by Dean Hughes
“I’m in charge. The supervisor doesn’t haul rock. He sees to it that the crew does.”
“Oh, right, Honeybucket–and you call us lazy? I swear, you’re the lowest form of life I’ve ever come across.”
The nickname was one the men had hung on Honeywell, and clearly one he hated. He reacted immediately. He rushed at Johnson, but Johnson was ready for him. His left fist lashed out and caught Honeywell in the side of the head, stopped him. And then a crushing right caught him in the eye.
Honeywell collapsed onto the ground and rolled onto his side. For a moment he was still, but then he came up suddenly with a big rock in his hand. “You’re a dead man,” he bellowed, and he charged at Johnson.
Chuck stepped in the way and met Honeywell like a linebacker. He tackled him and drove him to the ground. Wally heard Honeywell grunt, but then he saw his hand come up with the rock in it. Wally dove and grabbed Honeywell’s arm, pinned it to the ground. Chuck grabbed the other arm, sat on Honeywell’s chest, and shouted into his face, “We’re Americans. We have to stick together–not kill each other.”
Honeywell cursed Johnson again, but he didn’t move. For a time the three held their positions, all of them breathing hard. Finally Chuck said, “We’re going to work now. And you’re going to work with us.”
“I’m reporting every one of you to Fujioka,” Honeywell gasped. “Every one of you. This whole crew is in big trouble. Especially Johnson. He hit me when I was in charge. That’s the same as hitting one of the guards.”
“That’s right,” Johnson said, with cold anger. “It’s exactly the same thing.”
“Shut up,” Chuck said. “Both of you. Now listen to me, Honeywell. A lot of men hate you more than the Japs themselves. If you report Johnson–or anyone else–your life isn’t safe around here.”
“Don’t threaten me, Adair, because–”
“I’m not threatening you. I’m not going to be the one to come after you. But listen to me, and ask yourself whether I’m right. If this story gets out–and if other men find out you turned us in–ask yourself whether someone isn’t going to get you for it. I’ve heard men say already they’d like to kill you. Now let go of that rock.”
“I’m not afraid of anyone in this camp,” Honeywell said, but his voice had lost all its fervor, and he dropped the rock.
“We’re going to let you up now,” Chuck said. “And what we all need to do is get to work. If we do that, everything will be fine, and if you keep your mouth shut, this whole thing is over.”
“I just might kill him right now,” Johnson said.
“Clark, lay off that stuff,” Wally said.
Wally and Chuck let go of Honeywell’s arms. “Let’s work,” Chuck said. “All of us.”
Honeywell walked over and picked up a shovel. “Hey, I have to work now,” he said. “You lazy bums won’t get enough done if I don’t.” But that was to save face. Honeywell seemed to know he had no choice.
Wally was relieved. The pain in his leg was worse now, but he had no choice either. He also had to get back to work.
As it turned out, the men did move a great deal of rock that afternoon. They didn’t clear the passage entirely, but when Fujioka returned he didn’t seem to expect that. Wally had the feeling that the whole idea had been Honeywell’s.
Fujioka kept the men until after five in the afternoon. They got to the bathhouse, as usual, when the water already looked muddy from all the men who had been in it. Chuck helped Wally into the pool, and Wally washed as best he could. Then the men dressed and lined up for the long hike back. By now Wally’s leg was throbbing, and he cringed every time he put weight on it. But there was nothing to do but keep going.
When the men reached the camp, Wally went straight to the mess hall, ate his rice, and then limped to his barracks. But he had only just lain down when the barracks supervisor appeared. He pronounced Wally’s number, and Chuck’s, and then motioned for them to follow. Wally struggled to his feet, not daring to defy. And outside he got what he feared. That day’s work crew was assembled, all but Honeywell, and three guards beat the men, one at a time.
Wally waited for his turn, tried not to anticipate, not to think or feel. He could deal with this. But the first blow came suddenly and hard, a hammering slam to his chest that knocked him off his feet. Then the guards kicked him in the ribs and abdomen. He was hanging on pretty well until one of the guards kicked him in the back of the leg. The pain was so powerful that it filled up his head. Everything swirled for a few seconds, but he didn’t black out entirely. He was thrown into a strange state, as though outside himself, aware but not aware.
