by Karin Tanabe
“Gunshot! I need a medic!” Christian screamed while Jack kept firing at the enemy line.
No one was coming to their aid, so Christian picked up his gun, crouched down, reloaded, and felt Jack slide down next to him. “What the fuck are you doing still down here, kraut?” he screamed. “Get back up and kill the assholes who shot Dave!”
Christian shook his head, pointing at Dave curled up on the ground, clutching his bleeding stomach. “Someone needs to help him!”
“Get the hell back up, kraut!” Jack shouted, pulling Christian by the arm. “Do your job!”
Jack repositioned himself and started firing again, even as he continued to berate Christian. “The Japanese shouldn’t have gotten their hands all over the Philippines. That was a stupid move and now they’re dying like insects!”
He fired round after round before throwing himself to the ground, grabbing for Dave’s gun. “Kraut, take over! I can’t feel my arms.”
Christian glanced at Jack, then at Dave, who looked just a few breaths from death, stood up, and fired off every bullet they had left between them.
Between rounds, he could hear Jack talking softly to Dave.
“How about you don’t die here in this hellhole so you can impregnate a whole bunch of women after the war?” said Jack, wiping Dave’s mouth with his sleeve.
“Thanks for shooting him,” said Dave, his eyes closed. “Thanks for shooting the fucker who shot me.”
“Of course,” said Jack, resting his hand on Dave’s forehead. “You would have done the same for me.”
“No, I wouldn’t have,” said Dave. “I didn’t fire my gun. Not even once.”
Christian turned to look at them just as Jack was turning Dave over on the ground. He was dead.
“Write to the Dove’s parents and lie like crazy,” Jack told Christian when they finally had time to grieve that night. “Say he killed all sorts of men and ran into the onslaught of armed commanders. Don’t say he never fired a single shot.”
“Why not?” asked Christian. “I think there’s something pretty honorable in that.”
“Yeah, at a kid’s birthday party, kraut! Not in the middle of a war. It just means you’re a coward who won’t defend the cause or your fellow man. I’ll write the goddamn letter. Everything will be spelled wrong, but at least the lies will be the right ones.”
By December, the American hold on Leyte was solid. The Seventh helped capture Ormoc City on the western coast and the body count on the Japanese side was over a thousand from the push to Ormoc alone.
Walking through the dead with his superiors, Christian left Jack and ripped off his shirt, throwing it over a particularly maimed Japanese body. He walked on the scorched earth in nothing but his sleeveless white undershirt, his torn pants, and his boots. So many corpses littered the ground that he almost couldn’t get to his sergeant without stepping on their hands and feet.
“They all get cremated anyway,” said Perko. “Good enough to leave them here half-charred. The job is almost done. And for free.”
“You’ve got a heart of gold,” said Christian, bending down and closing the eyes of one who looked as if he wasn’t a day over fourteen.
“You going to go around and do that to all of them?” Perko asked, laughing. “You’re going to be mighty busy.”
Christian thought about Lora’s tiny body and how sick it had made him to see it. Now, with hundreds of bodies around him, he was steady.
Christian took Perko’s water and splashed it on his face, then followed his sergeant around to the back of a building, which was nothing more than a shell. It provided a slip of shade for the injured Americans waiting to be transferred to the hospital boat.
Beyond them he could see a group of Japanese prisoners, sitting in a tight row in the scorching sun, their hands tied behind their backs.
“Who are those men over there?” Christian asked Perko, pointing to a small group farther away. “Why aren’t they with the others?” He watched as an American guard stripped a young prisoner naked and dragged him across the grass to the group of men.
“Them?” said Perko. He was smoking the very end of a cigarette and took a long inhale. He managed one more before he dropped the butt in the pile he had between his legs. “We just got that group. They tied themselves to the trees, if you can believe that. We’ve been shooting and shooting, up and up, waiting for those bastards to fall out like buzzards. But even the dead ones stayed up there. Tied to the branches. Sampson’s dealing with them now. He speaks some Jap,” he said pointing.
