Children of the Promise

by Dean Hughes

  Along the way, a Scotsman shouted to the other men, “If we get back to the camp, and the camp commander finally breaks loose with that Red Cross chow we’re supposed to have been getting, then you’ll know the war is over.”

  Some of the men laughed and shouted their agreement, but others argued rather gruffly to lay off the stupid talk. “Those Japs are probably setting us up,” one man told Wally. “They’ll let us think something has changed and then fall on us like vultures.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “Maybe they’re upset about something. Maybe they’re looking for an excuse to shoot some of us. Who knows what they think around here?”

  “They can’t afford to kill us. If the war isn’t over, they need the labor.”

  “They’ve killed plenty of us before.”

  Wally had to admit, all that could be right. He did have just a bit of apprehension that some sort of trap could be laid and the men were walking into it. But that’s not what his instincts were telling him. It just wasn’t the way the guards—or the commander—operated.

  At the camp the men lined up in front of the guard house, as always. But a guard waved them on. There was no count, no search. The men walked into the compound, still talking loudly, laughing. They were heading for their barracks when the camp commander began to shout. He was standing on the porch of the headquarters building, and Mr. Okuda, his interpreter, was next to him. “Each prisoner please come forward to receive Red Cross boxes.”

  A wild cheer went up. The Scotsman’s prediction had come true. The commander hadn’t announced anything official, but this was close enough. The men were now shouting and slapping each other on the back, and no guard stepped in to stop them. In fact, Wally saw relief on the guards’ faces. These men so full of hatred and anger, it always seemed, were actually smiling. It was over for them, too.

  “Now what do you say, Chuck?” Wally yelled.

  Chuck was grinning. “I think it must be over,” he said. “It almost has to be.”

  The two grabbed each other, embraced, swatted one another on the back. When they stepped back, Wally saw tears on Chuck’s cheeks, and he felt his own chest begin to heave with sobs. It was too good to be true—simply too good to be true. But the Red Cross boxes were being distributed. If nothing else was true, this was. He had extra food in his hands—real food, not just rice.

  The men tore the boxes open, but most of them chose carefully, didn’t eat the food all at once. Wally sat on the ground and opened a tin of meat. It was so powerful and tasty that the flavor almost overwhelmed him. He wanted to eat some other things, but he promised himself he would keep the rest of the box for later. He and Chuck took a bath and then went back to the barracks. By then he could no longer resist. He decided to eat just a little of a Hershey’s chocolate bar. But he ate half of it before he could stop himself, and a charge went through him like electricity, making his head spin. He knew he had to save the rest of the chocolate for later. Before the evening was over, however, he had traded his cigarettes for more chocolate, for powdered milk and jam. He tried not to eat too much, but he kept nibbling away at the food all night.

  No one went to bed. It was a hot night, August 15, and the barracks were sticky and miserable as usual, but it didn’t matter. Wally got together with Chuck and Art, Don and Ray and Eddy. They sat in a circle in one corner of their room and talked—and ate from their boxes. Ray and Eddy smoked.

  At some point, late in the night, Eddy asked, “How long before the government can get us out of here?”

  “It’s going to take a while,” Chuck told the others. “I just hope we get supplied with food. The commander and all these guards might just high-tail it out of here, and we could be left high and dry.”

  This didn’t seem like Chuck. For so long, he had kept Wally going, always helping him believe they would make it. “What’s with you?” Wally asked him. “You worry too much. America isn’t going to let us starve to death—not after all this. They’ll drop food in here long before they haul us out.”

  Chuck smiled. “That’s probably right,” he said. “But let’s just keep ourselves under control a little bit. We still need some discipline if we’re going to get through the end of all this. I’m not ready—absolutely—to admit the war is over. Maybe the Japs have just given up on this mine and they’re closing it down. Something like that.”

  “Oh, sure,” Don said. “And they’re letting us do anything we want for a few days—just for a little vacation. The only way they pull back on us, the way they did today, is if the war is over.”

