by Dean Hughes
Yuki finally turned and looked up the hill, but then the attack all came back to him, the fury he had felt as he had made his charge at the Germans, wanting only to kill.
“I did something,” he told Shig.
“What do you mean?”
“I almost shot that German soldier up there in the trees.”
“I know.”
“He’d been hit, and he was trying to hide, but I almost pulled the trigger anyway, just because I wanted to kill someone.”
Yuki wondered what that German soldier with the wound in his head had gone through, what it must have been like to wait at the top of the hill and hear all those banzai shouts, see men wild with anger charging and shooting. Maybe the guy had been a new recruit; maybe he had been terrified. He must have retreated with the others, but then that bullet had gouged out part of his skull. Maybe he hadn’t known how bad it was; maybe he’d thought he could hide somehow, and live.
“I aimed at him,” Yuki said. “He was looking right at me. There was blood all over him. I almost shot him anyway.”
“But you didn’t do it.”
“At the last second, I saw the look on his face, like he was in agony. But I still wanted to kill him. I wanted to watch his chest blow open and see his blood pour out.”
Shig’s eyes stayed steady. “We were all crazy mad, and no one would have blamed you if you had shot that guy. But you didn’t. That shows what kind of man you are.”
“But this whole thing is getting inside me.”
“That’s not true, Yuki. You’re the best man I know. You carried Mat off that hill. What I always know is that if I go down, you won’t let me die—not if you can help it.”
“And you would do the same for me, Shig. But I don’t know what kind of man I’ll be if this stuff goes on much longer.”
“You’ll be who you are, Yuki. You believe in honor. It’s deep inside you. You won’t let anything get in the way of that.”
Yuki tried to think what the word meant. Honor. He had thought he’d known when he had joined the army. Now he only knew that he couldn’t let his friends down. He had to fight for them, and he expected them to fight for him. Nations didn’t go to war. Men did. Boys did. The trouble was, defending his friends meant killing the boys from some other nation: boys he actually had nothing against. Back in training, he had imagined the Germans he would fight—and they were all brutal Nazis. He had assumed they all hated Jews, hated people of every race but their own, and certainly would think nothing of killing him and his Japanese friends. But the German soldiers he had seen looked about like the boys he had gone to high school with: young, not angry, guys who probably missed their families and wanted to get home just like he did. Maybe they had believed what Hitler told them, had joined the army out of their own sense of duty. And maybe they now hated war as much as he did.
Yuki heard a woodpecker knocking its beak against a tree, the sound reverberating through the forest. He wanted more than anything to go for a walk, look around, see the forest without watching for an enemy behind each tree. It was hard to remember what it was like to let go, to simply enjoy a day.
“Do you believe in heaven?” Shig asked.
Yuki was not at all surprised by the question. But he didn’t have an answer ready, so he only asked, “Why?”
“I’m just wondering about Mat.”
Yuki knew what his minister back home had said about life after death. There was a heaven, he had said, a place of peace and glory, where a person could be with God. And he knew what his Buddhist father had told him once: that life is a spark that shines brightly for a moment and then goes out of sight, but the spark returns to the earth and is never obliterated. Yuki wasn’t sure which of those ideas he believed, or whether he believed either one. But he had seen something, and it was still on his mind. “Mat’s body looked like something left behind after his soul—or whatever you call it—went out of him. I don’t think life just vanishes. It must continue on in some way.”
“That’s kind of what I was thinking. Whatever that was down there on the ground, that wasn’t Mat.”
Yuki nodded. He wanted to believe that. He wanted to believe that death didn’t take everything away. Tomorrow he would shoot at people again, and they would shoot at him. He didn’t want to think that he was ending everything for those men—or that they could end him.
CHAPTER 14
For a week, one furious battle followed another in the mountains of the Vosges Forest. As the 442nd—now reassigned to the Thirty-Sixth Infantry Division, known as the “Texas Division”—pushed to the east, German forces continued to hold the high ground. The Nisei soldiers were still segregated from white soldiers, but it was clear to Yuki and his friends that General John Dahlquist, commander of the division, liked to throw the Four-Four-Two into the toughest fights. And the battles were getting more and more intense. With each defeat, German troops retreated closer to the border of their homeland, and they seemed to be fighting ever more urgently.
