by Rory Marron
Today, Nagumo was in far too good a mood to let Ota’s depression affect him. ‘Well now you can forget about it and come and get some exercise before dinner.’
Ota jumped up, embarrassed by his melancholy state. ‘Yes, some kendo would be good.’
‘Baka!’—Idiot! Nagumo said rolling his eyes in exasperation. ‘I mean the Sakura! I haven’t been for days. The girls will have forgotten me!’ The Sakura Club was the most expensive of the three brothels for officers in the Central Java Military District.
Ota laughed, his mood lightening. ‘Your name perhaps but surely not your tool!’
Nagumo smirked then looked at his watch gleefully. ‘Anyway, Saito says they have white women working there again this week!’ He paused. ‘I expect they’ll be a bit pricey.’
Ota frowned, ‘How much is it now, anyway?’
Nagumo shot him a vexed look. ‘We’ve stopped saving for retirement, remember? It doesn’t matter. Anyway, you can’t blame the whores. War’s the best time for them to sell “springtime” after all.’
‘Yeah, you’re right,’ said Ota with an awkward nod. It had been weeks since he had visited the Otowa, another brothel.
Nagumo smiled. ‘Good! We’ve got plenty of time but it’ll be quicker to cut through “Little Holland” and catch the tram. Let’s go!’
Ota’s interest suddenly quickened. Little Holland was their nickname for the adjoining internment camp. He might catch a glimpse of the girl…. ‘White women?’ he replied, trying to sound casual. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Of course,’ grinned Nagumo. ‘Who knows, I might get to plough a blonde furrow before I die!’
Ota laughed and reached for his tunic and trousers, his mind in a pleasant turmoil.
They left the guesthouse and turned right to walk alongside the bamboo perimeter fence of the internment camp until it met the high, brick wall of the old school. Set in the brickwork was a narrow, wrought-iron gate, its original open-work floral design now augmented with barbed wire. A lone guard was squatting at the base of the wall, making the most of a thin band of shade. He was half-asleep and the two officers were upon him before he saw them.
Embarrassed, the guard jumped to attention, grabbing frantically for his rifle. Nagumo stood sternly and stared. Colour drained from the guard’s face. He was clearly expecting the worst.
‘Pathetic!’ Nagumo shouted haughtily. ‘Do you call this doing your duty?’ Only Ota caught the hint of teasing.
‘Sumimasen!’—Please excuse me! ‘Sumimasen!’ the guard blabbered in panic.
‘I shall report you!’ Nagumo bawled. ‘Now open the gate!’
The hapless guard rushed to comply.
Once they were inside, Ota grinned. ‘How long do you think it will be before he realises you didn’t even ask him his name or unit?’
Nagumo guffawed. ‘A couple of days at least… He’ll be volunteering to wipe his sergeant’s arse tonight!’
They walked on casually. When Ota noticed the bowing women and children his good humour left him. Just a few weeks before, he would not have given them a second thought. Yet ever since the incident with the girl they had started to make him feel uncomfortable.
‘Unnecessary,’ he muttered.
‘Eh?’ Nagumo queried.
‘Oh, er, I was thinking that imprisoning women and children is a waste of time.’
‘You’re right,’ replied Nagumo misunderstanding him completely. ‘Those kenpei would rather lock people up than help us build defences,’ he said derisively. ‘The guard units must be bored out of their minds. What a rotten job! Where’s the honour in guarding women?’
Ota was looking for the girl. Since he had started taking the shortcut regularly he had seen her just three times. On each occasion she had been in a group. Apart from bowing she had given no hint of recognition whatsoever.
As they reached a small crossroads formed by the junction of four huts Nagumo stopped abruptly. ‘Listen,’ he said.
Ota heard the yells and the urgent ringing of bicycle bells before a pair of brightly painted pedal carts flashed past them. Each cart carried two boys, one steering with ropes and pedalling furiously, the other leaning out when necessary to balance the cart. Both drivers were screaming for people to make way. The two soldiers watched them until they turned a corner. Angry shouts sounded in the carts’ wake.
Ota turned to Nagumo. ‘Wow! They’ve made those!