  “All right. I pretty much agree,” Chuck said. “But we still need to keep control. For one thing, I’m afraid some of the men might go after these guards. I don’t blame ’em too much if they do, but they could get themselves shot or beaten to death, and I don’t want anyone else to die.”

  “Not even the guards?”

  “No. Not even the guards.”

  Wally agreed with that, but he hoped someone, sometime, would take care of the commander. The guy was guilty of war crimes, and he ought to end up in jail, at the very least. Still, Wally didn’t want to think about that tonight. “Hey,” he said, “here’s something to think about. Won’t the army give us all our back pay when we get home?”

  “They have to,” Eddy said, and he obviously liked the idea. Poor Eddy’s face was thin and withered, almost like an old man’s, and he had lost a lot of his hair, but his eyes were bouncing around like pinballs tonight.

  Ray said, “Sure, we’ll get some money, but I wonder what people back home will be saying about us. Maybe we’re just the yellowbellies who gave up in the Philippines.”

  “You’ve listened to the Japs too much,” Eddy told him. “We didn’t have any choice about that.”

  The question had not seemed very important during these years in prison, but going home might change all that. Wally hated to think that he might have to apologize for surrendering all the rest of his life.

  “If I get a bunch of back pay I’m going to buy me a nice car,” Eddy said. He was grinning, gazing over the others’ heads, as though he were seeing it all. “A nice little Chevy coupe, maybe. I’m going to date a different girl every night. Eat steaks. Go dancing. Man, I’m going to live it up.”

  “Slow down,” Wally said. “You’ve only got twenty-one bucks a month coming. You’ve got it spent ten times already.”

  “No. I’m already thinking ahead. I’ll use some of it for a down payment on a car and use the rest for good times.”

  “You’ll spend it all in two weeks, and then what?”

  “Hey, I’ll get me a good job. I’ll be all right.”

  “Yeah, I can see where the girls will be chasing after you,” Chuck said. “They like a man who’s nice and trim.”

  All the men laughed, but they also agreed that putting weight back on was going to be easy enough, and they were ready to get started.

  “I want a job with no heavy lifting,” Ray said. “And outside—where there’s plenty of light.”

  But Wally wished the men wouldn’t talk too much about realities. He wasn’t sure what to expect at home, and he felt a little worried about the transition that might lie ahead. For tonight, he just wanted to feel the relief of having so many bad things behind him. He had concentrated on the end for so many years, told himself that he had to keep hanging on. Now, he wanted to think of seeing his family, of being human again, but he didn’t want to think about jobs, about making his way in the real world. He knew his body was weakened, that his health wasn’t good; he hoped he could rebuild himself, learn to be a normal person.

  “All I keep saying to myself,” Don said, “is that maybe, before long, I’ll see my wife and kids. I hope they’re all right.” His voice broke a little, and he looked down.

  “Do you think your wife even knows you’re alive?” Chuck asked him.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know what she’s gone through. I’ve thought about it every single day for all these
years. I don’t even know whether the Japs sent any of my letters to her.”

  Wally knew the feeling. He wondered what was happening in Salt Lake. Had the end of the war been announced? Were people celebrating? He had no idea what life had been like back there all during this war. Maybe the Japanese had bombed San Francisco or San Diego, maybe even Salt Lake. Maybe there was as much devastation there as here in Omuta. What he wanted to think was that his house was exactly as it had always been, that no one in the neighborhood had moved. He wanted his life back, wanted to be Wally again, wanted to sleep in a nice bed with clean white sheets, get up to a breakfast of bacon and eggs. He wanted to sit with his old friends in his ward chapel and hear a sermon—even a boring one. He wanted to take the sacrament.

  “Let me say something to you guys,” Wally said. All the men looked at him, sensing that he wanted to be serious for a moment. “I just want to thank you guys. Anyone who made it through this thing had to be lucky, to some degree—and had to be pretty tough, too. But I know I couldn’t have made it without you—you and some of my friends back at O’Donnell and Cabanatuan, and out in the Tayabas jungle. Some of those guys didn’t make it, but they got me through, the same as you did.”

