by Dean Hughes
Yuki saw the muzzle fire and aimed his rifle at it. He pulled off a few rounds, as a lot of men were doing, but the gun was well blockaded with stones and tree limbs. Yuki knew that someone had to get closer and use a grenade, but it would be hard to toss a grenade with so many limbs in the way. He made another move forward and waited for his men to do the same, and then he fired at the machine gun again, but his angle was no better. The worst thing was, Hirinaka’s squad was more directly in front of the gun emplacement. If Hirinaka and his men attempted a charge, they would have to run head-on into the fire.
Yuki looked around and waved for Shig to come up to him. Shig made the run and dropped down next to him. “Can you shoot that grenade launcher you’ve been carrying around?” Yuki asked.
“Sure.”
Yuki had his doubts. All the men had been picking up firepower by adopting weapons from men who were knocked out of action. Shig had acquired a rifle with a grenade launcher attached to the barrel, but he had never had a chance to fire it.
“I’m going to get a couple more guys up here, and we’re going to lay down cover for you. You move up to where you can see that emplacement and try to knock it out.”
“All right. I can do that.”
“Don’t take chances. Don’t run out in the open. Shoot from under the limbs. You won’t have to get as close as you would if you had to throw the grenade.”
“I know.” Shig pointed through the woods. “I’ll stay off to this side and then make a run to that big tree. I can shoot from there.”
“That looks too close. You better not . . .”
But Shig was on his way, angling right, away from the line of fire and up through the trees. Yuki waved for more of his men to move in closer. “Be ready to put suppressing fire on that emplacement when I give you the signal,” he whispered to the men. Then he waited for Shig. But the wait was tedious, and the machine gun was holding the other squads in place. He hoped Hirinaka’s squad wouldn’t charge before Shig got off a shot.
Yuki watched as Shig made three more little runs and finally reached the tree he had pointed out. As soon as he hit the dirt, he raised up on his elbows, aimed, and fired. But his range was off. The grenade passed over the machine-gun nest and exploded beyond it.
Yuki and his men were pouring cover fire on the emplacement, but the gun was still scattering bullets into the woods. Shig rolled over in the wet leaves under the tree. He grabbed a second grenade and reloaded, but by then Yuki saw bullets thumping into the ground around him.
Shig waited while the entire platoon blasted the emplacement. When the direction of the fire swung back down the hill, Yuki saw Shig roll back to where he could take aim, and he fired a second time. This time his aim was accurate. An explosion rocked the emplacement, and the gun went silent. Yuki broke from behind the tree where he had been waiting, and his men followed him. The other squads made their break at the same time. There were plenty of bullets in the air but no machine-gun fire. The platoon ran up through the woods in an all-out charge.
Yuki expected to run directly into the German line, but at the last moment the Germans began jumping up, retreating, walking backward, continuing to fire. And then they started to turn and run.
The order was to rout the enemy, chase them off the hill, and take over the high ground. That was accomplished. But some of the men chased into the woods, taking out as many Germans as they could. In some ways, that only made sense. More battles were ahead. But Yuki knew the woods were treacherous; even retreating men might find places to hide and set up ambushes. Besides, he felt no zeal to hunt men down.
Now that the position was secure, Yuki looked for Shig. He feared that he had been hit back there under the tree. But as Yuki hurried to the spot, he saw his friend walking toward him, smiling. “Hey, that launcher works,” he said.
“You’re lucky you got two tries. I’m surprised you didn’t get shot after you missed that first time.”
“I did get shot.”
“What?”
Shig pulled his pack off and showed it to Yuki. A bullet had hit the handle of the “entrenching tool”—his shovel—that was attached to his pack. “Those guys must hate this shovel as much as I do. Why else would they shoot at it?”
Yuki could only think that Shig had come too close one more time. But he was glad to see him smiling, and glad they had survived another charge.
CHAPTER 15
Fox Company finally got pulled off the line. The men took showers and had a chance to dry out in tents. A medic did what he could for Yuki’s feet. He soaked them in a solution that stung, put some dry socks on him, and then told Yuki to rest and not put his boots on. The boots, above all, needed to dry, and his feet needed air. The medic also gave Yuki an aspirin tablet, which didn’t really take the pain away, but at least Yuki felt better knowing that he wasn’t doing anything to make things worse. The rain had let up somewhat, but the temperature was steadily dropping, and even in the tent, Yuki felt the cold.
The men hoped for a long rest. They stayed in their tents most of the time, kept as warm as they could, and slept.
Yuki needed that, but he didn’t like the sound of a rumor that was going around. Word was circulating that the First Battalion of the 141st Infantry Regiment—some of the Texas Division soldiers—had pushed too far into the Vosges Forest and had gotten cut off and surrounded by German forces. All the talk—mostly whispered by officers to sergeants and then on to enlisted men—was that General Dahlquist had refused to listen to intelligence officers who reported to him that German troops still occupied the area. After the First Battalion was cut off, the two other battalions of the 141st had tried several times to break through the German lines to rescue the surrounded soldiers, but each attempt had failed. Supplies had been air-dropped to the stranded men, but most of those parachutes had missed their target, and the men were running out of food and ammunition.
