by Dean Hughes
At the moment, the answer seemed to be that he could last another thirty seconds, maybe another minute. But when a minute passed and the pain only deepened, acute at the point of pressure and more general throughout his legs and hips, and especially in his injured back, he told himself that he could go one more minute. Then, if he couldn’t stand it, he would simply lie down, and they could kill him. But he wasn’t ready to give up quite yet.
Five minutes passed that way, and then ten. Or maybe it wasn’t nearly that long; Wally had already lost his sense of time. All he knew was that he couldn’t last much longer.
Hisitake finally spoke again, from behind Chuck and Wally, who were next to each other, shoulder to shoulder. Wally understood enough to know that the commander was leaving, and he was turning the punishment over to the guards. Wally also knew, just as he had sensed from the beginning, that this torture was not going to be a matter of a few minutes.
The commander began to walk away and then suddenly turned back. He came around in front of the men. Wally expected another blow from the shovel, still in Hisitake’s hands, almost welcomed it as a chance to fall to the ground again and end the pain in his legs. But the commander handed the shovel to Wally, made him hold the handle with both hands. Then he motioned for Wally to raise it above his head. Wally did as he was told, and then Hisitake nodded. “You hold it. No put down.”
Wally was already tired from everything else, but he held the shovel high. He tried to lock his elbows, to make this as easy as he could. He was well aware of the new agony that was coming. It was a favorite punishment the guards used—forcing men to hold something in the air for long periods of time until their muscles gave out.
When the commander left, Wally watched the guards to get some sense about what their intentions were, but they were settling in. One of them stood before Chuck and Wally, his legs spread, the butt of his rifle on the ground. He showed no sign of anger, no emotion—certainly no pity. What Wally saw was something like interest or curiosity, as though this were a mild little entertainment, something to change the monotony of his daily guard duty.
Wally was on the edge of breaking down. He knew that. He could see in the guard’s face that the man had no intention of stopping the torment any time soon. So why not give up now? Maybe he should throw down the shovel and take what the man had to give him.
But just then Chuck whispered, “I can’t do this much longer.”
“Yes, you can,” Wally told him. And, of course, he was telling himself the same thing. “We’ll get numb. It won’t hurt so much.”
Wally knew that about pain. It was one of the principles he had learned to live by. Every terrible test looked impossible at first, but the body had a way of adjusting, of protecting itself. He was overpowered now, but the spreading pain would finally push him to a state where his mind would refuse to accept so much agony. And then his head, along with his knees, would give way to a deadening numbness.
If he could get past the next few minutes, maybe that numbing would come, and then he could survive for perhaps an hour. It was hard to believe that the guards would push this abuse much longer than that.
Chuck bent forward and adjusted his weight a little, but when he did, the bamboo poles moved, ever so slightly. The effect was like an electric shock. And suddenly, Wally was starting over. The tiny movement had driven the rough ridges of the bamboo deeper into his skin, seemed to freshen the pain, to bring it back to full consciousness.
Minutes kept going by, but every now and again Chuck adjusted his weight, and each time the pain for Wally was like razor blades cutting at his knees and shins. Finally, he said, “Chuck, if you can help it, don’t move like that.”
Wally didn’t have the strength to explain, nor did he dare say much in front of the guard. Chuck only said, “I’m sorry,” but he didn’t move again, and Wally knew that had to be hard for him. In some ways Chuck had been more weakened by his illness than Wally. The vomiting and dehydration had taken him to the edge of death and kept him there for a longer time. Wally knew it was taking all of Chuck’s strength just to hold his position, let alone to accept the pain in his legs.
“Hands up!” the guard shouted.
Wally realized that his arms had begun to sink a little. He pushed upward, locked his elbows again. It was better that way, easier, but it took a certain amount of concentration, and his mind was working its way back to the place where it had been during his illness. His arms were hurting as much as they were going to, he suspected, and so he told himself he could deal with that. The pain in his legs was everywhere now, maybe general enough to deal with for a time. Now it was a matter of removing himself from his body, of not letting the pain reach him.
