clip escorting you back to the nurses’ quarters. Try to join us, if you can.”

  “I hope so. But who knows if we’ll ever meet again, knowing the Medical Administrative Corps. We’re so short of staff, surgeons, general practitioners, corpsmen, psychiatrists, rehabbers, and nurses; they may put you on a plane for England to follow the troops breaking out across France. I doubt if they’ll hold the plane so you two can leisurely enjoy ham and sunny-side-up eggs and coffee,” Ellen said, hesitantly and without humor.

  “Oh, I doubt that, Nurse Ellen. If that was the case, a Special Order, an SO, would indicate it’s from the G-3 Operations Officer, Division of Higher Staff. The one I received a few hours ago was from the Medical Corps Office of the Chief Surgeon in San Diego.”

  Bill intervened, “Ellen, Dr. Kildare, you know, the movie hero doctor starring actor Lew Ayres, belongs to the 1st Division, USMC, the Navy Office of Intelligence, and the U.S. Medical Corps. There’s nothing he can’t do, and the kid is only 26 years old!”

  “I know, Bill, I know.”

  “Frankly, I would rather be a movie star,” Peter laughed.

  With that, Peter waved, adding over his back, “If you meet the Mad Ghoul, Bill, please raise your Reising, not the Bell & Howell, and aim. You must have the heart to pull the trigger.”

  “And you,” retorted Bill, “don’t depend on your good looks to barter your way past him!”

  Escorting Ellen back to the Nurses’ Quarters in Wing A of the Banika 1,300-bed portable surgical hospital MOB 10, an adjunctant of the Navy’s Fleet Hospital 108 back on Guadalcanal, Bill, in all fairness to his wartime buddy, and partly to appease Ellen’s loving curiosity, defined Lieutenant Peter Albioni Toscanini, USMC-USN.

  “I have to admit, Ellen,” Bill smiled, as the two walked slowly up the trail to the hospital adjacent CHP, “he really is more handsome, more intelligent, more serious about this damn war, than I.”

  Ellen laughed, “I agree. But go on.”

  “Thanks,” he returned glumly, as they slowly walked on. “Well, first and foremost, you should know he’s a Toscanini, an authentic, blue-blood relation to Arturo Toscanini, the world-renowned Italian maestro of classical music. My parents, who enjoyed the opera, ballet, and symphony on the radio, loved the conductor as no other—not only because of his genius, but also because he hated Mussolini as much as they did. In fact, most Americans of international understanding felt the same way, especially when the maestro refused to direct any form of classical music in Italy since 1931. Imagine, he told the dictator to go to hell. No operas, no symphonies, no ballets. He detested fascism and Nazism.”

  “What a brave man,” Ellen said quietly, “That Arturo Toscanini.”

  “Hitler wanted Toscanini to conduct Wagner’s compositions in Germany, especially those glorifying war, and he told him to go to hell. Instead, the Italian conductor formed, in the face of both those monsters, an orchestra of Jewish refugee players.”

  “Peter’s mother’s maiden name is Firpo. Her father was Antonio Firpo. But Peter’s father is a Toscanini. So, you see the origin of the Peter Toscanini name. The village of Peter’s grandfather, his father’s father, was Suzzi, north of Genoa in Northern Italy.” All the Toscaninis came from Suzzi.

  “Such noble blood…”

  “Yes, the noblest.”

  “You know Peter well, don’t you?”

  “We’ve been together since basic training in boot camp at Camp Elliott. I enlisted in the Marine Corps during the last day of May 1944, straight out of the Warner Brothers Lot in Hollywood. Peter joined two weeks or so later out of the Stockton’s College of Pacific. We wound up in Elliott almost to the same exact day.”

  “How’d you meet? Who initiated the friendship and on what premise?”

  “Well, like you ladies, when you enter a strange new program, a new way of life and existence; you want a ‘girl friend’, a ‘buddy’, too. You naturally start looking around for a ‘buddy’, a girl ‘buddy’ to pal around with. Each of us seized the other up. ‘Do I want him?’ Then, I arranged to have a mutual friend introduce us. It was a good, warm handshake, and he said then that he thought he recognized me. I asked if he was a ‘movie-goer’. He said, ‘No’, but that maybe he remembered me as a San Joaquin Valley boy.”

  “That’s funny,” Ellen chuckled.

