“You sure you chiselers didn’t just steal it?” I said.
“How could it be stolen? It’s right here, sir,” Burke said.
“Fair enough for now, jokers. Marino, is that pile of stuff over there sleeping bags? Grab enough of them for us all,” I said.
“Oh yeah, those are sleeping bags, Lieutenant, sure thing, special just for you,” Marino said.
“If your bullshit was water we’d all drown, Marino,” Polanski said. “Sir, those are body bags.”
“Alright, enough fellas, save it for the enemy. Sergeant Laabs? A word in private, please,” I said. I felt like a kid trying to live up to his older brother. I wanted to clear the air with Laabs, start over if I could. “Hey, the Captain mentioned something about you being able to speak a few words of Japanese. From on Okinawa.”
“No, sir, only some stuff I learned from this Nisei girl in Waikiki.”
“Sergeant Laabs, er, Jason, right? Look, I may have made some mistakes this morning. I wanted you to hear that before we headed out,” I said.
“Mistakes are expected, Lieutenant. That’s why they put erasers on pencils.”
Chapter 24: You’ve Arrived at the Ashiya Beachhead
Lieutenant Nathaniel Hooper: Japan, Ashiya Beachhead, 1946
THERE WAS A HAND-LETTERED sign out front, WELCOME TO JAPAN, YOU’VE ARRIVED AT THE ASHIYA BEACHHEAD, COURTESY OF THE U.S. SIXTH ARMY. We made it to our first objective, this beachhead, where I’d been told I’d get my next set of orders.
Underway was the well-practiced dance of bringing ashore the beans and bullets. To see all this happening just a couple of hours after landing made me feel like Superman. It looked like the industrial Midwest had gathered up a lung full of air and spat out everything it made all at once: bundles of bandages, crates of K-rations, cartons of powdered milk, pallets of tires, truck parts, mess gear, rifle parts, mechanics’ tools, pin-up posters, howitzers, mortar tubes, sleeping bags, typewriters, toothbrushes, condoms, Jeeps, and artillery pieces, all bound up with spit, baling wire, Yankee ingenuity, frontier spirit and Wild West know-how. It smelled of wet khaki and axle grease and leather, all overlaid with a smog of diesel fumes. The ground was a slush that made sucking sounds out of my boots, even as the trucks muled up the slopes churning more of the semi-frozen mud into slop while they aimed their horns at me. A dozen generators buzzed, and Sherman tanks moved inland. America had arrived in Japan.
And everywhere, crates of ammunition, wooden boxes big enough for howitzer shells and small enough for pistol rounds, all bound together with steel straps. Hundreds of thousands of them, maybe millions, maybe that number after millions. Inside every box, all those rounds next to each other, kind of keeping each other warm until someone needed to pull them out of the dark and kill Japs.
At the same time, we’d already accumulated a tremendous trash pile, all sorts of wooden pallets and empty cardboard boxes hauled across the Pacific to be dumped here, their job done. Our guards had figured out the Japanese civilians coming to pick through it all were harmless and left them alone, just kids rooting for food scraps and seam-faced old women using our discarded tin cans as little stoves, starting cooking fires inside with pieces of our scavenged wood. I’d heard the Japanese were industrious people; hell, they were already starting to clean up after us.
Our artillery fired from not too far away. We could use shells heavier than one guy could lift to chase away a single enemy sniper a mile distant. The smoke columns rising in the distance looked like the arms of God reaching down to pound him. If we could do this halfway across the world, what couldn’t we do? We were gods, the only nation in human history that’d never lost a war and probably never would. I thought there must be more Americans in Japan by this time than Japanese, and we were dumping supplies ashore so fast you might have thought the place would sink under the weight.
And towering over it all was the American flag, all 48 proud stars, flying off a flagpole we’d pounded deep into the Japanese ground. This place was ours, it said, we took it. It all had a feel of temporary permanence, a place never meant to exist but that had accepted its role. I suspect if I could have seen it from the air it’d look like an island floating inside Japan.
Sergeant Laabs took the men for chow. That was about the extent to which I knew my job at this point—let Laabs do it. I heard the men pass another group of soldiers, equally self-conscious in a new place, but greener than us by all of about two hours. Our group bragged like a rival sports team over killing a single machine gun on the beach, while the newer guys stared in awe.