But an hour went by, or some time that seemed like an hour, and the guard showed no sign of change. He didn’t check the time, didn’t seem to have any plan to stop what was happening.
Wally realized the truth: there was no end to this, and he shouldn’t think about it that way. It was like the imprisonment itself. A prisoner had to take it a day at a time and not think about the future. The pain was something to keep on the surface, accept as the current condition, without considering when it might stop. It was that understanding that got him through the afternoon.
Time kept passing—hours, not minutes—and Wally was barely sentient. Reality had turned into a dreamy sort of blur, outside himself. But when a new crew of guards came on duty, he let this change register in his mind. When the commander had first brought him and Chuck to the guard station, the time had been about 2:15. The shift change was at 6:00. He and Chuck had been kneeling on the bamboo for nearly four hours.
If the first set of guards left, there was no one to tell the next crew when to stop the torture. They might keep this going until Chuck or Wally, or both, collapsed. But what then? It was tempting to let himself go and crash on the ground. Would the guards conclude that they had broken him and let the punishment end? Or would they beat him to death? Shoot him? Make him start again? There was no telling. The one thing he knew was that he was alive, and he could last a little longer. He might give up at some point and then see what would come of it, but right now he would rather deal with the pain than find out what else the guards might do to him if he forced a change.
Wally’s vision came back into focus as one of the new guards walked to him. This guard, the one who seemed to be in charge now, had a different look in his eye. He reached out and took the shovel from Wally’s hands. Wally lowered his arms and felt the blood pump back into them, which, for the moment, made the pain much worse.
“You take,” the guard said to Chuck.
This seemed to be the guard’s notion of fairness, that one not have to hold the shovel the whole time, but Chuck gasped, and then he whispered, “Wally, I’m sorry, but I can’t do it. If I have to hold that shovel, I’m not going to make it.”
So Wally spoke up. “Me,” he said. “I’ll hold it.” He lifted his hands to take it, even though the motion cost him more than he expected—his arms feeling cramped now and unwilling to respond to his new demand.
The guard gave Wally a long look, and then he glanced around to see who was watching. Finally, he stepped over to the guard station and leaned the shovel against the wall. Then he nodded. That act of kindness almost ended it for Wally. He almost broke down. He needed to get back to his desensitized state, not to think or feel. And so he tried to let his mind drift again, to separate himself from the pain in his lower body and to feel some comfort from the end of the torture on his arms.
Hours kept passing, and gradually it was exhaustion that Wally was dealing with at least as much as pain. At one point during the evening, the guard went into the guard station, and when he came out, he had a stick of chewing gum—gum from Red Cross boxes that were supposed to be passed along to the prisoners. Wally watched as the man removed the Spearmint wrapper and the tin foil, then put the gum into his mouth. He wondered whether this was another little nuance of the torture.
&
nbsp; But the guard chewed only a few seconds, and then he took the gum from his mouth and stepped close to Wally. Wally watched out of the corner of his eye as the guard, being careful not to be seen, reached the gum toward him. Wally opened his mouth just a little, and the guard pushed the gum in, then stepped away.
It was only a tiny bit of sugar, only the slightest of help to bring some saliva to Wally’s mouth, but he knew the guard meant well, that he was pulling for the men, hoping they would survive. After a few minutes, he unwrapped another stick of gum, chewed it for a few seconds, and this time carefully approached Chuck, just as warily placing the gum in Chuck’s mouth.
That was a little boost, some indication that this guard might relent at some point. But a thought was beginning to press itself on Wally. Maybe this was a death penalty. Maybe dying would be the only escape from this suffering. He could feel his body breaking down, his strength giving out. He and Chuck had been too worn down going into this. There was no way they could hold any position for much longer, with or without the pain. Without food and water, it was just a matter of time before their body systems simply shut down.
