“The Army did not order you to steal my village’s yams,” the old man said.
“Yes it did. We are soldiers.”
“No, you are not. You are just skinny boys.”
“What do you know, old man?” I said.
“See my hand? Only two fingers. I left the others in Korea when I was one of the Emperor’s soldiers myself 35 years ago.”
The old man beat me with a stick he had with him, without much strength but with some enthusiasm.
“You should show me respect, you fool, I am older than you,” he said. “You know how long this killing has been going on?”
“I know, old man,” Otokita said. “We were taught in our training the Empire secured many valuable resources from Korea via your generation’s efforts. We thank you for your service. We have used the bastard garlic eaters’ iron, for example, to construct a powerful navy.”
“Do you know where that powerful navy is now? Sunk by the Americans,” the old man said.
“Sir, respectfully, my training was that additional resources were gained from Korea. I may list phosphorus, magnesium, coal…” Otokita said.
“…and human beings, you dolt. My unit’s task in Korea was to gather up women to ship back here. We said kyoseirenko, forced transportation, but others called them ‘comfort women.’ We would reassure the girls they were going to factory jobs, but in fact it was the Army’s brothels that needed to be kept well-stocked. At first we stole the beautiful ones, but we were soon told to look at endurance instead. Sometimes when we saw a sturdy one we would grab her right out of a field, mud still between her toes. Even so, their health would fade after being used twelve hours a day and we would need to often replenish the supply. So do not tell me about resources from Korea.”
“Zegen,” Takagi whispered to me. “Pimp.”
“To hell with you,” the old man said. “I was a soldier. I followed orders. We were trained in logistics school to calculate the allotted time for officers and regular troops to know how many to take, because officers were allowed more time between their legs. And the official term for harvesting women was choben, an old quartermaster word, ‘gathering food for the horses,’ not zegen.”
The old man spat on my boots. I raised my hand, but, after meeting his eyes, lowered it just as quickly.
“I had absolute control over human beings. I could do anything I wanted to them,” the old man said. “Want to know what happened? Hah, exactly what you think happened. You can imagine the kind of men attracted to such work, eh?”
“Did you…” Otokita said.
“Take a little taste for myself now and then? Of course. But the others did to, everyone did. That was not so bad in itself. But using them ourselves was against military waste regulations, so we had to destroy the evidence.”
He moved some dirt around with his foot. “They tried to still be human, but there were too many of us that took our real pleasure in making them less. You know, there was often no bedding, underneath them was just earth most times when we put them… to work. They cried ‘Mummy, it hurts.’”
“I—” Otokita said.
“Otokita, just be quiet. Can you not see every time you say something you just encourage this old buzzard?” I said. I wanted Otokita to think he was a liar, instead of helping him see the lie. There had been rumors of these things.
“Look at yourselves. You are stealing rotten yams from the elderly,” the old man said. “That is the way of it now.”
“We are here to save you from the Americans and need our strength,” I said.
“What are you protecting me from? The Americans passed through here a day ago, and they did not want my yams.”
“The Americans were here?” I said.
“Yes, hairy white beasts, but they gave us some food. It was horrible, a type of canned pink meat. It smelled like feet, but we ate it. You can only die once, right? And it was better than monkey meat,” the old man said.
“There are no monkeys here. Have you gone insane, old fellow?” I said.
“You will soon learn some of your tastiest meals arrive on two feet, young soldier. Just be sure not to die before those other two.”
“Enough of this. My rifle says you must give us food now,” I said.
“Ah, so you boys are in a hurry for your first taste of monkey meat then, eh? Anyway, you do not want us. We are rotten, all suffering from dysentery. If we live long enough, the Americans may be back with something to eat, and medicine for us. Maybe you should wait for them. I will put in a good word for you.”
“Why are you not prepared to fight the Americans instead of taking what scraps they’ll give you, like whores? Every one of us Japanese are expected to defend the nation, with pitchforks, kitchen knives and strong hearts,” I said.
“Look at us—do we look like an army? Do you?” the old man said.
“That is not important. What is important is to die with honor,” I said. I looked to Otokita and Takagi for support.
“We will die here with honorable dysentery,” the old man said.
“Why do you not support the troops?” Otokita said.
“Yes, I suppose I should,” the old man said. “Look at how much we in this village have benefited from this war. You are lucky we do not clear you lot out ourselves. Perhaps with pitchforks and kitchen knives.”
“Look, old man, can we be reasonable?” I said.
“Perhaps. Will you stop stealing our yams?”
“Perhaps. Will you give us some food?”
“Perhaps. Do you have any grenades?” the old man said. “There is a frozen river not far from here, and we cannot break through the ice. Underneath may be fish. If you have grenades, you can blow a hole in the ice. The shock will kill any fish down there and they will float to the top. We will all eat tonight, and there will be enough for your men in the hospital as well,” the old man said.
“What men? What hospital?” I said.
“Grenade first, then I will tell you.”
“No, you go first,” I said.
“No, you hand over the grenade first,” the old man said.
