But the telegram said only that their son was “missing in action.” And a letter from Jimmy’s commander assured Mr. and Mrs. Dye that he had “landed safely with his parachute on.”
The Dyes had hope. Even after the war, they expected Jimmy to emerge from a prisoner-of-war camp any day. Jimmy’s friends and family hoped and prayed for a year that he was alive. They just didn’t know.
But Gloria Nields did.
“I had a big eight-by-ten framed picture of Jimmy,” she told me decades later. “It was the shot of him in his sailor uniform with a big smile. Every night I would kiss his picture and sleep with it. One night it fell on the floor and broke. I woke up and it scared me. I knew something had happened. Later I learned that was when Jimmy died.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Fire War
Please try to understand this. It’s not an easy thing to hear, but please listen. There is no morality in warfare. You kill children. You kill women. You kill old men. You don’t seek them out, but they die. That’s what happens in war.
— Paul Tibbets, quoted in Duty: A Father, His Son, and the Man Who Won the War
AFTER Marve Mershon, Grady York, and Jimmy Dye were taken away on Friday, February 23, Floyd Hall was alone at Major Horie’s headquarters. His solitude lasted until Monday, February 26th—the day Jimmy and Grady were taken to their deaths—when Warren Earl was transferred from General Tachibana’s to Major Horie’s headquarters. There, the two pilots met for the first time.
Major Horie was a small bookish man who limped because of a leg injury suffered while serving in China. An intelligence officer with a clerk’s demeanor, he had a low opinion of Tachibana and Matoba and shared none of their hatred of POWs. Friends at navy headquarters in Tokyo had informed him that Japan’s fleet was gone, and Horie realized Japan’s defeat was only a matter of time. As a result, he thought that abusing POWs was senseless and even dangerous if America won the war. When he told Tachibana and Matoba of his opposition to killing flyers, they scoffed. Major Horie’s intelligence operation was a sideshow, without operational authority. He could not determine policy, but Floyd and Warren Earl were safe as long as they were in his custody.
In Major Horie’s care, there was little discipline. Floyd and Warren Earl walked about freely, were fed well, and were not beaten. If either had been violent or run away, there would have been consequences, but they behaved themselves. They knew they were trapped on an island with no hope of escape.
After a few interrogation sessions, there wasn’t much else to be gleaned from the two pilots. Warren Earl told Major Horie that he had come from Ulithi, that he had “transferred to a destroyer about a hundred miles south of Iwo,” and that he had been on his “first real flight,” but nothing of value. Floyd and Warren Earl had been briefed on their missions just hours before flight time. They had no knowledge of long-range strategy.
Major Horie spoke rudimentary English and wanted to improve. He asked Floyd and Warren Earl to give him English lessons.
“The war will be over soon,” the boys told the major. Horie would need some practical survival skills. It was time to learn how to go out at night in America.
“They taught me how to enter a nightclub, to order drinks, to do checks and other such things,” Horie later wrote. In one lesson, Warren Earl even took the major’s hand to teach him how to snuggle a honey on the dance floor.
Two peaceful days passed. Floyd and Warren Earl enjoyed the security of being in each other’s company. Perhaps they would make it out alive.
Then Captain Yoshii appeared.
On February 28, 1945, the day after he had Jimmy Dye beheaded, Yoshii informed General Tachibana that he needed another prisoner. Captain Tadaaki Kosuga remembered Yoshii telling Tachibana, “The prisoner did not help in the interception of broadcasts. Therefore, I had two of my youngest officers kill him.”
“Is that so?” the general replied. “It was just an ordinary conversation between the two,” Kosuga recalled.
Yoshii learned that Major Horie had two Americans in his care and he asked the general if he could have one to replace Jimmy Dye. Tachibana assented, and Yoshii brought Warren Earl up to the Mount Yoake radio station.
Captain Yoshii put Petty Officer Tamamura in charge of the new prisoner. “I did not like the idea,” Tamamura-san recalled, “because I knew what he had done with Jimmy Dye.” Tamamura was protective of his new charge. Warren Earl lived in Tamamura’s own room in the radio station, shielded by a cloth curtain. “I did not like anyone to come to the room with him, except the men in my group, and we had a fine time,” Tamamura-san said.
