Wounded Tiger

by T Martin Bennett

  The guard stopped for a moment. “They kill a few fish in river. So what?” Perturbed, he quickly walked on.

  Jake watched the guard until he left his sight, then smiled. “M-e-r-r-y Christmas.”

  Chapter 101

  March 10, 1945. Tokyo, Japan.

  In the middle of the night, Fuchida’s wife, Haruko, lay on her side under the covers on her matted floor, her eyes wide open, kept awake by the endless drone of wave after wave of B-29 Superfortress bombers. This was the fourth time they’d come in the past three weeks. Their home was far enough away from the downtown section of the city and the docks that she didn’t fear their home being bombed, but close enough to see and hear the distant thunder of war. It was a bad dream that never went away.

  Listening to the children whispering in the other room, she threw aside her covers, donned her kimono, and crept out to see what was going on. Slowly walking up behind the two of her children, just outside the back door, she, too, stared up into the mesmerizing, glowing red smoke filling the entire sky above the roaring inferno of the city below.

  Hundreds of heavy bombers were dropping thousands of napalm filled incendiaries onto Tokyo and the winds whipped the flames into a fire-breathing dragon of death, a beast with an unquenchable appetite.

  Miyako felt her mother against her back, looked up at her, and took her hand. “Mommy, when’s the war going to be over? When’s it going to stop?”

  The dry evening air was scented with the foul odor of smoke and flesh. She ran her hand over her daughter’s hair but could give no reply. She wished it had never started.

  March 18, 1945. Tokyo, Japan.

  Emperor Hirohito peered impatiently out of his vehicle window, having become increasingly tired of his advisors and their words of impending victory. An unannounced motorcade of three, highly polished, burgundy and black gold-trimmed 1935 Mercedes-Benz 770K limousines escorted by soldiers on six motorcycles with sidecars rolled down the street of downtown Tokyo, a scorched wasteland of blackened brick walls, burned tree stumps, and rusted shells of automobiles – an endless horizon of charred debris.

  Each of the super luxury cars with dinner plate sized headlights, long swept front fenders, and flat windshields displayed a gold chrysanthemum crest in front of the chrome radiator as well as on each of the rear doors – the sovereign seal of the Emperor. The royal burgundy of his automobile was forbidden for use on any other vehicle in the nation.

  A week earlier he had witnessed the walls of flames reaching a hundred feet into the sky beside his own palace, heard the air raid sirens and vain cries for help, and had received the official reports of tens of thousands of people suffocated or burned to death, perhaps over one hundred thousand citizens, trapped in the flames and consumed along with every combustible object in an area of over sixteen square miles. In the conflagration, asphalt streets had boiled, glass melted, and the rivers had filled with corpses of people seeking protection from the all-consuming fire, in vain. Air raid shelters became oven tombs.

  He had made up his mind against the counsel of his advisors to see for himself what had become of the capital of Japan. As he stoically stared out of his walnut-paneled, calfskin-upholstered coach compartment and observed the soot-covered poor carting off grotesque corpses, the veil of the elegant theories of war was torn away to reveal the hideous reality of a people enduring unimaginable suffering.

  Seeing the imperial vehicles, those digging through rubble quickly bowed, turning their eyes to the ground, yet a few were willing to defiantly look up, barely hiding their resentful glare.

  Leaning forward, the Emperor rapped on the dividing glass with his white gloved knuckles. The driver looked back, nodded, and brought the Mercedes to a halt over the charcoal-covered street. The aide quickly exited and came to the Emperor’s door with a look that asked if the Emperor, indeed, wanted to get out. Hirohito nodded firmly and the door was swung open for him with a deferential bow.

  Hirohito disembarked in his riding boots, sword, and full military uniform, as did the officers in the following two matching limousines. A woman picked through the ashes of what was once her home. Reaching down, she lifted an earthenware teapot and shook the ashes from it.

  The Emperor walked uprightly, turning his head from side to side attempting to take in as much as possible, then came to a halt as the other officers strode up beside him. The group of them stood and examined the horrific devastation in a long gaze from one end of the horizon to the other.

