Chapter 95
Fall, 1944. Downtown Rochester, New York.
Peggy hoped she looked her best in her soft yellow dress, white gloves, and white hat adorned with a chiffon scarf tied in a bow at the back. As people walked past her on the sidewalk, she stood reading address numbers of the two and three story, ornate stone storefronts adorned with vertical neon signs. A streetcar bell clanged to part a river of pedestrians crossing the street amongst cars and smoking buses.
This was the right place. She nodded and tucked a sheet of paper back into her purse, snapped it shut, and headed two doors down to the Federal Services building. She loved adventure, but feared the unknown.
Upon arriving, she waited among an assortment of young men and women in one of a row of wooden chairs against a hallway wall. The room was a bit musty and lit only by the natural light coming in from two windows at the end of the hall. Tapping typewriters, ringing phones, and muffled conversations filled the air.
Sitting quietly, she read the war posters on the walls, one after another, shouting their messages:
“When you ride ALONE, you ride with Hitler! Join a Car-Sharing Club TODAY!”
“Buy War Bonds!” pictured Uncle Sam mystically standing in the clouds with a huge American flag, silhouettes of bombers above him and hundreds of soldiers below his feet.
“Wings Over America – Air Corps U.S. Army,” with an eagle soaring among fighter planes in a blue sky with clouds.
Uncle Sam rolling up his sleeve revealing a muscular arm holding a huge wrench, “JAP ... You’re Next! We’ll Finish the Job!”
And at the end of the row, a poster displayed a photo of a blindfolded American strong-armed by a pair of Japanese soldiers with a superimposed newspaper clipping reading “Japs Execute Group of Tokyo Air Raiders.” Lettering across the top of the poster blared out, “The Jap way – COLD-BLOODED MURDER!”
“Miss Covell?” a lady’s voice called out. Peggy was still lost in thought. “Miss Covell? He can see you now.”
“Oh, Oh I’m sorry. Thank you.” Peggy clutched her purse, stood up giving her hat one last adjustment, and followed the assistant to a balding officer with glasses flipping through papers at his desk. She sat down waiting for some acknowledgement, but she was only one of many the officer had to interview with that day.
“Sociology major,” he said, looking over the top of his glasses. “Very good grades.” He licked his finger, flipped the page, paused and cocked his head. “Japanese? You speak Japanese?”
“Hai, I mean, yes.” Peggy smiled politely.
The officer kept reading a bit, then dropped the papers on his desk, tossed his glasses on top, and leaned back in his chair. “Listen. You seem like a nice girl and we’d love to have you, but you need understand what you’re getting into. Some of the Japs are good people, but a lot of ‘em just plain hate our guts, understand?”
Peggy gave a nod. She felt it impolite to interrupt his speech with some of her own background.
“I mean, there can be social implications for a young lady like you, you know, working with the Japs. Like what would your neighbors say, or what would your parents think?” He leaned forward and raised his eyebrows. “Have you thought about that?”
She glanced down at the rough ridges of the worn wooden floor. How could he possibly begin to understand? She didn’t want to show any emotion that might keep her from getting the job. She looked up with a smile and a slight nod.
“You sure this is something you want to do?”
Peggy looked straight into his eyes and took a breath like someone about to scale a mountain, and with equal determination.
The Santa Fe Express locomotive rumbled across the western plains of Kansas heading west hauling a dozen passenger cars, its coal-fired engine painting a fading river of black smoke across the canvas of the light blue sky. Jostled by the continuous click-clacking of the tracks, Peggy gazed out the window at the monotonous landscape of the prairie plains, dressed with barbed wired and the occasional western windmill. Her body was stiff from the 1,300 miles she’d already traveled from Buffalo, New York, a trip she’d begun three days earlier. Now, just past Dodge City, Kansas, she knew it would only be 150 miles more until she’d be in western Colorado.
