Devil at My Heels: The Story of Louis Zamperini (17 page)

“Hello, Louis,” said a familiar voice. “It’s been a long time since USC.”

I felt like I’d taken a sucker punch to the gut.

The man was my former classmate James Sasaki.

I
t hurt to see James Sasaki, not only because we’d been together at USC but because I thought he, of all people, had been around Americans long enough to know that we didn’t deserve the hatred and brutality his country had shown us.

“Sit, Louis,” Sasaki said, pointing at a chair. He perched on a corner of his desk and tried to explain what he knew I was at that moment desperately trying to explain to myself. “All the time I went to colleges in the United States,” he said, “I also spoke to Japanese communities.”

“I remember you went to the Torrance Japanese district.”

“Also to Carson and Gardena and Lomita,” he added. “I lectured to the Japanese, especially the Issei—the first generation in America—to admonish them to maintain their Japanese culture, and to keep faithful to the homeland.”

“Why? They were American citizens.”

“I was never an American citizen. Japan’s a poor country, so I told them, ‘Send money home to your poor families in a country that needs your help.’ I also showed them how to save lead foil from gum and cigarette wrappers and roll it into a huge ball. Also, copper, brass, and aluminum. When the Japanese freighters came to San Pedro to buy American scrap metal, they could contribute to their country.”

I knew what he meant. I’d seen the lead balls at the Breakfast Club
on Riverside Drive in Los Angeles. A close friend was the son of the owner, and I worked at huge private parties on weekends when I was in college. A Japanese gardener and cleanup man lived on the premises. I visited his shack a few times and I saw two 20-pound balls of soft lead—all painstakingly collected after each function—that he’d pressed together by hand. I even picked one up to judge the weight.

At one time I might have considered Sasaki’s ideals admirable, but now I had to think of them in terms of the war. I’m sure he never put it to his people that way, because to admit that they were helping a future war effort would have been foolhardy. I’m certain not one Japanese-American he spoke to knew of the conflict to come. I doubt the gardener had any idea the lead he’d collected would one day become bullets fired at Americans. He loved the United States and was glad to be there.

Most Americans never knew about these activities. Had they, particularly after the war began, it would only have increased the hunger for revenge we felt after the Japanese made their unprovoked, surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, wiping us out without warning. That was a dangerous time; with or without reason, many Americans hated any Japanese face—or any Oriental face. That’s one reason the government relocated the Japanese to internment camps: absolute necessity. Had they been left among the people, their homes might have been set on fire, and lives lost. I’m not saying that the property of American citizens of Japanese origin being confiscated by the government was right, because they were defenseless. Some were even my close friends, Japanese kids with whom I went to school. Others were patriotic citizens and proved that many times over fighting in Europe as part of the 442nd, the highest-decorated combat group ever. Internment, sadly, was just the best of many imperfect choices made at a time of national shock, fear, and disbelief.

Sasaki chuckled and interrupted my memories. “Oh, how I used to love having breakfast at the student union,” he said. “Ham and eggs, bacon, sausage, coffee. I enjoyed American food.” So did I, and here he was, making a seventy-pound skeleton drool.

We spoke a bit more about USC, then he asked for a rundown of
my raft experience and spoke with calm confidence of Japan’s successful aggression in the Pacific. “We shall see each other from time to time,” he added. Despite our earlier friendship we were now on opposite sides not only of the desk but of the war. I expected no personal favors and no special treatment, and wouldn’t ask for anything. As far as I was concerned, I could call him friend no longer.

Sasaki dismissed me and I returned to my cell. As soon as the guard on patrol was out of earshot the other prisoners peppered me with questions: Who are you? Where were you based? What outfit? How were you captured? But when we fell silent, a suspicion gnawed at my gut, grew, and wouldn’t let up. Not once had Sasaki asked me a military question. I knew that Ofuna was a high-level interrogation camp. If a pilot was shot down Tuesday, he could be at Ofuna Wednesday for an intense grilling. What’s more, Sasaki had told me he not only held a civilian rank equivalent to admiral but was the head interrogator for the Japanese prison-camp system; he traveled the country, visiting one or two camps a day. Had he simply not bothered because he knew that after forty-seven days on a raft, forty-three in a Kwajalein dungeon, and nearly a month in transit to Yokohama, any information I had was more than stale, more than obsolete? Probably. It made perfect sense. Whatever I could say would be useless.

