by Karin Tanabe
Agatha walked to the door and turned to look at Leo one more time before she left. She leaned her head against the door frame, nicked and worm eaten, and said, “Luchik, do you think I’m in love with you?”
Leo sat up quickly, his head light, and asked, “Should I think that?”
“I think you should,” Agatha replied, pulling the door closed behind her.
CHAPTER 28
CHRISTIAN LANGE
JANUARY–FEBRUARY 1944
Christian moved his feet through the mire, weighed down by anxiety and illness. His lungs felt blackened and his skin irritated and burning, his thick Army uniform abrasive in the heat. But somehow, he was walking fast, low branches full of long thorns tearing at his arms as he protected his face.
In training in Texas and Hawaii, his commanders had said that combat skills would all become second nature. That a soldier’s instincts to kill or be killed was honed in the Army training grounds. “You’ll learn everything you need to know during your training,” Christian’s sergeant had said. “It will all become mechanical. Then, when you are fighting on the ground against the enemy, your adrenaline will just push go and you’ll find yourself brawling like the devil.”
But as far as Christian was concerned, those assurances failed to address two problems: he had no real desire to kill anyone, for freedom or country, and he was in love with Emi Kato, an enemy citizen.
The Seventh Infantry Division had gone through amphibious assault training on Maui for weeks and then been assigned to V Amphibious Corps under the Marines. Christian had gone to Maui only near the end of the training, and Jack Walter even later. But at the end of January, because of the size of the force needed for an offensive on Japanese territory, the two found themselves on one of the massive ships heading deep into the Pacific toward Kwajalein Atoll for the U.S. military’s long-planned Operation Flintlock.
The soldiers spent eight days on the boat, the ship moving swiftly into the South Pacific. The enlisted men were made to go over their operation with their superiors, from beginning to end, day after day, making sure they were as prepared as could be. Sitting on that boat, smoking and cursing with the others, Christian was ready. He wasn’t exactly what the Army wanted, but he felt he could do his job and survive. Even Jack had slapped him on the back—then, as was more his style, on the side of the head—and said, “You’re tough enough to do this, kraut—believe!”
But what he was about to engage in had not become clear to Christian until they reached Carlson Island, one of the smaller islands in the Kwajalein Atoll, part of the Pacific’s Marshall Islands under Japanese rule.
The landing went smoothly, but as soon as Christian’s boots were in the water, then on land on Carlson—the humid, soggy, foreign land—he knew something was wrong. He wasn’t driven by anger and adrenaline, as the boys around him seemed to be, but instead with a terrible sense of wrongdoing.
With his feet on enemy territory, the reality of war hit him like a fist to the jaw. He’d been dropped into the wrong place and given the wrong job—worse, it was one he’d willingly signed up for.
As the soldiers ahead of him gunned down the few enemy troops they came upon, Christian and his unit were tasked with hauling ammunition and weapons onto land. Setting out to cross the island in the dark, Christian tried to keep his eyes and his thoughts fixed on the man ahead of him, but all he could think was that he should have gone to Germany. He shouldn’t have been so quick to abandon his family. “I might have died, but I wouldn’t have had to kill anyone else,” he said to Jack as he carried artillery across the wet soil. “Now I’ll die here, with blood on my hands. Why did I think I could do this?”
“Shut up with the introspective crap,” said Jack, grunting under the weight of the machinery he was shouldering. “You’d better shoot any bastard who is about to shoot me, kraut. If you can’t be trusted, I’m leaving you to be speared by the Japanese. You like them so much now, but I bet you’ll sing a different tune when you’re in their POW camps. You’ll see what mean bastards they can be.”
“Most of the Japanese I met were American citizens,” Christian pointed out, but of course, Emi wasn’t.
“Listen. Stop overthinking things and just shoot them,” Jack said, his gun strapped to him, ready to do just that at all times. “Forget about souls and mothers and fathers and all those details and just fire away. If you don’t, you’re not going to leave here alive, and because I feel some strange kinship to you after being your babysitter in Wisconsin, I probably won’t, either.”
