Dawn of a Thousand Nights

by Tricia N. Goyer

  When they’d first arrived, shock and fear had occupied every thought. But hatred had taken fear’s place. He wished there was a way to kill them. Every last Jap.

  “I’ll be back soon.” Tony rose from the ground. “I’ll help with the water when I get back.”

  Gratitude and worry fought for a place in Dan’s mind as he watched Tony leave. No one said it out loud, but they all knew. Tony had made a connection with someone on the outside. He often showed up with a few eggs or a small bunch of bananas. No one dared ask specifics.

  “Be careful out there. You don’t want to slip up,” Gabe called after him.

  “Heck. I’ll be fine.” Tony offered a wave. “The Lord only takes the good.”

  The Lord only takes the good.

  The words continued circling Dan’s mind as he led water detail. They sloshed around like the water in the buckets he carried back to camp, mocking him.

  The path was slick, but he urged himself on, trudging as fast as he could back to their billet. It led him past the cemetery, called Boot Hill. Dan had managed to keep his eyes fixed ahead, focused on the back of Tony’s head, during the walk there. He’d seen enough death. Didn’t need another glimpse. But on the way back, he thought he heard movement from the tangled mass of recently buried bodies that had now resurfaced. By instinct he looked, only to see two vultures skittering from body to body.

  “Get outta here!” Dan shooed them from the thin skeletal frames of naked American GIs tangled with Filipino soldiers.

  They’d been buried naked because their clothes and boots were too valuable to plant beneath the earth. Many bodies bore evidence of beatings on their backs, their shoulders, and even their faces. Dan paused, looking closer. One Filipino soldier appeared to have been beaten so severely that only half of his face was distinguishable. But the other half looked as if he slept.

  Dan looked closer and realized it was Paulo’s half face that stared up from the tangle.

  “Oh, no.” Dan legs faltered, and he sank to one knee. The buckets of precious water tipped and spilt into the dark earth.

  Dan thought back to the last time he’d seen his friend. It had been on the march. Paulo had brought Dan food. Then he’d quickly moved on to help others.

  Shouts erupted behind Dan. Curses due to the water Dan had spilt. But he didn’t care. His gut ached. He knelt to the ground, smothered in the stench of death. And he knew Tony’s words were true. The Lord only takes the good.

  What Lord?

  Surely, if there were a God, He wouldn’t let things like this happen to His own.

  Dan’s shoulders shook, and he covered his face with filthy hands.

  Dan slowly trudged toward their billets at their new “home,” Cabanatuan. Camp O’ Donnell was behind him now. July 4th had been an independence day of sorts for him and fifteen hundred other men. Dan had to line up with others who seemed to be in the best condition and be checked and prodded for diseases such as dysentery and malaria. Dan was grateful he hadn’t had a spell of yellow fever for the last couple of weeks.

  After the inspections, the head Jap guard asked for volunteers for work detail in another camp. Dan, Gabe, and Tony had stepped forward in unison as the Jap guards eyed them. They’d discussed it before, knowing that survival meant finding a way out of O’Donnell. In Dan’s mind, a worker would be worthy of food, and though the Japanese had been overwhelmed with the sheer number of ill prisoners at first, things could only get better.

  And things had—slightly. At Cabanatuan, located on a hill on the other side of island, there was clean water, rice three times a day, adequate latrines, and a small hospital—never mind that they had no medicines or supplies. They were also under their own command. American officers took charge and divided the nine thousand men into platoons. Dan noticed the thin cheeks and saggy eyelids of those he worked with and wondered if he looked the same.

  The sun was setting behind the lush, green mountains as he slowly trekked across camp toward his bamboo billet. Each building had a wide catwalk down the center. Two levels of sleeping bays, upper and lower, ran the length of the building.

  Dan spotted Gabe leaning his scarecrow body against the opening of the doorway and hurried to his friend. Gabe grasped Dan’s arm and led him to the corner of the building.

  “I’ve been checking things out.” Gabe’s voice was raspy from lack of nourishment. “We could escape anytime. The perimeter isn’t as closely watched as the Japs would like us to think. At some points they’ve even posted American sentries.”

