by Don DeNevi
Approaching his retreat before the arrivals of Bill and Ellen, Peter was accosted by one of the hundreds of beach sentries,
“Lieutenant Toscanini, is that you? For your usual hour?”
“Yes, sir, it is, too soon to be joined by cameraman PFC Bill Lundigan and Nurse Ellen. You know them.”
“Yes, I do and they’ll pass through to you. But with the black of night approaching, I suggest you three retire to the amphitheater for the movie.”
“Oh, what’s being shown tonight, despite ‘The Ghoul on the Loose’?”
“Believe it or not, sir, ‘Call Out the Marines’, a 70-minute comedy-musical starring Victor McLaglen, Edmund Lowe and Binnie Barnes.”
“’Call Out the Marines’? Are you kidding me? We don’t need to call them out. We got over 16,000 1st Division here already. Then, add another 35,000 miscellaneous Navy and Army and you have all you need to catch one mad Marine who enjoys murdering fellow Marines!”
“Have you already seen it? It was in the theaters two years ago, two months after Pearl Harbor.”
“Oh, I saw it advertised, but wasn’t interested. I had no idea then that I would be in the Navy-Marines then or showing any signs of being interested in the Marine mind that goes around killing his own.”
“Well, if it’ll make you laugh, why not go see it?”
“I’ll send Bill and Ellen. I’ll be on duty patrolling Pavuvu. I think the Ghoul will strike again tonight. Stay alert, young man. He’s killing youngsters like yourself,” the lieutenant concluded as he turned and walked the few feet to his favorite niche of repose.
Peter’s “private beach” was no more than 10 yards of pure white sand, debris-free because he personally cleaned it for himself. For some reason, the sand on the north west side of Banika facing the Solomon Sea Slot was deeper and more pure than anywhere else in the Russell Islands. From his restful position sitting on the white sand, with his back leaning on an ancient shore ridge that had receded, he not only valued the solitude for an hour or so of thought, but also enjoyed observing the beautiful rare cream-colored cockatoos skimming over MacQuitti Bay waters for food. Adding to the early evening color of the overall setting were the green, blue and red parakeets and the sounds of their rhythmic flow of chirping sounds. As the sun slowly descended, then disappeared over the horizon, the birds buzzed, cowed, then with diminishing chatter, they flew into the coconut palms where they would be safe during the night hours.
As he waited expectantly for Bill and Ellen, Peter studied the dock activities now that the harbor lights were on. Preparations were well under way for the following week’s invasion by the 1st, 2nd, 5th Marine Divisions; of the Palau Islands, in particular, one called “Peleliu”, less than a mile wide. Tinian had been declared secure on August 1, and, in a matter of hours, all resistance on Guam in the Mariana Islands would be over. Weeks earlier, Saipan had been taken and fully occupied.
The island hopping and long leaping were accelerating. Rumor had it that if all went well, the 1st, 2nd, 5th Divisions would be occupying Tokyo by Christmas.
In Europe, the prognosis for surrounding Berlin was just as promising. The week before the allies had broken out of Normandy and within the week invaded the south of France. Rome had been liberated and the siege of Leningrad lifted.
All was going well in both theaters of World War II. Little Pavuvu was living proof of it. Never before had seventeen freight-laded merchant ships anchored in the Bay, waiting to be unloaded, two at a time at the only dock in the entire Russell Island group. For more than 36 hours straight, Liberty and Victory freighters had been disgorging and discharging their tons of crated cargoes, supplies, and vehicles. For Peter, watching the activity and listening to their muffled sounds at his distance away from the one dock carried a special significance.
His middle-aged uncle on his father’s side worked at the Richmond, California shipyards, one of more than a hundred in America, helping to turn out a Liberty or Victory freighters and transports every week. Gus worked as a welder next to “ . . . hundreds of lovely ‘Rosies the Riveters’, enjoying them more than his specialty, joint and butt welding,” as he explained.
Now, in the moonlight, gleaming in their shades of gray and black, Peter could distinguish by their silhouetted profiles the liberator EC2 (emergency cargo medium size) and Victory VC2 (Victory type cargo medium size). Sailors, Marines, and merchant mariners themselves teasingly referred to them as “ugly ducklings”. Of course, it was with utmost fondness since each carrier was the source of survival with its five cargo holds of 12 deadweight tons of life and death loads of food, medicines, and munitions. And, no military man was more respected than the merchant mariner because his class of serviceman suffered the greatest percentage of deaths while delivering supplies.
