Somewhere West of Fiji

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Somewhere West of Fiji Page 8

by Darrell Egbert


  That might explain the sneer. He not only ranked me but I was an army pilot. We never had a very good reputation, what with the inferior airplanes we were flying.

  Their navy had taken a toll on P-39 army aircraft at Guadalcanal. But things changed when we switched to Lightening’s. Their attitude changed soon after that but I doubt this guy has ever seen anything but a P-39. But our army pilots never cared what they thought of them; least of all I never did.

  He fed me and gave me some water. I couldn’t figure out what was going on. Why would he do this if he were planning to shoot me any minute?

  It was about this time that I started to pull the sand down on top of me. Not enough to cause a cave in but enough to start to fill the bottom of the pit. I would spread it around with my feet and tromp it into the sand. But I had to take it real slow so he wouldn’t be aware of my height. Since he never knew how tall I was in the first place, he couldn’t tell what I was doing. He was used to looking at little people. I doubt he had ever seen anybody in his life as tall as I am. I was counting on it.

  The next day he came up to the edge and looked in as if he wanted to talk. He handed me a dictionary with several words underlined. I got the idea he really was going to shoot me if I gave him any more trouble.

  He left and then came back about an hour later with a decent vine rope and tossed one end to me, I was sure he had changed his mind and was going to lead me off somewhere and do it. Now I set an all time record for being scared.

  If I could get his pistol or if I could get in a position to hit him or tackle him I was going to try. I was not going to let him shoot me in the head. I was no hapless Chinese.

  He sensed what I was thinking and kept his distance as he motioned for me to move on down the trail. I figured he was going to do it out in the water to keep from having to bury me.

  We walked down the beach for about a mile. We stopped and he drew a line across the sand. Then he blazed a nearby tree, telling me in Japanese that he wanted me to stay on the one side and he would stay on the other. I of course didn’t speak the language all that well, but I picked up on some of the words and his sign language was obvious. And then when he waived his pistol at me in a threating manner, I knew what he meant. He intended to shoot me all right but only if I ever came back.

  I nodded my head that I understood. But I was lying to him. I was sure it was a trick and eventually he was going to get rid of me. He knew I had no firearms, or I would have shot him. He was not the least bit afraid of me. He knew I would make a spear and a bow and arrow if I hadn’t already. He wasn’t the least bit afraid of them, either. What he was afraid of was my digging another hole for him to fall in. He told me so in sign language and I nodded back in the negative, meaning I wouldn’t do it. But I was lying to him.

  We didn’t part friends or anything like it. I swore under my breath to get him before he got me.

  It was about six months later, when I went to his camp. I certainly didn’t want to but I had to. He was surprised to see me, and he welcomed me with his loaded pistol, pointing it at my head. He didn’t appreciate my being there.

  He had a lot of things lying about that he didn’t want me to see. He had taken the radio out of the airplane and had been transmitting by key to save his battery. But after this long time it had given out. But I knew he had arranged for his rescue after the War. As for me, you better believe he had no plans to include me. But what was he going to do with me if he didn’t?

  He was of very high rank, maybe even an admiral commanding a flotilla. His rank would insure some favorable press back in Japan when it was discovered he was alive.

  I figure he was at Midway. Maybe he commanded something there connecting him to the atrocities I told you about and a lot of others, too. And if we showed up first, he was going to be in big trouble. How was he going to explain my disappearance with the remains of my airplane sticking up out in the ocean. He either had to take me with him or make sure I was not around to tell our army the truth after he left.

  I also thought about what he was doing flying his own plane and what was he doing over here? I concluded he had been on his way to some out of the way occupied island or another headquarters for a high level conference, maybe with Yamamoto, when he ran into this navy fighter on patrol duty, out ahead of his carrier. I would later find out they suspected we had broken their codes. That would explain why he would have wanted to meet Yamamoto in person.

  Admiral Yamamoto, the guy who no doubt will be held responsible for Pearl Harbor, preferred offbeat meeting places to avoid what actually happened to him at Rabaul. In fact, just weeks before my arrival in Australia the code breakers deciphered a radio message saying Yamamoto was going to visit Rabaul. It even gave them the date and time of his arrival. Armed with this information, long range Lightening’s from Guadalcanal intercepted him and shot him down in the jungle.

  ********

  I fully expect the surviving Japanese to come off as humanitarians that were, according to them, just acting under orders. Their pitch to the world will be: they were tough soldiers but they never mistreated prisoners or did they shoot any.

  Sooner or later, but probably after the War, somebody will see my airplane on the other side of the lagoon and come looking for me. He didn’t want that to happen. True, I’m thinking more and more that there is only and outside chance it will happen. But it is a chance he can’t afford to take. The last thing he wants is for an American submarine to pick me up and have me tell the world he had abandoned me. That was not in keeping with his newly sought-after image.