  Tony approached, overhearing. “That’s nuts.” He shook his head. “It would be like escaping into the Everglades. Do you know how to survive in the jungle? Besides, the Filipinos get a hundred-pound bag of rice for every American they turn in, and they’re as hungry as we are.”

  “But they love us. Did you see them waving the V for victory as we were trucked through Manila?” Gabe raised two fingers in the air.

  “Most of them would help. Like Paulo, God rest his soul.” Tony made the sign of the cross. “But as my mother always told me, it only takes one bad apple to ruin the whole bunch.”

  “What about Japan?” Dan leaned against the building and wiped a layer of sweat from his forehead. “I heard Doc say they’ll be choosing crews to work in factories over there.”

  “Heck, if you think I’m going to help the Nips with their war production, you’ve got another think coming.” Tony flicked a cockroach from the wall and stomped it.

  “Not war production—normal factories,” Dan insisted. “Besides, even if we could escape, we wouldn’t be able to run. We don’t have the strength, and where would we hide?”

  Gabe nodded. “Guess you’re right. Don’t know how we’d find our way off the island anyway. Can’t really swim to Hawaii.” He grinned. “Although, I wouldn’t mind stealing a Jap plane and—”

  Dan gave him a firm glare.

  “Okay, okay. Japan it is, then—if they will take us. Anything sounds better than this heat. But enough talk—we’d better get back to work. Gotta mend those fences. Can’t let the prisoners get out.”

  As they turned to head back to the perimeter of the camp, shouts split the air.

  Dan turned to see three men from their billet being jerked into the roll-call area at gunpoint by four Jap guards. Their hands were raised, and blood trickled down their faces. One man’s eyes were swollen shut. Dan grimaced, remembering Paulo’s face. More Jap guards ran up and down the rows of billets, motioning for the GIs to form a single line. Dan and the others had no choice but to oblige.

  “This is what happens to those who try to escape,” the Japanese translator called out in English.

  “You!” One of the guards pulled an American from the line of spectators. He thrust his bayonet into the short, dark-haired private’s hands. The guard made a jabbing motion with his hands toward the first escapee. The private froze, then shook his head.

  The guard’s face reddened, and his eyes bulged in anger. He motioned again, in jerking movements, obviously wanting the soldier to plunge the bayonet into the escapee’s stomach.

  “I–I can’t!” the private wailed. “I won’t.” He shook his head, the bayonet shuddering in his shaky hands. The guard grabbed the bayonet, pulled out his pistol, and aimed it between the private’s eyes.

  “Please! No!” the man screamed. The guard casually pulled the trigger, and the soldier slumped to the ground.

  The guard then tossed the bayonet to the next person in line, a man in his thirties with sergeant’s stripes on his collar. Dan knew this man, had heard him talk about his wife and three boys. The Jap made the same thrusting motion toward the escapee’s stomach. The soldier closed his eyes and with shaking hands stepped forward and thrust. A cry erupted from the escapee, and then a thud as he hit the ground. Still alive, the man moaned in pain. Dan looked away.

  Another gunshot sounded as the next soldier made his choice—then another cry from the escapee as they moved down the line, growing ever closer t
o where Dan stood.

  The next guy refused to even touch the bayonet. The gun was raised to his chest. “God bless America!” he cried as he hit the ground.

  Dan turned away—staring instead at his worn boots and his toes sticking from the end. More alternating gunshots and cries from the escapees followed as they moved down the line.

  Dan’s heart pounded as a tall man only ten feet away leaned down in order for the Jap to get a better aim at his head.

  “Go ahead, Nip. You can kill me before I’ll hurt another American.” The shot rang out, and the man slumped forward.

  Dan knew what his decision would be. He’d never be able to live with himself if he took the bayonet into his hands and thrust it into a dying man.

  Then he thought of her. Libby. He wanted to see her again. Be with her. He’d made a promise to return.

  The guards were only a few men away when Japanese shouts filled the air. One of the officers strode across the compound, screaming words Dan couldn’t understand.

  Gabe leaned close to Dan’s ear. “I think I recognize the word for ‘work.’ He’s telling them to stop killing his workers.”

