On January 23, 1943, U.S. Army private E. Dickson and Corporal Clinne Lamb of Company F, 163rd Regiment, serving in New Guinea, found the remains of their sergeant, who had been missing for four days. The two American boys swore to the following: “The flesh part of the thigh and each leg had been cut away. The abdominal cavity had been opened by cutting away the skin and flesh under each lower rib. The face had not been mutilated, thus making identification possible. A stew pot in a nearby Japanese bunker contained the heart and liver of approximate size of that [of a] human.”
On May 20, 1945, Australian army warrant officer C. Hugo swore an affidavit that he had found the body of a buddy in New Guinea in this condition:
(a) All clothing had been removed.
(b) Both arms had been cut off at the shoulder.
(c) The stomach had been cut out, and the heart, liver and other entrails had been removed.
(d) All fleshy parts of the body had been cut away, leaving the bones bare.
(e) The arms, heart, liver and entrails could not be found.
(f) The only parts of the body not touched were the head and feet.
(g) A Japanese mess tin in which appeared to contain human flesh was lying four to five yards from [his] body.
Starving Japanese combat troops used battles as a hunt for food, but noncombat units had to devise other means. Japanese officials dispatched an engineering battalion deep into the interior of what is now Indonesia. The engineering battalion used Indo-Pakistani POWs, former Commonwealth soldiers captured in the fall of Singapore, as slave laborers. One of those soldiers was Pakistani Hatam Ali. Ali had been aware that sick prisoners unable to work were immediately shot or given lethal injections and then eaten by the Japanese. But by 1944, the Allies were closing in, supply lines had been cut, and the Japanese had started to eat live, healthy prisoners. Ali told his harrowing story to Australian investigators: “Those selected were taken to a hut where flesh was cut from their bodies while they were alive and they were then thrown into a ditch alive where they later died. When flesh was being cut from those selected terrible cries and shrieks came from them and also from the ditch where they were later thrown. These cries used to gradually dim down when the unfortunate individuals were dying. We were not allowed to go near this ditch, no earth was thrown on the bodies and the smell was terrible.”
The reason the Japanese butchers didn’t kill the prisoners outright was that in the tropics, with no refrigeration, the meat quickly rotted. So they would just hack off parts of the body to provide a meal without killing the prisoner, then toss him into a ditch, where he would survive another day or two, thereby ensuring that his internal organs remained fresh for later consumption. Ears, noses, lips, cheeks, toes, palms, buttocks, shoulders, and thighs were cut and eaten while the main course remained preserved.
The abandonment of troops with no concern for their welfare was a monstrous crime committed by the Spirit Warriors. The starving Japanese boys were brutalized too. But debased officers like General Tachibana and Major Matoba, rather than seeing the horror in their comrades’ predicament, reveled in the morbid stories as they drank themselves into their nightly stupors.
Radioman Jimmy Dye, gunner Grady York, and pilot Warren Earl Vaughn sat tied to trees outside General Tachibana’s headquarters from the afternoon of Friday, February 23, to Monday, February 26.
For all his bravado, there is no record of Major Matoba’s ever laying a hand on any of the prisoners. Glenn and Marve had been outside his headquarters on February 23, but Matoba never interrupted his partying long enough to even view them. On February 24, the major was drinking at General Tachibana’s headquarters and once again, there is no record that he made an effort to get even one Yamato damashii kick in against Jimmy, Grady, or Warren Earl.
Indeed, except for Captain Nakajima’s drunken beating death of Glenn Frazier, there never was any frenzy of hatred toward the prisoners. There were many thousands of Japanese soldiers on the island armed with rifles and knives. Any one of them could have wounded or killed an American. But the Flyboys were not shot or cut, just socked and kicked—de rigueur for members of the emperor’s army.
It seems that the Japanese soldiers, tired from overwork, undernourished, depressed by their prospects, and perhaps only narrowly following orders, mostly ignored the prisoners. Jimmy, Grady, and Warren Earl were certainly roughed up as they sat tied to trees those three days. But presumably this was mostly because soldiers coming and going from the general’s headquarters had to demonstrate their toughness to their commander. The boys were tied there as trophies of General Tachibana, who demanded that his men show proper Japanese spirit.