When it was all over, and he was lying on his back, he could see the night sky, the stars, and he thought he was rising toward them, maybe dying, and it didn’t frighten him at all. There was something restful in the vision, something his body longed for. But his friends came for him and carried him to his mat. He was apparently covered with blood because Don brought in a rag and washed his face. Chuck was somewhere nearby, and men were talking, cursing as they worked on him, too. Wally knew all of that, but he felt very little, only the pervasive pain that was intense and yet distant, as though it couldn’t quite reach the inner core of him.
He never really slept that night, and as the hours passed by, the pain began to find its focus, gradually returning to his leg. All the same, he got up in the morning, still dazed but more aware, and he walked to the mine. He and Chuck stayed by each other. They didn’t talk, didn’t lean on each other, but Wally felt Chuck’s presence and knew he couldn’t have made the long hike without the help.
It seemed likely that Fujioka would break up the crew, but he didn’t. He kept the four battered men. Only Honeywell was gone. As the men pulled themselves from the train, Fujioka screamed at them, demanded that they get to work immediately, without their morning rice. And so, bruised as they were, they began to break more rock, move it. Wally found himself letting out little, uncontrollable gasps with every movement he made, but he didn’t let the other men down. He kept pushing himself.
At noon the men lay down, rested, and ate their rice. But this only gave Wally time to stiffen, and the work seemed even harder when he started again. He managed for a few minutes, and then he realized he was about to pass out. He clung to his shovel, leaned on it, and waited for his head to clear. By then Fujioka was screaming at him. And then Chuck was there. “Are you okay?” he asked Wally.
“I don’t know,” Wally said. “I almost blacked out. How are you doing?”
“I’m okay.” But Wally got a look at his face, saw how swollen and bruised it was.
Fujioka had come closer now. He was shouting, probably cursing. As Wally tried to get his legs under him, he felt them give way, and he sank to his knees. The pain doubled him over. Then he felt hands on his head, and he heard Chuck say, “Walter Thomas, in the name of Jesus Christ, and by the power of the holy priesthood, I command you to arise and be healed.”
Wally responded. He got up. “Thank you,” he whispered. The pain was still there, in his leg, but not so much in his head, and he found the power to go on.
The day was very hard, but Wally made it through. And he walked back to the camp. He ate, and mercifully he even slept. And when he awoke in the morning, the healing had occurred. He reached down and touched the boils, felt that all three had festered into heads. The pain was not yet over, but it was easier, and that night Wally reported to the medical station, where an American doctor, without any painkiller, lanced the boils. The cutting was excruciating, but once the boils were open, the putrid infection squirted out, and the pain drained away. Wally knew he would be all right now.
Chuck helped Wally walk back to the barracks.
“It’s a lot better,” Wally told him. “I’ll be all right now.” And then he took another look at Chuck’s bruised face. “How bad did they hurt you?” he asked.
“I’ve been beaten worse a couple of times. The bad thing is, I lost another tooth. I hardly have any
left.”
“Honeywell ratted on us to the Japs, didn’t he?”
“No question.”
A few days later the tenth working day came–the day the prisoners didn’t have to go to the mine. It was the only thing to look forward to in the camp. The men, worn down from work and malnutrition, usually spent most of the day sleeping. But late in the afternoon the little Mormon group always got together and held a church service. Chuck and Art always came, and Wally’s friend Don Cluff. Several others like Don, not LDS, usually showed up: Eddy Nash and Ray Vernon, old friends, plus a couple of younger guys named Raymond Golson and Joe Fields. Some other Christian groups had formed, but the men who met with the Mormons were guys who liked what they heard at the meetings.
On this particular day Chuck was the assigned teacher. He and Art and Wally took turns leading the discussions. They tried to remember the scriptures as best they could–since not even a Bible was available–and all three wished they had studied more carefully when they were younger so they could explain doctrine more clearly.