Her mind drifted to what she’d read in the letter from her brother, as she’d done a hundred times before. She could hear the angry Japanese soldiers surrounding her mom and dad, see the teachers and the missionaries in the mountains of Panay gathering together, getting on their knees into a circle to hold hands. Among the chaos of shouting soldiers and weeping children, she could hear the voice of her father in a humble voice praying, “Dear Lord, where there is hatred, may we sow love; Where there is doubt, bring faith; Where there is despair, may we bring hope; Where there is darkness, light; And where there is sadness, may we bring joy.”
The shrill sound of the train whistle startled her, bringing her back to the present. She looked down at a worn, creased photo of her parents clutched in her fingers, blurred from the mist in her eyes.
Chapter 96
October, 1944. Tokyo, Japan.
“They were all lies!” Fuchida fumed to Haruko as they sat together on their back porch. His German Shepherd, Lity, lying beside him looked up in alarm. “Filthy lies!” Fuchida ran both hands over his head in exasperation.
Sitting beside her husband in his civilian clothes, Haruko reached over and gently rubbed his back. “Well,” she said, “at least in most other places, things are going well for Japan. Just this morning, the papers said that ...”
“Haruko! This is what I’m trying to explain to you. You can’t trust anyone. No one is telling the truth about the entire war. Everything you read and hear about the war is false. It’s just propaganda! We’re on the verge of total defeat!”
She stopped rubbing his back and looked puzzled.
Fuchida turned more toward her and sighed with exasperation. “Off the Marianas, in the battle of the Philippine Sea, half of our entire strength for the battle was with Vice Admiral Kakuta and his five hundred aircraft on Guam, Rota, and Saipan. He kept sending us reports of what his planes had done and were doing all through the battle, engaging the enemy and sinking American ships, and but every plane he had was destroyed on the ground days before by American attacks from the air.” He looked as if he could hardly believe his own words. “He never sent a single aircraft into the battle. He was lying to his own commanders about everything!”
In the yard, Yoshiya, now eleven, and Miyako, seven, threw a knotted rag for their Lity to retrieve. They laughed and giggled, oblivious to the plight of their nation, and of their father.
Fuchida twisted a small, dead branch in his hands and leaned forward in resignation. “In the end, we lost over six hundred planes, three aircraft carriers ...” His eyes seemed to glaze as he looked into the distance and continued to snap the sprig into ever smaller pieces. “... thirty thousand men on Saipan alone. Nagumo. He killed himself. And the papers continue to print ridiculous lists of triumphs. Even the Emperor thinks we sank two battleships and eleven American carriers.” He turned back to Haruko’s pained face. “Eleven! We didn’t even hit one!” He looked away in disgust.
He tossed the broken pieces of the twigs in the air letting them sprinkle onto the steps and grass. “I never thought I’d see the day when Germany was in retreat.” He paused longer between each statement, as if being forced to confess against his will. “It won’t be long ... They have complete control of the Marianas ... The American bombers will come ... So many of our nation’s best ... so many of my own friends, sacrificed ...”
He stared at Haruko’s sympathetic face. “For what?”
Chapter 97
October, 1944. Yokosuka Naval Base, Tokyo Bay.
The shoulders of both Fuchida and Genda displayed their new rank of captain, another gold stripe on their epaulets, as they stood on either side of a wall map of east Asia and the Pacific. Officers and teachers of the Naval Staff College sat along t
he sides of a long table and listened attentively.
Genda swept his hand over the archipelago of the Philippine Islands. “We believe the next strike of the Americans will be in the Philippines in order to come between us and our supply of oil.”
Fuchida continued. “There’s no point in wasting more planes in hopeless duels with the Americans. We understand that we cannot entirely defeat the U.S. Navy, so the agreed plan is to make the war as expensive as possible in the way of American casualties, to concentrate on attacking troop transports, and to extract such a painful price that public opinion in America will shift against their government to pressure them to end their needless sacrifices.”
Genda paused to scan the faces of the officers. “We believe we can kill one hundred thousand of their soldiers.”
