All of a sudden, a shell exploded just fifty meters ahead of Sumi, and he saw black shadows of branches and twigs ripped away by the blast dancing in the air.
He and his men hit the dirt. Sumi was terrified, expecting the next shell to come at any moment. But it didn’t come. The shot they had nearly caught might have been the last; the pounding seemed to have stopped at last.
Soon after they resumed rushing through the woods, their range of vision widened. Then a pitch-black waterway burst into view; it was Myinkhon Creek. If it was daytime, they would have been able to see the Burmese mainland far on the opposite bank, but now it was just endless darkness.
They found a thicket jutted out into the creek and plunged into it. Saltwater lapped against their shins. From the thicket, Sumi could look in both directions along the edge. He prudently hid himself behind one of tree trunks and resolutely commanded the others while keeping his attention on anything unnatural.
“They must be around here. Now divide up and search for them!” Sumi commanded the troops.
A star shell abruptly went up behind them again before he finished the last word. A dazzling luminosity almost like daylight shone all around, and dyed the foliage in a lively green. Sumi immediately took advantage of this opportunity to view his surroundings.
And he saw something he didn’t expect.
It was a large cluster of countless little lights floating on the surface—many pairs of red lights spread along the water’s edge. Though most drifted the creek slowly to the left, some didn’t move at all—near the rim of the very thicket where the rescue party hid, as if they were laying siege to it. Just when Sumi realized what those lights were, Pondgi sharply alerted him from behind. “Master Sumi. Watch out! Crocodiles are aiming at us!”
In a moment, the memory of the earlier horrific event returned to Sumi’s mind. He cowered on the spot, almost instinctively.
The star shell was burning itself out. Darkness began to reign over the creek again, and the cluster of lights encircling the thicket was also melting away into the dark surface. Sumi managed to suppress the fear welling up and shouted a command: “Prepare to fire!”
A series of sharp metallic sounds of cocking and releasing safety latches was heard in the darkness.
“Here is dangerous. Draw back by ten meters. Get away from the water! But don’t move quickly!” Pondgi said from somewhere behind.
Every soldier began pulling back with his gun at the ready.
What they were up against them now was no human. Any jerky motions might evoke an attack. Everybody moved slowly, like a Noh actor. Sumi was barely able to bear the fear that those white, triangular jaws might break through the darkness and come at him at any moment. He managed to tread on soggy mud before being carried away by the impulse to scream, when a crack of gunfire pealed out from inside the woods on their left. It continued by ones and twos. He could clearly see its muzzle flash in the deep, dark mangrove. It wasn’t further than two hundred meters, or even less.
Pointing in the direction of the gunfire, Morioka said, “It’s the fire of a model thirty-eight infantry rifle, Lieutenant!”
Others also shouted. “Yeah, no doubt! That sound is exactly the same as our rifles.”
“The friendly troop is firing now!”
“We’ve found them at last!”
This firing of rifles awakened their excitement. Yoshitake’s voice was trembling, like he was unable to restrain his emotion. “It’s really worth wading across all the way here. Let’s go and guide them to the south paddy, Lieutenant.”
“Wait! Don’t get flustered. Remember the enemy is around,” Sumi said, holding his rash subordinates with a stifling snap.
The sporadic firing of model thirty-eights didn’t cease, but he didn’t detect even the slightest hint of hostile return fire. If they fired even one shot at the dominating enemy, then there would be the devil to pay. Something was strange.
If they weren’t engaged in a gunfight, what were they shooting at?
Then Sumi heard a weird sound. Mixed with the reports of rifles, a strange shriek, like that of a monkey, came up from the mangrove where they had just witnessed the muzzle fire flashing. But it was obviously different from the monkey jabber they had heard many other times in jungles.
Suddenly every piece of the puzzle linked up in his brain, and he felt like his blood had frozen. He was listening to the screams of men. Then Sumi heard Pondgi mutter quietly, as if he shared the appalling conclusion: “Crocodiles are eating Japanese soldiers.”