There was as much confusion as snow lying over the base camp. Nobody had heard of the Captain Christiansen I was supposed to report to. I found a soldier who pointed me toward another soldier who said some captain or another could be found either over there, or over that way. I tried both directions and found him in a third place.
Lieutenant Nathaniel Hooper: Ashiya Beachhead, Captain Christiansen’s Tent, 1946
“NO, YOU LISTEN TO me, goddammit. The first man who brings me a Jap skull today gets a three-day pass,” Captain Christiansen said into a field telephone. I could practically see the steam rising off him as we stood there in the cold. And that voice—like he’d been chain-smoking Luckies since nursery school. Here was a man who needed war the same way Baptists need sin. He dropped the handset back into its holder and looked at me. “Who the hell are you?”
The inside of the tent was as empty as a place with only a coffee pot, a radio, some maps and a small desk could be. A police blotter description of Captain Christiansen would say it didn’t matter what color his eyes were or what he weighed. He was a fist of a man wrapped around a regular body for convenience. At the same time, it was odd, he had a kind of baby face, smooth skin that made you wonder if the inside matched the outside. He looked down at a list on his desk.
“Lieutenant, um, Hooper, right? I kinda expected you to be dead by now. Grab a cup o’ joe over there and take a load off. You want in on my Jap skull game? Get you into a Manila whore house lickety-split if you win.”
The coffee was the first hot thing I’d put down the pipe since I threw up breakfast. We’d been served the traditional American pre-invasion meal of greasy steak, greasy powdered eggs and coffee that somehow tasted greasy, the Navy mess cooks making us feel cared for, at least until the one old timer made a joke about fattening me up for the slaughter. “Ya get a last meal ‘fore the electric chair, too,” another said, not smiling back even after I grinned a bit.
“Hooper, pass me a cup of that coffee willya, hell, I think this is my tenth already this morning. No, twelfth. Who’s counting? Cheers, to better days and happier endings. So, this your first rodeo, Hooper?”
“Sort of, Captain. I was on Kyushu for Operation Olympic, rear wave. Guard duty mostly, trying to meet some of the local girls, but they didn’t speak American money. A joke there, sir.”
Captain Christiansen curled down his bottom lip to show he’d heard it and would not be laughing.
“Sometimes I’d get a Jeep and a translator and visit some village we were making hold an election. I’d hand out some pamphlets, and then mark it off a list as having been democratized,” I said. “I was bored to death, tell you the truth, so I asked to get into some real action here.”
I saw the tendons wiggling in his wrist, and thought he was going to throw the last of his coffee at me, but then he looked deep inside, through the bottom of the cup, and drank it instead.
“Real action? Hooper, how the hell’d you end up here?”
“I was studying agriculture, Ohio, sir, for after the war when we’d start back in on the farm, when I got, um, sort of called. The Army saw I had some college, even though it was studying agriculture, and said they needed more Second Lieutenants. So I guess I was a victim of my own potential. Another joke there, sir.” The Captain didn’t smile. “And, um, my dad had been in the Army, too.”
“Good for him, but that’s not what I asked you. How’d you end up here?” C
hristiansen said.
“Well, sir, it wasn’t much of a choice, at least not my choice. I didn’t have much training, sort of like they just said ‘score more home runs than the other team,’ but didn’t explain how to hit or pitch. Another joke, sir, last one, sorry, I’ll stop. Then the war in Europe was over and I got promoted to real lieutenant.”
“First Lieutenant, Hooper, for the love of God and this man’s army, not ‘real lieutenant.’ Jesus, son, did you fail potty training, too? I better get myself out to Ohio and give your mother a son she can be proud of. Who’s the poor sergeant that’s stuck keeping you out of trouble, First Lieutenant Hooper from Ohio?”
“Laabs, sir,” I said.
“Sergeant Jason Laabs? Shit, you’re luckier than a bull with two dicks, Lieutenant. Much sweat and beer between me and Laabs. Bravest man I know. He’d bleed on the flag to keep it red.”
