Three bamboo huts stood in small clearings as a small, crackling fire sent a light smoke drifting upwards. Jimmy and the group of two dozen adults and a handful of children assembled in front of one of the huts not far from the towering trees as Frank made his announcement.
“As you all know,” Frank began, “the word around the island is that the Japanese want everyone to turn themselves in.”
Several armed miners-turned-guerrillas stood off to the side. Little Earl, who had helped to stack rocks with Jack, reached up curiously to feel the wooden stock of Jack’s sub-machine gun. Jack smiled down, then motioned like he was going to hand the gun to Earl, who giggled. The clothes of all were dull with age and they all stood barefoot, except for the miners in boots. Charma filled a tin cup with water trickling from a bamboo pipe and walked up beside Jimmy.
Despite the heat and humidity, Jimmy put his arm around Charma. They’d long believed that this would all be over quickly. That hope was fast fading. Jimmy seriously wondered if he’d made the wrong move by coming to Hopevale in the first place, or maybe by just staying on the island too long. Too late to change that now.
“We’ve received a letter from some of the university staff who are imprisoned downtown at Iloilo.” Frank held up the letter for all to see. “They say that the Japanese are giving any Americans on the island four months to turn themselves in.” He paused. “After that, anyone discovered will be killed. It’s as simple as that. Surrender – or be killed.”
Jack spit. “Or surrender and be killed. No one trusts the Japs.”
“We each have to decide what we want to do,” Frank continued. “After four months, that’s it.”
“C’mon, Jack,” Jimmy said, “We’re no threat to them. They don’t even know we’re here. We’re three miles from the closest road. If they ever found us, the worst that could happen is that they’d send us off to a camp.” Most in the group promptly nodded. “I think we need to just keep to ourselves and mind our own business. Just sit things out until all this passes over, like a bad storm.”
Jennie, the nurse, added, “The local people need me here, and I see how much they’ve been encouraged by the church services we have here each week. I love these people and I’m not going to leave them. Not now. I’m fine staying put.”
Jack loudly clanked open his Zippo lighter and lit a cigarette, leaving it dangling between his lips. “Get a load of this.” He unfolded a worn color comic book whose cover displayed smiling Asian men locked arm in arm waving flags. “Courtesy of the Japanese department of propaganda.” He exhaled the smoke through his nostrils and read out loud with a decidedly sarcastic pitch. “‘We of Greater East Asia will combine our power and will become friends with the good countries of the world.’” He looked around. “Now ain’t that sweet?” He read on. “‘Together we will spread our splendid culture throughout the Philippines.’” Jack rolled his eyes and flipped to another page of smiling characters working on roads. “‘The more we work, the more we study, we will achieve happiness. Then the people of Greater East Asia shall become prosperous. Let’s become friendly like brothers.’” Jack abruptly folded the comic book, stuffed it in his shirt pocket, and yanked the cigarette from his mouth. “Anyone buying this crap?”
A few ladies looked down in embarrassment at his language. The men stared.
“There were eight thousand American and Filipino soldiers stationed on this island. Just under two thousand turned themselves in. The rest, well, they just disappeared into the jungle. Me and the boys from the mines have thrown in our lot with them. If the Japs want me, they’re gonna have to come and get me. No way that I’m gonna lay down for the Japs. They’re all a bunch of liars.”
Frank nodded politely. “Yes, well, Jack, we’re not all of the same inclination, but I think we see your point.”
The hospital surgeon, Fred, adjusted his gold, wire-rimmed glasses. “I can’t say it’s safe here, but I can’t say it’s safe to go to a prison camp either. I’ve done surgery on children for years in the city. Now I have patients all over the jungle barrios.” He clasped his wife’s hand. “Ruth and I have decided we’re staying here.”
Jimmy looked at Charma and caught her looking back at him. He raised his eyebrows in the slightest way. Charma inhaled, blinked slowly, and nodded.
“Frank,” Jimmy said, “we know we’re supposed to stay here. We’re not going anywhere.”
“Anyone else have anything to say?” Frank asked.