The predicament of the cut-off battalion was the main subject of discussion in the camp—and something to gripe about. Soldiers were always skeptical about high-ranking officers who moved troops around without knowing the actual situation up front. Yuki wondered whether the general would learn from his mistake. He didn’t like the thought of being commanded by someone too proud to listen to his advisers.
Yuki was resting in his tent when Sergeant Oshira came to talk to him. The sergeant stood by Yuki’s cot, but he looked at the tent wall, not at Yuki. “I gotta tell you something you won’t want to hear,” he said.
“We must be going back to the line.”
“Yeah. But it’s worse than that. They’ve ordered us to break through to that cut-off battalion.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“I wish I weren’t.”
“When do we go?”
“We move out this afternoon. We go into battle in the morning.”
Yuki felt as though Sergeant Oshira had stepped on his chest and forced all the air out of him. He wondered whether he had the strength to get up, let alone to walk on his painful feet. But he didn’t say that to the sergeant. He knew he had to make himself do it, however impossible it seemed at the moment. Still, he couldn’t hide his frustration when he said, “Are we really the only troops they can send in there?”
Sergeant Oshira shut his eyes, took a breath. “Yuki,” he said, “I’m not going to say this to anyone else, but I need to say it to someone. What they’re doing to us is wrong. We get all the worst assignments. You know exactly what the general is thinking: That the Nisei troops will sacrifice half their men again, but they won’t stop, no matter what.”
Neither said anything for a time. Yuki’s initial rage was dying quickly, and a grim sense of inevitability was taking over.
“I guess it’s what we asked for,” Sergeant Oshira said. “We told the army we wanted a chance to prove ourselves. The trouble is, I’m not sure anyone’s paying attention to what we’ve done.”
“We know.”
“Sure, we do. But headquarters promised
us some time off because we need it, and now the general is going back on his word.” He ducked his head for a moment. “But you know what? We can complain all we want—we still have to get our men ready to go.”
Yuki sat up. “Can you help me get my boots on?” he asked.
“Rest for a while longer. We still have a few hours before we move out.”
“But I need to start moving around. And I want to be the one to break the news to my squad. I have to say the right things so they don’t go in feeling sorry for themselves.”
“I guess that’s right. We also need to start by getting our own heads ready.”
Sergeant Oshira picked up Yuki’s boots and stepped to the end of the cot. Pushing the boots on was an even worse ordeal than when Shig had helped. It was all Yuki could do not to scream. By the time the boots were back on, he was out of breath, and the pain seemed to fill his whole body.
“Don’t get up yet,” Sergeant Oshira told Yuki. “Let your feet get used to the boots.”
Yuki knew that was not really going to happen, but he wasn’t ready to put his weight on his feet just yet.
“Maybe you can’t do this, Yuki,” the sergeant said. “Just say the word and I’ll get an ambulance in here to take you to an aid station.”
“No.” Yuki didn’t explain. He just hoped the pain would gradually calm.
Sergeant Oshira stood by him as though he were considering whether to overrule Yuki’s judgment. After a couple of minutes, Yuki realized he had to sit up to convince the man that he could do what he had to do.
But when the sergeant turned to go, Yuki said, “When’s our luck going to run out, Sarge? I keep thinking, there’s no way I can keep surviving these battles.”
“I don’t let myself think about that. A while back I realized, I’ll probably get killed sooner or later. So I just take that attitude every time we go after another hill. And I’m okay with that. I’ll die, if that’s what it takes. I just think we should be looked at as assets, not throwaways. That’s the only thing I’m complaining about.”
“That’s how we all feel.” Yuki extended his hand. “Help me up. I need to walk.” So Sergeant Oshira grabbed Yuki’s hand and raised him up slowly. Yuki tried not to let the pain show in his face.
“Are you sure, Yuki? Can you do this?”
“Yeah. I’ll manage.”
“I appreciate it. I really need you, Sergeant.”
The two stood and looked at each other for a moment. Here they were, both noncommissioned officers, both “men of experience” after less than five months at the battlefront. They had shipped out together, fought every battle together, but it was Oshira, when he was squad leader, who had taught Yuki most of what he knew about the realities of actual war. Yuki had watched the man put his life on the line for his men, over and over, and it was what Yuki knew he had to do now.
“When you say you figure you’ll die,” Yuki said, “don’t you think about your family back home?”
“Sure I do. At least I’m not married, like some of the guys. But I have a brother who’s training at Camp Shelby right now, and if we both go down, I don’t know what that would do to my parents.” He looked past Yuki, seemed to be considering, as though he were trying to imagine that kind of future for his parents. “I’m not saying that I want to give up my life. I’m just saying it’s what might happen and I can’t do very much about it.”
“I thought I knew that when I came over here, but I didn’t. Not really.”
“Sure. That’s how it is.”
Yuki was still breathing steadily, still trying to allow the pain to abate, and trying to convince himself that he needed to stay with his unit, even though he had a good excuse to go back to an aid station and get more rest.
