Dragon of the Mangrooves

by Yasuyuki Kasai

  Enemy planes had been rampant since the beginning of that year. As soon as they saw moving figures, those pilots strafed everything there mercilessly. The possibility of an enemy counteroffensive was getting stronger day by day. It was no wonder that many locals were missing. At least, Kasuga thought, the shrimping villager had evacuated himself somewhere to avoid the evils of war. The locals surely had many place to hide to save their lives, unlike Japanese soldiers.

  They had come to Myinde as a search party, and the priority was to get clues to the whereabouts of the missing soldier. There wasn’t enough time for a talk with the rudgi about trifling. There was even less time for a chat by a rank-and-file about crocodiles’ stench. The troop soon departed there, while Kasuga still harbored a doubt.

  But he had time at present, and it was a good chance to determine the cause of the stench.

  His squad was detached from Machine Gun Company and kept on antiair-

  craft defense duty in Hill 353, where the main body of Sixth Company stayed. A freshwater stream, precious on the island, ran by the eastern hillside. Just before it joined with a saltwater creek, the stream made a little falls in the woods. Kasuga came here alone on duty to fetch water, and all the canteens were filled.

  He knew Second Lieutenant Jinno, their hysterically fault-finding platoon commander, hadn’t been around since the previous night. On the other hand, Sergeant Keiichi Tomita, the squad leader, was friendly and kind to Kasuga, since the two had come from the same province. Even if he should come back a little late, Tomita wouldn’t tell him off much.

  It was very valuable leisure time for a soldier who couldn’t have even one minute of solitary do-as-you-please time. So he came out of the woods and walked to the waterside to enjoy a stroll.

  Turning his eyes from the shining pagoda on the opposite bank, he scanned the edge to search for any cause of the odor. He reckoned it to be a decaying carcass of livestock caught in a pool nearby.

  A little sand bank stood where the opposite woods got sparse. Kasuga found something like a decayed tree trunk laying on the sand there. The moment he fixed his eyes upon it, he held his breath.

  It was a crocodile with its tail tip dipped in the water. Flattened out on the sand, it didn’t move—as if dead. But it radiated a strong presence. Its skin was mottled with innumerable tawny and dark green scales, reminding him of an ancient mosaic art. Two rows of sharp, pointed prominences ran along the spine to the tip of its tail. It looked encased in armor.

  And its eye was the most impressive thing of all. The whole eyeball was golden and shining, except for a vertical slit as sharp as a knife-cut. Standing motionless, Kasuga couldn’t avert his eyes from it. The corners of its mouth had given him an image of a laughing countenance, and reminded him of a smiling face of the supine Buddha statue seen in every temple. Feeling even a holiness, he was bewildered. But the snaggleteeth sticking out from the lips were all sharp, and that made him also feel something evil. He couldn’t suppress a dim uneasiness.

  Suddenly, the crocodile rose to its feet as if it had noticed the gaze. All its limbs were as small as the hands and feet of a human baby—quite an imbalance compared with its stout body and tail. Soon it veered with an awkward gait, then slithered down the slope, and vanished silently into the dark water. Ripples caused by its dorsal scuta appeared on the surface a moment later. The crocodile seemed able to swim under the water at a remarkably high speed, quite contrary to its sluggish action on the ground. After the ripples subsided, not a trace of the crocodile remained.

  Kasuga exhaled without noticing. It seemed that a long time had passed.

  Remembering the rudgi’s tale, he got a spooky feeling and thought the cause of that stench might have been a man-eater crocodile, as the man had said. But the crocodile Kasuga had seen wasn’t so big. It was two meters long at the most. It couldn’t prey upon human beings. It might occasionally devour a drowned body drifting nearby, but certainly it couldn’t attack a man, judging from its lack of speed on the ground.

  Kasuga’s thoughts turned back to the facts: he came here to fight a war. It was no time to fear animals when the possibility of the enemy counteroffensive was increasing. It didn’t suit a soldier to lose nerve in the presence of a mere crocodile.

