Ghosts of Bungo Suido (2013)

by Deutermann, P. T

  Neither of the other two captains said anything.

  “Lieutenant Commander DeVeers, Mister Falcone, you are allowed to bring witnesses to support Commander Hammond. Do you wish to do that?”

  “Yes, sir,” Sharon said. “I would like to have Vice Admiral Lockwood testify, please.”

  “Um, Commander, that’s—”

  “I believe he has information relevant to this accusation. The rules allowing the accused to present evidence on his behalf make no mention of rank.”

  “That would be highly unusual,” Captain White offered. “Perhaps Commander Hammond’s division commander, as his immediate superior in command, could be made available, but ComSubPac himself? That’s reaching pretty high.”

  “Commander DeVeers, I tend to agree,” Captain Martell said.

  “Then deny my request, sir,” Sharon said.

  That gave Martell pause. If he decided not to let Gar call Admiral Lockwood, Gar’s lawyers might claim he wasn’t given a fair hearing.

  “I’ll take your request under advisement,” he said finally. “I want to talk to the members about this.”

  Captain Hooper, the ex-cruiser skipper, raised his hand. “Nothing to talk about. I say bring him in.”

  Captain Martell looked to his left at Captain Wilson, who nodded agreement with Hooper. With the members obviously not going to support him, he conceded. “Okay,” he said. “We’ll call the admiral to testify. Captain White, can you arrange that for tomorrow, please?”

  White nodded glumly.

  Sharon leaned closer to Falcone. “We have some work to do, shipmate,” she said.

  THIRTY-NINE

  Uncle Charlie did not look pleased when he entered the courtroom at 1000. Everyone stood up when he arrived, and he kept them standing while he went to the front of the room and took a chair. He was in dress khakis, and his golden three-star shoulder boards glinted in the morning light. Rear Admiral Forrester came in with him and took a seat in the spectator gallery at the back of the room, along with a captain from the CincPacFleet staff. Sharon told Gar that he was the public affairs officer.

  “Admiral Lockwood,” Martell began, “thank you for coming so quickly, sir. We know you’re a busy man.”

  “Good,” Lockwood said. He hadn’t even looked at Gar and his attorneys. “Let’s get on with it.”

  “Commander DeVeers, Mister Falcone, are you ready to proceed?”

  “Yes, sir,” Sharon said, standing to address the admiral. She introduced herself as Gar’s co-counsel and then asked the admiral if he had had a chance to read the transcript of Gar’s testimony. Lockwood said he had. Sharon picked up a piece of paper, on which she had a list of questions.

  “Admiral, did the submarine force train its officers on the matter of surviving a Japanese prisoner of war camp? I’m talking formal training, not just people discussing it.”

  Lockwood had to think for a few moments. “Formal training? Syllabus, trained instructors, practicals? No, we did not. Everyone knew the drill—name, rank, and serial number—but no, there was no formal, schoolhouse training on that.”

  “There a reason for that, Admiral?”

  “Yes,” he said. “If one of our boats tangled with a Jap warship and lost, there were usually no survivors, so formal training didn’t seem cost-effective.”

  “Cost-effective?”

  “Not worth establishing a formal course at sub school or out in the fleet. Like I said, everyone knew the basic rule.”

  “The basic rule being driven by the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war?”

  “Correct.”

  “Were you aware that the Japanese never ratified the convention?”

  “Yes, we all were aware of that. I thought that was a great incentive never to be captured.”

  “Would it be true to say, then, Admiral, that Commander Hammond, who did become a prisoner of the Japanese, had no formal training or guidance as to what he could say if the Japanese applied force majeure?”

  “I think he knew what not to say—that he should try to reveal as little as possible that could be useful to the Japanese.”

  “But if they began to kill fellow POWs in front of him and told him that they’d keep doing that until he talked, would that in your opinion constitute sufficient reason to go ahead and talk to them, beyond name, rank, and serial number?”

