by Dean Hughes
There was no reaction. The men looked at Peter as though he were one more anomaly in a world gone mad. What did they care what he thought? Maybe they agreed with him, but it was apparently not worth bothering to say so.
Peter was supposed to go to the front of the building, to wait for a truck to pick him up–along with others who were being transported to the camp. But it didn’t occur to anyone to watch him, to make certain he got on the truck. So he walked out the door and kept walking. Once he was well down the street, he got out the sling and placed his arm in it. The blood was certainly real. No one could doubt that.
Peter kept walking, taking on a limp, until he found the edge of town and a little road. Refugees, in a steady stream, were walking or pulling carts, some even riding in horse-drawn wagons. Peter didn’t know where he would get his next meal, and he had no idea where he was going, but he walked with the refugees. He would take his chances as a deserter, but he was never going back to die in this war. More important, he was never going to kill again.
Chapter 32
For some reason, the Japanese guards and the supervisors in the mines were mounting the pressure on the POWs in Wally’s camp. Some of the prisoners claimed it was because the war was coming to an end and the guards were frustrated to know they were losing. Others claimed it was retribution for the way America was bombing Japan. But Wally had his own theory. He felt that those who operated the mines were under increasing expectations to produce. The supervisors knew no other method to get their work done than to pass the pressure on to the prisoners–mainly in the form of longer work days and more harassment at morning roll call.
It was best for Wally to think that way. It gave him a way to forgive the supervisors–to tell himself that they weren’t instinctively cruel. Since Christmas, he had been making a stronger effort to control his hatred. But it was not easy.
In some ways, the mine was the best place to be these days. Deep in the mine, the temperature was constant. After work, however, the prisoners would return through the snow to their barracks, which were not heated. They would huddle together, with all their clothes on, and try to sleep. But they got little rest, and on the coldest nights it was all they could do to survive.
The long workdays, the inadequate food, and the cold were wearing down men who had already survived so many other horrors. Some were dying. One man, knowing that he was not going to make it otherwise, let a train car in the mine roll over his feet and cut off his toes. The pain was terrible, but it saved him from the drudgery that was gradually sapping the life out of him. Wally thought maybe the man had been smart; he appeared to have saved his life.
One day, early in 1945, when Wally walked into the mess hall after work, he saw four men standing on a table in the center of the building. They were naked, and each was holding a carrot. Wally found Chuck and sat down next to him. “What’s going on?” he asked.
“They swiped some carrots. Everyone’s betting that Langston turned them in. But there are other guys who would have done it. Honeywell, for one.”
Wally looked at the four men, obviously tortured by the cold, and standing in front of everyone. He could see them quivering, the skin on their legs and arms turning blue. “Who are they?” he asked.
“I don’t know any of their names,” Chuck said. “I heard that two are Brits, one an Aussie, and the little one, on the end, an American.”
“How long have they been up there?”
“An hour or so. Something like that.”
Wally tried not to look anymore. He sat and ate his rice. But he told Chuck, “How can you starve men and then punish them for taking a carrot? It’s at times like this that I think there’s nothing wrong with hating these guards.”
“I know the feeling,” Chuck said. “But I don’t know how I’d think and act if I’d been brainwashed and trained in the Japanese army.”
Wally was bending over his bowl of rice and scraping out the last few grains. “Maybe that’s right,” he finally said. “But these guys take joy in what they do.”
Chuck leaned over close to him, his elbows on the table. “Look, Wally,” he said, “I’m not doing any better than you are. I feel the same way. But when I try to pray, I feel like everything’s not really right inside me. And if I want the Lord to get me through this, I need to behave–or at least try to behave–the way he tells us to.”
It was the same guilt Wally often felt. “I know what you mean,” he said. “But you’re way ahead of me.”
“No. I don’t think so.”
There was a stir, and Wally looked around. The four naked men were being allowed to get down from the table. Wally hoped they would also be allowed to dress. He knew they would be placed in solitary confinement for a time–probably without food.
However, they were marched through the hall, and when they reached the door, the guards motioned for them to walk outside into the snow in their bare feet. One of the guards, a man in a heavy coat and high boots, gave each of the prisoners a hard shove as they stepped through the door. The little American stumbled and fell onto the snow. Then the door closed, and Wally could see nothing more.
Wally couldn’t think of a way to forgive that kind of behavior. He finished his rice without saying another word, and when he left the mess hall, he saw the four men, still holding the carrots, still completely nude, standing in front of the guardhouse, up to their ankles in snow.
A few days later, Wally heard that the men had been forced to stand in the cold all that night. The two Englishmen had died. The American, according to what prisoners were saying, was going to lose his legs up to the knee. Wally, of course, was not surprised by any of this, but at a time when he was trying to get control of his own hatred, he found himself wishing he could force those guards to suffer some of their own brutality.
When the tenth day of work came, most of the men had the day off. But that was a mixed blessing this time of year. The prisoners needed the rest, but spending all day in the cold barracks was miserable. Wally was almost glad he had drawn duty for the day and would be inside the mine where the temperatures were less uncomfortable. On this extra day, however, he wasn’t working with Kiku. His supervisor was someone he didn’t know–a quieter, less intense man than Kiku.