Heads nodded among clouds of cigarette smoke.
Stepping closer to the table, Fuchida gave his final pitch and leaned on the table with both arms. “By exacting the heaviest possible toll on the enemy, we believe that public opinion in the U.S. will pressure their government to stop the sacrifice. At some point, it will simply be too much to bear, and they’ll be forced to look for a way to negotiate an end to the war.” He stood upright. “As we speak, the Shikishima Unit of the first Kamikaze Special Attack Corps are preparing in the Philippines for their first wave of attacks against the expected American invasion. A single plane filled with twenty-five hundred pounds of explosives can sink a capital ship. We will send thousands more. The Americans have yet to experience the devastation we will inflict through the courage and determination of our warriors.”
Chapter 98
November, 1944. Nanking, China.
Jake pulled his thin blanket around himself tighter in the blue darkness of the chilly evening air. He looked up at the vent and could see only a few stars through the slit, but he was familiar enough with the pattern that he knew they were getting closer to the middle of winter.
Hearing a slow pace of footsteps in the hallway, he went to his door and peered out though the small peep hole. Yoshimasa was pacing with his hands clasped in front of him, mouthing words silently as he walked, sometimes closing his eyes.
Seeing the light glimmer off of Jake’s eyes behind his door, Yoshimasa slowly walked over to him in the quiet of the night. “I was praying to my mother,” he said softly. “I know she hears me.”
Jake nodded soberly. “When did she die?”
Yoshimasa looked away for a moment. “When I was a young boy.” He looked back at Jake.
“I’m sorry.” Jake wanted to speak, but had no words to say that he felt could ease the pain he saw.
“Sometimes at night ...” he trailed off a bit, “I think I can hear her voice.” He sighed as if to gather strength. “I thought I heard her last night.”
The two looked at each other briefly, both knowing that they shared the loss of a parent and the pain that others would never understand.
Yoshimasa bowed his head toward Jake, who likewise bowed in return, then he turned and slowly faded into the darkness of the arched brick hallway.
Chapter 99
November, 1944. Granada, Colorado.
In a darkened, small-town theater, Peggy sat off to the side by herself, listening to every word of the narrator, fixed on the shaky black and white newsreel images and thunderous sounds of an American battleship firing a full broadside of sixteen inch guns, American fighter planes tearing into Japanese aircraft, ships blown to pieces, waves of soldiers wading ashore under a hail of bullets and bombs, and countless mangled Japanese and American bodies washed over on white sand beaches.
The high-strung narrator continued: “Our boys are giving hell to the Japs in the Philippines with sweet revenge. Nearly every battleship sunk at Pearl Harbor was raised and sent back into this colossal battle in Leyte, both on land and at sea, sending Jap carriers and battleships to the bottom, and sending Jap soldiers to their graves.”
Shaky films shot from the decks of American ships showed Japanese planes diving toward ships and crashing into the sea while others exploded directly into vessels.
“In an act of hopeless desperation and blind devotion to their Emperor, whom they call a god, the Japs have started crashing dozens of their planes into Allied warships in suicide attacks they call ‘kamikaze’ – ‘The divine wind’. We call it insanity. Only a few get through.”
Higgins boat landing crafts dropped their ramps into the shallow surf and unloaded soldiers in the knee-deep water. General MacArthur and officers stepped from a landing craft through the surf onto the shore.
“And much to the dismay of the Japanese occupying forces, General Douglas MacArthur kept his promise and returned once again, bringing along with him a couple hundred thousand soldiers to liberate the Philippine Islands.”
Peggy leaned forward, engrossed in the stories as MacArthur’s face filled the screen with his iconic pipe and his officer’s hat pulled down to his sunglasses.
“Next stop, Tokyo!”
The screen suddenly showed the close-up of a rotting Japanese corpse, the flesh half melted off the skull.
Chapter 100
November, 1944. Nanking, China.