“I sorta guessed. You look at him and say, ‘I bet he killed a lot of men,’” I said.
“You don’t have to be brave to kill, that just takes a steady aim. Laabs, Jesus. So we’re on Okinawa, sweating like whores in church. The Japs honeycombed damn near everywhere with caves, and we had to dig the yellow bastards out. Only after the first couple of times when we poured flamethrowers in, we found some of the caves were full of goddamn women and kids, not troops. The Nip soldiers had been telling them for weeks we planned to kill them and eat them, or some stupid shit about throwing them into the sea alive to drown in front of their kids, and so they hid. Sometimes they’d be in there with grenades, waiting for the last moment to blow themselves all to hell.”
“I read about Okinawa in Stars and Stripes, tough business,” I said.
“Jesus, Hooper, do you squat when you pee? Go on into a cave with the walls painted with baby, and then tell yourself to shut the hell up ’cause you know nothing. Laabs had one of the squads under me with some butter bar like you, the LT all piss and vinegar to hose out another cave, but Laabs said he hadn’t seen them take any fire out of that one. So against his lieutenant’s orders, Laabs belly crawled into that cave and in some sort of baby-talk Japanese, got twenty women and their kids out alive.”
The Captain’s hand was shaking enough to nearly put out the match he’d struck. He gave up on it, steadied himself, and lit his next cigarette off the end of the previous one still burning in the ashtray. Christiansen looked like he was going to say something more, but let me cut him off instead.
“I’ll be sure to ask Sergeant Laabs about Okinawa when I get back to my unit, sir.”
“You’ll be smart and do nothing of the sort, Hooper. You need to know a man like Laabs keeps a lot inside. Let it stay there. But Lieutenant, and mark this down, if Laabs says something to you, he’s right and you’re not, because you know about as much about war as a pig knows about Sunday. Pay attention. Do that and you’ll get yourself and most of your men home from this, because you either learn fast or they die fast. Pick one.”
The Captain spat out the words like he was prosecuting me. He turned, hovered over his maps, then seemed to surprise himself reaching for another cup of coffee. He was now holding two cups, one in each hand, and drinking back and forth from them both. Halfway through the swallow he took from the one in his right hand, he noticed I was still in the room.
“Sir, really, I’m sorry, I don’t want to start off on your bad side,” I said.
“You don’t need to be sorry, Hooper, you just need to be quiet. And I don’t have a good side, so stop worrying. Look, this is rough on all of us, son. No hard feelings, it’s just been a tough week this morning. Okay?” Indifference maybe, but no weakness in the apology.
“You mean regular okay, or here kind of okay?” I said. I could smell the Captain’s disgust at being on the other end of a question.
“You lose some men this morning?” Captain Christiansen said. Something weary in his voice.
“Nine, I think, I’m not sure.” I was so tired I needed to use my fingers to count. “Two in the boat, three more on the beach, and three to mines crossing a frozen rice paddy. So, no, eight.”
“And you feel responsible?”
“I do, sir. I was in, am, in charge. On the beach I picked which three men died,” I said. “I mean, it could’ve been three others, or nobody at all.”
“You’re gonna get used to it. You die a little when your men die, but then the Army sends you some new ones and you start over. Grieving can get to be a bad habit in this job,” Captain Christiansen said. He waited, but I didn’t say anything. “War can be about a lot of things, my young Lieutenant, but it’s always about the crappy things that happen to people. So when I hear somebody back home use the word unforgettable, well, his nightmares have no idea. ‘Eviscerate’ is not just a good Scrabble play. He’s never seen a thousand maggots in the shape of a human body, and I have.”
There was never a longer pause in my life.
“I hope I’m not making this sound too romantic for you, Hooper,” Captain Christiansen said.
“I get it, sir, but I can’t shake it,” I said.
“Shake it, Lieutenant, on the double, ’cause you gotta start being a real soldier man now. You have an obligation to bring the rest of those men home, and yourself to whatever chubby Ohio girl you think is waiting for you. Hike up your skivvies, get your head right, and do your job.”
“Yes, sir. Captain, you mind if I talk to the Chaplain? I have a few, you know, religious kinds of questions. About all this,” I said.
