“Welcome!” Ian said, stepping back.
Max took off his coat and hat and hung them on the hook with Ian’s. Before he took his seat, he scanned the room like he wasn’t entirely sure where he was, almost like he was afraid. Then his eyes landed on me and his shoulders seemed to relax a bit.
“What?” he asked.
I realized I was staring. “I’m sorry, Max. It’s just that I really never expected to see you ever again. It’s…” I searched for words.
“Hannah called me the family’s miracle,” he said, his mouth twisted awkwardly.
“Well, she’s right,” I said. “You are a miracle.”
He smiled lightly then looked away.
“Hungry?” Ian asked, directing Max to the bench. “I’m starved.”
I glanced at Max, painfully aware of Ian’s gaffe. “Yep, you look it,” he said wryly.
“What?” Ian blinked, then he realized what he’d said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think.”
“It’s okay,” Max said, accepting the menu I passed him.
The waitress had brought three cups of coffee, and Ian raised his in a toast. “Cheers to Max’s homecoming. To all the men finally coming home to their families.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Max said, settling in. “So, you two work together, and you’re engaged. Is that difficult?”
My face burned, but Ian didn’t seem to notice.
“Not at all,” Ian said, flipping open his notebook. “We’re great partners.”
I eyed the two of them, wondering if I was imagining the slight tension across the table. I hoped I was. Today was about so many important things. I didn’t know how long we’d be able to talk before it became too much for Max, but I was hoping to propose an in-depth series of articles to Mr. Hindmarsh. I’d mentioned the idea to Ian, and he loved it.
I set my coffee down. “I’m so glad you’re okay with doing this.” I hated that my voice sounded higher than usual. Max would know I was nervous.
Max spread his hands. “Whatever you need, Moll.”
Was he trying to put me at ease? Was it a challenge? Was he angry?
“Okay.” I cleared my throat. “Well, I’ve done a lot of research into POW camps—”
“You have?”
“She was like a dog on a bone,” Ian said proudly, patting my hand.
“But why?”
“Because I didn’t think anyone was paying enough attention to them. I mean, we heard all about Germany, and the atrocities they were committing, but it seemed like Japan wasn’t on anyone’s mind.”
Max nodded. “That’s what we kind of figured.”
“What was?”
“That we’d been forgotten.”
Heat rushed into my cheeks. “Not by everyone.”
“Good to know.” He took a sip of his coffee. “So. Researching Japanese POW camps. Sounds like some fun reading.”
His tone was bitter, sarcastic, so unlike the Max I knew. Was it from his experience? Or was it because of Ian and me?
“I wouldn’t call it fun, Max,” I said, asserting myself. “But I would call it important. I know a fair amount, but the outside world was mostly kept in the dark. That fed the rumours, but there was no proof. So I’m hoping you can talk about it. Help people—like me—understand what went on over there.”
He looked down for a moment, then back up at me. All I saw was fatigue in those brown eyes. Fatigue and defeat.
“Okay, I’ll do my best. What do you already know?”
“I spoke with Sergeant Cox at the reception just before I saw you. He filled in a lot of details for me.”
“Cox was my sergeant. He and I were together at North Point Camp, then Sham Shui Po.”
“Yeah, I know. He told me that he was Richie’s sergeant.” I watched him, wondering if he’d let me hook him. I wanted so badly to know about my brother.
But Max skipped right over that, and I set my hopes aside for now. “I was glad to see him at the reception,” he said. “I hadn’t seen him in years.”
“You didn’t go with him to the NKK shipbuilding factory in Tokyo, then?”
He shook his head. “No. I got put on a hell ship along with a few hundred others and landed at Niigata Camp.”
My heart stilled at the name. Niigata, on the northwest coast of Japan, directly north of Tokyo. He’d been sent to the mines.
“Can you tell me about that camp?”
He took a deep breath through his nose. “It was cold. In Hong Kong, we were constantly sticky with sweat. But Niigata was cold.” His fingers curled around his coffee cup. “The minute we got off the boat, they bound our wrists with barbed wire.”
