Hooper’s War

by Peter Van Buren

  “I noticed, sir.”

  “Now word is the entire Jap 16th Area Army is going to make a rush into Kyoto before the weather clears. If we can take Nishinomiya rail junction in a few hours and prevent that, Kyoto will be mostly empty when we get there, and we’ll have nothing to do but run search-and-destroy missions on geisha houses. But if we fail to take this rail junction, we will face tested and rested Imperial Army regulars.”

  Captain Christiansen steered me into the house.

  There were straw mats on the floor, all torn to shit by the boots that’d been walking on them. I’d never seen the inside of a Japanese house before, sliding paper walls, a big bath half full of snow from the hole some weapon had opened in the roof, old wood beams, and busted ceramics in the kitchen. Most of the windows were either what looked like oiled paper, or now-broken glass, the shards criss-cross taped together in what had been an effort to keep them from flying across the room when the bombs fell. Who’d lived here? Were they inside then, eating, or sleeping, maybe praying with the guns talking around them? Do Japs pray? They must, but it didn’t work. There was a broken crock, rice spilled across the floor. I picked up a tea cup and mindlessly put it back on what was left of a shelf.

  In making the house his, not theirs, Captain Christiansen had pushed aside some Japanese-style, low-to-the-floor tables and seat cushions, and set up a field expedient desk, a couple of crates laid on their sides like an altar, more crates for chairs, a coffee pot on its last legs puffing against the cold, some maps, and not much else, except letters, a lot of letters, with envelopes and stamps, all over that desk. Looking at the letters upside down, I could see most ended lonely, midway on the page, no signature. The Captain took a chair, setting it down next to the desk, not behind it where he’d see the correspondence he must have been working on earlier.

  “Sit down, Hooper, we got one more thing. We’re trying to get all the ducks in a row ahead of this assault in case some of the ducks don’t make it home to quack.” The ritual of tapping the end of a cigarette and lighting a match seemed to give him a moment he needed. “You write your letters to the next of kin for those men you saw killed yet?”

  “No, sir,” I said. “I don’t know how.”

  “Aw, jeez, you probably want me to hold your hand when you’re jerking off, too, Hooper. Look, most of those soldiers already wrote their own death letter in case they got killed. Look in their stuff. And if you don’t know something, make it up.”

  I remembered Steiner’s letters to his girl back home.

  “Look, Hooper, every letter is the same. You say he was a good guy and everyone liked him and he died quick and for a noble cause. That’s the way it works in the Army,” Captain Christiansen said. Unlike his usual near-instinctive blend of grump and gruff, his voice dropped off a bit during his last sentence. I never would have believed he could talk to anyone quietly, but there it was.

  “I think that’s all just us doing what we think we have to, Captain,” I said. I’d manned up a bit, gotten angry a bit, was confused some.

  “So fine, Lieutenant, you don’t want to write bullshit, don’t write it. I’m proud of you for taking a stand.” His eyes bit me, fixing me in place same as if his hands were pushing down on my shoulders.

  “And here’s what your goddamn principled stand accomplishes. Some pudding-faced old ma who did nothing more than spend 18 years raising a son gets to spend the rest of her life thinking what it looked like when that kid decided the way to thank her for all those skinned knees and happy Christmases was to have the Japs turn his face into hamburger. Maybe you could tell her about the gray and red and pink goop, too. That sound about right?”

  “I’m sorry, Captain. Every time I think I’m doing the right thing, it’s the wrong thing,” I said. “I should’ve shot the damn puppy back on Day One and fed the village.”

  “I’m regular Army, a retread,” Captain Christiansen said. “I’ve been looking down the wrong end of somebody else’s weapon since before you got rid of your baby teeth. And I don’t know anything about puppies, Lieutenant, but I do know you better hold it together.”

  Grandma used to say we look into the mirror with fool’s eyes. So many of us, maybe even me at first, wanted to go to war and have the experience we thought we’d have, the one we’d read about in boy’s books. But to see the reality of it all and then want to do it all over again in a new war like the Captain—knowing—was different. In front of me was a man who was no longer bothered by what he’d done, a guy who’d had his affair, got caught, and had nothing left to say to his wife.