Under the cover of darkness, however, one soldier showed mercy. Captain Tadaaki Kosuga wanted to help the bound Americans but dared not disobey General Tachibana’s prohibition against feeding them. But he found a way to give the boys something to eat while remaining true to the letter of his commander’s order. “The cakes that I gave to the prisoners were not military-supplied food,” said Kosuga, “but cake which I bought with my own money. Therefore, I thought it would be all right.”
By Monday, February 26, General Tachibana apparently tired of the three dirty and bruised flyers. He decided to send Warren Earl Vaughn to Major Horie (who still had Floyd Hall) for questioning. The 275th and the 307th Battalions would execute Jimmy Dye and Grady York. Colonel Kato’s 307th Battalion would get first choice. “I heard the general say that he was sending a flyer to Colonel Kato because of the number of casualties in his battalion,” said Captain Ikawa.
“We took back the smallest of the three prisoners,” said Sergeant Masao Kishimoto of the 307th. They had chosen five-foot-four-inch Grady York, who probably weighed less than 100 pounds by then, considering his fighting weight was only 106.
“We took one prisoner and brought him back to the 307th Battalion headquarters,” recalled Corporal Shinosuke Taniyama, who never learned Grady’s name. “This flyer had black hair, was about 1.7 meters tall, and was wearing a leather fur-lined jacket. We tied this prisoner to a telephone pole in front of our headquarters. We took turns guarding him until after noon.”
Inside the headquarters, Colonel Kato was deciding who would execute Grady. He had a clerk find out what companies within the battalion had men killed by American bombs. He then selected five men from those companies, to be led by Captain Masao Yamashita. Yamashita was told they should kill Grady with sharpened bamboo spears and bayonets.
After Grady was taken away and Warren Earl was dispatched for interrogation, Jimmy was left alone outside Tachibana’s building. The general then gave the order for the 275th Battalion, the group that had captured Jimmy and Grady on the beach, to execute Jimmy.
“Have that flyer executed with bamboo spears,” Captain Kosuga remembered General Tachibana ordering him. Kosuga phoned the 275th Battalion to express the general’s wishes. Soldiers from the 275th headquarters drove to Tachibana’s headquarters to pick up Jimmy while other soldiers dug his grave and nailed a wooden crossbar to a nearby tree. Jimmy would be tied to the cross and pierced with bamboo spears.
But before the soldiers from the 275th Battalion arrived, someone else came to claim Jimmy.
“A car from the wireless station came,” Kosuga recalled, “and a sailor got out and said he came to get a flyer. He said there was an arrangement between Captain Yoshii, the commander of the radio station, and General Tachibana. I went to the general’s room and told him that the car had come to take a flyer to the Yoake wireless station. The general said, ‘All right,’ and the flyer was sent.” Days earlier, navy captain Yoshii had asked General Tachibana for a prisoner to assist with the radio station’s monitoring of U.S. military messages. The general fulfilled his promise to the navy by handing over Jimmy. Radioman Dye had—for the moment—been spared.
Back at the 307th battalion headquarters, Captain Yamashita moved to carry out the order to kill Grady York. “Around two o’clock in the afternoon, Yamashita came and ordere
d us to accompany him, as the prisoner was going to be executed,” Taniyama said.
Earlier that day, Grady had been separated from Jimmy for the first time since they were shot down. He had been moved to another headquarters and must have observed soldiers conferring about him. Now, when Captain Yamashita showed up, he heard barked orders and was surrounded by about ten soldiers with sharp bamboo spears and shiny bayonets.
Grady and the soldiers walked in a procession toward the execution ground. It was the same area where Dick Woellhof and the B-24 crewman had been bayoneted and beheaded. Sergeant Kishimoto was one of the soldiers in the procession. Earlier, he had picked Grady up at Tachibana’s headquarters and by now had been at Grady’s side for over four hours. Grady was small for an American but average size for a Japanese. Also, Grady had a swarthy complexion and black hair similar to those of a Japanese. He was not as “white” as the white devils Kishimoto had imagined Americans to be.
