I stayed at Walter Reed hospital for the next month. During that time, I was called on by a number of lawyers from the Justice Department. I also collected my back pay, less what had been bled off by mandatory allotments to Gene. I received my mail from some army post that had been designated as a kind of dead letter office for missing soldiers and sailors.
One of the first to catch my eye was from Gene. But before I opened it I sorted through the others. There was only this one from her, another bad sign.
She came directly to the point. She didn’t still love me as her mother had said. In fact she left me with no doubt that she had been playing around long before I crashed. She still reiterated about not wanting to see me. Bear in mind this letter was mailed before I crashed, long before I had been declared missing. When the full realization of this struck me, I crumbled the letter not bothering to finish it. I wanted custody of my son, but given the history of like cases, I really didn’t think I had much of a chance. It might be possible to visit him at his grandmother’s; but I had no intention of ever seeing Gene again. Before the day was over, I had cancelled further allotments. Legal authority will adjudge whatever she will continue to receive, but I don’t expect it will be much since she is remarried. I should be broken up by the news of her divorce, but strangely I’m not.
Chapter 18
I had been at Walter Reed almost a month when I received orders to report to a fighter base in Arizona. I can’t tell you what a relief this was, because I was afraid they were going to recommend I be discharged. The service was cutting way back. I didn’t want to leave. The truth is, my goal was always to become an officer in the Air Corps. Whether there had been a War or not that’s what I intended to do. I planned on graduating from high school and then working summers and part time to pay my way to college. That was the requirement, two years of college before applying for aviation cadet training. Realistically, I had given up on going to West Point, a desire more than a goal. But graduating from the aviation cadet program at that time would have guaranteed me a reserve commission only. After two years of active duty, I probably would have been released to the inactive reserves. I would have been put on standby status in case there was another war. At the time this seemed highly improbable to me, so I was straddling the fence. I may have told you that I once was considering going on to college and trying for a degree in engineering, maybe then going into aviation cadets and working toward a regular commission. But that’s when I married Gene and that’s when the War started and changed everything.
And the psychiatrists were not too shocked; at least they didn’t find any mental aberrations warranting discharge when I told them about my out of body experiences. One told me it was not uncommon; there were numerous cases on record of it happening to people under extreme stress. He told me it was a religious matter more than it was medical, and then let it go without further comment. That is he never commented to me but I wondered at the time if he hadn’t forwarded another report to the medics at my Arizona base. It was several months later that I found out my worst fears would be realized.
Before I left the hospital, I received another set of orders. My transfer to Arizona was delayed. I was going back to Japan for an indeterminate period of time. This was a temporary assignment with my station still being in Arizona. I was obviously going to be called on to testify in one or more tribunals against the military and civilian hierarchy responsible for the major atrocities uppermost in the minds of returning veterans and the civilian population. The press, nationwide, seemed to be interested in keeping the hard feelings against Japan alive. Most people were tired of the War and wanted to get back to a normal life. But the crimes against our military in captivity and against the Chinese were just too much, so the papers and the radio were full of stories calculated to expedite the tribunals that Aokie knew were coming. How could they not be, he once told me. But where did that leave the Emperor? It left him right where General MacArthur and President Truman wanted him to be–back in his palace tending to his hobbies and fading from the limelight and the stage that was being set to showcase his generals.
The way I had it figured, I was only going to testify that I knew Aoki and that he had in his possession the papers we had talked about. My testimony would allow the prosecution to admit them into evidence.
Strange, the way in which the secret projects of the I-400 submarine program and the planned wide spread destruction of populations was kept under raps. I thought they would be the focus, but they were not. They were only interested in the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. There was nothing about germ warfare, I suppose, because the reality was so hideous and unthinkable that it might reopen the case against Hirohito. MacArthur had put it to bed for now, and his officers conducting the tribunal didn’t want to reopen it.
I played a small but vital role in the final outcome, resulting in capital punishment for the top Japanese brass. Another thing that comes to mind: perhaps the prosecution’s reluctance to dwell on the germ warfare thing was to avoid any attempt by the defense to compare it to the use of the atom bomb. There wasn’t of course; the atom bomb was being seen as the savior of the Japanese nation and not as an atrocity. The American Air Force would have destroyed the Japanese population if the War had been allowed to continue. The Japanese military were committed to a mass death of themselves and their people before they would have surrendered, and the Air Force was committed to continuing on until it was a reality. The bomb was the shock necessary for the Emperor to declare an unconditional surrender that brought it all to a close.
I called Joyce as soon as I reached Washington. I had her address but the operator informed me the number had been disconnected. It might have had something to with the telegram I received while in Hawaii.