  I waited for the Captain to tell me to scram, but he didn’t. I started on my own out of the house, then paused at the door. I turned to face him.

  “Those men of mine who died, I didn’t know most of their names,” I said.

  “Go see the Corporal. He’s got them on some goddamn list,” Captain Christiansen said. He looked away, a dismissal of me, and sat down at his desk, those letters of his own still there, now facing him.

  Lieutenant Nathaniel Hooper: Retirement Home, Kailua, Hawaii, 2017

  THERE WAS ALWAYS THAT question of why Christiansen was still a Captain, a fairly low rank given his years of service, combat experience on Okinawa, and apparent war daddy enthusiasm. You’d expect a guy like him to have been at least a Major, more likely a Colonel. It wasn’t until many beers later at several unit reunions that I heard the straight dope on Christiansen, doled out as puzzle pieces I finally put together.

  On Okinawa, Christiansen’d got into some sort of trouble that dogged him, they said.

  On Okinawa, Christiansen’d really pissed off some Colonel and got busted down in rank, they said.

  On Okinawa, Christiansen’d been told to frontally assault a hill in broad daylight. He instead waited until dark to take it, they said.

  On Okinawa, then-Major Christiansen’d been told to frontally assault a hill in broad daylight, a near-suicide move ordered mostly so the newspapermen could some get good pictures. The fight hadn’t been going well and the folks at home needed the morale boost action shots would provide. Christiansen meanwhile had his own morale problems, having grown tired of carrying around a crowded cemetery inside of him and crying on dead kids draped over clumps of mud. He told the Colonel that ordered the attack over an open radio net to go to hell and take his mother with him. Christiansen then, fully against orders, waited until dark, flanked the hill, and tore it from the Japanese. He saved who knows how many American lives. We use the word hero too goddamn loosely today.

  The few men Christiansen lost were wounded in the initial movement, then suffocated to death under the mass of Jap bodies killed after their desperate counterattack. Christiansen got a Silver Star, then was busted down from rising Major-Enroute-to-Colonel to Captain-Stuck-for-Life for insubordination. He survived, and so did most of his men, but survival alone confers no rank.

  All the sand on the beach was once rock. My ending was already known—if I stayed at this war long enough I’d become him. That was Captain Christiansen’s real story.

  Lieutenant Nathaniel Hooper: Chaplain’s Tent, 1946

  I HAD ONE MORE stop to make before briefing the men and then settling myself in to wait for the order to attack. I felt stupid going to see Chaplain Savage again, knowing he’d be no help, but was short on other places to go. The other battles had been spontaneous, but this one at Nishinomiya was planned. Gave me too much to think about and too much time to think.

  “I’m sorry to bother you, Chaplain Savage. There really isn’t anyone else I can talk to about this kind of thing, especially before battle, so I came here.”

  “I understand, son. Ask me anything.” I think he wanted to frown but ended up offering a little smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

  “What did you do at home, Chaps, you know, before the war?” I said.

  “I was a minister, same as now,” the Chaplain said. “My wife and I had a nice house, lots of invites to covered-dish suppers. People’d come to me
with problems getting along with their husbands, kids who wouldn’t behave, that sort of thing.” The Chaplain reached for where his necktie back home would have been. “Anyway, I miss it.”

  “I used to be a farmer, after my dad got hurt. I can’t be a farmer here,” I said.

  “Yes, that’s the way it works.”

  The tent was empty enough. The Chaplain, like Captain Christiansen, did not expect to be here long, and so brought along few amenities, and only limited tools of his trade in the form of a couple of olive green-covered Bibles.

  “To be honest, Chaplain, I’m scared. I never knew kids could die. Why do the Japs want to kill us anyway?” I said. I wasn’t trying to sound naive, I really couldn’t figure it out in a big picture way. I knew it all started with Pearl Harbor, but since then became an ice cream cone that licked itself.

  “Because we’re trying to kill them,” the Chaplain said. “Eye for an eye. It’s in the Bible, you know.”

  “So if we stopped, they would stop?” I said. “We can just stop killing and the war is over, right?”

  “Now I remember you. Lieutenant Hooper, we met at the Ashiya Beachhead, right? Son, God does not like smartasses. Get out. And God bless.”