The people glanced around curiously.
“Then all those in favor of staying, raise your hand.”
All hands went up and, again, everyone looked around.
“Well, from this day forward, for better or for worse, we’re all in this together.”
The arms came back down.
Frank scanned the group with dead seriousness. “Until death do we part.”
Jimmy and Frank led their wives through the nearby jungle, pushing aside huge, shimmering leaves and arching ferns.
“It’s pretty muddy,” Jimmy said as he held a branch back for Charma. “Just don’t twist your ankle on a rock or something.”
Charma pulled her dress up a bit and stepped carefully as Frank led them to a vine-covered wall and drew some of the overhang aside revealing a small cave.
“If we get an alert from a lookout,” Frank said, “that the Japanese are somewhere nearby, this is where we’ll go. The other families have their spots, too. Some have hideouts in the ground with camouflaged roofs. You can be right in front of them and can’t see ‘em.”
Jimmy ducked down a bit and entered the rock hollow as the ladies tentatively followed. Frank came in and let the vines drape back over the entrance.
“So,” Ruth said, “Does this make us cavemen?”
“That’s cavewoman to you,” Frank replied.
Jimmy hunched a bit, scratched his armpits, and grunted like an ape.
Chapter 60
June, 1942. Tokyo.
A Kempeitai19 officer in his khaki uniform, sharply dressed in black riding boots, leather waist belt, and a white armband on his left sleeve, slapped Jake across the face. “How long was the flight deck of the Hornet?!”
Blindfolded, Jake was kneeling on a concrete floor with his hands tied behind his back and a three inch diameter stick of bamboo wedged behind the crook of his knees. Having not shaved or bathed in nearly two months, sweat and dirt matted his hair and beard. He reeked with the stench of sweat and human waste, but he hardly noticed as the screaming pain of his legs fogged his mind nearly to the point of unconsciousness.
His bruised head wobbled. “Seven hundred ... eight hundred ... I ... I ... seven hundred ...”
The officer nodded to a soldier who walked up to Jake and stomped his boot onto Jake’s thigh. Jake screamed out with what little energy he had left, his knees feeling like they’d explode. The two weeks he’d been in Tokyo were a blur of interrogations, beatings, meals of watery rice, and nights of being perpetually awakened by guards prodding him with poles into his cell. He felt he was drifting in a dark, surreal hell.
“Seven hundred?” Jake twisted his head. “Eight hundred? ... eight hundred.” He nodded unconvincingly and panted for air. “Eight hundred feet ... eight hundred.” The pain, throbbing in his knees and back, his shoulders, his neck. He just wanted it to end. God, he wanted it to just stop.
The officer turned to two other soldiers standing against the wall. “Bring me a different one. Now!”
In another room, Jake’s pilot, Bill Farrow, lay on his stomach completely drenched on a sopping wet wooden floor – blindfolded with his hands bound behind his back and his ankles tied together. A Kempeitai officer stood silently as soldiers rolled Bill onto his back with a wet flop. One soldier than sat on his legs and a second one sat on his stomach, crushing Bill’s hands underneath as he screamed through clenched teeth. A third knelt at his head bracing it between his knees and proceeded to throw a coarse, wet cloth over his face. The officer motioned to a nearby sold
ier with a bucket who proceeded to pour a steady trickle of water over Bill’s face as he grunted and twisted, gasping for air. After arching his back several times while choking in gurgles, his body went limp.
Two guards dragged Jake, now barely able to walk, down a decrepit, dark hallway lit by a few bare bulbs and shoved him into a six-foot by eight-foot wooden cell with a putrid “benjo hole” in a corner of the floor.
“Sit only!” the guard barked in English. “No lying down!”
Jake struggled to move his throbbing legs in front of him as the door shut him into further darkness and the bolt locked. A tiny rectangle of yellow light fell onto his chest. As the echo of footsteps faded away down the hall, Jake slowly bent to the side, then collapsed to the floor.
The next morning, a jangle of keys and a clank of the deadbolt awoke Jake into semi-consciousness as the door squeaked open.
