Truly, “east was east and west was west, and never the ‘twain shall meet.” But deep down they were respected if not looked upon as rather fathomless and mysterious as were all Orientals. But that was not all of them were respected, not by me anyway. I worked with one in the fields. His name was Shig after Shigamitsu. He told me once he was in the Japanese army. He would regale me with stories of Japanese atrocities against the equally fathomless Chinese at Nanking. He would boast about how the Japanese soldiers would cuttum’ of heads of Chinese.” All it managed to do was begin a life-long dislike, a deep-seated hatred for all things Imperial Japanese. This festered below the surface until Pearl Harbor. Then when I read newspaper accounts of Japanese officers ritual beheadings of American Airmen it rose to the top. And I took a personal oath that after I soloed my first combat aircraft; I would exact a stinging retribution against as many of them as I could.
This Japanese I worked with was in the country illegally. After the War my uncle told me that following Pearl Harbor, the FBI had arrested him. He was caught broadcasting to what he hoped was the Japanese army. He thought they had landed on the coast of California and he wanted them to know he was standing by to help in any way he could. He was never seen in those parts again. I have no idea what happened to him but I’ll bet any amount of money they never cut off his head.
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And another thing, in case you’re interested: two young Japanese once saved my life. I skated into an open break in the ice, when a friend and I were caught in the middle of a lake with night coming on. I become disoriented after a long struggle to get out of the water and back on to the ice. Helped by my friend, my only chance of surviving was a distant fire burning on the far side of the lake.
When I got there, my clothes were frozen stiff. It was in the middle of the winter, extremely cold. And I had spent a long time in the water and a much longer time skating back across the lake.
Two young Japanese and their dates for the evening were tending the fire. When they saw me, confused, freezing, and in the throws of first stage hypothermia they bundled me up in a blanket and drew me close to the fire. When they felt I was out of danger, they tied my bicycle to the top of their car, and then drove me home about five miles away. If they had ignored me, leaving me to fend for myself, I doubt I would have made it. These Japanese were as different from Shig the monster as night was from day.
Shig once lectured me about how superior Japanese soldiers were compared to the Chinese. And someday soon, he said, all Asia would change their way of thinking about the Japanese. And soon the entire world would come to appreciate the power of their science. He didn’t refer to Americans specifically in his racial remarks, but he meant our soldiers were no better than the Chinese.
He desperately wanted to convince me they were not a culture of backward rustics, who specialized in manufacturing and exporting inferior quality merchandise that really was of no consequence or had any relevance in our society. He knew we saw them as a nation of trinket makers, incapable of contributing anything of importance to science.
On the contrary, Shig told me Japan was a nation of important people. And someday we would regret the way we treated them. They required respect, and we Americans were a nation without traditions or culture. He said we were reluctant to respect much of anything that was not American. In a way he was right, we seldom thought much about them before they marched into Manchuria. Even after that, we ignored them–we didn’t care much about them one way or the other–not until they attacked Pearl Harbor.
There were even people in our town speculating that Shig was a Japanese agent, but there was no proof of this. But the idea was helped along by his attitude and by his ability to communicate. Where did he learn to speak English as well as he did? Nobody knew. But there was some speculation along the lines of him being trained as a spy, but to spy on what? True, there were a number of military installations in close proximity to our farms–so maybe he was. But it didn’t really matter, because following his encounter with the FBI Shig disappeared and was never heard from again.
But while he was here, he was reluctant to talk about his politics with adults. However, he was not afraid to talk to me–he considered me to be harmless. In fact, he relished the idea and he sought me out every chance he got; it gave him an outlet, a forum where he could express himself to somebody in complete safety. And once he started, he seemed to be unable to stop.
But over the summer, he talked about other things as well. When he ran out of stories about Nanking, he told me fairy tales. At least I thought they were fairy tales.
He told me he had once been detailed to load gold bars from two banks in Shanghai and one in Nanking. This amounted to millions of dollars in stolen property from the Chinese people. He said there were other loads of treasure coming in from Malaysia and other countries. He said it was being gathered in the Philippines awaiting orders from the Japanese royal family as to its final disposition. He also told me that friendly Phillipino’s, who expected to profit by their labor, would close the caves where it was being stored when the time came.
He told me he was one of the temporary guards of this stolen treasure. He said he was ordered to escort it via merchant ship to the Philippines. And then soon, thereafter, he deserted and hired on a merchant ship sailing under the Liberian flag to the United States.
Shig was proud of his small part in this theft, almost as proud as he was of his part in the rape of Chinese girls. And the relating of it to an innocent boy was not only titillating, but also in some way it satisfied some criminal urge lying deep within his psyche. Of course he would deny it if I had told anybody other than my uncle, who never believed Shig was in China. Shig would simply say he was misunderstood or that somebody had told him these things. He knew nobody would ever be able to pin him down. And he had told so many unbelievable stories that they wouldn’t have paid attention anyway.
But if you didn’t believe he was ever in the Japanese army, how do you account for him dodging the Japanese draft. And if he didn’t escape the way he said he did, how then was he able to get here.
