Rev. Dianala retired his canvas bag on the path and wiped the grime-streaked sweat from his face with a handkerchief. A typically thin Filipino, his sweaty, jet-black hair glistened in the sun as he spoke with a Filipino accent. “We’re almost there. Just up over the ridge we’ll come to a clearing. You’ll see.” Rev. Dianala, a native Filipino, led a church in the village of Katipunan, about two miles away. A number of students and staff from the university fled to the village, but only the Filipinos felt relatively safe from the Japanese. All Caucasians or those deemed “American” in any way were being told to surrender. Having been befriended by an American family at the university who took him in when he was an orphan, they raised him and gave him a full college education. He took risks for the Americans no one else would as he knew how much others had risked to take him in off the streets and how much it changed his life.
When Jimmy finally broke through the heavier vegetation, he and the group entered into a clearing near the top of the mountain beside a gorge surrounded by steep, rocky walls. He looked up at the sun which pierced the leafy, branched canopy in dozens of columns of light. Majestic mahogany trees lifted their branches to the heavens, alive with dozens of birds and a family of macaque monkeys who swung buoyantly through the branches, chattering with curiosity. Two tents stood in a small clearing below high-arching trees hanging with vines.
Jimmy gazed in awe at the wild orchids, a fascinating display of pink, white, and yellow. A brilliant Red-bellied Pitta sang its low whistle song from a nearby branch and flitted away toward a trickling brook that wove its way through a rocky clearing. He closed his eyes and breathed in the sweet scents. It seemed like heaven on earth.
Panting, Frank Rose spread out his arms. “Well, this is it. I scouted this out a while back with Rev. Dianala. There are about twenty local families in the area, a creek nearby, and ... we’re pretty far from the main roads. Kind of a secret hideout. What do you think?”
Charma kept looking around in wonder and shook her head. “It’s so beautiful! So peaceful.”
“My kind of place,” Jimmy added. “Amazing. Really.”
“We’ll put up a couple more tents for now,” Rev. Dianala said, “and the locals will help you build some bamboo houses. We can help provide food for you as well. In time, you should be able to have a few gardens and be somewhat self-sufficient.”
Jimmy was grateful for the help of the local reverend and knew much of his story, how he’d been orphaned at a young age, how missionaries had taken him in and later paid his way through school at Jimmy’s university, and how he’d gone back to his local people and started a church. He also knew that Rev. Dianala was taking risks by helping them. Now it was the missionaries who were homeless and needing help.
Jack Treat, a sturdy, six-foot-two American in a khaki jungle hat swung the trunk he was carrying to the ground but kept his machine gun over his shoulder. “Besides me, there are a few others gold miners and know the area pretty well.” Jack was one of many American civilians who had linked up with the guerrillas in recent weeks. A muscular man in his late twenties, it was a natural move from laborer to warrior. “We’re in some of the most remote parts of the mountains. No one’ll find you here – unless you owe ‘em money. Then they’ll find you.”
“Isn’t that the truth,” Jimmy replied. Though a staunch pacifist, still, he took comfort in his armed escort.
Frank stood proudly with his hands on his hips. “I’ve named it Hopevale: Valley of hope.”
“Hopevale,” Jimmy said. “I like the name. I like everything about this place.”
Frank smiled and slapped Jimmy on the shoulder. “Maybe God’ll bring something good out of this after all, eh?”
Precariously perched on upper frame of his new bamboo hut in progress, Jimmy pulled off his straw hat and smeared the sweat of his forehead off onto his equally sweaty arm. It was like a sauna, only with snakes, cockroaches, iguanas, scorpions, and the biggest centipedes he’d ever seen. Fred killed an eleven-foot snake in their camp. At least he was off the ground, for now.
Local Filipinos gladly pitched in to show Jimmy and the others how to build their own nipa huts up on stilts off the damp ground and away from the rats. Men fastened premade walls woven of nipa palms with openings for windows shuttered by tilt-out covers held by a stick.