  “Wally, you did more for us than we ever did for you,” Don said. “You and Chuck and Art have taught me more about life than I ever knew before.”

  But Eddy said, “Hey, it’s going to take a lot of work to keep you Mormon guys from messing up my conscience. How am I going to have any fun when I get home?” Everyone laughed, and that was just as well. For now, Wally didn’t want to think too much about all his friends who hadn’t made it but had once longed, as he had, for this day.

  “Wally,” Don said, “what about that girl you used to tell me about? Do you think she’s waiting for you?”

  “She never was waiting for me. We broke up before I left.”

  “I know. But you used to talk about her all the time.”

  “Don, I left home in 1940—five years ago. Lorraine is twenty-four now, and she’s beautiful. What do you think the chances are that she’s still single?”

  “Well . . . you’ve got a point.”

  “I can’t imagine being around a girl now anyway. I can’t even think what I would say.”

  “It’ll all come back,” Eddy said. “All of it will. And I do have to admit, I had what it took when it came to the girls.”

  Wally tried to think of himself going out on a date—but the picture simply wouldn’t come into focus.

  When Wally and the others finally tried to sleep, there were a thousand such things to think about. Wally did finally drift off, however, and it turned out there was no early call to work, and that was like heaven. Once he did get up, the day was strange, with nothing to do. By now, the guards were assuring the men that the war really was over, and even though nothing official had occurred, no one doubted any longer that it was true. The guards issued Japanese NCO uniforms to the prisoners, complete with underwear. It was strange to put on the very uniforms they had long hated, but the clothes were clean and fresh and felt wonderful. Wally especially loved the leather shoes with rubber soles. He made up his mind that he was going to have comfortable shoes the rest of his life, and he was going to wear gloves—work gloves and dress gloves—to pamper his beat-up hands.

  The men spent the day trading and eating, sleeping and talking. No one knew what to expect. The great question was how much longer they would be there. But for now, this was enough, this leisure, this chance to eat from Red Cross boxes, this relaxation of all the rules they had lived under for such a long time.

  On the following day, the seventeenth of August, the men were called to the parade ground. Commander Hisitake—the man who had beaten and tortured Wally and Chuck—stood before them. He was dressed in his full Imperial Army dress uniform, with braid and decorations, and with a long sword at his side. He looked like a comic fool. Wally had sometimes imagined himself putting the man through some kind of pain—just enough to show him what torture was like. He wouldn’t really do that, of course, but he did harbor enough hatred to wish he could somehow humiliate Hisitake, let him feel what the men under his control had felt.

  As Wally moved closer, however, he was surprised to see how broken Hisitake appeared. He was attempting to look stern and straight, but his eyes were distant, and his pride was clearly gone. He spoke through his interpreter and read the official declaration of Japan’s surrender. Then he told the prisoners, “I know that we have not treated you as well as you might have liked. We had limited supplies, however, and we fed you the best that we could. We believe in discipline, and so it was necessary to keep order here.”

  Wally heard some of the men react, swear under their breaths. One man nearby called the commander a filthy name, shouted it out. But Wally was stunned by his own reaction. The commander was a proud man, trained in the Japanese military tradition, and now he was, in effect, surrendering to these POWs he had long considered cowards. It was surely the most humiliating moment of the little man’s life, and Wally felt something he never could have predicted. He actually felt sorry for the man.

  Wally fought the impulse. He didn’t want to let Hisitake off the hook that easily. What he had done to the men—to Wally personally—was inexcusable.

  But then Wally saw that Hisitake was crying, tears sliding over his wrinkled cheeks. A kind of tingling passed through Wally’s body, and he hardly knew what to make of it. It was a spiritual feeling, a change coming over him. Some weight seemed to lift from inside his chest. Wally actually fought it, told himself he didn’t want this. He wanted to hate this man, always. But what had started as a hint, an idea, began to build into a powerful emotion, as though his spirit were being altered. He felt calm and right, and the thought that began to fill his head was that he never wanted to hate anyone again.