“How come Sampson speaks Japanese?” Christian asked, watching him scream at the men.
“He’s from San Francisco,” said Perko. “Grew up with Japs. He can’t really speak it all that well; he just knows a mighty fine amount of curse words. Want to know how to say ‘go fuck your mother’ in Japanese?”
“Not especially,” said Christian, handing him one of his expertly rolled cigarettes. He left Perko and headed toward the group of men beyond the line of leafless palm trees. By the time he reached them, Sampson had walked off. Christian forced himself not to make eye contact. He went a few yards farther and stood in a small grove of trees that somehow had escaped the bombing. He turned to sit down, but scrambled backward when he spotted another prisoner, this one alone.
Christian stared at him. He was stark naked and blindfolded. The cloth covering his eyes was a ripped piece of an American military uniform. Christian walked slowly over to where he was huddled next to a large palm tree. His chest was moving up and down quickly, and he was trying to feel around with his bound hands. Christian knelt down and put his hand in the man’s. He glanced around to make sure he was still alone, then pulled off the blindfold. Startled, the man looked at Christian, and Christian looked back squarely into his dark, terrified eyes. As fast as he could, he took the knife out of his pocket and cut the rope tying the man’s hands together and his body to the tree. He picked up the rope and placed it in the prisoner’s hands. No point leaving evidence of how he’d been cut free. The man stared at him, as if in shock, and Christian helped him stand up. They looked at each other a moment longer, then Christian said one of the ten Japanese words that Emi had taught him. Hashitte. Run.
CHAPTER 31
EMI KATO
MAY–DECEMBER 1944
By the end of May, Emi, Ernst Abrus—the Polish teenager, who Emi soon learned was a Jewish refugee, in Japan since 1937—and his accomplice Kenji Magara, the young boy thin enough to get through the fence, had made two trips to the German farm and had taken chickens and, quite by accident, a baby goat. It had wandered near the fence, away from its mother, and Kenji had been able to slit its throat without climbing through. They all knew the smart thing to do was to take it alive and use it as a milking goat, but they couldn’t risk removing a live animal. Kenji, whose father worked as a butcher before he was sent to war, could slit an animal’s throat silently. It was why Ernst had recruited him.
With the group’s learned patience, waiting in the woods until an animal came close enough to them, they had stolen enough meat to improve the health of all their families. Kenji had taught Emi how to use every single part of the animal, down to the feet and bone marrow, and she had been able to make a single chicken last nearly a month.
After the second trip, Yuka questioned where Emi was getting the food. “From the Germans,” she’d said, not specifying by what means. Because, in the two months that Emi had taken over the cooking, Jiro’s face began to look normal again, Yuka did not press her.
When the three went back to the German farm in June, sure to always avoid each other in town until a trip needed to be planned, Ernst said he thought there were others stealing food.
“We have to be more careful this time,” he said as the truck rattled up the familiar path. They had decided to go much later in the day and it was nearly midnight when they approached the farm. “I heard a woman in town, a Japanese woman, talking about a miracle goat that her son had brought home. That
he had found it lost in the woods.”
“Who was the woman?” asked Emi. She had gotten to know the townspeople very well in her six months there.
“I don’t know. A thin, hungry woman, just like the rest of them,” he said, turning on another road when he saw the headlights of a car traveling in their direction.
“Everyone is starving now,” said Emi. “It’s much worse than last year. I’m not surprised that we’re not the only ones.”
“We just can’t be the ones to get caught,” said Ernst. “Wouldn’t that be a pity? Because then we could never get married.” He put his arm around Emi, who plucked it off, though she let it rest a few seconds longer than she had the month before. She cursed in Polish, something Ernst had been teaching her on their long nights standing in the woods, and pointed at the little road that took them near the farm. Behind them, Kenji was asleep, his face young and peaceful. How unfair, thought Emi, to be putting a nine-year-old child like him through such tests of war.