  “A lot of fellas in the 1st Division were already calling me ‘Dennis O’Keefe’, not knowing there was such a person as Bill Lundigan. So, I finally asked if he had seen the three films out of the more than 50 I played minor roles in since I began acting in 1937: ‘The Case of the Black Parrot’, in 1941; ‘A Shot in the Dark’, also, in 1941; and, the last picture I made, ‘A Salute to the Marines’, early 1943, with co-star Wallace Beery.”r />
  “What did he say?”

  “None of them because now that he was older, he wasn’t going to waste money going to the Rialto Theatre anymore where all the cowboy, Bowery Boys, gangster film serials, and cheap comedies were playing. No, sir. When he went to the movies, he went to the Fox Theatre down the block on Main Street in Stockton to watch the real Hollywood stuff, not the cheap comedies steered over to the Rialto closer to the city’s ‘Skid Row’.

  “Was he kidding? I hope so,” Ellen offered.

  “Of course, he was. He knew who I was, but pretended not to. He was testing to see if I could be teased, then laughing about it, because best friends tease and joke with each other all the time. If he teased me, I was entitled to tease him, as I do daily. No, Ellen, he was very respectful that during the past seven years I was under contract with Universal, Warner Brothers, and MGM. He’s very proud of me being a combat photographer, knowing how dangerous it is when we have to go forward for the real footage of battle.”

  “You really like him, don’t you?”

  “If we survive this war, we will be friends for the rest of our lives. Do you know he’s an inbred animal lover? Dogs, cats, and horses, especially. But I’ve seen him so angry when he caught a cocky Marine about to torture a stray dog. He would have killed the man, hadn’t three of us, his friends, intervened. Every time he sees him in camp or Tent City, he’ll approach him, even if he’s with his buddies to ask point blank if he’s tortured any other animals. No, not only is he a nice man, but a man of animal warmth, always smiling or grinning, which of course add to his fine looks.”

  “I know,” Ellen said softly, “I know.”

  Bill cast a quick glance at her. Her somberness told him again how much she loved Peter.

  “Well, we’re here, Ellen, safe and sound. Would you like to hear the conclusion of how we became fast friends? You know most of it anyway.”

  “Yes, go on.”

  “After boot camp, in which we were always together, I was ordered to the Marine base on the east coast at Quantico, about 35 miles south of Washington, D.C. I was to be trained by the best documentary filmmakers in America on how to use the handheld 16mm camera under severe, dangerous combat conditions. I loved it. Meanwhile, Peter was preparing to be an advances corpsman, specializing in NP issues, neuropsychiatric conditions; primarily the criminal man. From the first moment we met, he told me his whole life was focused upon the labyrinth of the neurotic personality’s mind; its sick structure and all its winding passages that lead to criminal behavior. And, of all the crimes possible, murder is the most baffling. We wrote to each other all the time, realizing that in the unpredictability of war, we might never see or hear from each other again.”

  “Did he have a girlfriend, a sweetheart?”

  “Oh, yeah, big time. Joan is a Japanese-American girl currently interned in Arkansas.”

  “Really. A sad, sad story, that horrible interment of American citizens in concentration camps.”

  “I’ll ask him about her when I see him next. And, you, what about a sweetheart for you?” Ellen looked up, quizzically.

  “No one. But the last week in Washington D.C., before flying out here, I met a young woman I’m now corresponding with. Her name is Rena, Rena Morgan. I don’t know if anything will come of it, but we write to each other every few days—going on eight months now.”

  Ellen remained silent, her eyes downcast. Bill continued,

  “To conclude, Peter and I reunited just a few weeks ago, about the time you entered our lives as Nurse Ellen. As you know, I flew in from San Francisco to the airfield here on Banika. Crossing the channel between us and Pavuvu, I was loaded down with camera, film, and other accessories, as well as my own personal gear, searching for my tent number. Preoccupied, I wasn’t paying attention to two medical lieutenants, walking in the opposite direction from the mobile surgical unit, one of whom was staring me down, wide-eyed, mouth agape. He had spotted me! I dropped everything I was carrying in the middle of the Tent City road, vehicles dodging it all, men in khakis enjoying our shouting and hugging. But the reunion was brief. Within the hour, I was to participate in documenting in film the 1st Marine Division amphibious landing operations for the invasion of New Georgia, the next assault. I’m still waiting for the order.”

  “But, what I don’t understand, what’s he do? He’s certainly no ordinary PFC rifleman, machine gunner, or administrative clerk,” Ellen said, turning her back to the hospital ward entrance, and leaning on the rail of the steps.

