Hooper’s War

by Peter Van Buren

  We all carried little first aid pouches called Carlisles on our web belts, really just a field dressing, some sulfur powder and a couple of morphine syrettes. They weren’t actual hypo needles, just little tubes like glue or drawing salve about two inches long with a needle at one end and a small loop of wire used to break the seal and release the morphine. You jabbed the thing into a wounded man to dull the pain until either real help arrived, he stopped screaming, or he passed.

  The drug made Steiner go from screaming into a low moan, fetal, rocking himself. We could hear something else now; the leg looked bad, but it was an open sucking chest wound that was killing him breath by breath, the bullet caught in his right lung, Steiner now gasping like a fish on the end of a line—in suck, out cough, in suck, out blood, in suck, out spattering air. Jones tried to drag him back toward us, but he was too heavy and Jones’ fear of standing to get a better grip was too much, and so after pulling Steiner just a yard or two, Jones belly crawled back alone. I looked out and saw a red arrow on the snow, marking just how far Jones had got him before giving up. Steiner was turning blue, his breathing became a stopped-up drain gurgling, then, finally, just the low hiss of gas escaping an open valve. Only thing warm was the blood, Jones said, as he wiped his hands on his trousers.

  Steiner was smoking a Chesterfield when he was hit. The dropped butt was on top of the frozen snow, still letting off a spit of smoke, curling up, before, pffft, it melted into the earth.

  Sergeant Eichi Nakagawa: Japanese Lines, 1946

  “YOU SEE THE BASTARD bleeding to death out there?” Takagi said.

  “One less foreign devil, even though he is soiling our land,” I said. “Takagi, over there, in the trees, try and take out that one before our brothers launch their charge. Kill him, he appears to be giving orders to the others. That one, the American wearing glasses.”

  Lieutenant Nathaniel Hooper: American Lines, 1946

  I’D BEEN SHOT AT too many times already since leaving the ship and heading onto the beach, but it never felt all that personal until one went past me now like a fat steel horsefly, hit the tree, and threw some bark down the back of my jacket. Bullets move faster than sound, so the round gets there before the noise. You’ll truly never know what hit you unless it doesn’t.

  This wasn’t the Japanese Army shooting at an American Army uniform; it was some Jap shooting at me. Whatever concerns about right and wrong some people lose bit by bit, I lost all at once. I knew what to do, already hearing Sergeant Laabs’ voice in my head. You hit harder than you’ve been hit. Smitty dragged his radio over on my command, and with a few shouted sentences, just as quick, I had a Navy Bearcat inbound from a carrier off shore. The shot at me had to have come from either the tree line to the right, or the one straight ahead, kind of an L-shape. I got to pick; I could make that plane do anything I wanted. I was choosing who would die. I picked… the trees in front.

  “Let the Nips come out and fight,” Marino said. “My trigger finger’s itching for it.”

  “Well, time to scratch. Here they come, maybe 30 of them,” I said. “Fire, fire, contact front. BAR, open up, short bursts, Polanski, now now now.”

  What was happening fast was happening slow. I was hypnotized watching the BAR exhale the empty brass shell casings out of the ejection port, chunka chunka chunka. This was nowhere; the field had no name. No one would study this at West Point. This would achieve nothing noteworthy for the war effort. It would never be “The Battle of…” so we could tell our kids we were there when they learned about it in school. I knew that, but I pushed it down.

  My body was tight, and I could see and hear and smell like I never had before. Cleaning up Steiner’d come later; I’d already thrown a blanket over him in my mind. In this now, I sensed my blood moving. I could taste the air on my tongue. I was goddamn glowing from the thrill of it. Ohio let go and that feral thing inside of me took over.

  All that stuff you hear about, guys hesitating when they face their first conscious decision to kill? A pause when they can finally see the face of the enemy? Bullshit. Line up the rifle, shift focus from the sight to the human head, a squeeze on the trigger, the target falls down. It was too easy. It felt like we could have been throwing snowballs and knocking them over. The Japs meanwhile advanced across the field like they were conducting a parade, almost without noticing we were there, running toward our line like Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg. As one man fell, and we were killing them easy enough, the others never hesitated. They just kept staring through us into the next tree line as though they hoped to see their mama-sans back there waiting for them with a box lunch. It was like they were more concerned about signaling something to each other than having any impact on us.

