The White Ghost

by James R Benn

  “What now?” Coburn barked as he turned, wrench in hand, about to get to work on a tractor engine.

  “Describe Silas Porter for me, will you?” I said. “Then no more questions.”

  “Silas? Oh, about five foot ten, I’d say, a stocky man. Bald patch on the crown of his head. Black, wiry hair, going grey. Thick beard, last I saw him, almost as long as mine. Why? I thought you knew him.”

  “I thought so, too,” I said. “I’m sorry to say he’s dead. And if you see Peter Fraser, be careful. Your life is in danger.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  “But Peter Fraser is dead, not Silas Porter,” Kaz said as I drove the jeep down the steep path to the coast road.

  “The man we know as Porter is over six feet tall. Brown hair, no bald spot, with a wiry, not stocky, build. I think he’s Peter Fraser.”

  “Oh dear God,” Kaz said. “That explains everything.”

  “It does. Daniel Tamana met the real Silas Porter, and Peter Fraser for that matter.”

  “Then the Japanese come, and Peter Fraser finds himself the sole survivor of a massacre,” Kaz said, working it out as he went along. “Hardly anyone knows Silas Porter, so he takes on his identity in order to secure possession of the plantation. He counted on the chaos of war to cover his tracks.”

  “Right. And remember, he had good reason to think the three people he had to worry about were dead.”

  “Josh Coburn, because he had left for Bougainville and walked right into the Japanese invasion,” Kaz said. “Sam Chang, also on Bougainville. As a Chinese national and a man of military age, he was likely to be killed by the Japanese. And finally Daniel Tamana.”

  “Yes,” I said. “The loss of the ferry with all those refugees must have been a well-known fact. Porter—I mean Fraser—may have even seen the bodies when he took the launch and made his escape. It was a calculated risk that Daniel was among them, but a good one.”

  “But then Daniel saw him on the boat from Guadalcanal. Or he saw Daniel.”

  “Or John Kari,” I said. “Remember, Daniel was on the high deck, and saw the group of them below. He may have heard someone call Fraser by Porter’s name. However it went, he bided his time. Once on Tulagi, he went looking for Sam Chang, a man he knew could confirm what he’d seen.”

  “Why did he not simply go to the authorities?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he thought a native wouldn’t be believed. That may be why he went looking for Chang. He’d be cautious in challenging a white man and may have wanted someone to back up his story. Or perhaps he did speak to Fraser.”

  “That’s possible,” Kaz said, hanging on as I took a sharp turn. “There had been no real crime committed at that point. Perhaps Fraser promised him a job if he kept his mouth shut. Assistant manager, his old post.”

  “Or maybe Daniel forced the issue. We know he wanted to move up in the world, and his chances were limited.”

  “You mean he blackmailed Fraser?” Kaz said.

  “It’s a possibility. But it may be more likely that he simply hinted at the potential for exposure, telling him he knew Sam Chang was alive and could identify him.”

  “So Fraser concocts an offer, one that Daniel decides to consider,” Kaz said. “An offer of a job or a share of the profits from the plantation.”

  I nodded. “They meet at the beach, where no one can see them, so as not to arouse suspicion.”

  “Reasonable,” Kaz said, constructing the scenario. “They discuss terms, and Daniel agrees to tell Chang it was all a mistake.”

  “Although we don’t know if he ever actually talked to Chang,” I said.

  “But Fraser doesn’t know that. Daniel could have held out the possibility as an inducement, to insure that he was needed.”

  “Right, and then Fraser asks who else he’s talked to,” I said, the chain of events falling into place.

  “He names Deanna, and once that’s done, Fraser has all he needs,” Kaz said.

  “He kills him, and then Sam Chang,” I said.

  “But why wait so long to kill Deanna? She hadn’t accused him.”

  “He couldn’t take a chance that she would. She was probably harder to get alone. He may have heard from Gordie that he was dropping her off in Chinatown; there were calls back and forth from Sesapi and the communications center. So he sent Kari on an errand, drove there, and knifed her, leaving a smear of Cosmoline to implicate his partner.”