Vaughn worked with Tamamura in the receiving room. “I was not very busy at that time,” Tamamura-san recalled, “and we talked about a lot of things, and we listened to the shortwave radio. Captain Yoshii told me to get all the information possible out of him.”
Yoshii came by the radio station every day, badgering Tamamura for information from the prisoner. Warren Earl told Tamamura that “he was off the Bennington,” he flew “a single-cockpit fighter plane,” he was from Texas, and he was “part Cherokee Indian.” Together they listened to intercepts from nearby carriers and Warren Earl gave Tamamura routine information.
Yoshii read Tamamura’s reports but wasn’t satisfied.
“Yoshii said, ‘I know that Vaughn knows more than what you are telling me,’” Tamamura-san remembered. “He said it was funny that the lieutenant did not know more.”
Tamamura told his prisoner that Captain Yoshii wanted more in-depth information. Tamamura-san remembered the moment: “Vaughn told me that he knew more information than what I got out of him, and I could kill him, but I would not get the information from him.”
It was clear that Tamamura was running out of ammunition in his battle to protect the American. Some Japanese sailors were not even willing to wait for Yoshii to step in. “A group of navy officers got drunk,” Tamamura-san said. “They came and wanted to beat the flyer. They were outside demanding I turn him over. I said, ‘No, sir.’ They said, ‘We are officers and we are giving you an order.’ One said, ‘Tamamura, I am going to chop your head off for this disobedience.’ He pulled out a sword. Petty Officer Kagaya got up and said, ‘God damn you, stay out of here and leave the prisoner alone.’”
The drunken officers later complained to Yoshii about Tamamura’s obstinacy. “I was called to the captain’s room,” Tamamura said. “He said the prisoner was in my care and I did the right thing.”
As Warren Earl spent his days in front of the radio monitor, he often found himself seated next to a shy young man who, like himself, was new to the radio station. The man was born in Hawaii and spoke English. He wanted to be on Chichi Jima about as much as Warren Earl did. His name was Private Nobuaki Iwatake.
Iwatake had been in the hospital suffering from diarrhea when, on February 19, there was an announcement: “U.S. TROOPS HAVE LANDED ON IWO JIMA. THIS IS AN EMERGENCY. ALL TROOPS WHO CAN WALK MUST RETURN TO YOUR UNITS.” He returned to “pounding on rocks, hammering away with steel bars every day.” Then one morning, his commander took him to battalion headquarters. “Here’s a guy who speaks English,” the commander told a colonel. “I order you to the naval communications unit on Mount Yoake,” the colonel said. “Your work there is valuable; you must proceed immediately.”
Iwatake arrived at the radio station just after Jimmy Dye was killed. He was introduced to Warren Earl but was wary.
“At first I didn’t say much to him,” Iwatake-san said. “We were told to be careful.” But soon the two American-born boys, both in their early twenties, struck up a friendship. “I told him I was from Hawaii,” Iwatake-san said. “He said he was from Texas. He was a very friendly guy, and we started talking a lot. Even though he was a prisoner, he used to tell us jokes.” Decades later, Iwatake-san could still recall Warren Earl’s humor:
A rough-hewn country boy was invited by a sophisticated girl to her home. She sat him on the couch. She started to play the piano. H
er dog Fido was under the couch.
The boy had some gas. He thought no one would hear if he tooted quietly into the couch. He farted.
The girl stopped playing the piano and said to the dog, “Fido!”
Then the smile returned to her face as she resumed her playing.
The boy thought he got away with it so he let out another quiet toot.
“Fido!” she said, then again resumed playing.
One more fart and he’d be done with it. He tooted.
The girl said, “Fido! Get away from him before he shits on you!”
Untied and unshackled, Warren Earl mingled with everyone at the radio station. Against one wall was a row of wireless radio sets where Warren Earl sat next to Iwatake as they listened to messages. Against the opposite wall were navy bunk beds. Outside was a shack that served as a kitchen, a bathhouse, and a slit trench for a toilet. Nearby was a huge cave drilled into the side of a hill used as a shelter when American planes appeared overhead. Everyone there—Warren Earl included—worked, ate, and slept in the large radio room.