He was glad to get a “home” built, even though he knew it would only be needed for a few months – six or so, he figured – until the Americans came to rescue the island from the Japanese. Jimmy looked down at Charma lugging a sheaf of cogon grass on her back for the roof. “Faster. I can’t do this all by myself, you know.”
“That’s real funny.” She heaved the load onto the jungle floor. “Let’s switch when you get tired of sitting up there.”
Jimmy tipped his hat, then went back to strapping the bamboo beams to each other with split strands of banban.
Others kindled a fire to boil rice for lunch as a local woman led a pig on a rope leash into a makeshift pen. In little over a month, the band of refugee faculty members and teachers had begun to establish themselves in the lush, deeply forested mountains.
Fred Meyer couldn’t resist opening up the portable Estey reed organ they’d lugged all the way from Iloilo and was dying to give it an airing under the leafy awning. He brushed off the dirt and unlatched the cover as Signe Erickson, with a bright lavender orchid pinned above her right ear, began assembling her flute. With several Filipino men hacking at bamboo behind him, Fred now sitting on a suitcase before the organ, he looked at Signe and nodded. He closed his eyes and, taking a deep breath, started pumping the pedals to commence Bach’s Prelude No. 1 in C major. On cue, Signe released the fluid melody of Charles Gounod’s Ave Maria which mingled perfectly with the fresh mountain air, harmonizing with the entire atmosphere of Hopevale.
As the music filtered through Hopevale, all paused to enjoy the peace of their safe haven. Even the monkeys stopped swinging between branches to listen.
Jennie, a nurse who’d long worked with Dr. Meyer at the hospital, looked up to listen as she hand-fed cooked rice to a small parrot perched on her hand, a Philippine Hanging Parrot, a bright green, red-beaked bird with splashes of red, orange, and yellow. She didn’t tame the bird, it simply had no fear of people and ate freely from her open palm.
The ambiance of the music enveloped Jimmy as well. Despite fleeing from his home in Japan and again being driven from the city on Panay, he was filled with gratitude for their new home. Every need was met, and now he was living in a surreal paradise, a haven of peace in a world of war.
Nearby, still able to hear the music, Frank Rose had found a high-walled gorge nearby surrounded by flowering orchids and featuring towering white lauan trees. The shaded small clearing gave him an idea, and he began stacking rocks near the mossy foot of the largest tree to form an altar for an open-air church. Jack, the miner, carried in some reddish rocks that he placed in rows as seats.
Earl Rounds, a seven year old whose parents were also helping with the construction, was struggling to lift a small boulder. Jack watched in amusement.
“Jack! Jack, help me!”
Jack came up behind the boy, reached his arms around him, and the two of them grasped the reddish, flat-topped rock and stacked it on a base with a thud.
As he stood upright, Frank squinted while twisting his back to stretch a bit, then asked Jack, “Well? What do you think?”
Jack looked up at the vine-covered walls, listened to the chirps of wild birds and the distant sound of Jimmy and Signe on organ and flute and took a deep breath of the mountain air. “It’s nice. Real nice.” He slumped down onto one of the stone seats. “You see, you can’t quite fall asleep in this kind of chair, no matter how boring the message is.” Jack pulled Earl onto his lap. “How many seats do you think you’ll need?”
Frank scanned the area. “Enough for seventy-five or so.” He peered down at his watch. “Oh yeah,” he said while tapping his wrist, “they’ve got the radio working again a
nd we’re gonna tune in to the report at two o’clock.”
Jimmy stood outside his nearly finished hut, carefully adjusting the dial of the radio sitting on the porch to minimize the sonic squeal while the silent group of about thirty Americans and Filipinos listened in, some with hands to their faces, others with arms folded and heads cocked in anticipation of the news report.
“Good evening everyone, everywhere. This is the Voice of Freedom broadcasting from somewhere in the Philippines. Bataan has fallen.”
Charma gasped.
“The Philippine-American troops on this war-ravaged and bloodstained peninsula have laid down their arms. With heads bloody but unbowed, they have yielded to the superior force and numbers of the enemy. The world will long remember the epic struggle that Filipino and American soldiers put up in the jungle fastness and along the ...”