  The solution to his problem was simple; when my people eventually come, they will find nothing but him and my friend the naval pilot. The easiest way to make that happen will be to get rid of me, and then report that I died from a tusker infection and that he had buried me at sea

  But one thing for sure, many senior officers in the Japanese army and navy will be brought up on atrocity charges. You better believe we have a record of hundreds since the fall of Corregidor. Added to this will be hundreds more, reported by revenge seeking witnesses. And many of the Japanese are going to do anything they can to avoid being hung. They intend to ingratiate themselves with a very angry American military and an outraged American public.

  I had things all figured out, and thinking about them added fuel to the fire burning in my gut. To help quench it, I needed to destroy at least one Japanese. I didn’t particularly care if the War was over or not, I didn’t want to go home without killing at least one. And my primitive bow and arrow would work just fine.

  But now was not the time. I needed his help that’s why I was there. A tusker had gored me in the back of the thigh. I couldn’t see it but I knew it was long and deep. I had no needle and thread but I suspected my Jap might. Furthermore, I couldn’t see to sew it up if I had any.

  He wasn’t too eager to help me. In fact he brandished his pistol at me as if he intended to shoot me on the spot.

  When he backed off and then offered to help, he came off as a great humanitarian. That’s what he wanted me to believe and that’s what he wanted me to report. Everything he did from then on pointed to a change in his attitude. He wanted to be my friend or he wanted to convince me he was. Now he smiled at everything, as he went about the business of preparing to sew up my leg.

  All this didn’t escape me. I figured at some point, he had been contacted by one of his captains and told the War was lost. I know this because he offered me a seat and then proceeded to take his radio apart.

  He knew what he was doing but I didn’t have a clue. Then when I saw him unwinding a coil from a perfectly good radio it came to me? Radio coils like the ignition coil in an old Model T Ford are made of extremely fine wire. He intended to sew up my leg with this wire. Why not it was a good idea. I smiled at him in recognition and he smiled back, but in my mind it was all an act.

  It was no great sacrifice this coil thing. He didn’t need it anymore since the battery was dead. I figured he had long ag
o issued his orders insuring his rescue, and now he was just waiting for the War to end so they could be carried out.

  But maybe this newfound benevolence of his was just to keep me alive until it happened. He didn’t want me to get infection and maybe die before he could use me. That’s the way I saw it anyway, and it didn’t change my plan to kill him.

  Chapter 8

  I hadn’t been fishing for two weeks. He told me to stay out of the water with a few words from his dictionary and a lot of gesturing. I thought it might cause infection but later he told me the exact opposite would be the case.

  At any rate, I was getting hungry for something besides pork. I had cooked it every way I could think of–I even experimented with making stew.

  I was standing on the beach letting the water wash over my feet and thinking about going fishing when I saw a small dot.

  He was walking this way and he was about at the place where he had marked the beach.

  I didn’t know what to do. I almost panicked. I had about ten minutes and then I figured he was going to shoot me. He had, by befriending me, violated several pledges to his Emperor concerning the treatment of the enemy.

  There was a code of honor for the treatment of prisoners adopted by all civilized nations after World War 1. Japan, however, had their own code we found out about the hard way. Following the Bataan Death March, our nation realized we were not fighting a rational foe, one that treated helpless prisoners humanely.

  Having thought this over, he was now prepared to do his duty by shooting me. I knew it. I wasn’t mistaken.

  I stopped thinking and did the first thing that came to mind. I ran with my bow and arrow several yards down the beach and hid on the edge of the jungle.

  My intention was to jump out as he neared me and shoot him with an arrow.

  These arrows were designed and fabricated by a skilled craftsman schooled in the latest techniques–namely, me. I had sharpened them to a fine point and hardened them by fire in my nearby forge. They were field tested and certified capable of penetrating a piece of pig to a depth of an inch and three quarters. That was plenty, providing it was followed by a thrust from my knife tipped lance.

  I had also made a sling of sorts, practiced with it for a while and then gave it up. I couldn’t figure out when to release the stone. Sometimes it went too high and at others times too far. But in very few times did it come near the target. I had better luck with the bow, and even better with the sling propelled lance. The lance was much more accurate at about 30 yards than was the bow. I practiced with the bow and arrow, declaring it to be my weapon of choice for something under 30 yards but for more than that I needed the heavier lance propelled with this simple sling affair.

  I spent a few hours every day slinging the lance until I became quite proficient. I had an array of them sticking in the sand about 10 feet from where I was sleeping. This way I could grab one and use it as a spear or propel it with the sling at an enemy in daylight who was bent on my destruction.

  When he came within 30 or so yards I could see, wonder of wonders, he was carrying a peace offering. He was toting a healthy stringer of fish and a stalk of bananas on his shoulder. He had no side arm showing.

  I took a gamble and slid out from behind the foliage, leaving one of the three new spears behind. He was surprised but I’m sure he chalked it up to just another manifestation of my peculiar behavior.

  I motioned to him to enter my jungle clearing a few feet away. Then as he looked at me, I thought he might be expecting some kind of a western welcoming ceremony for this his first visit to my camp, something involving a peace pipe–you know, with carvings, and an eagle feather dangling from the end. Instead, I came to attention and saluted as befitted an officer of his rank. It wasn’t expected but I could tell he was impressed. I thought, instead of a kind of joke as I meant it to be that it might have been the exact thing to do.