“While we were monitoring, there was a can of hard biscuits,” Iwatake-san said. “We’d pass it around when we were hungry. Because of the bombing, we couldn’t grow anything, so our meals were mostly canned goods—fish, beef, beans—and rice. We also had dried stuff to cook—dried vegetables, dry beans, dried tofu.”
It must have been surreal to Warren Earl. Atop Mount Yoake, on an island six hundred miles from Tokyo, surrounded by the enemy, he must have felt as far away from Texas as possible. But with his headset on, he was more tuned in to the American homeland than he had been for months. He tapped his toes to the Andrews Sisters’ hit song “Don’t Fence Me In,” chuckled at Bob Hope’s jokes, and was kept abreast of the European conflict by Walter Cronkite’s London broadcasts.
“We listened to radio contact between ships,” Iwatake-san remembered. “I heard Admiral Halsey talk about his shelling of Japan. We listened to Tokyo Rose for the good music and the Voice of America for news.” Once Captain Yoshii caught Petty Officer Tamamura laughing while listening to a comedy. “He asked for a translation,” Tamamura-san said. “But comedy doesn’t translate so well.”
“I remember listening to the Bing Crosby show once,” Iwatake-san told me. “Frank Sinatra was on the program with Bing’s two kids. They told Sinatra they didn’t like him because ‘Daddy says you are taking our bread and butter away.’”
Warren Earl listened a lot, but he didn’t volunteer any inside information. Iwatake and Tamamura covered for him. “I always told Yoshii that Vaughn was working out fine,” Tamamura-san said, “because I did not want him to get killed.”
But everyone on the headsets could hear reports of the slaughter on nearby Iwo Jima. Japanese messages made it clear they were being obliterated; American messages spoke of territory gained and Japanese dead. American progress on Iwo Jima meant death was nearing for both Warren Earl and his captors.
“We heard many frantic messages from Iwo Jima,” Iwatake-san said. “Once, I heard cries from a ship, ‘This is an emergency. We’ve been hit by a kamikaze! Emergency!’ We often heard strange voices. It sounded like code but wasn’t in English. It wasn’t until long after the war that I learned that it was the Navajo code talkers.”
And the boys endured the daily raids against the Mount Yoake radio station. “There were craters everywhere,” Iwatake-san told me. “It was a hopeless feeling with all the bombing—we always had to be ready to run for shelter.”
Once, a bomb exploded just outside the radio station’s window. “We were almost goners,” Iwatake-san said. “Warren ran out shaking his fists and shouted at the American plane, ‘You son-of-a-bitch!’”
Warren Earl also impressed his captors with his brave face.
“I didn’t hear him having any concern for himself, only for his buddy [Floyd Hall],” Iwatake-san said. “He would ask, ‘I wonder what happened to him?’
“The only pain I sensed from him,” Iwatake-san added, “was when he talked about his girlfriend. He’d say, ‘After I finish this tour of duty, I’m going to marry my girlfriend.’ Only then could I see anxiety on his face.”
“He was a real friend to me,” Iwatake-san told me. “One night we were walking in the dark to the bathhouse. I was nearsighted and fell into a bomb hole about six feet deep. Warren pulled me out. He kept asking, ‘Are you OK? Are you hurt?’ He expressed real concern like someone trying to rescue his buddy. Later we were soaking up to our necks in hot water. ‘This is great,’ Warren said.”
One night, three kamikaze pilots trekked up Mount Yoake just to meet the Marine Flyboy. They had heard Warren Earl had piloted a Corsair.
“I acted as an interpreter,” Iwatake-san recalled. “The kamikaze asked, ‘If I got on your tail, what would you do?’ Warren stood up and towered over everyone. He motioned with his hands to demonstrate how he would roll away from them. He was eager to explain his tactics. They spoke together as pilots, not as enemies. You could see they respected Warren.”
Warren Earl Vaughn and Floyd Hall were receiving perhaps the most kindly and benign treatment experienced by any captive American pilots in the Pacific war. Things were certainly different for their Flyboy brethren held in Japan.
Bill Connell, the “last man off Chichi Jima alive,” and Charlie Brown, shot down over Tokyo during the February 16 strike, were held at the Ofuna prisoner-of-war camp outside Yokohama. Ofuna held about eighty prisoners in the individual six-by-eight-foot cells of three flimsy wooden buildings.