  Encouraging himself, he came back to the woods where morning dew still remained on every grass blade. Kasuga picked up the canteens and began climb-ing up Hill 353. Still, he couldn’t stop thinking about the crocodile. Its figure crossed his mind over and over, as if branded on his memory.

  A crocodile wasn’t indigenous to Japan, and he had never been to a zoo or an aquarium. Only after he had joined the Southern Army did he step on foreign soil for the first time. But he hadn’t seen a crocodile in Shanghai, Malaya, or Sin-gapore. For Kasuga, a crocodile had been nothing more than a grotesque villain in myths and fairy tales. However, the real thing was beautiful enough to override those poor images. It had a certain grandeur suitable only for the legitimate descendant of gigantic reptiles that ruled the earth long before humans did.

  On his way to the position, Kasuga ran smack into First Lieutenant Okawa, the Sixth Company commander, and his outfits in a communication trench. He

  stepped aside and saluted in haste. But Okawa passed through at a rapid pace, as if ignoring Kasuga, and ascended the slope toward a watchtower near the hilltop.

  The commander’s face stiffened clearly. Several servicemen followed with the same look.

  Kasuga felt a presentiment of emergency and ran toward the machine gun post of Tomita Squad. Surely every fire trench on the route had already looked like an overturned anthill with many flustered soldiers. Some wore camouflage nets covered with full of branches and leaves and stayed ready for action. This made him even more tense.

  He plowed his way through the crowd, regretting having fetched the water so leisurely. The moment he arrived at the gun position, Superior Private Etsutaro Hirono rushed up to him. In Tomita Squad, Kasuga was a marksman, and Hirono was a loader. Hirono caught him with astonishing news. “The enemy landing operation has just started!” he yelled, leaving Kasuga speechless.

  “When the fog cleared, one sentry post reported sighting an enemy fleet off the coast of Kyaukphyu. It’s large-scale. They’ll come at any moment.”

  Kyaukphyu, the northernmost port, was the biggest town on the island. It had some concrete buildings, which was the only difference between it and the island’s other towns, and Kyaukphyu had a naturally good port and suitable places for airfields. It was no wonder the enemy had chosen it as an objective.

  “I can’t believe it’s a real one,” Kasuga said. “Isn’t it a false attack or a reconnaissance in force, as usual?”

  “No, it isn’t,” Hirono replied. “This time, a big fleet has come with a big battleship and a carrier. Engli are serious!”

  “Where is Sarge?”

  “I don’t know. Even the platoon commander isn’t here. Everyone is annoyed!”

  “Have we gotten any orders?”

  “Nothing so far. Maybe Sarge will bring some. If it should be to defend Kyaukphyu Port to the death, the battalion commander would order us to perform an all-out banzai charge against enemy tanks, and we would all be annihilated sooner or later.”

  Ramree Garrison was no more than one battalion strength, as Hirono implied.

  That’s why Sixth Company was on guard alone at the long coastline, reaching no less than sixty kilometers from Kyaukphyu to the mouth of the Yanbauk River far south. If determined enemies attacked it, everybody knew they would have no way to defend it.

  “A banzai charge? Don’t worry, guys. It can’t be done!”

  Kasuga and Hirono turned back to hear a sudden, raucous voice. A big NCO was standing there smiling. It was Sergeant Keiichi Tomita, their squad leader.

  “What comes after defending this place to the death? You know? Losing such a rural island or two doesn’t matter now. I’ve heard the Army brass hats are sane.

  They can’t order such nonse
nse. Well, I’m going to have a look over the Engli fleet now. Follow me!”

  It was no time to leave the machine gun unattended, but Tomita dangled binoculars from his neck and started running, quite indifferent to the astonished faces of Kasuga and Hirono, who had no option but to run after him. Tomita made his way not to the hilltop watchtower—the best viewpoint—but to the north bunker. Unlike other positions, which were in confusion, this bunker had been empty and silent when the three had reached it.

  Tomita laughed and said, “Oh, it’s lucky to get a vacant room. I was heading for the hilltop post first, but I saw the Sixth Company commander just on my way. If he finds me there, he’ll know I left my gun alone. I’ll catch hell from him.”