Superior Private Minoru Kasuga came back to his old foxhole on the morning of February 17, after he and his colleagues had stopped the search for First Lieutenant Kishimoto. He dawdled a whole day there. The HQ staff confirmed the mess kit and the boot as Kishimoto’s equipment. Sergeant Keiichi Tomita apparently had reported his death to the battalion HQ as KIA, as planned. No one mentioned crocodiles after that.
Then an orderly came from the HQ at daybreak of February 18 and notified them that the escape operation would be put in action that midnight, and that everyone should prepare one or two bamboo poles of about two and a half meters length. The instruction ordered each soldier to fill up the hollows of the stem with 2.7 liters of drinking water. They would be forced to swim across Myinkhon Creek by using the bamboo as makeshift buoys. This was ancient enough to remind some of the Warring States period, when armored feudal lords competed for dominance in the sixteenth century. Tomita was infuriated to hear the way-too-primitive plan being called an operation and bawled out the orderly. But once the order had been announced, they had nothing to do but to obey it.
Kasuga had been cutting the bamboo at the foot of Hill 604 when he heard of the death of Second Lieutenant Jinno. A soldier from Machine Gun Company HQ, shifting from Saikpya Village, told him. According to the soldier, Saikpya had suffered an air strike while Tomita Squad had searched for First Lieutenant Kishimoto two days before. The bombing had destroyed all the precious sampan that MG Company HQ had independently maintained to carry the severely injured men. And an automatic cannon had blown off Jinno’s right leg. Jinno must have thought nothing could be done to save him, because reportedly he had entered a nearby mountain alone and killed himself with a grenade.
The soldier told him Jinno’s words to everyone before his death: “I’ve dispatched Sergeant Tomita and his men to Yanthitgyi to study the escape route there. Be sure to pick them up before the creek-crossing operation and take them to the continent. Don’t leave my men in this damned island. Not even one!”
Kasuga was surprised. It was the first and last consideration for his subordinates shown by their platoon commander, whose life until then had been filled with self-protection and deviousness. Kasuga stopped sawing for a while, feeling compassion for his commander. Jinno probably knew his company had lost all the sampan to ferry him. Otherwise, Jinno might have tried to run away to Taungup, even on one leg. The decision to commit suicide couldn’t have been easy.
Kasuga now realized the difficult situation they faced.
Just as Tomita or Jinno had forecasted, the withdrawal seemed to begin from Yanthitgyi. Soldiers were coming from every corner of the island into the surrounding hills, one after another. Unlike Kasuga and others, the soldiers coming there were quite unfamiliar with the geography. When they got a order to bring bamboo, they didn’t know where to find one. Some of them entered the nearby settlements at their own initiative, battered down private houses, and even plundered bamboo poles that were precious building materials for the locals.
This reminded Kasuga of a time he had been slapped by an officer. It was the time their troop had gotten delayed in Rangoon, just after he had come to Burma. He had been out on official duty in a sweltering heat. While he walked on the street teeming with people, he had gotten thirsty and pinched a mango from a passing fruit seller’s cart. Though he had had money, he had thought it bothersome to bargain, for he hadn’t known enough Burmese yet.
As soon as he had taken a bite
of it, a fat officer with a saber in his belt, had come out of nowhere and given him a binta, the hard slap, powerful enough to knock him down onto the dusty street. The officer had looked furious; he had apparently seen the whole sequence of events.
He had told Kasuga off, saying, “Listen, you private! You might think it’s only a mango, but what you’re doing now is clear plunder. The Imperial Army is fighting against Britain to liberate Asian people from white men’s colonial rules.
However hard we may try to enforce discipline among front-line troops, if troops like you act this way, how can we set a good example for the locals?”
The sudden confrontation between the two Japanese had attracted a crowd of local spectators. It had been intolerably humiliating for Kasuga to be abused in front of many Burmese, but he had known that the officer was right.
But how about the Imperial Army’s actions of late? They stole rice, stock, and even building materials from locals who were anything but rich. Such actions were opposite their intentions, although they couldn’t help it, being on the verge of death. They might have lost not only the purpose, but the meaning of this war.