  Again Lockwood paused. He appeared to be choosing his words very carefully. “I think each individual would have to decide when enough was enough.”

  “But it is true that you, as commander of all submarines in the Pacific, never specifically issued guidance to your officers, even along the lines you just mentioned, i.e., when enough was enough, as to what they were supposed to do when faced with overwhelming force?”

  “Yes, technically, that’s correct. Look, miss, you haven’t walked in their shoes, or mine. We did not dwell on matters of POW behavior. It was, I think, simply understood. You resist doing any harm if they capture you, as best you can.”

  “Do no harm, sir?”

  “Yes. Do no harm. It was also understood that your chances of being captured were nil—we lost fifty-two boats and over thirty-five hundred submariners, and we had very few submariner POWs. So there it is.”

  Sharon studied her list for a moment before continuing. “Commander Hammond has testified that when he did give them information, it was to discourage them more than benefit them, tactically speaking.”

  “Such as?”

  “He told them that we could ‘see’ their mines underwater, that we could penetrate their minefields with impunity.”

  Lockwood seemed surprised. “That’s a significant revelation, I think.”

  “Could you elaborate, Admiral? How would that benefit the enemy?”

  “Well, toward the end they were using their minefields principally as defensive measures, specifically against submarines. Now they’d know that their defenses had been weakened.”

  “And what could they do about that, sir? I’m talking about the minefields—what could they do differently to counter the fact that we had a sonar that could ‘see’ the individual mines?”

  “I don’t know, double the size of their minefields? Triple the size? That sonar wasn’t perfect, and it was no cakewalk to get through a minefield even with the FM sonar.”

  “As Commander Hammond did.”

  “As Commander Hammond did. That was a major accomplishment, and what Dragonfish did at Kure was an equally major accomplishment. Captain Enright told me that the only reason he got a shot at Shinano was that she wasn’t making full speed. The Japs must have been beside themselves when they realized what had attacked their naval arsenal. But I think it would have been even scarier if they could not figure out how that boat got through.”

  Gar began writing something on his pad of paper.

  “So in your opinion,” Sharon continued, “he did collaborate with the enemy? I’m talking technically here, putting aside his reason for talking, to stop the murder of any more prisoners. Do you feel that he did harm to the American war effort?”

  “It didn’t help.”

  “Did any more submarines attempt to penetrate Japanese minefields after Dragonfish?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did they get through?”

  “Most of them did.”

  “Did you detect any changes in the way the Japanese deployed their minefields after the Dragonfish mission?”

  “I’d have to research that. I don’t think we did.”

  “So what harm ensued from Commander Hammond’s revelations?”

  The admiral said nothing.

  “And morally?” Sharon continued. “Given his reason for agreeing to talk to their interrogators in the first place? That other prisoners would be shot until he did agree to talk to them?”

  “I guess I still can’t answer that, counselor. Each officer has to react to his own moral values, I suppose. I wasn’t in a prison cell watching Jap guards murder prisoners. I was he
re, in Hawaii, safe and sound. I can tell you that those moral values you’re harping on vary with rank. Sometimes we, or I, sent boats and crews on missions or into places where their chances of surviving weren’t good at all, but where the potential for hurting the enemy seemed to justify the risk.”

  “To them, not you?”

  Lockwood gave her a pained look but did not reply.

  “Submarines were expendable, then?”

  “Not in so many words, Miss DeVeers, but they existed to go on the offensive against Japan. Their mission was not to preserve the boat. It was to attack the enemy’s shipping. If we had a boat go out on patrol and come home empty-handed, we usually replaced the skipper.”

  “And everyone understood that, correct?”

  “After a while they did,” Lockwood said.

  “But some missions were extremely dangerous? Over and above the usual hazards of submarine operations?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was Dragonfish’s mission into the Inland Sea one of those?”

  “Yes, I suppose it was.”

  “Is it true that you had previously proscribed the Inland Sea as an operational area?”

  “Yes.”