Time kept passing. Wally didn’t think about bravery, about the value of life, and not even about his family, the thought of whom had sustained him for so long. And he didn’t pray. In this state, hope was a kind of enemy. It was better to accept that whatever was best would finally happen and not to ask for specific relief or even strength. What was different for him now, compared to those horrible days when he had first been taken prisoner in the Philippines, was that he lived with the assurance that God knew his hardships. At times he would start to pass out, and his body would jerk; then his muscles, seemingly on their own, would choose to hold on again. What he knew was something he had learned over all these years of abuse: God was with him even when he felt abandoned. He didn’t have to plead for help; he only needed to trust.
“I’m not going to make it,” Chuck finally said, after neither of them had whispered a word for hours. “It must be midnight. They’re going to keep this up all night.”
“Don’t think about that. Just deal with now.”
“I’m finished, Wally. What’s he going to do if I just quit? I don’t think he’ll kill us.”
“He might not, but Hisitake might in the morning. Don’t give up yet.” And then he did pray for Chuck. “Keep him up, Lord. Hold him,” he whispered.
Wally heard a little whimper, and he knew that Chuck had made a decision. He was holding his position. Sooner or later, however, it wasn’t going to be a decision. One of them would just go down. Their lives were in God’s hands. Only if He wanted them to live would they have a chance.
And then Wally heard an odd whistling sound. His body jerked, reacting to a flash of light and what he thought was a clap of thunder. But the flashes continued in a steady rhythm, as did the rumbling sounds, and by then Wally knew: bombs were falling. One crashed very close, hitting a building in the compound, and others were falling in the city and off toward the mine.
“Americans,” Chuck said.
Yes. It had to be. Bombers were striking Omuta. Wally had heard rumors that Japan was being bombed now, but he had never heard or seen any direct evidence of it. But this was it. Maybe there was an invasion going on. Maybe the war was nearing its end.
Wally’s reactions were confused. He could be struck by an American bomb at any moment, but he felt no fear. What he believed was that God had sent these bombers now—for him and Chuck—that the two of them were being freed.
“Don’t move yet,” Wally told Chuck. “Wait.”
Wally wanted the guards to release him. He wondered how angry they might be, with bombs dropping. He didn’t want to give them any excuses to take out their anger on him and Chuck.
For a time there was confusion. The man who had been guarding Wally and Chuck left for a couple of minutes—or at least moved out of their line of sight. But then he returned, and he shouted, “Stand up.”
Wally felt the release, the relief, but he couldn’t get up. He put a hand down and lowered himself onto his side. He tried to straighten his legs just a little, but pain shot through his body. He lay still, panting. Chuck was next to him, grunting, crying out at times. Suddenly someone grabbed Wally under the arms, dragged him on his side up some steps and into the guard house. Then the man dropped Wally onto a concrete floor in a dark little room. In another minute or so Chuck arrived the same way. Without saying a word, the guard stepped out, then shut the door and locked it. Wally was still curled up, still in agony, but he also knew the worst was over, at least for now. He looked up at the barred window in the room, and he saw lights flashing, the distant report of continued explosions, and then he shut his eyes and said, “Thank you, Heavenly Father. Thank you.”
Chuck was muttering the same words.
Chapter 3
Bobbi Thomas looked out at the ocean. She loved to watch the emerald waves rise, swell, then break and turn white as they crashed toward the beach. She was sitting next to Richard Hammond just as she had the year before when he had been getting ready to go to sea. He was back now and they were officially engaged, but they were about to be separated again. In another week—the first week of February, 1945—he would be transferred to the mainland. He would be going to San Francisco first, where a specialist, a doctor who did hand surgery, would operate to remove scar tissue and try to salvage more of the movement in his left hand. After that he would report to the Bushnell military hospital in Brigham City, Utah, only about a hundred miles from his home in Springville. He would receive skin grafts there, probably a series of them. What he had learned was that his hand would not be amputated, since he had feeling in it, and it would be more useful than any sort of prosthesis, but he still might lose parts of some of his fingers.