  “Your Majesty,” the officer nearest the Emperor said in a low voice, “we must be patient. Soon, the people will accept the bombing and in time our resolve will become stronger and stronger. Then our diplomats will have room to devise a more advantageous situation for Japan. We must resist surrender no matter what the cost.”

  The Emperor gently nodded, then, out of curiosity, walked to an overturned steel bowl, scorched and rusted. He squatted down and picked it up, but then realized it was a helmet as it revealed a bleached skull covered in white ash. Pausing, he looked back at the officer who had just spoken, then carefully replaced the helmet over the fallen soldier, stood, and bowed with reverence.

  Chapter 102

  April, 1945. Nanking, China.

  Spring brought a relief from the biting cold of winter, but as Jake took his walk in the yard that morning with his comrades, he winced in pain as his body was erupting with boils, even on the bottoms of his feet. He tried to put his mind on something other than the searing pain of his flesh when a guard came along side of him and the three others.

  “So, your leader, Roosevelt, he dead now. You have no leader,” The guard said, smiling broadly.

  Jake didn’t look back at him. He did his best not to wince from his pain. “Yeah, we heard,” Jake said. He raised his eyebrows and looked over at Bob, beside him. “Well ... looks like General MacArthur’s gonna be in charge now.” Still walking, he turned to the guard. “What do you think about that?”

  Jake took the guard’s smile, and the guard was left with Jake’s frown.

  “No more talk!”

  June 15, 1945.

  Once again, without announcement, Jake, Bob, George and Chase were hauled from their cells early in the morning, cleaned up, lined up, dressed in large, green canvas raincoats, and unceremoniously hand-cuffed and put in leg irons. Jake knew this meant they were taking another trip. Why or where, as usual, he had no idea. He eyed his companions without a word, and he knew they felt like he did: the known, bad as it was, was always better than the unknown.

  Yoshimasa checked Jake’s shackles, then stood up in front of him. Although they were from different nations from opposite sides of the world fighting on opposite sides of a world war, Jake felt strangely connected to his captor, who was equally captive of the same prison. The other three prisoners exchanged a few words of small talk with the guards.

  In spite of the harsh treatment, the fights, and the dire circumstances, there was an inexplicable camaraderie between them all.

  Instead of the traditional eastern bow, Yoshimasa put out his hand in a western-styled handshake. Jake gave a slight smile, lifted his cuffed wrists and shook his hand.

  “Good ... luck, Jake,” Yoshimasa said.

  Jake stopped shaking his hand for a second and held it steady. He knew Yoshimasa had to have practiced saying that over and over to be able to say “luck” instead of the typical “ruck” he was more used to. Yoshimasa wanted to be able to say it right, one last time, and it produced the desired effect.

  And Jake wanted to leave just a hint of cowboy culture behind. “Take care of yourself, partner.” He wasn’t prepared for the lump in his throat and his feelings of sorrow in leaving a place of such isolation and pain. Both were conscious that neither of them would forget these twenty-six months they had spent together, years they could never explain to anyone, years no one else would ever understand, and that they would never see each other again. They gave each other one last, long look.

  Appearing uncomforta
ble, even somewhat ashamed, Yoshimasa sighed heavily, shook out a green hood with two eye holes and yanked it down over Jake’s head. As Jake peered out through the two holes, he could see Yoshimasa look downward and wipe the edge of his eye.

  The coal-fired train chugged through villages and towns that seemed to repeat themselves endlessly. Sitting beside his guards with a rope around his waist, Jake and the three other hooded Doolittle raiders traveled north across the flat, open farmlands of China. Through his canvas mask, Jake observed people of all kinds board and exit their coach. He found his heart moved for the uncounted masses of people in the world living lives of near poverty, poverty like he’d never seen before.

  In the summer heat, sweat dripped down over his face under his hood and he tried not to hyperventilate as he feared he might pass out. The escorting soldiers decided to withhold water from the prisoners to minimize “bathroom breaks.” It nearly killed them.