What didn’t add up, then, was why I’d been brought to Ofuna in the first place.

SET IN THE
foothills at the junction of two valleys, Ofuna in September was much like New York in the winter, layered with thin crusts of snow and cold, very cold.

The camp was built of flimsy wood and consisted mainly of three plain, crackerbox structures called One, Two, and Three—
Ichi, Ni
, and
San
. The layout looked like the letter
E
. Each barrack was set apart from the other by twenty yards; all were connected to a main building that housed the officers’ headquarters, the latrines, and the kitchen.

Inside, each cell was as wide as the tatami mats on which we slept. My blanket was made of paper; we got two and had to learn
how to fold them—tightly, to get layer after layer—for maximum warmth. The pillow was straw. I slept in my clothes and shoes. All I had was the uniform I’d crashed in, now a sleeveless khaki shirt and torn pants. A Norwegian named Thor Bjorn Christiansen, a crewman on a captured merchant ship, went through his belongings and gave me his extra coat. Without his kindness I’d probably have frozen to death.

Despite the icy temperatures, the guards wouldn’t let us stay inside during the day. I spent every hour of sunlight outside, huddling against the elements. Fortunately, we’d worked out a system in which we lined up and walked slowly, wound around like a serpent. The men on the outside moved inside, got warm, and moved out again.

Our cells had small square windows with wooden bars through which anyone could easily escape; but then what? Japan was not like Europe, where most people looked alike. What’s more, the guards made it clear: “If you escape, we line up ten men and shoot.”

Frank Tinker, a captured pilot who’d gone to the Juilliard School of Music, and I had a plan anyway. We could always hear airplanes, and they didn’t sound too far away, maybe two or three miles from Ofuna. I said, “Can you fly a Japanese plane?”

“Louie,” he said, “I can fly anything with wings.”

I thought we’d sneak to the airport and grab a plane. Of course, we wouldn’t know if the fuel tank was full, if we’d end up flying to China or crash in the Sea of Japan. Still, we plotted for several weeks, then decided to abandon our crazy idea.

One guy did escape, though, but within twenty-four hours got caught hiding in the hills. Luckily, everyone knew he was crazy, even the Japanese, so they didn’t shoot him or anyone else.

Not everyone was so fortunate. When men left the camp I often watched them exit. If they turned to the left, that usually meant they didn’t live. If they turned to the right, that meant they went to another camp. Every time, other men arrived to take their place.

RUNNING THE LENGTH
of each barrack was a long, narrow walkway about four feet wide and made of smooth wood that we had to
mop continually. The cells, on either side, were one step up from ground level. My day began at sunrise when the guards rang the morning bell. Sometimes I’d do calisthenics. Then, after going to the head, I’d sit on the step below my cell, my feet sticking into the walkway, and wait for breakfast. Utensils clanging in the kitchen became like music to me. Sometimes I’d smell the food on the wind and salivate. Even today, I can’t kick that habit.

Two prisoners, Duva and Mead, worked in the kitchen doing the serving and cleanup. Duva had survived after the Japanese crippled his submarine. Mead flew for the navy and was captured after his plane ran out of fuel during the battle of Midway. Both were strapping fellows and impressive physical specimens—and stayed that way because on kitchen duty they could always sneak an extra mouthful.

Every day, with big wooden ladles, they scooped rice into our tiny bowls. A few guys liked their rice dry, but dry rice never made me feel nourished, especially when I’d find straw in it. Other times it was too moist and had rat droppings in it. When all you get is rice, it’s funny how you’re always conscious of the way it’s prepared. Sometimes we also got a small cup of water with a piece of daikon radish, the Japs’ version of soup. If we were lucky, we’d get miso paste.

Lunch was the same. Dinner, too.

ALTHOUGH I WAS
starving, sometimes I preferred hunger to eating what the Japanese served. A few of the prisoners—we had Americans, British, Australians, Norwegians, even Italians captured from merchant ships—knew international law required that we get meat rations once every week or so. We mentioned that to the guards, and a few days later a truck backed up to the big cement trough outside the barracks, where we washed ourselves and spit. The truck was packed with fish that had been frozen but had spoiled. Even before the driver dumped it in the trough, the smell overpowered us and the whole mass seemed to move. In fact, it
was
moving,
it
being infested with thousands of maggots.