  Though it wasn’t better than the hilltop post, they could get a wide view here, as well. Kyaukphyu was one of the major ports of Arakan. In spite of this, all it had ever been was a port with occasional cargo ships transporting salt. It had been a quiet port.

  But the scenery through the loophole had changed completely. Many ships covered the normally calm and void port, which looked like an international port such as Kobe or Yokohama. All were enemies. Miscellaneous warships painted in light gray, characteristic of the Royal Navy, were afloat about five kilometers from the shore and didn’t move; it seemed they had anchored there. Apparently some had already begun setting landing crafts on the water. Kasuga could see cranes working busily.

  Overwhelmed by the commanding scene, he was struck dumb. The next moment, a muzzle fire flashed on a battleship, and, as soon as powder smoke rose into the blue sky, a roaring sound reached the bunker and jolted the ground.

  Then all other warships also started firing. Shells were concentrated on a hillside south of the town. It was exactly around where their forces had occupied a position, but the consecutive explosions were so fierce that Kasuga could spare no time for worrying about them now. Shortly thereafter, an enormous fireball went up over the hill. The shells had probably hit an arsenal.

  The fire got bigger and higher with tremendous energy, like it was scorching the sky. Against the backdrop of the pillar of flame, which reminded him of hell fire, innumerable palm trunks flew about as if cut away by an invisible, huge sickle. Kasuga gazed at the scene helplessly.

  Mixed with the deafening sounds of explosions, a drone of aircraft suddenly reached his ears. He turned to the left and found three Lockheed P-38 twin-engine interceptors ripping the sky. They were rushing toward Kyaukphyu in a V formation.

  Tomita shouted loudly, “How low they fly! All right, men! Go back to the gun. We can get them if things go like this.”

  Kasuga returned to his senses. It was no time to be in astonishment. He focused and ran after Tomita, who had already dashed out from the bunker.

  Since the Imperial Army had drafted him, he had to distinguish himself and get a decoration, at least. Otherwise, he couldn’t face his parents or the neighbors, who waved the Rising Sun flags with ardor to send him off. He remembered promising himself he must be a good warrior when he passed through a gate of the infantry regiment. And he never forgot feeling pride when he joined the machine gun company, the lion of infantry. He had worked hard at the drills since then and had done well at every target practice. His efforts now made him a number four gunner, the best marksman of a squad.

  As soon as the three got back to the machine gun position, the other members of the squad all ran up to them together. They had been puzzled over the disappearance of not only the leader, but also the marksman and the loader in this emergency. Everybody was relieved to see the three. Tomita immediately began giving orders. “Enemy pilots are flying their planes close to the ground, so we can’t shoot them here. Prepare for a position change! Detach the antiaircraft adapter and carry the gun to the west bunker.”

  New sections of P-38 interceptors appeared in the sky, one after another, while they were furiously disassembling the machine gun. Tomita counted the planes and urged his troops forward. “Four enemy flying sections. Twelve Lockheed in all. Now we down them all. Go!”

  Ondaw Coast spread below the enemy planes having already opened fire. An antitank ditch had been dug in the sand beach to prevent enemy landing. And behind it, the hem of the jungle bristled with many antiaircraft guns defiantly pointed at the sky. Of course these were all mock guns made of palm wood. The Army had no money to purchase those modern weapons, or ships to transport guns if it had any. However, such bluffs seemed to have some effect. Interceptors kept circling just above the beach and strafing intentionally around false positions near the mock guns again and again.

  Tomita had judged it correctly. The prearranged position didn’t suit horizontal shooting, which was hindered by standing trees. The Army could clearly see the state of circling enemy planes from a slit of the west bunker, into which they had carried the machine gun. Everybody could see the faces of the pilots wearing goggles, they flew so close. Therefore, Kasuga thought it would be easy to hit them. All members moved rapidly and completed the position change in no time.

  Every gunner had memorized the motion of setting a gun and firing through a repetitive training exercise named “Bolt Action Dance.”