Jimmy’s entire posture fell as the weight of the defeat sank in. The breathless group stared at each other in disbelief and with the sober realization that their hopes were crushed. There would be no rescue or quick victory.
Chapter 48
April 20, 1942. Nanchang, China.
Jake and the four other members of his crew stood stoically on concrete steps leading up to stone columns of a granite-block building. Eight Japanese officers in their dress uniforms proudly surrounded them as a photographer stared down into the viewfinder of his camera while holding his hand in the air motioning the men to be still. Other photographers stood off to the side in front of a growing group of civilian and military spectators.
The officers stood erect. Jake did his best to hide a scowl. He felt like a chained monkey in a circus. He was happy to see his lost buddies, who all made it safely to the ground – but into Japanese hands. After they bailed out, one by one, they were picked up and interrogated upon threats of death. Jake was tight-lipped, but knew his prospects of making it back home were thin to nothing.
After a few shots, the photographer quickly repositioned only the five captured fliers with Jake in the front row. Harry nonchalantly puffed on a cigarette he’d bummed off a soldier.
With the publicity shots done, the officers blindfolded the fliers, tied their hands together in front of them, and shoved them into the back of a 1938 Ford pickup truck along with their guards. Then they were hauled off to an airport and loaded into a passenger plane – where to, Jake didn’t know. The idea of taking over the plane was out of the question as there were four guards assigned to each prisoner who was blindfolded and handcuffed to his seat.
Although they’d been questioned, amazingly, no one among the Japanese connected them to the Tokyo raid. Not yet.
Chapter 49
Late April, 1942. The battleship Yamato. Hashirajima Bay, 25 miles due south of Hiroshima.
“We’ve achieved our objectives far more quickly than we ever imagined, and that with only insignificant Japanese losses,” Genda said to the roomful of high ranking officers. “What’s left of the American fleet remains paralyzed. General MacArthur deserted his men in the heat of battle, leaving them behind in the Philippines. And Singapore, the stronghold of the British Empire, fell in a single week, resulting in the largest surrender of British-led forces in history, and in a nice prize of Johnny Walker Black label, which you are now enjoying ...”
The officers chuckled and nodded, others smirked with pride, and still others raised their drinks and surveyed the faces of their peers. Curls of smoke drifted up from cigarettes. Fuchida, who had personally experienced the exhilaration of uncontested victories, likewise beamed and took a victorious sip of his whiskey.
Isoroku Yamamoto, the highly respected admiral of the Combined Fleet, had gathered his top commanders and their select staff to his flagship, the mighty battleship Yamato. She and her sister ship, Musashi, were the most powerful and massive battleships ever to ply the seas, displacing 78,200 metric tons – 50 percent heavier than the biggest and newest Colorado class battleships of the U.S. Navy. A single gun turret of the Yamato weighed more than the largest American destroyer. Yet the Yamato was so luxuriously appointed that sailors began calling it “the Yamato Hotel” – both a compliment and an insult. Still, she was the pride of the Imperial Japanese Navy.
Seated along both sides of the long table were the leading commanders of the navy in their dark blue uniforms trimmed with gold braids. Their combined forces had attained the objectives of securing new lands rich with oil, rice, rubber, and other resources needed by their empire – quickly, and with minimal losses. The Japanese had hurled the Americans to the floor before the eyes of the world, dealt the British Indian fleet a humiliating defeat, and had completely overrun the Dutch forces. Never had they imagined achieving so much so soon and they found themselves in the unexpected position of needing to choose their next conquest as a stunned world sat and watched.
Lieutenant Commander Genda stood near the front completing his remarks on behalf of Vice Admiral Chūichi Nagumo before Yamamoto presented his newest strategy. Fuchida sat beside Genda’s empty chair, listening attentively.
“All have exemplified outstanding Bushido spirit in the service of our august Emperor,” Genda continued. “The sun has finally set on the British empire – as it rises on our own.”