  He squatted and sat with his legs folded under him. I couldn’t help thinking he did this all the time. I in turn took the only chair I had.

  I said, not at all serious in Japanese, “Okay what’s up.” Those were the only words spoken. Except for profanity and hello, they happened to be the only Japanese words in my vocabulary: I did say “Sayonara” when he left.

  He motioned for me to stand up and turn around. I hesitated and he smiled as he realized I was afraid of being choked by some Ju-Jitsu move they were all famous for.

  All he did was grunt, kind of.

  Then he looked over the stiches closely.

  He reached for his pocket dictionary and pointed to the word “infection” and then to “poison.”

  Blood poison in the leg. That’s all I needed. He saw the expression on my face and hurried; flipping the pages he pointed to “worry” and then shook his head in the negative.

  All well for him to say, but I knew about blood poisoning. It kills rather quickly, and how long had it been working its way up my leg was anybody’s guess.

  He reached in his pocket and before I could draw the hunting knife from my belt, he had a pair of dykes in his hand. He intended to cut the stiches and pull them out. I guess brass or copper in the wire had contributed to the problem.

  He smiled and nodded in the affirmative, which I took to mean I was going to live after all. But then what did he know, after all?

  He motioned for me to walk out in the water, which I did. It stung a little but then I realized it was standard treatment for those who had nothing else. But just maybe it was the best treatment, since we had none of the new sulfa drugs people were talking about.

  He watched me walking about waist high for about 15 minutes. When next I turned around he was gone. I saw him walking up the beach it was then I yelled sayonara. He never turned around; he just lifted his arm in recognition and kept walking.

  That night I had something different to think about. I lay contemplating the vagaries of mankind of all things. How can men who appreciate such things as beautiful gardens, floral arrangements, and formal tea parties, how can they participate in such things as the ritual beheading of prisoners. But then how can men in Germany be fascinated by the music of Bach and Beethoven and still approve of concentration camps, and the effort they are making to extinguish the Jewish race.

  The next day, he woke me up. I had slept late, not feeling well. Again he never said anything but went right to work on my leg. He had a case, a first aid case. It had a scalpel among other things. But before he cut away the “proud flesh,” he felt under my arm and my groin. I never resisted, I knew what he was doing. Anybody else might have thought he was being “familiar” but not me.

  I was eleven years old when I found out about this medical procedure. I had a pair of hand-me-down shoes. I don’t know where I got them but they didn’t fit. And my stockings had holes at the heel. The upshot of this combination was a genuine painful blister, and it had been there for some time. It was causing me to limp.

  I had passed him twice, this older gentleman sitting on his porch rocking. After the third time in two days, he stopped me and called me over.

  He asked me why I was limping.

  I told him about the blister and what was causing it. Then he told me to take off my shoe. He looked it over and mumbled something. Then when he saw the hole in my sock, he beckoned me even closer. He felt under my arm and my groin, just as the Japanese did.

  This old man told me it was just as he had suspected. Then he told me to sit down, while he went in the house with my shoe. I figured he took my shoe to keep me from walking away. He came back in a few minutes with a folded piece of paper. He asked me if my mother was living and I nodded yes. Then he told me to give it to her. Then with an exasperated expression on his face, he told me to come back the next day.

  I hobbled back down the street turned left at the corner and hobbled some more down the block to our house. Of course I read the letter, which was much more than a note. In fact it gave her a verbal spanking, telling her that she was not deserving of me. Furthermo
re, he said, my lymph glands were swollen from the blister infection and I was on the verge of blood poisoning.

  He went on to tell her what she already knew that I could die from it.

  She had a niece that as recent as a year ago had fallen on her roller skates, and her badly skinned arm had contracted blood poison. Following a lingering illness in the hospital, she died. She was only 12 years old, a family tragedy.

  It was this that scared her and caused her to go to work on my foot immediately. She didn’t say a word, which I thought was out of character. She never said anything about him minding his own business, particularly when he told her he was going to take me to the hospital and then notify the childcare authorities of her sub-standard parenting.

  She prepared a large pan of very hot water, and then poured in a liberal amount of Epsom salt, a granulated salt that was denser than just plain table salt. He had told her to immerse my foot in it no matter how I hollered about how it hurt. This she did without hesitation. I was then directed to soak it for an hour. All the time she was adding and removing water to keep it hot, at the same time she was adding more salt. Then she made poultices of Epsom salt and placed them on each of the affected lymph nodes in my groin.

  He also knew I had better shoes–they were for Sunday best. He also knew this and told her to quit being so tight with her money. Those new shoes immediately became everyday and she bought me another pair for going to meetings.

  This old man knew a lot more than anybody suspected. My mother was, indeed, astonished but she never criticized him in the least. But she never thanked him either. She had been soundly reprimanded and her pride had suffered. But things changed as far as my footwear was concerned.

 

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