  “Prepare for firing!” Just after Tomita’s command, Hirono inserted an ammunition strip loaded with thirty live bullets into the always meticulously polished model ninety-two heavy machine gun. Its cooling fins shone and radiated genu-ine functional beauty, receiving the light of the Indian Ocean coming through the slit. Kasuga held the grips firmly and put his thumbs on the firing button. He found a P-38 coming toward them clockwise through the rear sight. If it would keep going at that rate, it should expose its belly to their gun. Tomita was squatting behind him and also seeing the same thing. Now, Kasuga could discharge 7.7-millimeter armor-piercing ammunition of convergent trajectory at the target anytime. At that moment, an unexpected shrieking voice burst into the bunker.

  “Hey, don’t shoot it!”

  Second Lieutenant Jinno, the platoon commander, came jumping into the

  bunker. No one knew where he had been up to then. His face was white, and the hilt of sword was shaking in his hand. He bawled out in front of the soldiers.

  “What do you think you’re doing? You unhelpful pinheads! If you shoot, they find our position. Can’t you make out such a simple thing? You retards! How long have you been in the machine gun company? Huh?”

  Jinno looked infuriated. He was notorious for his short temper. Having a tendency to get angry over trivial matters, he used to give them “binta,” a hard slap, and sometimes forced them to recite “Gunjin-Chokuyu,” the Imperial rescript to soldiers and sailors. Everyone nicknamed him “Binchoku,” a compound of binta and Gunjin-Chokuyu, behind his back and avoided him.

  Kasuga now believed the possibility of an enemy landing was strong. Disclo-sure of positions was only a matter of time. Comrades in Kyaukphyu were moan-ing under severe attacks. The time to shoot was now or never. He became indignant and looked back to Tomita, who was grinning in a self-satisfied manner. Then Tomita tightened his mouth, faced Jinno, and said, “I wasn’t going to shoot, Lieutenant. I moved the gun into the bunker so the enemies wouldn’t spot it from the air. It’s my fault for not having gotten your permission to change positions, sir.”

  Jinno showed some embarrassment and murmured, “Well, I was thinking exactly the same. Actually I also came here to order you a position change. You’ve made a good decision, Sarge.”

  Then Jinno disappeared again. He looked uncertain of this war situation. If not for Tomita’s quick wit, Jinno would probably have pulled Kasuga or someone else out of place and given him double binta. Kasuga reckoned that Tomita excelled over Jinno in experience and shrewdness.

  Tomita grinned lightheartedly again, indifferent to his admiration, and stated,

  “A puking excuse suits Binchoku. Now I can’t help it. He has nothing better to do than to keep me as meek as a lamb here.”

  After a while, a buzzing low-pitched sound came from nowhere. Everyone had hea
rd it many times. Kasuga looked for the western sky. More than thirty aircraft came into view at once. A flock of Consolidated B-24 Liberators—examples of expensive, tough, Allied heavy bombers—spread over the sky. Allowing them no time to feel overwhelmed, everyone erupted into a commotion. Kasuga heard everybody around him shout.

  “That’s too bad! Here come the damned Consoli!”

  “Everybody! Evacuate immediately! Bombers coming!”

  “Shelter the machine gun! Get into the cave! Hurry up, you dimwit!”

  Other soldiers jumped into the narrow bunker, one after another, while members of Tomita Squad were dragging the machine gun. Shortly, a sound like distant thunder came. Kasuga supposed the first bomb had just reached the ground.

  Then another followed. Gradually the sounds became incessant, louder, and closer. Soon an incredibly loud reverberation came. And the loudness like a drum performance at a Shinto festival wrapped up everything. Dry soil powder began falling on them from gaps in the logs beneath the ominously squeaking ceiling.

  Though it was a fully covered bunker, a direct hit would crush it easily. Due to the number of people, Kasuga could no longer evacuate into the slightly safer side tunnel. He firmly fastened the webbing tapes of his steel helmet in haste and covered his eyes tightly with both hands to guard them from the negative pressure of an explosion that could easily force them out of their sockets. Then he spread out his palms and plugged his ears with his thumbs to prevent an eardrum rupture.

  That was all Kasuga could do.

  The enemy had already won command of the air when he had come to Ramree Island for the first time. He had experienced the terrors of air raids many times, but never one as fierce as this. It was so severe that it felt almost everlasting.