No Ordinary Joes

by Larry Colton

  The routine at Ofuna, Bob quickly learned, was tightly regimented. Each morning at five minutes before reveille, a guard marched down the corridors yelling at the prisoners to get up. After folding their blankets and placing them in a corner of their cells, they were marched outside and forced to run around the compound, usually for a distance of three or four miles or until a prisoner fell. Guards armed with baseball-bat-sized clubs were positioned at four different places round the perimeter. Anyone lagging behind was beaten across the back and legs. Almost all of the prisoners were either malnourished or suffering from beriberi, so few made the run without being beaten or collapsing, including Bob. Twice in his first month he was caught trying to whisper to other prisoners and the guards made everyone stand at attention for ten straight hours. But their favorite trick to punish Bob was something he called the Ofuna Crouch—bent at the knees, back straight, arms overhead, and up on the balls of his feet. As soon as he wavered or fell, which he always did, a guard beat him with a club and forced him to resume the position. Each day, after exercise period was over, he and the other prisoners were marched back to their rooms and fed one teacup of rice and a cup of thin soup, precisely measured.

  Fitzgerald had been taken to the interrogation center and questioned almost daily by officers he’d named the QKs, or Quiz Kids. One focus of their questioning was where the Grenadier and other American submarines were based. (Someone on the crew—and nobody knew for sure who it was—had coughed up the real name of the sub.) Fitzgerald was determined to provide them with no useful information, no matter the consequences. From their questions, he determined that they believed American subs were stationed in Sydney on the east coast of Australia, so he played along, telling them the Grenadier had arrived there directly from Pearl Harbor by traveling east of the Marshals and past the Fiji Islands. They also wanted to know how many American subs had been sunk or damaged. Again he lied, telling them fifty subs had failed to return and over forty were seriously damaged. On questions about the design and specifics of the Grenadier, he provided them only with information that was readily available in Jane’s Fighting Ships, a book he knew they had in their possession. When they intercepted a radio broadcast from Australia that mentioned American subs refueling at Exmouth on the northwestern Australian coast, he maintained he knew nothing about that, even though the Grenadier had taken on fuel there on its fateful last patrol. To make sure that Lieutenant Hardy and the other crew members told the same story, he left short, cryptic messages in the benjo after each interrogation or whispered to them as they exercised. Bob had been questioned several times and he had repeated the same story.

  Still holding the rice ball, Bob paced the four steps across his cell and then back the other way. By his calculations he still had a couple of minutes before the guard opened his door.

  Pacing his cell was what he did every day, pacing and thinking. Usually his thoughts went to Barbara. He relived their wedding night—the late-night ceremony at the church on Dolores Street in San Francisco, dinner at Vanessi’s, making love in the apartment on Pine Street. He pictured what it would be like if he survived all this: She would greet him as he got off the ship and walked down the gangplank. She would be wearing the new charcoal-colored dress and pillbox hat she’d bought for their wedding. She’d be so beautiful, so happy to see him. It would be the happiest day of his life. He’d been unfaithful on leave in Australia, but in his mind, that had nothing to do with how much he loved Barbara. Getting home to her was what mattered. Maybe he’d stay in the Navy; before he left he’d talked to Barbara about maybe trying to become an officer. That had impressed her. Or maybe they’d move back to Oregon. In his head he designed the house they’d live in on the Rogue River. He would be able to fish right from the porch. Barbara would cook the trout and serve it with sweet potatoes and huckleberry ice cream. And then they’d make love. And there would be kids. Maybe three, maybe four.

  In his darkest hours, he worried that Barbara had given him up for dead and had already met someone else.

  Hearing the guard’s footsteps approach his cell, he stuffed the rice ball under his arm and waited. The door opened; it was Big Stoop.

  Walking toward the door, Bob felt the rice ball start to slip and pressed his elbow closer to his side, pinning it more firmly in place. He wasn’t worried about being beaten; he didn’t want the rice ball to be taken away before he could give it to Captain Fitzgerald.

  Moving briskly down the long corridor, he made it outside and stashed the rice ball under a bench, then turned to look for Fitzgerald; there was no sign of him.

