The Guardhouse Murders

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The Guardhouse Murders Page 11

by Don DeNevi


  “Really?”

  “I grew up with the Niseis, the second-generation Japanese-Americans. And, by the way, they are not ‘Jap-Americans’. They are Japanese-Americans, as American as you and me. The family of this place, the Satos, I believe, bought the large acreage in the early 1920s with hard-earned money they earned in Japan and here. No one wanted this land way out here from downtown San Diego. They revitalized and made over the part dirt-part sand with new vines until they had nearly 10,000 of them by 1930. They cared for each one. The family of sons and daughters tractored the land, irrigated each row, pruned every vine. All with their bare hands. Their joy wasn’t in the money the earned, but watching their labors blossom for hungry, appreciative people. And, their prices were always fair.”

  “Grapes mostly?”

  “Yes, Zinfandel wine grapes and a second, Tokay table grapes. Tokays are a northern California grape grown around Galt and Lodi. They are a Galt-Woodridge-Lodi specialty. They contain seeds, have crisp reddish-yellow skin, and the taste is a nice full fruity flavor.”

  As the line of buses, each filled to capacity, with some troops standing in the aisle, began to rattle away, the young man asked, concerned,

  “And our government made that family leave their own property just because they had ancestors buried in Japan? Who could stand that? I’d be so mad!”

  “Yes. And, almost all Japanese-Americans survived, pretty much, with the exceptions of the elderly suicides in the camps, and those who died of broken hearts. Those who survived had a wonderful attitude akin to ‘gamon’, which translates to ‘never giving up’, ‘continue to go forward’ through the seemingly unbearable. The word ‘shouganai’ also guides their lives. It means ‘always endure with dignity all hatreds and discrimination’. It’s an idea that pervades every Japanese and Japanese-American family.”

  “Well, you sure made me rethink how I feel about them. I can understand relocating them if they lived around oilfields, armories, railroad lines, reservoirs, power stations, harbor defenses and other specialized and restricted zones. But ranching way out here in the boondocks? What threat are they to us out here?”

  “Well, next time you have lunch with Lt. Gen. Dewitt who instigated the mess, you give him a piece of your mind.”

  “Before Pearl Harbor, all was well, wasn’t it? We were all having a good time without knowing it. Oh, if we could only jump forward for a quick tomorrow,” concluded the young private.

  To reach the brig-stockade, the caravan of Black Marias had to drive through the heart of Camp Elliott toward the east.

  Once again, Peter was lost in a mad swirl of events. Despite not knowing what awaited them after the 25-minute bus ride to the Camp Elliott brig, the prisoners were surprisingly jovial, happily chatting, joking, teasing, throwing paper balls, etc.

  “Ah, remembrances of boot camp experiences!” Peter’s new friend exclaimed.

  “With a large, ugly, belching, supperting transporting us,” chuckled the Lieutenant, as he gazed out the window at all the camp activity. Part of the Treasure Island sit-down concluded with a short briefing of where he was headed.

  It seemed that by September of 1942, Camp Elliott had become the home of the Fleet Marine Force Training Center, West Coast Sector, with the main mission of training individual replacements for combat duty. Over 10,000 Marines were in the San Diego area, under the banner of the 2nd Marine Division and leadership of Major-General C.F.B. Price. Peter know that he had served in World War I, and, with his considerable experience, was assigned the responsibilities of coordinating and supervising all the training there. Although more than 50,000 Marines passed through Elliott en route to Pacific duty in late 1944, the area could not meet the expansion needs for the training and deployment of the overseas replacements. The Training Center consisted of over 30 schools that taught a wide range of subjects, including individual combat and modern infantry.

  “What a base,” Peter said to the private sitting next to him who was listening intently. “Apparently, there are five large separate commands quartered here.”

  “What, for example, are they?”

  “Well, let’s see. If I remember correctly, the Headquarters for the Fleet Marine Force Training Center; the Troop Training Unit, Amphibious Training Command, Pacific Fleet, the Marine Barracks, and Base Depot. Few bases in the world, Allied or Enemy have such.”

  “Yeah, I heard. And, each command is separate, and distinct with specific responsibilities. Four of the five commands here fall within the jurisdiction of the Fleet Marine Force, under old General Clayton B. Vogel, a good man, I’ve repeatedly heard. Of these four, the largest and most complex operation is the Fleet Marine Force Training Center.”