Two days after Sergeant Koba had been killed, Lieutenant Freeman was shot through the belly and he too was carried from the battlefield. The last anyone had heard, he wasn’t dead, but he certainly wouldn’t be returning to battle, and no replacement officer had arrived to lead Second Platoon. The men sorrowed over the loss, and the emptiness Yuki had been feeling only deepened. More than half the original platoon was gone, and many of the replacements were already wounded or killed.
A lot of the white officers—platoon leaders and company commanders—had also become casualties, and there simply weren’t enough new officers arriving to replace them. Sergeant Oshira had been promoted to platoon sergeant, and rumor had it that he would be receiving a battlefield commission as a second lieutenant. For now, he was leading the men as a sergeant first class. He had always been a strong, smart leader, but he was hardened by battle now, and Yuki hoped the rumors were correct. He didn’t want a young lieutenant fresh out of Officer Candidate School to be shipped in to take Lieutenant Freeman’s place.
Yuki had been promoted to squad leader and had received his sergeant stripes. Shig had become the fire team leader and a corporal. Yuki had not wanted the rank, and Shig had been even more hesitant, but in the few months they had been in Italy and France, they had learned plenty, and they were some of the most experienced soldiers in their platoon.
Everything was different now. Yuki found himself surrounded by soldiers with little combat experience. They caught on fast if they lasted a battle or two, but Yuki hadn’t trained with them, didn’t feel connected to them, and he wasn’t as confident in their ability as he had been with the “old hands” who made up the original unit.
Yuki also worried that some of the men who had been around the longest were the ones getting most discouraged. One night Yuki and the other squad leaders were called in by Sergeant Oshira to talk over the next day’s attack. What Yuki heard sounded like the same old thing: another uphill charge, which could mean another day of heavy losses. The rain had stopped for a while that afternoon, but dark clouds were dropping low again, and rain would probably pelt the soldiers in the night.
After the meeting, Yuki walked back to the foxholes with Sergeant Del Hirinaka. He was one of the last men left from Mat Matsumoto’s original squad and he had taken over as squad leader. Days were short now. The sun was already setting, the damp air under the trees filling with a misty brown glow.
Sergeant Hirinaka stopped before they reached the men. He turned and looked at Yuki. “How long can we keep doing this?” he asked. “General Dahlquist just keeps using us for everything that no one else wants to do. I think we’re expendable to him. He’d rather lose us than the guys in his precious Texas Division.”
“I don’t want to believe that,” Yuki told him. “The Thirty-Sixth was taking a beating before we got here. Those guys have paid a heavy price themselves. And most of them aren’t Texans anymore—they’re as full of replacements as we are.”
“They may not be Texans,” Hiri
naka said, “but they’re white. And they still don’t want to serve with us.”
“But we’ve won their respect. I don’t hear anyone saying that we’re disloyal—or that we won’t fight.”
“They can’t say that. And we’re just fine as long as we keep to ourselves. But General Eisenhower is never going to integrate the troops. When Roosevelt finally made up his mind to send us over here, it was Eisenhower who said he didn’t want us.”
Yuki knew that. All the AJA troops had heard the story. And the truth was, Yuki didn’t see much change in attitude—except in a few individuals. Yuki’s mom had written him that home newspapers were making a big deal out of the Japanese American units, reporting all their successes. But she was still reading those newspapers in a prison camp.
Yuki knew something else. It didn’t do any good to grouse about that stuff, and the men in his squad couldn’t give way to the weariness they were feeling. He was a leader now, and he had to do his best to keep up morale.
“I wouldn’t complain so much if I felt better,” Hirinaka said. “I’m just sick of living in mud. I don’t dare look at my feet, they’re so messed up. They get hurting so bad sometimes, I can’t think straight.”