“The prisoner was rather small and the color of his hair did not differ from ours,” Kishimoto later said, “and his face resembled the smaller brother of a friend of mine. I pitied him and tried to think of some way to escape this place, while following some distance behind the prisoner.”
But orders were orders. Maybe some of the Japanese boys assigned to execute Grady detested the duty, maybe some relished it. Their feelings didn’t matter.
The group soon reached the killing ground. It was about 3:30 P.M. on Monday, February 26, 1945.
“We thereupon immediately prepared for execution,” Taniyama said. “We tore off the coat and shirt of the prisoner, tied him to a telephone post, and shoveled out a hole in the ground in front of him.”
Grady York, the sensitive artist, the boy who never cursed and thought rough behavior was drinking on Christmas Eve, now watched soldiers dig his grave. He saw the bayonets and the sharpened bamboo spears. He stood nude above the waist, his bare back against the rough wooden pole. He must have looked smaller and younger than his nineteen years and six months. Even though his heart was probably beating wildly in that tiny frame, Grady did not squirm or struggle. Finally, Yamashita wrapped a blindfold over his eyes.
Two bamboo spears and three bayonets were thrust into Grady’s body. Private Takekazu Oshida and Corporal Shoichi Morito speared Grady with the sharpened bamboo first.
“Captain Yamashita said hurry up and spear him,” Oshida said. “He said it over and over. He said it to Corporal Morito and Morito pierced the flyer. Then he turned and said the same to me.”
“Corporal Morito was very willing to help, very gung-ho,” Kishimoto said later. “I saw Morito spear the flyer. I remember Captain Yamashita standing beside him saying, ‘Spear his heart.’”
After the young soldiers had demonstrated sufficient Yamato damashii with their spears, the older soldiers moved in for the kill with bayonets. “At the command of Captain Yamashita,” said Taniyama, “we soldiers together with Yamashita took turns in bayoneting the prisoner in the chest.”
General Tachibana and Major Matoba, who assumed these executions would build fighting spirit, probably would have been disappointed by the human feelings in the breasts of some of the participants that day.
“As this was the first time I saw a man getting killed, I felt fearful,” Kishimoto admitted. Private Oshida had been ordered to spear Grady, but he hurried from the scene as soon as he had done so. “After using the spear, I stepped down the hill and stood on the path about eight yards away,” Oshida said. And when Captain Yamashita later informed Colonel Kato that the execution had been carried out, he added, “I hate to receive orders of that nature.”
“We completed the execution in two or three minutes,” Taniyama said. Added Kishimoto, “The prisoner died and was in a half fallen position with his face looking upward.”
“This prisoner did not cry out, not even a groan from start to finish,” Yamashita recalled. “He also did not show any tears from start to finish. He struck me as being a very brave man.”
“The bayoneted prisoner was buried in the hole we had dug for him,” concluded Taniyama. “His body was amply covered with earth and, our duties completed, we were ordered to return.”
The United States Navy telegram informing Grady’s parents that Grady had been shot down and was missing reached their Jacksonville home after Grady was already dead. Betty Huckleberry, Grady’s cousin, was there. “Mr. York got the telegram at home,” she said. “Mrs. York wasn’t there; she was in church. Mr. York telephoned the pastor, DeWitt Mallory. The pastor told Mrs. York at the altar.”
Grady’s mama was where he would have wanted her.
She was in church. Praying for him.
Now there were three Flyboys alive on Chichi Jima that Monday, February 26, 1945. Pilots Floyd Hall and Warren Earl Vaughn were at Major Horie’s headquarters. Radioman Jimmy Dye was in a car winding his way up to Mount Yoake.
The imperial navy’s Mount Yoake radio station had two missions: to relay Japanese military information between the troops out in the Pacific and Tokyo and to eavesdrop on U.S. military radio communications. Because of the inferior state of Japanese radio receivers at that time, these jobs could not be done in Tokyo—a presence in No Mans Land was necessary. Captain Yoshii hoped that Jimmy could help his team understand the American codes they intercepted.