  “Wow, young fella! How do you know all that? I’m your superior and can’t articulate the detail you know.”

  “We’re going through the two-story temporary, wood-frame barracks, officer’s quarters, and their necessary utilities, such as the water supplies stored over there to your left.”

  “Yeah, and on the other side, the mess halls, storehouses, non-commissioned officer and bachelor quarters, recreation areas, and additional magazines.”

  After a pause, Peter continued,

  “A city unto itself, completely self-sufficient, boating mess and recreational facilities, post exchanges, classrooms, outdoor theaters, shops, medical services, and maintenance facilities to teach how to maintain tanks in combat. What a base, youngster.”

  Even for the sunlit San Diego area, including the Camp Elliott area, the morning seemed extraordinarily brilliant and bright. As the caravan slowed even further, maneuvering through incredibly busy grounds, virtually all flooded with raw recruits hustling in groups or individually to one area or another. It was a little more than 7:30AM, and, as Peter noted, a Training Center reaching its peak of personnel movement among five separate major commands. Although Lieutenant Toscanini was apprehensive when he reflected about the unknown demands of his undercover work, and the very real possibility he would be murdered before a final word to Joan Ikeda, he felt himself in a whirling, unsteady sensation.

  “When do we eat? I would love to have a cup of Java.”

  “Soon, kid, soon.” Peter smiled, “By the way, what’s your name?”

  “Daniel Michael Marino. Supposedly I’m part Viking, part Irish, part Portuguese, and 100% American, the part I’m most proud of.”

  “Where you from?”

  “Astoria, Oregon, at the mouth of the Columbia River.”

  Peter gazed upon him and smiled again, “I know Astoria, like it a lot. Been there often because before the war I enjoyed driving the Coast’s Highway 1 during summer vacations.”

  “And you stopped in Astoria?”

  “Best fish restaurants of the Pacific Coast.”

  “I was a dishwasher in three of them. That’s how I earned my keep. All my earning went to Mom and younger sisters. Dad was killed working on a branch line of the Southern Pacific. We all took it hard, real hard. But I know he would be proud I signed up, although Mom was harder than hard to persuade to sign for me.”

  “How old are you then?”

  “Ah, 18. Well, I’ll be honest with you, 17 ½. But I can fight.”

  “Peter again allowed a slight smile to cross his lips. He liked Daniel Michael Marino. The 17 ½ year old was young, intelligent, sincere, honest, sensitive, immature, and most important of all, good. Peter, with all his natural warm, protective instinct aroused knew he would allow no harm to come to the teenager.

  “How on earth did you get mixed up with us? You’re no criminal, are you?”

  “I have no time to be a criminal. My mom needs my earnings! They’re first in my life. No, I’m no criminal. Let me explain what happened. But, before I do, Lieutenant, what’s your name? Oh, and please call me by my pet nickname Mom and Dad always called me, which is Sunny.”

  “Okay, Sunny, and, somehow that one fits you. Well, my name is Peter Toscanini. In fact, it’s Peter Albioni Toscanini.”

>   “Where have I heard that name before? Before the war, were you some kind of big-shot ball player or movie star? Or politician?”

  “Hardly. Although I feel I should have been. I’m better looking than William ‘Bill’ Lundigan, far better looking. Even better looking than a new kid that just arrived on the Hollywood lots named Greg Peck.”

  “Never heard of them.”

  “Of course not. Bill is my friend resting, recuperating, and refitting after fighting for six months on Guadalcanal. He’s now on Pavuvu Island, getting ready for the next island happening. My friend, a good guy. Being assigned to camera, motion picture taking duty. In real life, he’s actually a movie star.”

  “But I know your last name. I’ve heard it before.”