  Gar passed a note to Falcone. He read it, nodded, and handed it to Sharon. She glanced at it for a moment before resuming her questions.

  “Was there more than one mission involved in Dragonfish’s Inland Sea operation?”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning Minoru Hashimoto, sir.”

  “Oh, that. That was some kind of a sideshow, in my opinion. We weren’t told why PacFleet wanted him returned to Japan, nor were we encouraged to ask questions. Commander Hammond told me later that he thought it had something to do with the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.”

  “Did his instructions prioritize the elements of his mission?”

  “The sealed instructions? I never saw them. Those came from Nimitz, CincPacFleet. We were focused on getting that carrier.”

  “Would you be surprised, then, to learn that the sealed orders told Commander Hammond to get Hashimoto ashore before he attempted any other elements of the Inland Sea mission?”

  “I guess I would. Would you be surprised to learn that Commander Hammond initially refused to do the mission if he had to take a Jap on the boat with him? I watched Admiral Nimitz convince him otherwise, but, again, I viewed it as a sideshow. The mission was the Shinano. After that, it was to escape back to sea.”

  “Attack the carrier as best he could, and then escape?”

  “Yes. And that’s another thing—it seems to me Commander Hammond had a couple of opportunities to escape, and for some reason decided not to try.”

  “But the reason Commander Hammond was captured a second time was that he felt he could not expose Hashimoto to the threat of capture or exposure by continuing to hide in the village. He basically instructed Hashimoto to ‘catch’ him again and hand him over to the authorities.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Commander Hammond says so, sir. And it was because the sealed orders made it clear that whatever Hashimoto was supposed to do, it was actually more important than the Shinano. Which brings me to my question: He basically allowed himself to be captured again. Did this act constitute, in your opinion, collaboration with the enemy?”

  “He made his decisions and he had his reasons,” Lockwood replied, angry now. “You’re new to this navy business, miss. Decisions have consequences, especially in wartime. Earlier in the war we had a submarine division commander intentionally go down with a badly damaged sub when he could have escaped, rather than expose himself to the possibility of being captured and tortured and then giving up crucial intelligence information. No one required him to do that, which is why he got the Medal of Honor, and probably why Commander Hammond got a court of inquiry!”

  “Was that what drove your decision, Admiral?”

  “What?”

  “The case of Captain Gilmore and the Growler. Is that what drove your decision to let the court of inquiry proceed after Commander Hammond had requested an admiral’s mast to resolve this matter?”

  Lockwood stood up, visibly furious. “Young lady, I do not have to justify any decision I make in the matter of an admiral’s mast. Not to you, not to Hammond, not to anyone. Besides that, I’m not on trial here. Commander Hammond is. You’re supposed to be finding out what he did and why.”

  “No one is on trial here, Admiral,” Sharon said, smoothly. “But I think you just hit the nail on the head: what he did and why. And I would add one more dimension to this inquiry: what real harm did he do. You brought up his ‘failure’ to escape. After the bombing at Kure he was picked up by some guards and thrown in with a bunch of British prisoners. Because of this, he did not get taken to Ofuna, where the real interrogators and torturers worked. Naval interrogators, experts in making naval people talk. He ended up in a coal mine, doing slave labor. Was this a better outcome them his ending up in Ofuna?”

  Lockwood slowly sat back down. “I suppose it was,” he said. “Are you saying that he did this on purpose? To avoid being sent to Ofuna?”

  Gar had had enough. He stood up to face Lockwood. “I did not do that on purpose,” he said. “The Jap officer I called the Priest had just finished emptying a pistol at me. I was floating at the edge of a flooded dry dock, having been pummeled by a few hundred thousand-pound bombs and the exploding magazine of a destroyer fifty feet away. I was deaf. I was in shock. My brain had been turned to mush. I thought maybe I had died. When I realized otherwise, I wanted to die. Then some guards hauled my bloody ass out of the water and threw me in a truck. They took me to the nearest POW detention facility and threw me into a railroad car. That’s how I avoided Ofuna, Admiral. One more thing: That officer who’d tried to kill me in the water saved the last round for himself. He did that because I’d driven him crazy—he even said so. I didn’t collaborate with that guy. I drove him to suicide.”