The men preferred to gather outside, but it was a cool fall day, so they met in a corner of the mess hall. The place wasn’t heated, but it was out of the wind. All of the men sat around one large table. Chuck asked Don to say an opening prayer–something he had become very good at–and then Chuck said, “I’ve been having a hard time this week. There’s something we’ve talked a lot about, but it seems like the biggest challenge we all have to deal with. That’s hatred. The Bible says we should love everyone, even our enemies, and no one here is having an easy time with that, I know. What’s worse this time, though, is forgiving someone who isn’t supposed to be my enemy but acts like it.” He hesitated and looked at the floor. “I think you know who I mean.”
Everyone did know, of course. Some of the men nodded.
“I think I understand how a guy gets so hungry or so messed up in his head that he’ll do almost anything to get food–or to save himself when he feels like he’s dying. I never say too much when I see someone that desperate, because I’ve been pretty close to it a few times myself. But when a man is in decent health, as good or better than anyone, and he chooses to turn his back on men in his own circumstances, just to get a few advantages–cigarettes, or a little extra food–”
“Or better duty,” Eddy said.
“Well, yeah. But you see what I’m saying. How do I forgive someone like that? How can I be a Christian about that? I lost a tooth because of that man this week. And the loss of my teeth has been one of the toughest ordeals for me. Every time my tongue touches that hole in my mouth, I feel hatred in my heart.”
Joe Fields was a guy who never hesitated to speak his
mind. He looked as emaciated as any of the men, but he kept his spirits up. He was sitting at the end of the table, opposite Chuck. He raised his hand but then spoke before Chuck called on him. “Chuck,” he said, “I’m sorry, but I don’t think we have to do something even God can’t do. And there’s no way God likes Honeywell. That guy is about three steps below a cockroach on the food chain.” He looked around and grinned, seeming pleased with himself.
Some of the men laughed, and Chuck did too, but then he said, “What if he were your son? Would you love him then?”
“I’ll bet his mother can’t stand him,” someone said, but there was less laughter this time.
Chuck glanced around. “You’d better keep your voice down,” he said. No one was near, but Wally knew what he meant. There was no end to the ways that men could get in trouble in this camp. Laughter was always cause for suspicion.
“What Honeywell is, is weak,” Art said, in a soft voice. “We’re all tempted to be like him. If you ask me, we hate him because we see ourselves in him. He represents what every guy can be, if he lets down just a little.”
Wally had been thinking something pretty close to that. “I’ll tell you what I’ve learned from Honeywell,” he told the others. He was sitting next to Chuck, both of them occupying a position at the head of the table. “For a long time I’ve been telling myself there’s something wrong with Japs. They aren’t like us. But Honeywell shows me that treating people wrong has nothing to do with being Japanese. If Honeywell were guarding a bunch of Japanese POWs, you know how he would treat them. I wonder what a lot of us would do, if all of a sudden the whole situation were turned upside down.”
“Okay,” Chuck said. “That’s what’s been on my mind, too. People, when they sink to their lowest level, don’t care about anyone. They’ll hurt a guy, steal from him, do anything rotten–just to have what they want. But that’s not something German or Italian or Japanese. It’s something we can all sink to.”
“But we can still hate the way these guards treat us. There’s nothing right about that,” Eddy said. Eddy knew all about tough treatment. He had come very close to dying on the hell ship, and he had taken a severe beating one day because he was late arriving at morning formation. He was a cocky little guy, a sort of bull terrier, but he was also a loyal friend to the men he trusted.
“That’s right,” Chuck said. “God hates sin. We can too. But if we hate the Japanese, we’re sinking to the level of these guards we deal with every day.”
There was a long silence. Wally looked around the table. It was a strange sight, all these skeletons trying so hard to think and feel, to cling to their essential humanity. This was their only day of relative freedom, and yet they were gathered here in this corner of the mess hall, and for each the motivation seemed more or less the same. They needed to believe that life had meaning, that this experience didn’t have to destroy them.
Joe finally said, “I’m sorry, Chuck, but I can’t accept that. I hate these Jap guards with all my heart, and I can’t believe God would expect me to feel any different.”