  “Speedo, speedo,” Big Scoop gave the command to start running.

  Forty-five minutes later, exhausted and sore from being clubbed several times, Bob finally wobbled to a stop; there was still no sign of Fitzgerald. Shoved along by Big Stoop, he headed back toward his cell, the rice ball still hidden under the bench.

  Sitting at the bar in the Sir Francis Drake Hotel, Barbara Palmer eyed her watch. It was January 1944, nine months after Bob had been captured. She’d come to the hotel with friends, a married couple who had arranged to have a male friend come and join them for a drink. The guy was already ten minutes late.

  In May 1943, a month after the ship had gone down, she had been at home early one evening when there was a knock at the door. It was Western Union with a telegram from the Department of the Navy, informing her that the Grenadier had been lost on patrol and the whereabouts of the crew were unknown. She cried herself to sleep that night. For a week she stayed home from her filing job with Southern Pacific on Montgomery Street, alternately crying and checking with the Red Cross and the Navy to see if there was any news on the crew. She heard nothing. She took a bus home to Medford to spend a few days with her parents and Martin and Cora, Bob’s father and stepmother. Her father was surprisingly supportive. He and Bob had gotten along better on Bob’s last trip home, Bob winning points by talking with her father about the workings of the submarine. Barbara’s mom, although sympathetic, was quick to remind her what she’d said about the hardships Barbara would encounter raising a baby if anything happened to Bob. For his part, Bob’s father refused to accept the possibility that his son was dead, diverting the conversation to talk about what a lousy job FDR was doing and how his policies were responsible for Bob’s being missing. Barbara was not political, but she wondered why Martin disliked FDR so much, considering that it was a WPA project building the roads and lodge at Crater Lake that had employed him during the Depression. But questioning her elders wasn’t part of her personality.

  Still seated at the bar, Barbara checked her watch again. Her “date” was now twenty minutes late.

  Coming to the Sir Francis Drake had become one of her favorite things to do in the last couple of months. She loved the hotel’s elegance and high style, with its classic crystal chandeliers, gilded ceilings, curved marble staircase, and a lounge that overlooked Union Square and the Powell Street cable cars. Plus, it was a favorite spot of naval officers, and she took every opportunity to ask them if they’d heard anything about the Grenadier. None had, of course, but they usually bought her a drink. She appreciated their company.

  Since returning from visiting her parents in Oregon, Barbara had done her best to keep busy. With friends, she went to several USO events. It made her feel better to dance with the servicemen and feel like she was helping the war effort. She went to Grace Cathedral, where volunteers gathered to help sort supplies to be sent to servicemen. And not a week went by that she didn’t check with the Red Cross and Navy for any possible news about the Grenadier. In November 1943 on a trip to the Red Cross, seven months after the sinking, she saw a new listing:

  U.S.S. Grenadier (SS210)

  Prisoners of War

  The following men reported missing on the U.S.S. Grenadier are carried as Prisoners-of-War on the records of the Casualties and Allotments Section, Bureau of Naval Personnel, Navy Department, Washington, D.C.

  The names were listed in alphabetic
al order, from Ralph Adkins to Peter Zucco. Her eyes went straight to the P’s: Piaka, Pierce, Poss, Price … but no Palmer. She read it again, over and over, and could not find Bob’s name. She counted the names: forty-one. She didn’t know the exact number of men on the ship, but thought it to be around sixty. She looked for Captain Fitzgerald’s name. It was not there either. Did some of the men survive and not others? Had Bob drowned? Was he shot trying to escape? She went to the Navy offices on Treasure Island and she called back to the Red Cross almost daily, and always got the same answer: “I’m sorry, we have no further information at this time.” She cried every night, every morning.

  In early December 1943 a small package arrived at her apartment on Pine Street with an Australian postmark. She hesitated to open it; she didn’t think she could take any more bad news. Finally, she unwrapped it, and her knees nearly buckled. It contained Bob’s Navy dog tags and wallet and a short note from a woman named Leslie Phillips, informing her that Bob had left these at her house before his last patrol, and she figured Barbara would want them back. There was no explanation of why Bob had been at her house. Barbara assumed the worst.