  “Commander Hammond,” White interrupted, “you will have your chance to make a statement when the time comes. In the mean—”

  “I believe the time has come, gentlemen,” Gar said quietly. “I think this entire hearing happened for one reason and one reason only—someone is desperate to protect the image of the Pacific Fleet submarine force now that it’s peacetime again.”

  “That’s not true,” Forrester shouted from the back of the room. Admiral Lockwood held up his index finger in Forrester’s direction, indicating that he should be quiet.

  Gar stepped around from behind the table and looked straight at Lockwood. “A collaborator,” he said, “is a POW who does favors for the enemy in return for better treatment. To get food when the rest of the prisoners are being starved. To work in the office instead of at the bottom of a coal mine. To not be beaten on a daily basis. To get medicine if he needs it. A collaborator is someone who goes over to the other side. I did not do that.

  “You seem to think that I could have escaped. I’m here to tell you that that was impossible. In Europe? Maybe. In Europe, the prisoners of war on both sides looked a lot like the enemy, didn’t they. In Japan, all POWs looked like gaijin, foreign devils, white-faced, round-eyed, bad-smelling, and much too tall. The general population knew damned well that it was these foreign devils that were killing their sons and husbands on faraway islands, sinking their ships, cutting off their fuel, medicines, and food, and burning down entire cities. The fact that they started it didn’t figure into how they felt at the local level. If an American flier parachuted into the countryside, he was cut to pieces with farm implements the moment he landed. Sorry, Admiral. There was no point to an escape.”

  He paused to gather his thoughts. “I did not collaborate with the enemy. Everything I told them, much of which was fantasy, made it clear that they were going to be invaded and destroyed, that there was no way out of what was coming. I told the captain of that carrier that his ship was doomed if he tried to make it to Yokosuka, and it was. I could see it in their faces—they knew it, even
if they couldn’t speak it. You want proof that they knew it? They had a plan, a plan they practiced at all the camps. Know what that plan was, Admiral?”

  Lockwood shook his head.

  “They had a policy in place throughout the prison camp system: When the Allies finally invaded Japan itself, all the POWs throughout the empire were to be executed immediately. All the POWs. Did you know that, sir?”

  “I think I read that somewhere,” Lockwood said.

  “I didn’t read about it, Admiral: I was there. I experienced it. Hell, I was next. We were all on the verge of being beheaded when the second bomb went off over Nagasaki. I think the only thing that saved us was the fact that the camp commandant’s entire family lived in Nagasaki and he just lost it out on the parade ground when he saw that cloud. The next thing we knew, a column of army regulars showed up, and the camp officers were ordered to abandon the camp.”

  Gar took a deep breath. “There were no collaborators in the Jap prison camps, Admiral. There were only prisoners. Sick, starved, filthy, despondent, battered, and, in too many cases, dying prisoners. This inquiry that you and your chief of staff have allowed to happen is an outrage. The two of you have forgotten everything and apparently everyone you commanded during the war, and now you’ve reverted back to being the kind of navy that got caught with its pants down right here in Pearl Harbor.”

  “Commander Hammond,” Martell said. “That’s enough. I can’t allow—”

  “Wait,” Lockwood said. He turned to Captain Martell. “By what authority did you convene this court?”

  “Well, by yours, Admiral,” Martel said, frowning. He waved a piece of paper. “ComSubPac. It’s on your letterhead, sir. The naval district is just the admin.”

  Lockwood looked across the room at Forrester. “Mike, did you sign the convening order to proceed with this court of inquiry?”

  “Yes, sir, I did,” Forrester said. “After you and I talked, of course, and—”

  “Does that mean I can retract that decision? Aren’t I the convening authority within the submarine force?”