  Japan, Large American Encampment, Near Nishinomiya Train Station, 1946

  “MARINO, WHAT’D YOU FEEL when you pulled the trigger on that first Jap?” Smitty said.

  “I mostly felt the rifle kick back,” Marino said.

  “But like when you whacked that first Jap, the wounded one. Later I wasn’t sure that was the, you know, the right thing,” Jones said.

  “And Jonesy, what’d you do about it, huh?” Marino said. “Hell, the Lieutenant told me I did a good job, you heard him. Did you tell him he was wrong? Huh? Hell, five minutes before I greased him he was shooting at us, in case you forgot. Eye for an eye. If your conscience is bothering you, go see the goddamn Chaplain.”

  “I’m just saying it don’t feel right, even if we gotta do it,” Jones said.

  “I killed one old guy that was dying anyway. In that paddy we killed a bunch more. When we bombed Tokyo we killed four or five Brooklyn’s worth of them. Bayonets, bullets, napalm. Same church, different pew, that’s all it is,” Marino said.

  “Back home—” Jones said.

  “We ain’t back home, Jones. You can’t be no house cat out here,” Marino said. “The brass knows what we’re doing, and they keep sending us to do it. That makes it official.”

  “I ain’t saying we shouldn’t kill Japs. It just is different when they aren’t shooting back is all,” Jones said. “Like me and you back at that farmhouse, with the Jap and the knife and all, Marino.”

  “You keep your freaking mouth shut about that, Jones,” Marino said.

  “Wait, what happened at the farmhouse, Marino?” Smitty said. He’d nodded off, and but woke up as the argument got heated.

  “You shut the hell up too, Smitty,” Marino said.

  “So what happens when we get home? We just forget about everything over here?” Jones said.

  “Nothing else you can do,” Smitty said.

  “We’re going home more soldier than person. You think you’ll get there, kiss your mom like you’ve just gone out for cigarettes?” Marino said. “You got shit all over your boots, Jones, and you can’t even smell it. Me, I don’t care. But you, Jones, hell, you haven’t figured out how things work yet, have you?”

  Sergeant Eichi Nakagawa: Japanese Lines, Nishinomiya, 1946

  “WELCOME SERGEANT NAKAGAWA,” THE Major said, “to Nishinomiya. And no need to report. I already heard what happened.”

  “The sake warehouse, Major? I can explain. We will pay for it all,” I said.

  “Sake? No, nothing like that. I am referring to your action against the Americans recently in the paddy fight. I understand you and your men harvested your share. With bayonets no less! Save the bullets for later, eh?”

  “Yes, sir. Takagi and Otokita are all that are left, but we are here now to defend Nishinomiya.”

  “That is good, Sergeant Nakagawa, because the importance of our job has grown. With the American aircraft grounded by this weather, higher headquarters decided the 16th Area Army can move by train. We must hold the Nishinomiya junction for them. After we succeed, we will make for the Kyoto geisha houses as heroes. We will have extended the war by weeks, if not longer.”

  “I know my men and I had hoped for that, sir.”

  “Well, your ambitions will be realized, right out there. Go into battle light. Take nothing with you but your rifle and your soul; you’ll need one at first, and the other after you are killed. And, oh yes, get something to eat—there is cold nabe stew with vegetables we have been hoarding—but please do not ask where the meat came from. The only assurance I have been offered is it is at least from a four-legged animal.”

  “A last meal, sir?”

  “Ha, for some I suppose, but we cannot all be the lucky ones, can we?” the Major said. “Nakagawa, are you afraid?”

  “No sir, of course not… I am, sorry, yes, yes I am. As I wait for the attack, I want to grab the clock, I want to tear off its hands.”

  “Nakagawa, fear is not the problem. Overcoming it is. ‘Sweet and proper it is to die for your country. But Death would just as soon come after him who runs away. Death gets him by the backs of his fleeing knees.’ Please memorize that before tonight.”

  “And then, sir?” I said.

  “Kill Americans. Kill many Americans.”