“And I won’t, either,” said Dave, who still hadn’t shaken off his nickname. “Because none of these assholes will try to save a pacifist. My best shot is the both of you.”
“It is pretty funny,” said Jack, trying to step on the Dove’s foot, which was tapping like a heartbeat. “How’d they let you in here anyway?”
“It’s called a draft,” said Dave. “Just shoot someone if they’re trying to shoot me, Lange,” he said, looking at Christian. “You know Jack won’t.”
Jack started to argue, but then he said, “You’re right. I need to cover someone who’ll actually cover me back. Kraut, you’ll have to save the Dove. Though it’s not very pacifist to ask someone to take someone else’s life just to save yours,” Jack scolded.
Christian hoped that he would be able to. That he’d be fearless enough to pull the trigger, if it came to that. When he’d been training in Texas, he hadn’t doubted his ability to fire at the enemy. They weren’t Emi. They were men trained to kill. But now, with bullets in his gun meant for someone else’s temple, he wasn’t so sure of himself.
On Carlson Island, they were tasked, like most of the unit’s other grunts, with setting up the artillery they had just carried. A February 1 assault on the larger Kwajalein Island was about to begin. When Carlson looked as if it had enough explosive power to take out the entire island chains all the way to Japan, they retired to their assigned camp, swarms of mosquitoes feasting on them as they waited for their orders to begin.
In their section, Dave had set up a wooden cross, little more than two sticks held together with a paper tie. Because he was sure it was the right thing to do when one’s life was on shaky ground, Christian knelt in front of it next to Dave and clasped his hands. He prayed for himself and for his parents and Inge at the camp. His mother had written to say that they were being repatriated to Germany in February along with Inge and her family. She sounded relieved that they were finally leaving Crystal City, and wrote that if they didn’t survive the voyage, she forgave Christian for enlisting. She confessed that she was scared of the boat ride and that she didn’t want to die angry at her only child. Christian had quickly written back saying that of course she wouldn’t die and that he was sorry and would see her very soon. But he was much sorrier now, praying in the middle of the Pacific, that he’d made the decision he did.
Seeing that Dave still had his eyes tight shut, Christian also prayed for Emi’s safety in Tokyo, and that one of the letters he had sent would reach her somehow and compel her to write back. And because the Dove looked like he was going to utter devotions all night, Christian threw Jack and Kurt from Crystal City into his prayers, too.
Jack came up to them after a few minutes and said, “Just about everyone in the world is praying for someone to stay alive. You can’t expect your prayers to be answered first, gentlemen. And with the look of that crappy cross, they’ll probably be answered last. If I were God, I’d be offended by that craftsmanship.” He bent down and broke off part of it, carving a toothpick from the wood.
“I can pray for as many unrealistic outcomes as I want,” said Christian, leaning back on his boot heels. “You have to be blindly optimistic during war, right, Dave? If not, every enlisted man would end up deserting. If you let the fear and pessimism win, you’re not going to stick around to see if a bullet gets you or not.”
Dave nodded.
“Good, because I already feel extremely pessimistic. I need some sort of d
ivine intervention.”
“What you need is some fight in you, River Hills,” said Jack. “You’re too emotional.”
“Kneel down and pray,” Dave said to Jack, moving over for him.
Jack shook his head and kicked the cross over with finality. “I did enough praying for my parents after they disappeared, and they never came back, did they? They died instead. Haven’t bothered praying since.”
They all slept badly that night and by the time the sun was visible in the sky, the Seventh was already on the move toward Kwajalein.
“How many Japs are gonna be on this thing?” Christian heard one of the soldiers in their unit ask Dave on the boat.
“I don’t know,” Dave said, so nervous he had his head between his legs. “But it only takes one to kill you.”
“Shut your mouths!” their sergeant yelled. “There’s a huge air and Navy fleet to back up your asses. Look around you! We heavily outnumber the Japs. They should be the ones crying, not you. But they’ll fight till they die—remember that. And Simon, if you throw up on this boat, I will tie a rock to your foot and tip you overboard!”
