Ghosts of Bungo Suido (34 page)

TWENTY-NINE

At the end of his first month in the camp, Gar had a near-fatal confrontation with the guards at the face. He’d started work as usual but then realized four guards were watching him and talking something over, which sounded like they were working themselves up to a little fun with the American prisoner. The shortest one, who looked like a caricature of a Japanese soldier on an American propaganda poster, wandered over and demanded something in Japanese. The other POWs pretended not to notice, mostly to avoid a stick across their backs. Gar had no idea of what the man wanted, so he stood there, head down, not looking at the increasingly agitated soldier. One of the other guards came up behind him and whacked Gar’s hands with his baton where they held the crude pick. Gar dropped the pick and folded his stinging hands into his stomach. The guards then indicated he should get back to work, but using his hands rather than a pick to claw down bits of coal from the seam.

Gar tried but made no headway. The coal wasn’t very good quality, but he could not force any of it out of the seam. The guards laughed at him and “encouraged” him to try harder with their bamboo batons. He didn’t know what to do, which was probably the whole point. The little soldier was the most aggressive; he kept badgering Gar with his stick and then with his boots until Gar snapped. Whirling in place, he landed a right cross to the soldier’s face that almost snapped his neck and certainly broke his jaw. The soldier went flying across the workspace and lay still in a heap under one of the coal carts.

For one moment there was stunned silence, but then the remaining guards, all yelling at the top of their lungs, converged on Gar with their sticks. Gar rolled into a ball and then scuttled under a second coal cart to escape the beating. He wasn’t thinking anymore, just reacting. Suddenly the beating stopped and hands were grabbing at his legs. He kicked back at them, but it was no use. He simply wasn’t strong enough. When they pulled him out from under the coal car, one of the Jap sergeants was standing there with a pistol in his hand. Gar figured this was it and, at that juncture, almost didn’t care. The other prisoners had stopped working when Gar had cold-cocked the little Jap.

The sergeant said something to Gar in Japanese. One of the Brits, who apparently understood, told Gar to stand up. He did so, slowly, alert for another bashing. The sergeant said something else, indicating with his pistol that Gar was to turn around and start marching. Gar couldn’t figure out which way the sergeant wanted him to go, as there were four tunnels converging at the coal face, so he picked the main tunnel going back up to the mine entrance. The sergeant yelled at him and indicated he was going the wrong way. He then pointed his pistol down a side tunnel leading away and down from the coal face. Gar complied, stepping over the narrow-gauge tracks and their ties. The sergeant remained behind him, well out of range of any tricks Gar might try, as they crunched their way deeper into the tunnel. The lights strung overhead became more infrequent, but Gar had no illusions about getting away from the sergeant.

Finally they came to what looked like the end of the tunnel. Gar stopped up against the rock face, hands at his sides, waiting to see what would happen. He half-expected to hear the pistol and feel a bullet drilling through him, but then he felt a strong hand grab his hair from behind and an even stronger knee in his back, bending him backward like a bow. He windmilled his arms instinctively trying to stay upright as the sergeant pulled him backward to one side of the tunnel. He could smell the man’s fishy breath as he leaned in close, his pistol barrel digging into Gar’s neck. The sergeant said something in a low, incomprehensible growl, then at last jerked Gar to the right and kicked his feet out from under him. Gar felt himself dropping into darkness and then colliding with a steep slope of rock and gravel as he continued falling, accompanied now by a small avalanche of gravel and dust. After what seemed like an eternity, the slope began to flatten out until he was brought up short against a rock wall. His friendly avalanche proceeded to bury his lower legs before subsiding into silence and total darkness. Then the guard up at the top started shooting.

The tunnel did strange things to the sound of gunfire, but the bullets whacking into the surrounding dirt and howling off the rock walls as they ricocheted in the darkness sounded just like bullets. He felt a tug on the fabric of his right sleeve, and another one on his left leg, blunted by the fact that there was nearly a foot of dirt and gravel on top of his leg. Then he heard a yell from way up above and realized that something was coming down. Instinctively he jerked his feet out of the scree and slithered across the bottom of the hole until his face whacked into solid rock. A moment later something heavy arrived at the bottom in a second hail of loose rock, gravel, and coal dust, followed by the unmistakable sound of a bone snapping in the darkness. The snap was punctuated by a loud scream. Then silence.