“I wish I were going with you,” Bobbi said—words she had spoken a dozen times before but that she was feeling more powerfully every day. Richard was going home, and now she was the one going to sea. She had received an assignment as the head of a burn ward on a hospital ship, the Charity. The next time it put in at Pearl Harbor—and that was likely to happen within the next two or three weeks—she would make the transfer. She had volunteered for the assignment when she had desperately needed a change, when Richard had appeared to be lost at sea. Now the transfer only meant a wider separation. The navy had dropped its regulation that had previously prohibited nurses from marrying, but with Bobbi shipping out, there was no way for her to be with Richard, and her commitment to the military wouldn’t end until the war was over—and probably not for some months after that.
“Richard,” Bobbi said, “I want to talk to you about something.”
“Okay.”
She looked at the waves, not at him, but she let her arm rest across his knee. The two were in their swimming suits, sitting on beach towels close enough to the water that the remnants of the larger waves sometimes glided up the sand almost to their feet. It was Bobbi’s day off, and she had stolen Richard away from the hospital. They were breaking all sorts of rules, but when Bobbi asked her commanding officer for permission, Lieutenant Karras had said, “Just don’t tell me anything about it; I don’t want to know.” Bobbi had borrowed a car from some members of her Mormon ward. She didn’t have a driver’s license, but she didn’t care about that. The police could throw her in jail if they wanted—but only if they caught her on the way back from Sunset Beach.
“There’s a temple just a few miles from here, you know,” Bobbi said, and she laughed.
The two of them had stopped in Laie not two hours before and walked around the temple grounds, so that information could hardly come as a surprise to Richard. “Yes,” he said, the word sounding more like a question than a reply.
“We could drive back to Honolulu, track down my bishop and stake president, and get back out to the temple. We could get married before the day is over.”
“Elope to the temple? Is that allowed?”
“Richard, I’m serious. Why d
on’t we get married now? Not today—but before you leave next week.”
“I’ll tell you what I love most about you, Bobbi. You’re so subtle.”
“You should be flattered.” She put her hand on his cheek, turned his face, and kissed him. “It means I want you.”
“You brazen woman.”
“I know. I am.” She put her hand on his chest and shoved him, drove him onto his back, and then she leaned over him and kissed him seriously. Or at least tried to. Both were laughing by then.
Richard rolled onto his side, slipped his bandaged hands around Bobbi, and took her in his arms. “So do you think I’ve never thought about doing just that?”
“I don’t know. Have you?”
“Sure. Bobbi, when I kiss you, if you think I’m not getting other ideas, you’re nuts.”
“I’m glad to know it. You never tell me that.”
He laughed. “I don’t want to shock your delicate sensitivities.”
“I’m delicate, all right.” She pulled away and socked him in the stomach with her fist.
He grunted, but he pulled her close again, and she loved the feel of his skin. “People make it sound like girls aren’t supposed to have those kinds of feelings, but I think about it all the time lately—us being together.”
“Bobbi, I love you,” Richard said. “Maybe if we’re married fifty years—or a few thousand—you can teach me to say what I’m thinking, the way you do. It’s a good trait.”
“I’m not always like that, Richard. Afton’s the one who says what she thinks—whether she should or not. I’m only that way with you.”
“Why with me?”
“Because I want you to know everything about me—and still like me. And I want to know you the same way.”
He laughed again, and she liked hearing the deep rumble inside his chest, but he let go of her and rolled onto his back. She rested her head on his shoulder, but she thought she felt some tightness there now, and she heard the hesitancy in Richard’s voice when he said, “Bobbi, it’s just not like me to reveal myself all that much. It’s a good way to be, I guess, but I’ll probably never be as open as you are.”