‘Umm,’ said Nagumo cheerfully. ‘Maybe we could borrow them and hold a race day! Let’s go and have a closer look.’
They followed the bells and shouts and after a quick search discovered the carts parked behind the main school building. Neither of them had ever been in this part of the camp before. The boys were nowhere in sight.
‘This must have taken weeks to make,’ said Nagumo impressed. ‘It even has gears!’
‘So has this,’ said Ota looking at a low-slung cart equipped with larger wheels at the back than at the front. Two salvaged rattan chairs served as seats.
‘Everything’s cobbled together from other bicycles,’ Nagumo added. ‘They even found paint!’
Bursts of suppressed giggling interrupted them. Curious, they walked around the corner of the building to investigate. Jutting out from the wall was a semi-circular, latticed bamboo fence about six feet high. Four boys were standing or kneeling with their faces pressed to the bamboo. Ota and Nagumo approached them quietly. They heard women’s voices behind the fence.
One of the boys glanced backwards. He jumped up, alerting the other three. In an instant they were lined up and bowing. Without thinking, Ota went to the fence and peered through. His eyes widened. Several women and girls were showering under a crude arrangement of bamboo piping and a line of pierced buckets. He was about to turn away when he saw the girl. She stood side-on, partly hidden by another woman. He tensed and pressed closer to the fence, willing the girl to move.
Suddenly the woman nearest Ota stepped out from under her shower and the girl started towards him, a ragged towel was draped over her shoulder. Ota caught his breath as she hung up the towel and stood naked before him, bathed in sunshine, less than three feet away. Her girl’s arms and shoulders were tanned a deep, rich brown. In contrast, a band across her chest was alabaster white. She pulled on a cord and water splashed over her. He saw her shiver slightly, and close her eyes. His heart pounding, he stood mesmerised. Her hands moved to her face, channelling the water between her breasts. His eyes followed the tiny rivulets down over her belly to the second band of pale white skin across her hips and the patch of wispy blonde hair at the top of her thighs. He let the image burn itself in his memory.
From across the enclosure a dark-haired woman called cheerfully. ‘Kate! Kate!’
The girl turned. ‘Yes?’
‘I’ll give you a tin of Red Cross corned beef for the rest of your soap.’
‘Sorry, Juliette, this is the first real soap I’ve had in a year! It was a present—’
‘Kate, please! A Frenchwoman needs scented soap more than food!’
Ota smiled to himself. Her name was Kate….
‘Sugoi na!’—Great! Nagumo muttered under his breath.
Ota shot a horrified glance down to his left. Nagumo’s cap was askew and his face was pressed up to the fence.
His face reddening, Ota stepped quickly away, pulling Nagumo with him. The Dutch boys, still bowing, were now turning to look and giggle amongst themselves.
‘What’s up?’ Nagumo was genuinely perplexed.
Ota struggled for words. ‘It’s—It’s wrong to peep!’
‘Eh?’ Nagumo’s jaw dropped. ‘What do you mean? It’s ages since I’ve had luck like this!’ He looked longingly at the fence as if about to go back. Ota, desperate, moved in front of him.
‘You know the Field Service Code. Japanese officers should set an example.’
Nagumo gave him a curious look. ‘Well you watched happily for long enough! Any man would if he got the chance. In fact, I wouldn’t want to
serve with any who didn’t!’
Ota tried to change the subject. ‘All right! Look, we’ll be late. Let’s go.’ He started to walk away.
Nagumo shared a sly grin with the boys then trotted to catch him up. ‘They’ve the right idea, anyway,’ he said casually, enjoying his friend’s discomfort.
Ota glanced back and with not a little envy saw the boys were back at the fence. He wondered if Kate were still there….
Nagumo laughed. ‘She was a peach wasn’t she?’
Ota flushed but did not reply, so Nagumo kept quiet. They were out of the camp before he tried again. ‘Ota-kun….’
‘Yes?’
‘Is peeping really against the Field Service Code?’
Ota whirled. ‘You arsehole! Can’t you drop it!’
Nagumo walked on, his shoulders shaking. Ota could not hold out for long and they were still laughing when they arrived at the Sakura.
