Broken Jewel - [World War II 05]

by David L. Robbins

When the last note sailed into the brightening morning, Lucas stepped to the microphone.

  “My friends. By now you all know, the Japanese have gone.”

  The crowd erupted into a riotous cheer. Remy tossed his hat in the air, the thing spun high and fell into someone else’s hands. They threw it, and another, before the fedora was handed back. Lucas called for attention.

  “There’s much of importance to cover this morning. But first, I want to ask Father Corrigan to offer up a prayer.”

  The old priest moved to the microphone. He began, simply, “Our Father, who art in Heaven . . .” Every voice in the camp joined him. When the invocation was done, Corrigan offered short prayers for those who had died in the war, and of thanksgiving for the freedom of Los Baños.

  The priest stepped back from the microphone. A scratchy rendition of Bing Crosby’s “Star-Spangled Banner” issued from the camp loudspeakers, followed by a raspy recording of “God Save the King.” With the day’s first rays glowing inside the wire, an old U.S. flag, wrinkled and discolored from years at the bottom of someone’s trunk, went up the bamboo flagpole. Beside it waved an equally tarnished and proud Union Jack.

  “By agreement of the executive committee,” Lucas announced beneath the flapping of the banners, “this site is now renamed Camp Freedom!”

  Cheers burst again. Remy and Tal hugged everyone on all sides and each other long and well. They stayed with an arm around each other’s waist while Lucas continued his announcements. High overhead, three American planes headed south.

  The camp, he made clear, was not out of danger. They remained deep in a war zone, surrounded by hostile Japanese forces and makipili sympathizers. Despite rumors, there had been no confirmed reports that U.S. forces had landed on Luzon. And the fact that the Japanese had left the camp did not mean they were not still a threat. A dozen guards from a new unit had arrived in the early hours and stationed themselves outside all the gates. Lucas knew nothing about the new guards except that the camp had to feed them.

  He explained that for the camps safety, everyone must continue to conduct themselves as they had before. That meant staying inside the camp boundaries. No one should go to the village seeking food or supplies. The Japanese had left enough food for eight weeks ...

  “... but that figure was calculated by the rations the camp suffered under while the Japanese were in charge. We’ll try to work with the locals to buy more. I think we can do better than Nagata.” This drew wide laughter and applause.

  The committee felt the 10:00 p.m. curfew needed to stay in effect, with lights out an hour later. A curfew roll call would be put in place to assure that no one was outside the wire.

  “Of course, there’ll be no need to bow during roll call.”

  The flags came down. Lucas advised all to preserve their discipline, the trait that had kept them alive to this point. He released the crowd to another tune over the camp loudspeaker. Bing Crosby crooned again, “Don’t Fence Me In.”

  The looting began immediately.

  With Lucas and the committee hardly off the porch, internees entered the commandant’s office to root for food and souvenirs. Others raided the guards’ barracks, another group made a beeline for the paddock to claim Toshiwara’s bull. Tal and Remy joined seven men headed for the Japanese storehouse, off limits until now. The locks were beaten off the bamboo doors with rocks. Inside the men found stacks of corn, beans, rice and grain sacks, hoarded by the Japanese.

  One man did not wait. He shoved forward to heft: a fifty-pound sack across his shoulders. Remy put a hand on the man’s chest when he turned to walk off with his prize.

  “Clem,” Remy said, “leave it.”

  The Scottish sailor shifted his eyes to the others itching to make a grab for the food.

  “No way,” the man said, hunched under the sack. “This food is ours. We bloody well earned it, all of us did. I’m taking mine. You leave yours, if you want.”

  Another man, Molina, who’d worked for General Motors, pushed to the front. He, too, lifted a sack of beans onto his back. Tal moved beside his father, blocking the man’s route away.

  Remy spoke. “You just said it, Clem. This belongs to all of us. There’s folks that ain’t here loadin’ up. It’s their food, too. The kids. And the sick ones in the infirmary who can’t carry as much as you. It’s theirs as much as it is yours. So set it down and we’ll all share.”

  “I’m hungry,” Molina said.

  “We’re all hungry,” said several at Tal’s back.

  Remy turned on them. “And you’ll all eat. But you’ll eat the same.”

  Tal reached for the bulky sack across Molina’s shoulder. The man resisted. Tal said to him, gently, “We’re not Japs, Mr. Molina. We don’t starve folks.” Tal pulled the bag down and lugged it back onto the pile inside the storeroom. He returned to his place beside his father. Molina stomped away, perhaps to find easier pickings elsewhere in the camp.

  Clem dropped his bean sack at Remy’s feet. The others retreated, following Molina.

  “Then why’d you come over here, man?” Clem asked. “If you didn’t want to grab something afore the others.”

  “I reckon I had a change of heart.”

  Clem rattled his head walking off. Remy slid down the face of the storeroom door to sit in the dirt.

  “We’ll wait ‘til someone from the committee shows up. They can fix the lock and post a guard.”

  Tal gazed down at his father, unable to see his face under the brim of the fedora.