  “Now all we need is proof,” Kaz said.

  “Of murder,” I said. “We know Fraser took over Porter’s identity in order to steal his property. Fraud does qualify as a crime, even out in these islands. But I want him for three murders.”

  “Yes, I am sure Porter’s family would agree, if he has any,” Kaz said as I passed the POW enclosure and turned off the main road, making for the nearest Quonset hut. “Why are we stopping here?”

  “To check out a long shot,” I said. “You don’t speak Japanese by any chance, do you?”

  “Konnichiwa,” he said. “Which means hello. It is the only word I know.”

  “Well, you just might learn a few more,” I said as we approached a sentry in front of the hut. I was about to ask for the commanding officer when shouts rose up from a nearby tent. POWs surged to the edge of the barbed wire, guards raced in from various directions, and two officers burst out of the Quonset hut, shoving us aside as they made for the tent.

  “I’ll kill that sonuvabitch, get out of my way!” It was a voice filled with rage, the words turning into one long scream. A high-pitched stream of Japanese followed, drowned out by other shouts, furniture being overturned, and bodies thumping to the ground in an embrace of violent struggle.

  Two GIs hustled out a frightened Jap POW, each with a firm grip on an arm, practically lifting him into the air. The guy was so scared his legs were pumping, toes barely touching the ground. Guards at the entrance to the wire enclosure motioned with the tips of their bayonets for the POWs inside to back off. They did, and their pal was tossed in quickly, the gate closed and locked behind him.

  “Let go of me, goddammit!” came a voice from inside the tent.

  “Settle down, Harrison, that’s an order!”

  We turned back to check on the hubbub. Harrison was a marine sergeant, his face red and his eyes wild. The guy giving the order was an army lieutenant. But that wasn’t the only difference between him and Harrison. The officer was Japanese. Japanese-American, I should say.

  The tent was a mess. An upended table, chairs knocked over, papers scattered over the wooden plank floor. A couple of GIs held Harrison as he struggled against their grip. Finally he gave up, shaking his head. “I knew those guys, Lieutenant. I knew them.”

  “Yeah,” the officer said, motioning for his men to release their grips. “I don’t blame you one bit, Sergeant. Go get some coffee, okay?”

  “Sure,” he said, shuffling morosely out of the tent. The lieutenant motioned with his head, telling the GIs to go with him, as Harrison continued muttering, “I knew them, I knew them.”

  “Who the hell are you?” the lieutenant said, startled as he noticed us.

  “Lieutenant Billy Boyle. This is Lieutenant Kazimierz. I see we’ve come at a bad time.”

  “Lieutenant Joe Sakato,” he said, offering us his hand and glancing at Kaz’s shoulder patch. “You’re a long way from home, Lieutenant Kazimierz. You’re the first Polish officer I’ve run into.”

  “And you are the first Japanese officer I have seen. In an American uniform, that is,” Kaz responded.

  “Japanese-American,” he corrected Kaz. “I’m a nisei, born in California. My parents emigrated from Japan, but we’re a hundred percent American. Not that everyone believes that, but what the hell can I do?”

  “Looks like you’re doing plenty,” I said. “Interrogation?”

  “First you tell me what
you’re looking for,” Sakato said. “But not here, let’s go inside.”

  We sat across from Sakato in his small office, which accounted for the rear section of the Quonset hut. The table behind him was covered in Japanese documents, maps, and booklets. His desk was clean except for a pad of paper and a single sheet, covered in Japanese characters. He took out a pack of Luckies, offering them around. We both shook our heads and he lit up, clicking his Zippo shut and tapping it against the wooden desktop. He seemed shook up.

  “We’re investigating three murders on Tulagi for the navy,” I said, figuring we should establish our credentials before asking what Harrison’s threats were all about.

  “Why are you two doing the navy’s dirty work?” he asked, tossing the lighter aside.

  “Fair question, but it’s a long story,” I said. “Quick version: you heard of Ambassador Joe Kennedy?” This got a quick nod. “His kid Jack is in PT boats and got too close to one of the victims.”