The men knew that American air and naval bombardments had targeted the island chain for the last two months, but the Seventh would put the first Allied boots on the ground.
“Are you ready for this?” Dave asked Christian, his head still on his knee.
“Absolutely not,” said Christian, as stoic as Dave was panicked. “But we have no choice. We have to jump into the fire.”
“That’s right,” said Jack gleefully. “I was meant for fire.” He looked down at Christian and said, “Chin up, River Hills. It’s just life or death. Yours or theirs. Why be so serious?”
“Silly of me,” said Christian, feeling a lot more like Dave Simon than Jack.
“Hey, you know what I never told you about?” said Jack, suddenly smiling. “Calling you by your formal name, River Hills, reminded me.”
“What’s that?” asked Christian, trying to look at the horizon line to steady himself.
“I went to your house. I went to River Hills, kraut!”
Christian looked back at Jack. “Really?”
Jack gave him a brilliant smile and said, “What a house, kraut. You’re a lucky bastard. Even if you get your brains shot out here, today, you’re still luckier than I’ll ever be.”
“I know,” said Christian, who hadn’t felt lucky since Emi left him. “So what happened to the house? Did you get inside?”
“I didn’t get very far,” Jack admitted. “I was going to dress up all in black and sneak in a window, but before I did, I saw that there was someone living there.”
“What? Who?” said Christian, sitting up.
“The one you said would be there,” said Jack. “The one who reported your dad. Martin something.”
“Martin Macht. I knew it,” said Christian, too nervous to be angry. “Did you speak to him?”
Jack took a long drink of his water and said, “Only a bit. I knocked on the door and he opened it. I asked if you were there, which must have thrown him off, because that’s when he told me who he was.” Jack dropped his gun in Christian’s lap and said. “So if you’re wondering if that’s who fucked you, that’s who fucked you.”
“You didn’t call the police? Write to me?” he asked.
“Nah,” said Jack smiling. “I was about to ship out and see you. Thought it would be more fun to tell you myself.”
“But you didn’t,” said Christian. “Tell me.”
“That’s right. I didn’t. Know why? Because there isn’t shit you or your parents can do about it. You’re about to die in the Pacific,” said Jack, waving his hand at their surroundings, “and your parents are in an internment camp. So I said to myself, why bother the krauts?”
“You’re right,” said Christian, taking Jack’s canteen and pouring the water over his head. “I sure as shit am going to die here.”
Just before eleven in the morning, they had Kwajalein’s shore in sight and were ready to run up the sand. Christian and the other troops looked out at the black smoke billowing up from the already heavily bombed island and after the order from their sergeant, let out a collective yell.
“It’s fucking doomsday!” Jack screamed as they jumped from the boat.
Christian let out his breath, holding his rifle in front of him, and prayed one last time, hoping that somehow his parents, or some higher power, could hear him. Then he jumped into the ocean behind Jack. Between the warm, translucent water and the white sand beaches, the Kwajalein Atoll looked like a brochure for a vacation, not a place for young men to die.
Behind them, American battleships and destroyers were bobbing in the water, and above them, shells were screaming in from the artillery they had set up on Carlson Island the night before. Just a year ago, Christian had been asleep in his pajamas, his parents mere feet away, all comfortably swaddled in happiness and comfort. Now he was walking into gunfire. How could his world have turned on him so quickly?
Jack led Christian and Dave up the beach and into the trees, moving steadily until they heard the gunfire from a Japanese sniper. Christian instinctively pulled Dave down with him into the brush, but Jack was still standing twenty yards ahead of them. Finally, after another round of gunfire erupted, they saw Jack throw himself on the ground and crawl into the brush below the palm trees, their tops seared from the ammunition being dropped by the planes.
The pungent smells of gun shells and burned flesh were knit into the jungle heat, choking the three men as they continued to inch forward with their unit. Christian flinched as a light tank from the Seventh rolled past them, clearing the ground ahead, and Jack hissed at him to stop acting like an abused dog.