“I said no lying down!” he said in Japanese. The guard pulled at Jake’s sprawled body as he tried to sit upright. A second guard followed behind. Momentarily blocking the light to his cell Jake saw it was Harry, his gunner, his wrists in irons like his own. He looked like hell.
“No talking! Quiet!” the guard shouted in Japanese. Jake could figure out what he meant even if he didn’t understand the words.
The bedraggled gunner limped to the wall and grimaced as he slid down into a sitting position. After the door was locked again and the guards clopped off, Jake and Harry stared at each other soberly. With one eye nearly shut from bruising, Harry raised his shackled hands a few inches and gave a thumbs-up with a smirk. Jake grinned back. They didn’t break him.
The stench was nauseating and his joints flashed with pain, but the joy of seeing his partner still alive flooded the cell with a subtle triumph. They spoke in the quietest of whispers.
“They’ve got three others, too,” Harry said.
“Who?”
“From Hallmark’s plane, The Green Hornet: Hallmark, Meder, and Nielson.”
“What about the other two of their crew?”
“Their plane hit the water. They drowned.”
Jake cautiously glanced up at the small peep hole beaming dim light. “They gonna kill us, you think?”
“Probably,” Harry whispered back. “The information they’re squeezing out now is all nonsense anyway. They know it.” Harry tried to swallow. “They know they can get away with it, too.”
“Why?” Jake whispered. “Aren’t we at least pawns worth keeping for making bargains or something?”
“Nah. They don’t care about that. From all the talk, I think our little raid got under their skin. They lost face. The Japs hate that. Now someone’s gotta pay. Probably gonna be us.”
“They gotta know one day America’s gonna come over and kick their asses all to hell.”
Harry blinked slowly with a nod.
“Well.” Jake paused. “If I can just take down one more Jap on my way out, I’ll be satisfied.”
Harry smiled. Jake felt it deep inside. Nice to have a friend.
A Kempeitai officer sat behind an interrogation table while a soldier motioned for Jake to sit in the chair on the opposite side. In handcuffs, Jake still wore the same soiled shirt and pants he’d put on the morning of the raid. He sighed and took his seat.
The officer leaned forward to hand Jake a pen and laid a small stack of papers before him. They were all in Japanese with a blank line at the bottom.
Jake looked at the papers quizzically, and peered up at the officer. “What is it?”
The officer blew cigarette smoke up toward the ceiling. “A confessional.”
Jake pushed the papers away. “No way that ...”
A soldier slapped him in the face. “You sign!”
By now, everything seemed to make no sense to Jake. Half of what he and the others had told the interrogators over the last two weeks they simply made up to try to stop the torture. Now they wanted his signature on a document which everyone knew that he couldn’t even read. So what difference did it make anyway?
Jake reached out for the pen with his cuffed hands, looked up at the triumphant officer one last time, and signed.
The office smiled and puffed his cigarette.
Chapter 61
June, 1942. The Imperial General Headquarters, Tokyo.
Outside the imposing brick building clad in ivy and adorned with a white columned entrance, Chief of the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff Sugiyama strode beside the bespectacled Tojo, Prime Minister and Army Minister of Japan.
Sugiyama came to a halt and rammed two fingers into his open palm. “They’re war criminals and as such should be executed without delay!”
“It’s not clear at this time if they are war criminals or prisoners of war,” Tojo replied. “If only prisoners, we both know they can’t be executed for an act of war. This has now become an international event. All the world knows we have them.”
“And we have their confessions! They have clearly admitted to strafing schools and killing civilians, which amounts to murder! They’re war criminals. We have to teach the Americans a lesson. If they ever attempt such an act again, they will all suffer the same fate!”
Tojo began to pace again and brought his hands behind his back. “And what would be the fate of the Japanese interned in camps in the United States? We have eight of their men, they have thousands of our people. We cannot afford the chance for such unfavorable consequences.”
Snorting, Sugiyama looked away.