Chuck considered that for a time before he said, “I do think God understands what you feel–but nothing I’ve ever read in the scriptures would convince me that he approves of your hating one of your brothers or sisters on this earth–no matter what that person does.”
Some of the men nodded, as did Wally. But faces had been brighter when Joe had spoken. Apparently the justification for hatred had sounded more convincing than the idealism Chuck was expressing.
“Some men have vowed to kill Honeywell,” Don said. “I’ve heard the talk all week.”
“So what about that?” Chuck asked.
“Maybe some behavior deserves the death penalty,” Vernon said.
“Maybe. But this is no court, not a legal system. We can’t start killing each other like a bunch of vigilantes.”
“Maybe not,” Don said, “and I won’t be the one to do it. But if someone gets Honeywell, I won’t waste a single second feeling bad about it. I’ve seen too many good men die to feel bad about him.”
“So what are you guys saying?” Chuck asked. “Is God expecting something from us that’s just too hard–something we can’t do?”
No one wanted to answer, and the silence lasted a long time. The men were all looking at the table–or inside themselves–not at each other. It was Joe who was finally willing to say what he thought. “I know you don’t want to hear this, Chuck, but when I look right down to the bottom of my heart, I gotta say, I can’t do it. I can’t love these Japs, and I sure can’t forgive Honeywell for what he did to you guys. Maybe some of you guys can do it, but I can’t.”
Another silence followed, and Wally saw that Chuck was struggling to think what to say. It was a black and disappointing moment for Wally, worse than the pain he had had to fight. God had touched him, stayed with him through his ordeal, healed him, and that should make a difference now, but even though Wally had said the right things earlier in the discussion, he knew what he felt. Joe was only different in that he had found the nerve to say it out loud.
Wally hated the guards who had beaten him, and he hated Honeywell. He didn’t hate all Japanese; he knew better than that. But he hated these distorted creatures who preyed upon the prisoners, and he hated the we
akling Americans who took advantage of their own brothers. And what was worse, like Joe, Wally didn’t want to give up his hatred. In so many ways, it was still his greatest source of strength. Wally felt the guilt that came with that admission–but it wasn’t a strong enough force to overpower his hatred.
Chapter 13
Anna was still translating documents for the MI-6 office of the British SIS. Gradually she was being trusted with sensitive materials, but to do that she had to go to the office near Grosvenor Square. This was only a short trip on the underground, but it got her out of the house. She needed to be busy, to concentrate on something other than her worries. Everything she heard from Holland was discouraging. Alex’s letters, once she finally started receiving them, didn’t admit to any personal danger, but Anna knew his situation was precarious. The Allied troops were still clinging to a narrow strip of land from Belgium through the southeast corner of Holland.
Alex said little about any of that, but he did close one of his letters by saying, “Anna, war is worse than anyone can know without experiencing it. It’s bad for all the obvious reasons, but what I hate the most is the way it changes me. I’m not myself right now, and I can’t be. I get by the best when I don’t think too much, but that makes me something less than human. At times I shut my eyes and try to see you, and just feel for a moment the way I do when I’m with you. That’s all I cling to now–the idea that I can feel like that again someday.”
Anna cried when she read those words. She hated to think what Alex was going through. Just when the two of them should be building a closeness with each other, as newlyweds, they were split apart, each changing, each experiencing things they couldn’t share. She feared that the war would create a gap between them that could never be bridged entirely.
What was also distressing was that her father seemed to have vanished. She and her mother had never been allowed to know the reason for his leaving, or even the length of time he would be gone. They only knew he was working with the American OSS in some capacity, and he had promised he would be back “long before Christmas.” Anna was almost sure he had returned to Germany, but she never told her mother that. She knew from her work in intelligence that the Americans were sending agents into the country, and she knew how much her father wanted to look for Peter. It would be like him to take any chance to get closer to him. But her father had been gone three weeks now, and Anna and her mother hadn’t heard a word from him. He had warned them that he wouldn’t be able to write, but the reality of knowing nothing, of having no way to reach him, was more difficult than Anna had realized it would be.