  The more she thought about it, the angrier and more hurt she got. Instead of continuing to cry herself to sleep every night, she resolved to start going out again. “I guess if he could go out, so can I,” she told her cousin Margie.

  A naval officer in his dress whites sat down next to her at the Sir Francis Drake bar. He signaled the bartender for a cocktail. She noticed he wore the dolphin insignia, the symbol of the submarine service.

  As she usually did when she met Navy men, she told him that her husband had been on the Grenadier and was reported lost at sea. The officer expressed his regrets, then introduced himself. His name was Robert Kunhardt, and his submarine, the Sawfish, had just returned to San Francisco for a major overhaul after suffering damage from depth charges on its last patrol. He would be in town for three weeks.

  The bartender brought his drink. He was, by Barbara’s initial estimate, well mannered and nice looking, 5 feet 7 inches, with broad shoulders and blue eyes.

  Three hours and several drinks later, they said good-bye, making a date for the next night. Her original date never showed. Returning to her apartment, Barbara shared her excitement with her roommate. “He’s a graduate of Annapolis and an officer,” she enthused. “I can’t wait to see him again.”

  Through the thin walls of his cell, Bob heard a guard’s footsteps coming down the corridor. He quickly finished urinating and moved the floor plank back into position. Normally prisoners were supposed to summon a guard when they had to go to the toilet, but sometimes the guards didn’t respond, and prisoners had learned to remove one of their floor planks and relieve themselves on the ground below, a practice that ran the risk of a beating if detected.

  Bob spotted a fly and quickly took off his T-shirt and swatted it out of the air. He picked it up and put it into a pencil box he’d been given to store his dead flies. Flies were everywhere in Ofuna, and the camp commander had set up a system in which prisoners were rewarded with an extra cigarette for each box of flies they collected. Bob had become an expert fly killer.

  His cell door opened, and Liver Lips stood in the doorway, motioning for him to follow. The guard always carried a thick bamboo stick that he used to hit prisoners; usually, being summoned by Liver Lips meant a trip to the interrogation room or a beating. Bob took a deep breath and followed Liver Lips down the corridor.

  Bob told himself that whenever the intensity of the beatings increased, it was a sign of an Allied victory somewhere, and the POWs were paying the price. Getting accurate details on the war’s progress, of course, was not easy. Guards had told him that San Francisco had fallen and Tojo was in Washington, D.C. The most reliable source on war news came from the newest prisoners to arrive in camp, but because the prisoners weren’t permitted to speak with one another, this wasn’t always possible. Still, Bob had been able to whisper to Captain Fitzgerald about the rice ball under the bench, and Captain Fitzgerald had been able to let Bob know that he’d found it and eaten it with great appreciation.

  Arriving at the medical office, Liver Lips pushed Bob inside. Bob stiffened. The medical facilities at Ofuna were woefully bad, with no doctor and only a minimum of supplies. There was a “medical technician” on site by the name of Kitamura Congochyo, a man the prisoners had nicknamed “The Quack” and considered to be one of the most sadistic men on staff. Since arriving at Ofuna, Bob had seen men with a wide array of medical problems—from scurvy and beriberi to intestinal parasites and pneumonia—denied treatment. When the men were allowed to go to the medical office, nobody seemed to come back improved. Some never came back at all. There was no shortage of horror stories: amputations performed with no anesthetic, bamboo strips used for acupuncture to the eyes. If the Red Cross was sending medical supplies, they weren’t being used on prisoners.

  Upon entering the office, Bob spotted a familiar face across the room, Greg “Pappy” Boyington. Standing next to him was The Quack. Liver Lips pushed Bob in their direction. With the possible exception of Captain Fitzgerald, Bob admired Boyington as much as anyone in camp.