  Remy said, “That wasn’t their fault. Starvation’ll make anyone crazy.”

  “Why aren’t you crazy, then?”

  Remy crossed his ankles and his arms, as if to take a nap.

  “Soon as I saw all that food, I thought of Mac. All the things he had on his soul. I reckon he’s facing up to them right now. Then I saw you next to me, and I asked, what kind of father steals from folks outright in front of his boy? I figured if a man can do one thing less he’ll have to answer for, it might be the right move. Considerin’ our circumstances.”

  Circumstances? The Japanese were gone. Plenty of food had been found in the camp, and Lucas said the committee would deal with the villagers for more. MacArthur was right around the corner.

  “What’s wrong with our circumstances?”

  “We’re still a long way inside Jap territory. There’s plenty of blood gonna run before this is over. Trust me. One thing I know from listenin’ to that radio. Japs don’t surrender. And they don’t like people who do. That’s us.”

  Remy tipped back his hat’s brim to eye Tal.

  “How ‘bout you? You have a change of heart?”

  Tal pulled on the handle to the storeroom door, jostling Remy leaning against it.

  “Nope.”

  He closed the door behind him. On his knees, by the light between bamboo slats, Tal flicked his Zippo to burn a corner of a burlap rice sack. He clapped hands to smother the flame when the hole was big enough. He filled all his pockets. From outside, his father said, “Hurry up, boy.”

  Tal slipped through the door. Remy stood, looked down at Tal’s bulging pockets. He laid a hand on Tal’s shoulder.

  “I guess a fella can’t make a courtin’ call without a present. Wait for me at the gate.”

  ~ * ~

  Three Japanese guards nodded when Tal and Remy walked past. They were of the same mold as the men and boys who’d patrolled the camp before this morning: short, not fit or well fed, with little military bearing. They looked like children playing at soldiers. Their guns were real.

  “Keep walking,” Remy muttered. Ten strides outside the main gate, he asked, “They following us?”

  Tal glanced over his shoulder. “No.”

  His father’s face lit up. “Ain’t that somethin’?”

  Tal and Remy were the first internees outside the gate. Others saw them from behind the wire and pointed, shouting, “Hey!” There were the two Tucks, father and son, breaking a rule not ten minutes after it w
as set.

  The animal husbandry building loomed fifty yards from the front gate. Tal’s palms tingled with every closing step. He had no idea what to say to the girl, no way to express what he’d been feeling these past months. He might blurt something stupid. And what did he feel? He knew nothing about her except that shed borne abuse day after day and stood in her window wrapped in red, unexplainably lovely, as if untouched. He’d ask her name right off and introduce himself. But that would be awkward; they seemed beyond that sort of formality, exchanging names like strangers. This was complex. Entering the shadow of the building, his lack of a plan fluttered with the butterflies in his chest. He glanced down at his bulging pockets. He looked clownish.

  His father stopped him. Remy cleared his throat.

  “Look here,” he said, hiding again behind the fedoras brim. Remy scraped the grass with the toe of his sandal. “I suppose this is a dollar short and a day late, but you ... uh ... What I’m askin’ is, you done this sort of thing before?”

  “Calling on a girl?”

  “Well, yeah. That’s part of what I’m getting’ at. I mean, there’s a few girls in the camp.”

  Tal glanced through the barbed wire. The camp seemed even smaller from the outside. He’d never noticed the handful of girls interned with him beyond their shared predicament. He doubted if they’d ever noticed him. He was always in trouble or chasing it. He’d turned nineteen in prison, and along with losing his freedom he’d arrived near the end of his teen years a virgin. He wished for his mother, Sarah, to be with him now, not Remy. He thought cheaply of his father on the subject of women and did not want his advice.

  “You’re talking about sex.”

  Remy shuffled more on the weedy lawn. “Yeah.”

  “So what are you saying about her?”

  “I’m not sayin’ anything.”

  “Yeah, you are. You’re saying because of what she’s had to do with the Japs, that it’s the first thing she’s going to do with me. Well, maybe not, Remy. You think of that? Maybe we’ll really like each other for better reasons. And maybe this isn’t your business.”

  Remy held up both palms. “All right, all right. Fair enough. I just wanted to say I was sorry if I’d let you down. As your father and all. I just want it to turn out right for you. For you both. That’s all.”

  “Okay.”

  Tal headed for the rear door of the building. Next to him, Remy kept pace. Inside, Tal stopped his father at the foot of the steps.

  “I can do this alone.”

  “No. We got no idea who’s still in here. Might be a Jap guard got left behind. I’ll hang with you ‘til you see the girl. Then I’m gone. This ain’t negotiable, son.”

  Remy led the way up the stairwell. Turning the corner onto the landing for the second flight of steps, an old Filipina bounded down at them from above, gripping a broom by the handle.

  “Go back inside the camp!” she snarled. “You can’t be here!”

  On the stairs, she swung the broom once toward them away.

  Remy asked, “Lady, who the hell are you?”