My gut clenched at the thought, and I looked at his hands. They’d been such strong, capable hands. Hands built for baseball and medicine. Hands that, once upon a time, had held mine. Now I saw vague lines cut around the wrists, scars put there by hate. I thought of the German prisoners at Bowmanville, then their Canadian counterparts at Stalag VIIIB, shackled because of a random order. I remembered how the men had fought so heatedly at Bowmanville, determined to maintain their freedom. Max had never had the opportunity to fight back.
“We were often bound,” he continued, his voice flat. “Sometimes with barbed wire, sometimes chains. We worked in the mines twelve hours a day, so we weren’t bound then, of course. We couldn’t have worked for them if we had been. Every day for over two years we were up around five in the morning for tenko, the daily roll call, where we all lined up and called out our number, one at a time. In Japanese.”
“But how did you know any Japanese?” I asked.
Max gave a little huff of derision. “We didn’t. But we learned real quick. If you stumbled on your number, you were dragged up and beaten in front of everyone. A couple of the guards looked the other way when they could, but that was rare. I got the impression most of them lived in terror of the senior officers. If they were caught being lenient, their punishment might be even worse than ours.” He took another sip of coffee. “I can tell you one thing for certain. The Japanese were great at doling out punishments, warranted or not. They hit us with anything they had on hand, and they hit us without mercy. A lot of my friends died from those beatings.”
I studied him, discomfited by the lack of emotion in his voice. Then I remembered Sergeant Cox trying to explain to me about how he couldn’t feel emotions anymore. Could Max?
Max patted his pocket and retrieved a pack of cigarettes. “Do you mind?”
“Go ahead,” I said.
Ian leaned forward. “I imagine this must be difficult to talk about, but what you’re doing is giving a voice to those who won’t be coming home. They deserve to be remembered.”
Max inhaled, let the smoke roll over his lips. “I know.”
Sergeant Cox had also talked about the lack of medical treatment at the camps. That aspect would touch Max, I was certain.
“It must have been hard for you, being a doctor, to watch all the suffering.”
Finally, I saw his jaw flex. “I’ve never felt so helpless,” he said, his voice a low grumble. He drew on his cigarette again, and his voice returned to normal. “So many men died of disease. Dysentery, diphtheria, cholera, beriberi, pneumonia, gangrene, tropical ulcers, pellagra, skin infections. Without nutrients, some of the men went blind. Some lost all sensation to parts of their bodies. A lot of them screamed all night because of ‘electric feet.’ ”
I raised an eyebrow.
“It’s an illness that comes from starvation,” he explained. “Relentless, agonizing pain in the feet, like needles being jabbed into them day and night. And the Japanese had an interesting way of taking care of the sick: they got even smaller rations. One less prisoner to feed. As a result, there were so many dead we had to load bodies into a wheelbarrow to take them to the crematorium.”
I hesitated, trying not to imagine what he’d just described. “What about you?” I asked, needing to know. “Did you get sick?”
“Everybody got sick.�
�
“What happened?”
He tapped his cigarette on the edge of the ashtray and stared blankly at the ashes. “The first thing to hit the camp was dysentery,” he said. “That spreads like wildfire. It drained the men in every way possible. We already weren’t eating, but then our guts got rid of whatever we did have. It was disgusting. And often lethal.” His nostrils flared in anger. “So many of these diseases were treatable, even preventable. There was a diphtheria outbreak at Sham Shui Po, and men were dropping like flies.” His hand went around his throat, as if he were being strangled. “Their necks swelled up, and their airways were cut off. They developed lesions all over their bodies, which then got infected. Some died of kidney failure.”
This time, when he took a drag on his cigarette, his hand was noticeably shaking. “The only reason I survived was I’d had a vaccine for it back in school. But Arnie—” His brow drew in tight. “Arnie hadn’t gotten the vaccine. He’d been off school, sick that day, and never got one. When he came down with diphtheria at the camp, I tried.” He closed his eyes. “I tried. But he’d already suffered so much. His body couldn’t fight it.”
