No Surrender Soldier (20 page)

“Darn shooting, that old Nip ought to be scared,” Tatan said. “Enough of us war prisoners would like to sneak into his hospital room and fill him full of lead. That’d teach him.”

I was tired of hearing Tatan talk that way about the Japanese. I was ready to go to school for a change. I folded the newspaper under my arm, grabbed my transistor radio, and shoved it in my pocket. Tomas and I listened to it as we rode to and from school by holding it against the bus window to get reception. We listened to KUAM for news of the straggler every chance we got. Even some teachers turned radios on low in their classrooms. When news updates came on, they stopped teaching to let us learn history firsthand. It was neat, really, to think I helped make history. I wondered if my name would be in the Guam history book someday.

By Thursday, the third day after Seto had been captured, Tatan and Bobo were pacing at the bus stop after school. Bobo’s cut had been healing nicely. Nana had said I’d make a good medic, the way I cleaned it up and put salve on it.

Seeing Tatan acting so agitated, I started worrying again. Tomas got off the bus with me.

“Tatan, what’s wrong?” I asked.

“Damn Japanese. Whole lot of them. All dressed like you and me… like civilians.”

I looked back at Tomas and shrugged to see if he was okay with Tatan mouthing off about the Japanese again.

Tomas grinned and tilted his chin skyward as if to signal,
I’m with you, bro.

I placed my hand on Tatan’s arm, hoping to calm him down. “Tell me, Tatan. Where are the Japanese civilians and what are they doing?”

Tatan stopped pacing and jerked his head toward Tomas. “He’s not one of them. Too young.”

“That’s right. Tomas is our friend. Remember his tata, Rudy Tanaka? Eh? He was one of the good guys on our side during the war.”

Tatan looked at me as if I’d lost my mind. “Don’t get smart with me, boy. I know Tanaka. I got to show you those damn Japanese tromping t’rough our boonies. What they doing back there? Stealing my bats?”

Tomas and I followed Tatan and Bobo to the opening by the baseball diamond. It didn’t take long until we reached where the underbrush was trampled down.

“Bet a lot of people been snooping around Seto’s cave,” Tomas said.

“Yeah, probably all those Japanese reporters who flew in yesterday,” I said.

“That’s what I been saying,” Tatan said. “Bunch of Japanese where they don’t belong.”

In the bamboo patch, there was a yellow taped-off area and Guam policeman standing guard. When we approached, the policeman yelled, “Hey! Stop! No one’s allowed here without authorization.”

Tatan went up to the officer and tapped his finger on his chest. “You’re the one on my land, Sonny. I been hunting and fishing and gathering food from these parts since before you were born.”

I touched Tatan’s elbow. “Come on, Tatan. He’s just doing his job. Let’s go home.”

Tomas mouthed to the officer, “Sorry,” as we all turned to go. The officer shrugged.

When we got to my house, Tomas and I read the newspaper account. “It says here,” Tomas read, while I peered over his shoulder, “that two war buddies brought a tape recording of relatives’ voices who are still alive in Japan. Seto tried to answer them back when they spoke.”

“Imagine that,” I said, “he doesn’t even know what a tape recorder is. Wonder what else he doesn’t know about.”

“Damn t’ing,” Tatan said. “Probably made in Japan. What they couldn’t conquer, they make.”

I held my breath and rolled my eyes. I wanted to cover my ears. I was so damn tired of hearing my tatan bad-mouth Japanese people and Japan. But I realized Tatan would never change. Still, it was embarrassing hearing him talk like that, especially in front of my best buddy.

Tomas acted as if he hadn’t heard Tatan. “There’s the telephone, and, of course, TV.” He folded the newspaper and laid it on the kitchen table. “I know, how about skateboards… what else?”

I tried to think of new inventions Seto wouldn’t have known about since he holed away nearly thirty years ago. “I got it. Bikinis! Seto’d still think Bikini’s an atoll in the Pacific.”

We burst out laughing.

Tatan scowled. “What’s so funny? You two not laughing at me, are you? Eh? Better not be.”

*

Seto did not understand why he could not sleep since he came to the hospital. He had a comfortable mattress under a roof in a climate-controlled room. This was the first time since he left home that he did not have to lay on a cold, hard ground in China, or moist, damp soil in the tropics of Guam.