Meanwhile, Peter’s attention was diverted to the troop transports arriving with replacements and combat veterans returning for retraining at stateside bases. To his left, within the channel itself, Marines were enjoying the final swim of the day, plunging and immersing, soaking and splashing in the calm, luminescent seawaters of early evening.
MacQuitti Bay and its channel was especially active, and beautiful, that night, the eve of one of the greatest entertaining events in the history of the USMC.
And, with a murder mad Marine on a killing spree.
Suddenly, quick, soft footsteps on the moon-blanched bluff could be heard behind him. Forgetting for a moment that he was expecting his friends, apprehension gleamed in his eye as he automatically reached for his .45 holstered to his belt.
The radiant moonlight threw her slender figure and graceful stride into strong relief, her face and hair as blonde, lively, and lovely.
It was Ellen, and Peter, despite his longstanding love for Joan, had to admit she was special.
“Where’s Bill?” Peter asked smiling.
“Here’s a towel we can sit on. I’m tired of getting sand in my panties when I sit here with you and Bill.”
“He would rather go to a stupid prewar Marine movie than engage in a quiet, thoughtful conversation with us?”
“Yes. When he heard the title, he laughed. He was on the set next door while they were making whatever the movie is called, ‘Wake up Marines’ or ‘Here come the Marines’, whatever.”
“Yes,” chuckled Peter. “He told me he was making an RKO film in February, 1942, called ‘International Squadron’. The guy wanted to be a lawyer, and here he was by the age of 30 having more fun being a co-star of over 40 movies. He says the year before he was in two of his favorites, ‘Sailors On Leave’ and ‘The Case of the Black Parrot’, making maybe $300-$500 a week. Around the same time, he was narrating Looney Tunes cartoons for Warner Brothers because the executives there said his voice had a ‘smile to it’! Did you hear any of this?”
“Oh, a little. I know he was making a movie, ‘Salute to the Marines’ after finishing ‘International Squadron’, and he walked out of the studio to join up.”
“Yes,” continued Peter, “After ‘International Squadron’, in the middle of ‘Salute’, he said, ‘Who am I to play a hero when so many of our boys are now fighting for me to ‘act’ a hero. I can’t be a hero when so many heroes have already lost their lives.’ So he walked off the set and drove over to a Beverly Hills Marine Recruiting Office and enlisted!”
Ellen added softly,
“He was draft-exempt, wasn’t he?”
“Yes, due to a physical back injury. The guy joined up out of patriotism. He was under a newly signed contract with MGM. His boss was Louis B. Mayer. The head of MGM was furious with him for enlisting! He shouted, ‘You signed up to be a Marine just as we were about to promote you to be a big star. Do you realize what you’ve done? Well, you’re fired!”
“No, he never told me that part of it. This afternoon, he came to my ward and said he heard a tugboat convoy from Guadalcanal just arrived with steaks for the whole island, 1st and 5th Divisions, for every person on the island. Well, one boat brought a copy of ‘Call
Out the Marines’. He tried to find you. By the way, where were you?”
“In the morgue, believe it or not.”
“He knows Binnie Barnes, who is the waitress in the café the two Marines flirt with. Because Binnie and Bill are good friend, he was over there at the time. She introduced him to the two actors, Victor McLaglen and Edmund Lowe, who he says were perfect gentlemen and very nice to him.”
For the longest moment, the two were wordless and each reflected upon their friend, William Lundigan, the moonlight shimmering off the eroded white sand crystals of the beach before them.
“Did you see any of his movies before you, too, enlisted?” Ellen asked quietly.
“A few. But when I saw Bill in boot camp standing in line for chow like the rest of us, I knew I had seen him before. At first I couldn’t remember, but there’s only one smile like his and by the end of chow, I knew it was some motion picture I had seen him in.”
Again, there was a long silence as Ellen slipped her soft hand inside Peter’s arm. Surprised, a pleasant shiver perplexed him. Not that he was embarrassed with the sudden thrill of a woman, Ellen, who he knew clutching his arm, but he was confused, and therefore troubled by his ambivalence. A shadow crossed his face.
‘Her eyes are magnificent, her body so lithe, and I’ve never seen anything like her hair’, he thought. ‘Fortunately, this having conflicting feelings won’t last. But I am puffing and panting without her noticing it.’