I wanted her to invite me to her home as soon as I returned from Japan. I had some more leave coming and I intended to spend it with her if she would let me. I had forgotten Gene. My new love, and the woman that would make my live worth living was Joyce. I couldn’t wait for it to happen. I hadn’t told her so, but I had mailed her a picture of me and she must have tacitly approved because she never terminated our relationship. This was the woman I wanted to marry. It had been in the back of mind since the first few days on the island. And I knew it without a doubt the minute I read Gene’s letter.
This welding of our souls’ if it can be called that was the thing Coleridge and Emerson were seeking. It had happened to us, this “teletransporting” of what I choose to call our beings. It had happened because of my circumstances, something that had been denied the New England Transcendentalists. They strongly suspected it could, as had many devotees of eastern religions. But how many had succeeded in making it happen? I have no way of knowing. But it doesn’t matter; I know it can happen because it happened to me.
If anybody chooses to argue or object to this phenomenon as some kind of hallucination, then their argument is not with me it is with hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people that believe the reaching of Nirvana is the ultimate goal of mankind in this life.
Chapter 19
Since I had requested the medical assistance of a psychiatrist at Fiji, and again at Hawaii, I expected they would be waiting to put me in the loony ward at Walter Reed. They had plenty there from combat, though, from New Guinea to Saipan and a few islands in between. But they didn’t and for that I am thankful. But it was a big mistake, telling them. Once that gets on your record it is permanent. Trouble is a lot of people read it and don’t understand because it is in Latin or Greek. They just know something mentally was wrong with you and maybe it still is.
They did bring me from the airplane in an ambulance, just like a combat soldier. But of course I wasn’t, but I had come down with a periodic case of what they were calling the gout. I thought only the aristocracy from the middle ages got that, and that’s because they were living high on the hog, literally. I mean because they were eating a lot of meat, mostly pork. They were the only ones who could afford it. Anyway I ce
rtainly had. In fact I was eating protein from the first day I landed on the island, either in the form of fish, shellfish or pork.
It started in my big toe of all places. The pain was so bad I could hardly walk at times. Of course, I had no idea that my kidneys were not processing uric acid and it was accumulating in my joints. These crystals of uric acid could just as well have accumulated in one of my knees but as I understand it, the big toe is often the most likely place.
So like it or not, I was a hero just like the real ones lying up on the wards. Nevertheless, I was embarrassed. It didn’t help that I had been on the island for four years with two Japanese, and that I had killed three others from a submarine and one from a raft. All this came from the report of the intelligence debriefer at Fiji, and now here at Walter Reed, liberally mixed with their personal take on things.
When it got out that there was a navy pilot involved, the press showed up. I suppose it was a slow news-day, because my new bunkmate that is the guy, who slept next to me, told me I was going to make the New York papers. The exact thing, he says, they like to print. The daily struggle of the wounded to recover from their wounds, and to just continue to live was lost on them. The War had been over for six months and already they were choosing to forget.
I had been there two days, when agents from the FBI showed up for an interview. They started out by telling me that I had the further interest of Mr. Hoover their director. The way they said it sounded as though he had a special place of favor in their minds and hearts. And I guess he was entitled, but all I knew about him was that he was a G-man and had his picture, along with that of Melvin Purvis, on cereal box tops. I also knew that Purvis shot Pretty Boy Floyd and John Dillinger, two big time bank robbers.
The next day, two more jokers from the State Department showed up with a Japanese and another guy who spoke the language fluently. I was to learn in short order that two of them represented the prosecution in yet another trial, and in the coming tribunal for a dozen or so of Yamashita’s top echelon. The Japanese was part of a defense team. They were all there to take a deposition from me, relieving me of personally having to go back to Japan to testify.
They swore me in as though I was in a court–the fact was, I was. Then they asked me questions and I was cross-examined by the Japanese and his interpreter. They were interested in my testimony about what Aokie told me about Pearl Harbor and some of the atrocities they had committed. But most of all they wanted to see and photograph the pictures and written documents contained in Tash’s briefcase.
Did I tell you that Tash left the contents of his briefcase at Fiji? I had vouched for him and signed a short affidavit that was witnessed and verified and it became a legal document. I also swore that not only had Tash befriended me but that he had saved my life. From then on he was treated with respect, not like a prisoner but they did in fact roll out the red carpet for him.
I was told he would go back to Tokyo or what was left of it. There he would be turned over to a special division of the army. He would want for nothing, I was told. That was good enough for me, so we parted with a handshake and bows all around and he left on a navy cargo ship. I gave him my permanent address and told him to write when he got settled. I also told him I would write a recommendation to whomever he intended to work for. I also told him I would contact any government bureau he would later contact if he wanted to become a citizen. He left smiling, not many other Japanese had been treated as well. He felt he owed me something for my taking an interest in him. I think he thought he was going to jail for at least a couple of years.