Wally worked hard all morning. He was drilling and breaking rock with a bulky old jackhammer that had a way of bucking and slamming against his body as he tried to keep it under control. After a couple of hours on the thing, he was dead tired. The foreman saw him taking a rest and walked over. He pointed to one of the other men and motioned for Wally to turn over the hammer. Wally was relieved. The only problem was, the supervisor was obviously hoping to salvage a little of the day for himself, too, and he wasn’t about to let Wally continue to rest. “Kabok,” he said, and pointed deeper into the mine shaft. Then he pointed at a man named Fred McPherron and repeated the order.
Wally knew what the supervisor meant. Kabok was the word for the timbers used in the mine. They were in short supply, and so the foremen would often send the prisoners into caved-in areas to salvage the big logs. It was dangerous, but so was almost everything else in the mine. Wally was a little irritated by the supervisor’s insistence that he leave immediately, but otherwise he didn’t mind. Once he and Fred were out of sight, they could move at their own pace and not be pressured to hurry.
And so the two walked into the dark, with only their lanterns to guide them. They each carried a shovel. “The only timbers left back in here are buried deep,” Fred mumbled.
“I don’t care. We can take our time.”
When they came upon a place where the shaft had collapsed, they found one end of a timber sticking out from under the rubble. “Should we try to dig this one out?” Wally asked.
“Might as well,” was all Fred said, and they began digging, not pushing hard but working steadily.
“This thing is waterlogged,” Fred said, once they had uncovered a good share of it. “It’s going to be heavy as lead.”
“Do you think we can carry it?” Wally asked him.
“Yeah. Probably. It’s going to be a job, though.”
“We’d better get it out. If we’re back here too long, and we don’t have anything to show for it, that supervisor is going to blow a cork.”
Wally turned toward Fred, who was leaning on his shovel for a moment, conserving a little energy. “This guy ain’t so bad,” Fred said. “Not usually anyway. I’ve worked with him for the last month or so, and he’s pretty fair. But he’s antsy today. They always are when they have to miss their day off.”
“It’s the only thing they have to look forward to, the same as us.”
“I don’t think they’re much better off than we are, either. I’ve seen these civilian workers fill their lunch buckets with pieces of coal. You gotta figure that much coal ain’t going to burn very long, and yet these guys are willing to take the chance of getting caught. And you know they’ll pay a terrible price for that.”
“One night, after work, I saw a guard get caught,” Wally said. “The two-stripers beat him half to death.”
“This whole country is getting bombed all the time. The people are getting to the point where they’re real bad off.”
“How much will they take before they give up?”
“I don’t know, Wally. I don’t think they ever will. I figure our boys will have to bomb this island until no one’s left.”
“Including us?”
“Maybe.” He cursed. “I do worry about that. I hope there’s some way those bombers know where we are.”
It was something the men often speculated about. At least they were away from a strategic military site, and the mine didn’t seem a high-priority target. That made them feel they were not likely to get hit by a stray bomb.
Wally and Fred knew better than to chat very long. And so they went back to work, lifting larger rocks away with their hands and shoveling out the dirt and debris. Eventually they were able to lift one end of the log, work it loose, and then drag it out. It proved to be every bit as heavy as Fred had predicted, but they each got on an end, and they hefted it onto their shoulders, left their shovels behind for the moment, and began the long walk back through the mineshaft.
They had walked maybe a couple of hundred feet when Wally felt himself begin to stagger under the weight. “I need a break. Let’s drop it,” he gasped. They let the log roll off their shoulders and thump onto the floor. Then Wally sat down on top of it. His shoulder was aching. “I just don’t have the strength I used to have,” he said.
Fred swore again. “That thing weighs as much as the two of us put together.”
“You mean two hundred pounds?” Wally asked, and he laughed.
“That’s about it,” Fred said, but then he added, seriously, “It wouldn’t be easy for any two men to carry–even ones who got a decent meal once in a while.” Wally could hear Fred’s breath coming hard, the same as his own.
Maybe two minutes passed as the two continued to get their strength back, and then a light appeared. Someone had come out of a connecting shaft, around a corner. Whoever it was, was walking straight at Wally and Fred. They both stood up immediately.
As the man walked closer, Wally saw two stripes on his lantern. He was a manager, and he had begun to shout in Japanese. Wally knew that he and Fred were being accused of hiding out and sitting down on the job. They waited as the man came nearer. He was a clean, sharp young man, handsome, but he was extremely angry.
Wally pointed to the timber. “Kabok very heavy,” he said. And then he made a motion to portray the difficulty of hefting such a large log. But clearly the man wasn’t convinced. He shouted, “Ki wo tsuke!” Attention!
Wally came to attention, all right, but just as he did, the man struck him with his fist, hard in the face. Standing so upright–and unprepared–Wally was thrown backward, over the log. As he fell, he twisted enough not to land square on his back, but pain exploded through his shoulder and the side of his head. He felt something in his mouth and realized that this two-striper had broken one of his back teeth.
