MacArthur's War: A Novel of the Invasion of Japan

by Douglas Niles

  “Publicly.”

  “Publicly recanted. Would honor be satisfied enough to let me keep both of you?”

  King paused, jaw clenched. “He’s spending more time fighting the navy than fighting the Japs.”

  “Douglas has been waging a one-man war against the world ever since I’ve known him,” Roosevelt said. “Anything or anyone standing in his way is the enemy, and he’s deeply convinced there’s a clique of people out to get him. By now, there is, but I think he helped create it. But he’s captured the public’s imagination and he’s winning against the Japs. Right now, there’s nothing more important to me in that part of the world, as much as I love the navy.”

  “He can’t destroy the navy to win the war,” growled King.

  “And so he can’t,” replied FDR. “On the other hand, Ernie, there has been legitimacy in some of what our Douglas has been saying. Midway was unfair; that was bad luck. Ghormley, on the other hand …” Roosevelt let that sentence trail off.

  “You’ve made your point, Mr. President,” King replied gruffly.

  “Have I? I’m not sure I have, Ernie. My point is that if Douglas has attacked you with some legitimacy, you must show that you can attack him with equal legitimacy.”

  “With what?” King said angrily. “The ‘Coward of Corregidor’ story? You and I know what a piss-poor performance Mac delivered in the Philippines, but he became a national hero over it.”

  “Ernie, Ernie,” Roosevelt said soothingly. “Of course you don’t attack him there. Not only would it be ineffective, it would also hurt the war effort. If I wanted to destroy Douglas MacArthur, or shut him up, I’d tell him I knew about the half million dollars.”

  “Half million dollars? Mr. President, I don’t—”

  “Ernie, I’m about to do you a big favor and give you one of the big guns I’ve been keeping around in case I needed it where Douglas is concerned. I don’t want this in the press because I don’t want him destroyed. But he’ll shut up once he knows you have it.”

  “What is it?” King asked eagerly.

  “Ernie, do you accept tips?”

  “Tips?”

  “Yes. Gratuities. Tips. Five dollars to the maître d’ for a good table. Twenty-five cents to the bellhop.”

  “I—tips? No, of course not.”

  “So if some foreign government official offered you five hundred thousand dollars as recognition for your services, you wouldn’t take it?”

  King whistled. “MacArthur took a half-million-dollar bribe?”

  “No, Ernie. Not a bribe. He didn’t do anything extra for it. It was more on the order of a tip. A bonus. An award for services in the past.”

  “And MacArthur accepted it?”

  “Yes, Ernie. He accepted it. He had won himself a waiver to the rule that forbade officers to accept payment from nations they advised. The Philippine president—Quezon—had promised the money to MacArthur. His staff got money too. Dee was offered sixty thousand dollars, but he turned it down.”

  “My God,” breathed King.

  “It’s a rather dicey business. I don’t want anyone to know—”anyone” specifically meaning Douglas—that I gave you this information. That means you have to find out some other way. Then you let Douglas know that you know, and afterward you both have reasons to keep your mouths shut about each other.”

  King looked at Roosevelt. “Do you have material like this on everybody?”

  “Only the sinners, Ernie. Only the sinners. You do understand how you have to play this, don’t you?”

  “Yes, Mr. President. It’ll work. I’m tempted to use it to take back the Pacific, but then I’d be guilty of what he’s been doing.”

  “You’re a good man, Ernie. I knew I could count on you. Now let’s get back out there before poor Frank Knox has a coronary.”

  1943-1944

  Eli, Eli, Lama

  Sabachthani

  We’re the battling bastards of Bataan

  No mama, no papa, no Uncle Sam.

  No aunts, no uncles, no nephews, no nieces,

  No pills, no planes, no artillery pieces.

  And nobody gives a damn.