If I ever had any doubts about him, I now know he had been a soldier. That is something almost impossible to disguise from another soldier, even one that has spend most of his army service around airplanes as I have.
After he deserted, the Liberian freighter carried him to San Francisco. From there he made his way to our small farming town. Somebody had told him there were numerous Japanese farmers living here. Also it was far enough inland and isolated enough that American authorities wouldn’t care about his citizenship.
Farm work was something he had done all his life if you discount his years spent in the Japanese army. Because he was a farmer, they told him he could get work with any number of American farmers that would furnish him with board and a room. They would also pay him. After the War, he could go back to Japan and buy himself a wife and live happily ever after.
That’s what he said he planned to do. Not in those exact words, though, you had to listen close to understand him. But I had the time. Bent over next to him in an adjoining row of potatoes, I was a captive audience.
When I asked him what happened to the gold he carried to the Philippines, he hesitated to talk about it further. When I pressed him, implying that he wasn’t telling me the truth, he became upset. I could tell he was working hard to keep his true feelings under control. But even so, he had no intentions of letting me think he was not for real. That’s when he told me in broken English how they unloaded the bullion at Mindanao and carried it inland by mule. He drew a map on the ground with a stick, showing me the mountains north of Manila and the exact location of the caves where it was hidden. But he preferred talking to me about his life as a soldier more than he wanted to talk about gold–that’s when he told me more about Nanking.
The massacre of Chinese civilians and prisoners of war at Nanking in 1937 had no parallel in the annals of human history. If it wasn’t number one in infamy it wa
s a close second. For days the Japanese Army roamed at will, killing and raping, and then often cutting the throats of the young women they raped, and slaughtering captured soldiers. Only when their blood lust was sated did they stop. And their officers had not only tolerated it but had given their tacit approval. It was a present from their commanding general for winning a battle hard fought.
Shig said he was there and he regaled me with all the gory details. Later I saw some of the scenes in picture magazines, and in reports filed by respected correspondents, and I read testimonies, and saw back-up pictures that were taken by foreign missionaries. I knew then what he said was true. And I’m not ever likely to forget the smirk on his face while he was telling me.
Shig woke me up to the real world I knew nothing about, where hatred and intolerance existed, where disregard for human life and the commission of human atrocities were unheard of–unheard of then, but became common during the years that followed.
Because of him, I was never again an innocent boy. He changed my life forever. Now I looked forward to the Chinese eventually destroying all things Imperialist Japanese. This feeling, this need for vengeance, has never subsided–it is still fueled by thoughts of Nanking. Those atrocities are always on my mind–I can’t forget them.
And I hoped before Pearl Harbor that there would be a place for me in our military machine that even then was modernizing and expanding.
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The wind continued until it reached a high, as high as it ever did at the fictional Manakoora. Certainly nothing was left, and my airplane where did it go? Not that it served any useful purpose. But sitting out there beyond the reef it reminded me of home and civilization. And I admit standing on the beach on many lonely nights, gazing out to sea and wondering what it might have been like at the battle for Guadalcanal if I had been there with my airplane.
Six or seven hours later the barrage lifted. We crawled out wet and hungry and still very frightened. I started out for the beach and he pulled me back. We had a drink of water and waited. He knew what I had been taught and had forgotten about, the passing of the eye. An hour later, he headed back to our quarters under the ground and I followed.
I knew the backside of the storm would be even more vicious and in that I wasn’t disappointed. There was more pummeling by debris, more lightening and more of the same howling wind. Finally in the middle of the night it slowed and then stopped and the stars came out.
We sat in the wet sand until the sun came up before we tried making our way back to the beach. By the time we got there the sun was high up and we were warm and well on our way to being dried out. We had survived our first hurricane. Thanks to him and his quick thinking I had survived. I remembered the word “ domo-arigato.” He smiled with a slight bow of acknowledgement.
An hour later we were fishing. He cut two spears and sharpened them and we set out for breakfast. But not before he pointed off shore. There sat my airplane in the lagoon, but now she was almost out of the water. He grunted and smiled but only because now the fish would collect around it. Fish were that way. They saw the airplane as a reef instinctively it afforded them protection. Instinctively, they could hide from predators but not from us.
When we drew near, he first had to inspect it. Not strange when you consider he was an aviator before anything else. All pilots have to inspect all beautiful aircraft and secretly admire them; it is a compulsion, just as they have to critically watch one when landing or look-up when one flies overhead–they have to look, the same as they do at a pretty female who walks by.
The “eight day clock” in the instrument panel was ruined, as was the “Gibson Girl” in the equipment compartment. I had forgotten about it, I suppose because I wouldn’t have used it at the time–it would have attracted the Japanese.
Now I wanted it in the worst way.
The Japanese saw it but didn’t share my enthusiasm. He knew what it was. Now it would summon only his enemy. But then like as not, no Japanese would respond even if they heard the transponder like radio signal.