Wally snapped. He spat out the tooth, cursed the man, and then jumped to his feet. Three years of pent-up fury suddenly let go, and this time he didn’t stop himself.
Wally charged toward the man, but as he did, Fred grabbed him. Wally fought against his grasp and shouted, “Let me go. I’m going to kill him.”
“Are you crazy?”
Wally threw an elbow into the side of Fred’s head, once, twice, and then pulled free. He lunged toward the manager, tried to grab him by the neck, but the man jumped back and then spun away. Wally took a step to pursue him, but Fred grabbed him again. The manager suddenly bolted. He dashed into the dark, as Wally screamed at him, cursed him in language he hadn’t used in a very long time.
“Shut up, Wally,” Fred shouted in his ear. He tried to grip his hand over Wally’s mouth.
Wally pulled loose again, but he knew it was too late to chase the guy.
“We’re in big trouble,” Fred said, and Wally heard the terror in his voice.
“Not you. Just me.”
“That’s not how it works around here. You know that.”
Wally did know, but he couldn’t get himself to care. He only wished he had moved immediately, that he had knocked the man down so he could have strangled him to death. Then he could have dragged him to some dark corner of the mine and buried him. “When they come for me, I’m going to fight,” Wally said. “I’m not going to sit still for another beating. They’ll kill me, but I’m going to take someone with me if I can.”
“That’s just stupid. Why come this far and get yourself killed now? You’ve gone through plenty of beatings before. All that guy did was hit you.”
“I don’t care. I’m not going to take it anymore. I’ve had enough. They have no right to treat us that way.”
But all the effort was robbing Wally of his energy. He felt the rage seeping away, the tiredness returning. And already he was feeling the guilt. For a few seconds it had felt so good to allow himself the anger and hatred, but all that only showed what a weakling he was–and how stupid he could be. Fred was right. Why put up with so much for so long, only to throw away his life now?
“The first thing we’ve got to do is get this log carried to our supervisor,” Fred said. “We need him to report that we were doing the job he sent us to do.”
“What difference does it make?” Wally asked. “These guys don’t care about justice. They won’t try to find out whether we were really being lazy or not.”
Reality was coming clear to Wally now. If he survived the beating that would be waiting for him, other punishments would follow. He could be left out in the cold, naked, like the four men who had stolen the carrots. Or he could be thrown into solitary confinement without food. Recently a prisoner had been left in solitary for twenty days. Every day, rather than comply and beg for food, he had spat in the faces of the guards. He had had his victory, of sorts, and had never given in. He had also died.
Wally saw no way out. What he did know, however, was that Fred, with some luck, might not be treated as severely. He had, after all, held Wally back. So Wally lifted the log, and he struggled down the mineshaft with it. He was doing this for Fred, not for himself. His ordeal would be waiting, no matter what he did.
When Wally and Fred reached their crew, they dropped the log, and then they bent and grabbed their knees, both needing to recover from the strain. The supervisor began to chew them out. Wally didn’t know what he was saying, but it was the usual nagging. Clearly the man didn’t know what had happened.
There was nothing to do but wait for the next shoe to drop. Maybe someone would come for him, down in the mine. More likely, the two-striper would be waiting, with others, when he left the mine at the end of the shift. And Wally was calm enough to be frightened now. He feared the beatings, the pain he might have to pass through, and he feared death. He had lived with the idea of his own death for so long that he didn’t panic. He cou
ld even accept the idea that if his life was over, maybe a better one lay ahead. But he didn’t want to leave the earth this way, in failure. He had succumbed to his own hatred, the very impulse he had hoped to overcome.
“I’ll try to keep you out of this,” Wally told Fred later as they got off the train.
“I guess you’ve changed your mind about fighting them, then,” Fred said.
“Oh, yeah. Look, I’m sorry I lost my temper. Sorry I got you into this.”
Fred didn’t say anything. What was there to say? Wally knew how afraid he was. He was a big man, had once been a very strong man, but he had to know, just as Wally did, that he might be on his way to his death. Wally felt that regret more than any other–that he had put Fred in such jeopardy.
The shift had been shorter than usual, but the January sun was already setting. The opening to the mine was fenced in, with only one gate, and by it was a guard station. That was where Wally expected the manager to be waiting for him.
He decided to walk ahead of the others, and away from Fred. Maybe he could pull all the retribution toward himself and Fred could pass through the gate without a problem. Wally felt as though he were walking a gangplank, about to be plunged into a sea of pain. As he approached the guard station, he kept saying, in his mind, “Help me, Lord. Help me to get through this.”
And then he saw the manager, recognized his frame, his stance. In the twilight, Wally saw the crisp lines of the man’s cheekbones and jaw, the resolution that seemed sculpted there. The young man stared hard at Wally, not with anger but with authority. This seemed a statement, and it said to Wally, “You are mine. Be ready for what is coming.”
But the expression didn’t change. Wally reached the man, kept looking into his eyes, and then in an act of submission that seemed natural, stopped in front of him. The man gave Wally the slightest nod but nothing more. He didn’t speak, didn’t move. Wally waited another second or two, and then he walked on.