“Be my guest, Lieutenant Hooper, but watch yourself. Old Chaps, well, you could say his cheese has slipped off the cracker a bit.”
As I started to leave, Captain Christiansen waved me back, waiting until I got close to his desk before he spoke. “And Lieutenant? War ain’t so bad. Where the hell else is a kid like you gonna have the chance to be a hero?”
Lieutenant Nathaniel Hooper: Japan, Ashiya Beachhead, Chaplain’s Tent, 1946
“SIR, YOU’RE CHAPLAIN SAVAGE?” I said.
Tight glasses over eyes the color of the dirt under his still-clean boots. Only man in the entire Army with his collar buttoned.
“Yes, yes.” Chaplain Savage said. “And I like to pronounce it as in the French, with a rising intonation.” He finished with a shallow smile.
The Chaplain had pores the size of craters, and an uncomfortable face, like my dog when his ass itched. The guy probably hoped I’d feel more at ease despite him fidgeting with the things on his table, olive drab crosses, a metal box with screw-on legs labeled ALTAR, RELIGIOUS, TYPE CHRISTIAN, OLIVE DRAB, PORTABLE, and a handbook called Interdenominational Last Rites.
I told him about the men that had died already.
“Were they Buddhist? Atheists? I’m a Christian Chaplain is why. Those others have their own God. Not even in the handbook, I think.” He leafed through the book, wetting his finger to turn the pages.
“I just wanted to know about those men, the ones I got killed. Are they okay now?” I said.
“Oh, I doubt it. That’s pretty much the same in any religion. No, wait, I think Buddhists believe in reincarnation, heathens,” the Chaplain said. He tossed the handbook aside. “So that’s settled, son.” He looked at me like a bored school teacher, and got up before I wanted him to and motioned me towards the way out.
At the flap of his tent Chaplain Savage asked if I wanted him to bless my rifle. I shook my head no.
“Okay, then. Go see Major Moreland, everyone has to, before we fan out and win the war, and he can get promoted to Colonel. He’s in the tent next door, though he calls it a command post, watch that if you want to score some points. And Lieutenant, a word just between us believers, eh. The Major isn’t like me, in fact I think the old bastard’s got a screw or three loose, if you know what I mean.”
Lieutenant Nathaniel Hooper: Japan, Ashiya Beachhead, Major Moreland’s Command Post, 1946
“LET’S MAKE THIS QUICK. I’m sure you’re anxious to get out into the field anyway, marching to the sound of the drums and all
,” Major Moreland said. He spoke without looking up.
If not for the uniform, he might be that rounded guy who won’t stop restarting a conversation on the train. And for a guy in a hurry, Major Moreland didn’t have much in front of him but a form with a long list of names. He ran his finger down into the H section, and drew a line through one of them.
“Harper?”
“Hooper.” Major Moreland erased the line he’d drawn and then crossed out a different name.
“Hooper, of course, just know this is the Jap’s Waterloo, his Götterdämmerung. Oh, don’t speak German? There’s no need to speak Japanese either. By the time we have anything to say to each other, the locals will have learned English. ‘War is a terrible thing but God I love it so.’ You know who said that, Lieutenant? It was the great American general William Tecumseh Sherman, while he burned the great American city of Atlanta to the ground during the Civil War to liberate it from the Confederates. A general who loved his men, and who was loved by his men.”
Major Moreland was now arched over his desk, way past the centerline at this point, to emphasize some part of what he said. I was afraid he’d tip over. But about all I could focus on was his nearly perfect circle of a bald spot, and the unhealthy scraps of red hair I now hated uncombed on the sides.
“You getting to know your men, Lieutenant, er, what is it, Hooper, dammit?” Major Moreland said. Every word was wrapped in the smell of bad teeth. He leaned forward even further as I leaned away.
“Yes, sir, Hooper. But no, sir, the men keep getting killed before I can get to know them.”
“All the more reason to get ahead of the curve, son. You’d better start learning their names now, while they’re still alive, much easier that way I’ve found over my years at this game. You’ll need to write death letters to their parents. See, I keep a list. There’s your name.”
“I don’t want to know them, Major, not until this is over and I know which ones are still gonna still be alive.”
Hooper’s War Page 17