Though guards stood by his door, he had been assured his life was no longer in danger. War buddies, childhood friends, and relatives had flown all the way from Japan to reassure him he would not be jailed or executed. And to convince him it was true, within a week he would board his first airplane and soar back to his homeland, Japan.

Still, he could not sleep.

Even in the safe, warm comfort of a hospital, with pretty nurses, attentive doctors, and policemen outside his room, ghosts haunted him at night.

“Why are you alive and going home?”
the phantoms asked in hollow voices to the cadence of their march. Specter soldiers marched, marched, marched by hundreds through his room.

“I have written your names. All of them,”
Seto told them.
“I will pray to the mountain. I will give obeisance to your names.”

Then appeared Privates Michi Hayato and Yoshi Nakamura.
“Are you going to Japan and leaving us here?”

“No. No! I will take your bones and bury them in a shrine in the mountains. Why do you haunt me? Have I betrayed you? Do you call me ‘coward?’”

Seto waited for the apparition of his mother. She did not come.

Seto dropped his weary body on cold linoleum and curled into a ball.

The next day a distant relative flew in from Japan to visit him.

“Your mother is dead,”
he said.

Seto showed no emotion. He already knew. Had she not visited him in his cave?

*

Saturday, Daphne’s nana dropped her off in our driveway. Missus DeLeon made it clear, “Only for one hour, while I’m at Ladies’ Altar Service. And do not go in his house while his parents are not home.” She wagged her finger at Daphne at that part of her lecture. Daphne looked very sober at her nana and said, “Yes, ma’am,” so I knew no breaking the lion’s rules. Or else I’d never be trusted to take Daphne on a real date when I could drive next year.

We took Bobo for a walk in the boonies so I could show Daphne where I found the straggler. Plastic yellow tape still outlined the area around Seto’s underground cave entrance.

“Not much action today, eh?” I asked a different policeman guarding the area.

“Nah. All the snoopy reporters went that-a-way looking for some old soldiers’ bones.” The policemen nodded upstream toward the falls.

“Did you know he was the one who found Seto?” Daphne asked.

I gave the policeman a green mountain apple.

“You don’t say?” He bit into the apple. “T’anks,” he said with his mouth full.

“Don’t suppose I could look down there?” I pointed to the bamboo mat covering Seto’s underground cave.

“I’m not supposed to let anyone…” The policeman looked in all directions. “But if you don’t tell and don’t touch anyt’ing. And I mean not’ing! They took one box of stuff out of there the soldier asked for, and the rest they need to inventory.”

I wasn’t about to wait for him to change his mind. Lickety-split I lifted the mat and motioned for Daphne to climb down first.

She shook her head. “I’ll stay up here and watch Bobo. You go ahead.”

I started down the bamboo ladder. “Bobo, stay!” I commanded when Bobo looked about ready to plunge down the hole after me. Bobo barked. Daphne kept a firm grip on his collar.

“Five minutes,” the policeman warned.

This didn’t seem scary at all, I thought. What a difference, climbing down the hole with daylight flooding the shaft and a policeman standing above ground.

But the farther I descended to the bottom, the cooler and damper it got. The walls closed in on me. I was suffocating again, not just from being underground, but from the overwhelming stench. My left foot hit bottom first. I turned, let my eyes adjust to the dimness, and saw Seto’s underground cave. I doubled over to make my way into the tunnel.

“Two minutes. Hurry up,” the policeman called down the shaft.

I got on my hands and knees and crawled through the cave. I touched the sticky blackened ceiling. “Good t’ing it’s supported with bamboo and beams,” I said quietly to myself. “Still, wonder how long will it take before it caves in?”

I crawled faster through the tunnel until I reached what looked like a crude campfire spot with stones all around and cooking pot in the center. Stacked to the side, from floor to ceiling, were chopped up bamboo, logs, and coconut husks. I sniffed the pot, which contained something gray and slimy on the bottom. “Yuugg.” I gagged back vomit.

I held my breath, only taking quick short breaths when necessary, and crawled to the end of the tunnel where it was hollowed out in a rounded, taller compartment. Light streamed down from a shaft over another, bigger cooking spot. Two tiers of shelves were loaded with old tin pans of assorted sizes, bottles, spoons, a rusted coffee can, and a tea kettle. I touched two plain spoons and ran my finger over a pair of scissors. I wondered if the scissors had been Seto’s favorite possession, because the blades were sharpened, probably on a rock.

