Somewhere West of Fiji

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Somewhere West of Fiji Page 13

by Darrell Egbert


  “But it’s not going to be seen that way.” I said, with a stern look on my face. “Almost every American has long ago made up his or her mind that it was a sneak attack and the perpetrators are going to be hung. No exceptions. No defense.”

  “I agree, but my superiors will not face reality. They still believe they can avoid unconditional surrender, which will save the Emperor and allow them to stay in uniform….”

  “How do they intend doing this,” I interjected.

  “By destroying all copies purporting to be “true extracts” of the original documents….”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “There will be a tribunal. And the evidence against them, that is to say the evidence branding them a ‘War Criminal,’ will be presented by introducing the document we have been talking about. It will be entered into evidence, proving that Pearl Harbor was indeed a premeditated sneak attack and a criminal act of war. The accused, being those who signed it, will claim it is a forgery and that none of them signed off, and, therefore, didn’t know much about it. They, including the Emperor, will be accused of supporting it. And since those who signed it figured the war would end in stalemate, there was nothing to worry about at that time–the point was moot.”

  I raised my eyebrow at the term War Criminal. I had never heard it before. But I could easily see how Yamashita’s conduct in the Philippines and in China, particularly in allowing what had become known as the “Rape of Nanking” and the infamous “Death March” from Corregidor; these two incidents would certainly come under that heading.

  “Let me ask you something. You seem to know a lot about this as though you were the prosecutor charged with gathering evidence.”

  He looked at me quizzically, as if he wanted to discontinue the conversation. But I smelled something fishy and had from the start. Why, indeed, was an officer of his rank detailed to do the menial task of removing the wedge we had installed? I never completely bought into his story about being marooned because he had a falling-out with the captain in front of the crew. He was here for another purpose–I was convinced of it.

  I could tell he was on edge. If he was going to have me back up his story to our people, he sensed he was going to have to do a better job of convincing me. He him-hawed around and then decided to tell me the truth. Things had changed for him, and although I didn’t realize it at that time, he was even thinking about leaving the island.

  He said: “In the Japanese army, the same as most armies I suppose, if you sign off on a document it means you have read it. And if you have read it you understand and agree to its contents.

  “The original Master Plan as it became known, was penned for the benefit of the Emperor. But it soon became obvious, if it was in fact ‘the plan,’ then many people also had to see it to study it. That doesn’t mean they had to sign off. Quite the contrary, only about 25 military and even fewer civilians were directed to memorize and then actually sign the paper–that is the one given to the Emperor.

  Now he is holding the original to save his own neck. He wants to be able to tell his tribunal that he had no part in the rape of Asia. Moreover, since he did not sign it, he was kept out of the loop so to speak. But above all, he never knew about the attack on Pearl Harbor. According to his coming defense, he will try to prove that he was intentionally by-passed. Now if you have no questions, get a load of this. These 25 signatories were given true extract copies showing all their signatures. We know who they are and we know where they are….”

  “All of them but our senior admiral, who must be buried up the beach.” I said, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly, as the whole stinking plan unfolded in my mind. He looked puzzled; I hurried on. “Our admiral became part of our little group of three, who had been marooned here now for the past three years or so. But I’m afraid my friend if you came here to shoot him or to steal his copy, you are too late. The airplane he was in was shot down and he was killed, actually he was shot….”

  “Yes, but by whom?” He said, as he looked up at my friend the pilot. I knew who he meant.

  “He was supposed to shoot the admiral if for any reason they could not land beside the island where he was to meet Yamamoto. Then he was to burn the copy the admiral was carrying in his brief case….”

  “And so you guys came here in your submarine to see if the admiral might be still hanging around, and whether the pilot burned the document. Your headquarters heard nothing from him and they became worried. After Midway, those in high places knew Japan had lost the war. And there was a good chance she would surrender unconditionally. And, again, if this happened, and that document survived, and later it poked its ugly head into the wrong place, they were going to get hung. Is that about right.” He looked up from staring at the ground and nodded in the affirmative. “Your assignment was to chase down all copies and to destroy them. If you failed, somebody had been detailed to destroy you. But the main reason the admiral’s pilot became a traitor is, he never carried out his orders. After the two of them were shot-down, he never destroyed his brief case with this sensitive document.”

  “That is about right. Right enough that you can take it to the bank.” He said, with an air of finality. Once again his speech patterns were reminiscent of what you would expect to hear in the halls of Berkeley. The idioms, the slang expressions were intended to keep me thinking he was really an American who had been forced by his father to fight for Japan.

  “That goes a long way to explain why they want our pilot friend so bad.” I said, “they don’t care about punishing him so much as they do about preventing him from appearing at the wrong place at the wrong time. Even if he destroyed the admiral’s copy, he could still testify as to what he had read and what his mission had been.” He looked at me and nodded his head.