  Lieutenant Nathaniel Hooper: Japan, Large American Encampment, Near Nishinomiya Train Station, 1946

  I FOUND THE MEN resting after I left the Chaplain. Marino and Jones had settled with their backs to one another, Laabs was on one knee, and the others had arranged themselves into a kind of half circle, seated on ammo crates. It was my turn to tell them what was to come, aping Captain Christiansen’s brief to me, because that’s the way it works in the Army. I’d since also picked up some talk that we’d have a couple of Sherman tanks supporting us, good news, but also had heard I’d been stuck with a new guy.

  “Sergeant, how’s everyone look?” I said.

  “They’re all a little jumpy. It’ll go away at the first shot. Like jumping off the high board. No time to be scared once you’re falling,” Laabs said. He blew into his cupped hands to warm them. “Hey, Lieutenant, you think they’re gonna pull another banzai charge on us?”

  “They’re fanatics,” Polanski said. “Every one of them happy to die. Good thing we don’t do that kind of thing.”

  “We sorta do, Polanski,” I said.

  “Aw, c’mon, Lieutenant, Americans don’t fight that way, running men into machine gun fire.” It was Laabs jumping in, poking his finger into my chest. “Hell, we don’t even need to. One of us is worth two of them in a fight any day.”

  “Yeah, but there’s always that third Jap bastard around, isn’t there? And how the hell, Sergeant, do you think we took all those islands across the Pacific? Or when we came ashore at Ashiya?” I said.

  “Bullshit, Lieutenant, that’s different,” Laabs said. “No disrespect. Sir.”

  “Aw, bullshit yourself, Sergeant,” I said. “I heard about you on Okinawa, when you believed in something enough to risk dying for it. What’s the difference between that and fanaticism, other than who tells the story?”

  “What do you know anyway, Lieutenant Hooper?” Laabs said. “You haven’t been in uniform long enough to need a second shave.”

  “Sure, you’re probably right, Sergeant,” I said. I lowered my voice so the others couldn’t hear. “Sergeant Laabs, over here, please? Take a knee.” I knelt down across from him, the classic Army position when you need to get to the real talk.

  “Yeah, Lieutenant? Am I in the shithouse with you?” Laabs said. Maybe a question, maybe a challenge.

  “No, no beef, Sergeant. Not sure how to ask this, but are you okay?” I said.

  “I’m sorry, sir. Won’t happen again,” Laabs said. “Sometimes I just got a big mou
th.”

  “No, that isn’t it, Sergeant. Look, you sure you’re good to go? We got a fight ahead of us,” I said. “I just never heard you talk like that before.”

  “Yes, sir, sorry, kind of a special night. You remember, I told you on the beach back on Day One my birthday was coming up? It’s tomorrow.”

  I’m not sure I’d seen Laabs smile before. I know I’d never seen anyone smile like he did there, starting at his lips, working past the corners of his mouth, right into his eyes.

  “We’ll try to arrange some cake and ice cream for you in Kyoto,” I said. “So, Sergeant, let’s get it copacetic between us, okay? Um, what’re you gonna do after the war?”

  Laabs stared back at me like that was the dumbest question he’d ever heard. The pause stuck around, so instead of waiting any longer for an answer I stood, reaching out to clasp his hand and pull him up.

  “Hey, sir, you seen this picture? Got it in the mail drop today,” Laabs said.

  “Girlfriend back home, Laabs? What about that Nisei broad in Waikiki whose heart you broke?”

  “It wasn’t what you think it was in Hawaii, sir.” Laabs turned the photo over in his hand, hiding whoever’s face it was. “I’d lie in bed with her, smelling bleach and sweat on the sheets, didn’t even know her real name. She had bruises on her thighs the color of eggplant from the last guy. The whole goddamn thing was about as sexy as soap in your eyes; even when she’d drop her nightgown like a puddle on the floor it’d mean nothing to me. Yeah, sometimes I did what I did, appetite, and I was embarrassed to be hungry. But most of the time I’d quiet her down with a few bucks and fall asleep with her, me like I was shielding her from shrapnel more than anything romantic. I just wanted to wake up next to someone and think it wouldn’t be the last time.”

  Laabs wasn’t a very good storyteller, but like the best stories, the words themselves weren’t what mattered. He handed the picture he’d been holding to me. Nobody keeps a picture of a whore; it showed him and a girl back home, standing in front of some lake. Made me want to live forever.