He stubbed out his cigarette and tapped another from the pack, but he didn’t light it. “All Arnie needed was the serum, and the Japanese doctor had it all along. Oh yeah. The Japs had medicines for practically everything, but they wouldn’t give the POWs any of it.”
He swallowed. “So one day I went to the hospital and told the doctor I was a doctor as well. I begged him for medicine.” He looked directly at me. “Oh, and by ‘hospital,’ I should clarify. It was four walls with no windows, doors, fittings, lights, taps, baths, or furniture. No beds, no chairs, no blankets, no disinfectants, and no bed pans. It was just a filthy, broken place where they put the sickest of us.” He paused, returning to his thoughts. “But I knew that bastard had the medicine. None of their men were sick. I also knew the chance of my getting it from him was slim, but Arnie was really suffering. So at first I was subservient like they expected, bowing and scraping and all that, speaking as much Japanese as I could work out, but he wasn’t interested in listening to what I was trying to say.
“It was the most frustrating thing I’ve ever experienced. I ended up yelling at him, which shows you how out of my mind I was. The whole time I was yelling, I knew what was coming. I mean, I’d basically slit my own throat just by raising my voice. I didn’t even bother fighting back when they threw me out of the hospital, then a bunch of them took turns beating me. I couldn’t stand up when they were done. I was afraid my jaw was broken at first, and at least a couple of ribs. After that, they—” His voice cracked. “They dragged me across the yard and shoved me into the shack for a week.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat. “What’s… what’s the shack?”
“Exactly what it sounds like. A tiny, broken-down, floorless shed with nothing in it. Nothing but darkness and dirt, with half portions slid under the door when they remembered me. The rain was constant. And it was so cold.” He shuddered and looked away. “I changed in there. I was no more than an animal. No. I was less than an animal. When I got out, Arnie was gone.”
I caught my breath, imagining how that must have felt. Ian reached for my hand, but I slid it out of reach. It wasn’t I who needed comfort.
“Is that when you hurt your leg?” Ian asked, breaking the silence.
“No,” he said quickly, striking a match and finally lighting the cigarette.
I could tell he didn’t want to talk about his injury, so I changed direction. I hoped we would discuss it eventually, but I’d never go where he didn’t want me to go.
“Did the Red Cross packages help?” I asked. “I helped pack them, full of food and clothes and books, even sports equipment. Did they help at all?”
“I never got one,” Max replied. “I think some of the guys got a couple over the years, but the Japanese mostly sold them on the black market. Someone said there was a whole warehouse full of them somewhere. The Red Cross wasn’t allowed into any of the camps, from what I understood, except for one time at Niigata.” He smiled. “They wanted the Red Cross to go back and report on what a nice, happy place our camp was. They sent us to the field to play soccer, for crying out loud, and they even gave us little bits of meat in our rice. But after the meal, one of the men tried to pass a note to the Red Cross people, telling them the truth, and a guard caught him. They waited until the visitors were gone, then they cut off his head.”
My stomach rolled, and I had to look away. Ian was staring at his notepad, but his pen was still. I forced myself to turn back.
“What did you do?” I whispered, sick for him. “How did you survive?”
He met my eyes, and the most terrible longing twisted in my chest.
“I thought of you,” he said simply. Then he went on. “I thought of home. Of Mama and Papa and Hannah and the kids. I thought of all of you over here, gathered around the fireplace, knowing you’d be thinking of us, or at least hoping you were. I thought of our summers together, of the fun we used to have, of baseball.”
I wanted to tell Max that thinking of him had pulled me through the worst of times as well, but the truth was, I’d given up on him. The shame I felt was crippling.
Ian shifted on the bench beside me. I wondered if he could sense the torment ripping through me. “I knew this was going to be a hell of a story, but wow. Thank you so much for opening up to us this way. It can’t be easy.”
Max tapped his cigarette in the tray and finished what must have been cold coffee. We hadn’t even ordered food, I realized, but I had no appetite now.
“I’d like to hear about the battle at Stanley Village. Can you tell us about that Christmas Day?” Ian asked.