Several hundred feet on, they knelt down in foxholes and took turns manning the mortar at that position. When Christian was told to run from his foxhole to one farther on, he stared blankly at his ranking officer, Sergeant Perko.
“We’ve got forty-eight howitzers set up on Carlson, remember, Lange? You have so much cover you might as well be wearing armor!” he shouted. “Now move your ass. We need to move thousands of yards north, not five.” Christian took off, and spent the rest of the day keeping up that pace, as he was tasked with clearing the brush for the other men. It was a job for a disposable soldier, one who wasn’t particularly brave or a good shot, but Christian was glad to have it, especially since he was nowhere ready to fire his gun. He thought of John Sasaki at the camp telling him to enlist. Did he see in Christian the same bravery that his son in the 442nd had? Christian doubted it. It was a recommendation based on love, more than war. Love, it turned out, he was far better at.
Their first day on Kwajalein, the Americans only lost seventeen men, but while they slept under their tarps that night, the Seventh was blindsided by a late Japanese offensive.
The relentless enemy fire continued into morning, and as soon as the sky was streaked with blue, Christian was back in a foxhole, with new orders. No more ripping out bushes on hands and knees; today he would be shooting at Japanese soldiers.
For the first hour, it was nothing but the sound of the jungle coupled with the thrum of his own heartbeat and whispers from Jack about the afterlife. “You’ll be fine if you die, kraut,” he assured Christian. “You’re used to something as boring as heaven. You’re from the suburbs.”
Perko kicked Jack in the knee and they all stayed quiet until they heard movement in the brush.
On signal, Christian rested his elbows on the dirt and tried to get his trigger finger to stop shaking. He held it in his mouth and listened as Perko hissed, “Lange. Pull your fucking trigger. Right now, Lange.” When they both saw that the Japanese soldiers were no longer just sounds, but men in front of them, he screamed, “Shoot!” and Christian stared ahead, still unable to pull.
For the first time, he saw enemy faces. They were distant, but he saw bodies, eyes, skin. He saw men. He looked at them advancing toward them and his hands remained still. Dave was right. When it ca
me down to it, everyone was the same, just blood vessels and heart. All of a sudden, every one of the Japanese men in their drab khaki uniforms felt like him. He shot a desperate glance at Jack, who was reloading his gun, having already fired dozens of rounds.
“Shoot, kraut!” he heard Jack’s voice shouting. “You’re going to get us killed. Shoot!”
Christian turned back to look at the Japanese soldiers and curled his finger around the trigger. He felt the metal against his sweaty skin and thought about all the rounds he had fired in training. Those rounds, despite his sergeant’s assurances, had not prepared him enough. His mind was in a fog, and the buzz of his panic drowned out even Jack’s urgent voice. Finally, he closed his eyes for a split second and pulled.
At first, he only fired straight ahead, aiming at random. But then he spotted a Japanese soldier exposed behind a grove of trees, running toward them, and he fired directly at him. As soon as he pulled, his body tensed and Christian was sure he could see the bullet fly from his gun straight into the man’s heart. He dropped his gun and looked out as the man fell to the ground. He started to stand up, instinctually wanting to run to him, but a hand shoved him roughly down.
“Lange? What in hell are you doing? Get down! You’re going to get killed!” This time it was Dave who was screaming at him.
He’d killed a man. He felt that for the rest of his life, everything would coil around that moment—before he’d stopped someone’s heartbeat, and after. Could you really fight for the Americans? Emi had asked. No, it turned out. He could barely fight at all.
That night, after they had advanced halfway across the island and taken hundreds of enemy lives, Sergeant Perko sat down near Christian and grabbed one of Jack’s hand-rolled cigarettes.
“Finally! Dead Japs,” he said. “I’ve been waiting a lifetime for today.” Perko pretended his hands were a gun and emptied an imaginary round into Christian’s face.
“What’s wrong with you, Lange?” he said as Christian grabbed his hand and pushed it down. “You got at least one kill. I saw that bastard go down. Let’s celebrate. Tomorrow we do it again,” he said, handing him a canteen. “Have some water. Pretend it’s beer.”