  The Japs had no mortars, no artillery, no aircraft. There was nothing to keep our heads down, and so we just kept shooting and shooting. It was right out of the Rexall boys’ dime books back home. I shouted myself hoarse, I couldn’t trust my senses to respond properly, I was God throwing lightning bolts, teasing up some part of me I’d never listened to before. I felt like I’d be eating only dry crackers all my life and somebody just said, “Oh, here’s what steak tastes like, eat up, buddy.”

  Killing was the most powerful thing I’d ever done and made me feel I was living intensively, and that was perfectly addictive. At the same time I knew it was somehow wrong. I tried to think about it as just a way to stay alive, something I had to do, but truth is I liked it.

  “You see that? I took the head off one and his damn body just stood there, holding his rifle before he fell. You saw it, right, Polanski? Always better to be the man with the gun,” Marino said.

  “That one’s running away with half his guts in his hands. What should I do?” Jones said.

  “Give him a few more yards to suffer then plug him in the back,” Sergeant Laabs said. He was laughing. We all were now.

  “We’re either gonna run out of ammo, or they’re gonna run outta men,” Polanski said.

  I was still worried about the other tree line, the one I didn’t pick for the incoming aircraft. I sent three men off to our flank, to have a look.

  Sergeant Eichi Nakagawa: Japanese Lines, 1946

  “SERGEANT NAKAGAWA, THERE ARE three Americans running this way,” Otokita said.

  “Let them get closer, right to us. Bayonet them if you can so we do not give ourselves away. Do not embarrass yourselves. And do not be surprised by their blood; it smells like a ten yen copper coin, you know,” I said.

  “Sergeant Nakagawa, I hear aircraft.”

  Lieutenant Nathaniel Hooper: Japan, American Lines, 1946

  THE PLANE WAS A PINPOINT, became a speck, then a dot, and finally came in low and fast, treetop level, so close I could see the pilot inside smiling. The aircraft held two bombs, 100 pounders. Those tumbled off from under the wings, exploding among the Japanese soldiers as the plane pulled into a near vertical climb, escaping its own fire. Clouds of snow and dirt geysered up where each weapon struck. The bombs did some real work, but while the charging mass of Japs had thinned, it had not gone away. In the confusion, I saw our own three guys make the flank, and go through the trees.

  Sergeant Eichi Nakagawa: Japanese Lines, 1946

  “QUIET, LET THEM SLIP past the trees. Now, from behind, bayonets, slash, slash,” I said.

  “I killed one. I killed an American!” Takagi said.

  “I butchered one myself, before you did, I was first this time!” Otokita said.

  “Look at the blood. They gurgle as they die. Like babies talking.”

  “Now one has his hands up. Take him Otokita! Slice him in half with your steel,” I said.

  It was almost too easy, and it was glorious, just like in the war manga we boys read at home. To at last use our training to protect our nation, this was what war was really about. I was proud to watch Takagi and Otokita, my two little frightened kittens, take their bayonet-tipped rifles with both hands and move them like plungers. That doubt-free sound was the voice of our victory. I
watched Otokita, now off to the side, work his knife through the knuckle of an American’s pink little finger, scraping against bone like my fingernails against the blackboard when I was still a schoolboy. Otokita clearly thought the man was dead, and Takagi and I laughed as he jumped back at the American’s moan. The sound stopped soon enough, and Otokita pocketed the prize, saying his father told him when he fought in the China campaign years earlier such trophies brought luck.

  Lieutenant Nathaniel Hooper: Japan, American Lines, 1946

  “THAT LAST JAP OUT front looks like he’s putting his hands up. Maybe some of them do surrender after all,” Jones said.

  “He’s falling forward, who the hell shot him from behind?” I said.

  “The Jappers shot at him themselves,” Polanski said.

  “That one on the ground’s still moving,” I said. “We’ll take him prisoner. You two men, go guard him so he doesn’t escape.”