The officer next to me in the hospital was a Captain Carl Wycliff. He said he had been there a few months and he obviously knew his way around. We each had a wheel chair and for the first few days we wheeled all over the hospital on the Cook’s Tour.
That night I told him my story, all of it–every bit I could think of, even about my various encounters with Joyce. Then I asked him how to get in contact with her. He told me that it didn’t surprise him that I wanted to. Then he told me he would do the same thing, after telling me how sorry he was about Gene.
He had come into the commissioned ranks of the army from just before they started the draft in the fall of 1940, a year before Pearl Harbor. He had been a member of the Civilian Conservation Corps. When it disbanded, he went directly to officer training as did many of them. Their units were under the direction of “old army” soldiers and they were considered to be a cut above the draftees that came later. They were almost combat ready. It is said of these fellows that they saved us. They were a waiting cadre that formed a welcome foundation to the army that would go from a scant thousand to millions almost over night.
While it took me almost a year to earn a commission, I suppose I made it in record time. I came directly from college under the flying program at that time. Later when the army ran out of two-year college attendees, they settled for high school graduates. And then much later, they had the time to send those that qualified to a university for a semester of mostly math, physics and English.
While at Fiji, I had been promoted to first lieutenant a formality that came after 18 months of commissioned service. A week after I had been at Walter Reed, I was promoted again to captain with a brief ceremony on the ward presided over by one of the hospital staff. It didn’t mean much; I still had the same bed and the same uniform. The daily uniform being pajamas and an issued robe that was distinguished from enlisted patients only in color.
We did a lot of talking those first few days, something I hadn’t done in years. That is to say something I hadn’t done except to Joyce and Gene. It was then I continued our conversation with Carl about Joyce. I wanted to know how to go about telephoning her. I had sent a “V” mail, a small light letter popular during the War. Since most if not all mail was travelling by aircraft it returned stamped “recipient refused” in a couple of weeks.
I showed it to my new friend. He shrugged his shoulders telling me it was a mistake. Obviously she wasn’t there, he said, and not to pay too much attention to it. Bum address he said.
Then he told me not to waste anymore time. Downstairs, he said, is an operator with a switchboard. All I had to do was show up and give her my address. He told me she had reference books that converted addresses to telephone numbers. She even called it for me, asking the lady coming on the line if she would accept the charges. She reluctantly said yes.
She knew what was in my letter; she had opened it and then resealed it. Now she was quick to tell me that there was nobody by the name of Joyce living there. Furthermore her son had never married. Then she wanted to know again if the navy had been advised of his whereabouts. Before I could answer, she told me they should be. And the packet of letters and the briefcase I had mentioned did not come from any wife of his because he died single. She told me the navy would take care of things. They had advised her four years ago that her son was missing and she said they would continue to take care of things without my help. This is commentary on my writing about how I had taken an oath to see that he was brought back to the states. She told me she didn’t want him to come back. She said he was to be buried in one of the military cemeteries either in the Far East or at San Diego.
I hardly had a chance to say anything. But before she hung up, she told me this should end our conversation on the subject.
But the thing that really startled me was her again telling me that he was not married, and that she had never heard of anybody named Joyce.
I talked this over with my friend after the lights were out. He agreed that something was going on, and likely as not it involved money. He said it sounded to him as though there was a big inheritance duel going on between his mother and his wife, and that his mother was trying to pull some kind of a scam on his new wife. Being a man of the world, he had already concluded that my navy friend must have married Joyce on the spur of the moment and that she had not been acceptable to his family.
He looked at the address again, and then told me h
e had worked for a while in Vermont on an outdoor ski lift, one of the governments hundreds of conservation projects. He said he knew the area. He said it was really upscale, which I didn’t doubt. I had made up my mind about that from the first moment I saw the briefcase. Then I told him I was satisfied Joyce was top-notch, not only because of her letters but also because of her taste in leatherwork. He assured me she was, but I could tell he knew a lot about women of the times, especially those who lived near military bases. This colored his judgment. That his mother had disowned her also said a lot to him. But he kept it to himself. But I could tell he wasn’t blaming the mother completely.
That’s all I had to go on. I didn’t remind him that I had talked to Joyce before many times and I knew her better than he did.
He never gave up on me, though. He said if I was determined to find her, he would help me.
He said he was from the New York area and he knew some people who knew some people. So he outlined a course of action for me to think over and approve. In the meantime, he said if it were up to him, he would go see the old “bity.” What could it hurt, and anyway she was just a short train ride from where his friends in the City were located.
The next day, he came wheeling up to my bed. He had a map and a pencil. He was all prepared to play detective, but really he was bored stiff with his life in the hospital. But to his credit, he had become a good friend and he genuinely wanted to help me–although I could tell it might be against his better judgment.
Somewhere West of Fiji Page 17