  —Frank Hewlett, American war correspondent, 1942

  And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” that is to say, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

  —Matthew 27:46

  NINE

  Arkansas; Philippines; Japan

  • SUNDAY, 21 MARCH 1943 •

  MCGEHEE, ARKANSAS, 1147 HOURS

  Gregory Yamada, newly minted captain, United States Army, picked up his duffel and stepped down off the train. The last leg of his trip had been the worst. From Chicago, the City of New Orleans had taken him in comfort all the way to Jackson, Mississippi, where he’d gotten on the Missouri Pacific milk run to Little Rock, stopping at every two-bit hamlet on the way. He was the only passenger disembarking at McGehee. One person boarded.

  As the train pulled out of the station, Yamada looked around.

  McGehee, Arkansas, had a small redbrick passenger station located, logically enough, on South Railroad Street. The building was only big enough to handle about thirty people, but it was still separated into two parts, WHITE and COLORED. Drinking fountains and restrooms were similarly labeled.

  As a Nisei, a second-generation Japanese American, he was never sure which one he was supposed to use, especially in the South, where these matters were taken seriously. He’d used the restroom on the train right before disembarking.

  In Minnesota, where he’d been, March was still winter. Here in Arkansas, it was spring, the day bright and sunny. The air, now that the train was gone, smelled sweet.

  He went up to the ticket window. “Excuse me, sir.”

  The clerk looked up and did a double take. Well, it was unusual to see a Nisei in McGehee, Arkansas, wearing an army uniform with captain’s bars. “Why ain’t you out in Camp Rohwer with the others?” the clerk demanded. “That’s where you’re supposed to be, ain’t it?”

  “That’s where I’m going, sir. Is there a taxi service, a bus, or some way to get there?”

  The clerk laughed, showing yellow teeth. “Some way to get there? You’re standing on ‘em, boy. It’s only about five miles right up State Road One. Won’t take you more than an hour or two.”

  Shouldn’t be surprised, Yamada thought. “Thank you, sir,” he said, and turned to go.

  “Hey, wait a minute! You didn’t answer my question, boy.”

  “I’m sorry, what question?”

  “How come a Jap like you ain’t in the camp already? And how come you are wearing an army uniform?”

  “I guess the answer is the same to both questions. I’m in the army, which is why I’m not in the camp and why I’m wearing this uniform.”

  “Don’t get smart with me, boy,” the clerk said with annoyance. “When I ask you a question, you just answer it, okay?”

  Yamada waited, painting a pleasant expression on his face.

  “How come a Jap like you is in the army?” the clerk asked.

  “Well, sir, I speak Japanese. The army needs translators to interrogate prisoners and interpret radio signals, things like that.”

  The clerk digested the information for a moment. “I guess,” he replied. “So that’s why you ain’t in no camp?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then what brings you to McGehee?” the clerk asked.

  “My family. They’re here. I thought I’d pay them a visit.”

  The clerk thought again. “I guess,” he replied. “Listen here, boy. You may be telling the truth or you may not, but I reckon Sheriff Hudson will want to see you. You just wait for a spell, and then you can go see your family if Sheriff Hudson says it’s okay.”

  “All right,” Yamada said. It wasn’t all right, but fighting might make it worse, and might cost him those captain’s bars he’d so recently pinned on. But now he faced the dilemma he’d avoided previously: white or c
olored?

  Colored seemed the safe choice. That waiting room was dingy, with walls that hadn’t been painted in years, a floor that hadn’t been swept in weeks, and two wooden benches on the verge of collapse. An old, stooped black man with shock-white hair sat on a worn wooden bench. He looked up with curiosity when Yamada walked into the room, then the curiosity died out and he began staring at the floor as if in a trance.

  Two minutes later the clerk came bustling in. “What are you doing in here?” he demanded.

  “Sitting,” Yamada replied. “That’s what you said.”

  “Not here. This is the nigger waiting room. You’re not a nigger.”

  “I’m not exactly white either,” Yamada pointed out.