Tojo continued, “Our best legal minds are looking into the rules of international law regarding this case. Even if they’re found to be prisoners, I am inclined to create a law to impose the death penalty to execute them if they are found guilty of crimes.”
“Ex post facto?”20
Tojo nodded.
“Tried in a military court, then?”
“Yes. In Shanghai by the Thirteenth Army under Lieutenant General Shimomura. I will send them back to where they were captured.”
“Shanghai, then.” Sugiyama gazed up with a smile at a carefully pruned Japanese Black Pine. “Good.”
Chapter 62
June, 1942. Tokyo.
Looking like rats dragged from a sewer, soldiers paraded the eight American prisoners through the streets shoving them with rifle butts through a quickly growing crowd of jubilant, shouting onlookers. Jake narrowed his eyes in the rare sunlight beaming on his filthy head as he shuffled along, both hands and both feet in irons. He couldn’t understand a single word of the enraged, screaming Japanese, but then, he didn’t need to. He also happened to note the lack of younger and middle-aged men – now all off to war.
“Move! Move!” A soldier prodded Jake along with his seven other comrades as other rifled soldiers in front made a path through the pressing mass. They’d just been driven a short way by a couple of cars and unloaded. He wasn’t sure where they were heading, but as they made their way to a train platform it was clear they were being moved somewhere far away. Where, he didn’t know, or why.
Several women with raised hands, wept and shouted out, “Okawai so ni! Okawai so ni!”21
“What?!” an enraged officer yelled in Japanese as he approached. “Shut up! All of you!” He signaled for two soldiers. “They must be spies! Arrest them!”
Soldiers strong-armed the women away among further shrieks of sorrow.
Jake wasn’t sure what he’d just seen, but he felt a tiny breeze of compassion from an otherwise hateful crowd. His feelings of warmth soon dissolved into cold fear as he wondered what would become of these women.
On the rolling train, Jake sat silently between his guard and the window, the “click-clack” of the rails gently thumping his head as he rested against the frame. The smoke of the locomotive constantly blew through the open windows, coating his face with a film of soot. Japanese passengers peered in from the preceding coach and briefly stared stoically at the odd cargo of American prisoners.
The ache of the overly tight shackles on his wrists and ankles w
as quickly forgotten when he and the others were given the first real food of their captivity: rice, white radishes, soybean pods, and shredded cabbage. Jake wolfed down the food fearing it might just as quickly be taken away.
The thought that they could have been killed and seemed to be spared was marginally encouraging, but his treatment didn’t give him any ideas that his situation was likely to improve. Where were they going? How long would the war last? Could he make it out alive? All Jake had were questions, but no answers.
After several pain-filled, sleepless days and nights of trains, ferries, cramped cells, and a wretched berth in a freight ship, the eight prisoners finally arrived at the Bridge House, a former British hotel in Shanghai that had been taken over as a Japanese headquarters and jail facility. Here they were corralled into a ten-foot by fifteen-foot room, a makeshift cell, all eight shoved in with over twenty others: a mix of Chinese boys, men, women, and a Russian. Jake saw a bucket in the corner of the room that overflowed with waste and an emaciated, old man who lay on the floor motionless. He wasn’t sure if he was dead or alive. Jake wasn’t sure how long he’d be alive either. It had to be over ninety degrees. The sweat and smell was unbearable. The only way to rest was to take turns squatting against the wall or curled in a ball on the floor.
As the guard pushed the heavy wooden door of vertical wooden bars into its latch, the combination of stifling heat with the stench of human waste made Harry vomit. Jake cringed and looked at Bill who closed his eyes.
Every one of the Americans was bruised, lame in some degree, and covered with sores, scabs and open wounds from their many beatings. Lice and bedbugs incessantly gnawed at their withering flesh, but Jake was grateful for one thing. For the first time he was among the seven other fliers in one place, and able to talk freely.
After each took his turn to unwind his tale of where he grew up, what he wanted to do, who he wanted to marry, and, most importantly, what food he missed most – from biscuits and gravy to rhubarb pie with vanilla ice cream – the conversation gravitated to the inevitable.
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