Max looked down at his hands. He didn’t say anything, but to me it seemed like he was asking himself permission. Then he nodded at Ian, but I could see the anguish in his eyes. I couldn’t do this to him.
“You know what? I think that’s enough for today,” I said. “That’s a lot for all of us. We don’t have to do it all at once, and I’m sure Max would like to spend some time with his family. Maybe we could meet again tomorrow or Thursday?”
Ian bristled beside me, but gratitude shone in Max’s eyes.
* * *
Two days later we met again at the Senator. But this time, we ordered our meals first. Max dug into his soup, swallowing four spoonfuls before Ian and I had even started.
“Hungry?” I asked kindly.
He looked sheepish. “Sometimes I forget nobody’s gonna take it away, I guess.”
“When’s the last time you had a real meal?” Ian asked, his notepad and pen magically appearing.
“The Americans fed us after they rescued us. On the ship. That was swell.”
“We’ve seen photographs of the men after they were liberated,” Ian said. “I gotta say, you look all right. Not exactly robust, but not skeletal.”
I thought about the photographs I’d seen. Men just like Max, with their boney arms hanging like twigs, stripped of muscle, slender and fragile as a child’s. Of the ribs, the clavicles, the hip bones.
“I’ve gained back at least forty pounds in the past six or so weeks. About a week after the emperor surrendered, the Americans started dropping food over our camp. That was a sight to see: huge oil drums floating down on parachutes, filled with peaches, sausages, cigarettes, chocolate, you name it. Every time we opened one it was a surprise. We ate like millionaires for a while. The doctor says I’m almost one hundred forty pounds now.”
The waitress came by to take Max’s empty bowl, and he took the opportunity to order another one.
“And some bread please,” I asked, then turned to Max with a small smile. “You’ve still got a ways to go if you’re thinking of swinging a bat next summer.”
Max gestured to his leg. “I’ll never run bases again.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Max. I shouldn’t have—”
“I’m six foot two,” Max explained to Ian as he lit a
cigarette. “In the old days I’d be somewhere around one hundred ninety. I’m lucky, though. Some of the men with me were well under a hundred pounds by the time the Americans got a boat in to get us. Some of them couldn’t hang on. One of the fellows, a tough Italian named Stan Jilani, was real sick. His whole body was riddled with infection. He and I both knew he wasn’t going to make it, but he stuck it out as long as he could. I brought him some chocolate and put a square in his mouth. He told me it never tasted sweeter. He was dead by morning, but I was glad I’d given him that at least. After years of hell, he got to taste a little freedom before he went.”
My mind fell back a decade to when my family had all eyed the last slice of bread on the table, and how my dresses kept getting looser. I knew how hunger felt, but we had always been able to scrape something together when we needed it. I tried to imagine what it must have been like for those men, knowing their bodies were dying, waiting for food they believed would never come. And then, after all those years of waiting, to know help was in sight, but not close enough.
“Did you know about the bombs?” I asked. “When they dropped Little Boy and Fat Man on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?”
“The Americans told us on the ship going back. We had no idea.”
“Right. That makes sense,” Ian said. “So how did you learn about the surrender?”
Max tapped the ash off his cigarette. “That was a strange day,” he began. “They ordered us out of the mine, and they made us sit in a circle on the ground. They’d attached speakers to the trees, and everyone got real quiet when a Japanese man started talking. We couldn’t catch a word of what he was saying, but the Japs, well, they looked like someone just threw ice water over them. I actually saw a couple of them cry. But one fellow there—one of the nicer guards—came over and nudged me on the arm.”
Max leaned back so the waitress could place the soup and bread before him. He took a couple of bites before speaking again.
“I still remember the look of wonder on that guard’s face. The sheer relief.” A broad smile stretched across Max’s face, the first genuine one I’d seen. “He said to me, ‘War is finished. Canada go home.’ We all stared at him, and he kept saying. ‘You go home.’ It wasn’t until the guards all left that we finally believed him.”
Letters Across the Sea Page 25