The Army and Navy Club, Semarang
‘Kimochi ga ii na!’—This feels so good! Nagumo said wearily. The water was up to his neck and very hot. Vapour hung in the air.
‘Hmm,’ replied Ota, not wanting to speak.
They were in a Japanese-style bathhouse in the garden of the Army and Navy Club. Upon their arrival in February 1942 the Japanese officers had found the lounges, dining room and well-stocked bar vacated by their Dutch counterparts much to their liking. Bathing facilities, however, were considered lacking until two homesick officers in an engineering regiment had constructed the bathhouse from bamboos and cypress. Around the walls small stools and buckets were stacked beneath taps for bathers to soap and rinse. Ten men could soak in the large, central square tub. The two engineer officers were long gone, lost to the Burma campaign, but their hot oasis remained.
From one of the club’s lounges the words of ‘Kantaro of Ina’, a popular ballad, drifted out into the garden.
Under a brigand’s haggard looks
O Moon, see my pure heart
Reborn in the Tenyu waters
Reflecting my radiant soul
Ota settled back and closed his eyes. Except for the chatter of the two Javanese masseuses in the adjoining room, he could easily have been in Japan. His thoughts drifted back to the Sakura. Kiriko, the proprietress, had been having a slow day and had greeted Nagumo like a long-lost son. She was in her fifties, rosy cheeked and every inch the professional Madame. When the war had taken more than two-thirds of her regular customers to Southeast Asia, she had wasted little time in following them. The port city of Semarang had seemed a good location, and the recently ‘vacated’ Hotel Jansen, the perfect premises. A very grateful military had approved her quick acquisition of the hotel, which she renamed the Sakurahana Kurabu, the Cherry-blossom Club.
Ota chuckled as he remembered Nagumo’s crestfallen look when Kiriko told him the white women had been moved to the city of Surabaya the day before.
‘Nagu-chan,’ Kiriko had soothed. ‘What bad luck! But don’t worry; they’ll be back in a few weeks, I promise! Why think about them when we have so many beautiful Japanese girls here?’ Her eyes sparkled mischievously and she nudged him. ‘After all, you can tell them exactly what you want them to do!’
Nagumo had leant forward, lips pinched in mock anger. ‘But I’ve spent hours learning those phrases in Dutch!’
Kiriko had been so amused that she had offered them an extra thirty minutes free of charge. Then, still chuckling, she had shown them through to a large, richly decorated room with a marble floor, ornate plaster and a magnificent chandelier. Inside were twelve young women. Most were oriental but three were Eurasian and two were Javanese. They sat provocatively in easy chairs along one wall. All except the Javanese wore yukata, the light, colourfully patterned Japanese summer robe. Many of them held small fans that they flicked coquettishly.
Ota and Nagumo had greeted them with bows before sitting down opposite them. As usual, Ota had felt a little awkward but Nagumo seemed to know most of them by name and they him.
‘Nagu-chan, where have you been? I haven’t seen you for weeks!’—‘You promised me some stockings!’—‘Eh? He promised me stockings, too!’
Nagumo whispered in Ota’s ear. ‘Let’s not waste time. Grab one!’
In the end, chided by his impatient friend, Ota had chosen Yuki. She had very long dark tresses and reminded him vaguely of a girl from his village. As she had led him confidently upstairs, Nagumo had bounded up after him with another girl, shouting that he would see him in an hour.
Yuki took Ota to a room with a large four-poster bed and cream silk sheets. In one practised movement she locked the door, switched on the ceiling fan and began to undress. He was aroused and he had moved to her quickly, pulling her down beside him on the bed. For a few moments he desired her until he saw her flinching. He pulled away from her and undid the sash around her waist, opening the robe. Her breasts, abdomen, inner thighs and pubis were dappled with bruises. His passion cooled abruptly as he wondered which of his fellow officers had beaten her.
Yuki had tried to urge him on but he had stilled her. Then resignedly she had asked him if he wanted a different girl. He had declined. Instead, he had held her loosely, content with running his fingers through her hair and savouring her scent. Hesitantly, he had begun to talk to her about his village and farm, and then about his family.