  With a wave of the officer’s hand, they were disbanded. Dan moved as fast as he could past the two dozen bodies that now littered the ground. He raced toward the slit trench as bile surged up his throat.

  How close he’d come to making one of the worst decisions of his life. He wiped his chin and chest, feeling ashamed.

  Later that night, the sky was pitch-black when Dan felt Gabe’s hand upon his shoulder. “You’re shaking like a sapling in a hurricane. We have to get you to the doctor.”

  At first Dan believed it was the day’s events that had made him so ill. Instead, the malaria had returned—full force. The heat that Dan remembered from earlier that day had been replaced with an icy chill that caused his teeth to chatter.

  “What good will it do?” he moaned, shaking off Gabe’s hand. “There’s no medicine.”

  “Maybe in Japan things will be better.” Gabe glanced into the eyes of Tony, who also hovered over Dan. “Doc says they might have more supplies, medicine too. He thinks the prisoners will be better taken care of.”

  Dan wrapped his arms tighter around himself and nodded, his cheek rubbing against the grass mat.

  “Japan,” he whispered. The thought both horrified him and gave him hope. Hope that dared to rise up, even in the darkest point of the night.

  Twenty-Three

  JAPANESE SEEK-WORLD RULE

  BY “DIVINE APPOINTMENT”

  Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Aug. 10—According to the propaganda fed to the Japanese people by the military clique that has seized control of the Japanese government, Japan is prepared to wage war for a hundred years and will not stop till the United States and Britain are crushed, till Japanese troops parade down Piccadilly and the Japanese Navy holds a victory review off New York.

  Though they are willing to concede the establishment of this divine rule may take some time and trouble, their doctrine is that Japan can never rest till that rule becomes an actuality, till every nation receives its “proper place,” according to the principle of Hakko Ichiu, which is to make the whole world one household under the paternal sway of the Japanese emperor.

  Today the Japanese “war gods” themselves are apparently prisoners of their own war propaganda and their own success.

  Otto D. Tolischus

  Excerpt from the New York Times, August 11, 1942

  Dan attempted to calculate the days he’d been held captive. Including the march, his time in Camp O’Donnell, and Cabanatuan, he’d been a prisoner for four months.

  Now he found himself in a new home. Bilibid Prison was an old Spanish penitentiary in the heart of Manila that had been condemned and shut down before the war. Deeming it fit for enemy prisoners, the Japanese had reopened it, filling it to capacity.

  During daytime hours, Dan, Gabe, Tony, and the other prisoners toiled on the famous million-dollar Pier Seven, jutting out on the Manila waterfront. Their job was to load cargo ships for the Japanese, including the officers’ trunks, crates, and satchels bound for southern outposts of the island via inter-island ferries.

  Dan received more quinine for the malaria, and his strength rallied during his work on the pier. Perhaps the renewed vigor was due to the better rations of two rice balls a day. Or maybe it was the guards’ “vitamin sticks”—thin rods cut from mahogany or coconut trees, which caused an awful sting to the head or back of one moving too slow.

  “I’m tired of hauling all these crates. Let’s try that trunk.” Tony tightened the cord holding up his baggy trousers and hurried over to the large metal trunk.

  Dan groaned but obliged. He approached one end of the trunk. Gabe took the other end, and Tony the face. Under the scrutiny of a Japanese guard who watched in the distance, they hoisted the trunk and muscled it up the plank, and then down a narrow flight of steps into the hold. Dan’s frayed boots twisted on his feet, pushing his bare toes through the splits in the leather. He glanced across the trunk to see Gabe’s face reddening under the exertion.

  Dan chuckled. “You doing okay there, Gabe? You look more strained than you did last night at the slit trench.” Dan felt the pull of the weight on his own arms and clenched his teeth as they moved into the underbelly of the steamer.

  “Ha, ha. Very funny. I’ve got the heavy end of the load. What does this guy have in here anyway? Gold bars?”

  Then Dan noticed that Tony wasn’t carrying any of the load, but was jimmying the trunk’s lock with a small pocketknife.