  “So you’re sent out with a bucket of whitewash?” Sakato said with a laugh.

  “There are those who would not mind the entire affair being swept under the rug,” Kaz said. “But we prefer to find the killer.”

  “I assume it’s not the Kennedy kid then,” Sakato said. “Otherwise, whoever sent you here would have you on a slow boat to the Aleutians.”

  “Last I heard, the Aleutian Islands were still occupied by the Japanese,” I said.

  “Exactly,” Sakato said, blowing smoke toward the ceiling.

  “Smart guy,” I said.

  “You have to stay on your toes out here, especially when you look like the fellow everyone else is trying to kill. Okay, I’ll bite. How can I help you?”

  “First, you want to tell us what that was all about with Sergeant Harrison?”

  “Harrison is our liaison with marine intelligence,” Sakato said. “We’re attached to the Thirty-Seventh Division, as part of the Allied Translator and Interpreter Section. There’s one other nisei with our section, but he’s on New Georgia right now, trying to talk isolated units into surrendering.”

  “Much luck with that?” I asked.

  “No,” Sakato said, dragging deep on his cigarette. “Especially if there are any officers. They order their men to hold grenades under their chins. Or stage suicide charges. Senseless.”

  “It is the Japanese warrior code, is it not, to avoid capture at all costs?” Kaz asked.

  “Bushido, yes,” Sakato said. “But Japanese propaganda also tells their soldiers that, if captured, they will face torture at the hands of the American devils. We’ve found that fear of torture leads many to suicide, even without an officer present.”

  “Then how did you get all these POWs?” I asked.

  “There are always some who wish to live, in any group. And we’ve had some success in getting our guys to take prisoners more readily. With all the evidence of atrocities, GIs haven’t been going out of their way to accept surrender. Especially since some of the Nips fake surrender, and then pull out a grenade or a knife.”

  “Nips?” Kaz asked.

  “Nipponese,” Sakato explained. “The Japanese word for Japan is Nippon.”

  “You don’t mind those terms?” I asked. He didn’t seem ready to talk about Harrison yet, so I let the conversation move on. “Japs, Nips?”

  “Not when it’s shorthand for the enemy, no. I doubt a German-American minds it much when German troops are called Jerries or Krauts, do you?”

  “No,” I said, thinking his reply was a bit too quick; it sounded like a stock answer he didn’t much believe in. Easier that way, I guess. “So, how do you get these guys to give up?”

  “Like I said, our men have been bringing more of them in. We’ve demonstrated how useful information from POWs can be in saving American lives. That helps a lot. And we’ve begun dropping leaflets behind the lines.” He reached back into the mass of papers on the table and picked out a couple. They were written in English and Japanese, with the phrase I Cease Resistance emblazoned across them.

  “It does not mention surrender,” Kaz noted.

  “Correct,” Sakato said. “We got that idea from some of the first POWs we took. Ceasing to fight is more palatable than surrender. And the note guarantees safe conduct. So far it’s paid dividends.”

  “Do you get good information from the prisoners?” I asked.

  “Quite good. Once a Japanese solider has given up, he feels that ties to his homeland have been severed. He knows his family would be ashamed and that the military would never acknowledge his capture as anything but traitorous. We are all he has. And once he sees a nisei, he has his eyes opened. Obviously the Americans are not the beasts he was taught to believe in. Give him food and medical care, often much better than he was receiving from his own people, and he’s very willing to talk and tell us what he knows.”

  “We have some questions for your POWs,” I said. “But first, if you don’t mind my asking, what was going on with Harrison?”

  “It’s hard to talk about,” Sakato said, looking for a moment like he did mind. Then he pulled a tattered, thin notebook from the pile of papers, leafed through it, and gave a great sigh as he ground out his cigarette. He shook another out of the pack, flipped open the Zippo, and thumbed the wheel. A bright flame bloomed and he lit his cigarette, holding the orange flame near the edge of the notebook, close enough to catch fire.

  He snapped the Zippo shut.