Or maybe Captain Yoshii had another motive. The navy and the army had separate operations on Chichi Jima and the two services seldom fraternized. But the captain was one navy man who did cross that line. And he had an unsavory army acquaintance.
“Major Matoba was quite a good friend of Captain Yoshii’s,” said a navy petty officer who served at Mount Yoake. The relationship between the army major and the navy captain was based on more than an interest in interservice cooperation: They both loved the bottle and partied together at army headquarters and on Mount Yoake. Indeed, Matoba and Yoshii had a lot in common. “Captain Yoshii did not recognize ordinary men as human beings,” one who served under him later testified. “He would do things without thinking of anything or anyone. He was sort of a bully and a despot.”
As they drank together, Captain Yoshii absorbed some of Major Matoba’s ideas about killing POWs and about eating kimo. “I heard Yoshii talking with some officers in the mess hall about eating a portion of the human body as medicine,” his orderly Suzuki later testified.
Jimmy was brought to Captain Yoshii’s office near the radio station atop Mount Yoake. Yoshii only spoke Japanese, so he had one of the radio station’s English speakers, Petty Officer Fumio Tamamura, there to translate.
Fumio Tamamura was born twenty years before in San Francisco. His father left Japan in 1906; he ran a small shop on Grand Avenue and had been chairman of a local merchants’ association. Young Fumio had walked across the new $35 million Golden Gate Bridge the day it opened in May of 1937. But he was not long for his native land.
“Fumio, if you finish college in America, you’ll become too Americanized,” he remembered his dad telling him. His mother took him back to their hometown of Kyoto, where he studied until it was time to make a decision. “The navy seemed a safer place than the army,” Tamamura-san told me.
He served in the navy’s communications school as a civilian employee. When he was about to be shipped overseas, he said he’d like to continue his status as a civilian employee. “Tamamura, you don’t know the score, do you?” he remembered a superior telling him. “‘You’re not going to come back alive. You should become a petty officer for your mother’s pension.’ So I became a petty officer.”
Tamamura arrived on Chichi Jima in March of 1944. He had been serving under Captain Yoshii at the Mount Yoake radio station for eleven months. “Yoshii was a career navy man,” Tamamura-san said. “I had a formal reporting relationship with him. I was young enough to be Yoshii’s son and he looked at me that way. I saw him as a father figure.”
With Petty Officer Tamamura interpreting, Captain Yoshii questioned Jimmy. “We learned that he came from an American
task force in the vicinity,” Tamamura-san said. “He said his home carrier was the USS Bennington. He told us the dates the carrier left Pearl Harbor and later Ulithi. He gave his name and rank as James Dye, Aviation Radioman third class.”
Tamamura-san remembered Jimmy as “tall, with a light complexion, light-colored hair, wearing a leather jacket, dark green trousers, and field shoes. Also, he was wearing a white silk scarf.”
Yoshii told Tamamura to take the prisoner to the radio station and put him to work listening to American messages. “Report on your progress,” the captain ordered.
But Jimmy was in no condition to make any progress. His characteristic cheerfulness had long since abandoned him. Jimmy was nineteen years old, far from home, and very scared.
“He was in a nervous state of mind,” Tamamura-san said. “I knew he could not do any work, so I let him sit in front of a receiving set and we talked a lot.”
Jimmy spoke of New Jersey and life in the navy. He showed Tamamura his hands and explained that they hurt from being tied up at Tachibana’s headquarters. He said he was worried about Grady, his tail gunner. And, after the relationship between them warmed, Jimmy fingered his scarf and told Tamamura that it held special meaning for him. “He said he got it from his sweetheart,” Tamamura-san remembered.
“Dye and I discussed mostly other things than our business,” Tamamura-san said. “As he was a little tired out, I thought it would be unreasonable to start work from the beginning. So we never did get started on our work.”
Others noticed.
Jimmy, in his agitated state, couldn’t have impressed Captain Yoshii much at their interview. And it was easy to see that Jimmy wasn’t going to pull himself together enough to be of assistance.
Flyboys Page 28