  “I think his legs are blown off, sir. I’m pretty sure he isn’t gonna go anywhere,” Sergeant Laabs said. Everybody, cease fire. You all okay? Anybody hit? Pumped up? Adrenaline. Happens. Takes a while for it all to slow back down.”

  I sent Laabs to search the Jap bodies laid out across the field for maps or papers. I allowed myself to focus on Steiner only enough to order Marino and Jones to wrap his body in one of the sleeping bags we’d picked up, so we could take him with us. It was Polanski who I gave the short straw, telling him to go see what happened to the troopers on the flank.

  POLANSKI’S REPORT COMING BACK from the tree line was sharp. They’re dead. That was the whole story if you knew enough to understand it. But Polanski threw out a few more words in case I didn’t get it: gray, crushed, slashed, a soldier’s brevity code. Marino and Jones returned from the field with Steiner’s remains, the spine twisted like a dirt road in their rough handling.

  “What should we do about Steiner’s letters, Lieutenant?” Marino said.

  “Look, his girlfriend dotted the ‘i’ in his name with a little heart. Steiner has about a million of them from her like that in his knapsack,” Jones said. “Now he ain’t gonna get any more.”

  “Neither will she,” Marino said. He tried to smile at his own joke, but even he could only come up with a little twist at the corner of his mouth.

  Steiner had those letters, but more than that he had a bunch of unused, pre-addressed envelopes, all going the same place. She’d never hear what Steiner had to say about this shitty day. The thought pulled up that puffy tension behind my eyes, and I tamped it down by biting my lip. You’d think after all the men I’d seen die already, one more wasn’t such a big deal, but I looked at the envelopes and there it was—Ethan Samuel Steiner. Ethan Samuel Steiner. I held it together only a few seconds more until I saw the ring on Steiner’s finger. I never really knew him. It wasn’t just a girlfriend he’d been writing to.

  As complex as it would be to anyone who’d never stood in a place like this, it was simple. We’d acted selflessly, reassurances that said we belonged to each other—Jones’ crawling out to Steiner, Polanski’s taunt requiem, even Marino’s crude way of marking Steiner’s death. The dead Japs meant nothing.

  Black birds circled overhead, calling to each other. Japanese crows are fat as Satan’s alley cat, big enough that we could see their yellow eyes from the ground. They were waiting for us to leave and let them get on with their part of the war, while we got on with ours. We were all hungry for more.

  Sergeant Eichi Nakagawa: Japanese Lines, 1946

  “PRIVATE OTOKITA, CORPORAL TAKAGI, we need to move, now, before the Americans regroup,” I said.

  “There are so many of our dead. Should we not attack again, Sergeant? Charge those American murderers?” Otokita said.

  “I feel life would be easier,” Takagi said, “if I was dead.”

  “No, we have to live for the time being, because there are more we need to kill at Nishinomiya. That is important. It is our primary mission. This was just… for fun. You get to live a little longer. Use that properly as it no longer belongs to you,” I said.

  Birds had arrived, calling to each other in blue voices, circling overhead where the American plane had been. They knew we would leave soon, and their turn to eat would come. They were anxious to get to the dead. They were hungry for it.

  Chapter 19: The Farmhouse

  Former Lieutenant Nathaniel Hooper: Retirement Home, Kailua, Hawaii, 2017

  JAPS. NO JOKING, THAT’S what we called them, all the time, even in the newspapers and on the radio, if not Nips, slopes, monkeys or just yellow bastards. The Japs must have had similar names they called us, because in every war those words are there—Krauts, Charlie, VC, rag heads and infidels. The Romans must have had some nasty term in Latin for the Gauls.

  I would never use such slurs today, and am horrified I ever did, but over there, then, it was different. We heard the Japanese painted American flags on sidewalks just so people could walk on them. Kids in my hometown were taught to squash “Japanese” beetles. The U.S. military had to issue an order stating, “No part of the enemy’s body may be used as a souvenir.” The rule wasn’t followed, by either side, and I saw American troops use their fighting knives to pull gold teeth from dead enemies, or slice off ears, or worse. We all saw dead Americans with their genitals hacked off and stuffed into their mouths. I don’t want to think what’s hidden in old men’s closets around the world for the kids to find. Good Christ it was primitive. There were monsters in the air then.