Kasuga realized nobody pretended to be brave and impressive anymore, once doomed to defeat. He recalled the face of a soldier, joyful to know of the evacuation order, who had been tearing the bamboo wall apart. Next he tried to remember the face of the fat officer who had foamed at the mouth and admonished him, but the image in his mind was somehow blurred. Though he had surely suffered the burning disgrace, the event seemed long ago.
The sun went down, and brilliantly crimsoned clouds drifted just above the ridgeline of Hill 604. The command was announced—at last—to plunge into Myinkhon Creek. A crowd of soldiers shouldering bamboo poles began moving out. It was not an orderly march; most of them rambled. It was rather natural, because the order to evacuate to the continent lacked any specific instruction.
Was this order issued hastily, without studying the escape route thoroughly, since First Lieutenant Kishimoto had met with an untimely death? Kasuga didn’t understand the reason. The only thing he could do now was to follow Tomita.
He was now the acting platoon commander, due to the successive deaths of Arakawa and Jinno. However, he also followed the fragmentary guidance of MG
Company almost blindly. Even though he knew quite a bit about the way to the creek because of his experience in search of First Lieutenant Kishimoto, he fell in line with the others, his face showing despair and resignation.
Various reports had come to light via word of mouth among the soldiers. The regiment HQ had reportedly dispatched a relief column, and it had already stationed itself at a village called Lamu on the opposite bank. But in addition to crossing the creek, they would have to keep walking for no less than a week to get there. Mangroves covered the continental side as well, and it would be a journey probably without food and drink.
Kasuga heard that friendly aircraft would come to attack hostile vessels blockading there just before the time of action. However, he was disappointed to hear that they consisted of only two type one hundred reconnaissances. The Allies had apparently advanced on a massive scale toward Mandalay. Now all Japanese troops were at stake. The Army Air Service had no fighters or bombers to allocate here now, so it was flying reconnaissances, hurriedly bomb-laden, instead as a last resort. But there were only two.
The garrison HQ seemed to have experienced many twists and turns up to the decision of this evacuation. The regiment commander in Taungup said they didn’t need to fight to the death and repeatedly ordered them to come back to the continent by all means. Nevertheless, most company commanders had taken a skeptical view of the operation, along with the battalion commander himself, until they eventually decided to carry out the crossing. First Lieutenant Okawa, the Sixth Company commander, opposed it vehemently, claiming the troops were very likely to be spotted if they all tried a forced crossing of the creek in the face of the enemy. Okawa said he couldn’t agree with such an irresponsible operation, and he also insisted they should build up a guerilla front there so that they could seize every opportunity to make repeated small withdrawals after gathering as many boats as possible.
But an order was an order, after all. The battalion commander had decided to carry out the creek-crossing operation. On the other hand, First Lieutenant Okawa never budged an inch from his view. So it was settled by the battalion commander that only Sixth Company would remain and back up the rest of the evacuating soldiers. Probably, he didn’t want to prosecute Okawa with disobey-ing an order.
Kasuga was delighted to hear the evacuation would proceed, but was worried about the real state of affairs. He came to think that a guerilla war in the mountains, as Okawa had said, might be a better idea. He also wondered if he could really swim that vast creek with the help of a humble bamboo pole. If they were spotted and raked by enemies on their way, what would the outcome be? Evading wouldn’t work in the middle of the creek, to say nothing of counterattacks. Even if they were fortunate enough to make it across safely, could he get to Lamu with only 3.6 liters of water in his canteen and the hollows of a bamboo?
But the foulest feeling among them all was a rather primitive fear which threw Kasuga into a blue funk.
As soon as they greeted the dawn of February 17, Tomita Squad resumed searching for any other trace of First Lieutenant Kishimoto but didn’t find anything new. How he was lost and killed ended up as an unsolved mystery.