“Send for another man from the village. He and Private Otokita will take a grenade down to the river. If Otokita does not come back with fish, I will shoot you down where you stand,” I said.
“And for dinner eat my heart?”
“We will see, though I suspect you have none,” I said. “And after the fish, then you will take us to this hospital you say has Imperial soldiers. We may need them.”
“Of course. You can have as many as you like.”
“Okay, Otokita, go fetch some dinner,” I said. “And you, old man, take us where we can get warm. It is cold out here for hungry men.”
TAKAGI AND I FOLLOWED the old man into his village. Maybe not a village; the place looked more like a fistful of little houses washed up from the river. There were no young men. The teenage girls, we were told, were hiding in the hills in case we sought to use the last of our strength on them. They had done the same when the Americans came.
As we turned to enter what was the old man’s home, a middle aged woman stood in front of us.
“Kill me. I cannot stop myself taking food from my daughter,” she said. “Every time uncle distributes food, I take hers. Please, I do not have the courage to kill myself.”
She grabbed my rifle barrel and screwed it against her forehead. The old man pushed her aside.
A grenade exploded in the distance, and soon after Otokita returned with fish. Not enough, but almost enough. I took one and cleaned it in front of the old man. I flicked the guts to the ground with my knife. The old man snatched them up, stuffed them whole into his mouth and swallowed as if he was worried I might pull them out and eat them myself. He closed his eyes, and allowed his tongue to dart out to lap up a bit of fish blood left on his lips.
“Sergeant, forgive my manners.” He belched, then smiled at the taste. “Now I have a small test for you to take. You just saw my niece begging you to spar
e her the shame of knowing she stole food from her own child. Take that fish and follow me. I want to teach you something about war, one old soldier to another.”
The old man called over a young boy.
“Sergeant. Give that boy your tasty fish,” the old man said.
“You are crazier than I thought, old man. The boy will get his share later,” I said.
“There is not enough to go around. Give the boy your fish. He will die without food.”
“No, I need it. I have to fight, to kill Americans, for Japan,” I said. “And, um, to protect your village.”
“I think we have covered that already, Sergeant. Give him the damn fish, you coward. Bah, you have no more balls than my niece.”
“I can do terrible things now,” I said.
“Congratulations, Sergeant, you have learned something about how war works. One old soldier to another.”
THE OLD MAN WAS not done with me. As he claimed, the village had been caring for a handful of soldiers laid out in one of the homes, the so-called “hospital” he had spoken of. The cold did not mask the sweet fog of decay.
“A week ago about 40 Imperial soldiers passed through our village,” the old man said. “They were in a hurry, with their officers beating them, driving them forward, and so did not even stop to steal our food. An American airplane came screaming into this valley, firing its machine guns. All of the soldiers dove for the ground. When the plane did not return, several of the soldiers appeared to rise from the dead, standing up unhurt. They collected these few wounded. They told us to care for them, and someone would return to help. Half of the wounded begged us to kill them so they were not later taken prisoner, and half begged us to hand them over alive to the Americans in hopes they would be fed and receive medicine. We have no new bandages left, and the women will not wash the pus out of the old ones anymore so we can reuse them.”
“What now?” I watched a fly explore one of the faces, lingering near an eye before settling at the corner of the man’s mouth.
“The ones with beriberi swell. We lay them on one side, then we roll them over to drain back the other way when the fluids build up. On their backs they drown. The ones who got tetanus from the soil they laid on while wounded just die. See that fellow? Today his skin turned the color of young leaves. The two you smell are the worst. Dysentery. We have no choice but to leave their trousers off and stuff their backsides with leaves. We thought the one by the window there with the glasses had died, even covered him with a straw mat, but then the next morning he moved the mat aside and mumbled ‘I am breathing again.’ We give something to eat to those who appear able to survive on their own, and withhold the food from those who seem destined to die soonest.”
“And who must decide who to feed and who to allow to die?” I said.
“The previous man to take on the task ran off into the mountains. Have you seen him, by chance? Listen to them, Sergeant. They all want their mothers. I always think, well, where was your mother when you were called out to war? Probably at the rail station waving a paper flag and cheering.”
“So what do you want me to do, old man?” I said.
“What can any of us do? The dragon has been unleashed and will not go back into his cage until he has had his fill. Sergeant, leave here. You cannot help us. We cannot help you. Move on if you must. Perhaps they can feed you there, though given your upcoming task that does seem a waste of good food.”
“Despite your insolence, I appreciate what you tried to teach me, old man,” I said.
“Yes, yes, you are welcome, but if you insist on continuing, you have learned nothing,” the old man said.
“Maybe, old man, maybe. I hate the Americans, but I now also hate something of what we have become. And I will die because of it. I even look forward to it,” I said.
“Death? Oh, yes, so do I, Sergeant. Maybe we are not so different after all.”
Chapter 16: Hungry For It
Former Lieutenant Nathaniel Hooper: Retirement Home, Kailua, Hawaii, 2017
“DON’T WORRY ABOUT THE soldiers who complain,” Sergeant Laabs once said to me. “Worry about the ones who don’t.”