It was an emergency radio designed primarily for downed airmen. They called it that after the “gay nineties” girls with the tight waists. It was shaped like the torso of a woman to be grasped and held between the knees while you turned a handle attached to a generator. When turned on and the generator was “genning” the current sent out a radio distress signal.
Gibson was an artist who painted voluptuous women for consumption by the pulp periodicals. They were to be found in most barbershops and in most pool halls, hence the irreverent name of Gibson Girl bestowed on it in his honor.
We ate a leisurely breakfast of “sushi” and gave thanks for being spared, each in his own way.
He didn’t linger for any after breakfast talk. We each had too much work to do, even if we could have communicated.
I said sayonara and he muttered something resembling goodbye. He disappeared now with his brief case, the noon sun shinning in my eyes.
My first job was to restore my cistern. No scrimping, only quality work allowed. Nobody knew how long I would be here, even if my friend thought he did.
Then there was the job of recovering my briefcase and muddy parachute. I stretched it out on the beach and then shook it out when it dried. Made of quality silk it was resilient and looked almost new. The briefcase protected her letters and I had protected it as best I could. My efforts did not escape my friend who did the same thing, making me wonder if he didn’t harbor something inside that he considered very valuable.
Some of the trees lining the beach were down, the low bushes and tangled jungle had been thinned out by the killer winds but not that much. The beach was still there. How much had been washed away was the business of hydrologists if any were interested. It made me think the famous director John Ford, who was always seeking after more realism in his movies, overdid the damage to Manakoora.
Life went on. That is my life went on, I can’t speak for the ants. But they have been around for a while so this was nothing new to them. A week later, I saw gulls resting on her rudder. Where they had been was one of nature’s mysteries. How they rode out the waves without getting seasick or drowning was beyond me.
I immediately went to work to build back my arsenal of shoulder-launched lances and another bow with a dozen arrows.
I cut three straight bamboo poles. I split one end and inserted a sharpened hardwood head into each one. Then I gave the heads the fire treatment before I tied them securely to the split bamboo. I guessed the weighted head would cause them to fly truer to the target. And in this I was right. I notched them about a foot from the balance point and tested one with my simple vine-cord sling. It was better than my first design. I placed them with point down in the sand again; awaiting the emergency they were made for. Unfortunately it would not be long in coming.
At least a couple of weeks had passed in relative calm, maybe more. Then there was the inevitable storm again after the lull. But this was a storm of a different kind. But there was no mistaken it was a storm, all right. This is the one he had been waiting for. This was a submarine and it was Japanese.
One minute the sea was clear and the next minute it seemed to consume the entire horizon. Big? It was huge, far larger than I ever imagined one would be. And foreboding. It fairly reeked with the stench of the death it had caused. I wanted to run and hide. Not necessary, they couldn’t see me. As small as I was, they couldn’t see me I could barely see them.
Chapter 10
I sat in the sand and watched. Nothing moved on the deck. Then I walked up to higher ground, still nothing moved. What were they doing, taking noon shots to fix their position–maybe undergoing another shore-detail briefing? Could they be arming themselves? Things were happening and they didn’t bode well for me.
Directly, figures about the size of ants could be seen crawling around the deck. What were they doing? Was my Japanese at the waters edge waiting to greet them? Was the sub’s captain a comrade of his from the old school? Was he
the long awaited subordinate coming to fetch him, to spirit him aboard and to take him home? And were they going to take me with them? Would he vouch for me and ask them to wait for me? Should I take my briefcase and hurry down the beach before I was left behind wondering what happened?
My better judgment told me not to trust them. They were Japanese and I was an American and never the twain shall meet. But logic told me he was an admiral. I had come to think of him as such. So why would the crew be expected to have a say in the matter. He would simply tell them I was his friend, and they would prepare the fatted calf; they would roll out the red carpet.
I chose to listen to my new inner voice, my newly discovered spiritual self, my soul, the only one I could trust–my emotions and not my reason. Better yet, I would remain out of sight while I was watching them. And even better than that, I would move still farther up to higher ground so I could see better what was going on.
Why wasn’t I surprised to see a large rubber raft at the shoreline? They had launched unbeknownst to me. And while I sat waiting and wondering, they had moved on to the beach.
What was I going to do? Should I now run down and let myself be known? But why were they not walking towards me? And why did they have rifles slung over their shoulders? Wasn’t the War over and even if it wasn’t why the rifles, wasn’t I a friend by adoption? What kind of navy did they belong to? No wonder they lost the War or had they? Had the Germans given them some secret weapon and had we lost or were we losing? I recognized the symptoms of stress overtaking me and I fought to subdue my emotions with reason.
The sub was kitty corner across from me. Three members of the crew had landed about a 100 yards down the beach. I watched while my friend sat down in the life raft or rather he was pushed down. In fact if my eyes were not deceiving, he was slapped by one of them who was not carrying a rifle–an officer obviously, what else could he be? I couldn’t believe what I was watching. He was being treated more like a prisoner than he was a hero.
Somewhere West of Fiji Page 10