“I know. Most of us are dealing with the same problem. General Dahlquist needs to pull us back for a few days and let us dry out—and give the medics time to treat our feet.” But admitting to his pain only seemed to make things worse. It was suddenly hard to stand without shifting his weight from one foot to the other.
“We can’t keep this up much longer—fighting uphill every day,” Hirinaka said. He cursed, with surprising bitterness in his voice. “My men have started talking about wanting to get shot, just to get out of here.”
Yuki had heard the same thing. After the day Mat had gone down, Fox Company had been part of a special task force. They had marched at night, looped behind Hill D, and attacked in a pincer movement that had pressed the Germans from both sides. The move had been effective, and a lot of enemy troops had been killed or taken as prisoners, but there had been American casualties too, and the men had lost a night of sleep. Since then they had been on the attack every day, working their way through the woods, taking lots of fire but pushing the Germans back time and again. And every night had been long and cold and wet. Digging new foxholes day after day in ground full of rocks, attacking each morning, seeing more and more of their brothers go down—all of it was a nightmare, and Yuki knew he was reaching a breaking point. He didn’t want to leave the battle on a litter, but he understood why some men might consider that an option.
Still, it didn’t help to talk about it. Hirinaka seemed to know that too. “I guess for now we just take one day at a time,” he said.
“Yeah. And we can’t talk like this in front of our men. Let’s get back to them.”
Yuki strode out as best he could on his painful feet. When he got back to his squad, he checked on foxholes, asked the men about their feet, and told them they would be attacking at 0800. He didn’t hint that he saw anything very difficult in that.
Shig was digging a foxhole. Yuki told him, “Let’s not dig too deep. We won’t be here long.”
“Yeah, well, that’s not what you’ll say if we take fire tonight.” Shig tossed a shovelful of dirt out on the ground. He was only knee-deep so far, and he and Yuki both knew they would have to get deeper, though they were digging where tree roots made the job hard. Shig looked up at Yuki in the dim light. “Are we going after another hill in the morning?” he asked.
“Yeah. We are.”
Yuki couldn’t see Shig very well in the twilight, especially when he looked down again to dig, but Yuki had caught a glance of something he hated to see. Shig never showed much emotion—especially not discouragement. But he looked broken tonight.
“Get out of there,” Yuki told him. “Let me dig for a while.”
Shig didn’t argue. He stepped out of the hole and sat down on the wet ground. There was no getting dry anyway, and no way to stay warm at night.
Yuki and Shig took turns digging until Yuki finally said, “That’s as deep as we’re going to get with that big root blocking the way.”
“I’m sure it will be nice to sleep on.”
“Who sleeps?”
“I do. That’s the only thing I look forward to anymore.” But Shig seemed to regret his complaints. His voice softened when he asked, “How bad are your feet, Yuki?”
“Not good. Once I get up and around, they don’t hurt so bad, but when I try to sleep, they swell up and the pain gets hard to deal with.”
“Let’s change your socks.” Shig sat up and slipped closer to the hole, let his legs hang inside. He put a hand on Yuki’s shoulder. “I’ll help you do it.”
“I don’t know if I dare. I’m afraid if I pull these socks off, all the flesh on the bottom of my feet will come off too.”
“You gotta tell someone. You can’t keep going on this way.”
“Everybody’s got bad feet. I’m not going to sit at an aid station and cry about—”
“It’s not just ‘sore feet.’ You could be crippled for life.”
Yuki had been thinking the same thing. But he still couldn’t ask to leave the line. There were so many new guys who didn’t know what they were doing. The experienced men had to run the show and keep the replacements from getting killed. “I’ll tell you what,” he said. “I’ve had some stockings inside my shirt for two days. They’re pretty dry. Help me put them on, and then I’ll help you change yours.”
“I’m okay for another day. Let’s just get you fixed up for now.”