The near-constant complaining we did was a way of getting rid of gloom without denying it existed; the only forbidden thing was self-pity. Privates bitched about corporals, who complained about sergeants, who grumbled about officers, who bad-mouthed MacArthur, who groused about Truman. The buck stopped there.
There were a few, mostly the real backwoods country boys like Burke, who made the best of it, with a cheerful contempt for the hardships—“Oh, been colda’ ’an this,” or “Nope, this ain’t nothing compared to a real winter, no suh.” As for the rest of us, we complained, usually about that same cold, the one that pressed on us, the one flowing into our foxholes. To fight back, we cut down pine boughs and filled the bottom of our holes with them, giving us something better to stand on than the frozen earth. We wriggled our toes to keep warm, and to keep from nodding out on watch. We would’ve killed for a snort.
The only thing worse than the cold was if you were moving enough to start sweating. We had nothing but body heat to dry our things out, and it got cold again faster than that would work. Back home, dry underpants were just something our mothers handed us on wash day, but out there they could save a life.
I wish there was a better way to tell this, maybe a box full of dirt, damp web gear, cigarette butts, and rags soaked in rifle oil I could drop off at your place. And food, because about the only nod at pleasure we had was our K-rations—K-Rats—canned food and other things packed into waxed boxes. K-rations were an improvement over the older kind of field food, C-rations, which came in cans the size and shape of dog food. K’s came in a smaller can, about the size and shape of cat food.
Other than the Fruit, Peach, Canned, Syrup-Type, it was the instant coffee—it was called soluble coffee then—that was the real prize with your K-rats. Most times you just poured the crystals right on your tongue, or kept them in your cheek like dip, and let them dissolve. Other times we made little stoves out of a metal tin and a block of paraffin wax to heat up the coffee, right in a canteen cup. The taste wasn’t so good, a gesture more than a drink, but it was a damn welcome gesture. The metal canteen cups would glow a nice cherry red. They had a rolled metal rim that would grab the heat and not let go; sometimes you’d burn your lips, sometimes you’d thaw them out as your teeth chattered against the metal in Morse code. I heard of a guy who’d never washed his cup, the whole war, so by victory day he just needed to splash hot water in to make coffee.
Another piece of news inside the K-rat box was a tropical Hershey bar, special chocolate with as much of the flavor removed as possible and flour added so it would not melt in the heat. This was of course somewhat less of a concern in midwinter Japan than on Guadalcanal.
The bad news in K-rats was Spam, pink and salty as all hell, and about the texture of snot. More rumor than actual meat, we still ate it, never thinking we’d one day be wrestling with high blood pressure and 300-plus cholesterol counts. Spam took the idea of “food as fuel” about as far as it could go. The stuff was also known not affectionately as bunghole cement because it didn’t exactly promote what Grandpa called “healthy digestion,” but that was sort of okay, given that the alternative was to expose your backside to freezing temperatures and enemy snipers. That’s also why we pissed in our helmets and threw the pee out over the sides of the foxhole.
About the only good thing to say was that the K-rats made me remember back at home every Friday there’d be a fish fry at the fire house. I hated that stuff then but out in the field I’d have killed for something so hot and wonderfully greasy. I wanted to go home and eat what I wanted when I got hungry, sleep with my hand tucked under a real pillow when I was tired, and go to the toilet anytime I had to go without worrying about getting shot. People who have never been in the service or prison undervalue things like being free to walk away from something. For a kid who not too long ago wished for a catch
er’s mitt, hoping just for a hot meal while not dying was a change.
Every K-rat box also had a few cigarettes inside, usually Luckies. It might just be an exaggeration to say some guys chewed the cigarettes to get the nicotine into their bodies faster, but just. Lighting a match at night invited death, but we cupped our hands to hide it, forcing scary shadows on our faces, deciding, back then without irony, that smoking was worth risking dying for. The pony packs of four smokes fit snug inside the magazine pouches on our web belts, and we carried them that way. Everyone joked that free cigarettes were the only good thing about being in the service. Cold coffee and a pack of Luckies for breakfast, didn’t get any better than that.
But what we really wanted more than free smokes was to think we were closer to home, though the more you forced it, the more it just felt worse out there. Like when they made a big deal out of serving us a traditional turkey dinner for Thanksgiving when we were on Kyushu. I ate it all, but to tell the truth, I really just wanted it to be Friday. “I’m glad that’s over” is what most guys said after the pumpkin pie.
Out in the field at night, I set up watch rotations, so someone would be awake to tell us we were about to die when the Japs came. The Japs couldn’t pronounce L and R sounds right, so I picked challenge passwords like “red lollipop” and “lazy river,” and thought I was clever. As close as I got to any real leadership those nights was showing up. I’d slide into a hole, tell the men there to keep an eye out and move on. I was younger than some of them and not much older than the rest, but I called them son those nights because they wanted me to. I knew it was fake, and so did they, feeling like that last Christmas when I knew Santa wasn’t real but pretended anyway. It was, literally, the least I could do. They did not respect me or look up to me, and I’d have worried if they had.
Hooper’s War Page 11