  “My dad’s grandfather, back in the northern Italian mountain village named Suzzi, was related to a Toscanini there. Who? I don’t know. If I survive this war, I want to honeymoon there to find out who my distant relatives are. I’m temporarily out of fiancées. So it may be awhile. But you’ve heard of Arturo Toscanini, a conductor, a classical musician the whole world knows. He grew up a cellist-turned-composer, and he fled Italy in 1931 to get away from Mussolini. By 1934, millions, almost 10 million Americans, men, women, and children, tuned into the radio on Saturday nights to hear the New York Philharmonic concerts. May family and I listened faithfully because, after all, he is a relative. Our favorites were ‘Pagliacci’, ‘La Boheme’, ‘Cavalleria Rusticana’, ‘Rigoletto’, ‘La Traviata’, heck I can name them all.”

  “Never heard of them. My family likes old-fashioned cowboy music, Okie music, singing, stomping, and strumming. That’s my people. And, your middle name. Who does that belong to?”

  “Another Italian composer, but of an earlier time. SO, we’re music people and proud of it. Now, it’s your turn. How does a nice kid like you wind up on this fat bus sitting next to me.”

  “Well,” Sunny blushed, “I’ll try to get my story in before we arrive at the stockade, which we must be near by this time…Look there…”

  As Sunny paused, Peter quickly glanced out the window of the Black Marias. At the corner of one of the camp’s main thoroughfare in “Barracks’ City”, two dozen Marine inmates wearing white uniforms bearing the word “BRIG” written in large black letters across their backs stood at ease in three rows facing the street.

  “Jailed for various infractions at Stoneman and other bases, but who opted for an infantry assignment rather than remain incarcerated in the brigs, near the bases where the infractions occurred.”

  “Camp Elliott serves as the advanced training base, as well as the headquarters for the West Coast elements of the Fleet Marine Force.”

  “Wow, 24 of them, probably waiting for these buses to drop us off, then return to pick them up. And, if you look out there behind the base, the landscape offers a unique combination of gently rolling hills and steep hills and mountain slopes that are ideal for infantry conditioning as well as weapons and field maneuver training.”

  “Well, we still have a little time before we pull up at the stockade.”

  “Okay. I was not your usual typical teenage errant Marine. After Mom reluctantly signed for me, and I went through training at the Fort Cods Bay training facility near the Oregon and California border on the Pacific, we stepped off the troop train at Camp Stoneham to board a transport at Fort Mason in San Francisco for ferrying to Honolulu, then straight to Guadalcanal, we think. I knew nothing about brigs, military police, stockades, Army discipline and court martials. In my young life, I hadn’t even watched a single guardhouse, prison, or jail movie. For me, the shock and fear of such words was greater than any near-death experience I would encounter wherever my battalion was going in the Pacific.”

  After a pause, looking down at his folded fingers, Sunny continued,

  “While undergoing additional training, I wound up serving a short sentence in the brig we were in together the past week or so. I had served slightly more than a week of a 30-day disciplinary sentence for being AWOL three days after a leave for completing the additional training. It was a non-escort by Military Police sentence.”

  As Peter listened intently, oblivious to all the outdoor base activities, Sunny continued,

  “We were about to complete the boot camp addendum at Stoneman when our outfit was granted a 10-day leave to go home, or fool around in Frisco. Well, naturally, I hitchhiked to the Oregon border, then hopped a freight to the Portland area, and hitched again to Astoria. All in only three days! Mom and the girls were so surprised, so happy to suddenly see me walking from the main road to the house. I got more hugs in those minutes than in my whole life, and I was only gone for less than a few months. You’d think the war was over.”

  “Well, Mom prepared a dinner you’d think it was Christmas! She didn’t have that much money, but she bought a whole chicken for us. That evening, I strolled to downtown Astoria and saw one of the girls I vaguely remember from the 5th or 6th grade and lost track of for a while because she had moved away, then moved back again.”

  “I don’t have to tell you what happened next, but to make a wonderful story short, let’s just say I lost track of time. By the time I got back to base, I was three days late. Hitching rides and finding the fastest freights didn’t go well. Besides, the distance from 1027 South Suisuin to Antioch-Pittsburgh, California, and Camp Stoneman is long, very long, more than a thousand miles. And, even if you could afford a passenger train, no point in trying to get a seat, what with whole units of troops traveling hither and yonder.”

  “Okay, so I was late. At the time, I laughed, ‘So what? No big deal. They going to throw me in the brig when the battalion was preparing to ship out?’ Heck, I meant no harm. I didn’t plan on staying out. I just went home to see Mom and sisters, while the Corps filled out all the paperwork for our movement. After all, it was a 10-day leave. But a curfew is a curfew and, as you better than anyone knows, the USMC is strict about those kinds of things.”