  Lieutenant Nathaniel Hooper: Japan, In the Woods, 1946

  “ANYBODY SEEN BURKE?” LAABS said.

  The last time I’d seen Burke he was talking about wandering off, mumbling how he was going to shoot a rabbit for dinner, complaining he was sick of eating K-rations, and how back home in North Carolina he’d hunt all the time. Did they even have rabbits in Japan? Burke was always bragging about his heritage down south, some line about having relatives that died in every war back to the one between the states. It got to be like having the radio on in the background, and I paid about as much attention to him as that. I didn’t think he’d really go off by himself, something that stupid, that it was just more of his talk, but he must have really slipped away.

  A single shot.

  Maybe he got his damn rabbit. We had to keep moving, so I sent Marino and Jones off, to pull him back in, rabbit or no rabbit.

  We heard Marino shouting first, but it was Jones who came back on the run, saying something about Burke, and how we’d all better come quick.

  Burke was laid out on the grass, face down. There was blood on the back of his head, pushing out because there was otherwise no place else useful for it to go anymore. When I got close I saw the single hole and I knew he’d been shot from pretty close. Marino was jabbering about some trail he thought led off into the woods, but before I could pay attention to him, I knew what I had to do. With Polanski’s help, I rolled Burke over to make sure.

  Bullets enter more or less intact, the nose pointy, and make a small hole going in because they are going pretty fast. But against something as hard as a skull, the tip flattens out and the bullet slows down, meaning when it hits the front of the skull, from the inside, it pushes out a large piece of bone. Blunt force. Burke’d been shot from behind. Execution-style, not like the rules say is right for a soldier.

  There was no face except what had stuck to the dirt under the snow. There was not a whole lot of blood splattered, like you’d have nightmared. Instead, it had mostly pooled up in the dent Burke’s face made when it hit the ground we’d soon bury the slush that was left of him in.

  Marino came back down that trail he’d followed, saying there was a farmhouse. It wasn’t far from where we were standing in an angry semi-circle around Burke’s body, so I sent Marino and Jones off again, to take a look, just check it out, telling them not to start anything before the rest of us caught up.

  Japan, Rear of the Farmhouse, 1946

  “JONES, THE BACK DOOR. Holy shit, someone’s coming out
,” Marino said.

  “Jap soldier,” Jones said. “He’s pulling down his pants. I think he’s gonna take a poop.”

  “Let’s get him, to hell with the Lieutenant,” Marino said. “What if he killed Burke? What if he knows something that’d save our guys’ lives? Maybe he knows where the rest of the Japs are hiding. I’ll choke him from behind. You go for the rifle.”

  “GOT THE RIFLE,” JONES said. “I’ll get the Lieutenant over here.”

  “Not yet, Jones. Okay, Hirohito-san, who’s inside that farmhouse?” Marino said. The Jap soldier was on the ground now, hands tied together with his belt.

  “Tanomu kara korosanaide kure! Onegai da.”

  “What’d the bastard say?”

  “How the hell should I know? Ask him again,” Jones said.

  “WHERE IS E-NE-MY?” Marino said.

  “Eigo ga wakaranai. Korosanaide kure.”

  “He’s not gonna talk,” Marino said. He swung hard, laying his fist squarely against the bridge of the Japanese soldier’s nose. It wasn’t the first nose Marino had broken. “See how soft that shit is? The center’s just mush.”

  “Ore wa nani mo shiranain da. Yamete kure.”

  “See, he knows how to talk, he just won’t. Shove something in his mouth so we don’t have to listen to him,” Marino said. “There ya’ go pal. You likee? You speakee English, don’t you? PEARL HARBOR? BURKE? Bastard was the one who did Burke. Watch this, Jones. The knife slides right through, see? And not a freaking word out of him; the Oriental don’t feel pain like we do. Wonder how many times he used that finger to pull the trigger on our guys, huh? Lemme work on him, then you’re gonna shoot him.”

  “To hell with you, Marino, I ain’t gonna shoot him,” Jones said.

  “You’re gonna shoot something Jap, you coward,” Marino said.