Not for a moment had he forgotten or dismissed Joan, although at this moment the Mad Ghoul was of little concern.
“Is something disturbing you?” whispered Ellen, poignantly.
Smiling, Peter said affectionately,
“More than you can possibly know. I’m slightly uneasy because I think I’ve gone ‘Asiatic’, as so many of my fellow Marines, friends and colleague say.”
“What’s that mean?” queried Ellen, seriously.
“Oh, it’s what every Marine out in the middle of the Pacific does if he’s been here too long: strange, eccentric, silly, idiocy, goofy. It’s a term peculiar to a region, a geography, a class of people. When a Marine begins to break apart, as I’m doing now, Marines diagnose the collapse as ‘Asiatic’, having been in the Far East, or anywhere else, for that matter, far too long. Pavuvu isn’t in the Far East, but close enough.”
“So,” she asked with a twinkle in her eyes, “You believe you have the ‘Asiatic’?”
“Sure do.”
“But why?”
“Look, Ellen. Right now, bright moonbeams are enhancing the soft radiance of your amazing golden hair. You have a slimness accentuated by your poise, even while sitting here next to me. The beautiful tenderness of your face makes you more exquisite than ever. How do you think all that affects me, lonely in a war zone, and the murdering - mad going to kill again, even as I shudder saying all this?”
Peter drew a deep breath to slow and quiet the pounding of his heart. Ellen, here, at this moment, was as stunning as his Nisei, Joan, yet it just couldn’t be. They couldn’t be one and the same.
As the two gazed up at the stars, a cold foreboding seemed to drag Peter down. All his thoughts and emotions were now of Joan. To further break Ellen’s grip on him, his growing embarrassment, and his growing affection for her, he asked,
“Think the Ghoul will strike tonight, Ellen, the eve of a most deserved day for the Corps in the South Pacific?”
“He may have, already. Oh, my God, I hope not. If he’s waiting for me, he has to go through you, and later, Bill. But Peter, he doesn’t frighten me, even without you two. I know how to aim and fire this .45 at my side.
After a smile and a pause, she asked,
“What movies of Bill did you see? I saw some, too, but can’t recall their names. Like you, I remember his warm smile, his animal warmth.”
“The movies with Bill in them that I saw were ‘Santa Fe Trail’, ‘Sea Hawk’, ‘Dodge City’, ‘The Fighting 69’, among a few others. He was helping to make two or three features a year, because he was so popular. And, what stood out in every film, no matter what role he played, was his natural charm, his kindness, his goodness.”
“Yes, when I was introduced to him a number of weeks ago, I had heard I was meeting a movie star, but couldn’t picture him. When he walked up, I had to laugh because that ‘natural charm’ is exactly what I remember the most long after I saw his pictures.”
“So, Ellen, it all leads to this. I will be perfectly honest with you because I will always consider you two as my lifelong best friends.”
Peter paused, then continued gazing straight ahead across the channel into the darkened coconut groves of Pavuvu.
“You and Bill make a handsome couple. You’ve heard him refer time and again to Rena Morgan who he met on his last night of leave while in New York when he was in transit to boot camp. He writes to her every single day, even about you. But I honestly believe he loves you. He’ll often say when you’re not present that he misses your gentle voice as much as your whole being. And, I agree. With you, as with my Joan, it’s the feeling of wholeness, of peace, of a kind of completeness when you’re within feet, of actually seeing, hearing, even smelling you. Is there a better definition of love? Maybe. But that emotion of having you within reach comes close.”
“Well,” responded Ellen, “That’s how I feel about you two. Complete relaxation, an unwinding, being yourself, total peace.”
“Joan and I have that. As you belong together, Joan and I are one.”
Ellen had tears in her eyes that Peter did not notice. She remained quiet for a moment, then asked with a forced cheerfulness,
“Tell me about her, Peter. You’re always talking about her, little things, your obvious feelings. But who is she, really?”
“Well, Ellen, I’m not certain when Joan entered my life in south Stockton. It turned out we lived only six blocks from each other, but she went to a different grammar school. But in the ninth grade, the first year of high school, the kids of Hazelton and Jackson grammar schools, about 15 blocks away from each other, merged into ninth-graders at Edison High School. Since we both were on academic tracts, we were in the only Latin 1 class. She sat in the first row near the teacher’s desk, and I sat in the second row near the windows. Three or four desks separated us, but for some reason, we kept exchanging glances. Joan insists our love for each other began right there. But I don’t think so.”