Emi got out of the car first, walking to the front of the farm where the German guards kept watch. Their numbers changed—the first time there was only one, the next time three—but their conversations barely differed. They talked about what they were going to do when they got home—what they would eat, the women they would have, the places they would go. And arbitrarily, they would patrol the farm. When one took off on foot, Emi would motion to Ernst, who would then make sure Kenji wasn’t near the fence, but on that late night in May, Emi stopped short before she got close enough to the guards to hear them. For the first time since they’d been going up into the hills, the pigs were out.
Making their way slowly around the grass in the dark were about a dozen fat pink pigs. She looked at them shocked, trying to determine if they would be able to fit them through the fence or not. Instead of moving to the guards like she was supposed to, she ran back to Ernst and told him.
“We need one,” he said excitedly, motioning for Kenji to follow him. “I don’t think we can carry more than one, but we should take it out alive.”
When the three of them were close enough to the fence to see the animals, Kenji shook his head. “They won’t fit through the wires. Maybe we can get a smaller one.”
“We have time,” said Ernst, refusing to give up on the several-months supply of food grunting in front of him.
“Have you ever slaughtered a pig?” asked Kenji, getting down on the ground to assess them further.
“No,” said Ernst. “I’m from Warsaw.” He followed Kenji’s lead and said, “Just don’t do a good job. Cut the suckers lengthwise and slip them through.”
“If he says he can’t, he can’t,” said Emi, putting her hand on Kenji’s slight shoulder. “It’s not worth the risk.”
“Really?” said Ernst. “Is your mother nearly dead?”
“I can try,” said Kenji, interrupting them. “But you,” he said, motioning to Emi, “have to make sure I have time.”
Emi nodded reluctantly and moved quietly through the thick larch trees to the perch she’d discovered in April. Behind a large grouping of rocks, slick with moss, she was totally covered but still able to hear the Germans’ conversation. There were unfortunately three guards out that night, as it was one of the warmest nights they’d had all year.
Emi waited for one of the guards to finish walking the periphery of the property, which he did quickly, then returned to the other men to continue a conversation about the Soviet troops, who, Emi knew from Evgeni and his diplomatic connections, were winning the war against Germany.
The conversation quickly became heated and Emi motioned to Ernst that it was time to send Kenji to the fence.
She watched as the little boy came out from the cover of the trees, dropped to his stomach, and slithered to the metal wires. He put his hand out between the lowest rung, food on his palm, and waited for the pigs to come.
None of the stubborn animals moved close enough to Kenji before one of the German guards started to do his rounds. Emi motioned to Ernst to get him back and he ran and picked up Kenji from the ground, getting them both behind the tree line in time.
An hour passed before they were able to try again. This time Kenji put his head and arms all the way through the fence, Ernst watching him and Emi watching the guards. None of the pigs were coming close and Emi was sure she would have to signal to Ernst to pull him back again. She was about to, as the German guards’ conversation had hit a lull, when she saw Kenji crawl under the fence and into the farm, running several yards. He grabbed one of the smaller pigs and it let out a loud squeal. Despite the noise, he dragged it to the fence, where Ernst had run up to meet him.
Not knowing if she should stay by the guards or help them, Emi went back to the trees and ran to where the boys were. She saw that Kenji had made his way back through the fence but was struggling to get the animal between the wires, the little pig much fatter than a half-starved Japanese boy.
Ernst leaned in and pulled the pig by the tail. “Both of you get to the trees,” he hissed at them as he worked. “When I have it through the fence, come back.”
“It’s too loud,” said Kenji, worriedly. “Look at him!” he hissed. He moved to the edge of the trees, and was about to go to Ernst when they heard a shout, so strong that it sounded like a foghorn piercing the silence of the mountain town.
A light went on and Emi saw that it was a flashlight in the hand of a German guard who had run out of the barn. Suddenly, with his shout, the three in the front of the barn ran toward them, too.
“Leave!” Ernst yelled in Japanese, dropping the pig but not moving back or turning around to face the woods where Emi and Kenji were hiding. “Leave right now, take the car, and don’t talk to anyone!”