The wind howled in a driving rainstorm outside Jake’s cell as he sat in the corner, bundled as best he could. He searched for the right words, then just whispered to himself, “Lord, I ... I want to be baptized. You know, be on the team all the way. Make a stand, just like your ...”
He looked up as a gust of wind blew a spray of water through the upper slot against the wall high above him. Jake grinned and nodded, then began his ritual of climbing up the wall to the very top and put his grinning face into the wind and was promptly doused in a spray of freezing rainwater. “Whoa! That’s cold!” He shook his face with joy. “I sure won’t forget this!”
Early December, 1944. Nanking, China.
The edges of the prison courtyard were pushed up with dirty snow as the four remaining prisoners took their daily exercise laps. Under the eyes of a half dozen, warmly dressed guards, Jake, Bob, George, and Chase hugged themselves and exhaled clouds of vapor while jogging through the slushy mud in bare feet.
“Where are your sandals?” a guard called out in Japanese. “I told you to keep your sandals on!”
Jake understood the words, but kept jogging. The men agreed beforehand to ditch their sandals, which would just get sucked off their feet in the muck anyway.
“Stop! Everyone! Now!”
The men stopped, picked up their sandals and headed for the water spigot to rinse off their feet.
“No!” The guard decided to make them pay a price for their insolence. “Use snow instead!”
Jake looked at the other three. The mud was cold enough. Washing in the freezing snow? It wasn’t worth the fight, so he headed off with the others to a snow pile to clean off his feet. But George, the Brooklyn red head, had had enough bossing around for a day and headed back to his cell, muddy feet and all.
Wiggling the mud off their feet in the numbing snow, Jake and the other two anxiously watched George from the sides of their eyes.
As George, at six feet two, walked past, the perturbed five foot two inch guard grabbed his scabbard and flailed it across George’s calves.
A streak of fear shot through Jake’s veins as he, Bob and Chase stared in dread.
George swung around and belted the guard in the face, knocking him to the muddy ground as the rest of the guards converged from all directions, shouting.
Yoshimasa motioned for the other three to head to their cells. As Jake walked past him, he caught Yoshimasa’s eyes which quickly darted to the ground.
The guards piled onto George, beating him mercilessly.
Trembling from the cold that night, Jake cinched his blanket as he sat in his cell, watched his ghostly breath swirl before him, and unwillingly listened to the muffled shrieks of George Barr echoing through their compound as he was beaten and beaten, then hung by his arms stretched behind him. This time, George surrendered
to all his feelings and filled the air with nightmarish howls of pain. He hoped George would make it. He hoped they’d all survive, but even his own health was deteriorating and no one knew how long they would last – physically or mentally. It was a painfully cold winter, but George’s screams were even more painful.
December 25, 1944.
His eyes opened with a start that morning. Jake got up on his elbow and listened to the sounds. He could hardly believe it. There were cheers coming from the cells of his three other partners. He didn’t believe it and quickly shimmied up the sides of his cell until he reached the top to peer out the narrow slit. American P-51 Mustang fighters roared over at low level, one after another. At least two dozen of them. He could hear their machine guns firing in strafing runs in the distance and thrilled to see black clouds ascend into the sky.
“Now that’s music. That’s real music.” For months, for years, the guards had been bragging of Japanese victories on land and at sea, of Japanese invasions in California, that they’d conquered San Francisco and New York City, how American citizens were taking orders from Japanese officers, that the Americans had little hope, and that the entire war was all going the way of Japan. Jake and the men never bought into their braggadocio, but, then again, they always wondered what actually was going on. Where were the Americans? Why weren’t they in China? Now he knew.
He shimmied back down, dropped to the floor, and stood by his door, waiting for a guard to walk past. From the commotion and arguing between the soldiers in the yard, it was clear that none of them were prepared to see anything like American planes flying directly over the prison. It seemed to Jake that even they had bought into their own propaganda.
Eventually a guard walked near, and Jake spoke out in English, “So... those planes seemed an awful long ways from home, wouldn’t you say?”
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