  The only thing Jake could really do on this journey was to observe the other people around him. He studied each person, one at a time and became as uncomfortable in his mind as he was in his flesh. It seemed strangely rude to him for the women to be forced to sit on the floor while the men took the seats. Officers routinely slapped subordinates in the face for trifling offenses, or perhaps for none at all. Jake cringed as he watched a soldier slap an old woman on both sides of her face for not moving her heavy baggage quickly enough.

  Things he’d read and memorized drifted through his mind: Treat others the way you want to be treated ... Whoever is greatest will be the least, ... and The greatest of these is love. If they only knew a better way, he thought, they could lead much happier lives. All of them.

  After the train had come to a stop in another tiny village, a young mother with an unwieldy bundle strapped to her back boarded their coach with two young children who were instantly captivated by the strange, hooded men. As the little girl and boy cautiously ventured closer to Jake under the watchful eye of the guards, the mother looked at the guarding soldiers and gave a sly smile, put her finger to her mouth, and backed away from the children, leaving them “alone” in front of Jake.

  He stared down at the awestruck children whose mouths hung open. Jake leaned down toward them, his dark eyes wide behind his hood. “Boo!”

  Shrieking in terror, the children fled, running for their mother. The passengers broke out in a few, rare chuckles. Even the guards smiled. All over the world, Jake thought, people were people. Just the same.

  Toward the end of the third day, after over 600 brutal miles of travel, the hooded prisoners were disembarked and loaded into a military cargo truck and told they were in Peking.30 Jake settled on the floor beside the guards and his fellow prisoners and looked up at the canvas covered ribs above him. If the idea of escape to free China was a long-shot in Nanking, it was now beyond impossible in Peking, even further inside the continent.

  The hooded mystery guests, Jake, Bob, George and Chase, arrived inside a walled structure and soldiers escorted them into another hell-hole of a prison. Worse than what they’d been in before, it was packed with over 1,000 hollow-eyed Chinese souls staring at them – men who looked like they’d welcome their own death if it would bring relief. After being unshackled, a guard shoved Jake into an even smaller, darker cell than he’d had before.

  “Sit on stool!” the guard shouted in his broken English. “Face wall! No move!”

  Jake settled down on a wooden “stool” – four inches by eight inches across and about eight inches off the floor – and faced the rear wall as the heavy wooden door clunked behind him and latched closed. The constant, muffled sound of beatings and wailing let him know they meant business. The days of walks in the prison yard were over. Now he was only let out once a week to wash. Sitting and staring at the wall, Jake felt sure that this would be the road to his insanity.

  The boils under his skin had come back and had spread over his entire body. Each one ached with continuous pain, yet there was no relief in the darkness. After collapsing several times and blacking out, he was finally permitted to lie on a filthy straw mat. Jake sensed his body beginning to shut down and his life ebbing away. He drifted in and out of reality. The screaming, the darkness, the pain, all combined to bring him to the edge of delirium. As much as he may have wanted to, he had little strength to even scream.

  One morning he felt his heart laboring in his chest, each beat feeling like a struggle. He remembered Bob Meder telling him that his heart was hurting not long before he died. Jake felt he was coming to his end. His heart couldn’t hold out much longer. He was ready to die. He’d made peace with God and even looked forward to the relief of death, to death and new life, life free from the filth and pain and loneliness of his existence.

  Yet something inside told him to ask for help. He remembered the verses he’d read, that if he had the faith of just a tiny mustard seed, he could speak to a mountain and make it move. He thought, maybe he should take what little faith he had, go to God, and ask for healing and for life, and he believed that God would answer.

  Jake gathered all of his strength, strained up onto one elbow, then onto his side, struggled up from his mat, and settled his aching bones onto his stool facing the back wall. He began to pray. He decided he’d just keep praying until he got an answer – or simply passed out and collapsed onto the floor.