So the two got into the foxhole, which was drier than the surface ground at this point. They sat with their backs against opposite ends, and Shig pulled Yuki’s right foot onto his lap. He loosened the laces on the boot, and then he tried to pull it off, but the boot pulled at Yuki’s wet stocking and stretched the putrefying flesh. “Stop!” Yuki gasped. “Wait just a minute. Unlace the boot a little more, and then pull easy.”
But that didn’t work any better.
“I guess you might as well jerk it off all at once,” Yuki finally said.
Shig did it, and Yuki didn’t scream, but he wanted to. He tried to let the pain calm, but that didn’t work, so after a time he said, “Okay, take the sock off carefully. Let’s just see what happens.”
Shig had to roll the heavy stocking off a little at a time. Yuki wouldn’t let himself cry, but tears ran down his cheeks anyway. And once the sock was off, he didn’t want to see his foot. He simply asked, “How bad is it?”
“I can’t see very well. Some of the skin came off. I can tell that.”
“Well, that’s not so bad. Let’s get a dry sock on and leave the boot off to dry for a little while. We’ll do the other foot tomorrow.”
“I think we need to change that one too, Yuki.”
“Well . . . okay. You’re probably right.” So they repeated the whole process, and Yuki dealt with the pain again. And then, before they put the wet boots back on, he sat and let his feet air out. Shig held Yuki’s ankles, elevated them, and the fresh socks, which were quite dry, soothed the pain a little. Yuki thought of nights when he was a boy and his legs would ache after he’d run around all day. His mother had rubbed his legs and he had loved her tender touch. Shig certainly wasn’t his mother, but Yuki’s reaction was similar. It was like being home and having someone look after him. He didn’t say that to Shig, but as the darkness deepened, Yuki no longer tried to stop his tears. He needed something in his life that wasn’t ugly, and Shig’s gentleness was almost more than Yuki could bear.
But the boots had to go back on, and all the necessary pushing brought back the pain, which persisted into the night. And the rain came again. Yuki didn’t sleep much, despite how weary he was. It was strange to think, after all the battles, all the loss of friends, that this pain in the night seemed the worst of the suffering he had experienced. More than anything, he needed sleep—escape from his days—but these nights lasted longer
than any he had ever known.
At first light Yuki was up, glad to move around enough to get his blood flowing. He quietly rousted the soldiers in his squad and told them to eat something. They would be moving out soon. He ate some C rations himself. He had almost no appetite, but he knew that he needed strength.
At exactly 0800, Yuki led his squad through the trees to the bottom of a hill, and then they started their ascent with the rest of their company. They hoped to push forward as far as possible before being spotted or heard. The Germans would be in position near the crest of the hill, and certainly they would be expecting an attack this morning.
The men made little runs from one tree to another. They couldn’t see any sign of the enemy ahead, and they hoped they weren’t being watched yet, but it was hard to know. The Germans might be letting them get close before they let loose their firepower.
The men moved about three hundred yards up the hill and nothing happened. Yuki used hand signals and his own actions to lead the way. Other squads flanked them on both sides; Hirinaka’s men were on the left. Squads from First Platoon were making the same climb not far away. There was no spotting one another in the dense forest, but all the squad leaders had been instructed to move slowly and stealthily until they began to take fire.
Yuki had started to wonder whether the German forces had vacated the area, but then a single sniper bullet snapped through the air. Yuki heard a grunt, a moan, heard a man somewhere in the forest hit the ground. Sniper fire was terrifying; a soldier never knew when the enemy had a scope trained on him.
Yuki ducked behind a tree as soon as the bullet broke the quiet. He could see his seven men, all on their bellies or behind trees. Shig, Ted Tanna, and Yoshi Higa were still in his squad. The other four were replacements, and two of them were engaged in their first battle. Shig was closest, crouched behind a big pine with low-hanging limbs. Yuki knew the men had to keep going, not let a sniper stop them, so he bolted quickly to a tree about twenty yards ahead. Shig did the same, and then his other men made their own runs. Hirinaka’s squad was moving up the same way. And then machine-gun fire began to echo in the forest, seeming to bounce from one tree to another.