Intuition had told Yuki that her customer needed to share, so she had feigned interest. At his prompting, she had spoken of her own family in Korea, even telling him her real name, Kyoung-Suk, and that she was sixteen. That far, her story had been the truth. She did not tell him that a year earlier she had been in a group of girls recruited to work in a munitions factory in Japan. Only when their freighter had steamed southeast from Pusan had their ‘employment agent’ told them they were headed for Java.
Their journey had been a living hell. First they had been robbed and then every night the crew had raped them. Army procurers had been waiting for the terrified and now destitute girls at the Semarang docks. Fortunately for Kyoung-Suk, one of Kiriko’s pimps had noticed her and outbid them. She had found out later that the other girls had been sent straight to the field brothels in Malaya and Burma, where they were serving thirty or more men a day, while they lasted.
Kiriko had saved her life, then trained her and given her a new identity. For that, at least, she was thankful. Within a few months Kyoung-Suk had saved enough to pay off Kiriko and buy a ticket back to Pusan. But by then the voyage had become too dangerous. Her Imperial Navy clients had let slip that American submarines were sinking their ships with impunity. So, she had kept working and saving, praying for the war to end and a chance to go home.
‘I’m here to help my family,’ she had lied, knowing that if she were ever to be her parent’s daughter again, she would have to take her dark secret to the grave.
Movement disturbed Ota. He half-opened his eyes to see Nagumo climbing out, heading for a massage. ‘I hope the Americans don’t invade tomorrow,’ he grunted, shattering Ota’s reverie. ‘I can hardly move!’
Two other officers sharing the bath laughed. Ota said nothing as he was reminded yet again that his time was fast running out. He banished the thought by recalling his first sight of the girl he now knew as Kate. He had been shaving when he had heard someone humming a pleasant melody. Curious, he had glanced out to see a pretty, if rather thin, blonde hanging out clothes.
Two more young women had joined her and she had shown them some tomatoes, obviously pleased with them. He saw the girl ‘salute’ the washing line ‘flag’. Her wit and inventiveness had amused rather than angered him. The girls’ relaxed laughter had been refreshing. Suddenly she had glanced up. He had stared back, held by her sparkling eyes. Then her face had paled in fear.
Hurt followed by anger had been his initial reactions. How could he have let a scowl from a prisoner rile him? But the blatant theft and something else, a challenge in her look, had left him unsettled. That same night he had resolved, somehow, to make amends.
Ota shifted in the hot water, easing his body but not his mind. With an effort he forced a change in his train of thought. Today had been a very good day. At last he knew her name. And he had seen her naked! He pictured the water running down her body….
‘Oi!’
Ota opened his eyes. ‘Um? What?’
Nagumo was peering down at him. ‘I said, let’s have a drink.’
‘Oh, right, sorry, I was miles away.’
Chapter Three
Tjandi Camp III
Mainly for the sake of her mother, Kate had made light of the theft of her tomatoes, though now she picked the fruits before they were fully ripe. Her distress that day still troubled her but she had accepted Dr Lucy Santen’s diagnosis of ‘Tjandi shakes’, her all-embracing diagnosis for the hundreds of minor neuroses on daily display. Kate was soon back in her routine of garden, then mandi, then kitchen.
One morning, a week after the theft, Kate went to tend her plants as usual. Surreptitiously she glanced up at the guesthouse window. As always now, the curtain was closed. She had not seen the young Japanese at the window since that day and assumed he no longer had the room. When she had recognised him walking through the camp she had not dared look at him. During the first few morning roll-calls she had waited a little apprehensively for the summons and punishment for her prank and her defiant stare. And yet for all her anxiety, something told her that he would not report her. There had been something about him....
Kate stopped as she almost trod on a small, knotted sack lying at the edge of her plot. Her first thought was that another early bird gardener had dropped it. Curious, she knelt and untied the knot. Inside were two tins of sardines and a bar of soap. She squealed in delight then caught herself. Nervously she looked round once again, scarcely believing her luck. Who had dropped it, she wondered, a careless smuggler in the night? As casually as she could manage, she buried the tins near one of her plants. She considered what she was doing. Did she feel guilty? Someone had lost a great treasure—but she had found one! That was all that mattered. ‘It’s mine now,’ she said under her breath.