  The clerk held up his hand, then went around the corner and came back. “It’s okay. Nobody’s in there. So you go sit over in the other room and wait for Sheriff Hudson.” The white waiting room had been painted within the last three years and the benches were clean. The room actually contained a spitoon, something Yamada had read about but never seen. He sat patiently for almost an hour until the sheriff arrived.

  The sheriff was dangerously overweight. His eyes were small and piggy, and he chewed tobacco. “You’re the Jap who says he’s in the army,” the sheriff announced.

  “That’s right, Sheriff. Would you like to see some identification?”

  The sheriff chewed furiously, then spat. It rang like a bell when it hit the metal of the spitoon. “Yep.”

  Yamada handed over his military identification card. The sheriff inspected it minutely.

  “Says you’re a captain.”

  “That’s right, Sheriff.”

  “We got Jap officers in the army?” Sheriff Hudson looked as if the foundations of his reality were about to tumble down.

  “Somebody’s got to speak the language. There are prisoners to question, radio transmissions to decipher, that sort of thing,” he repeated patiently.

  Watching the sheriff’s mouth work the plug of chewing tobacco was fascinating and horrifying. “So you speak Jap.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Say something in Jap.”

  “Anything particular you want me to say, sheriff?”

  “Nope.”

  “You are an ignorant bumpkin with no manners and belong with the burakumin, you dung-eating mouth breather,” Yamada said.

  “What’s that mean in real words?”

  “I am happy to be visiting your fine community and appreciate your kind hospitality,” Yamada lied, smiling.

  The sheriff looked suspiciously at him and spat again. “All right. Donny says you’re going to the camp to see your family.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Going to visit long?”

  “I’m on a thirty-day pass, then I’m bound for the South Pacific. I’m going to be part of General MacArthur’s G-2 section. Army Intelligence. My branch.”

  “General MacArthur.” The sheriff spat again. “Well, I guess it’s all right. The camp is about five miles up State Route One. Won’t take you more than a couple of hours.”

  “No taxicabs or buses?” Yamada asked.

  “For whites,” the sheriff said. “Not for colored. Which reminds me. Army uniform or no army uniform, you don’t sit in a white waiting room again. You ain’t white, so don’t put on any airs, or you and I will have a little talk and you won’t like it very much.”

  Yamada thought about protesting that the clerk had made him move but decided there was no percentage in that. “All right, Sheriff. Which way to State Route One?”

  “Go one block up to Second Street, turn right, go about ten blocks to West Ash, and turn right. Then keep walking until you see the signs.”

  “Thank you, Sheriff.”

  He spat again, turned, and walked away without reply.

  • MONDAY, 17 MAY 1943 •

  POW CAMP CABANATUAN #1, LUZON, PHILIPPINES,

  0715 HOURS

  Today the prisoners had been ordered to watch executions before turning out for work details, so they remained lined up outside the huts after roll call. Johnny Halverson’s gut was cramping so badly that he could barely hold himself erect, but he managed a semblance of attention before the nearby Jap sergeant—the one he called “Fu” because of his long mustache—looked his way.

  There were some five hundred men gathered in ranks at the edge of the broad field that served as the camp’s parade ground. All told, at least twenty times that many Americans were held in the whole sprawling compounds of the Cabanatuan POW camps. There were almost as many more who had surrendered but never made it this far, killed or left for dead on the long, bloody march north from Bataan.

  Halverson’s last day of freedom, May 6, 1942, was more than a year ago now. Already the memories seemed to belong to some other person’s life. His existence now was based on hunger and a terrifying sense that his life could end at any moment. All he knew, all he could allow himself to know, had become this camp, these prisoners, and—most important of all, for survival’s sake—these guards.

  The captain, Ogawa Taiki, was strutting to the front of the formation, limping his way up the three steps to the low platform from which he addressed his charges. The Americans had often assured themselves that the squat officer needed the elevation simply to look his prisoners in the eye, but no one made any remarks. Now Ogawa stood with his legs apart, fists planted on his hips as he glared across the faces of the assemblage with unconcealed contempt.