Gar didn’t know what had happened or what to do next. He couldn’t see a thing, and every breath he took was full of dust. Then he realized his eyes were clamped shut. He opened them cautiously, still flattened against a solid rock wall. He had to blink several times to get the dust out of his stinging eyes. Then he thought he heard something. He listened carefully. Something was down there with him, moaning occasionally. He looked in the direction that he thought was up and discerned a grayish circle at the very top of the shaft. His eyes filled with tears as the coal dust irritated them, and his vision began to swim. He blinked rapidly until it cleared again. Then came another moan from somewhere in front of him. He finally figured out what had happened: Some part of the hole had caved in, and the sergeant had joined him at the bottom of the pit.

His first thought was to find that gun, assuming it had come down, too. The circle of gray light way up at the top did not extend to the bottom, so he could only feel his way on his hands and knees. He made small moves, trying not to make noise, although the more he listened, the more he became convinced that the sergeant was drifting in and out of consciousness. His fingers felt one of the sergeant’s boots, and next to that was the pistol. He picked it up and pushed it back toward the pile of gravel that had broken his own fall, then backed up, in the direction of the far wall from which he’d come. His upper right arm was stinging. He felt the area. The fabric of his sleeve was sticky and wet. He knew he was lucky not to be dead, but now what the hell would he do? Then he realized the bottom of his pants was wet.

Pissed myself, he thought. Wonderful.

Except—he hadn’t. As he felt around the bottom of the shaft, he realized there was water. There hadn’t been any water there a few minutes ago. As he sat there, his befuddled brain trying to work it out, he realized that his fingertips were slowly being covered by water. The damned shaft was flooding. All those bullets had opened something up.

He sat back against the wall and tried to figure out what to do. After resting for five minutes with both eyes closed, he realized he could see better than before as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. He discovered the remains of a ladder going up one side of the shaft. Every third or fourth rung was missing, but the sides were still there, anchored into the rock with metal fasteners. He had no idea of how far up he’d have to climb, but he wasn’t going to stay down at the bottom of this hole. He stuffed the gun into his pants pocket. He wondered if it was still loaded and chambered, but it hardly mattered; not knowing how to unload it, he just hoped for the best. If there was water seeping into the shaft, he
had
to get up that ladder.

It took him half an hour of climbing and resting to get to the top of the shaft. By the time he reached the lighted tunnel, he was having to wedge his left arm through the ladder attachment rings just to keep himself from falling back down into the shaft before attempting the next rung. The overhead light revealed what had happened. Fully half of the rim around the shaft had collapsed all the way back out into the middle of the tunnel. The gunfire had probably initiated the cave-in. There was room for Gar to crawl past the semicircular hole in the floor, but just barely. Finally he staggered back up to his feet.

He’d expected a crowd after all the shooting and then the noise of the cave-in, but there was no one there. He hadn’t been down there that long—maybe an hour? There was only one way to go, and that was back to the work area in front of the coal face. He could dimly hear the sounds of machinery back down the tunnel.
Up
the tunnel, he realized when he started back, his breath wheezing as he made the climb. He pulled the pistol out of his pocket and checked it out while standing under one of the lights. It appeared to be either a 9 mm or .38 caliber. He popped the magazine and counted four rounds left. Plus one in the chamber, he calculated.

Carrying the gun in his right hand, he trudged back toward the work area, bent over as usual to keep from banging his head on the low ceiling. His right arm had stopped bleeding, and he was pretty sure it was a glancing wound, not a through-and-through. When he came around the corner into the coal-face work area, everyone, guards, civilian mine workers, and prisoners, froze in succession as they realized he was standing there with a pistol in his hand. The guards were armed only with batons; only the detail sergeant carried a gun. They were all staring at Gar as if Lazarus had just emerged from his grave, which was not all that far off the mark.

Gar had five rounds and there were five guards. He could shoot them all and then—what? Lead an escape to the mine entrance, where four machine-gun towers and the rest of the guards would be waiting?