  “Well, the battalion shipped out a few days before you arrived. I saw you come in. And, I saw you come in because they left me behind. Can you believe that? When I finally stumbled in, dreary and dirty, embarrassed and angry at myself, sheepish but hopeful, I was escorted by four MPs past the whole battalion to the base detention center. And, for what? Look at me now. I just hope I didn’t get Agnes Dobbs pregnant. That’s just about all I need.”

  After a long pause, Peter offered somber, downcast Sunny a slight smile.

  “Well, let’s hope she’s not. It would hurt your mom and her mom. Marriage, yes. But not that way. And, for what? Oh, well. Life goes on. Now what’s important is for us both to get through what we’re about to face as safely as we can.”

  “Damn,” Sunny uttered softly.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  -

  The Stockade

  “Nothing froze me in my tracks more than Mother warning me from time to time, ‘Now, you behave, young man, or I’ll call for the Black Maria to come and take you away,” Sunny said weakly, smiling. “And, who would have predicted that now, in 1944, I’d be leisurely riding along in one of those dead meat wagons to the blackest Black Maria of all, the Cape Elliott ‘Calabozo’, as the Navajo boys call it.”

  Peter grinned,

  “That bad, huh?”

  “Maybe worse. I’ve never see it, or obviously been in it or any house of detention, for that matter, but was told by my Indian friends at Stoneman who did time there for being drunk all the time, or innocently being AWOL without realizing it, that inmates would occasionally be found dead on the yards, or simply disappear. ‘Oh, he was shipped out’, or ‘He went home last night’ was the explanation. They all knew it was a lie. But they figured the guy was so badly beaten he was put in a van and sent to a prison hospital. But they claimed that soon enough, a strange, peculiar smell, faint yet strong enough would come from the outdoor furnace and open dump area. No one knew whether any of it was true, or their imaginations running wild after a little drink or
two. All they knew was what they warned me, ‘Be careful. You’re going into hard times in the worst of the baddest, most evil calabooses in America, a black monster in the middle of the desert, ugly, screaming for more of us defenseless to devour’. ‘Be real careful, or you’ll wind up a clump of roasted meat thrown into an open garbage pit’.”

  With the caravan weaving its way through the main 2,500 acre camp cantonment, past barracks, satellite tent cities, auxiliary structures, and classroom buildings, acres of tank training yards, grenade courts, bayonet assault ranges and trenches, it soon merged onto Murphy Canyon Road. Less than a mile later, it turned off upon the old dirt and gravel Escondido Road leading directly to the stockade’s outer entrance, less than a mile away.

  “That large dreary, dismal blend of black and white mass down the road there much be there brig,” Peter said quietly, pointing.

  “Yeah, sticking out of a rattlesnake hole in the hot desert, like a fat middle finger,” returned Sunny, disgustedly.

  Peter recalled being told the stockade grounds were on the fringes of the Jacques Farm located at the extreme southern corner of Camp Elliott. Originally, the area was used as a bivouac and training area for the 2nd Tank Battalion and 2nd Marine Raider. Since it was so isolated, the bivouac had to be self-sufficient. Easily accessible was slate, a bluish-gray hard, five-grained rock, suitable for building temporary stone warehouses. Evacuated from nearby newly designated slate quarries, large blocks were cut to construct the stockade, originally used as a tank maintenance center, and other minor facilities.

  “Lookie yonder, Lieutenant. We’re coming up to the inner stockade entrance, the so-called Westgate Entrance where they’ll dump us off. More important, out to my right, you can see what appears to be a large furnace, and next to it an open pit.”

  “Yeah, I see them.”

  The caravan slowed to a crawl through the wire-mesh fence with razor sharp edged wire topping it off, two armed Navy sentries standing beside their smart-looking guardhouse waving them forward. Less than 50 yards across the desert floor, at a roundabout before the sunlight-lapped triple rusty iron gates, more than 20 feet high tall, the Black Marias pulled up, then switched their motors off. Waiting outside the gates was a contingent of some two-dozen unsmiling MPs waiting for the prisoners to disembark.

 

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