  Tony’s eyes darted from side to side. “Keep watch, will you?”

  “Are you nuts? Stop—stop now.” Dan’s heart pounded. He shifted his weight, and the trunk sank a few inches.

  Tony’s voice was harsh. “Ease up, will ya? I’ve almost got it. Come on, are you a soldier or a pansy?”

  “I’m a pilot, remember?”

  Having possession of a knife would be cause for Tony’s execution. But breaking into an officer’s baggage? It was enough to get them all killed.

  They turned one last corner, and Dan heard a small click.

  A grin filled Tony’s gaunt face. “Thank you, darlin’.” He slid the knife into a pocket.

  They turned the corner, and a Jap guard leaned against the wall, lighting a cigarette. Dan paused briefly, but Tony had already resumed his hold on the trunk. They moved past the guard, and he glanced at them, unimpressed. Thankfully he hadn’t noticed that the trunk was no longer latched, with the lid actually bouncing slightly as they walked.

  “Do you want to get us killed?” Gabe hissed when the Jap was out of earshot. His eyes narrowed. “Close that thing!”

  They entered the hull, and Tony nodded toward a large pile of crates. They carried the trunk around the corner, and in less than ten seconds, Tony had sifted through the top layer of items, removed a few small packages, and returned the lid with a click. Dan watched in amazement as Tony slid the items into a pocket sewn into the inside of his baggy trousers and trudged out of the hold, past the Jap guard, and back into the radiating sunlight as if nothing had happened.

  Dan and Gabe followed him back to the dock. They watched as Tony bypassed a few small, boarded-up crates and again moved to a heavier trunk. They repeated the previous scene, Tony unearthing more items to stash in his pocket.

  When they returned to the dock the third time that day, Gabe led them to another officer’s trunk. “I was wrong. Tony’s not trying to get us killed.” Gabe hoisted one end. “He’s trying to save our butts. I knew I liked this guy.”

  That night, holed up in their small prison cell, they spread their loot out on the scratchy gray blanket on Tony’s mat and examined it by the light of the one bulb that shone down the hall. Three field-ration kits with compressed rice, dried fish, and other packages that weren’t marked. But as long as it was food, they didn’t care. There were also a few packages of pickled radishes and a dozen rice cakes. Tony divided the food among th
em, and they hungrily devoured it, depositing the packaging in the filthy slit trenches.

  Dan lay on his mat, trying to block out the sound of shrews scampering down the hall, and smiled. Thanks to a good friend—and some Japanese officers—for the first time in months, his stomach didn’t ache with hunger as he drifted off to sleep.

  It was with eager steps that they hurried to the docks the next day. A Jap guard greeted them at the end of the pier, but instead of forming them into their typical work crews, he ordered them to the far end of the dock.

  Dan instinctively bowed low as a Jap officer dressed in a white, starched uniform approached them.

  “Kirei! Attention!”

  He saluted. The rest followed suit.

  A beautiful Filipino woman stood by the officer’s side. She wore a colorful kimono, a perfect shade of cocoa that matched her eyes. It was the closest Dan had been to a female in months. His gaze moved up her body till their eyes met. Dan knew he should look away, but he couldn’t.

  The woman followed the officer with slow steps, lagging behind. As she passed Dan, she leaned close and whispered into his ear, “Don’t hate me, Joe. I have children to think of. I do what I can to save them.” Her perfume lingered as Dan watched her board the steamer, and a warm sensation stirred in the pit of his stomach.

  Tony leaned close. “That was a sweet piece of heaven. Too bad she’s not sticking around. I bet she’d be willing to help us.”

  Dan dragged his gaze from her parting steps and forced himself to scan the docks and large buildings framed against the azure Manila skyline.

  “Yeah, I bet she would. But I’m sure there are others around too who are sympathetic to American Joes.”

  A few hours later, Dan watched a Filipino fisherman strain to lift a large bucket of fish from his boat onto the dock. Seeing that the guard was occupied farther down, Dan hurried over, grabbed the handle of the bucket, and hoisted it for the fisherman.

  The Filipino’s big smile revealed his mostly missing front teeth. “Thank you, sir.”