The guards told us to wash the “fish.” Looking at it made me sick, but I hosed it down and tried to get the maggots off and kill the
stench. Then I helped shovel the mess into big soup tureens. We all got the result, hot, the next morning. (They had to serve us hot food or we’d die. Japan was contaminated with human feces, which they used liberally as fertilizer.) The maggots floated lazily on top, as if in their own private swimming pools. I half expected to see them wearing sunglasses and drinking lemonade. Some guys considered the maggots nutritious, guzzled, and threw up. At no more than eighty pounds I was probably the hungriest guy in camp, but I just shook my head no.

A guard barked a command. “Eat!”

“I can’t eat it,” I said.

“You
eat
,” he said, and stuck me with the point of his bayonet, behind my ear, right on the muscle. I bled. He repeated himself. “You eat.” I ate.

We’d asked for meat; they’d given us “meat.” Two weeks later, we each got a little whale steak, about the size of a fifty-cent piece and as thick, cooked with teriyaki. Now,
that
was tasty.

ONE SPRING DAY,
when the ice broke in the little reservoir between the barracks that served as a fire-fighting supply, the guards took turns throwing a little puppy high in the air and watching it splash in the water. When, inevitably, the puppy missed the pool, he showed up in the stew the next day. I passed.

I wasn’t the only one who shied away from the rations. One old Norwegian would regularly trade his food for cigarettes. We told him he’d die if he didn’t eat. “I think maybe the tobacco is better for me,” he joked. He finally died of malnutrition.

Our food should have been better. In fact, it was supposed to be, except that the cook, Hata, had a racket. He stole rations meant for the prisoners and traded them through the fence to civilians. He wrapped the booty in bandanas and had me and others wait with them by the edge of camp until a tiny Japanese farm woman came along. I gave her Hata’s package and got a package in return. I’d give that to Hata. Sometimes he got chestnuts to boil with the rice—not that the prisoners ever got any. He also got gifts to share with the officers; in
other words, insurance that let him conduct his illegitimate business so openly.

AFTER BREAKFAST I
sat outside with the men on long wooden benches. Since we couldn’t speak to one another or hold anything in our hands—so no reading—each day seemed like a month. (When, after many months, we
were
allowed to read, we got basic books about an English girl named Pam, titled
Pam’s Own Story, Pam’s Little Box
, and
Pam Visits Her Grandmother
.) Any communication we managed was by Morse code. When the guards were far enough away, I’d shield one hand and tap out messages. Everyone did the same after lights-out, when the night patrol had moved to a different barrack.

For anyone caught breaking the rules, the reward was a severe beating, and the various guards—Shimizu, Yamazaki (“Swivel Neck”), Kumagai (“the Canary”), Asoma (“Metal Mouth”), Hirayama, and others (these aren’t translations, just nicknames)—took great delight in turning offenders in to the head man, whom we called “Conga Joe,” just to get a feather in their cap. Kitamura, the medic (“the Quack”), especially wanted to know who’d broken the rules, and not because he was interested in caring for them after the beating.

AFTER THREE MONTHS,
Phil left for an officers’ camp in south Honshu, where he was trotted out as a display piece for the Red Cross and other international agencies. It was plush, with no punishment. All anyone did was garden to grow their own food. We had no time for final words, but I was glad for Phil, even though I’d miss him. Unlike Ofuna or Kwajalein, his new home did stick to a few international rules for prisoners of war because it was a show camp for the Red Cross.

IN SPRING
1944 Major Gregory “Pappy” Boyington, the famous flying ace of the Marine Corps “Black Sheep Squadron” and, earlier, volunteer with the Flying Tigers in China, showed up at Ofuna. He’d
crashed in January, during a raid, and been captured by a Japanese submarine. After a brutal interrogation they moved him to Truk, and eventually to Ofuna.

They put Pappy in the small cell next to mine. Of course, I knew who he was, and he had read that I was missing in action. Boyington had shrapnel in his thigh and was almost a cripple. I used to massage his leg every morning to loosen up the tendons so he could walk. Later, the Quack claimed he could find the shrapnel with a magnet and cut it out. I don’t know what he used for a painkiller, but he did what he promised.