  “Well, Ellen, as of this moment, I’m not exactly sure myself. Tomorrow morning, he’ll learn where he’s been reassigned to from the 11th Regiment of the 1st Division to G Company, 2nd Battalion, 5th Regiment. He has been summoned from this rest area to an office next door in the GHQ, SWPA. He’s to receive yet another reassignment. It’s in an SO, a special order, from USAF WesPac, U.S. Armed Forces, Western Pacific.”

  After a pause, Bill smiled and continued,

  “I’m sure proud of that boy. As a young lieutenant, his reputation for intelligent investigative work. All the services would like to have him, especially our Marines and the Navy. You don’t know this, but Peter received a wire a few weeks ago before we encountered each other on the road in Pavuvu’s Tent City to be available for departure to Camp Elliott in San Diego, stateside. It seems he was to begin some type of inquiry, some sort of undercover probe, of how Marine inmate prisoners were being treated. That call came directly from a major officer in Washington D.C., superseding all other assignments. He’s excited about the challenge, whatever it is. Now, this, tomorrow’s SO.”

  “That may be the one to redirect him to California?” Ellen interjected, with a sad expression all over her face.

  “He doesn’t think so. This SO is from Honolulu, but he’s not sure what office.”

  “Well, I’ll be anxious to hear all about it, if he’s free to tell us. But, one more question before I leave you.”

  “Of course, Ellen. We both feel you’re one of us and we love you as such, even in the short time we’ve known you.”

  “That’s all very nice, Bill. But you could help me now. I need to know this, and I need to know it now. Does he love this interned girl, the Nisei, the Japanese American? Does he love her a lot?”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  -

  Joan, An Interned Japanese-American

  Despite the nurses’ quarters and the First Division’s General Headquarters serving as beehives of activity, the tropical night was unusually cold and still. Under the moon and stars the circular driveway entrances appeared cast in a gloomy dimness.

  “Well, let’s sit on the steps. If the Ghoul comes after us here, Ellen, he’ll get a stomach full. O.K., nurse, let me tell you what I know about Peter’s Joan—God only knows I had to listen to him day in and day out ennoble her.”

  Ellen smiled.

  “What angers him the most, almost as much as seeing an animal put upon, is why all Japanese-Americans in our United States had to report to assembly relocation centers within weeks of December 7th, from which they were shipped to internment camps. Their Stockton, California, was one center of about 15 on the Pacific West Coast. From there, Joan and her family were sent to Rohwer, Arkansas, the easternmost of America’s war internment camps. She was only 19 years old in 1942. Here it is, more than two years later, and Peter writes to her behind the barbed wire fences every, single day—can you believe it? Who cares for a woman that much?” Bill chucked, well aware of the answer.

  “Why did they have to go? They are Americans like me and you, weren’t they?”

  “Of course, they are Americans! According to Peter, they were removed for their own so-called ‘safety’ from the ‘other’ Americans, and there was a fear there might be some spies and saboteurs and certainly subversion tendencies among them. Peter said he would swear on his life that no Japanese-American would turn on his own country. He felt, as his Italian-American parents, and most good Californians, that other farmers a
nd ranchers in the state coveted their well-groomed, carefully-maintained lands and their crops. Without exception, their ranches and farms were the best, most profitable. If the owners were sent to camp, they would have to sell or entrust them, to friends. Most, unsure if they would ever return, simply sold, and cheaply.”

  “President Roosevelt was wrong listening to his advisers who were somewhat sympathetic of more than 125,000 good Americans having to read on cheap copy paper nailed to telephone posts that by the end of the week, in March, 1942, they were to assemble on a corner nearest them to board a bus for the Santa Fe or Southern Pacific train stations to take them to camps in almost all the western and mid-western states, as far away as Mississippi.”

  “Peter says Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066 was terribly, terribly wrong. Eleanor Roosevelt fought him on that order, and, I think, defied her husband by not only visiting several internment camps to make sure fellow Americans were being treated fairly, but also showing America which side she was on. Furthermore, and I didn’t know this, but according to Peter, a whole regiment of Japanese-American troops were formed from the young men in the camps. They volunteered with their lives to show and prove they were as American as you and me. Peter, knows some, including his Joan’s cousins, and keeps in touch with them. They write to each other all the time. He says they are mostly in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and they were recently in North Africa, Sicily, and now are in Italy. A few from the camps are interpreters out here in the Pacific and a small number are in the 100th Infantry Battalion. The best fighting men we have, Peter insists. His hatred of the Army’s Lieutenant General John Dewitt knowns no bounds. Thank goodness Dewitt was not a Marine.”