But Kasuga believed a crocodile had gotten Kishimoto. Even the company commander himself had gone reconnoitering. Armed escorts should have accompanied him as a rule. Nevertheless, the commander had vanished into thin air when they noticed. So it was settled as a missing person case.
As an officer, Kishimoto should have had a handgun, at least. Defying the weapon, the crocodile carried him away in a flash. His disappearance had not been a human deed. Nobody could explain that puddle of blood and the amputated leg in that context.
Uncanny reptiles with tremendous power were prowling in the pitch-darkness of the mangrove, and Kasuga knew he must go there again. He was feeling desperate enough without that additional concern. It was hard to keep his sanity.
The strength of numbers helped to calm his fears a little. He was still in the Army, though it was on the run. When he entered the mangrove before, he had been accompanied only by Tomita. But this time, two-thirds of the garrison would advance there at once. Looking around, he could see many soldiers marching shoulder to shoulder. Although they didn’t have heavy firearms anymore, all armed themselves with rifles, grenades, or even light machine guns. It made him feel that he had a chance of not being chosen as a crocodile’s target.
Marching among the desolate, elongated column, Kasuga went through the
dense bamboo thicket. Many men around him carelessly hit each other with bamboo, for the long poles on their shoulders hindered their walking. A clear clang broke the sheer silence and reverberated throughout the thicket every time, followed by rebuking shouts. Kasuga thought it far from a quiet march.
Now Tomita led the MG Fifth Platoon, which was running out of members, and it got on the tail end of MG Company. When Kasuga passed through the bamboo thicket and neared the community of nipa palm, the sun had set completely. The waxing half-moon was shining far above the already-blackened ridgeline of Hill 604.
Leaves glistening in moonlight looked like bare swords, giving Kasuga ominous impressions. But they began to vanish as the odor of the sea came drifting upon them. Their platoon had stepped into the mangrove. It was difficult to walk there, even in daylight. Their march quickly stagnated, and the groans of many soldiers were heard here and there. The darkness increased considerably, as layers of branches and leaves of salt-tolerant trees covered the night sky.
Kasuga feared being left behind. Still worse, his shrapnel wound had begun throbbing with pain, and he broke out in a cold sweat. If he were to stray here, what would his fate be? It was too terrible to think. Almost desperately, he pushed his
way through the trees, keeping the white sash across Tomita’s chest, looming faintly in the darkness ahead, in his sights.
He didn’t know how many hours they had been walking anymore. When he stopped to wipe the sweat from his forehead, he noticed a breeze that carried with it the hum of aircraft exhaust. Friendly reconnaissances had likely come to cover the crossing, as scheduled. A little later, the bang of a detonation could be heard up ahead. Then clatters of machine guns started reverberating. Hostile vessels had probably taken up positions on Myinkhon Creek as expected, and the recon section was challenging them to a gunfight. Kasuga could tell an aerial bomb caused the first blast.
The pitch of the aircraft drone fluctuated continuously, probably caused by the recon pilots busily manipulating their throttles. It was punctuated by the sporadic firing of machine guns, but Kasuga couldn’t tell if it was friend or foe. All of this action was unexpectedly near. All the soldiers, including Kasuga himself, had stopped. Everyone listened to the course of events in breathless suspense.
Abruptly, the clattering died down. Kasuga expected a deafening explosion of an enemy boat, but the surroundings were sinking into a hush again. The recon section might have already beaten a hurried retreat; nobody could hear their exhaust.
The whole battle ended in less than five minutes. Kasuga wondered what caused it to end so quickly. Two planes might have been too few, or they might not have had enough ammo. Or, the firepower or the number of enemy boats might have been too much or many for the recons.
Kasuga was disappointed. He didn’t understand what that operation meant.
He doubted such a halfway attack could contain the enemy. Even when looked at in the most favorable light, it was hard to think the air support had gotten the desired results—to make their crossing operation easy. Instead, it seemed to advertise that the Japanese Army was doing something that night. He couldn’t help feeling it was an unwelcome favor, being sorry for the airmen having come to support them without considering the difficulty of night attacks.
Dragon of the Mangrooves Page 14