“Here’s what I’ve been thinking,” Yuki said. “My father never talked to me much, but he told me about bushido—the way of the samurai. He called it ‘honor to the death.’ He told me that a man of honor never shames his family. He fights to preserve what is right and good. We don’t like to say things like that now because we don’t want to admit how Japanese we still are, but I think it’s why we fight so hard, why we win our battles. We believe in honor.”
“I don’t know, Yuki. I didn’t hear much about that kind of stuff in my house. We didn’t keep to the old ways.”
“But those attitudes came down to you anyway. It’s just in us. When I was a kid, the only thing I wanted was to be an American—like all the other kids. I was ashamed that my father was so Japanese and couldn’t speak English. But I don’t feel that way now. I don’t think we should try to run away from who we are.”
“Here’s the thing, Yuki. When you go home, you’ll be a Jap again, not a warrior. No one’s going to give you credit for your honor.”
Yuki didn’t want to believe that, but he knew it might be true. “Maybe they never will respect us, no matter what we do. But I’ll respect myself. And that’s what I’ve always needed to do.”
Sergeant Oshira nodded, and the two took another long look at one another. “Whatever we call it, I know we’ll go after those guys that are trapped up there in the mountains, and if they can be reached, we’ll reach them.”
It was Yuki’s turn to nod. And then he followed Sergeant Oshira from the tent, hobbling along as best he could. He talked to his men, tried not to deny them their own anger—and didn’t say a word about honor. He only let them know that they were needed again.
• • •
Yuki learned from Sergeant Oshira later in the day that the 100th Battalion, along with Third Battalion of the 442nd, would make the head-on assault. Second Battalion, including F Company, would attempt to take the high ground on a hill designated as 617. This would give them a position above the stranded battalion. The frontal attack would probably be the worst, but Hill 617 was heavily fortified and a tough objective.
Winter gear had still not reached the troops and the colder weather was tough to deal with. But late in the day, as the men began their trudge back into the mountains, Yuki found the cold didn’t bother him as long as he kept moving. His feet were the real problem. He didn’t want to limp, didn’t want to put any doubt about his readiness in the minds of his squad, so he kept up and tried not to let his pain show.
When he fell in next to a young private, newly arrived from the States, he wondered how scared the boy was. “Where you from, Fujioka?” he asked the soldier.
“Southern Cal,” Fujioka said, and he sounded like any other California kid.
“Were you in an internment camp?”
“Yeah. I was in Manzanar, up by the Sierra Nevada. I got drafted from there.” That was one big change in what was happening back in the States—Japanese Americans were now subject to the draft the same as anyone else, even though their families were still being held in camps.
“Are you feeling okay so far?”
Fujioka looked over at him. He was a lean, muscular young man, good-looking. He walked like an athlete, with a certain looseness and confidence. “Sure,” he said. “You don’t have to worry about me. I’ll hold up my end of the deal.”
“Good. I think you will. But you need to know, the first time bullets start whipping through the air, you’ll find yourself wanting to dig your way into the ground and just stay there.”
“No, I won’t be like that. Don’t worry.” His voice, his nod, his straight shoulders—all said that he was ready for action, but Yuki knew the man was scared. The fact was, he couldn’t be much younger than Yuki—a year at most—but the gap between them seemed decades. Yuki felt more than tired, more than hurt; he felt worn down, old.
“You got a girl waiting for you back home?”
Fujioka grinned. “One girl? What are you talking about? More like a dozen.”
“So what were you? The local Romeo?”
“What can I say? I got that certain somethin’. No doubt about that.”
“And you’re a good dancer, right?”
“You know it. Best in my high school.”
>
He was still smiling. Yuki sort of liked the guy. And hated him too. “You know what you are?” Yuki asked.
“What’s that?”
“You’re me. You’re the guy I was when I left the Topaz camp in Utah a year and a half ago.”
Fujioka slapped Yuki on the shoulder as though Yuki had no sergeant stripes there, and he said, “Thanks. I guess you mean that as a compliment.”
Yuki hated the pride he saw in the replacements. They seemed like Japanese kids trying too hard to act “American.” But Yuki told himself that a lot of that cockiness would be gone in a few days.
“Let me tell you a couple of things, Private.”
“I’m all ears, Sarge.”
“Stay close to me tomorrow and do what I do. When we start an attack, we don’t back off, but we move quickly from cover to cover, and we lay down a field of fire to protect each other.”
“I know. We learned all that in our training.”
Yuki continued to walk alongside Fujioka for maybe another hundred yards. All the while, his anger was mounting. He saw what was coming; he had seen it before. But he wanted to stop it this time. In a quiet voice, he said, “You’re going to die tomorrow, Fujioka. Are you ready for that?”
Fujioka stopped, turned toward Yuki. “What?”
“We had another cocky kid join our company a couple of weeks ago. He’s already dead. That’s what I expect will happen to you.”
“Hey, I’m just saying I’m no coward.”
“But you think you know what you’re doing and you don’t. You think that nothing could ever happen to you because you’re God’s gift to the world—and you’re not. If you’re lucky, you’ll only get wounded and they’ll carry you back to some aid station, where you can remember this conversation. But my guess is, this time tomorrow, your body will be in a bag and they’ll be hauling it off to dump in some burial ground your parents will never see.”