  Wally wasn’t deciding, wasn’t reaching this state on his own; a force beyond himself seemed to be working on him, refining him. He realized he was receiving a gift—one he hadn’t earned—and now even his reluctance was slipping away. What he felt was free—stripped of all the hatred he had felt for so long—and he was overwhelmed with gratitude. He didn’t exactly forgive Hisitake; he simply felt the burden of his hatred lifted from his soul. He couldn’t help it when he began to cry. He realized that the war was not only over but that it was over for him.

  ***

  Anna was sitting at the kitchen table. She and her mother were eating breakfast. Anna had been up twice in the night with the baby, and she was tired. She sipped at the peppermint tea her mother had made for her, and she ate the last of a breakfast roll, spread with a bit of marmalade. “When you finish that, I want you to go back to bed for a while,” Sister Stoltz told her. “If the baby wakes up, I’ll take care of him.”

  “It’s all right. I’m up now.”

  “Anna, you sound discouraged this morning. Are you?”

  “The doctor said I have the blues a little. He said new mothers get that way.”

  “I know that. Every mother knows it. But darling, I thought it would give you such a lift to know the fighting is over for Alex.”

  “It did, Mama.” Anna took another sip of her drink, then pushed it away, unfinished. Summer had come slowly this year, and now, already, fall seemed in the air. The sky was overcast, and occasional sprinkles of rain had fallen during the night and again this morning. Sister Stoltz always kept the flat cold, except for the kitchen, but this morning even the kitchen was cool. “I’ve always told myself that when the war is over, Alex will come home, and everything will be all right. But now I have no idea when he’ll be released. I didn’t mind so much when I thought he was being saved from fighting in Japan by being in Germany, but now the war really is over, and I keep thinking about the baby, how much he’s changed already, and his father has never even seen him.”

  “That’s not such a terrible thing, Anna. There are children four years old, and older, who have never known their fathers. And Anna, remember—th
ere are so many children in this world who will never know their fathers.”

  Anna was suddenly annoyed. She said, rather curtly, “I know, Mama. I know.” Then she got up and began to clear the table.

  Anna, of course, was well aware that her mother was right, that she shouldn’t feel sorry for herself, but it seemed that she had been waiting all her life for life to begin. It had been four years since she had taken on Agent Kellerman, cut his face, and her family had been forced to hide. The first three years after that had been hellish, and then miracles had happened and Anna had gotten what she had wanted: Alex for her own. She had known that he would have to return to the war and she would have to wait once again, and she had dealt with that. But now the war was over, and the baby was here; it was time to be a family, to be together. She found comfort in her son, loved to hold him and rock him, but she had never realized how much work a baby was, how exhausted she could be from nighttime feedings and long evenings when he would cry incessantly for no reason that she could understand. Sister Stoltz was a huge help to Anna, but she seemed to think she knew everything about babies, seemed to feel that Anna’s instincts were always wrong.

  But Anna was being petty, and she knew it. Her mother had so much to deal with herself. “Mama,” she said, “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be grouchy. I’m just tired.”

  Her mother had set the dishes in the kitchen sink, and now she was running hot water over them. She turned off the faucet and looked around at Anna. “It’s all right,” she said. But Anna knew she was offended. Mama was always fighting her own discouragement. But there was no use talking about all that. It wouldn’t do either one of them any good.

  The morning was quiet, with the baby asleep, not at all according to the schedule Anna was trying to establish for him. Anna didn’t go back to bed, but she walked into the living room, wrapped a quilt around herself, and lay on the couch. She was drifting but still half awake when a knock came on the door. She started, then sat up. Then she realized that it was probably Mildred at the door. The girl had a habit of leaving for work and then returning, all out of breath, having forgotten her card for the Underground, or some such thing.