Ellen, clutching his arm more forcefully, eyes cast upon the sand before them, implored softly,
“Why?”
“Well, Joan must have been 13 or 14 years old before the war working at a small soda fountain and snack bar next to the El Dorado Street Lincoln Theatre, making milkshakes, ice cream sodas, frosty cones, and preparing hot dogs. OF course, she could only work on weekends for 75 cents an hour. I’d go into that soda fountain on weekends because I was an altar boy at old St. Mary’s Church and had to serve Mass at noontime. She was younger than I, but I used to think she was the loveliest of all the girls who worked for nice old Mr. Hagio, the owner, who took the tickets and kept the lobby neat and clean. Everybody loved Mr. Hagio, including my dad, who was the projectionist for Emily Perino at the Star Theater on Sonora Street around the corner. My father always said the Issei Japanese-Americans were the gentlest, hardest-working, respectful, kindest people on earth, even more so than the high-mountain Italians of Northern Italy from where my family came. To dad; Mr. Hagio, and the owner of the three movie theaters within a block of each other; the Lincoln, across El Dorado street, the Imperial, which showed only Spanish-language movies, Mr. Hayashimo, were even nicer than all the others! Joan’s father respected the man so much he insisted he be her ‘baishakunin’, the ‘go between’, when the time came after her internment to marry me. It is a custom I wholly agree with. Mr. Hayashimo and my Italian-American father approving a mixed marriage! Unheard of in Stockton, California! So, both dad and I saw Joan at work on weekends when we both walked up and down the stairs at the end of the fountain up
into the projection room. Remember, dad had two or three jobs, one was driving a Union Oil Company truck delivering gas and oil to gas stations during the day, working the projection booths at night at the Star, Imperial, and Lincoln theaters, and working relief at Austin Brothers’ hardware warehouse, selling to Stockton. So, in short, I paid no attention and yet I paid attention to a skinny, no-breasted teenager black long - haired, Nisei before I noticed her sitting in the front row of Mrs. Hofmeister’s Latin 1 on the first day of school. I think I loved her before she noticed me that morning before class began.”
“That’s a nice story, Peter. I never knew nor heard of Japanese or Chinese or Koreans marrying anyone outside their races. It’s sad what our country did to her family, her people. I’m so ashamed what our country did to them, rounding up the nicest people on earth, throwing them into cold, dusty barracks, for nothing. They are Americans, aren’t they?”
“Of course; virtually all of them are. And, their so-called ‘apartments’ within the barracks are maybe 30 feet of space separated by blankets stretched across a rope! Some of the elderly were so depressed, so confused, so humiliated, they began to commit suicide! What kind of America has America become? I’m sorry, Ellen, that I become enraged just talking about this. Most of my best friends are Nisei. Oh, Ellen, how I want you and Bill to meet Joan, to be at our wedding, when this war is over.”
“But, Peter, is it really love that you feel for Joan, or pity, or sympathy, or simple anger at injustice. You still haven’t told me about her. Who is she?”
“First and foremost, Ellen, she is brave. That’s not the number one reason I worship her. But her courage in every aspect of her family’s life is something to behold. Like her brothers’ courage. There are three Ikeda boys, the family still refers to them as ‘boys’, and each of them personifies it in length and depth. For example, the brothers were the second to sign up for a newly formed combat unit to fight in the war. Mike Masaoka, from Fresno, whose father knows my grandfather in Galt because they both have almond and walnut orchards, is the National Secretary and field executive of the JACL, the Japanese-American Citizen League. He was able to convince President Roosevelt to authorize Nisei volunteers form the camps to join the armed forces. Mike was first to join up. Then, Lloyd, Dan and Cyrus signed. These good men, and hundreds and hundreds of others, from all the two-dozen other internments, enrolled to prove they were Americans, that the United States was their country, too. They wanted to risk their lives just like the other boys they went to Edison High with; Hispanic, White, Chinese, Black, every nationality that lived in south Stockton. I think that unit is now called the 442 Regimental Combat Team. General Joseph Stillwell, our commander in Burma, said at a meeting in San Francisco two months or so ago when I read in the June issue of ‘Yank Magazine’ that the fighting men of the 442nd were buying an awful big hunk of America with their blood. I’ll never forget those words because they are so true.”