  “Guards are still here. You better get inside the fence.”

  Remy answered again. “We’re here to see someone.”

  Tal put a hand in his father’s back. “You mind?”

  Remy retreated behind him. “Sorry. All yours.”

  Tal climbed several steps, putting himself in range of the woman’s next sweep of the broom.

  “You the housekeeper?”

  She cocked the broom over her shoulder. “I run this place.”

  Tal halted. This was the girl’s jailer? A Filipina, her own countrywoman? Tal rose another step. He’d never before thought of striking a woman and prepared himself to do it.

  At the top of the stairwell, a small Asian girl appeared. She wore a green robe, belted tight above tanned bare legs. Before the old woman could react, the little girl descended in a nimble leap. She grasped the broom from behind the old woman, yanking it away from her. The woman barely turned in time to fend off a swat of the broom at her own head. The little girl tossed the broom over the railing down to the first floor. She pointed behind her up the stairs.

  “Boy,” she said, smiling at Tal. “Boy Tuck. Go.”

  Tal strode past the old woman’s nasty stare. Remy stayed beside him only to the third-floor landing, where he took a seat, blocking the woman’s way up. The satisfied little Asian girl sat beside him, arms crossed.

  In a corner of the landing lay a shabby mattress. A desk stood in front of a peg board. One wooden tag bearing a Japanese ideograph hung from it. Tal walked past, into the hallway. An old Filipino stood in the center of the hall. Tal approached. The man bowed his head, and with a gesture, ushered him beyond the curtain.

  ~ * ~

  Chapter Thirteen

  L

  EFT ALONE tonight, Carmen lay dressed in an army T-shirt and khaki slacks. The clothes and the dark helped her put a stop to the naked day.

  She lay listening to the engines of arriving trucks at the main gate. Voices in English and Japanese drifted up to her. The camp seemed nervous.

  Carmen lay still, searching for elusive sleep. Frustrated, she pushed off the tatami to stand in her window.

  In the camp, every electric light around the perimeter had been turned on. Internees in singles and teams moved from barracks to barracks, collecting digging tools. What looked like the entire Japanese garrison milled around a dozen trucks. Small fires burned outside the commandant’s office. No guards patrolled the fence. What was happening?

  Carmen left her room to tiptoe down the gray hall. At the landing, Mama snored in the corner, Papa was nowhere to be seen. Carmen snuck into the other hall. She eased aside the drape covering Yumi’s room.

  Unlike Carmen, the girl slept soundly, in the nude. She lay on her side, a pale miniature. Gently, Carmen sat on the tatami, poking a fingertip into her tiny waist.

  “Shhh,” she hushed when Yumi stirred. Even in the dim light Carmen noted discolorations on the Korean girl’s buttocks and upper arms. Did she fight every soldier who stepped under her curtain?

  “Come,” Carmen whispered, motioning. Yumi slipped into her green haori. Together, they crept toward Carmen’s room. On the landing, Yumi made a jagged gesture at Mamas sleeping backside. She whispered to Carmen, “Han.” Grudge.

  Carmen’s perch had the better view of the camp. Side by side, the girls leaned out to survey the activity of the Japanese and the handful of awake internees. Carmen answered Yumi’s querying looks with shrugs.

  Yumi yawned and waved both hands into the open air. She’d seen enough. She left: the sill and curled on the mattress. Carmen stayed at the window, gathering what she could to tell Benito and the guerrillas. Yumi lay at Carmen’s brown feet.

  The energy in the camp faded. The internees returned to their own barracks. The Japanese concentrated around the commandant’s office and the waiting trucks. Dawn remained hours away. Carmen could guess at little and found even less she could do. She eased herself to the mattress, nestling to Yumi’s shape. She lapped an arm across the girl’s hip. Carmen brought her nose to Yumi’s black hair. The girl’s silk robe cooled Carmen’s cheek.

  In the hall, boot steps came her way. Carmen tightened her hold on Yumi.

  The black drape across her door was shoved aside. Kenji stepped in.

  He asked, “What are you doing?”

  Yumi woke with a grumble. Carmen sat up.

  “What do you want, Kenji-sama?”

  “Why is she here?”

  “Yumi is frightened, like I am. Why are you here?”

  The Korean drew up her knees to sit against the wall below the window. Kenji removed his cap. Carmen rose from the mattress to switch on the one lamp in the room. Kenji shifted to a military manner, sticking the cap back on his head. He seemed finished, as if he’d had sex.

  “We’re leaving,” he said.

  “Who?”

  “The guards. All of us. The internees will be on
their own. So will you.”

  Kenji reported this as if it were bad news. Perhaps it was for him.

  Carmen said, “Tell Yumi.”

  Kenji switched to Japanese. Yumi clapped and hugged Carmen.

  “Have the Americans come back?” Carmen asked.

  “They are close.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Our unit’s been ordered to move south, to dig trenches. An invasion is expected soon. I know you’ll tell the guerrillas this. It doesn’t matter.”