  “I’d been translating this,” he said, tossing the notebook onto the desk. “It’s the diary of a medical orderly we captured a week ago on the outskirts of the Munda airbase. His unit was stationed near Segi Point, which was one of the landing sites for the Marine Raiders. Harrison belonged to that outfit. He’d been wounded on Guadalcanal and sent for liaison duty with us after he recovered.” Sakato took a drag on his cigarette and spent some time watching the glowing embers turn to grey ash.

  “So he knew the guys in the Raiders who landed on New Georgia,” I said, prompting him.

  “Yeah, yeah. He did. The fighting was pretty light at Segi Point, not many casualties. But the Raiders lost two scouts. Missing in action, as they say.”

  “There is something about them in that diary,” Kaz said.

  “Yes.” Sakato rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands, as if to erase the words he’d read and translated. “They were captured and brought to the medical section. The orderly, Kenji Doi, describes a very interesting lecture by his major, a doctor. His own words, very interesting. The major said that in case he was killed, the orderlies should know the basics of surgery in order to carry on. He had the two scouts lashed to trees and performed human vivisections on them. No anesthesia. They were gagged so the major could make himself heard over their screams. He showed the positions of all the main organs, and removed a lung from one man. It was all very interesting, according to Kenji. Ironically, he seems a nice fellow, even gentle. Takes good care of his men with the medical supplies we give him.” Sakato was staring out the window, into the nothingness of the green jungle beyond.

  “That was Kenji Doi who was carried out of the tent,” Kaz said. Sakato nodded.

  “And Harrison knew the scouts,” I said.

  “They were his buddies. He was a scout himself. I didn’t want him to see the report, saw no reason for it. It was with some other documents he’d already seen, and the file was ready to go up to division headquarters. But he wanted to check something he’d read and grabbed the file a few minutes ago. I’d asked for Kenji to be brought into the interrogation tent so I could ask him about the major, get a name at least. That’s when Harrison saw him and made his move.”

  “Harrison’s lucky he wasn’t armed. That would be a court-martial offense,” I said.

  “No weapons allowed when we interrogate POWs,” he said. “Eliminates temptation for all parties. Although in this case, a lot of people would have lo
oked the other way.”

  “What’s going to happen now?” Kaz asked. “To the orderly.”

  “That’s up to Division, thank God,” Sakato said. “I’ll interrogate Kenji and get the name of the so-called doctor who did this. He’ll go on a list. A long list of those wanted for war crimes.”

  “Harrison?”

  “He’ll be okay. If there were any place to go around here, I’d give him a few days’ leave. But there’s nowhere to go, nowhere to get away from anything.” He flipped through the notebook, reading the daily jottings of an ordinary Japanese soldier. A man who sat through a display of horrendous torture and pronounced it interesting. Not to others—to put on a brave face, to show he was a Bushido kind of guy—but to himself, in his private diary. “Kisama!” Sakato shouted, and threw it across the room.

  I didn’t bother asking for a translation. We sat, silent, for a long minute. Sakato picked up his Zippo, flipping it between his fingers. It seemed to calm him.

  “What did you want?” he asked, irritation showing in his furrowed brow, as if he’d forgotten everything we’d said before he told the story of the scouts. “Wait a second, let’s get the hell out of here. I need some fresh air.”

  He led us outside, walking along a well-worn path paralleling the barbed wire. He stopped at a small rise that gave a view out over the hills and down to the sea. He lit another Lucky, fresh air helping only so much.

  “We need to know if any of the POWs here were part of the landing party on Pavau,” I said. “Especially if they came in on the northern side. We’ll need your help to speak with them.”

  “It will take some time,” Sakato said, turning to look out over the enclosure. “Come back tomorrow morning.” Prisoners gathered at the edge of the barbed wire, drawn by curiosity, or more likely, by the smell of tobacco. Sakato looked at the half-smoked cigarette, then at the closest POW, locking eyes with him as he dropped the butt and ground it out with his heel.

  We drove in silence for a while. After what we’d heard, words could only say so much. Finally, Kaz spoke. “Do you think we might learn anything useful from those prisoners?”