  “Four men were captured before dawn, today,” he said in the clipped English that never failed to surprise Johnny. (Rumor had it that Ogawa had studied in San Francisco in the prewar years.) “They were attempting to reenter the camp, after paying a visit to the filthy Filipinos. Black marketers. Perhaps even saboteurs or spies,” he added with a sneer.

  Johnny knew the truth. The men had indeed slipped out of the camp after dark, passing through the concentric lines of guards on a perilous quest to reach one of the local barrios. They had taken a wristwatch and a few other miscellaneous treasures that the prisoners had managed to keep from the guards during the Death March and subsequent captivity, and they had bartered those possessions for food. The proceeds of that outing might have kept two score men alive for another month.

  Except they never made it back to the barracks. Now two of them, as skinny and disheveled as all the rest of the prisoners, were prodded from the prison hut at bayonet point. They were each a mass of bruises and blood and one nursed an obviously broken arm; the Japanese frequently tortured their prisoners before killing them. Sergeant Fu grinned, or perhaps he was just squinting, as four guards wielded the ridiculously long, and very deadly, Jap rifles.

  The pair of captives shuffled, heads down, knowing they were being pushed to their doom. One couldn’t even make it to the far side of the field. He tripped and fell on his face, lacking even the energy to use his hands to break his fall. The guard right behind him shouted a hoarse, guttural word and lunged, driving his long bayonet through the small of the prone prisoner’s back. Even then the American barely twitched, lying silently as the steel blade sliced down again and again.

  The captain barked a command and his guards hastened to bring another man from the hut. Johnny knew the man, a young private from the 194th, barely eighteen when he’d arrived in Manila. Max something … Max looked a lot older now, as they marched him past the bloody corpse. Ogawa called the rank of prisoners to attention as their two comrades were pushed to their knees. Two guards lifted their rifles, muzzles barely a foot behind the skulls of the condemned men. Johnny winced as he heard the nearly simultaneous shots. He blinked involuntarily. When he opened his eyes the two prisoners lay facedown, unmoving.

  The rest of the prisoners shuffled down to the chow line, to be served what passed for food at Cabanatuan. Breakfast was a bowl of lugow, rice stew with precious little rice in it. Afterward, the men quickly began to fall out and formed their work details. The Japanese made no distinctions for rank in these camps. Al
l the senior officers, major and above, had been taken elsewhere. Everyone else worked. Even though he was a captain, and thus one of the highest-ranking officers in the camp, Johnny Halverson was a farm boy again. He was one of hundreds of prisoners who regularly worked in the fields of the camp farm through the full length of the 115-degree summer day. Now he started toward the detail’s gathering point, at the east gate, but stopped at the sound of Sergeant Fu’s voice.

  “You! You!” The guard singled out Johnny and another prisoner, Andy Sarnuss. Halverson felt a stab of fear that gurgled audibly in his bowels, and hoped he wouldn’t have an attack of diarrhea in front of the guard. Nevertheless, he stepped forward with Sarnuss. They both bowed to the guard—all prisoners knew that the penalty for failure to make this show of respect was at the very least a beating—and returned to attention.

  Fu gestured that the two prisoners should follow him and started across the assembly field toward the slain prisoners. Johnny forced himself to walk, letting numbness seep through his senses as they drew closer to the corpses. When he stopped to stand above the two dead men, he did so impassively.

  The guard gestured at the corpses, pantomimed using a shovel to dig in the ground, and then pointed toward the vast burial ditch along the edge of the camp compound. “Guess we’re the graves detail,” Sarnuss said laconically.

  Fu nodded enthusiastically. “Isogu!” he barked.

  Halverson and Sarnuss rolled Max over and lifted the corpse. Johnny’s hands supported the dead man’s shoulders, and he felt no meat, no flesh between the skin and the bones. The two men started across the camp with their grisly burden while Fu, apparently satisfied with their effort, turned to business with the agricultural detail.

  “Poor bastard,” Andy muttered, shaking his head. “All this to come back with one stupid fucking packet of rice.”