  His clothes were about dry and he looked to be about ready to take a nap. He said something to the pilot, who gestured down the beach. I guessed he intended to bunk with my friend or he was anxious to interrogate him to find out what happened to the admiral and the documents. I gathered that was really all he cared about. But there was something else. If he had been assigned to hunt down those officers on the list, he might shoot our pilot. He would, and then tell everybody the Japanese airplane and the admiral was never here. But what about the Jap pilot? Somebody from the submarine might have seen him on the beach through the periscope with the three members of the crew. And since there was only a remote chance they saw me, and the crew hadn’t come back, they would surmise the pilot did it. And if he was alive, then maybe the admiral was also. And, therefore, they were going to have to return to make sure or leave my new Berkeley friend behind to do the job. But if he couldn’t find the documents, he would dispatch the pilot and then me and then proclaim to his superiors that neither one of them were ever here. But how was he going to destroy the Jap airplane and my fighter lying off shore? I don’t know but he was going to have a lot of time to figure it out.

  But if I was right in my suppositions, and so far I had a low batting average, why would he be serving on a submarine? He had to be something other than what he was saying he was. He had to be connected to the state police or somebody like them.

  I watched this engineering student, late of Berkeley, with a very suspicious eye. He was smart, every bit as smart as I was. I couldn’t help but wonder if his father was one of the 25 and was his name on the list? A shudder went up my back. For the first time in a long time, I was scared to death. If he actually was who I now thought he was, he was a government assassin. He was a member of the “Kempeitai” the dreaded Japanese Military Police. And if he was, he was one of those sworn to die for his Emperor; he was not shanghaied by his father as he said he was, on the contrary he was a volunteer who had been groomed to serve Hirohito since he was a child. And furthermore, he was probably going to school in America in order to take an important position in the Japanese government after the secession of hostilities. Also, there is a good chance this fanatic had killed his father.

/>   I couldn’t help but wonder if the sub captain knew this. And if he did, our admiral was the last one to be located and to have his documents removed. And if he was, my friend from Berkeley was on the submarine for this one voyage only and was marooned here on purpose. The same way Ben Gunn and Selkirk were. Dead men tell no tales, said Captain Flint, a fictional character in Treasure Island. And being marooned on an uninhabited island was considered by pirates to be the same thing then as it is now.

  At any rate, The Tanaka Memorial was proof positive of a criminal conspiracy to attack Pearl Harbor. It would serve, along with other evidence to convict the aforementioned generals and admirals. The American people expected the Emperor and several male members of his family to be included in this group. But General McArthur, who was charged with the governing of the nation after the surrender papers were signed, would overrule them. He said he needed the Emperor. President Truman would agree with him that it would make it much easier to govern the Japanese through the Emperor. That he was not tried and hung with the rest of the criminals would come as a disappointed to the majority of Americans.

  Chapter 12

  During our discussion, Aoki, that was his name, told me our petty officer was really an admiral who had shot his pilot. I knew this was not true but I said nothing. If anything happened to them, he was ordered to shoot the admiral and to protect the briefcase with his life. The admiral had been killed but the pilot never reported that he had secured the briefcase. His crime had been not to tell anybody as he had been directed to do. And when he had been asked if he had destroyed the document in the admiral’s brief case, he didn’t know what they were talking about. He told them there was no such document; obviously he was keeping it as a bargaining chip with the American authorities. But it left his people wondering where it was. Aoki knew this and more, which makes me wonder if he intends to get rid of us both at a later date. Rather than dispatch Aoki on the spot, as my first thoughts had been, I figured I could use him to help us build a raft with a sail. And since he was a navigator, we had a better chance of reaching Fiji with him than without him.

  Thus we set about building the raft. We both agreed it could be done, the petty officer was still reluctant but he was now overruled.

  It took us a week to cut down five large balsa trees and pull them to the beach. We mounted them on a palm tree skid, they being far to heavy to pull to the water in the sand. We commenced to weave heavy vine ropes to be used to tie them together. We thought about also fastening them together with wooden pegs but concluded they would be snapped in heavy seas. Like this peg thing, I demurred to their judgment in most all things and then held my tongue where I didn’t agree. In the end it paid off. The raft turned out to be quite ingenious. It had a keel, which was a simple drop down type that allowed us to build the raft and then add the keel later when it was in the water.

  It had a single mast guyed by heavy vine rope. We used the “lateen” sail that was used in Roman times and on water like the upper Nile. It is triangular, rigged with the apex pointing forward with a light bamboo boom attached to a sliding ring. It goes way back, and has proven to be the easiest to reset according to wind changes than any other design. It is superior to the square set in that it is more efficient, particularly in light winds and it can be sailed closer on the wind. How these Japanese knew so much about it is anybody’s guess. But then it must have been popular amongst oriental fishermen as well.

  Our vessel had a long trailing oar mounted on a tripod pedestal, secured by homemade vine ropes. The oar was made to scull the craft in periods when we were becalmed as well as to steer it when running with or on the wind.

  Like most wind driven vessels setting out on a long voyage, we were hampered for space. Almost every square inch was taken up by water-skins or racks for hanging jerky. We expect to be well on our way before we have to ration food and water.