I knew how he felt. I missed my favorite possession—Sammy’s baseball.

I was anxious to get out of the cave, yet curious enough to still linger on my way back through. As I crawled toward the ladder, I paused to look at Seto’s clothes neatly folded and stacked beside a mat woven of bamboo leaves. I’d seen
manamkos
weave hats from the long slender leaves. I picked up a case the size of a matchbox and opened the lid. Needles. Made sense, the newspaper article said Seto had been a tailor in Japan and wove and sewed all of his clothes while living in the boonies.

“Boy, get up here. Time’s up,” the policeman called down.

“Kiko, are you okay?” Daphne’s voice echoed down the shaft.

Quickly, I ran my hand over a cloth lying on the mat. Strange, wonder what this was used for? I laid the cloth back down on the mat, scurried to the ladder, and climbed out of the hell-hole as fast as I could.

“Creepy, eh?” the policeman said as soon as my head poked above ground. Bobo licked my face and I pushed him back, anxious to get out of the cave.

“You okay?” Daphne said again.

“Kay-o. Kay-o.”

She looked relieved.

“Here, let me help you up.” The policeman reached down and clasped my wrist and arm. I grabbed his arm and heave-hoed up top.

I took a deep, long breath, then let it out slowly. “How could anybody live down there? Even for one day?”

“Beats me.” The policeman put the bamboo mat back over the hole. “You better get going now.”

“T’anks for letting me take a look around.”

“Yeah. But no telling, you got me?” The policeman cocked one eye; it twitched.

“Sure, kay-o, we no tell.” I petted Bobo’s neck and Daphne nodded her head. But before we left I asked the policeman, “Did you see that cloth with all the embroidery? What was that?”

“Weird, huh?” the policeman said. “One of those old military guys who checked out the place said when soldiers in Japan go off to war, people make a thousand stitches on a piece of cloth. They take it with them as a good luck charm. Doesn’t look like it worked for him, did it?”

“No, guess not. Doesn’t seem he was too lucky having to hide underground all that time.”

“If I went off to war, all I’d want is a good gun, bullets, and knife,” the policeman said. “I’d make my own luck.”

“A knife, eh? Like one of those Swiss Army knives?”

“You betcha,” the policeman said. “The best Swiss Army knife money could buy. Never know when it’d come in handy.”

Daphne tugged on my T-shirt, signaling we needed to go.

“Well, we best be going,” I said. “T’anks again. Which way did you say the reporters went?”

The policeman pointed. I took Bobo’s collar from Daphne and pulled him away from the tunnel. We trotted off toward the falls. We were almost to a clearing when Bobo veered in front of me. I swerved and stumbled over a tree root. Daphne caught me by my arm and steadied me. I slipped my hand in her warm hand. Daphne met my eyes with hers, smiled, and squeezed my hand. The warmth ran up my arm and through my entire body. Even if I wasn’t too tongue-tied to say anything, what would I have said to her? I didn’t want to spoil the moment. All I could think was,
she likes me! I don’t deserve a girl as wonderful as her, but still Daphne likes me!

We held hands the rest of the way. One part of me wanted this walk to never end. Another part told me that we better hurry up or Missus DeLeon wouldn’t let me see Daphne alone again for the rest of my life.

After a long hike through the boonies we came across a crowd of reporters and officials gathered around a cave opening. Bobo slipped through people’s legs, but Daphne and I couldn’t get through until someone called out, “Whose dog is this? Come and get him out of here!”

“Excuse me, excuse me.” I elbowed my way through the crowd, keeping hold of Daphne’s hand, to claim Bobo. One policeman restrained a barking, snarling Bobo by the collar. A US soldier held up a plastic bag with human bones and two skulls in it.

Reporters murmured the names Hayato and Nakamura. Evidently Seto told authorities where to look.

“What are you going to do with the bones?” a woman reporter called out.

The soldier, holding the bag of bones, said, “First, we will verify who they were and how they died. Then, if we do find these are the two Japanese soldiers, we’ve assured Seto and the Japanese consulate we will send the bones to Japan for burial.”

I figured we’d seen and heard enough for one day. Not exactly a romantic first date—visiting an underground tunnel, the stench of death, soldiers waving skulls and bones. Still, I wouldn’t have traded the walk in the boonies while holding hands with Daphne for anything. The only thing that would have made the day more perfect is if Sammy had been waiting for me at home to tell him all about it.