He pointed the gun at the oldest of the guards, who quailed, dropping his baton and putting up his hands to ward off the expected bullet. Gar gestured with his other hand for the guard to come to him. The man stepped forward, his own hands still out in front of him, and started talking. Gar yelled at him to shut up. Then he gestured for the rest of the guards to come with him. They looked at each other but didn’t move until Gar lowered the gun to his side and gestured again. Then he turned around and started walking back. Gabbling among themselves, the five guards followed, accompanied by about a half-dozen prisoners.

When they got to the hole, Gar pointed down toward the bottom and then at the pistol. The guards were mystified, but then the older one understood. He pointed down into the hole and said what sounded like a name, his eyebrows rising in a question. Gar nodded and then picked up a rock and dropped it over the edge of the hole. Everyone could hear the splash down below. When he saw understanding on the face of the older guard, he handed him the pistol. For a moment he wondered if he’d really screwed up, but suddenly there was more urgent gabbling, and then they got to work. Gar sat down about 20 feet from the hole with the other prisoners and watched as the guards mounted a rescue effort. An hour later they brought the sergeant up in a makeshift litter made from a cargo net, assisted by everyone in the tunnel pulling on a long rope. The sergeant was in and out of consciousness, and his right leg showed clear evidence of a compound fracture.

One of the Brits came over after the rescue and shook his head.

“They’ll either blame you for his injury,” he said, “or the sergeant. Should be interesting, either way.”

“Can’t wait,” Gar said. “I need to get this cleaned up, though. Before they shoot me.”

In the event the camp commandant summoned Senior One and chewed him out for what Gar had done to the short guard. He then said that, because Gar had not left the sergeant down there to drown or killed him at the bottom of the shaft, he would not be punished further. Thereafter, the guards tended to leave Gar alone, and he wondered if that was a temporary thing or a sign that this horrible war was coming to an end. Lieutenant Colonel Kai had protested fiercely, but Gar thought the commandant was perhaps beginning to prepare for the future.

THIRTY

In mid-July three U.S. Army doctors were brought in from another POW camp. They’d been captured with Wainwright in the Bataan campaign and were now experts in how to serve time as a POW of the Japanese. They provided what little medical treatment they could. POWs sick with dysentery, asthma, influenza, malaria, and other assorted diseases were kept in what was euphemistically called sick bay, which was one end of the barracks screened off by hanging blankets. Anyone who died was taken to the camp crematorium. His ashes were buried in a well-like common grave that grew bigger and bigger as the summer dragged on. Each box of ashes had a small number tag, which the Japs nailed to a tree near the gravesite.

The bombing raids had intensified in July. The prisoners were usually down in the mine by daylight, so they never saw contrails, but their nights were filled with the sound of many rumbling engines passing high overhead, going north, and then coming back out again. There were rumors that the northern, more industrialized parts of Japan were getting hammered, but it may have been wishful thinking. There was no denying the nightly formations, though. The prisoners did wonder why they didn’t bomb Hiroshima City; perhaps Kure had been the only militarily important target in the area. In the middle of July the Japs made them paint the letters
POW
on the roof of the barracks and their own buildings, probably figuring that that should fireproof the mining operation from the B-29s.

On the first day of August there was a major cave-in during the nighttime blasting work. The fittest prisoners were sent into the main tunnel the next morning to begin removing rubble, but the work was stopped at noon and everyone ordered back out. The fate of the miners trapped behind the rubble was not revealed. That night the Japs told them that they were going to be moved from this camp to one farther south, where the Kawasaki Company had a much bigger coal mine. Apparently “their” coal mine had flooded as a result of the cave-in, which meant it was finished as a productive asset. They were all aware that the general mood at the camp had changed markedly in July, with the Japs seeming not to care so much about what they were getting done in the mine. The guards acted dispirited, as if the real news from the front had finally begun to penetrate the propaganda screen. The POWs, on the other hand, sensing that the defeat of Japan was approaching in proportion to the number of planes coming overhead at night, became a tiny bit more confident and determined to live through the hell of being prisoners. One of the doctors who could speak Japanese and had been asked to treat the commandant for something or other told them that the commandant was getting worried about what would happen to him once the war was over. Everyone came up with ideas on that subject, although they rarely saw the actual commandant. Kai was another matter.