  Boyington, an ace Marine fighter pilot from Idaho, had recently arrived in camp after being shot down in a dogfight over the island of New Britain. A notorious bad boy with a proclivity for fistfights and drinking, he had formed a flying unit of misfits called the Black Sheep Squadron. His nickname was Pappy because he was ten years older than everyone else in the squadron. The Black Sheep quickly became a lethal force, credited with ninety-four downed Japanese planes. Nineteen of those were by Boyington, five of those in one day. After being shot down, he was pronounced missing in action and presumed dead. (In March 1944 he was awarded the Navy Cross and the Congressional Medal of Honor, to be held in Washington, D.C., “until such time as he could receive it.”) Brought to Ofuna after his capture, he arrived in camp with an infected thigh wound he’d sustained when he was shot down. Since being in camp, he’d been beaten endlessly, his request for medical attention to his wound ignored until now.

  The Quack ordered Boyington to lie down on a table, then signaled Bob to stand next to him. Bob glanced down at Boyington’s gaping wound, almost gagging at the look and smell of the infected leg. He quickly figured out why he’d been summoned: he was there to hold Boyington down by his shoulders.

  Using a knife that looked like it had been borrowed from the kitchen, The Quack sliced open Boyington’s thigh. Keeping his hold on Boyington, Bob turned his head. If he’d had anything to eat, he was sure he would’ve thrown it up. Boyington gritted his teeth, but didn’t flinch or yell out.

  After probing the wound, The Quack removed a bullet fragment, then wrapped the leg in gauze and ordered Bob to help Boyington back to his cell. Boyington declined the help and hobbled back on his own. Bob was positive he’d just spent time with the toughest guy on earth. He felt reenergized and even more determined to be strong.

  31

  Tim “Skeeter” McCoy

  Fukuoka #3

  Working in the pipe shop at the steel mill, Tim waited until there were no guards or civilian pushers hovering nearby. Now was the time to make his move. “Whistle if you see somebody coming,” he said to Gordy Cox.

  Gordy nodded, although he wasn’t sure he even had the strength to whistle. In the last couple of weeks, the malnutrition and dysentery had taken their toll. It was all he could do every morning to get up for roll call and climb on the flatbed car for the thirty-minute ride to the steel mill. Still, he was one of many who thought that going to work was better than taking their chances at the camp hospital.

  A Japanese worker had recently changed the blade on one of the nearby band saws. Tim eased his way toward the saw, sliding past other prisoners and Japanese workers. Nobody paid him any attention. Of all the Grenadier prisoners, he was the one always moving around, leaving his position, testing the limits. He was committed to doing whatever he could to make things tougher
for his captors, and nothing had diminished his resolve—not standing naked in the snow or watching the dead bodies being wheeled out of camp to the crematorium.

  Reaching the band saw, he glanced around. It wasn’t just the guards he was worried about. He was also leery of the civilian workers, the pushers. For them to catch a POW stealing was not only a victory for the empire but also a way to earn personal praise or, better yet, be rewarded with extra food; their rations had also been reduced.

  Confident that nobody was looking, he grabbed the blade and pulled, bending it in the middle. It didn’t break. He pulled harder, this time snapping it in two. He quickly took half the blade and stuffed it into his pocket, and then turned and headed back to his station.

  Now his task was to file it down into a knife blade, and then smuggle it out of the pipe shop and sneak it past the guards and into camp.

  Tim waited in line to board the flatbed car for the ten-mile train ride back to Fukuoka #3, watched by two armed guards.

  He climbed up onto the flatbed car and sat down on his small, three-legged wooden stool. The POWs had talked the factory administrators into letting them make these stools in the carpentry shop so that they wouldn’t have to sit on the wet, dirty floor for the thirty-minute ride. What the Japanese didn’t know was that most of these stools had been crafted with a false bottom, and the POWs used them to smuggle things in and out of camp. The most frequently smuggled items were cigarettes and food.

  Tim had successfully filed down the saw blade and slipped it into the false bottom of his stool; his plan was to deliver it to Dr. Herbert Markowitz, a Navy doctor who had been captured on Wake Island. Exactly what the doctor would use it for Tim wasn’t sure, maybe to lance the boils the prisoners had developed from malnutrition. The reason didn’t matter to Tim; all that mattered was that Dr. Markowitz had said he needed it. Like all the prisoners, Tim had great respect for Dr. Markowitz, although he knew that the doctor was limited in what he could do because of the lack of supplies and the fact that the Japanese controlled everything that went on in the hospital.