  Unexpectedly, he thought he heard a voice tell him that he was free. He smiled. You’re free. He somehow had a sense that he would know what to eat and what not to eat, and that God would, in fact, save his life. For the next two days, he ate no food, clearly sensing that he shouldn’t eat it. Then, each day, he asked God if he should eat the food served him or not, and he knew when to eat it, and when to not eat it. Although extremely weak, his health slowly returned ever so slightly.

  Some days afterwards, on his stool facing the wall, he whispered a prayer, “What should I do now?” Jake nodded, then got down on his knees and faced his door. He’d never faced the door before and knew it could easily lead to a brutal beating, but he followed the clear leading and got down on the floor onto his hands and knees, folded his hands, and began to pray silently.

  In time, when the guard checked, he rapped on the door with his scabbard and yelled in English, “Get off floor! Get on bench and face wall!”

  Jake remained unmoved.

  “Face wall or I come in!”

  Jake didn’t move. He was certain he should just stay put.

  The guard left and Jake could hear that he’d returned with more guards. The lock jangled with keys. Jake was pretty sure he should stay where he was, but he still feared the worst.

  The bolt cocked back and the guard flung the door open and stared down at Jake. Three guards stood motionless, looked at each other in confusion, then reached down and turned him over onto his mat. A doctor in a white coat rolled up Jake’s sleeve and gave him an injection of vitamins. By the time the sun was about to set, Jake was eating soup, bread, boiled eggs and fresh milk.

  That night as Jake lay on his back in the darkness, in the stench, surrounded by the echoed cries of unknown men– he smiled as he took a bite of bread. “You keep your promises, God,” he said with tear-filled eyes. Jake had taken his half mustard seed of faith and come to God with one request, and God heard him, told him what to do, and rescued him. He tore off another piece from the chunk of bread, placed it in his mouth and chewed it slowly, savoring the sweet taste. “You keep them all.”

  From that day on, Jake received the same kinds of food each day. His health returned.

  Chapter 103

  August 5, 1945. Hiroshima Military Complex.

  Fuchida rubbed his eyes and rested his head on his hand with his elbow on the table – another endless meeting of army officers discussing Ketsugō Sakusen , the massive preparations for the defense of Japan against the inevitable American invasion. Hiroshima was home to the headquarters of the Japanese 5th Division as well as the 2nd Army.

  Trying to pay attention to the speake
r, Fuchida sighed unconsciously as he reflected on the once powerful navy that had been pared down to only eleven major ships, with little to fuel them. The majestic battleship Yamato, sent to defend Okinawa four months earlier, was decimated on the open seas before ever reaching her destination, a successful suicide mission, or at least that’s what they told the public. Over 2,000 crew went down with the ship, including Vice-Admiral Seiichi Itō, the fleet commander.

  The remaining members of the navy were handed rifles and sent to the southernmost island of Kyshu as marines to be part of the 900,000 troops assembling for the battle. Only a month earlier, the intense fighting for the island of Okinawa had raged for nearly 3 months, resulting in the deaths of over 100,000 Japanese soldiers. Fuchida had heard that an equal number of civilians had died – maybe even more. It was a bloodbath, and an ominous portent of what lay ahead for mainland Japan.

  Through a PA that echoed through the hall, the commander boasted from the platform, “Our plans for suicide attacks against troop ships and landing crafts will be unlike anything the Americans have experienced!” “We can and we will repel any attack they can send. Carrying out the objectives we’ve outlined, we will crush their invasion forces while they’re still at sea with over ten thousand of our aircraft. On land, we are ready to sacrifice a million men while inflicting the same casualties on U.S. troops. The American public will give them no choice but to negotiate for peace with terms favorable to Japan. The sooner the Americans come, the better!” Applause filled the hall.

  Stifling a yawn, Fuchida looked at his watch, which was running extraordinarily slowly, then took a puff of his cigarette.

  A rather square-faced communication officer strode up to Fuchida. Lieutenant Hashimoto whispered as he bent down beside Fuchida. “Captain? Admiral Yano needs you at Yamato immediately for Army Navy coordination planning. Can I tell him you’re on your way?”