Genda bowed briefly to applause and headed to his seat as Yamamoto rose from his position at the head of the table. When Genda returned to his seat Fuchida looked up with a smile and nod of approval. But Fuchida was more interested in hearing Yamamoto, as there had been rumblings among the ranks about whether the IJN should first head east to deal with the Americans, or head south first, then deal with the Americans. Both groups believed that the aircraft carriers of the American fleet had to be destroyed, but disagreed on how and when to do so.
The southern operation, as it had come to be known, was favored by many. They were concerned that the Allies would use Australia as a staging area to attack the Japanese and retake lost territory, so it remained a weak point on their perimeter. They wanted to concentrate their forces to in order to occupy it and cut it off from Allied support. But Fuchida felt this was simply wasting time and taking resources from what he saw as the primary goal: destroying the remaining American carriers as quickly as possible, then bringing the conflict to a resolution through negotiations.
“Gentlemen,” Yamamoto began, “we have reached an agreement with the Naval General Staff in Yokosuka on the next plan of operations. The Americans have done us a favor by their foolish air raid. They say, ‘A bungling attack is better than the most skillful defense.’ True enough, but they’ve made clear to us that their carriers must be destroyed, immediately. This was our missed objective in the Pearl Harbor operation, but we will not fail this time.”
Fuchida began to smile as he leaned forward.
“In their weakened position and low morale, they won’t venture a serious attack, so we will carry out Imperial General Headquarters Navy Order Number Eighteen – the seizure and occupation of Midway Island.”
Several admirals nodded with approval. Fuchida immediately looked down and exhaled abruptly.
“Midway is a strategic island they cannot afford to lose, yet, at over one thousand miles from Oahu, it’s beyond the reach of their land-based fighters. They’ll be forced to send their carriers and whatever remaining strength to come to its defense, where we’ll be waiting with the overwhelming force to crush them.” Yamamoto’s eyes gleamed.
Vice Admiral Nagumo cleared his throat. “Admiral, when do you propose launching this attack?”
“There will be a full moon on June first. As close as possible to this date.”
Murmurs filtered through the room. Fuchida’s mind began to swirl. He couldn’t fathom launching such a colossal attack in only five weeks. The Pearl Harbor attack had taken months of planning, practice, and tremendous organization of resources – and that was against an unprepared enemy. This time the enemy would most likely be ready, or at least watchful, and the battle would require far greater resources.
Yamamoto l
ooked out with authority. “Much later and we won’t have adequate moonlight for night maneuvers on the beaches. Time is not in our favor. The balance of power will shift to the Americans if they’re allowed to rebuild while retaining their surviving carriers.” He turned to Nagumo. “You will command our six aircraft carriers, with Fuchida initiating the air attack on Midway. You will destroy their aircraft both on the ground and in the air to prepare for the occupation of the island. Then your fleet will provide air protection for the main fleet of seven battleships, their support ships, and troop carriers when they arrive for the landing of five thousand infantrymen on Midway two days later.”
Fuchida tried not to sigh. It seemed like too much too soon.
“The Americans cannot react in fewer than three days from the time we begin. With over two hundred ships amassed for this battle, we will overwhelm and destroy any force the Americans could possibly respond with. Hawaii and the entire west coast of the United States will be exposed and unprotected. After two months of continued operations in the southeast Pacific, we will take Hawaii and they will be forced to the bargaining table. They’ll be left with little choice but to negotiate terms for peace favorable to Japan.”
As a junior officer, Fuchida was pushing things to venture any comments in such a setting, but he felt compelled to speak. He inhaled cautiously. “Admiral, please excuse me for speaking, but as you are well aware, Admiral Nagumo and the First Air Fleet have completed four months of demanding service covering over fifty thousand nautical miles. Our ships and aircraft are in need of repair and the pilots may need time to recuperate in order to perform at their best before such a significant –”
“Out of the question. We must act now. This will be the decisive battle in the Pacific. Then we will have an impenetrable defensive perimeter to prevent another attack against our homeland.” He pounded his fist on the table. “I am determined to never again allow American bombers over Tokyo to threaten our Emperor!”
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