  Another of the major advantages of the lateen was it could quickly be converted in to a water gathering device, when encountering a storm or a light rain. As it would turn out, we had no problem with water. We seemed to have enough, although it was laced with salt from the sail. But that proved beneficial to our health. We lost salt, which was replaced as we sailed along.

  We carried lots of hollow coconuts on deck filled with water. We also had woven nets full for eating. And for lack of deck space, we hung them on poles over the water with the poles tied to the deck. In heavy seas, we planned to use them as sea anchors to keep from sliding down the heavy waves and burying the bow.

  Unlike a true raft, we had bow and side panels that were there to protect us from splash but they only worked part of the time. We stayed mostly wet the entire voyage.

  When times were really tough and we were close to despair, we reminded ourselves of the Polynesians who travelled great distances in open canoes. These people had less space for water and provisions than we did. And they had no compasses, relying on the sun and the stars for navigation.

  Our navigator appeared to be skilled–more skilled than the Polynesian navigators were. Then too, we had a modern chart and a magnetic compass they took from the downed float plane.

  We had two pallets for sleeping head to toe. We planned to have one man at the oar most of the time. And when he was not actually steering, he would be awake on watch–watching for what, I don’t know. It made no sense to me; I thought it was some traditional Japanese navy procedure more than anything else. But like most things, I went along because they had more experience.

  It took the three of us working during daylight hours, about a month to build the raft. We worked at nights cutting bamboo strips and braiding them into ropes, nets and half-dozen other things that we were going to need.

  The task of collecting dried jerky and tanning skins for water containers took us an extra three weeks.

  Our engineer became our director of operations. I never objected to this either. I knew from my time in the service that one leader was much better than three men with three different opinions. If I had ever been a believer in democracy or rule by committee, I gave it up early on. I realized within just a few weeks of observing the “army way” that it was the best way to get things done in a minimum amount of time. Somebody once said that a camel was a horse designed by a committee. I never disagreed and my two new shipmates had been brought up the same way since birth. We had a meeting of the minds on this. When asked to do something we responded without question and the work went fast without many hitches. There was one time, however, when I did object. Our leader wanted to tan the hides of our water containers. Nothing wrong with that except he wanted to use urine, which I found out later, is the time-honored way of many of the world’s primitive societies. He understood my reluctance and we used battery acid from the two aircraft instead. How he knew about this is still a mystery to me. But he knew this and much more than I did about most things. That’s the main reason he was the leader. And since I never objected, neither did my pilot friend.

  Speaking about the relationship between the two Japanese, I found it to be peculiar. Not what I expected between an enlisted man and an officer, especially since Aoki was trying to pawn him of as an admiral. I never thought too much about it that is in the beginning I didn’t. But as time wore on, and I was able to observe them everyday, I began to wonder. It was different than it was in our service. I couldn’t put my finger on just what it was. The best I can say by way of explanation is to say that it wasn’t cordial. It was even less cordial when they spoke Japanese together, which was becoming more often. I chalked it up to a national trait of some kind and let it go at that. But I still wondered what the score was. It was later I found out what that something was and it didn’t bode well for our coming adventure.

  Eventually the time came to shove off. The night before our navigator showed me on their Mercator projection where we were and where Fiji was. He had drawn a course line and marked it with a compass heading. I noticed that the chart, although it was covered with Japanese symbols wa
s not Japanese. It was one of ours and was so labeled at the bottom in English. Like many things Japanese, they had copied them. Their philosophy was: why spend time and money attempting to prove the world is round when Columbus had already proven it–they were willing to take our word for the accuracy of the charts.

  I did notice that two nights before we left, he drew a compass rose in the sand using the setting sun to determine geographical north. He also made a device that would allow him to sight the Southern Cross and then measure the angle of his plotted compass heading. He also did the same thing with another prominent constellation. I assumed he was using his second calculation to verify the first. Now all that was necessary was to calculate the average speed our vessel would make over the water. Using the simple formula of D=RT, he would be able to calculate the distance travelled each day. This was not accurate but we both knew that the inaccuracies would cancel each other and, therefore, our position over time would be fairly accurate. This guy was a smart cookie just as I figured he was. But then what was he doing at Berkeley studying engineering if he wasn’t.

  I further assumed he planned to sail around the island and then take up the course line he had drawn on the chart when we reached the center of the island on the backside. This would happen when we got far enough east to be able to see where the center was. At some point he would be expected to correct his compass heading to agree with the setting sun. I figured we had a good chance of fetching one of the islands close by the main island of Fiji and I was happy to be going home.

  The last day before we left, my friend the pilot saw fit to finally tell me his name. He said it was “Tash” after his last name, which was Tashima. Then he said what he had obviously come to tell me. And it was equally obvious he didn’t want the Berkeley guy to hear. He said, “Him bad man. Him wants to kill me.” I had him show me in the dictionary the key words. They needed to be verified because they were so flammable. Why did he want to kill my friend Tash? I ask him why and he held up the brief case I had seen earlier. He repeated the word “this” in Japanese and then showed it to me in his dictionary. I was not as astounded as I probably should have been.

 

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