Emi started to move toward Ernst, but Kenji pulled her back, his little hand in hers. “No,” he said firmly. “We need to leave. We need to take the car and leave. Right now. If the guards don’t understand Japanese, then we could be all right.”
“But Ernst!” said Emi, pulling her hand away, terrified for him.
“They have him now. And he’s a gaijin,” said Kenji, anxiously. “Even if he ran now, they would find him.”
Emi thought for a second, hearing the men with their lights coming closer, turned, and ran away with Kenji, driving the truck back toward town at dangerous speeds. Not knowing what to do with it when they got close, they left it, with the keys in the ignition, by the side of the road near the shrine just north of the Mampei Hotel.
Emi no longer had a watch, but she could tell from the sky that dawn was only an hour out.
“What do we do?” asked Kenji, once they were past the shrine.
“I don’t know,” said Emi. “Do as Ernst said, I suppose. Don’t talk to anyone. I’ll see what I can do on my end and I’ll find you when I have any semblance of a plan. Until then, stay quiet.”
She patted him on the head, feeling his fear, and watched as he ran toward his house, one she knew was filled with his newly widowed mother and four siblings, all trying to stay alive.
Instead of going home, where the Moris did very little to keep tabs on her, she went to the main street and sat in front of Evgeni’s store, waiting for him. She agreed with Ernst that Kenji shouldn’t talk to anybody, but she had to. She held her knees to her chest as she thought of the soldiers running at Ernst. Had it been her fault? Had the soldiers ever mentioned another man inside? She shook her head hard, trying not to think about it. She had to focus on keeping Ernst alive, not the moments that had just passed.
Three hours later, the sun was up and it was nearly nine, the hour when the shops opened. She looked down the road for Evgeni, sure he would be one of the first in town.
When she saw a foreigner coming her way, after a smattering of older Japanese women, she stood up, sure it was Evgeni, and had to stop herself from screaming when she saw it was Ernst. His hands were clean and he was in different clothes.
“They took me home,” he said in passing, not slowing down. He was hea
ding toward the path that ended at the Christian church hidden deep in the woods. “Then they took my father. They wanted him instead of me.” He didn’t wait for Emi to reply; he just kept walking and soon was out of sight.
Word got around town very quickly that Oskar Abrus had been removed from his home by German soldiers, but it was said just a few weeks later that they had handed him over to the Kempeitai.
When he hadn’t returned for a month, Ernst passed by Emi near the Mampei Hotel one afternoon and said, “See what you can do,” before continuing on toward the boys’ Catholic school.
To free a gaijin from the Kempeitai? What could she do?
After school, she stopped Kenji and told him what Ernst had said.
“Are you going to give us up?” said Kenji after they’d walked silently together. Hidden away near the Shiraito waterfall north of the machi, he started to cry. “It’s not going to save Ernst’s father if you do. They will just kill us, too. Or they will kill my mother. She can’t die. My father already died!” he said, growing hysterical. “They can kill anyone they want. Don’t you know that?”
Emi walked through the woods with Kenji until he was calm, assuring him that she was not going to turn herself or him in. When they were back on the street, she took him with her to Evgeni’s store.
“I need to tell my father,” said Emi to Evgeni, whom she had confided in weeks ago. “Don’t you think? He could do something.”
“It’s not a good idea,” said Evgeni. “They’ll just punish him, too. A man in the government whose daughter is a thief at best, a traitor at worst? You’ll kill your father by telling him.” He shook his head. “Emi, why didn’t you listen? I told you not to go.”
“I know,” said Emi, embarrassed. “But I couldn’t just let Jiro Mori die in front of me. I didn’t know what else to do.”
“There are much younger men starving,” said Evgeni. “Boys like Kenji,” he said, looking at him. “It is worse to see the youth die.”
When another month had passed with no word and even Ernst had stopped asking Emi for help, she tried to get Evgeni to help her approach an embassy. The Swiss Embassy was now in Karuizawa, and she knew they often acted as go-betweens for government affairs.