“When we were in our cells, all you could do was sit on the floor,” said Bill. “There were a couple of cotton blankets we made into our bedrolls, but they were worn out and gave no warmth. In the winter, we were freezing all the time.”
Every morning all prisoners had to fall into formation for calisthenics. The guards would lead the exercises. They began by facing in the direction of the imperial palace and bowing to the emperor.
“The first time, I didn’t bow with the rest,” Charlie remembered, “until the man behind me said, ‘Dammit, bow and spit.’ I bowed and observed each prisoner bow and spit. The guards didn’t see it because they were bowing.”
The Japanese held all prisoners in low regard, but Flyboys were the lowest of the low. At Ofuna, the war criminal Flyboys were given only two thirds of the rations served to the regular POWs. “The Japanese were hard up for food at that point anyway,” said Charlie, “so the POWs didn’t get much, and we got less.” On one of Charlie’s first days at Ofuna, he was served soup with a big fat green worm in it. He tossed it out into the corridor. “Two Americans had a head-on collision as they each grabbed for that worm,” Charlie told me. “They had been there longer than me. That was the last worm I discarded.”
“All we talked about was food,” Connell recalled. “That’s the way it is when you’re hungry all the time.”
Bill and Charlie described their meals in Ofuna as “mostly hot water,” with various other ingredients according to availability—cucumbers, potatoes, fish eyeballs, and barley. “Once I got a chicken wing,” Charlie remembered, “and I slowly chewed it over days. It was something to chew on, and I was hoping for some sustenance. I lost forty-three pounds—I came out weighing ninety-seven.”
The Flyboys never once had a chance to wash their clothes in the six months they were there. A bath was a once-a-month occurrence consisting of a small bowl of water and a sliver of soap. And Flyboys were regularly beat up during their interrogation sessions.
“They set up a good cop / bad cop dynamic,” Bill told me. “The guards were the bad guys, the questioners were the good guys. The questioners would give us a cigarette. If we didn’t give them an answer, the guard would work us over.” Charlie recalled, “The interrogation was intense, but I heard it had been worse earlier in the war. They knew dang well they were losing. Maybe that’s why they weren’t as ruthless as they had been. But it was rough enough.”
The interrogators spoke excellent English
and some had worked and studied in the United States. Flyboy Oscar Long, who went from one hundred sixty pounds to one hundred eighteen while at Ofuna, was asked if he could name a U.S. Navy carrier christened for a famous university. Long was stumped. His interrogator prompted him: The college was located in New Jersey. “I still couldn’t recall the name,” Long said, “so the interrogator became exasperated and asked if I didn’t know the U.S. had a college named Princeton. And then he boasted that he graduated from there.”
“Not all the guards were awful,” Bill Connell told me. “I would say about sixty percent of the guards did what they had to do but didn’t take pleasure in it. The remaining forty percent took great pleasure in making us as uncomfortable as they possibly could. They were young kids—sixteen, seventeen, eighteen years old—with a lot of energy. Even though they were young, they were vicious; they did everything they could to antagonize us, instill as much fear in us as they could. They could do anything they wanted to us, stick us with a bayonet, enough to be uncomfortable, not to fatally wound us.”
Once, a guard found Bill’s name, serial number, and date of entry into Ofuna scratched in the corner of his cell. Bill later recalled the punishment: “The guard made me assume the position—standing with legs spread apart—and hit me five times, knocking me down each time. Then he said, ‘Sorry for that,’ and gave me a cigarette.”
Prisoners’ “violations” were recorded, and special punishment was administered once a week. “They’d take us out one at a time and have us put our hands up against a fence,” Charlie told me. “They’d take a club that was a little longer than a baseball bat. They would hit us as hard as they could against our buttocks and hamstrings. After the third swing, your muscles would tie up in a knot—muscle spasms—and you’d have to crawl back to your cell. It took hours for that to go away.”
As carrier planes bombed so near to Ofuna that Charlie “could smell the burnt powder,” the prisoners and guards knew the American military was drawing near. But that only made the Flyboys’ status more precarious.
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